I’m itching.
Possibly because I couldn’t laugh. The theatrics with the neighbour’s wife yesterday, perhaps that was too macabre. Milla, the drama queen. Jak’s name for me. What in heaven’s name would he have said if he’d seen me here like this? Or done?
Closing scene. She-devil with shingles. Perhaps he would have emptied a bucket of water on me and lowered the curtain.
Thursday 3 December 1996. Twelve o’clock.
Itch.
Nobody who knows it or to whom I can say it. Possibly not a drama. Something for the stage, though, Jak. Art in miniature. The Scourge of the Seven-Year Itch.
This bed. A chrome railing. Covers up to my chin. Under that my skin heaving with the itch.
Where is Agaat? When is she coming?
Itch.
Not a word that one could sing, except in a hotnot song perhaps, words for Agaat’s St Vitus’s dance with which she keeps the demons at bay. I hear the servants talk of it, the to-and-fro-ing over the yard at night.
The Sunday morning
The Sunday morning
I didn’t care
My mommy’s words keep
Fresh in Tupperware.
I can scratch myself—that would have to be the message of the Gospel.
Where is Agaat?
Job itched.
But he wasn’t paralysed, and he had a potsherd.
Could it have been itching that caused the creation? They say the stress of isolation causes people to scratch their heads.
Why is Agaat not coming?
Who led the Bear out into the firmament? Who swathed the sea in a mantle of mist? All too pretty. Who clothed man in skin, made him susceptible to itching?
I can see myself in the mirror. As far as I can make out there is nothing swarming over my face, no nest of spiders erupted on the bedspread.
In a life-skills booklet, a Do It Yourself, I read that when you become aware of an unpleasant sensation in your body, you must concentrate on it. With a quiet mind. Deathward set. First you will become curious. And after that you will see it as an opportunity. Apparently you will discover that the sensation doesn’t remain the same. What you had assumed to be one sense impression with one name, is in fact a sequence of different impressions, nameless and unnameable. Like clouds they will drift past and disappear. Temporary. Unimportant. Like everything. Like breakfast cereal.
Definitely a less far-fetched doctrine of salvation than the Resurrection after three days. Short Form. Doesn’t need volumes.
In the beginning was the Skin and the Skin was God and the Skin itched in the outer darkness. No name needed, you need indeed then only say: I am who I am.
Where is the wretched Van der Lught with his chubby cheeks so that I can see his face when he hears it?
The world as the impotence of an itching God, and the sons of men, they scratch Him.
Milla, calm down.
Left side, front quadrant, twenty to seven if my head were a clock face.
That’s where it started.
A prick, like that of a mosquito bite.
I said to myself, nothing can bite you here, no flea could survive here.
But one thing leads to another. A second prick right next to the first, twenty-three minutes to seven, as if from a mosquito grazing in a circle. Zimmmm-zoommm. Oh mosquito, where is thy sting? I would be able to extract it with my imagination.
But it was not a mosquito.
It was legion. Snap, Crackle and Pop. All over my scalp. But not Rice Crispies.
Harpies, swarming like seconds, like fractions of fugitive seconds, minuscule little black monsters, scourging the dome of my skull.
And if I’m not permitted to scratch, give me the Book then, I’ll rewrite it, from front to back, with my hand set in a cast of iron. The waste and wild and the streets of jasper. With itching I shall replace them. It’s momentous enough.
And after that the hordes migrated over my neck and they gathered their forces in pools of itch in the hollows of my collarbone. And their numbers were vast and they migrated along my backbone, in columns, in a multitude of battle arrays. And in the fullness of time they returned by the front route, with intensified force, all along my ribs. They excavated me under my breasts, arrow-headed letters strayed from a text. And they marched across my belly, an inflamed track of itching all the way to the pit of my navel, amen.
Preacher-tick.
Ringworm.
Rubella.
Shingles.
Scab.
So many mansions in my Father’s house.
On my flank, on my shin, against my inner arm, squamous.
I wait, my hands inert hooks next to my sides, my mouth bitter.
Drool.
Squirm.
Tears.
Sweat.
Do it yourself.
My cheeks itch, my forehead, my gums underneath my lips. It itches all along the cleft of my buttocks, all the way into the inside of my hole, all along the white ridge running there, where Agaat cut me at the birth, and further, in every grey membranous fold of my posterior does it itch. Can I say it? All the way into my cunt. Cunt. Milla Redelinghuys’s cunt itches. Who would ever have suspected she had such a foul mouth? Not if it is gagged. Cunt. What is deeper than cunt? All the way into the depth of my black irrational womb it itches me.
Here she comes!
Lord, Ounooi, what’s the matter now?
She’s next to my bed, she searches in my eyes. She swabs my face with a tissue. Gary Player.
Drenched with sweat!
She throws off the covers.
Now I mustn’t mislead her.
Are you so hot then?
No, but carry on with your list, the list you made for me!
Is it the shivers?
No!
Can’t you breathe?
No!
Are you in pain?
Is itching pain? How must I reply? No, itching is not pain. It’s suffering, yes, but it’s like somebody who suffers an urgent call of nature. Relief is what one wants. Not comfort. Not nursing. People with an itch and people with an urgent call of nature, they belong in a farce. In a Greek comedy, perhaps? A philosopher shitting in the shadow of national monuments, a guffawing catharsis. The yearning for inconsolability is something else. That’s for tragedies. But nobody itches in tragedies.
So blink, Ounooi, blink your eyes, I can see you’re in a terrible state here, I’m asking, is it sore somewhere?
Perhaps ‘somewhere’ is a start.
Yes, somewhere!
