A broad sheaf of light spills into the room, light that I know well, the yellow light of late afternoon. Ten to five? It’s somewhere between the quarters, stray time. The alarm clock is hidden behind a box of tissues titled Inspirations.
But something is different. The opening is not in the middle of the swing doors as always aligned with the door knobs, the curtains have been drawn so that the opening is slightly to one side of the glass doors. And the gauze lining hasn’t been drawn as usual, it’s been swept back over the white cord that runs above the door frame, it’s been pushed away behind the curtain. I can make out the garden through the slight distortion of the little old glass panels in the stoep doors.
But it’s not only the gibbous glass. It’s the light itself inside the room that quivers. It’s filled with something, a restorative rippling, pellucid, watery, beckoning.
From where this light? What can lend such a quality to this chamber of death that I know in every last detail? Over which my eyes wander daily, filled as it is with the signs of my end, the nursing-aids that promise no recovery, that are applied to the polite dismantling of my body, to the daily cleansing of my limbs, four, my three axils of armpit and pudendum, the clefts of finger toe and buttock, the crannies behind my ears, the hollow of my navel, the subsidences above my collarbones, my head with its seven holes, the little bottles of pills for the relief of my spit, my tears, for the singing in my ears, for my wasting spasmodic muscles, the instruments for the measurement of my remaining reflexes, for the notation of the statistics of my going hence.
What an ado about nothing every day!
What a farce!
Pastime, Agaat calls it sometimes. Respite. Of late she’s taken to reading me poems from the collections circulated by the South African ALS support group. Who will get them after me? Such recyclable frail-care books, it’s as good as bequeathing your coffin to the next candidate for one day’s lying-in-state.
And now in the midst of so much attrition, the light comes and announces itself in my room like an unfamiliar word. Like a word that you recognise as a word but of which the meaning just evades you. Sculp. Scullogue. Scuggery. Scuffle-hunter. Agaat’s and my dictionary games. What will she play with me now, now that words fall ever more into disuse in this room? Light-and-shadow chess? Trompe l’oeil?
Now I know what it is! It’s the dressing table!
It’s turned differently, at an angle towards the stoep side. The two side panels have been adjusted. Like the wings of a thing flying forward, and stumbling the last stretch, yearning to catch up with something, to capture.
There’s a view of the garden in the mirror, but sharper, clearer than a garden can be. My garden I see there, cut out on three levels, abounding with detail, the most alluring prospects.
It’s cornflowers I see, deep blue cornflowers in the one wing and in the other wing a cascade of long bent stems of light-blue agapanthus. And crepusculating on the central panel, in a pool of jacaranda shade, the voluptuous powder-blue heads of hydrangeas in full flower.
Cautiously I sip at it, choking with emotion would spell the premature end of this story. Could Agaat have started understanding me, at last! If it wasn’t coincidence, if she could get that far merely on the basis of eye signals, endless possibilities remain ahead, then I mustn’t spoil it now with an attack of sentimentality.
The mirror reveals a perfect result. The best I’ve ever experienced the garden. This is how I had always imagined the north-east side could look. I planned it in terms of all the different shades of blue in the catalogues. This is how I imagined it. Blue perennials, iris, agapanthus, hydrangea, bushes of kingfisher daisies, annuals sowed in the low borders every year, first for the winter plain blue pansies and forget-me-nots that started coming up by themselves in tract upon tract and then ageratum for spring, and after that for summer, cornflower, cornflower, and again cornflower. Because of blue one can never have enough in the barren yellow and brown of summer and also not in winter when it must help the rains to fall as the old people believed.
Now Agaat has arranged it for me in mirrors, a vision. How shall I know whether she reacted to my request or if it was mere chance?
Or could she have been planning it for a long time? First the emptying out of my room, the drawn curtains and now the light, the restoration of colour and objects? So that I, as I am drained of myself, can fill up with what is outside myself, as the poet says? So that something can start floundering upstream in the run-off? You never know with Agaat. She is witched. Sometimes I think she’s playing games with herself, and I’m a mere excuse for her inventions.
In the beginning she arranged fresh flowers in the vases every day, as she knew I liked it, but then Leroux apparently said we should beware of dust and pollen and insects.
That was Agaat’s story.
Perhaps she’s sorry now, wants to make up for it now.
As always at this time of the day shadows are playing on the wall next to my bed, but now there are lively stipples of light, points of blue, a general tint of agapanthus cast on it by the mirror.
A multiplied garden.
One visible through the window, one in the mirror, one on the wall.
How long could it have taken her? How many times of walking to and fro, softly so as not to wake me?
Perhaps she flew, changed herself into a dragonfly. Or a wasp. Landed on my pillow, her head in line with mine, to see through my eyes, and then back to adjust the angle, the angle of the dressing table, the angle of the three panels in relation to me, to one another, to the cornflowers, to fit everything together. One degree to this side or that side could lose the hydrangeas, could include a chunk of brown stoep wall instead of a bed full of blue flowers.
And then there are still the maps, Agaat, what must I do to get them? Heaven and earth it would seem you would move in order to have me buried in a cheerful and contented state. You’ll see to it that I’m not left here impaled like a grasshopper on a thorn.
Poor Jak. What makes me think of him now?
Perhaps he’s wandering around restlessly. Perhaps he’s approaching now through the wattles to see what’s become of me. For him it was all so sudden. One two three, I’m coming! Premature! No time for second thoughts. His mouth was gaping with it, his eyes as big as saucers. Good Lord, now I have an urge to laugh! Our father who art in heaven, that I want for breath to laugh! Earlier Leroux thought it was one of the symptoms of my bulbar paralysis, these uncontrolled fits of laughter of mine, but they were always about Jak. It was always about that trajectory. What goes up must come down, there’s no escaping that. But the curve of the arc differs from case to case. As I got progressively sicker, I started wondering more and more whether it would be better to go like him, and then I always started laughing.
Wretched Jak, Hollywood to the last gasp, or perhaps not Hollywood, at most a Leon Schuster farce.
Two days after his death I said to Agaat: Clear out, pack all the papers in boxes so that the executors can come and collect them, carry everything else out into the back here, everything so that we can sort it. I didn’t want to see anything more of him. The car I had towed away immediately without further ado, I didn’t want to have to stare at it every time I drove out.
Ai, the baas, the baas, Agaat said with a straight face when she came in with the piles of photos and asked what she should do with them all.
Throw away, I said, take them all to be burnt, everything, out, away, I have no use for them. Just roll up the maps nicely for me.
