Milla, can you hear me? This is me, Beatrice.
Her voice is loud. As if she’s trying to penetrate a wall.
Beatrice of Friswind, you know me, don’t you!
What further aspect of herself would she select to remind me who she is? How much does she think my memory has shrivelled from lying still?
She opts for the more recent past.
I was at the signing of the will not so long ago, do you remember?
Hatted and gloved, I remember. I too was powdered and lipsticked for the occasion. Agaat’s great pleasure in life. With a white spot on the forehead, to remind me that I am a snooper at freshly-whitewashed window sills. But how does Beatrice expect me to show that I recognise her? Smite my hands together and jubilate? Long-time-no-see-how-is-your-suckling-pig-farming?
I don’t even want to open my eyes.
It’s me, Thys’s wife, can you hear me? Now her voice is lower, with feigned sympathy, as if she wants to say: Me, you nearest neighbour to whom you told everything about your life.
Why did I ever tell her anything? Now she’s lusting after more. She’s here for the scrapings from the pot, for the last meat on the bones.
She hangs over me, her face inches from me. She smells of sweat and powder. She comes even closer. Her breath smells of frikkadel. Her sympathy smacks of frikkadel.
She knows nothing about me, can now no longer know anything about me. What I told her at that time about Jak wasn’t news to her. I could see on her face that I was just a mirror for her, the darting glance, the shame, the repressed rage. Confession in the kitchen, we know, is treason against the sitting room. And it’s the sitting room that must be defended, at all costs. That I now understand. And that’s where Jak was right, I suppose. All hands on deck, I remember, he used to call on reporting for duty in the sitting room when people came to visit.
If I could suddenly find my tongue, I’d be able to tell it to you in so many words: All that we could think up to do, you and I, all our lives, was to unbosom ourselves in our inner chamber before the Lord. Oh hearken to me, your little girl-child meek and mild, oh preserve me, your bleeding virgin, bless me, woman of your nation, but what did that make Him? An insurance agent placating his policy-holders? A panjandrum of the harem? I don’t know about you, friend, but in my married life God was not on the side of the unmaskers. He was the great Mask himself. Our polygamous Heavenly Spouse. Do you remember Mrs Missionary van der Lught’s recommendation? That we should pray to Him in our Overberg Version of Psalm 119, Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity and quicken thou me in thy way. Indeed. Here I lie now, biered for the fatherland.
Would you understand that, Beatrice? In your book, I imagine, the dying may not mock?
Nevertheless, dear neighbour, note, my mask nowadays is made of hard green plastic. My life has changed. I am harmless to you, impervious to that God of mutually humbugging neighbourliness and pretentious poets. I am delivered to the mercy of my diary of former days. And it runs deeper than little kitchen secrets, I can tell you. And at present God is vengeful as in his youth, and it feels a whole lot more honest. Indeed, He has become a woman. He is now named Agaat, not that I think you can understand Greek. ‘Agaat’, do you know what else it also means apart from the name for a semi-precious stone?
I can feel Beatrice shying away from me. Unsatisfied. What did she expect? The Ave Maria in sign language?
How would she have got in here? What’s happened to Agaat?
Through half-closed eyelids I can make out that the curtains are drawn. But it’s not the morning light shining through, it’s not morning.
It’s afternoon, late afternoon. What’s Beatrice doing here? She was supposed to come in the morning, tomorrow morning. Then Agaat would be away in town.
But Agaat didn’t come to say goodbye, didn’t say she was leaving now. She put on the oxygen mask for me. That was the last time I saw her.
She said, rest a while, breathe easily.
She said, just don’t faint again, please not.
That was after lunch. It was today after all. Could the days be starting to play tricks on me? First spoon of jelly then I almost choked. So then she had to thump me again to get it out, first come and sit behind me to do the Heimlich, several times in succession. The first time that Agaat has entered my bed in broad daylight.
Today it was, I’m not confused.
Her heart thumping against my back. Her legs on either side of my body. Her arms around my stomach. A trace of anxiety mingled with her starched medicinal smells. After she’d got me calmed down, she was pale, didn’t want to look me in the eye.
She put on the mask, her hand on my chest, regulated the oxygen, drew the curtains.
Rest a while.
Let me die, I asked with my eyes.
No, Agaat said with her eyes, don’t be otherwise.
The elastic of the oxygen mask pulls my hair at the back painfully. No way that I could convey this to Beatrice. And what could she do about it? She’d sooner touch the tail of a crocodile than me. And I have one Tamer. She who can open the doors of my face.
I hear the chirping of sparrows. Late afternoon. Exuberant sparrows that can breathe again after the scorching day. Thirty-eight degrees, Agaat said. Oh, for the breath of the tiniest sparrow! If I could inhale it into me. I would live the better for it. I’d be able to spit in the face of the inquisitive wife of my neighbour. By her sneezings a light doth shine.
Could we open the curtains just a bit?
We. Overberg plural. The fact that Beatrice can consult the realm of death on domestic matters makes her light-headed. Light streams into the room. I can feel her watching my face.
I’m sorry if I gave you a fright. I thought I might as well come this afternoon. I’ll stay over if you like. I spoke to Agaat on the phone this morning. She wants to go to town tomorrow, she asked if I would stay with you in the morning. But then she didn’t sound altogether together to me. So I came over quickly to see if you’re managing here. You never know what the creatures will get up to if you don’t keep an eye on them. And with you so helpless here, for all you know they’re robbing you blind, I don’t mean Agaat of course, I mean the others. It’s not as if she can be everywhere all the time. I wonder where she is. Somewhere in the back I suppose. I knocked but nobody came. And the front door was wide open. And there’s a whole pile of loose stuff in the sitting room, looks as if it’s been put out to be carried off. I’ll tell her she should really lock the doors, my goodness, you two women so alone here in the place, nowadays you can’t be sure of your own life. I must say, Milla, I’ve often wondered whether she’s really competent enough to look after you here on her own, but I hear from Mrs le Roux that Doctor is very satisfied. She’s better than a nurse apparently, knows every need of yours, and is very meticulous with everything. Ai, one can just be grateful that some of them are still like that.
Beatrice opens the curtains further.
Is it too light?
I open my eyes as wide as I can.
Lord woman! Can you see me then?
She comes nearer. Looks me in the eyes. I can see the plan forming in her head. She holds a finger in front of my nose, moves it from left to right. I follow my neighbour’s wife’s finger with my eyes.
Heavens, she says, so you can really still see . . . and . . . everything.
Yes, see and everything, hello Beatrice, I blink. She wants to giggle, swallows it quickly.