Your head? Is your head sore again?
Yes, my head!
Headache?
No!
But your head all the same?
Yes!
Headache syrup?
No!
Neck stiff!
No, no, stay with the head!
Head? Is it lying uncomfortably?
Uncomfortable yes!
If only she would touch my head, that could be a start. It’s not the first time.
She rearranges the pillow. My head keels over on the pillow. Prickly pear full of Christmas lights.
Better like that?
No!
Well what then? With the head? Nightmares? Nasty thoughts?
No! Yes! Yes!
What, Ounooi? Be clear! You’re giving double messages! No! or Yes!
That time again on Grootmoedersdrift! Yes-and-no time! say her eyes.
I must prevent her from getting angry. Nightmares, nasty thoughts, those she can’t tolerate from me. I must just be good and stay good.
She holds out her little hand and then the strong hand. In, out, like switches. In, out.
Give with the one hand and take with the other it means. Yes or no. Be clear.
No! No! No! Agaat, my head! Put your hand on my head!
I flicker upwards with my eyes.
She places her hand on my forehead. Under her hands is an infestation of fine mites, under the palm it tingles, it squirms, it wells up out of the deep, it’s not mites, it’s maggots.
You don’t have a fever, Ounooi, what is it then?
Don’t take your hand away, keep it right there! I move my eyes to and fro, up and down.
Agaat strokes from my forehead, backwards over my hair. Backwards. Once. Once more.
My whole scalp erupts in one blaze, from the front, worse than ever.
I close my eyes, open them quickly, I to-and-fro them, turned up in their sockets.
Scratch my head! Scratch my head! My goddamned, scabby skull! Scratch it!
I see the light come on in Agaat’s eyes. I see the smile. She wants to suppress it but she can’t.
Stutterers, deaf-mutes, idiots, cripples, the lame, the itchers? Why does one want to laugh at them? I don’t know, Agaat. And bugger you too, Agaat!
She postpones. Her eyebrows deliberate question marks. Then she scrabbles a quick scratching motion with her fingers, just a little one, an appetiser. She doesn’t speak, she only shapes the word ‘itch’ with her mouth.
Silent movie. The Itcher and the Scratcher. How many acts tonight?
Need a scratch? ask her lips.
I close my eyes. It means you are an angel of deliverance. It means surrender. She must not remark any further urgency on my part.
The head, asks Agaat, and where else?
She puts her hand under my shoulder.
Here?
Tiny scorpions under a stone.
She pulls out the hand again, rests it on the point of my shoulder.
Three nymphae of the blue tick, their mandibles firmly affixed to my skin.
She puts her hand in the hollow between my breasts.
Small scaly adders in a nest.
Now she touches me with both hands. Lightly, here and there over my strings, over my stops, over my keys. Over my ribs, my belly, my thighs, my ankles, my toes. As if I were a harp. A harp of grass, of chaff and sand fleas and whirling itchy dust.
Everywhere? Is it everywhere?
She puts her hands in her sides. Looks me up and down.
An itch-storm? Ai me. Tsk.
Here comes a hand. It comes towards my head. It scratches, but in an unfocused way.
Harder?
Harder! Everywhere!
Now before we damage something here, Ounooi, let me first see whether you don’t have a rash or something.
Agaat opens the curtains. She tarries by the window. How would I know if it’s deliberate? Or resigned? Or tired? Or not capable of imagining for one moment longer my need? The spring unsprung at last? She spies on my eyes every day. My need her reins. The steerer and the steered and the bit. In whose mouth is it? It must be like sleeping in someone else’s dream. Your own journey abandoned, your own repose an iron in the mouth. You just bite on it. You bite it fast. How she must curse me at times. Cunt. Bugger. But the word in the mouth, a stopper. Under the white standard of the cap a mouth full of bitter teeth.
Where she’s standing in front of the window Agaat’s strong hand creeps over her shoulder. Just above the white apron band on the right, on the thick flesh of the shoulder blade she scratches herself.
She sighs.
The Great Itch, she says, you and I, each other’s itch.
I keep my eyes shut. Is she going to start scratching her own head to provoke me? Is she going to try and talk me out of it? Is she going to ignore it? How beneficent is her mood? Will she ever start a sentence with ‘I feel’ or ‘I wish’ or ‘I hope’? Is it her itch that is erupting on me? Because she can’t speak?
She switches on the lamp next to the bed. She unbuttons the bedjacket. She eases it down over my abdomen. She takes out the reading glasses from the breast pocket of her apron. Onto her nose she presses them. Shirrt-shurrt she pulls on the latex gloves.
Let’s see what’s happening here, she says, nobody can just itch like that for no reason.
She looks on both sides of my neck, on my chest. Her eyes are large behind the lenses. She reads my grain. My knots and my flaws. Between the lines.
Excuse me, but I have to inspect all around here a bit now, she says. She avoids my eyes. She takes the magnifying glass out of the dressing table drawer.
She lifts my breasts. She looks under them. She looks in the wrinkles of the skin of my belly. She pulls open my navel and shines the head of the bedside lamp into it. I feel the hook-and-claw feet of a beetle scrabbling in there. Can one go mad from itching? The rose beetle has twenty-five legs and seven antennae.
Permission? Agaat asks with her eyes?
Granted!
The itch blazes on me like a coat of many colours.
She pulls the tunic off my lower body. She scrutinises my loins through her lenses. She folds open my labia.
From where I’m lying, I see her mouth move through the magnifying glass, a vague fleshy hole.
Pure as morning dew, she says.
She comes slightly upright over my lower body, blows on the magnifying glass, polishes it with the tip of her apron.