About the racquets and the training-bench and the weights and the abdomen-strengthener and the mountaineering ropes and the crash-helmets and the knee-guards and the calf-vibrator and the lumbar-massage wheels and the electrical foot-palpitator I wondered, a sale I thought, an auction, but I didn’t feel up to the faces of the people. I had it all carried to the scrap-iron heap behind the implements shed. From there, I knew, it would in time be drawn, with the rusted ploughshares and old pieces of corrugated iron, into the recycling vortices of the farm.
That was in 1985. For years after that I would see the children on the farm walking around with the medals around their necks or playing in the dust with the silver trophies. That’s all they retained of Jak, his toys. And the adults who experienced it, to this day I sometimes hear them talk amongst themselves about the spectacle. The master of Grootmoedersdrift, shrike-spiked like a beetle.
Jak’s law books and action novels, his piles of magazines and photo-books full of sports heroes, catalogues of sports cars and expedition diaries of mountaineers and sunglassed adventurers in the Alps and the Sahara and the Amazon and the South Pole I donated to the town library. I immediately regretted doing it. The little librarians gazed wide-eyed at the material, as if they wanted to ask how I’d handled all that virile energy. As if they wondered how a mouse-face like me could have kept up with all the grandiose flights of fancy of my Camel Man.
But that one could never try to explain to the Swellendam town librarian. And also not to the chairlady of the Women’s Agricultural Union. Her I didn’t even warn that a mirror was imminent, a wall-sized mirror that had covered one whole side of Jak’s office. I had its panels unscrewed and packed and delivered to Dot Stander’s house with the message that it might be just the thing for fitting out the hall where the annual flower show was held. Forget-me-not, I thought, I’d often gone myself to clean the mirror there, the sweat-spatterings and the other splotches, I didn’t want the servants to see them.
Only the maps I kept, the old map of conveyance, the one that I’d found amongst my heirlooms after Ma’s death, with the little painted pictures of all the special places on the farm. That map was the most original of the collection. Then there was the old transfer-duty map with the boundaries and beacons. And the water map on which the rivers and the underground veins of water, the boreholes and watering places and the fountains were shown, and later the surveyor’s map when the irrigation scheme from the Theewaterskloof and the Duivenhoks was laid on. And the topographical map with the fall of all the slopes marked on it, the contour lines, the heights above sea level written on every numbered hill and mountain slope. Jak later had the rest requisitioned and ordered from the divisional council, district maps with all the other farms in the vicinity. On these you could see that Grootmoedersdrift was the biggest farm in the area and had the best soil and commanded the best grootbos, fynbos and the best water catchment area. The big soil composition map I’d had compiled by Agricultural Technical Services with, incorporated on it, the photos of the vertical sections showing all the soil types of Grootmoedersdrift, the red sand and the yellow sand on brittle stone, the clay loam and the sandy loam and the riverine turf. Then there was also the whole of South Africa, and a world map, Jakkie’s school maps on which he and his father drew with compasses and calculations the exact proportions and location of Grootmoedersdrift darted with dovetailed arrows.
Roll them all up together, tie them with string, I said to Agaat, and put them in the sideboard with the photo albums. They belong with our records.
It can’t be long now before she remembers it.
The garden hangs suspended, shimmering, in the mirror, a blue cradle, a nest dandled in the afternoon light. I hear a rustling. In the mirror I see a veil of mist irrigation slowly precipitating over the flowerbeds. The leaves scintillate, the stems start bending as the flower-heads grow heavier, my garden in all its glory.
The back door opens. Quarter past five. Agaat has been to collect the eggs before the skunks can carry them off. I can hear from her footsteps that she’s carrying a precious cargo, the round-bellied basket with straw in the bottom. I can imagine how it was. Grope-grope under the puffed up bibs of the lay-away chickens. Softly clucking the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, so that they shouldn’t take fright, the close watching of the hen, her austere yellow-rimmed bead-eye, because she can be vicious and peck the hand that’s pilfering her eggs. Amongst the prickly-pear trees Agaat would have gone to look, behind the chicken run, under the pomegranate bushes, in the quince avenue, next to the old orchard. All the lay-away places she would have traced.
She carries the basket to the pantry, she takes the egg cartons off the shelf to fill them. How the good hand takes the red-brown eggs, the dunnish dust-brown ones, the small-yolked ones one-by-one out of the basket and assesses them, the largest apart, for selling in town, how she eases them into the little hollows, large ends downwards, half-dozens full. A quarter-hour chimes. From the time it takes, I guess that there are more than a dozen eggs today. Now she will write the date on the box, as we always did. What day would it be today?
A map of days, a calendar, that I have and that she writes on every day. But I can’t see that far any more. And what do I care for time? One day is like another in this decoction she has devised for me. Purgatory according to Agaat.
There was peace and tranquillity after Jakkie’s departure, after Jak’s death, for the first time in a long while on Grootmoedersdrift. Not an obdurate eye, not a hunched shoulder, and the mouth gentled for a change, the lips often livened up with a smile. How long was it, the truce? Five, six, seven years? Until I got sick, but the first year, year-and-a-half, while I could still move myself, with my walking sticks, with the walking frame, in the wheelchair, then still it was all love and harmony. I could hardly believe it, sheer bliss, I thought, Freuden sonder Zahl, to enjoy my old age with her. When did it change? When I could no longer speak, when I could no longer write, when I became completely helpless and had to come and lie here? Was it that that released the poison? That I was more dependent on her than I’d ever been? I’ve always been that, from the beginning. But with every step of my retrogression it felt to me she was becoming more rancorous, more furious. Had she pent it up all those years?
I hear her going back to the kitchen, I hear the water from the tap, that’s for filling the kettle for coffee. Her late-afternoon coffee so that she can remain awake for the evening shift. The silence while she drinks it. I can feel her thinking something, considering something. Then she comes down the passage, more slowly, stands still and turns back to the pantry.
It’s very quiet.
Agaat has a plan. The one sprouts forth from the other. The drill has struck water.
I pretend to be asleep when she comes into the room. I spy on her through my eye-lashes. She regards the wall next to my bed where the blue specks of light play. Didn’t think it would work so well, did you? I wish I could say that to her. I see a little incipient smile. She comes closer, even closer, she comes and stands by my bed, bends, until her head is at my height. There’s a wisp of straw in her hair behind the gable of her cap. Lay-away chicken nest! She comes upright, looks down at me. I open my eyes and find hers.
I’ve seen it! I blink.
I flash my eyes at the wall, at the mirror, to and fro, try to move my eyebrows. Thank you very much! It’s wonderful, Agaat, my garden.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who has the loveliest garden of them all? she asks.
Satisfaction on her face.
She puts her hand into her apron pocket.
Close your eyes.
She places something in my hand, something cool and smooth it is, she holds her hand under my hand.
Open your eyes.
It’s a big brown egg.
