On the trolley next to my bed the hot water is steaming in the washbasin. It smells of Milton. Over the fume of disinfectant I detect the fragrance of lavender. Agaat knows Milton sets my teeth on edge. But she persists with it. She says she prefers it to Dettol. Dettol is for hospitals and for childbirth.
Sometimes she adds lavender to the Milton water, or fennel, to make it more pleasant for me, at other times mint, or lemon verbena. She’s read up in our gardening books, she says, herbs are good for the blood, for the concentration, for the nerves. I get the message. I must concentrate, I must have nerves of steel. And about my blood, I know, I mustn’t worry overmuch, she’ll pep that up for me with mint.
Agaat lifts one side of me. She manoeuvres a triple-folded bath towel in under me. Then she walks to the other side and tilts me and straightens the towels under me. All this she does with the strong left hand. With the right hand she steers and pulls and slips and folds. Like a conductor, with the one hand she beats time, with the other she signals the major entries, for percussion, for the trombone, and with that she gives the feeling, passionato, grazioso, every wash-time a concert.
The little right hand feels different to the left when it brushes against my skin, cooler and smoother. It’s as if recently she’s been touching me more often with the weak hand, a sweep of the knuckles, or a fluttering of the four gathered fingers, a weightless shell-shaped palm resting on my stomach for a moment.
It’s as if she’s less concerned about my seeing that hand of hers. Now and again I catch a glimpse in the folds of the facecloth when she puts it in the washbasin, in the pleat of a curtain as she opens it. Then it steals away before I’ve had a good view of it. It hasn’t changed. A little frizzled paw with a folded-in thumb such as one sees in verrucose chickens.
Every day she wears one of the light crocheted jerseys that she’s made part of her uniform, the right sleeve lengthened so that it covers the hand all the way to the knuckles. But I’ve caught her a few times now stripping back the longer sleeve when she washes me. She knows I see.
Butcher’s sleeve, she says then.
She folds back the bedding all the way and drapes it over the railing at the foot of the bed. She adjusts the bed so that my upper body is marginally more upright. She fits the rigid support so that my head is stable. Head Lock by LimberUp & Co.
We’re doing a full-body tonight, Ounooi, it’s midweek. Then you’ll feel a whole lot better.
She spreads a bathsheet over my body from my feet up to my waist.
And seems to me we’ll have to massage the feet, they feel a bit cold to me.
I feel her hand on the bridge of my foot. It’s the left hand, it feels warm. She does a little rub there, as if my foot needs cheering up. Hangfoot. Sometimes, to prevent my muscles from shrivelling as happened to my hands, she fits the foot-support. Foothold by Feet & All. The stirrups, Agaat calls it. But mainly I ride bareback. Lord, imagine, me in my present state on horseback, hairy death, the ceaseless whinnying, because he’ll know what’s mounted him.
She unties the ribbons of the bed-jacket behind my neck, she pulls it down over my arms until she can take it off over my hands.
It’s thin sleeveless hospital-wear that Leroux brought, for easy effective handling of your patient, I heard him say to Agaat.
But she’ll feel the cold, because the muscles are dead, so always keep her covered under several layers of light covers, even though it’s summer now.
Leroux speaks to Agaat in the passage outside my door. He thinks he’s in a hospital where voices can’t be heard over the rumbling of trolleys and clattering of crockery and buckets and nurses rushing around. He tells her everything about his latest conclusions and proposals and he issues his latest directives. I hear him clearly. It’s only the floorboards that creak as he stands and rocks on his toes, and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the front room. Agaat never says anything in reply and she never asks any questions. She knows I hear it all. And she doesn’t want to tell me herself. About my lungs that are getting weaker all the time. And about my swallowing. She wants me to hear for myself and decide for myself about the appliances and the hospital.
She’s simplified everything to a single question: Do you want another nurse?
To that my answer is no.
Agaat covers me with a large towel before she pulls the tunic, under the towel, from my body. She lifts the washbasin from the trolley onto the serving-top and draws it nearer across the bed, over my body.
First the left, she says, and takes my arm from under the towel and lays it down on the bed close to my body. She handles it like a fragment, something that belongs to me only by loose association. A dead arm, but a life-like replica. Like an artificial arm. But an artificial arm needn’t be washed like this.
Breathe calmly, Ounooi, says Agaat, and tests the water with her left elbow, as I taught her with Jakkie long ago.
Her grip is gentle but firm. She anticipates on my behalf the impact of the wet warm cloth by keeping constant contact with my body, a hand on my shoulder, a hand on my hand. She hasn’t forgotten a single one of her lessons.
Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow, she sings on the in-breath.