Impossible are your texts, Agaat. How are you going to explicate me one day? How are you going to explain everything to yourself? Collarbone, knuckle bone, jaw? Will you have a motto for every part of me? Perhaps that’s what you’re practising for? Perhaps you are now already calling me up. Poltergeist. But ghosts don’t itch. That’s all that still stands in your way. This last proof of external sensation.
Now she’s inspecting my thighs, inside and out, the birthmark in the bend of my knee, the shadows under my knees. Under her magnifying glass the itch fumes a salty mist, like drifts of sand across a dune, my shins, my ankles, two rusty wrecks.
She stacks her towel rolls on either side of me, she tilts me on my side, each touch produces a fresh flush of itchy patches. She is behind me, she examines the rough ridges, the giant sungazer lizard with its spiny girdle sun-gazing on the Trappieshoogte, the aloes, the bitter juice, the rustling mirage.
She tilts me back.
I don’t see anything. No redness, no dandruff, no rash, no scaliness, no bumps, no pimples. Not a bedbug in sight, mite-free definitely. Now tell me, are you still itching?
Agaat, I’m talking to you, look at me, the stars are old. Shall I give you a stone when you ask for bread? Just scratch me a bit for the sake of all the gods!
Very well, but just gently, I think you’re imagining things. That’s what I think she wants to say, because now her lips have stopped moving.
She goes and puts the magnifying glass back in the drawer, takes off her glasses and replaces them in the top pocket. Shirrrt-shurrrt, she pulls off the gloves. She washes her hands in the washbasin. I smell disinfectant. She dries them. She inspects her nails.
Her eyes look slightly unsure. What proof does she have that I’m not losing my mind? Her mouth is unfathomable.
She pulls the sheet back over my body. She wants to spare me that, spare herself that, the sight of her hands, the big one and the small, scratch-scratching over my naked emaciated body. Perhaps she wants to prevent herself from starting to laugh. Perhaps she wants to prevent herself from starting to tickle me. Perhaps she will all of a sudden want to tickle me. If I can itch I’m still ticklish. Perhaps she’s feeling a bit hysterical. Perhaps it hasn’t ebbed away yet after the great joke with the neighbour’s wife.
I inspect the stirrings under the sheet. I cast the harness of my eyes over the ill-matched pair. The fingers are cautious. She follows the movements of my eyes on her hands. My eyes are her score. She does sight-reading. She plays the keyboard. By touch. Trills. Scales. A chord. The note-perfect rehearsed death I shall be, the virtuoso performed.
Left, right, no, a bit to the top, more, no down more, down, this side, no that side. There! Just there! More! Don’t stop. Now up here. No, just next to it. Up! Down!
The clock strikes in the passage. That was a quarter of an hour’s scratching. From head to toe and in all the little crannies, in front, behind and along the sides. A partita. Improper tempo. Fantastic execution. Complete relief. Applause! Flowers!
Agaat doesn’t want me to thank her. She averts her eyes. She brings ice-cold wet cloths and wipes me with them, she takes a small, rough towel that she’s warmed in the oven and rubs my whole body warm with it, she rubs cold handfuls of Lacto Calamine Lotion all over my skin. She waves it dry with an open diary. The pages flutter. A bat, a butterfly, a blue gryphon. She puts on my tunic, fastens it behind my neck. She covers me. She walks out of the room with a straight back.
Itch-free I remain behind.
…
14 December 1966
At long last a bit of a holiday. Really and truly feel I need rest after this year of calamities. J. constantly agitated & full of conspiracy theories about the assassination of Verwoerd. Mother hardly cold in her grave then that on top of it. Haven’t really had time to be quiet & also not had much time to write how life does pass & Jakkie’s growing up & the old people precede us & you forget the moments that were precious to you.
Just yesterday before we left Agaat & I went by Ma’s grave to take some flowers & I realised then I didn’t really cry all that much in July but if I were to mourn what exactly would it be for? Perhaps that in spite of everything I did after all yearn for her approval? For one spontaneous embrace? Her body forgivingly pressed to mine? So much that now cannot be set straight or talked about. Yes at last liberated from her. But what will I measure myself against now? Now that her judgemental eye no longer falls on everything I do? It’s terrifying in a way.
Perhaps I wanted to cry because she died before I could tell her the whole truth about J. But in any case the whole funeral & the gossip that made its way back to me just made me realise anew that honesty & intimacy are not things that are easy to afford. But how do you defend yourself against your own mother? Her directions regarding the funeral felt like a last trial.
Fortunately I could count on A. Didn’t have to spell out anything for hr. She was a real live wire with the funeral & supervised the cooking for more than a hundred people who had to eat. It was a palaver with seating on the stoep because then it rained a deluge. A whole saga at the drift of course. The coffin duly arrived all the way from Barrydale by horse-drawn cart as Ma had stipulated in her will—in her way also bent on her little portion of drama. So different to Pa who wanted nothing but for his ashes to be scattered on the Tradouw. So there the drift was flooded & the horses balked I suppose also because of the crape funeral coats wet and heavy on them & they refused to cross. So A. left everything just like that in the kitchen & went and helped D. and his team. Unload the coffin and carry it we don’t want the ounooi to get washed away in the drift & bring the lip halters she says. They unload the coffin & then the horses rear up & the water splashes & they snort but she keeps hr side short & Dawid keeps the other side & they all keep their funeral faces solemnly composed & walk shoes & all ever so dignified through the water with Kadys and Julies with his floppy foot shlip-shlop bringing up the rear. So then they loaded the coffin back onto the cart for the last stretch up to the graveyard here next to the old orchard where it then was so wet & muddy that they had to put down planks & sacks for the people to stand on & had to pump the water out of the hole.