A double-yolk, I bet, she says. Tonight I’m making you scrambled egg, Ounooi, you’ve been eating far too little of late. Not a lot into you, not a poop out of you. And I haven’t embroidered a stitch. We must eat early tonight. I want to get working.
Work, for the night is coming, that’s what I think, but what I signal is: that will be nice, I’ve been wanting an egg for a long time.
Then that’s fine, says Agaat, a good appetite is not to be sneezed at and a wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse.
I close my eyes. I can’t trust my gaze. Better not take any chances. Give no cause for misunderstanding. Rejoice in the success of the first round.
I hear her clatter in the kitchen. It sounds extremely lively in there tonight. Renewed effort? At what? Courage for what lies ahead? How long? The yolk and the white are whisked together. From cradle to grave. The screen door slams. She goes in and out at the kitchen door. Scrambled eggs. What an ado simply to scramble an egg? Sounds like a five-course. I can feel her excitement. Positive energy. The Cape is Dutch again, how long can it last?
She brings my tray. A candle? A vase? And, for the first time again in how many months—a twig of the rambling rose! Crepuscule! Floppy copper-coloured petals, the inside darker, a lively rust colour, a Cape robin’s bib. The evening has been brought indoors for me.
The eye is the window of the soul, but a mirror helps, says Agaat. A picture of primness, but I can see she’s very pleased with her handiwork.
She cranks down my bed.
Lower the sheep, she says through her breathing.
She pulls herself up on her stool.
Raise the girl, she says. Her voice is soft, palliative.
The egg goes down well. She has brought it to the exact degree of just-done, but still good and moist, and, if I must judge, strained it twice through a tea-strainer so that the texture is uniformly smooth.
Without hurry she spoons up the egg pulp in small spoonfuls, and brings it inside, sees to it that I swallow, once, twice, everything without emphasis.
Her little hand is resting on my waist, in its white crocheted sleeve. With that she gauges my breathing so that she can bring in the teaspoonfuls at the right rhythm and tempo. Her starched clothes make a sound every time she leans forward, the shoulder bands of the apron as they tense and relax, her arms as they rub against the turn-ups of her sleeves. The stool creaks rhythmically as she shifts her weight.
I am hungry. There is something beneficent about the taste of the egg. It tastes of butter and cream. Agaat wants to pamper me, and herself, for the breakthrough, for my gratitude.
I understand the bustle back there. I can see her, spatula in the little hand, the bowl with the whisked-up egg in the strong hand, standing by the frying-pan in which the butter is already foaming, and then suddenly having an idea, putting everything down, removing the pan from the heat, and in the falling dusk going to the dairy to ladle a little jug of fresh cream from the pail. For scrambled egg de luxe. And how the one inspiration inspires another. In and out at the screen door as it occurs to her. She went and picked a twig of parsley, from the pot next to the back door, and put it on the side of the plate, too dangerous even to sprinkle finely-chopped on the egg, but for the look, and for the smell. She crushes the leaves between the fingers of her right hand, she holds it under my nose. Her lips come forward, her eyes glisten.
I smell it, Agaat.
Ai, Ounooi Ounooi, say Agaat’s eyes. She looks away. My face is too much for her. She divides it up into manageable fragments. Under my nose she mops up a drop, from my forehead she whisks away something that’s not there. She puts another teaspoonful of egg into my mouth.
I eat a highway through the double-yolk.
It’s a wind-still evening. Agaat has opened the swing doors so that I can hear the yard-noise of milk cans and the returning tractors and the closing of shed doors.
Now it has gone quiet. Now I hear only the sprinklers and the pump down by the old dam, that Dawid will go to switch off at ten o’clock. Closer by is the twilight song of thrushes and Cape robins, a light rustling every now and again in the bougainvillea on the stoep, a few slight sleeping sounds of the small birds, sparrows, white-eyes, that settle there for the night in the centre of the bush.
On the mirror an abstract painting is limned, midnight-blue like the inside of an iris, with the last dusk-pale planes and dark stains from which one can surmise that the garden is deep and wide, full of concealed nooks, full of the silence of ponds, full of small stipples of reflected stars on the wet leaves, full of the deep incisions of furrows. Green, wet fragrances of the night pour into the room, from water on lawns and on hot-baked soil and dusty greenery.
I smell it, Agaat. Everything that you have prepared before me.
She removes the spray of roses in the little crystal vase from the tray and places it next to my bed on the night-table with the candle.
Had enough? Was it good? Are you feeling better now? No way you could have gone to sleep on such a hungry stomach.
She clears away the tray, switches off the main lights.
Now how about warm milk, with sugar and a drop of vanilla?
That’s good, later, I gesture.
On her way out she takes her embroidery out of the basket. She looks in the little blue book lying on the chair. She reads the last page and sighs. She searches through the pile, pulls out another. She puts it down on the embroidery. I can always tell when she wants to give up the reading, when she becomes disheartened with it. But these are her two projects. She doesn’t leave a thing half-done. Especially when she doesn’t yet know how it is to end.
The candle casts a glow on the wall next to my bed. In it stirs the shadow of the crepuscule in the glass vase. Longer and shorter stretch and shrink the buds. The air freshens from the window. It billows the gauze lining at the open doors outwards and inwards. The flame stirs, casts a silhouette of stems on the wall, crystal and water and tiny air bubbles trouble the light. Doubly magnified in the shadow on the wall where he perches in the rose twigs, front feet clasped together, I see the praying mantis.
She wouldn’t bring a thing like that in here without intention. The most exemplary motionless creature she could think of. Little hands folded in prayer. The green membranous wings like coat-tails draped over the abdomen, the triangular head with the bulbous eyes.
I look at the mirror. I see the candle flame and its yellow glow, the shadows, the coruscation of the water, the vase, the rose, the spriggy limbs of the praying mantis. These then are the things reflecting in the three panels where the garden has now darkened. When the flame stirs, the shadows dance, the reflections of the shadows dance, the supplicant raises its front legs in the rose.
Does a mirror sometimes preserve everything that has been reflected in it? Is there a record of light, thin membranes compressed layer upon layer that one has to ease apart with the finger-tips so that the colours don’t dissipate, so that the moments don’t blot and the hours don’t run together into inconsequential splotches? So that a song of preserved years lies in your palm, a miniature of your life and times, with every detail meticulous in clear, chanting angel-fine enamel, as on the old manuscripts, at which you can peer through a magnifying glass and marvel at so much effort? So many tears for nothing? For light? For bygone moments?