She closes the curtain slightly again. Nervous, uncomfortable with me, can’t face it. I can’t face her either. So much embarrassment on the face, so much fear and aversion, all at the same time. She’d look at me much more readily if I were a stuffed pig with an apple in my mouth. She did look at me more readily when I was stuffed. Mrs de Wet with a sentinel in her mouth. Would Beatrice ever have given Thys a blow job? She certainly always could open her mouth wider than anybody else on the church-choir gallery. To articulate with emphasis. Thy praise shall linger on my lips.
Shall I open the doors a bit, it’s a bit close in here.
Beatrice tripples to the stoep doors, opens them.
Here comes a play for voices. And for smells. For neighbour’s wife, sparrow-fart and the intimations of mortality.
A-g-a-a-a-t! she calls in a little high-pitched voice. A-g-a-a-a-t! first to this side and then that side of the stoep.
A swarm of sparrows takes off from the bougainvillea. Beatrice’s dress is the wrong shade of blue next to the purple.
I wish she would leave. I wish Agaat would come and take her to the sitting room and say she’ll manage thank you and give her tea so she can get herself gone. I’ll signal off, off here with the Neighbour’s Wife in search of a Drama, she can keep her heartfeltness for when I’m cold and coffined, thank you. I’ll blink my eyes until Agaat understands: I’ll be content with Saar, Saar can sit with me tomorrow when she goes to town, I’ll go mad with such sanctimonious blethering in my ears all morning, stark staring mad. All that Saar ever says is ‘oumies’. When she sweeps the passage, she stops for a moment, straightens up, and looks in here. ‘Oumies,’ she says then, an acknowledgement of my existence, on the same small scale, the single word, as the scale on which I now live. She looks at me as one looks at a sheep that has long since lain down with bluetongue. ‘Oumies’. Ounooi. Indeed. What more is there to say? It’s honest at least.
Sickbed comforters generally don’t talk to you but to themselves, especially if you’re in the process of dying. You’re a trial run for their excuses.
I wonder where Agaat can be, says Beatrice. I hope she doesn’t often leave you on your own like this now, after all, you can at any moment . . . you can at any moment need her. Ai Milla that you should lie here so at the mercy.
Beatrice clicks her tongue. She looks round the room. Her eyes dart swiftly, scrutinisingly over everything. She thinks I’m not all there. She thinks I can’t really see, I’m just a reflex of pupils. She thinks I can’t see how she slides open the drawer of the dressing table and peeks into it while she’s talking, how she picks up the folded towels from the two bedpans and looks into them, how she picks up the medicines from the trolley and screws up her eyes to read the names on the little bottles, how she runs her finger along the bedpost, how she glances askance at the camp sretcher against the wall.
Must say everything looks nice and tidy here, she says, clean and all. I suppose it’s better than the hospital, familiar isn’t it, I suppose one would rather just be at home.
The volubility of the living. Her cup runneth over. Bountiful she wants the harvest to be from death’s dominion, from death’s ante-chamber. She wouldn’t have wanted to come for nothing, that’s clear. I can just hear her account: Nothing in the bedpans, doesn’t look as if they’ve ever been used. I suppose everything has just about ground to a halt in that department. The woman eats almost nothing. The maid says just little-little bits of thin gruel.
What the one madam wishes the other: thin gruel and a seized-up internal mechanism. I can see it, the smugness of the impeccable messenger, the primly-pleated pout, it would take more than a bedpan under her backside to conquer her conceit.
Shall I go and see if I can find Agaat?
Beatrice comes to loom over me. She looks as if she wants a twig to prod me. She should just open her eyes, there are sticks on the trolley, flat ice-cream sticks and ear-buds, she can choose. I want to say boo! I want to put out my tongue. I open my eyes, wide, suddenly, and then I peel them back for her, and I flicker for my neighbour’s wife by my bier of death, the flicker of death, sustained and unmistakable, the vibrating blackwhite eyelash butterfly. Leminitis camilla. Map butterfly. Liberated in the occluded valley. Haven’t felt so lively in a long time. The effect is all one could desire. It is sung. Mezzo-soprano in The Spout.
O Lorrrd Mil-la, Oh Go-o-od he-e-l-ep! Steps back, back, her eyes glued to my face. Boer diva in stage shock, Jak would have said.
Yes, don’t look away, Beatie, look, that’s what you get for coming to stand by my bed with a fastidious smirk on your face. Look how my eyeballs quake! It’s my last little bit of muscle power! With that I can move worlds!
She runs down the passage. Gaat! she screams. Her voice is shrill.
Gaat, come quickly, Gaat! Help! The oumies!
Out at the back door. Cat-twah! the screen door slams. I hear her hammer on the outside room’s door, a window is pushed open. A scream. I count the seconds. Then the screen door slams again. Another scream.
Lorrd Jesus please, help! Beatrice exclaims. She’s by the telephone in the passage. I hear the back door open again. I know who it is. I know who’s waiting surreptitiously in the kitchen to hear what’s going on, I know who’s standing behind the door and listening attentively. I want to laugh. I wish I could laugh. Water comes to my eyes. Beatrice the emphatic, Beatrice whom Agaat could imitate so well since childhood. We eavesdrop on her together, Agaat and I. We wait behind the curtains.
Thys, Thys is that you Thys? Thys, yes listen Thys I’m here with Milla de Wet and I think she’s on her deathbed the woman, and I think that maid of hers is dead already.
Agaat, yes.
No, I told you don’t you remember, she phoned this morning and asked I should come tomorrow she has to go to town for all sort of business and funeral arrangements.
Thys, no, listen to me now!
No, I thought I’d rather come and have a look this afternoon already, the maid sounds half odd to me.
No, towards five o’clock. Didn’t you get my note that I left you on the sideboard?
No, when I got here everything was wide open and the yard deserted and Milla was lying all on her own in a pitch-dark shut-tight room with a green thing over her face.
Over her mouth and nose, yes.
In any case so then her eyes peeled back and her eyelids started fluttering, something terrible.
No, Thys, I didn’t touch her.
No, that’s what I’m telling you, she was nowhere to be found, so I went to see where the creature could be when you needed her and then I found her in the outside room lying with exactly the same green thing on her face!
No, through the window, the door was locked, but I could see, the girl’s bed is next to the window.
No, I don’t know, I was out of there so fast.
A tube? No, I don’t know about tubes, Thys.
What?
Poison? No, Lord, Thys, I don’t know, but now is not the time.
Yes, I hear you. Just come. No, Thys, gas or poison, it doesn’t matter.
No, the point is that I’ve now arrived here unexpectedly, don’t you see? Perhaps I’ve just come upon it too soon, if you understand what I mean.