Heaven knows why one had to take so much trouble over something that in any case is going to waste away to dust in this case to mud because it rained incessantly all year from before June and thereafter. Ma’s headstone collapsed twice & as far as we drove yesterday all the way from Skeiding to Port Beaufort the wild fennel was standing hip height on both sides of the road. A. says it’s hr trademark. If I were she I’d keep my mouth shut about that I warn her. It’s not everybody who likes a taint of liquorice in their cow’s milk. She asks for who is the place in the graveyard between the ounooi & the great-great-grandmother?
Witsand 16 December 1966
Flag-raising & Day of the Covenant on the beach today quite moving such a bright blue windless day at the sea. There is no strand so wild or far away but there is found thy name in majesty. The minister prayed for the new leaders who must lead the nation after Dr Verwoerd was so brutally taken from us by the powers of darkness. Jak says Tsafendas is a communist. I say the poor man is mad who in his senses would dream of stabbing the Prime Minister of South Africa to death with a knife in parliament we’re not that kind of country. Jak says don’t have any illusions this is just the beginning.
A. stands firm as a rock next to Jakkie where he’s frolicking in the little breakers. Three other nursemaids in the shallows this morning where the toddlers are playing. They tuck their gaudy frocks into the elastic of their bloomers so that they won’t get wet—jump and scream when the waves come. They don’t talk to hr. She keeps to one side & and she puts on airs with hr black & white clothes the whole holidays so far there’ve been many opportunities for striking up friendships. Shame A. is alone I say to J. Shouldn’t have said it because that caused another spat. He says she’s got everything a woolly could wish for & it’s better that she keeps herself apart he really doesn’t want hassles with a hobnobbing then next thing you have young goffels climbing in & then she gets that way & then she’s lost to us. I tell him that’s not the point what worries me is that she’s too old & too cold & too high & mighty even to think of young goffels but it’s holiday after all & what does she have of her life as a young girl? Have! Have! J. shouts don’t even start with have she has everything a coon-girl’s heart could desire and furthermore she has Jakkie more than you or I have him or had him or ever will have. Why do you worry about her? Look at him. He doesn’t make any friends either he just tags along with Agaat all the time it’s not normal.
Haven’t really thought about it like that but I suppose J. has a point. Notice that Jakkie gets bored quickly with other children. Even when he’s alone with me. Perfectly subdued but if it carries on for too long he gets the fidgets. The moment Agaat is around he livens up. She always has a joke or a new game. Not that J. ever takes any trouble to help bring up Jakkie but that will probably start now. See he feel-feels him & says where’re your muscles my boy.
17 December ’66 morning
Is J. right? Does A. really ‘have’ Jakkie? I keep an eye where possible but the two of them are sometimes highly mysterious. Always try to listen when she tells him stories. She always begins with the ‘first story’ the 2nd and the 3rd etc. up to the ‘last story’. They say fairy tales can have a strong influence on a child’s mind. There’s the one story that he always wants to hear last of all & of which he never tires & when she changes one word of it he shouts no! no! that’s not how it goes even if he’s already almost asleep. The no-shouting is all I hear of it except for a few times just the beginning which I eavesdropped on from around the corner: once upon a time there was a woman who was terribly unhappy & who lived like this & that & was she unhappy because she was ugly? & was she unhappy because she was poor? & was she unhappy because she had no friends? etc. & to everything the answer is no but then I can never hear the right answer. On Gdrift it’s always the fire crackling in A.’s room which prevents me from hearing the ‘last story’ properly & now it’s the rushing of the sea. A. deliberately opens the window on the beach side & talks softer & softer at the bed’s head. Eventually he always goes to sleep from it however active and excited he’s been in the course of the day & she Lord how it goes to my heart! she smiles complacent as a sphinx when she gets up there & rearranges her cap.
17 December ’66 evening
Tonight after Agaat left I went and asked Jakkie what the ‘last story’ is he says it’s his & Agaat’s secret he’s not allowed to tell it. Agaat will bewitch him if he does. Bewitch how bewitch? I ask. White and black into a flycatcher says Jakkie ask Pappa. How does Pappa know? I ask. He also knows all the stories that begin with once upon a time doesn’t he says Jakkie. Heaven knows what J. puts into the child’s head but if I as much as write a little play for Jakkie he says I teach him attitudes. Jakkie has attitudes enough of his own. A. and I split our sides laughing at how precocious he is with his cloak and his sword as the prince in The Magic Flute. Wrote a simple version with songs for the children’s concert. Also to help get him to play with other children. Jakkie says he’d rather be Papageno alone in the forest because the prince & all the other children are too wimpish. Jak walks out in the third act in front of all the people when they put it on in the little hall last night. That husband of mine does have the knack of embarrassing me.
Witsand 18 December ’66
Here in a drawer dug up an old black bathing costume old-fashioned with the little frill round the edge & wire in the bust must still be Ma’s. It’s much too big but I thought I’d give it to A. perhaps she wants to swim. Please just at a time and place where she won’t offend because the beach is for whites only. Not that I needed to say it. She knows hr place. She will most probably never even dare it but then I’ve at least given her the opportunity to enjoy herself I feel. She flattens her gaze and takes it without thank you.