A floating feeling takes possession of me, to and fro I look between the shadow picture on the wall and the reflection in the mirror. A story in a mirror, second-hand. About what was and what is to be. About what I have to come to in these last days and nights. About how I must get there over the fragments I am trying to shore. I step on them, step, as on stones in a stream. Agaat and I and Jak and Jakkie. Four stepping-stones, every time four and their combinations of two, of three, their powers to infinity and their square roots. Their sequences in time, their causes and effects. How to join and to fit, how to step and to say: That is how I crossed the river, there I walked, that was the way to here. How to remember, without speech, without writing, without map, an exile within myself. Motionless. Solid. In my bed. In my body. Shrunken away from the world that I created. With images that surface and flow away, flakes of light that float away from me so that I cannot remember what I have already remembered and what I have yet to remember. Am I the stream or am I the stone and who steps on me, who wades through me, to whom do I drift down like pollen, like nectar, like a fragrance, always there are more contents to be ordered into coherence.
Through the open doors I smell the night ever more intensely. It permeates my nose like a complex snuff. Can one smell sounds? I hear the dikkops, from a northerly direction. Christmas, christmas, christmas, they cry in descending tones, christmas comes. The yard plovers cry as they fly up, a disturbance at the nest? The frogs strike up, white bibs bulging in the reeds. Under the stoep a cricket starts filing away at its leg-irons. Here next to my head something prays in the void. That I may be permitted to make the journey one more time, on stippled tracks for my eyes, pursuing place names that are dictated to me, the last circuit, a secret, a treasure that neither moth nor rust can destroy, a relation, a sentence hidden amongst words.
Suddenly I see Agaat. In the dark door-cavity with the tray in her hands. She’s watching me from the shadows, I can’t make out her face, just the cap, a small white tomb in the air.
Would she sometimes simply be curious, an onlooker at a fainting incident in the street, a visitor to a cage in which a snake is shedding its skin? How would I ever know? How could I hold it against her? How would I want her to look at me here where I am lying?
I close my eyes. I thought she’d already left for the kitchen. I wouldn’t, after all that, have dared look around again. Not if I had known she was still there. I hear her walk down the passage, turn round, walk back slowly. She’s in the spare room. She stands still.
I count to twelve before she moves again. I hear her put down the tray in the kitchen but then none of the usual, the sounds of clearing the tray on the work surface, of scraping leftovers into the bin, filling the washbasin with water, washing and drying and packing away dishes, taking her own plate out of the warming oven, the sound of the kettle being filled for her tea, pulling out and pulling up the kitchen chair and then, as always, the silence as she eats her evening meal. None of this I hear.
She walks around the house, every now and again she stops, a few paces to this side, a few paces to that, and then stops again. In the dining room, in the living room, in the sitting room, in the entrance hall I hear the floorboards creak and then again down the passage on her rubber soles she walks, tchi-tchi-tchi past my door, a glance at my bed, further along to Jakkie’s room, to the spare room, a hesitation before the walk to the back room, and back again down the passage and back and stop and carry on. I can hear her thinking. I can feel her looking for empty spaces. The already-cleared house that echoes lightly. Out at the back door now. Keys. It’s the big bunch. First the storage rooms in the back, then round the front.
What is she whistling for me to hear there where she is in the dark?
Oh ye’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road . . .
What is that rattling under my bed? The cellar door? Here right beneath me in the right wing? What would she be looking for there?
Muffled from below the floorboards, under the concrete floor layer, the whistling sounds just loud enough so that I can make out the tune.
An’ I’ll be in Scotland before ye’ . . .
The extra mile, Leroux said, that woman walks the extra mile for you.
…
night of resurrection sunday night one foot before the other slowly in front of my mirror it is I here I stand four limbs nothing that is wanting here roll away the stone before my foot I ask slowly until I stand in front of the pantry shelf flour bag in the palms sugar bag in the palms mixing-bowl in the palms milk jug in two hands god in heaven restore to me in your name the grip in my fingers six eggs one by one in each palm a cake is a manual exercise forgive me my trespasses sieve spoon pan oven I will I want I can the cock of monday morning crows a dent in the flour separate the whites from the yolks the first egg breaks wrong the second remains closed hopefully whole the third also falls and so the fourth to the fifth and the sixth there are seven shells in the flour.
…
12 August 1960 ten past eight
A. is going to give me grey hairs yet, I can see it coming. This morning when she brought in the coffee the dog prodded his nose into her again.
Smelt nothing just Mum & starch & a tiny line of mud on the seam of hr apron from hr nocturnal escapades but for the rest spotlessly clean everything.
Have just been to do inspection in her room. Old black umbrella standing in the corner & a paint tin on a sack tip-tip, it drips in the tin. There’s a patch of mould on the ceiling suppose roof must be rusted through will have to take it in hand. For the rest everything clean & tidy. Looked in hr cupboard she’s wearing the bras I see even though they are too big & the pack of Dr White’s has not been used further I suppose she doesn’t know how but I seem to remember one of the elastics to which it’s fixed was missing the evening when she disappeared with hr suitcase. I know that dog it does that with women who are bleeding. Had half hoped she would pick up the Facts of Life from the other servants but no help from that source. Leave hr alone she’s white I heard Saar say to Lietja. Had hoped that with the move to the outside room she would throw in her lot with the others—not altogether of course but just so that she can learn to know her place.
So I had hr called & went & spoke the necessary there in the back don’t know if it was enough you can’t be strict enough with them at that age. If you start bleeding between your legs every month I said to hr you’re a risk here on Gdrift you can bring to nought everything that we’ve done for you overnight & I know you wander about after dark & if I ever catch you in the labourers’ houses or discover you’ve been to D. & his crowd at night I’ll give you the boot in the blink of an eye where will you go then? Your place is here on Gdrift I said so see to it that you toe the line. She just stared at me. Don’t act stupid I said. You know what the bull does to the cow & what comes of it? just pain & suffering & you’re not quite right you’re deformed & they did bad things to you when you were small so you can’t have children in any case even if you want to & maybe it’s hereditary & you know what happens to the late lamb whose mother casts him off? We can’t go around raising them all as hanslammers it takes too much time & trouble.
Count yourself lucky I said that you were chosen & kept on & that you got to where you are today where there are people who look after you it’s sheer mercy & if you bleed I said you put on the pads. Demonstrated with the elastic & the loops 5 times a day the first 3 days & you wash yourself every time you put on a new one with hot water & soap & rub Mum in your groin when you put on a new one & if I ever pick up a whiff on you there’s trouble & the dirty ones you put together in a paper bag & you push it deep into the bin where the dogs can’t get to it. If the bleeding ever stays away don’t even come & tell me, just take your things & go because then I never want to set eyes on you again.