She soaps the cloth, wrings it half dry and washes the arm with firm soapy strokes up to the armpit. She swivels the wrist, the wrist can still swivel. She washes it as if it could still be stained from the silver bangles that I used to wear, and my palm that she folds open, that she washes as if I’d just deboned a chicken. And between my fingers, which she straightens, and up against the cuticles she washes as if I’d been working in black garden soil.
She washes with conviction, just as if I’d lived a full day as of old and were good and dirty, and she talks of lavender.
She says the bushes are flowering this year as if they’re paid to do it and the bees are buzzing about like mad there amongst the purple florets and she thinks they’ve nested in the hollow of the burnt-out bluegum she’ll have Dawid take a look and how would I like a little taste of honey, lavender-flower honey fresh from the comb? There’s nothing, she says, to touch comb honey, and she must remember to get a jar ready for Jakkie when he comes, as he likes it. Illuminated campaniles, it seems, remind him of honey in the comb. That’s what he wrote to her once from Canada.
Agaat wipes the soapiness from the arm with another cloth, a soap-wiping cloth. She dries the arm, puts it back next to the body and drapes the towel over it.
Now the leg on the same side. The leg looks blue towards the foot. She washes vigorously between the toes so that I can feel how much life there is in my foot.
You know, Ounooi, she says, it took me a long time to figure out why you’re forever looking at the wall, at the mirror, to and fro like a lizard taking its bearings on a rock, but now I understand. This wall next to your bed is too bare. You want something else to look at here by your bed than this old calendar, perhaps it only irritates you. The mirror in the corner over there, I reckon, is not enough by a long shot, even though you can see the bits of garden that I chose for you.
As she works, Agaat covers the clean leg and arm with the towel as if nothing’s the matter. Straight face. Butter wouldn’t melt. As if I’d imagined it all about the quarrels. As if it had been a squabble with the nightingales.
Was I too slow? Are you cold yet? she asks.
That’s her camouflage enabling her to look me in the eye, to catch a response from me without her having to ask anything directly. Catch a fly from the old mare’s back, ha.
I play dumb. No, I flutter with my eyebrows, I’m not the least bit cold and what are you talking about now?
She folds away the large towel from my trunk, so that the washed arm and leg and my abdomen remain covered. She sets her gaze to neutral. That’s her way with my nakedness. Well heavens, she says teasingly, you’d really like to know that, wouldn’t you, what I’m talking about, as if you haven’t for days on end been leading me a dance with your blinking and fluttering, so, you can forget about it then, all I’m pleased about, madam, is that you’re not cold!
She soaps my trunk from the base of my throat to the navel. She lifts my breasts and washes under them. One for you, she says, and one for me. She wipes away the soap under them. She swabs me dry, but under the breasts she dries twice with a fresh towel.
The animals went in two by two, she says as she dries them.
I note the inspection. There fungus threatens, there she keeps a sharp eye. Sometimes she checks there with her magnifying glass, mould is like a thief in the night, she says, a lurking menace.
Agaat covers my trunk again. She moves around the bed to the other side. As she moves past the foot of the bed, I manage to catch her eye.
Come on, you can tell me, I flicker with my eyes at the wall and back. You win, I admit, you’ve guessed right, of course, you always guess right, and good for you, you’re wonderful, you’re fantastic, as ever, standing ovation!
Hmmm? she says with a straight face, hmmm? Just in passing, she pretends. She juts out her chin just a touch.
I know what she’s doing. She’s making the washing easier for both of us with a gripping story and she’ll postpone the denouement until we’ve finished. As reward she’ll present it. Triumphantly. As consolation. For the exposure. For the shame. For the blue feet. For the tremendous art that it is to treat a half-dead relic like a whole human being.
Right, says Agaat before she bares the other arm, we’re on the home stretch. She’s cheering herself up. There’s still all of the back.
Are you still holding out, Ounooi? She leans over me and looks into my eyes while she begins to wash my arm.
And so I thought to myself, she says, and looks away again, let me collect everything that I can think of that can hang or be pasted that you want on your wall, everything that you said I should throw away in your great clear-out, everything that I kept and stored in the cellar, and everything that’s still here in the house to be inherited or given away, as you directed, and hang them one by one on your wall here next to your bed until you’re satisfied!
As an afterthought it comes, love will find a way to get the camel through the needle’s eye.
She covers the arm and takes out the leg, peeps at me for the effect, but the effect has been spoilt.
I protest. I am not a camel! And I’m not yet ready for the needle’s eye! Please watch your language! And don’t sound so smug, it’s not appropriate!
Sorry, Ounooi, don’t take exception now, it’s just a proverb, says Agaat, but she’s put off her stride immediately. She drops the cloth into the washbasin.
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise, she says, a penny saved is a penny earned.