No, Lord, Thys, why must I always have such a time getting something into your head, my dear husband. Suicide! Suicide! That’s what I say yes. Perhaps they both, you know, how do they say? a joint, a shared, how does one say? a linked, perhaps they decided it’s the only way out of the misery, a team effort, ai, what is the word again? Because I tell you it’s crawling with pills and pans in there and it smells of dead!
No, Thys, I’m not going into that room again!
No, Thys, please. I’m not going to revive Agaat, I don’t doctor coons!
No, I want to leave now I feel too weird here. It’s a . . . a . . . double-decker! How does one say it?
Well then just come immediately please!
No fine, fine, I’ll wait till you come, I’ll wait outside. And Thys, ring the doctor and ring the police and ring Dominee van der Lught. I’m going to ring off now Thys, I have to get out of this house, it gives me the creeps, I’m waiting for you in front, just come, bring Magda along, she lays out bodies doesn’t she, tell her it’s a twin, bye Thys bye!
Beatrice picks up speed down the passage. Trot-trot slip-slide into the sitting room as she cuts the corner. Clicks-clicks go the heels. Rattles the front door. Must have locked behind her when she came in. Neighbour’s wife incarcerated with cadavers. My cadaver, your cadaver, us together in our palaver.
Here comes Agaat now. Heard the whole phone conversation, that I can tell from the footsteps. From the kitchen she comes, from behind the door where she’s been eavesdropping, down the passage, quickly. She looks agitated when she comes into my room, cap at a crazy angle. She comes and stands close to me, looks into my eyes.
What do I hear you’ve been flickering here? What kind of flickering with the eyes and what kind of peeling back? Are you feeling faint?
No, Agaat, it’s a joke.
She’s too alarmed to read me correctly.
Sorry, Ounooi, I overslept, completely, I’m sorry. Ai.
She takes off the mask, wipes away my drool, smoothes cream on my face where the edge of the mask has pressed against my cheeks.
I flicker with my eyes, everything’s fine Agaat, I could die laughing, I laugh.
She doesn’t see it.
Nooi Beatrice, she must have got a fright, I was lying there in my room with the oxygen mask, with the extra one, I wanted to see how it works, whether it works well, whether you can breathe from it. If I get extra breath from it, how it feels to get extra breath. Then I went to sleep, must have been from too much breath, then I went into such a deep, deep sleep, I’m sorry. Then I woke up from the window. Then nooi Beatrice pushed open the window from the outside.
Agaat fiddles with my eyelids, she draws the upper lid over the lower, presses on the soft spots under my eyes, as if she wants to arrange them properly, living eyes, that don’t just peel back for nothing.
So what kind of flickering is nooi Beatrice talking about?
Relax, Agaat, it’s funny, can’t you see? Come on, laugh a bit! Laugh so that I can hear it. I want to hear laughter. Laugh Agaat, I want to see what you look like when you laugh, when last did we have a really good joke here? The laughing corpses. The one with peeled-back eyes, the other one drunk on air. The one old ghost was lean and the other old ghost was fat, do you remember, Agaat, the song? We used to sing it to Jakkie when he was small, when we were bathing him. Then I blew out my cheeks and you sucked in your cheeks and I sang high and you sang low and then he crowed with laughter.
Agaat pulls here and pushes there in the room. She’s too much off her stride to interpret me. What matters now is what it looks like to outsiders.
Tsk, she says, here the stretcher still is, clean forgot!
She slams shut the camp stretcher, goes to stow it in the passage cupboard, prepares for inspection. Then she looks in the mirror. Just look at me now, she says. She pins her cap on straight. I catch her eye in the mirror. She’s standing with a mouth full of hairpins. I’ve never seen Agaat pinning her cap in place.
Sorry, Ounooi, she mumbles through the pins, just let me pull myself together here.
Agaat, I flicker, please, can’t you see how funny it is?
I’m coming Ounooi, I’m coming, I must explain nicely to baas Thys, I must go and see where nooi Beatrice is now.
Let the woman be, let her be, didn’t you hear what she said? She doesn’t doctor coons.
Agaat comes closer.
What are you saying, Ounooi? I’m causing scandal here? No, that’s not what you’re saying.
I roll my eyes back to the garden where Beatrice is now wringing her tiny hands, I show how I peeled back my eyes for her. I peel my eyes back and back, I flicker them, I look straight at her, I laugh. Over and over in the same sequence I explain. I make my eyes shine, I make my eyes sparkle.
Agaat, but look, look, I have only my eyes to tell a joke, my dear Agaat who wants to breathe on my behalf and falls asleep wearing an oxygen mask, laugh then, laugh with me!
A smile steals across Agaat’s mouth.
Ho Ounooi, you didn’t really pretend? Act?
She can’t say it.
Yes, you’ve got it, you’ve got it, I Milla de Wet, née Redelinghuys, who has been lying here for months now on my back wasting away, I today pretended, yes, feigned, yes acted out the dance of death, so do your bit. If I can mock, how much more can’t you? It’s the last joke, can’t you see?
Right, says Agaat, very funny. But this is not the time for games. You heard who all was being informed.
Exactly, Agaat, the whole titocracy wants to see the double-decker suicide!
Cars arrive in the yard, the dogs bark.
All the stuff in the sitting room, says Agaat. They must just not think I’m trying to rob you.
She’s left before I can stop her. She’s going to establish a firebreak at the front door. Agaat, but here you are alive and kicking! Questions, exclamations. She tries to explain. Thys and the dominee and Magda the cadaver connoisseur. Agaat does not invite them in. But they want to see, see with their own eyes. They press past her. But she gets to the front, I hear her soles in the passage, backwards, backwards. She precedes them into the room, her arms wide as if she wants to dam them up behind her apron. She signals at me with the eyes, I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them. She comes to stand by my bed. Puts her hand on my shoulder.
I am framed, I am pre-eminent, my moment of glory. I turn my eyes slowly from her to the company clustering in the doorway craning their necks. I look at my neighbours, the keepers of law and order, the purveyors of benevolence, the profferers of prayers, the conjurers of contumely and catastrophe. One by one I cull their stares, until I have collected them all in mine, the stupefaction and the shame, and the fear.
We are prepared for the season, the ounooi and I, says Agaat. We have fruitcake and tea for you all, don’t we Ounooi?
I blink my eyes slowly in affirmation. And I point them with an extended wink in the direction of the sitting room.
Go forth. Eat cake.
But now they’re in a hurry. No, they don’t want to sit down.
I listen to Agaat taking leave of the guests at the door.
He is so grateful for the good hands in which her ounooi finds herself, says the dominee.
We do our best, says Agaat.
I’ll settle the hash of the sheep-stealers, says the sergeant.