12 August 1960 10 past 10
Don’t feel well since I’ve been there in the outside room must get more rest I suppose at this stage. Week 34. Dr. did say I would tire easily but I must make time for myself. Would be good to have more time to write up everything that happens here. Might just skip things that could be important. Saar says A. isn’t all there she looks as if she walks in hr sleep. See A.’s light’s on late at night I suppose she’s reading because I forbade hr to read in the day it sets a bad example to the other servants & she has more than enough work to do & I’m scared J. will catch hr reading he’s totally opposed to the idea teach a baboon to read tonight & tomorrow he’ll be dictating to you he says perhaps I can teach her the basics of embroidery it’s a better pastime at least then she’ll be producing something.
12 August after lunch
Slept this afternoon. Feel it’s close now. Two weeks too early? Everybody says the firstborn is late mostly. Worried about A. I think she’s scared of me of what is to happen to me & she tries to hide it behind affectations this morning again when the rain stopped at last. Bring along your embroidery book & come & sit here with me on the stoep I said because I wanted to comfort hr a bit too after the whole sermon on the monthlies & I might as well use my rest break usefully & give hr something of value. Did after all envision it like that from the start just didn’t get around to it. Bring your needlework basket I said.
And right there it begins. She turns around as if a snake has bitten her & looks me straight in the eye rude! All I’m saying is you must bring along your needlework basket but then & there I lose my temper completely because I’m made to feel I must justify myself. Who does she think she is the little scallywag full of airs & adopts a pose standing half to attention the feet together the back rigid the arms bent at the elbows the right hand in the left hand held under the chest & the chin stuck out all the way to wherever.
What do you want me to say? I thought. So I said what I wanted to say in any case: your embroidery book & your needlework basket bring them but she just stood there as if she were on stage. So that will be all thank you was all I said as if I were also on stage & only then she looked satisfied. Nods the head as if she’s a doll & off she goes with little measured steps the legs hinging only from the knee down as if she’s scared that something will drop out from under her. Where would she get that from? Had to shut up the other servants because there they go laughing like drains about the little airs. Ignore I said it passes by itself.
Went to look for an off-cut of coarse-woven material in the ragbag. Halfway through I had another idea. In the bottom drawer of the linen cupboard I remembered there were still precious lengths of material from my mother’s trousseau that she’d never used & so I chose the biggest most beautiful piece 2 cloths 6 × 3 yards Glenshee linen still wrapped in the white tissue paper just as Ma must have got it. I thought let me reward her & give her something to show I understand it’s not all such plain sailing for hr.
Here next to me on the bench I showed her she must sit when she came out on the stoep but she didn’t want to. Brings the stoep chair closer by your leave & puts it next to the bench. So there I had to move closer myself to be near enough to page through the book with hr. You’re provoking me I thought but rather said nothing. Sheep-slaughtering I said is not the beginning & the end of the world or stoep-polishing or onion-plaiting or pumpkin-stacking. Farming is only one half of a housekeeper’s work. Thought I had to put the point strongly because I’ve been driving her a bit hard this last month.
Embroidery I said is the other half & fine decorative needlework & knitting & crocheting. They belong to the finer things in life they are age-old arts & rich traditions from the domain of woman. Look at me I said because she was staring in front of her & pretended to be struck deaf. I want you to be knowledgeable & I want you to teach yourself & make it your own that will be proof that I haven’t wasted my time with you I said to her.
So I opened the book at my inscription in front & made her read out aloud what I had underlined in the Introduction. Embroidery creates an atmosphere of true values in a house & speaks of the personality of its creator it demonstrates the difference between a developed & an uncivilised nation.
Showed hr all the prettiest examples of drawn-fabric work & white-work & black-work & shadow-work & ravel-work & showed pictures how an embroidered table cloth makes all the difference to a full tea-table setting & how embroidered napkins can make any meal look like that of a king. Told her about the wall hangings of the tabernacle as described in Exod. richly embroidered by hand & about the first piece of embroidery from the 4th century B.C. & about the embroidered cloths in which the mummies of Egypt were wrapped for the long journey to the realm of the dead & of the pelicans & the jackals & all the figures of the gods & of how everything was embroidered with the greatest of care on fine woven cloth so that the deceased should not feel alone & would arrive in the kingdom of heaven completely wrapped up in his culture & history & faith. Also explained about the church embroidery at which thousands of nuns sat labouring day after day in poor light in their cells to the glory of God of the Opus Anglicanum & the great French tapestry of the walled garden in which a snow-white unicorn comes to rest with its head on the lap of the Virgin Mary.
The picture of the strange horse with the bump on the head where the single whorled horn emerges of course interested her mightily. Saw her sta-a-a-ring at this lot & wanting to ask something but the mouth remained drawn in a thin line. So I just said the horse is a symbol of the wander-weary soul & the Catholics believe that the Mother of God is also a mediator but it’s a superstition J C is the only way to the Father & the mother is secondary.
Did my best to impress upon A. all the possibilities & showed her examples of our embroidered National art & the representations of our History the ships of Van Riebeeck & the distribution of the first farms on the Liesbeeck & the fat-tailed sheep that the Free Burghers exchanged with the Hottentots for beads & cloths & the Voortrekkers & the Oxwagons & the Boer War & the History of Gold & Diamonds. She doesn’t yet realise how advanced such embroidery is but one day when she has learnt for herself how she will understand I said. It’s like that with every art form I explained. You start with the simple & then you practise faithfully every day until you’re ready one day to tackle the scenes from Hist. & then Heaven.
On the off-cut cloth I showed her the first drawn stitches with which the hems of embroidered cloths are finished. Punching hemstitching double hemstitching & Italian hemstitching & then the first basic stitches in the book dice-stitch & step-stitch & Algerian-eye wave-stitch & satin-stitch blanket-stitch & diagonal ripple-stitch prepared everything for her in practice strips on the length of off-cut cloth so that she could practise further on her own.
Explained nicely what a good discipline it is how it calms one after a day’s hard work. It keeps you humble & it keeps you out of idleness it focuses the attention on something useful & distracts from negative thoughts & feelings it calms other people around you & creates a homely atmosphere & it makes time fly & it’s better than sitting in your room in the evening counting your toes practise I said & you’ll never be sorry you learnt it & at the end of the week I want to see the first three practice strips completed.
To encourage her I promised that if in a few months’ time she feels secure with the principles of drawn fabric-work then we can start on her first adult effort on a prettier cloth & then I said to show what I expected of her one day when she’s grown-up—here are the very prettiest cloths that I have enough for a tablecloth for a large table when all its leaves are opened out & then I took the lengths of Glenshee out of the paper & I opened them out on my & her laps. Feel such cloth I said you won’t get your hands on that nowadays but I know with you it will find a good home.
She didn’t touch it just sat there with her hands folded in her lap a little mound under the cloth & hr eyes on the ground as if she wanted to stare a hole into it.