Every time the stress on the last word. As if she’s defending herself with prefabricated sentences that she appropriates to her purpose through tone and emphasis. Old trick. She has no respect for what the proverbs really mean, she invents her own language as she goes. That’s her way when she’s discombobulated. The old parrot ways. Double-barrelled mimicry.
Oh come now Agaat, in God’s name, don’t be so touchy, I’m the one who’s dying here, look at me dammit, I flicker, but she doesn’t look.
Speech is silver twixt the cup and the lip, when the cat’s away we throw out the baby with the bathwater.
She pushes the bridge with the bowl of water across my body to the foot of the bed.
Almost, she says.
She pushes her chin far out, moves my legs apart and washes my abdomen with quick soapy strokes.
But don’t count your chickens yet.
Once more she rinses the cloth and once more she wipes.
Where there’s smoke there’s fire, she says.
She dries my loins. The towel feels hard.
I’m sorry I protested. Don’t step on the toes of the living dead. Feeling starts at the feet.
I wish I could talk back, counter with my own idioms.
Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all.
I plead with my eyes.
She doesn’t want to look at me. She’s looking at her towels.
Let’s turn you on your side then we thump out the phlegm before I wash the back.
Businesslike she is all of a sudden.
She rolls three towels into sturdy bolsters to support me from the front. Firmly she wiggles them in next to my side. A self-conceived plan. Leroux said she couldn’t do it alone, especially not with one hand, she needs help, she will need help in future, he’ll send a nurse, don’t I want a live-in nurse.
I signalled such a one would never in a month of Sundays survive with the two of us.
Agaat translated it for him as: Mrs de Wet says no thank you all the same, she’s too particular.
Bolster me with rolled-up towels because I’m over the hill, Agaat, translate me, I’m sick with remorse.
She rolls up another few towels to support me from behind as well.
How many towels does Agaat have? How many does she have washed every day? How does she keep tally of all the linen that passes through here? How does she keep sane?
She covers my body completely with an extra towel, large enough for a king.
I hear her scrubbing her hands, is it possible to get any cleaner?
She returns with white sterile cloths over her shoulder. She places them under my cheek so that I can spit on them.
She turns her back and puts on two new gloves of white-powdered latex.
She unscrews the caps of three jars, her hands are pale, the right glove fits like loose skin.
She mixes two ointments and a liquid in a saucer with a rod of stainless steel. She rubs it on the base of my neck and under my nose. It smells of eucalyptus and friar’s balsam. It’s to help the mucus rise, to help dissolve it.
She pours warm water into the hollow of a silver kidney.
She places mouth sponges at the ready in a row.
She screws in the mouthpiece of the phlegm-pump.
How much slime does she expect to get out of me anyway? My cough reflex is almost completely gone.
She extends the arm of the bedside lamp as far as it will go.
She turns the head so that it shines full on my back, I feel the glow. It’s to keep me warm, I know, she could knock my phlegm loose with her eyes shut.
Ounooi, open your eyes and listen well now.
Her eyes are soft again. Her voice is soft. Close to my face she talks. Through the eye of the needle she’d want to help me. That’s really all, I can see it now. And bring me back.
All the way to the cow-shed.
Iron on the hoof.
Pumpkin on the roof.
As it was, always, as it was in the old song.
But was she happy with how it was?
You remember how we do it? asks Agaat. You take a breath, I turn you on your side, you hold your breath until I’ve propped you up nicely, three rolls behind the back and three rolls in front, then you exhale, then you rest first, then you take another little breath. Just as long as you need. There’s no hurry. We just work at our ease until we’ve finished. You warn me with your eyes, you blink them slowly if that’s enough for now, then we take a pause, then I suck out what there is, then I make us some tea. Then we do the other side. Or we do the other half tomorrow. It doesn’t matter. Have you understood well, Ounooi? Get ready for the first breath. On your marks, get set, go!
Lord, Agaat, what race? And how many rounds before the knock-out? And what bell? And what white tape against my chest? And the one who sets the pace, will she drop out before the end? Head between the knees in the slow track, too exhausted even to watch how the record is broken?
Record in long-distance dying, best time in cross-country with obstacles. All the way to where the strokes fall one-by-one from the white tower in the throbbing heat of afternoon with cicadas in the pepper trees and a procession escorting me. Or no, it will be different, everything here on the farm, Agaat will carve my headstone.
Don’t perform like that, says Agaat when she catches my eye, into every life a little rain must fall, just co-operate, I’m asking pretty please. Come now, ready?
With a firm yank of the towel under me she gets me toppled onto my side. She keeps me in position with her strong forearm pressed lengthwise behind my back. I feel her inserting the rolled-up towels behind me, the back of the weak hand nudge-nudging against me, like a muzzle.