Witsand 20 December 1966
Woke up early this morning not even light yet just a little moon then the gate squeaked and it was A. barefoot with her embroidery basket & with a purpose in mind I could see from her bearing. So waited for a while first before following in hr tracks. Far away on the beach she was walking a little black dot with white braces & then I followed hr duck-ducking behind the first row of dunes for almost an hour then it was quarter to 5 & day breaking & windless but the sea roaring so that if I were to call she wouldn’t hear me. So there she went & stood with hr face to the water upright on parade & she makes the same odd gestures as that evening on the mountain with hr arms extended in front of hr as if she’s indicating points of the compass or explicating the horizon. The sea was high with the springtide & a rank of black musselcrackers was also in attendance peering oceanwards & I smell kelp & clamour their legs are so red the creatures. Next thing there she is taking off hr apron and hr black dress & they fly te-whee-te-whee, off, off with their red beaks over the black water & she folds her clothes slowly neatly item by item I thought if there’d been a hanger she’d have hung them from the break of day but not the cap that’s pulled extra firmly over the forehead & there all the time I couldn’t believe my eyes she’s wearing Ma’s old bathing costume under hr clothes it hangs on her like the skin of a bat & she takes the white crocheted jersey out of the basket & she puts it on over the rest. Who is she scared will see hr kettle-spout arm hr legs hr shins the nail-clipping of a moon? & she walks over the sand deep washed-out pools of water straight into the sea straight ahead into the waves without hesitation or turning back or lifting of arms a prow. The possibility that something could happen to her. That she wants something to happen. My heart that starts beating & the taste of blood in my mouth. More than halfway in before she stopped. The waves bow down high before her & break & bubble white foam walls & the cap is only just visible & the crooked brown shoulder is high & she leans back slightly against the backwash & she stands firm & the bathing costume balloons black bulges around her body first to this side then to that & she settles her cap & she stands so rock-solid in the midst of the wild waves probably ten minutes. How high, how strong would the wave have to be that could flatten hr? Then she came out. Backwards-backwards she didn’t take hr eyes off from where it was coming from & I thought who does she think she’s preserving herself for? & then I was ashamed of myself & I sank down behind the dune & I cried I don’t know why & before I’d finished I had to leave & I step on sticks & sharp shells because I can’t see through my tears but I know I’d better be home before hr & in my bed when she brings the coffee. Then I must pretend to wake up & say hmmm I smell the sea & ask have you been outside yet what does the weather look like today?
21 December ’66
Oh dear heaven must really be more careful. Was too sleepy again last night to put away the diary so then J. this morning saw the bit about A. who’d gone for a swim. He’s bored at home because the wind blows too much to go out. Lord he said if you could only write something that made sense but it’s just one long string of ramble as if you’re bloody mixed-up in your head what’s the matter with you? It’s just getting worse all the time the yammering over bugger-all do you think you can make time stand still when you write such strung-together sentences? And then wouldn’t he take it to the kitchen & read it out loud to A. fast in one breath. She ignored him but I’m sure she heard it all. Then I grabbed the booklet from his hands. Kettle-spout arm! Break of day! Bat-skin! Nail-clipping moon! Wild waves! Jak exclaimed. Forty-five rotations per minute! For those who have ears to hear! Then in comes Jakkie and asks what’s happening. In her deepest being my son your mother is a great poetess. What’s a poetess? It’s somebody with a pain in the otherplace & there’s no medicine for it says J. What about Brooklax? Jakkie asks in all innocence & fortunately that saved the situation because then everybody laughed uproariously & couldn’t stop. A. has been walking around all day with such a little smile an odd expression in the eyes. Better left right there. After all didn’t libel her or anything.
24 December 1966
Seems to me Jakkie has perfect pitch. He’s been singing since infancy all the songs that he hears from A. and then tonight at the children’s Christmas tree in the little hall he sang all alone and without accompaniment O Star of Bethlehem o wondrous light while they pulled the star jerkily through the air on a wire. Oh my heart! What would his grandfather not have said! To the very highest notes of the chorus O Star of Bethle-h-em, Wondrous st-a-ar Thou lead’st to Jesus the little soprano voice clear & pure. A. listened at the door we can’t believe he sings so beautifully & then he can sometimes be so shy in front of people. Must get him to singing lessons. I believe there’s a Mrs Naude in Swellendam who has a way with musical children.
1 January 1967 Witsand
New Year’s message from the new Prime Minister on the radio SA the polecat of the world is performing excellently economically the powerhouse of Africa with mineral wealth we’ll make it to the top. Bought A. a new blue bathing costume for this year’s holiday with firm sponge cups because she’s pushing a stout pair of cans there. I listen but I haven’t heard hr go out in the early morning again. The bathing costume is still lying there in its box as I gave it to her & the old black bathing costume is nowhere to be seen doesn’t matter old anyway & out of fashion.
A. stands in her uniform halfway in the water on one side & I on the other side & then we teach Jakkie to swim. He’s managing very nicely indeed. J. wants to teach him but he’s far too rough with the child & then he arrives home crying and choked with salt water. That’s just going to make him scared of water I say. J. says he must toughen up the child there are hard bones ahead I ask what bones he says the bones of our fathers their battle which we must fight further our enemies are legion. He sits here every evening with his holiday pals & drinks red wine on the stoep and hatches plans for the party branch in Swellendam in the new year. Very worked up he gets could rather concern himself with the draining of the river-lands. We can’t carry on like this it was the second wet year in succession & the cows develop fungus on their hooves.
Witsand 23 December ’67
Every time I open this special Witsand booklet that’s left to lie here in a drawer all year long I page back to the entries for previous holidays & I can’t believe how time passes and how big Jakkie is already. Second year in school already! Eight in August next year! Invited a few people over for a Christmas concert. He hears a tune only once then he remembers it words and all. So then I taught him Ave Maria & Little Drummer Boy & Jerusalem & then he sang in the sitting room for the people & and a lot of other songs that he’d learnt from his teacher. Good intonation attractive colour in the voice good rhythmic sense but it’s been like that from when he was small still he’s developed very nicely since he’s been having lessons.