Rather bring the troops, says Agaat, the robbers work in teams.
Twock-twock-twock Thys descends the stoep staircase in his big shoes.
Have a nice day, Agaat, bye-bye, Magda calls gaily.
Not a sound from Beatrice.
The doors slam. The cars pull off. The dogs bark.
The joke of the afternoon seems small. A small forlorn joke. I can feel it seeping out of me. I feel heavy. I feel dense. I don’t feel sad. I feel tired. Agaat is sad. I know, I can feel it.
She remains standing on the stoep. She calls the dogs back. I hear them panting. I close my eyes. I can picture their tails wagging, their open-mouthed laughing with her. They come to have their heads stroked.
Look at you Boela, where have you been again?
Her voice comes with an effort. She tries to bend it into shape by talking to the dogs, appropriating the liveliness of dogs. Dogs that can come and go and wallow in the dust, in dead things, to appropriate the smell for themselves, to get up and to scrabble with the back feet.
Come here, Koffie, but my goodness, you too. Where do you find mud to roll in now? Oh sis, but you stink!
Agaat doesn’t come in. I can see her standing there. She watches the gate being opened and closed. She remains there longer than usual. She watches the cars turning off into the main road, the billows of dust getting smaller and disappearing over the hill. She feels the weight of the evening waiting, she smells the last still black water of the drift, she sees the dark mountain rearing up and the black tree-tops of Grootmoedersdrift.
But that’s better than nothing, it’s better than me in my white bed in here.
She does not want to come in.
She does not want to enter the house. But there is nowhere else. Nothing else. Not as long as I’m here. This is the cup. This is the book. Drink it, turn its pages.
Ai, I hear, look at how dry you are.
I hear her go down the stoep steps. Water on the cement. It’s the garden hose. The water splat-splats in a feeble stream. Agaat is watering the pot plants. She talks to them. She wants me to hear. That is how I taught her. Plants flourish when you talk to them, especially in pots. They grow shiny leaves. That’s their reply.
Virgin’s tears, she says, hen-and-chickens, hoya, Mackaya bella, delicious monster, peace in the home.
Tonight she gets no further than a roll-call.
The hose drags around to the other side of the stoep. One thing leads to another. Now it’s the bed right under the stoep that the irrigation doesn’t always reach.
Agaat is buying time. She considers what next. She makes plans. How to proceed. How to keep things well-aired and well-lit. Coping with the evening, coping with the morning.
One pot, another pot is dragged across the stoep. Wet terracotta gritty on the cement. The early December move. Then the late-afternoon sun shines in under the veranda and dries everything out.
There, now you’re out of the heat, says Agaat.
She grunts as she comes upright.
Everything is wet. The tap has been closed. The pots have been moved. Now she must in. Now she can’t do anything else. But it’s grown dark. She has somewhere to start. The curtains to draw, the table lamps to switch on. A sign of life she can give. This is a farm. People are living here. Sweetenough’s the name of the wife, Goodenough’s the name of the maid.
I hear her at the front door. She wipes her feet on the cane mat. Once, twice, checks under the soles, once more. A sigh. Then she’s in. She closes the door, locks, latches from the inside. She looks at the latch. She turns round. She looks at the sitting room. She takes one step in, another, she’s on the carpet. Now she’s ready. Now the hand does what it finds to do, the left hand in front, the right hand behind.
I hear a curtain, another, I hear a note, a phrase. Then she finds the tune. Then I find it. It’s for me, Agaat, I know, sing for me there in the sitting room. Blow the wind southerly, she hums. She knows it from the old record of Kathleen Ferrier. Did we throw it away with the clearing-out? Her voice is weak. She clears her throat, starts again.
Sing, Agaat. You sing the old-old tunes. Sing the songs of yesteryear. The music of the front room. Sing of the wind round the corners of the house, the south-easter, the north-wester. The song of the window frames, of the door frames and the curtains, of the standard lamps and the carpet with the red flowers and the sideboard of dark imbuia that has surrendered its secrets. And the riempie chairs and the riempie bench and the round table in the corner. The mute words of people, the still dense things, the old ornaments from which at the beginning you couldn’t keep your eyes. Are you touching, now, Diana and her tame wolves in old brown porcelain? Do you pick up the little copper Indian shoe, the shoe in which you always in spring put the kukumakranka for me? And the swans of white blown glass, do you touch their necks and do you see the green vase for freesias, the blue one full of daffodils, the big grey vase that you stuck together, the one for the wild flowers of September, for the first blue lupins, for the blue-purple hydrangeas?
Sing softly of the evening’s coming and of the evening meal, the sausage and eggs and the red tomatoes and the fresh loaf with the crackled brown crust, the milk in the jug that was a wedding gift, the square of butter under glass. The white tablecloth, the oven glove around the ears of the black iron saucepan, the sitting-down, the hands under low light, around the knives, around the forks, the spoons with the ivory handles, the people who look at each other, or do not look, speak to each other, or do not speak, or speak without words. Sing, that you may be consoled. Because that you now have to do for yourself, as you’ve always had to do.
Oh sing, sing, Agaat, of the wind that blows from the south and the ship in the offing, because it is in the offing. I see it in the distance. White is its bow and its splines are white and it’s coming over the hump-backed hills, closer I see it coming, ever closer.
I understand. You don’t think my joke this afternoon was funny. It’s a sad song, that’s all.
I open my eyes. The lights are suddenly on in the room.
Look, says Agaat, with all the hubbub you haven’t even seen yet.
She points next to my bed.
The rainbow is gone. Now there is a mountain with a vlei in front of it. It is full of white water-hawthorn. The mountains reflect a darkness amongst the flowers. An early-morning scene, a painting from the sitting room. I thought we had thrown it away.
The blue blue hills of home, says Agaat, I went and fetched it from the cellar.
And look here, the portrait of the grandmother. I thought you might want to see it once more.
It’s the portrait in front of which my mother used to make me stand when I was small. Her hand heavy on my shoulder. Look, Milla, it’s she who farmed into being this little plot of earth. One day it will be yours.
A matriarch in the making, her mouth young, her plump white fingers folded round a rolled-up document, her hair pulled back tightly in a bun, her cheeks two touched-up red stains, the collar around her neck of fine white lace, the one eye small and fierce, the other one larger, clear-sighted, the eye over which something reflects distractingly on the gibbous glass of the oval frame, a rectangle of white, my bed, a smudge of grey, my head, my grey hair on the pillow.