She works fast. No sound issues from her. She holds her breath with me. She begins the auscultation. Down below on the short-rib she cups the little hand. She knocks on it with the other hand. Up, up, up come the knocks, to under my shoulder-blade and then again from below. After every third sequence she vibrates over the ribs with the strong hand. She’s firm. It’s not unambiguously pleasant what she’s doing. I can feel something coming loose in my lees. It feels like old solid pieces of me. This is the critical stage. Now she’ll stop and with the Heimlich manoeuvre help me try to cough. And then she’ll suck the product out of me with the phlegm-pump.
I feel faint. Stones and grass glide below me, as if I’m approaching a landing strip, one foot without a sandal. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
Agaat exhales. Right we are, she says, she joggles the towel out and makes me roll back slowly. You’re hanging on nicely, Ounooi. Come let’s sit you up straight first so that I can help you cough.
I can feel her seeking out my face.
Look at me Ounooi, so that I can see what’s going on.
I try to open my mouth. I want to say, a piece, you are a piece of me, how am I to quit you? The landing strip is approaching how am I to land? The urge to cough stirs in me, but it’s vague, un-urgent, a phantom cough, like an amputated hand with which in an unguarded moment you think you can still lift something.
I feel pressure in front against my teeth, on both sides I feel pressure on my jaws under the ear, my mouth is being opened for me, a flat stick inserted between my front teeth to separate them, I feel fingers on my tongue, pulling threads out of me, I feel the suction of the phlegm-pump, the sound of my fluids, and then a damp sponge that wipes out, my cheeks, under my tongue, inside between my lips and my gums, and then a new sponge, drool runs out of me, another sponge, cool, damp on my tongue, and a strong arm that lifts my head and a voice that says:
You can breathe now, the slime is out, get ready to swallow, you’re thirsty.
And a spout of small finger-tips between my lips that squeeze out the drops for me. One, two, three on the back of my tongue.
I can’t swallow it, I can’t.
…
Jak was angry with embarrassment at his absence from the birth of his son.
An apology he couldn’t get past his lips.
He’d won the race, yes. He’d been first in the senior class out of forty-six contestants who were all younger than he. The tide had come in. The wind had come up on the river-mouth. Twice he had capsized and got stuck under his canoe. Exceedingly tough had been the inclines on the cycle routes. He’d grazed and bruised himself falling. His knees, his elbows. Look. Raw. He’d had to change a wheel all on his own in the gale-force wind. He’d been just about knackered. And on top of that, yomping across the loose sand of the dunes, for seven miles.
Ad nauseam you had to listen to it. But when you started recounting how Agaat had kept her wits about her, how brave she’d been, how she’d cut you with the strong hand and delivered the child with the other, how she’d done everything right from beginning to end and stopped a vegetable lorry to take you to hospital and how with hands and apron red with blood she’d helped stack cabbages to make space for you to lie, and how you’d bled on the cabbage leaves, and how she’d got into the front with a complete stranger with the baby, he interrupted you.
He’s just glad that you’re safe and sound, he said, and he’s so proud of his son.
It was the same lay-by, you said.
What lay-by?
Where we the first time, where we almost that time, when we were on our way together, the first time, do you remember, the day after my mother had harangued you so, when we almost in broad daylight in the open sports car, do you remember, when you pressed your head between my breasts, the waterfall was in flood from an unseasonable shower, just like the other day, as if there’d been no time in between.
You tried, you didn’t know how to say it, you so badly wanted to recover something of that youthful beginning with him, now that you at last had a child.
Jak looked at you, and looked away. Could not, would not remember it. He was nervous, didn’t want to be alone with you, phoned all the world and brought them into the room where you were lying and kept company with them. Ma was the one who put a stop to that. Milla is tired, she said, respect that.
He returned to the farm after two days, only phoned now and again. He kept himself apart from then on. He knew everybody was angry with him.
The Mercedes was sold without his trying to clean it. The upholstery was permeated, he said, with blood and stuff. The first night after you returned to the farm he got hold of you briefly. Half-angrily and deliberately. You were still sore, even though it was three weeks after the birth, but you let him have his way. Where pain was concerned your standards had shifted. He wouldn’t get the better of you any more.
For weeks you were tired and weak. You had problems with your milk. The little one was fretful and that got on his nerves.
In the first weeks he tried to build a toy aeroplane in the backyard. It wouldn’t come together. A few times he kicked it to pieces in frustration. You tried to bring him to his senses.
Jak, you said, surely you know by this time you have two left hands, just don’t get yourself so worked up about it, in any case it’ll be years before the child is big enough for a toy like that.
He wouldn’t give up. The whole backyard was eventually cluttered with pieces of plank and nails and open paint tins and clamps and glue-pots.
You had to keep shushing him with his electric planes and drills there under the nursery window.
Be quiet! you screamed at him, day-in, day-out you kick up a racket, don’t you have any consideration?