Witsand 5 January 1968
A. back had gone with J. to Heidelberg after New Year to buy provisions we’ll be here 10 days more then wouldn’t she go and buy herself a fishing rod with her Christmas money. She’s been watching other fishermen she says. J. laughs where on earth have you ever seen a fuzzy fishing but he has no problem eating the fish she catches. She now goes out in the morning while it’s still dark takes Jakkie along then she comes back at seven with a silvery cob & now this last time a fat galjoen. A. is always soaked to the bands of her apron.
How does she do it I ask Jakkie. He says first she preaches to the fish to lure them & when the first crabs crawl out to hear the sermon then she knows the fish are there as well. Then she juts out hr jaw & walks into the sea fully dressed she casts only once zirrrr! and then it bites hu! & then she jerks ha! & then the rod bends but just for a while then the fish is tired out with struggling then she winds in the reel with the little hand whirrywhirrywhirry & presses the rod in her loins with the strong hand then the fish comes hop-hopping through the little waves and then she gaffs him schmak! through the thick meat with the two-pronged fork then she takes him by the tail & smacks his head shplat! one blow against the rocks because she says she gets queasy to the stomach at a thing lying there & dying without breath & when it’s dead she says amen.
Baked fish steamed fish fishcakes pickled fish pink fish-moulds fish soup & salads & fish pies with fennel I must say we’re feasting this year on A.’s catches. She really is becoming such a dab hand in the kitchen & thinks up all sorts of new fish recipes I say yikes Agaat take a short cut with the food & rest a bit you work so hard all year & she says it’s hr holiday to catch fish & to clean it & to make nice food from it because at home it’s always only mutton & slaughtering makes her queasy & she gives away fish to all and sundry when we have visitors. Rather sell it for extra pocket money for yourself I say. She says it comes out of the sea for nothing & catching them’s a fluke it’s not work but it’s not swimming either because that she says she really can’t see the point of.
Witsand 10 January 1968
Home tomorrow. Actually slightly relieved then everybody can get back into their routines again. Jak has had enough of his canoe & when the wind blows he can’t go out on the river mouth then he sits here & ignores me if he doesn’t provoke me & then we squabble. Last night again a domestic rumpus. There’s a lot of bloedsappe here who rub Jak up the wrong way then he drinks too much.
Fortunately fine weather today. Think A. must get her monthlies then she gets out of sorts sits and sulks on the beach says she’s hot. Take off your apron I say take off your jersey but she just looks at me and folds her arms. J. rows with Jakkie deep in the sea with a lot of other fathers and their sons I tell hr have a look with the binoculars the yellow canoe look at Jakkie in his red life-jacket but she doesn’t want to. There’s a playing & a laughing around us the colourful umbrellas & balls on the last day of the holidays. Have packed cold red cooldrink & some of the nice custard biscuits but no laughing too much of an effort the mouth remains set on sour. Jakkie full of chat when they come out because he was so deep into the sea & that he was allowed to hold the oar & row with his father. Let you & me he says to A. let’s build such a big castle again with towers & dig a moat around it with a bridge of stones & snoek jawbones & coral but she refuses flat. Pure jealousy because he’s growing up now.
This evening after supper I see she’s embroidering a red & black cushion & she’s ostensibly telling Jakkie his bedtime stories and there she deviates from Hansel and Gretel & makes the witch say to the boy: Look so you think don’t you the sea is a friendly place where you play with coloured balls & chew sugarsticks & row in a yellow canoe there are black slimes below on the bottom there lurks an animal in the depths it blows through its nostrils filthy foams & it bites its own tail & it curls around the world like a clamp & it cramps in its guts with fury & then the water churns & that’s where waves come from & you think you row & you think you swim & you think it’s holidays with the colourful sun umbrellas but it’s not. How dare she? So I fly up on the spot & I scold my goodness but don’t be so malicious & I grab the cushion. A dragon it is with spiky wings scale by scale embroidered & above in death’s-head letters WITSAND. I show it to Jak & he says don’t come and moan to me now you filled that creature’s mind with all sorts of things when she was small I told you to watch out you never can tell how it’s going to hatch one day in a fuzzy-head.
Must get Jakkie under my hand a bit more. Spend more time music-making. That’s all he enjoys doing with me. If I can just get him going first. Singing & recorder-playing.
Witsand 11 January 1968
All packed and ready to go this morning then Jak wouldn’t leave because he’s heard at the café that there’s to be a beach race this afternoon for Father & Son in which he wants to take part with Jakkie. He’s creating massive trouble for me. The fridge had been cleaned & the freezer defrosted & all the frozen fish & tupperware filled with bouillons that A. had packed neatly to take along in boxes. So then we had to unpack everything again & switch on the freezer & A. grumbles nonstop throughout. She’d heard what Jak said last night & she’s good & fuming today. He has to watch his step she says the jaw stuck out all the way—I’ll make him a nice puffer-fish soup I have the recipe of a widow from Port Beaufort. God defend us.
The lamb, Jakkie’s hanslam. Was that the moment you felt something turning? Or before that already? You had hold of it in front by the neck-wool and Agaat was standing at the back with Jakkie in front of her.
You were under the eyes of Jak and under the eyes of Agaat. Between the two of them they had stared you into a corner. The lamb started bleating. Initially it had come running of its own accord. Agaat had called it.