Took no notice & folded the cloth again & wrapped it in the tissue paper & held it out to her. Bless me if she didn’t get up from her chair so ramrod-formal I thought my girl do just what you want you’re not getting me down but she just carried on standing there & damned if she didn’t force me to say what I didn’t want to say & then I said it. Thank you that will be all you may leave. So then she packed everything together in her needlework basket click-clack she snapped it shut & walked off with hr new short-step.
How on earth must I now bring A. round? Won’t have so much time in the next months to devote to hr. Remained sitting there on the stoep for a long time with my hands on my stomach felt the child kicking under my heart. Tried to imagine him in there with his little star-fish hands his progress through blood & water but all that I saw was the parcel of white tissue paper being borne off through the front room out by the kitchen door across the backyard white with new lime the white cloth in its folds in the tissue paper & its being carried into the outside room across the loose linoleum that creaks on the cement & I heard hr think where shall I put it? a clean safe place? The deepest one that she could find in the cupboards & drawers that I’d had nailed together for her. Knew that was what she wondered because I taught her myself precious objects you hide far away where nobody can get to them & you take them out only when you have a very clear idea of what you want to do with them.
I was still sitting like that when next moment there she was in front of me the hands together on the stomach heaven knows where she acquired that affectation. Mothballs! she says to me. Might as well have been a curse so abrupt. Good idea I say. Was really not going to let myself be upset by a little snot-skivvy & I walked to the cupboard in the passage to find it aware all the time of hr eyes on me & how she’s looking at my highly pregnant body as if she wants to burn a hole through me but I just kept myself aloof. Now I think of it that’s what I did right from the start consistently with her: kept my cool & kept my head & swallowed my words. A. has this way of creating dramas where there are no dramas. So I pretended not to see anything & opened the packet of mothballs a gust of moth-killer took my breath away. There she stood with hr hand extended & I was quite startled at the face the eyes wide open as if she’s going to have a fit from what? from tissue paper? From light-and-shadow work? from lengths of cloth that will take a lifetime to embroider? from the biggest midnight-eye mother-moth that heaves her powder-heavy wings before an onslaught of moth-killer? Heaven knows what goes on in the creature’s head.
Two balls are enough & don’t look at me like that I’m not a ghost. Two she said in a hoarse voice the good hand extended as if she’s waiting for punishment. So made sure I didn’t touch the hand & rolled the balls into her palm & quickly she closes her fist zip-zap gone but no running it’s just the new clockwork-step enough to make the apron creak. Remember to wash your hands! I called but my voice wouldn’t come out & I was angry something terrible with her & with myself for reacting like that to hr tricks. Must be the hormones. Dr. said people do have trouble with them during pregnancy.
But I have the feeling deep in my bones & I’m writing it down here now for the record: From the moment that precious cloth left my two hands I’ve felt there is a snake in the grass as sure as my name is Milla de Wet. Must remember to store the mothballs in a different place.
…
Jak was repelled by your pregnant body. He couldn’t stand being close to you, he couldn’t even hide it any more. Gone he was suddenly on that morning of the twelfth of August with the bakkie to an obstacle race with rowing and swimming and cycling at Witsand. He took Dawid along to transport his bicycle and his canoe for him to the various starting-points. You would have to look after yourself. You’d been booked months in advance into Barrydale’s clinic to be close to your mother. Your suitcase was packed weeks before. You weren’t going to be caught unprepared.
Then the first contractions came right there in the passage after the to-do with the mothballs.
You had to sit down on the telephone stool in the passage. You’d thought another two weeks. The first convulsion had made you feel faint. You phoned, who else, the omniscient.
Look at your watch, your mother said. Note how far apart the contractions are and plan your movements accordingly.
Her voice was hard, business-like, reproving.
You can get here taking your time, even after your waters have broken. The first one usually takes a long time, she said, I had a terrible struggle with you, nine hours on end. Sheer hell it was, so you might as well prepare yourself.
Ma, you said, please. She cut you short. There’s no time for chit-chat now, Milla, steel yourself and get on the road. I’ll phone the maternity sister so that they can prepare for you. And bring Agaat along so that we can teach her with the child, I have a sore hip, I can’t be running after you any more.
You called Agaat. You were scared, you could hear your own voice coming from afar.
You have ten minutes, you said, pack for a week, take your embroidery stuff along, we’re going to the Ounooi, the child is coming, he’s early, you’ll have to help . . . if necessary.
Her eyes were big. Her hands that she was holding in front of her, fell open, the little arm hanging like something that had been loose all the time, something that had broken off that she was hiding. You thought, God help me, you need two hands for a delivery. But you didn’t really think it would be necessary. Ma would know, after all.
Pull yourself together, Agaat, you said, we don’t have time to waste. Pack your suitcase.
Suitcase, she said, what suitcase, I don’t have a suitcase.
I shouted at her.
Where’s your brown suitcase that I gave you? If you can’t look after the small things, how can I ever count on you in important matters? Take pillow slips, take an onion-pocket in the store, take an apple box, take anything, just hurry up!
You started writing a letter to Jak.
Dear Jak
You tore it up. You started again.
Jakobus Christiaan de Wet, your child is being born, you know where you can look for the mother.
You crumpled it up.
Let the baas know where I am, you said to Saar, phone the hotel in Port Beaufort. Go and open the motorcar shed. Go and tell them to open the gate to the main road. If the drift is still under water, tell two boys to stand on either side on the kerb so that I can see where I’m going.
You called out orders. Agaat ran to and fro with wild gangling legs, the stiff little steps quite forgotten. Her mouth was open. You ordered her around. You remained sitting in the passage on the stool, your legs were lame. She was quick, she did what you told her to. Now it’s you and me, you thought, it’s always been just you and me. That you realised then, for the first time so clearly.
Sharp scissors, you said, sharpen a meat knife, singe the blades in a candle-flame, wrap them in clean cloths, the big enamel basin, the one with the three roses in the base, Dettol, take the half-full bottle and the new one. And cloths and sheets and packs of newspaper and blankets and matches and rolls of cotton wool and gauze.
She knew where everything was. She kept the whole list in her head as you dictated it. Her lips moved as she repeated it after you. She took hold, sure-handed as you’d taught her. Saar got a trunk off the shelf, put it down at your feet.
Must I come along, Mies? Saar asked. You just gave her a look, made her pack the things as Agaat brought them.
Don’t worry, you said to calm them as well as yourself, it’s just in case, we have enough time, we’ll be there in time.
You remembered the smelling salts, flasks of hot water, a roll of dental floss and string for the tying-off, a box of paper towels. One bottle of sweet tea.