Then he took umbrage and went running in the mountains, only to return with a red face to start chopping and hammering where he’d left off.
You said, forget about the propeller, but he had to install a dashboard with flashing lights and build a propeller into the nose that could turn with electricity.
One day when he was out, you had the mess cleared up and sorted and carried under the lean-to next to the stables.
You’re in our way here, you said, go and play over there.
He looked at you, opened his mouth and closed it again, and walked away stiffly. Give me a break, his back said, give me a break, I’m also here. But you didn’t want to see it, your heart was cold.
Once you went to him under the lean-to, with a mug of coffee. Flat on his back under the fuselage he was trying to jiggle the electric leads for the dashboard lights through holes that had been drilled too small for them and trying to tinker the wires into place behind the propeller-head. The blades that he’d taken out of an old lawnmower and filed down to make an airscrew were too heavy for the little plane, they looked completely out of proportion. You pointed at it. He looked at you. You lowered your hand.
One evening he called you and Agaat from the bedroom where you were attending to Jakkie.
Come and see, he said, his voice exaggeratedly jaunty, bring that lad of mine along, we’re ready for our maiden voyage.
For the demonstration he’d dragged the little plane from under the lean-to to the middle of the backyard. There it stood under a piece of black plastic, ready for the unveiling. From under the plastic a thick white extension cord snaked out. It was supposed to be connected to the electric cord with the plug that was dangling out of the window of the nursery.
You stand over there now, he instructed you and Agaat, who was holding the child. You had to stand in front of the bathroom window on the closed-in side of the backyard for the best view.
All the doors and windows of the rooms facing onto the backyard were open. He switched on all the lights that could switch on, from the kitchen all the way to Agaat’s room, the storeroom and the nursery, all the main lights, and left the doors wide open so that light could shine on his handiwork.
With a grandiose gesture he removed the plastic cover. Beneath the bravado, you could see, he was tense.
It’s turned out well, you said. From a distance, under all the lights, the toy did in fact look impressive.
It was painted silver with orange and blue stencilled on the fuselage and on the wings. Jakobus de Wet, Jr., was written on the one side and a black outline represented the five points of the castle. On the wings were rings and dots and crosses.
It’s a Spitfire, said Jak, and now we’re going to get it going.
Will it make a noise? you asked, because the child had just calmed down after a long struggle with feeding.
Not too much, Jak said, otherwise you just cover his ears.
Agaat looked at you. She stepped back. You put your arm around her shoulders.
Are you ready? Jak asked, it may move a short distance but it’s not working all that well yet, I must still adjust the propeller’s angle. You felt half sorry for him, so clumsy, and you didn’t want him to make a fool of himself in front of the farm children, because by now there was a whole cluster of them who’d come to see, trampling one another at the open end of the backyard.
He pushed in the plug. The propeller creaked, turned once, twice. Jak twirled it by hand. Then the propeller took suddenly with a high keening sound so that he had to jerk back his hand and jump back.
Jak called something and gesticulated with his hands behind the grey haze of the propeller. You couldn’t hear. The little plane moved forward fitfully, then it looked as if something got stuck in its throat. It dipped forward, heaved backward, and exploded.
A grey object flying loose, whirring blades.
You saw slow wavelike movements. First you saw Agaat turning round and growing. Her back ballooned out backwards and grew up into the air lengthwise, a mast. The cross of her apron bands white over her shoulder blades. She bent her head low over the child. Her white cap descended over his little pink face like a keel. Pieces of wood flew around. The propeller came straight at her. It struck her a glancing blow on the back of the head and bounced up into the air and broke the window of the nursery and was left dangling in the steel frame of the panes.
Agaat slowly sank down with the shards of glass shattering around her head. Her arms were locked around the little bundle. Her shoulders were hunched forward like shelters. At the nape of her neck a stream of blood coiled out from under her cap. Everywhere on the ground wrenched-loose wires smoking. The dashboard on which two little red lights were blinking, lay at your feet. Then there was another explosion, three, four more in short succession and more glass tinkling. Short circuits in all the rooms around the backyard where lights were on. The whole house blacked out from front to back. The backyard was pitch-dark. You couldn’t utter a word. Your knees collapsed under you. You sat down on the ground. It was dead quiet.
He isn’t hurt, Agaat said after a while out of the darkness. He doesn’t have a scratch.
Her voice was matter-of-fact.
You saw the white cap coming upright slowly.
The child started crying frantically.
Jakkie! Jak called, his voice high with anxiety. Give him to me!
You crawled over the splinters of plank and glass to Agaat.
You’re not laying a hand on my child, Jak de Wet, you said. You’re not getting anywhere near him.
I’ll put in new fuses quickly, he said, his voice rising higher all the time, I bought new ones.