Pietertjie. With its little fat tail. It thought it was going to be given the teat. But now it was scared. Now it started shying away with the head. You had to hold it tightly. It was actually too big already to be a hanslam but Jakkie was besotted with it. Every morning before school he went with Agaat to give it milk, a great greeting it was through the fence, a bleating. Every afternoon he went to fetch it out of the little camp. Then it came into the kitchen and stood head-butting while Jakkie was having his afternoon meal that Agaat had kept warm for him. Then they did homework, heads together at the kitchen table with the lamb that came and pressed against their knees.
It was Jakkie’s eighth birthday. Agaat gave him a knife as a present. On special order. A real Rodgers penknife from England, Sheffield, with two blades, bought from the Malay in Suurbraak. You baked cakes, Agaat and you, cupcakes, sponge cake cut in cubes for the party. People had been invited, lots of children. He was shy but you made him sing for the guests and accompanied him on the piano. Heimwee, by S. le Roux Marais. The adults were amazed. Beatrice listened wide-eyed. The children stood giggling, with glasses of cooldrink in their hands and cheeks bulging with cake. Jak was embarrassed.
A boy who wants a knife, he said, when Jakkie had finished singing and he was given his presents, must be able to dock a sheep’s tail. Then we can also see at the same time if that so-called English coolie knife is worth anything. Then Jakkie ran away.
Agaat, go and look for your little baas and bring him here, on the spot, Jak ordered.
You signalled at her with your eyes, look for him but don’t find him. She looked back at you with blunt eyes. It didn’t take her very long. Then you heard the crying. Across the yard she was dragging him by the ear with the little hand, by the arm with the strong hand, Jakkie straining back.
My goodness, but will you walk up straight and behave yourself on your birthday, Agaat scolded.
Where was the little blighter? Jak asked.
In the lucerne shed, right on top of all the bales. I had to drag him down there. Then he bit me, look.
Agaat held out her arm to Jak. Self-righteous. An open bite it was. Swollen, the tooth-marks still visible.
Well I never! Jak exclaimed, the choirboy, if he can bite a coon, he can dock a sheep as well! Bring the little bugger round the back, not through the sitting room, look how dirty he is. Where’s his knife? Bring his knife!
You can still see it in front of you. There Jakkie is standing in the backyard with the knife shut in his fist. There you are standing, bent over with the lamb’s head clamped between your legs. There is Agaat. She is pushing Jakkie forward by the neck.
Open, come on, open the blade, the big one, have you got porridge in your little hands then, my lad? Jak pretending it’s the most usual thing on earth.
The children came closer. Great louts some of them, with voices like geese.
Glass-head, they shout. Sissy! Sing high false notes to mock him.
Why did you not stop it then? You could have stopped it. But you helped with it. You wanted to get it over and done with. You didn’t know how else.
Jak’s eyes were on you. Agaat’s eyes were on you. Did they recognise each other’s reasons? You did. You recognised everybody’s reasons.
Jak had bought Jakkie a little motorbike to go for rides with him and you’d said over your dead body, he’s too small, he’ll get hurt. You’d quarrelled about it at table after dinner the night before.
He’s a child, you’d said. Let him be, he’s still collecting birds’ eggs, he’s still shooting his bow and arrow, he swims in the river, he plays hide-and-seek with Agaat, it’s his life, now you want to come and spoil him with dangerous things that make a noise and smoke up a stink here in the yard.
You and your skivvy, you mollycoddle him, you talk your women’s twaddle into his head, I can’t get close to him or you surround him.
Agaat had come in with the coffee.
He’s a child, you’d said, he’s still only eight little years old. You can’t expect from him now already . . .
Agaat had plonked the coffee pot down hard in front of your nose.
Not too much, she’d said to you, it’s strong.
Her voice was direct. You were silent. She had silenced you. You knew the tone, for your own good you’d better not say another word, the message was clear.
Has the cake been iced? you’d asked.
Done, she’d said. Pink and green. Children’s cake.
You two and your everlasting cake! Jak had said and got up and walked out.
And so then the crisis the following day, the lamb, the knife, was the beginning of a new alliance. If not the beginning, then a discovery of the possibilities.
You played along willy-nilly. You didn’t know how else. You could find nothing to say.
Jakkie was white-faced, his head hunched between his shoulders.
Agaat pinched him in the shoulder until he bent his back. She put the knife in his left hand and held it there with her strong hand. So that she could help him, she said. Was it help? Jakkie’s kneecaps were trembling.
Mamma, no, he whined, please, Gaat, please, I can’t.
You can, Boetie, Agaat said, she looked at you, she was speaking for both of you, pretending to be speaking for both of you, and there wasn’t a splinter’s worth of space between her words.
You’re Gaat’s big boy aren’t you! Your même is here, she’s holding him nicely, and I’m here, a sheep can’t walk around with such a long tail, it gets worms. Shut your eyes tight and make limp your elbow, then I’ll help you.
The last she said softly, quickly, next to his ear.
But it was you she was looking at. Full in the eyes. Hold tight, here it is, the look said. One hanslam for you. And one for me.
Agaat cut, one quick stroke. The tail was in her hand. Jak led the applause. The blood spurted on Jakkie’s legs. The lamb jerked loose, ran head-first straight into the wall of the backyard.
Take your bloody knife! Take it, I don’t want it! Jakkie cried. He threw the knife as far as he could. With long strides he ran out of the backyard.
Girlie! they shouted after him, girlie! Little hanslam! Pietertjie!
Rinse the blood from the cement, but this instant, you said to Agaat. And see to it that that sheep is given wound ointment.