You wrote your mother’s address and telephone number on a slip of paper. You put it in your purse. You see, Agaat, here I’m putting it, in case, remember it. You explained how it would work. You had to get to the pass in twenty minutes and then you would stop for a while for the next contractions and then in another twenty minutes you would be on the other side. Jak always used to do it in quarter of an hour. Further than that you couldn’t think.
You would take the Mercedes, you decided, that would be safest. You had to slide the seat back to fit behind the steering wheel. You put newspapers and a blanket on the seat under you.
Agaat was trembling. You had to reassure her, now she had to feel sure of herself, as sure as she could. Never mind, you said, we’ve caught lots of calves, you and I, haven’t we? Everything works in exactly the same way, you know it by heart. But it won’t be necessary, it’s like with the first calf, it comes slowly.
The drift was still flooded after the rains. Two of Dawid’s brother’s children stood on either side on the edges of the bridge, with the water washing around their ankles. They started laughing, high, long, merry yells when they saw how fast you were approaching. You put the car in a low gear and charged through at full revolutions. You could feel the silt under the wheels, you skidded slightly when you got out on the other side and took the curve. To and fro you corrected in the slippery road. The wipers left long muddy streaks on the windscreen. In the rear-view mirror you saw the children sopping with brown muddy water looking after you open-mouthed.
On the Suurbraak road the next set of contractions arrived. You pulled off the road. Looked at your watch. Twenty, twenty-five after the first? Suddenly you weren’t sure. When you could drive again, you started explaining to Agaat what she had to do if it came to the push. You had to concentrate hard on the road because it was wet, again and again you skidded.
Don’t be so pale, you said to Agaat, and don’t even think of puking. Your car-sickness you can keep for another day. You just pray that there isn’t something slow in front of us in the road. Now listen carefully. It’s for in case, it’s not to say . . .
Her face was tight. She looked straight in front of her in the road. You talked fast, emphasised the main points. Water. Breath. Push. Head. Out. Blood. Slippery. Careful. Slap. Yowl. Bind. Cut. Wrap. Bring to. Wash. Hitch-hike.
That was the easy scenario.
If the little head can’t get out, she has to take the scissors and cut, you said, to the back, do you understand? Towards the shitter, she had to cut through the meat of your arse, so that he can get out. Saw if necessary, she mustn’t spare you. If he’s blue, she has to clean his nose and wipe out his drool, out from the back of his throat and from his tongue and blow breath into him over his nose and mouth until he makes a sound. As we do with the calves when they’re struggling. She can leave you, you said, even if you’re bleeding something terrible, it doesn’t matter. And that again is different from the cows, you said.
You can still hear your voice.
We’d rather lose a calf than a cow. But a child, a human child, was something else, a human child comes first.
Ashen, Agaat was. She swayed from side to side in her seat as you took the first bends of the pass. You couldn’t go too fast, the road wasn’t tarred yet in those days.
The next contractions were too quick. You pulled off in a small parking area on the left side of the road. You tilted the seat as far back as possible so that you could half lie, but it didn’t help. The pain was in you like a lip of lava thrusting, thrusting slowly into a street.
The first thing I’ll teach you if we get through this is how to drive, you groaned. Do you hear me? You’ll learn to drive even if it’s the only ride you ever get.
You took off your watch.
Here, put this on your arm. Time how long it goes on for.
The contractions lasted for seven minutes. When they abated, Agaat filled the lid of the flask with tea. She held the flask in her strong hand to pour. Her weak hand trembled as she tried to pass the lid to you clasped in the puny little fingertips.
God in heaven, you thought, just grant that we get across the pass in time, because there really are not enough hands here. For the first time you realised it. You closed your eyes, tried to get in the sweet tea in little gulps.
Is it very sore? you heard a whisper to one side of you, as soft as if somebody was twirling the tip of a feather in your inner ear.
You couldn’t stop the tears.
Never mind, you heard, or thought you heard, deep in you, a sound that stirred lightly in your navel.
There is nothing, the voice said, nothing to about cry.
There is nothing.
The sound of feathers being settled in place before nightfall.
Never mind.
The sound of a rivulet trickling from a slope after it’s rained high up in the rock faces.
Nothing to cry about. Agaat’s first grammar.
You drew courage from that. You started the car and looked at Agaat. Her face was neutral, you must have imagined things.
It was almost twelve o’clock. Fortunately the road was drying out. You drove hard. The rock faces loomed up, closer all the time, rougher, greyer, swallowing you. Deeper and deeper, it felt, you were sinking into the body of the mountain, deeper into the black shadows, with every corner that you took.
What does the river look like? you asked Agaat to divert her attention.
Full, she said.
What else?
Shiny.
Is it far down?
Far. And near.
She whispered. There was a white ring around her mouth.
Suddenly it was lukewarm between your legs. Inside you something dropped and heaved and pushed. It was your time. It wasn’t going to take nine hours, Ma was wrong. It would be Agaat’s baby, you knew, but you didn’t say it out loud.
You were in the middle of the pass. The lay-bys were on your right. After fifteen minutes you had to pull in at the first one that appeared. This time the pains lasted longer. You breathed deeply. One more shift, you thought, another fifteen minute’s driving, perhaps we’ll make it after all. Suddenly you were angry with your mother. Furious that you’d listened to her hard voice and her harsh advice. You could have simply stayed at home. Saar was there, you could have summoned Beatrice. The one stank of body odour and the other of sanctity, but at least they had experience. You could have had the doctor called from Swellendam. There were hundreds of things that you could have thought of yourself instead of asking her. As if she had a monopoly on wisdom, she had after all only had you, the wisdom of a single child. Your resentful thoughts inclined you to brutality towards Agaat. You couldn’t stop yourself. Now you sounded just like your mother.
Yes, Agaat, you said, that’s the way of the world, you see what life’s like. So it has been written. Come, you know your Bible, don’t you. What does it say in Genesis about having children?
Agaat got out two words.
In sorrow, she said.
From the corner of your eye you saw her tighten her mouth, look at the watch. Seven minutes, she said.
My mamma has a goat, you started reciting, because you hadn’t meant to sound that fierce, my mamma has a goat, she wants to have him shod. Come Agaat, what’s next?
One two three four five six seven, said Agaat, her voice was quavering, but mamma doesn’t know how many nails she’s got.
You watched the lay-bys as you passed them. You had to fight against the illusion that it was the car that was stationary and that it was the mountain that had wrenched loose out of its grooves and was gnashing past you, a merry-go-round of grey rock faces, rocky inlets. You knew them all, the stopping-places. You were aiming for the one by the waterfall. There was most space there, there were a few bushes to park behind.
Tradouw, you thought, a child of the Tradouw. Gantouw, the way of the eland, Tradouw, the way of the women.