You’re not touching anything further around here, Jak. You keep your hands to yourself, and you go and sleep in your canoe in the shed, you said. You were quite calm and collected. You were furious. Your words issued from your mouth dispassionately.
I’ll have in an electrician tomorrow, we should have had new fuses installed a long time ago. And don’t worry about us, there are lamps and candles and the Aga. Agaat is here, she’ll help me. And tomorrow morning when I get up, the last shred of trash here will be cleared up, I don’t want to see one shard or splinter, not one, do you hear? And you take your car and you drive to town as soon as the shops are open and you have glass cut for the broken panes and you get putty and you put out all the tools here in a row. I’ll ask Dawid to put in the panes. Is everything quite clear to you now?
Jak stood there for a while yet before he turned around and crunched away over the glass.
Against the light of the stars you saw him clench his hands behind his head and cast them down by his sides, and he cursed three times in himself, the same curse, and shook his shoulders downwards as if he wanted to wriggle himself out of his clothes into the ground.
…
something’s wrong
you’re just getting old
I’m sick
not sick senile maybe who would want to bake a sponge cake in the middle of the night
look the spasms they come from nowhere
donkey twitching under the yoke have a mustard bath
can’t get the button through the button-hole
let me help you
my shoulder aches
it’s from putting it to the wheel all your life rest for a change
that’s not funny it’s stiff
cold shoulder I know it well frozen shoulder it’s the chill of may that gets into your bones
something’s wrong
you’re just old
I’m sick
stop complaining
my fingers prick
prick back
my rings won’t come off
use soap
it doesn’t work
shall I phone the goldsmith for you?
what can it be?
seasonal indisposition silver-leaf sickness
I’m falling
the leaves are falling soon the rain will be falling then we can plough then you’ll see it’s all over
but I fall all the time
a falling fashion trying to attract attention that’s all
I’m sick
hypochondria
really sick
affectation
anxiety’s palsy
it’s the inbetween-time’s sickness the fallow land must come to rest the oats has been raked in everything is holding its breath for rain.
…
3 September 1960 after lunch
Starting to feel halfway human again & feel like writing again even though I still cry a lot. Just after the birth I felt I should keep my diary up to date but the first weeks lame & no strength & the nightmares still carrying on. Post-natal depression says Beatrice. Comes & sits here with me sometimes when I’m playing Pa’s old records but I don’t want her here she gloats over my situation & she gets bored when I try to tell her about Brahms & his eternally unrequited love for Clara Schumann. She says no wonder I’m depressed it’s the dismal Brahms that I listen to der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, das Leben ist der schwüle Tag & that was apparently also my father’s problem. Then I think nothing of saying I want to lie down so that she can be on her way & A. is not behindhand & fetches her coat.
The brave little servant! how will I ever be able to repay hr? Oh moon you drift so low with constricted throat shame & Ma slipped her 20 pounds when Jak came to fetch us & an old church hat as well you can’t be confirmed without a hat she says I ask you. A. says thank you nicely & just gives the hat a long look & later on the way home she says: I’ve got seven caps what do I want with a hat as well? I see the silly little green hat is hanging there in her room from a nail in the wall with turkey feathers in the band. What would Pa not have thought up to thank her. He would have written a limerick.
A. was off to town at the first opportunity with D. to buy embroidery thread & cloth & buttons with the money from Ma & wouldn’t that woman from Eye of the Needle see fit to phone. Whether I’m aware of the two dozen imported porcelain buttons & goods to the value of altogether over sixty pounds cash that A. bought from her. Apparently she first selected everything & then went & drew some more of her own money at the post office. Had to bite my tongue not to say listen here madam thread-pedlar aware or not that little girl was my midwife & my refuge in my hour of need & no cloth of purple or thread of silk or ivory of Sheba can be too good for hr hands but then I thought better of it & said nothing otherwise the whole district would have feasted on the story again. Don’t I know how they batten upon death & birth & servants’ bugger-ups not that A. is a servant or buggers up but they draw no distinction. Seems in any case as if A. is making excellent progress with the embroidery I see washcloths & tea cloths & some of my handkerchiefs have acquired edges & roses too pretty for words. I show them to Jak but he just goes hmf. Just keep my shirts out of her hands I don’t want to look like a bloody Turk with a tulip on my shirt pocket says Jak. Don’t know what she’s got up her sleeve with the bought stuff there in hr room but I no longer go in there to check.
6 September 1960
I was reading back tonight everything that I’ve written so far in these booklets it’s quite a little pile by now & wouldn’t make much sense to an outsider who doesn’t know the circumstances. It comforts me to write up everything about home & hearth whatever Jak says. His latest is that I must sell it to Femina but he first wants to insert punctuation everywhere otherwise they’ll think his wife with her Brahms & her French can’t write properly & it’s also much too long-winded according to him I must remember he says the housewife market wants things out of the oven in a jiffy & they want joy & sorrow with capital letters & enough commas so that in-between they can have a cry & a cup of tea. Can’t understand why it irritates him so. It’s not as if I’m trying to write a history book for high schools, is it?