…
Clear out clear out my iniquitous life! screams the bob-head-doll she strikes her stick on the floor give away! bequeath! burn! the wise hoard no button the prudent begin discarding at fifty a lifetime’s gleaned-together rags tassels and tatters those condemned to death would have to clear out all save the rope of the gallows enviable the chaste suicide’s furious meticulousness museums are in cahoots with the negligence of the dying a comb a necklace a shoe-horn writers hook after the last hung-up coat a hat behind the door rummage in bottom drawers they the custodians should rather have to sing inflammatory songs in the archives should with the last cadences have to dig holes in the cellars raise demolition-axes light purifying fires come beloveds let us expedite the onslaught of moth and rust! and let us inspire the breath of the blowing dust! start with the linen cupboard! start with the veil-netting of the third dress of a woman start with the redundant winding-cloths the cosy coverings with which one tries to charm death give away! bequeath! burn! I make the list and you make three piles for giving away burning and bequeathing and today you will be in paradise with me even before the cocks have crowed.
…
It was the day of the pork measles, the evening after the accident with the tractor winch, December ’61, after supper. Agaat brought Jakkie in with ‘great news’ on her face, ‘good news.’
She could hear you and Jak were having words again. She could hear it was going to go awry again.
She put the child down on the mat and brought in the coffee after supper and said ‘something’ had happened.
Jak was too annoyed to notice. A deputation of workers had come at knocking-off time that afternoon to tell him that they wanted new pit lavatories at their homes, the old ones were dilapidated. You heard it all, you were in your room, exhausted after the day. You’d often spoken to Jak about sanitation for the workers, he simply didn’t want to do anything about it.
They were in front of his office door on the front stoep and you heard their complaints clearly.
Yes, Agaat doesn’t do the right thing by them and Agaat says it’s because of people’s shit lying around that the pigs get measles and their slaughter-pig for the month was spoiled and they don’t believe her they thought pork just had spots like that and why can’t they get a sheep then to slaughter and the mies had said the privies would come and when are they coming then and Agaat had threatened the baas was going to shoot their dogs and is the baas going to do it and where are they supposed to find food for their dogs when they don’t have any themselves and Agaat had said their wives can’t work for the mies in the kitchen with germs.
You looked out of the open door of the room onto the stoep. There they stood. Lietja’s husband, Kitaartjie, and Saar’s husband, Piet Skilletjies. You saw them from the back, the ragged seats of pants, the bare patches in the hair from stab wounds, the sloping shoulders. You could smell them, the sharp sweat, the old dirt.
Our children have worms, we want pits with corrugated-iron huts over them and wooden seats, they said.
Jak knew nothing of the morning’s doings, nothing of the medicine-dosing and the grumbling at the labourers’ houses. He didn’t understand what the slaughter-pig had to do with measles and latrines. He told them to get away from his office door, he was busy. You withdrew your head quickly from the window.
It was Dawid there in the office. He had come to speak about his cousin who had been caught in the winch-axle earlier that afternoon with the hay-baling.
Julies is lying in front of the fire and he’s talking confused and the doctor said he has concussion, and his foot, his foot isn’t so good.
Dawid’s voice was calm and serious. He demanded nothing explicitly, just spelt out the details.
It was too much for Jak, all the accidents. You could see it on his face as he sat there twirling his fork that evening after supper. He didn’t want to listen when you tried to tell him what had happened that day, of Agaat’s doings. Agaat got on his nerves, he said. And there she was again now with Jakkie and ‘something’ that had happened.
He put his fork down and leant back in his chair.
What could it be this time? Has the dam burst? Has the horse drowned? How come, Gaat, that you’re always the first on the scene? One would swear that there where your eye falls, there trouble erupts. What is it this time?
Later, you signalled to Agaat, tomorrow, now’s not the time, make yourself scarce here. But you could see that she was excited.
I want to help you, she signalled with the eyes, I want to provide diversion here at the table. ‘Something’ has happened! Just give me a chance! She had Jakkie on her arm. He pointed a tiny finger at her cap.
Go and put him to bed, you said, it’s bed-time.
You knew the expression on her face very well. It spoke of wanting to compensate, of wanting to make good all the bad things of the day, wanting reassurance, wanting to be set at ease. It was she who had had to put a stop to the slaughtering of the pig that morning and who had come to call you.
She was right, there was no doubt about that. The meat was permeated all the way into the muscles with little red globules. You had all the pigs caught and one by one you had the bit put into their mouths and you pulled out the tongues yourself with pliers to have a look. They were all infested.
Then you just couldn’t any more. Then you made her the messenger.
It was she who had to tell the workers that there wouldn’t be any pork this month, she who had to lock the smoking-cabin again where the fire had already been lit to smoke the bacon and had to send them all home empty-handed.
And then it was she again who had to go to the labourers’ houses with the medicine and the acid drops in her apron pocket and had to doctor the whole lot against worms as you had instructed her.
When she stayed away for too long, you went to have a look, but you walked around the back so that nobody should see you. You didn’t want to interfere. But you felt all of a sudden that it wasn’t right that Agaat should be there all on her own.
There she was commandeering the mothers of the children left and right to catch them and bring them nearer because when they saw the medicine bottle they took flight into the wattle-wilderness. Agaat was pushing and pulling them to stand in line, the big ones full of scratches from the branches and snivelling tearfully, the littl’uns bawling in the dust.
You heard her scolding before you even saw her. You peered round the corner. You saw how she grabbed the children by the hair and pulled their heads back and clamped their noses until they opened their mouths. With every spoonful she scolded.
This is what you get for shitting in the bushes like wild things! Open your porridge-hole! This is what you get for wiping your arses with your hands!
Swallow! swallow! If you spit it out you’ll get a swipe through your mug!
And then you guzzle vetkoek again with the same hands, what kind of black muck-mongering is this?
Swallow! swallow! dammit, swallow! and don’t leak snot all over my clothes!
You’re worse than pigs! They can’t help it that they didn’t get any brains. They eat your runny shit that lies around here stinking in the sun. That’s why they’re full of measles. If I come again, then I’ll dip the whole lot of you wholesale with a forked stick behind the neck in the sheep-dip, the Lord knows what kind of pestilences are hatching here!
Just look at that child’s scabies! When last did she smell a piece of soap? Godalmighty!
Just think what your guts look like! Pauperworms, they crawl up into your heads and gnaw out your brains till you’re dancing around with the horrors. And what about those mangy curs? On this farm we shoot everything that has worms quick-quick right between the eyes.
Will you pee on my shoes, you little hotnot! Stand that way, shut your trap and swallow or I’ll wind up your little prick for you like fly-paper. Where’re your pants?
Agaat made her way through her line and stood back, wiped her hands on her apron. With the spoon in the air she stood and explained.