This instant, she mocked. She went and picked up the knife where it had fallen, wiped the knife on her apron where you were standing by, the one side and the other side, two red gashes over the white cotton, and folded the blade back into the knife.
You know it stains, you said.
There is nothing, said Agaat, that you can’t get out with cold water and Sunlight soap and a bit of Jik.
You woke up later that night. A floorboard had creaked in the passage. Jak had sent the child to bed without supper for bad behaviour and now he’d come out. To the bathroom you heard him pad on bare feet. You heard the lid of the toilet, thought you heard the door of the bathroom cabinet. Then a window opening, a soft thud in the backyard. The grandfather clock struck quarter past one. You’d known for a long time that they spoke through his bedroom window at night, he on his elbows at the window, she on the butcher’s block against the wall. You knew that he sometimes climbed through the window and went and crawled into bed with her. From when he was very small you’d found him sleeping with her.
They both knew that it was against the rules, Jak would have a fit. Comfort is what he went to seek after his terrible birthday.
You lay listening with open eyes. You were sad. Who was there to comfort you? You’d had to eat Jakkie’s birthday food alone with Jak at table that night.
Don’t you think that was enough for one day? you’d asked. Can’t he just come and have his food?
He must learn he doesn’t disgrace his father in front of guests, Jak had said.
Agaat had served you silently. Her roast chicken and browned oven-potatoes and pumpkin fritters, Jakkie’s favourites. You saw her afterwards dishing up her food in the kitchen. But she didn’t eat. She washed the dishes and went straight to her room and left the two of you there without serving the dessert. When you took the trifle out of the fridge there was a big hole on the one side. You dished up in the kitchen so Jak shouldn’t see it.
You couldn’t sleep. You heard the outside room’s door open and close again, more softly. It still scuffed, ghrrrr over the cement floor. It had subsided further over the years. Why had you never had it fixed? Possibly because you preferred to hear all the ins and outs? For a long time you lay like that, but you heard nothing more. Later barefoot to the kitchen without switching on the lights. There was a glow in Agaat’s room, sparks above the chimney. The door was closed.
You opened the kitchen door quietly, held the screen door so that it shouldn’t slam behind you. Peered through an opening in the outside room’s curtain. There was Jakkie in front of the fire in his pyjamas. Agaat in her nightdress busy in front of her two-plate stove. Water on the boil in the big pot, the lid turned upside-down, a plate covered with another inside the lid. She was wearing her cap for the operation. The glow of the fire shone through it as she passed to and fro in front of the fireplace. It threw a long pointed shadow on the walls, the shadow shrank and twisted in the corners as she moved. Then she brought a white cloth and unfolded it on the floor in front of Jakkie, a glass of water on it. A plate. A spoon. In the air in front of his nose. Wiggle waggle. Sorry it’s the only cutlery I have. Off with the covering plate. Steam. Agaat’s supper. Jakkie’s wing, the pope’s nose, the back portion that had lain longest in the gravy.
Softly they spoke while he was eating. You couldn’t hear. You could only see the faces, the cautious opening-up after the terrors of the day. When he’d finished she handed back the pocket-knife. In his palm she put it and enfolded his hand with hers. Jakkie pointed at her forearm. She rolled back the sleeve of her nightdress. Together they bent over the bite wound. He took a roll of plaster out of the top pocket of his pyjamas. No, it must remain open, Agaat explained. She bethought herself, took a pair of scissors out of her needlework basket, cut off a length and allowed him to stick it on.
Suddenly Jakkie pressed his head against her body. His face distorted. Agaat pressed him close to her with both arms. For a long time they sat like that. She rocked forward and backward gently with him. After a while she whispered something in his ear, got up, took the spoon to wash it, came back, set an enamel milk-bowl full of trifle in front of him.
You turned round. You couldn’t look any longer. The faces in the soft light of the fire. The confidence. The ease. The forgiveness, asked, given, sealed. The soft bodies in the night-clothes. You didn’t recognise your child, nor Agaat’s body, the curves you could see silhouetted against the fire in the nylon nightdress. You saw her folding open her bedclothes for him. You turned back from the window, pushed your fist into your mouth so that they shouldn’t hear you groan.
…
clear out! clear out! throw away! bequeath! burn! sheets and pillowslips how many guests are expected for the funeral? mattress protectors the ruttish bleeding sweating sleepers don’t they long for rest? antimacassars where are the greasy heads of conniving patriotic sitting room-sitters? behind what ant-hill will they regroup? kitchen curtains checked floral striped prissy fashions of yesteryear why should kitchens have curtains? steam and splattering fat and dishes full let the hungry see them by all means curtains delay the course of history teacloths dishcloths oven gloves dishing-up is historical drying is scorch-marks are and plate-washing but who writes it up? traycloths tablecloths serviettes the wine the salt the remorse everything is now reckitt’s blue and white sobs of damask bath towels face towels guest towels facecloths the filthy living body its steaming dripping folds its unreflective splashing its lack of respect for decay nappies christening robe babyclothes why does one keep them? mommy’s child wring his neck tie a millstone round at the bottom of the dam ungrateful creature the son of mine don’t you think? embroidery-linen that you may keep that I leave to you to fill your days when I am gone hoarded trousseau whereto crocheted doilies with beads? what faith in the mothball! what idle fear of flies they live for a day and a night without fanfare do not begrudge them a jug of perishable milk muslin velours felt cotton satin silk ribbon mattress-ticking chintz kaffirsheeting flannel towelling canvas sisal seersucker brushed nylon suiting tweed flax down sixteen plastic bags of wool what on earth did I ever want to do with it all?