On the other hand when I page through the booklets like this then I wonder what’s become of me. Of my interests & my talents. Always in a hurry or sleepy or tired when I write. Just trying to keep up with myself on this farm every day. Husband child & servant over & over & that’s where it gets stuck. What on earth would Dr Blumer have made of such subjects? Perhaps I should try to write in English. Perhaps domesticities will sound better to me in a world language. Can just imagine what Friedman the little whipper-snapper of a professor in the English Department in those days would have said. Always filled the margins of my essays in his myopic little hand. You have come seriously unstuck here, Milla, what has become of your style, your wit, your vocabulary? According to the experts even psychology has to read like a thriller. Pace, remember, pace, texture & wry moments, only wry moments will satisfy my appetite. Of wry moments he would have had enough here if only he’d put on his glasses. More at any rate than in his great hero Charles Lamb. On Saying Grace. Where are the days. So vain the idea I had of myself then.
Odd how much one forgets even though it’s only about pots & pans. Had to add or correct things everywhere. Then I had a sudden inspiration to write the dedication that had been in my heart all the time but the time was not yet ripe for it but now it seems as if all my trouble with A. has after all been rewarded. So sweet-tempered nowadays. Three attempts before I was satisfied. Difficult to sound heartfelt on paper but that’s how I feel. Must still copy it neatly into the front of the first book.
10 September 1960
Can place my trust 100% in A. She has a remarkable way with Jakkie that much is definite. The first weeks she sat up by his cradle hour after hour & even now still every day. Is patient helpful quick to learn knows her place. Has undergone a major change of attitude it seems. Honestly didn’t think I was going to stick it out with hr. Before Aug. still thought I’d be forced to find some other refuge for her because I could see nothing but hardship ahead. But what on earth would I have done without hr now? She picks him up when he wakes up & changes him when he’s wet & cleans him when he’s dirty & bathes him & dresses him as if it’s the child of her own blood day & night immediately she’s on the spot when he cries & she sleeps with hr window open to hear him at night. Says she’s awake even before he can as much as squawk & then she comes in at the back door & soothes him & sings to him that always calms him down. I’ve told her she can sleep on the camp sretcher with him in the nursery while he’s so small it would be more convenient she pretends not to hear me suppose she doesn’t feel comfortable with the idea & so I just dropped the matter because I suppose Jak would also have something to say about it. The Hottentot Madonna of the Langeberg he says St Agaat of South Africa the halo is in place when can we expect the canonisation. If only A. hadn’t gone & overheard him.
It’s not an easy child. Ma says firstborns just are like that. Beatrice has all sorts of theories. He’s scared of my hands scared of my face & I have trouble suckling & as it is I have so little milk. A spring lamb says A. always has more whims than autumn lambs but with her she says he behaves himself as if it were April all the way.
She’s always cheerful & tireless. Often watch her when she doesn’t know I’m looking so tender & hr mouth so soft & hr body even though she’s no more than a child herself (have now written her name on the birthday calendar 12 July exactly one month before Jakkie. Won’t forget it again!) so protective of the helpless little creature. Feel myself in her shade her inferior by far in terms of patience & ingenuity. Feel weak in the face of the task. Still often weepy but at least somewhat less than at first. Often sit in my chair in front of the glass door feeble & listless then A. comes & lays the baby fragrant in his little white blankets & soft clothes gurgling in my arms. As if she wants me to share in the well-being she awakens in him or if she wants me to be kindled by the first little smile she gets out of him. But his little face clouds over immediately when he notices me & he frowns as if he’s seeing a dreadful problem on my face & he grimaces & he cries fit to break my heart so then I return him to A. she always has a plan. Let’s push him in his pram to the dam let’s sit there for a while in the shade of the willows let’s sing to him so he can grow human let’s go for a drive with him over the ridges so that he can feel the lie of the land up & down over the hills sikketir sikketir over drift & fields all the way to the old bridge of Vaandrigsdrift let’s take him over the plain to Malgas & sail with him over the river on the ferry so that he can get used to crossing the deep & dark places.
14 September 1960 afternoon
Allowed myself to be carried along with A.’s proposals this last week & every day today again we packed the baby-case & packed a picnic for ourselves & got into the car & followed our noses. A. doesn’t want to sit in front wants to sit in the back with the child in his crib. Watched hr in the rear-view mirror how she looks at him every now & again & rearranges a little blanket or covers a kicked-open little hand or foot & then gazes out again this side & that side over the land in its light-green spring attire the lambs playful on the dam walls the crops hand-height the fennel—her fennel!—in flower next to the road (once she opened the window to smell it & smiled with me in the mirror) the tops of the bluegums sprouted shiny-red what is she thinking? but I’d rather not ask. She rocks & she soothes the child.