Now you listen well to me on this day today, you take a spade, you throw all your shit on one pile every day and you make a fire on top, lot of clump-arses that you are. And then you throw soil on top. Even a cat knows to cover up. If I catch one of you dropping your pants in the veld then I’ll string barbed wire through his arse!
You stood back against the dirty wall. Your heart was beating fast. You had never seen Agaat like this, had never heard her talk like this. You saw the adults standing laughing at the performance, but not full-out, little half-mast laughs and looking covertly at one another. Then one of the striplings grabbed the bag of acid drops from her apron pocket and the children descended upon it like ravens.
Rubbish! she screeched and she up and kicked, one, two kicks into the bundle with her black school shoes so that they dispersed chow-chow.
You stood back and pretended to be coming round the corner of the house at speed.
What on earth! What’s going on here! you exclaimed.
You looked at her sternly. You picked up the bag of sweets and shared them out in the little dirty hands. You went and stood in front of her. You wanted to cover her.
You explained the cycle of the tapeworm and its stages and its contagiousness. The people looked at you in solemn resignation. You promised there would be proper toilets. You passed the medicine to the women so that they could drink themselves and dose the men. You said there would be water and a washroom. You said you would find a clean pig for the slaughter. As you were saying it, a great murmuring arose and you could see from the faces what was coming. A list without end. Water, bread, meat, milk, roofs, shoes, clothes, soap, candles, sugar, coffee.
Come, Agaat, you said, come, you must go and scrub yourself from head to toe and put on clean clothes, I don’t want Jakkie exposed to germs.
The child was on your hip. He felt heavy all of a sudden but you didn’t want to hand him over. Agaat’s apron was full of spittle and stains from the medicine and dust marks and her cap was at an angle.
Straighten your cap, you signalled with you eyes.
You felt the people looking at you, at you and your child and Agaat. She jutted out her chin and returned their stares and you wanted to say, Agaat no, one doesn’t glare like that, but you didn’t know how. You smiled ingratiatingly at the people. You wanted to apologise for her, she doesn’t know any better, you wanted to say, she’s still a child herself, you wanted to say, but they didn’t return your look and you didn’t know how you could appease them.
You thought you’d have a talk to her after lunch. You couldn’t tolerate it, the irate eyes that refused to return to normal, the footsteps that sounded too loud, the outside room whose door was slammed too loudly after she’d been to clean herself there, the new apron that was too white and starched, the cap that perched too upright on her head.
You could have asked, what’s the matter, Gaat?
She grated the carrots, garr-garr-garr, in the kitchen where the preparation of the midday meal had in the meantime fallen behind schedule. She peeled the potatoes with long strokes and vigorously turned the meat over in the pot. She served the meal quickly and without a word and excused herself to go and wash her clothes.
One-fist Punch, Jak said.
You keep out of this, you said.
You heard the zinc bath and the washboard being dragged out into the yard. You could just see how fiercely she was rubbing the apron against the corrugations. After lunch she put Jakkie in his pram as you’d asked her to do to walk him to sleep so that you could go and have a rest.
You used the child. Only through him would she become good again.
You lay open-eyed in your dark room and tried to think about the morning’s events.
Where did the words come from? You hadn’t taught her like that. Clump-arse. Pauperworms. You had heard them with your own ears. The cruel hand, the hard foot, you had seen them. You turned on your bed, you wanted to turn away from the thoughts, the images of the morning, but they wound around your head like cloths flapping loosely in the wind, obstructing your view.
Then you heard the screen door slam, the wheels of the pram over the linoleum, the frame knocking against the door-jambs, her footsteps.
She spoke rapidly. Down the passage to the bathroom with a quick rap of the knuckles on your half-open door. You heard her yank the first-aid chest from under in the first linen cupboard.
Man in the axle! In the lucerne field! Dawid has switched off the engine. Head against the rocks. They had to cut him loose! He’s bleeding, he’s hardly breathing. Come! Quickly!
That was the message, but the timbre of the voice said even more.
Get up! it said. This eternal lying down of yours! I can’t do everything on my own. It’s your farm’s botch-up. The whole botch-up of your life. It’s your life that I’m stuck with.
You felt numb. The shock seeped into you on top of the consternation of the morning that hadn’t yet subsided.
An accident, another accident!
Times without number you’d told Jak to see to it that the labourers did not bale or thresh without the tin sleeve of the axle and that they wore buttoned overalls at all times.
You hadn’t seen the axle-guard for a long time. It was extra trouble to cart it along to the fields. Must be lying forgotten somewhere in a shed.
Take a rug, you said, and water. Bring the stretcher from the storeroom.
He tried to hold onto the wheel of the trailer, his pants were winched off him, Agaat said.
You ignored the contemptuous tone, grabbed an old pair of pyjamas of Jak’s from the linen cupboard. You’d heard of this kind of accident but this was the first time on Grootmoedersdrift. A sleeve or the tail of a shirt or a loose belt is caught in the open axle and you’re flung arse over heels, round and round, limbs shimmying, head against the ground. It could be fatal if somebody didn’t press the button in time to turn off the engine.
Go and fetch the baas in the office, you said, he must phone the doctor, tell the baas to ask him what we must do here, perhaps he’d better come out himself to have a look, or send a nurse from the clinic.
She stiffened her body, jerked her head around, her mouth trembled with the effort of containing herself. She looked you straight in the eyes.
She had often had to fetch him for you, but that day something struck bedrock. It was the language. The words. She had had to speak too many languages in one day, hear too many kinds.
Baas! she wanted to say, since when suddenly? Whose ‘baas’? Yours maybe, but not mine. You, you are my baas!
Never mind, I’ll do it myself, you said and walked to Jak’s office. She followed you, came to stand behind you in the office door with Jakkie in her arms.
Julies got caught in the winch-axle, you said to Jak, he got hurt.
Says who? Says Agaat? Jak asked without looking up from under his newspaper.
It’s because the sleeve was once again not fitted, you said to Jak, it’s because they have to work with the machines in their tattered clothes, it’s because they don’t have overalls, Jak.
Jak jerked away the newspaper from his face.
The same old lamentation. Can’t you have done with it?
His back could be broken, you said.
He’s bleeding from his head, Agaat said.
The duet once again, Jak said, how about a cat’s chorus?
Jakkie started to cry. You put your arm around Agaat and the child and prodded her out of the room.
Phone the doctor, you called to Jak over your shoulder.
Agaat’s mood had still not lifted when the two of you arrived in the bakkie where Julies was lying in the lucerne field. She flung the rug over his exposed lower body.
Move your neck, move your neck, so’s we can see if it’s off! she said. You could see how Dawid looked at her. He had Julies’s clothes in his hands.