You brought the car to a standstill in a shower of stones.
Agaat did as you said, placed newspapers and blankets on the back seat, with two doubled-over clean sheets on top. You had to lie down. It felt as if you were tearing apart, as if your spine was splitting.
Sing, you said, sing me something.
Breathe, said Agaat, you said I had to tell you to breathe, breathe, and blow. Blow! Blow!
She waited till you started breathing and blowing. Then she herself took a breath so deep it lifted her shoulders and struck up. Oh moon, Agaat sang for you, you drift so slow on your bright throne.
Her voice emerged too high, out of tune. She cleared her throat, started again. Firm this time, and low, nicely on pitch. The moon, kept on a short tow-rope, tight and low along the horizon. She pulled off your wet underclothing over your legs and covered your upper body with a blanket as you did with the cows in winter. She put a blanket roll under your head.
So calm so clear, she sang, and I so sad and lone.
Now wash your hands, you said. Pour the water into the basin, add two caps of Dettol, wash your hands again, wash me from below, take a cloth, take the red soap, wash well. Have ready the scissors, the knife, the floss, the string, the cloths, the sheets, the smelling salts, line everything up where you can reach easily. There’ll be a lot of blood, don’t get a fright, just do everything you’d do with a cow. And sing, carry on singing here for me, so that I can get hold of a rhythm. Sing something fast.
The boys are cutting the corn tonight, corn tonight, Agaat sang.
Her voice rose, you blew.
My love’s hanging in the berry-bush, berry-bush.
You felt pressure in you, downwards, outwards pressure like a tree-trunk.
Now push, she said, my love is hanging in the bitter-berry-bush.
Breathe! Push! Blow!
You bellowed.
Breathe, breathe, breathe, push Agaat said.
You felt her weak hand low on your belly, there it was feeling, this side and that side of the bulge it pressed, like a spatula against a ball of dough, and gathered you lightly from below your navel and stroked down over your lower belly, one two three times. As you had taught her to feel over animals, whether the lamb was lying transverse or the calf was breeched.
Push, said Agaat, he’s lying right, his head’s in the hole, I can feel him.
Look who’s coming in from outside out, she sang, on the intake of breath.
Breathe in, push, blow, blow, blow!
The other hand was inside you, you felt, the strong one, it reamed you as one reams a gutter.
Breathe in and blow, now you must push, Agaat said, he’s coming, I feel him, he’s hanging in the bush, he’s hanging nicely, he’s hanging like a berry, head first.
Now you must, now you must, Agaat coaxed. Softly, rapidly, urgently, the language that you spoke to the Simmentals that had such trouble calving. You heard yourself, your voice was in her. You heard your father with animals, when you were small, when you stood next to him in the old stable on Grootmoedersdrift, the language of women that he could speak better than your mother.
Now take a breath now, a gasp, a groan
get yourself up now little tradouw
little buttermilk stand ready
now I’m pulling your même her ears to the front
mother macree little mother cow
point that cunt of yours
nowwe’regettingthere!
now now now push the womb
blow on the bellows
throw this wombbeast of yours out of the crate
throw over the rowers of dattem
throw out the iron
push him
give him
give him littlecalf to me
give the bluegumbloom
give him in the nest the shitling
ai!
You couldn’t any more. You were depleted.
He’s stuck he’s stuck his head is stuck in the hole.
Agaat was in panic, you could hear.
Take the scissors! you screamed. You felt it, the cold steel against you, it felt too slow, she was hesitating.
Cut, God! you screamed, cut open all the way to the hole!
You felt the sharp incision, one blow, another blow. There was a spurt of blood out of you all the way up to the upholstery, it dripped back onto you.
You felt a slipping, you tore, you were open, you screamed, you called, bitterly, you listened to, held your ears like. Like tarns, like eddies, like echo-bearing chasms, like wind-winnowed waterfall, you held them till you heard what was neither of you nor of Agaat.
The sound.
You strained upright, heard the scissors clatter to the ground, saw the strings dangling, slime and threads of blood out of you.
A bundle was put down on you, a bawl swaddled in cloths, your arms were gathered together from where they were dispersed, the arm from the river first and then from the mountain, from left and from right your arms were placed around the bundle, a tiny white cocoon with red palm-prints, a big one on one side, an unfurled fan, and on the other side the bloody forepaw of an otter. Agaat’s mismatched hands that had performed the deed for you.
Blood drenched it, Agaat’s apron was red all the way to the bib, Agaat’s cap a cockscomb, there was a plashing in your ears, a poppling, your heart was open. Full and shiny, far and near. A waterfall. From the highest cliff a down-feather twirling on the foam, a little lily bobbing after the haze of your body, a patch of scarlet in black moss, a throat, a tongue, a gong in the dripping sparkling jet.
There was a ride on an open vehicle, the wind was cold on you. You bled on cabbage leaves. You came to every now and again and sank away into a faint again. The mountains fell on you. Agaat was in front with the driver. That you still knew, that she came and told you, close to your ear.
Everything is fine, she said, my même, she said, I’ve got him with me, he’s safe, I’m holding him for you, we’ll be there now-now!
We drive like the wind with you and your child, we ride, we ride, round curves wild and wide, snip-snip went the scissors, snip-snip, and my cap, my cap, how red is its tip.
You came to in the hospital and cried. Where is Jak, you cried, where is Agaat?
Jak’s in his canoe on the Breede River. Agaat’s sitting in the fireplace, she won’t come out.
It was your mother. You did not want to see your mother.
It’s a boy, she said, a fast boy. A real De Wet. All its toes and fingers and a handy spanner. His father’s pretty mouth. You tore badly, along the cut to the top.
She indicated with her thumb and forefinger.
That servant-girl of yours got hold of you a bit roughly. They still have to sew you up.
Your mother’s smile was strange. Was it fright? Shock? Schadenfreude? Judgement? You didn’t understand it. You cried. They brought the bundle, you didn’t want it, you cried.
Bring me Agaat, bring her here, go fetch her, bring her to me, you cried, bring Agaat, I want Agaat.
Blew snot, your hands over your mouth, your hands on your collarbones. You wanted to choke, you wanted to die, you wanted to get back in under the mountain, trail your heart behind you, drag it in, a bloody trail, a fist on bloody cords.
They dosed you with medicine. They said you were suffering from shock. They sewed you up. They brought the bundle and took it away, brought and took away. Your milk wouldn’t come. You were taken to your mother’s house.
Agaat was there in her white apron and her white cap, at the garden gate.
She’d come out of the fireplace.
Not a stipple of soot, not a spot of blood, you heard yourself say, from the water, from the fire, from the hollow under your lip.
She held out her arms.
Give, she said softly, give him to me, I’ll watch.