I drive & show hr the world. Over the ridges over the plains over the rivers. Storms River, Breede River, Korenland, Buffelsjag, Karnemelks, Duivenhoks. We have picnics with hr favourite food cold sausage & bread with apricot jam & red cooldrink & sago pudding on dam walls & banks in the shade. Even dug up my Oxford Collected Poems & read to her & taught her a few new English words. It’s all really to console hr & to mollify hr to remind hr of the good things which should not come to nought. I look at hr & I cry secretly because I know it’s my little child in hr arms there that makes her now at times totally forget the quick steps & the stiff formal air that she affected & in unguarded moments become again as she was.
14 September evening
Reread the little books from the beginning. What is it with me this need to go over everything again now as if I’m searching for something that I lost? Tell myself I’ve lost nothing. I have what I’ve always wanted. And I’ve also got A. back & it’s all good it has all come to good as the Lord wanted it. So then I wrote the inscription that I composed the other evening in block letters in the front of the first booklet with today’s date so that I can remember one thing: That I owe it all to the coming of little Jakkie.
17 September
It’s been 3 days now & I still don’t know how to write it up & if I should write about it at all if writing can countenance it. J. would murder her if he were to know. Can’t tell it to anybody.
Have been seeing wet patches on the uniform for a while now & when I ask she says he must have drooled on me or he most have burped a wet wind will go & change. Without twitching a muscle. After the first few times she must have taken precautions. She knows the rule child-minding or not the uniform must be spotlessly white every moment of the day. So then last Wednesday one of those little spring mizzles & I had a nap in the afternoon & I wake up there’s a silence in the house heavy & deep & I stay lying on my bed listening to the dripping & looking over the stoep scattered with flowers from the wisteria like little blue butterflies in the wet & the gutters are dripping softly a turtle dove calls it’s almost done raining & I feel happy & grateful that I’ve always in spite of everything been able to keep everybody on track on Gdrift & when at last I get up & go to have a look there I find the cradle empty. Feel the covers still lukewarm from his little body & I press my nose into the blankets they’re so sweet & I know A. has come to fetch him to give him the bottle everything is so quiet.
Didn’t want to call or make it known that I was awake wanted to shelter in the hushed sleeping afternoon as in a nest in the rain. Softly to the kitchen on bare feet there the back door is wide open & smell of wet is so sweet & everywhere it’s dripping with rain. The water on the stove in which we always heat the bottles of milk was still warm I felt & 3 clean bottles were standing upright on the tea cloth A. somewhere feeding him with the fourth one I knew. But then she wasn’t in the sitting room either there on the green sofa & not on the stoep either & not in the spare room either.
So then I saw from the nursery window that the outside room’s door was closed but the outside latch was off & then I knew immediately that’s where they were & then I wasn’t easy the servant’s quarters is not a place for my child but I thought perhaps A. had just gone there to put on a clean apron & had taken him along. Put on slippers & went out into the backyard & A.’s curtains were tightly drawn but I didn’t want to knock & then I was ashamed of myself because Jakkie was nowhere safer than with A. Walk around the back because then I remember there’s a small window at the back & it’s muddy & I clamber onto a paint tin & the window’s open a chink & I cling to the window sill to peer into the room.
There is A. with her back to me on the apple box in front of her bed. Hr one shoulder bare the crooked bones of the deformed side wide open to view & I look & I see & I can’t believe what I see perhaps I dreamed it the apron’s shoulder band is off & the sleeve of the dress hangs empty & her head is bent to the child on her lap. Could just see his little feet sticking out on the one side. Perfectly contented. There I see on her bed on a white towel untouched lies the fourth bottle full of milk. There I stand in the drizzle on the paint tin that’s sinking away in the mud with my forehead pressed against the window sill & I listen to the little sounds it sucks & sighs it’s a whole language out there in the outside room I can almost not bring myself to write it.
Went & put on my raincoat & wellingtons. ‘Have gone for a walk’ I wrote on a piece of paper for A. & the exact time half past three so that she could see I was awake. Walked along next to the drift & stood by the deep places & looked at the drops falling on the water in ringlets & the eels coming to see if it was food dropping. Saw to it that I stayed away for an hour.
A. busy bathing the little one when I returned her strong arm under his little back supporting him hr little hand soaping him as I taught her there he lies gurgling in the water & smiles at me. I stand in the door of the nursery & I just look & I find nothing to say.
Look who’s here Jakkie, your même she’s been for a walk but I wonder where she was she’s got a white spot on her forehead like a blazed mare!
I look in the mirror & there it is, the lime of the little window through which I was peeping.