You pushed her away. The man was broken. His shirt was in tatters. The torque of the axle had stripped his pants off his legs. His shins were grazed, everywhere he was full of green stains from having been keel-hauled through the lucerne.
He groaned when you touched him.
He grabbed your hand.
I’m dying off, Nooi, he moaned.
You held the hand. You dripped water into his mouth with a piece of cotton wool.
He fainted.
You held smelling salts under his nose.
It looked as if one shoulder had been dislocated but you didn’t want to try to push it back into the socket.
You started cleaning the head wounds. There were ugly deep cuts that were bleeding freely. Soil and grit clung to them. Agaat calmed down as she passed you the cotton wool, as she dipped the wads in gentian violet and cut the lengths of bandage for you and prepared the plaster.
You talked softly to Julies while you were working. Jakkie was sitting wide-eyed in the grass to one side. Dawid went off somewhere.
Everything will be okay, Julius, you said, I’ll take you home, the doctor’s coming, I’ll see to everything, don’t worry. You’ll have all the time you need to get better and you’ll be paid through and all the doctor’s expenses we’ll carry.
It was intended for Agaat as well, the timbre you gave to your voice, the reassuring sentences, the holding of the man’s rough hand.
Perhaps it was for yourself as well. You missed music, suddenly, which could always console you, bring you closer to yourself, make you feel closer to everything and everybody, but what had remained of your music in the midst of all the sickness and catastrophe?
Down there in the heat of the midday sun where the two of you were sitting on your knees by the groaning man with the thorns under your knees, and your and Agaat’s hands that touched each other as you passed on and received the scissors and bandages to and from each other, there everything suddenly felt too much for you.
The ambiguity of the place, your farm, where you were passing your days, the destitution of the people around you, your inability to act rightly and justly, the catastrophes that beset you day after day, the eternal squabbles with Jak, your child who with the new fine grip of his little fingers was picking lucerne stems, and around whose head all these things raged without his understanding any of it yet. He’d start crying in a certain manner when the voices were raised, got a fright when the doors slammed, his little face was concerned when tension or crises brewed. How could you protect him against it all?
Your tears dripped on the man’s face.
Agaat wiped them.
You tied the tarpaulin between the tractor and the baler to cast some shade over him. He had to lie right there until the doctor arrived, you agreed. You wouldn’t pick him up or turn him in case he had a serious back injury. His foot you wanted nothing to do with. It didn’t look like a foot any longer.
How did that day ever come to an end? How in heaven’s name did you manage after all that to sit down together at one table and eat?
You looked at Jak’s face as he sat there glaring at you. You remember the feeling, a sort of sickly equanimity took possession of you. His face was that of a stranger. How had you not at the beginning yearned to share something of your sensations and your intimate perceptions, something of the difficulty of the decisions and concerns of the farm with him? But never could you penetrate his resistance.
Jak, you said, let’s give it up and go to bed, everything’s in any case under control again, as well and as badly as possible.
That was when Gaat came in again. She had awaited her opportunity. You could always hear her calculating her entrance. Her footsteps were soft, for the first time that day.
Is the child still not in bed? you asked when she stood there again with Jakkie on her arm, in the heavy silence that hung suspended between you and Jak.
She put the child down next to the sideboard whose drawers he opened every day, the one with his favourite handles. He pulled himself up by it immediately.
She went and crouched a few paces further diagonally behind him. Jakkie swivelled back his neck. First to one side and then the other, his mouth a rosebud as Agaat had taught him.
Come, she said, come to Gaat. She held out her arms.
Terrifyingly, he turned around. The little hand let go of the handle, the first wobbling solo stance it was.
Come, said Agaat, show your father-him how well you can walk already.
His little face broke into one radiant laugh.
’Alk, he said.
Yes, walk, Agaat said, walk walk walk!
And there it was, the unmistakable independent sequential first steps.
With the last steps he let himself fall, crowing with laughter, into his nêne’s arms. She got up with him, shook him up onto her hip, laughing into his eyes.
Pa’s little bull, Jak said, and opened his arms to receive him from her.
…
1 October 1964
They disappear like mice nowadays. Only have to take turn away once & to call when I miss them & then I know it’s too late for searching they want to be GONE. Wind & cloud they are together fern & water. Long hours together & full of secrets. Something about it makes me anxious. They’re chronically there around the drift & the dam or they hide in the forest. A. can’t swim & there are still baboons & leopards in the kloofs & A. with only one good hand & Jakkie not yet five & so attached to her one would swear she was his actual mother. Perhaps she is. I know she would protect him with her own life & yet.
Jak has plenty to say about it says I’m abandoning my child to wrong influences. He’s just jealous. I’m the one & only influence even if it is indirect. But now I’ve stipulated that she may not disappear anywhere without telling me where to exactly & at what time they’ll be back. After all, she has hr own watch that I gave hr for hr last birthday. She says she’d rather read the time from the sun but I tell hr put on your watch so that you can be back at the prescribed time I don’t want hassles.
In fact it’s not a hassle at all. Probably just needlessly concerned. After all she just takes him to all the little old places that I showed hr myself that were my places when I was small here on the farm & that pa had shown me. The tortoise cemetery the workshop of the elves the approach of the waterbuck the island with the blackest brambles where the dragonfly comes to nest on your shoulder a brooch of sapphire if it’s blue of rubies if it’s red but in reality the embodied breathing out & in of Him who dreams Holy dreams. I know in my heart that that is really all that Agaat tells him.
5 October 1964
Light-years says Jakkie. Prospect he says year-rings & krakadouw. He asks: Do eels also feel sad why do they stand up straight like that in the stream & what do whispering poplars whisper about & where’s the brack in the brackbush what do the whirligigs write in the water & why do they wear boots? I know where he gets it from. What can I say? My father taught me & I taught A.
At full moon as a child I used to be able to see two bay horses in front of a buck-wagon with a wedding couple on their way to a place called Eendekuil. I suppose it’s all really quite harmless. But there’s something dogged about Agaat’s way with Jakkie. Something about her energy that scares me.
Dreamt that she suffocates him & bashes his head to pulp with a brick. Not something I can tell Jak. Even less Agaat. Lord help me. I must attune myself to the beautiful & the good. Must pray that everything will conspire towards good here.
23 October 1965
A. is sixteen & I want her to be confirmed. So took hr last Sunday to the mission church in Suurbraak when we ourselves were on our way to church in Swellendam. Could see when we picked her up again that it hadn’t been a good idea. Had warned her that she couldn’t go to church in her cap & apron now she says she’s not going again the people laugh at her. Spoke to Dominee van der Lught. Now she goes to church with us in town. Sits in the mothers’ room with Jakkie. At least she now hears the sermon.
10 November 1965
Now I must feign blissful ignorance. Followed them all morning & ran home when they began to prepare to leave the forest. Must quickly get the afternoon meal ready otherwise A. will smell a rat but I can hardly contain myself. Am I jealous or angry or glad about what they saw?
10 November after supper
Great mysteriousness all day all parties under the cloak of secrecy. Why would they not want to tell me they’d seen it?
Agaat has been singing her own compositions all the time since they’ve been back & Jakkie is just about ready to explode with the secret but he’s under strict oath.
This morning just after ten I caught A. taking two bananas from the fruit bowl but I pretended not to see because then I knew immediately what she was planning & then I looked in the liquor cabinet & then I saw the rum that I use for caramel sauce already a tot down. She could at least have asked me. Probably shy that I’ll laugh at her how long did the two of us not sit & wait way back there in the forest with the stinking bait without seeing anything? & I really didn’t want to spoil the whole adventure for the little one.
We’re going to the Keurtjiekloof A. tells me with a straight face to look at the waterfall & we’ll be back just before lunch. My washing & ironing have been done & the vegetables peeled & the beetroot is cooked & the meat is in the pot just add water at eleven everything in one breath to prevent me from raising an objection but I say nothing & don’t bat an eyelid & I await my opportunity until they’re well & gone. Put on my walking shoes & take the high road through the Boesmanskloof to the forest because I knew then she would take the easy road lower down with Jakkie even though it’s longer. Estimated their pace accurately & lay in wait for them & when they had passed followed them to where A. decided to wait. A little clearing not far from where she & I that time sat for a whole week’s mornings & then I had to creep up very slowly to get a good view but without their noticing me. A. I know can hear a ghost walking.
So there she takes out the bananas from her apron pocket & a small bottle full of rum probably about five tablespoons & two paint-tin lids & a fork. Mash, she says to Jakkie. He likes little goblins like you to mix his food & Jakkie presses with the fork & she holds his hand so that he can get it fine enough. Then a few drops of rum with it on each lid. Here taste she says to Jakkie he spits sis yuck. I’m glad says A. he’s not here yet to hear you spitting because for him it’s food for a king the more stinky the better & he’s the emperor & she puts the lids in spots of sun so that the bananas can ferment.
Could get the smell from where I was sitting behind the trunk next to the rock fig. Then they waited & I waited. Half an hour later an hour so that my legs started cramping but I couldn’t budge so dead quiet was it only a kokkewiet calling.
But when is he coming? asked Jakkie. Be quiet you’ll hear him approaching up high there in the leaves said A. I could see Jakkie was getting restless. What do you think we’re waiting for? asked A. For the emperor of course said Jakkie what does he look like? Black like the dark moon from outside said A. but all blue November-sky from the inside no not powder-blue rather wet-blue silvery & when he unfolds himself you look into the eye. What eye? Jakkie asked & he blink-blinked his eyes at A. No, it doesn’t work like that she said. He folds open his wings & it’s the Eye of Everything. But when they’re closed, there’s nothing. Like hip up hop down? asked Jakkie. Yes, just like a fire like great love it’s all & it’s nothing & your soul perishes in the flames but the story is told from generation to generation. Shhht I can hear him! He’s coming!
Had heard the fluttering earlier. Always thought it was the forest thrush.
Close your eyes said A. to Jakkie. Bring him nearer with your will.
So there we sit the three of us with closed eyes & I add my will to theirs to make a miracle happen & there it happens!
The first thing I see when I open my eyes is Jakkie’s face with a shiny spot reflecting from the lid onto him. But it’s not only shiny it’s blue as if a little window has opened on his forehead. There the butterfly is poised on the shiny lid & eats banana with its wings spread wide so that the one side shows blue. Apatura iris the giant purple emperor butterfly. There the two of them sit with the sun on their heads & the blue reflection leaps from Jakkie’s forehead to A.’s cap & the butterfly opens & closes its wings & it flies away a hip hop jewel & then it descends again for more. Between the lids he to-&-fros. The span of its wings greater than you can imagine. As large as two open hands with crossed thumbs. Nymphalidae the family of the carrion eaters.
11 November 1965
They still haven’t told me. Jak asks at breakfast this morning so what secret have the three of you got now do tell me too? Then I see A. looking at me from where she is bringing Jakkie his porridge but I pretended not to know anything & I ask: What did you see yesterday in the Keurtjiekloof? He puts his finger in front of his mouth & gives A. a secret look & says riddle me ree the night is black & the day is blue & the soul is closed at first & then folded open what is it? Eat your porridge says A. with a straight face & I see she hu-uhs at him with her eyes not to let out anything. It’s time that you went to school said Jak you’re becoming far too smart here under Gaat. But he’s so inquisitive he comes & grabs my diary here from under me to see what I’m writing but he can’t make out my writing just as well I’m always in such a rush. Let go I say it’s private. Then you should rather not sit & write it up in public he says, it’s like lifting your skirts & peeing in the main street.
September 1966
What can it all mean? Sometimes so overwhelmed by what I experience every day I’m crying as I sit here & write. Don’t know exactly what it is. Not sadness rather gladness & fear. Envy perhaps? but why? & of what?
Have just been to look for Jakkie & A. then I saw them playing in the orchard by the pear trees—snow-white in blossom—their latest game. Jakkie has discovered the airplane that Jak built for him way back under the lean-to only a skeleton & the paint is all peeled off but it still has wings & wheels. He made A. drag it out all the way down to the irrigation furrow. She fixed the head of an old fan to the front for a propeller. He sits in the seat & she sits in the grass with her back against the fuselage & looks in front of her. They pretend he takes off & flies away. Went & sat on the edge of the irrigation furrow behind the pomegranate orchard to hear.
How high are you now? asks Agaat.
As high as the mountains! says Jakkie.
Do tell me everything that you see.
I see a bird!
What kind of a bird is it?
I don’t know!
Well then, ask him what kind of bird he is!
I can’t!
Put your hand out & catch him & bring him home, then I’ll ask him what kind of bird he is.
There he flies away!
Fly after him!
I can’t he’s gone!
Then I know what his name is!
What?
I’m not allowed to say it out loud, I must whisper it in your ear.
But I’m up here!
Well then come down again!
I’m coming! Here I come!
Come down, I can see you already! Here you come! Look out for the tower silo!
I come! I see you, here I am!
Then Jakkie jumps from the little plane into A.’s arms & she rolls in the grass with him & laughs they sit up & he holds his hand behind his ear & she whispers a whole long story into it & his eyes widen in surprise & she pulls her head away & he shakes his head for no & she nods her head for yes & he wants to ask something & she lays her finger on her lips & he lays his finger on his.