The towels, Agaat said with her head in the steam, are in the linen cupboard in the passage, your old dressing-gown is behind the bathroom door, your slippers are in front of your bed.
That was the first time. There had been other times, but never accompanied by words.
You charged at her, you wanted to shake her, you wanted to slap her right there where she was standing with the open bottle of boiling water held out in front of her.
Please, she said to you with a straight voice, her eyes on your cheeks, bring my stuff, please, Agaat.
Put it down, put that bottle down, now this minute, I’m not letting myself be threatened, not by you!
That was what you screamed, wanted to scream, but it sounded like a plea, like please, it’s not my fault.
Then Jak was there in his pyjamas, at the inside door. Agaat carefully placed the bottle on the table. She stood aside, her right hand clenched in the left hand in front of her.
Bravo! Jak exclaimed, bravo! Have we really still not had enough concert for one day? The madam, the maid and the milk. How-manieth act?
He walked to the fridge and poured a glass of milk, tasted and spat it out in the sink.
Sour milk on Grootmoedersdrift, he said, I wish you’d mark the bottles.
She, you said and pointed with your finger.
Jak went and sat at the kitchen table.
So tell the baas what’s the problem here, Agaat? he said.
Agaat remained standing, swayed forward and back on her rubber soles.
She, you said again.
No, Milla, not she, you, you stink something dreadful, look at your dress, where have you been?
The cow, the cow in the ditch in the poplar grove, you cried.
Yes, the stupid cow, walked where she shouldn’t have walked, fell and broke her leg. I had to shoot her.
Agaat moved closer and gathered the full bottles together.
Wait, said Jak, put down, I also want to recite my last lines of the day.
For a moment you thought Agaat was smirking.
My only advice, Gaat, is, don’t let yourself be misled, butter-fingers, a falling fashion, gets lost in the parking lot, gets lost on her own farm, it’s all put on. Mrs Helpless de Wet with the querulous bleat is a costume. Trying to attract attention, that’s all.
Because, and I’m sure you know this, but I’m just reminding you, actually she’s perfectly sure-footed, Queen of the Night, immortal, and she rules the world around here. But you wouldn’t think it, would you, because she always needs something and it’s never enough. Now too hot, now too cold, now too sweet, now too sour. Impossible to please.
Are we heartless, are we cruel, you and I? Then that’s only because that’s the way she wants us. She, my dear little fuzzy foundling, made us, took us apart and reassembled us. Meccano a la Milla. We are power food for her, our fury is pure vitamin. She thrives on it.
So you go ahead and inspect her well for maggots, you’re your nooi’s governess after all, and you know all about maggots don’t you, you know they enter by the soft spots, under the skin and devour you from the inside until one fine day you simply disintegrate and then everybody says, hey, that’s funny, she was never even sick.
from the easy chair to the wheelchair in three months it’s like walking with a tea trolley but without the tea instead of the teapot now Mrs de Wet poked up propped up patched up strapped up in her wheelchair she’s jingling less all the time a dream in a peel a ripple on a pool she is now herself a walking frame on wheels for her nurse her independent living-aid the good old sort she hoists ounooi into it when she has to make the bed and pushes her where she wants her doll by the window doll by the wall doll gazing limply at the floor in the hall sometimes she’s rolled up to where there’s sweeping to be done or peeling it’s better than just having to lie there on her back from wheelchair to wheelchair in less than a year the first chair that she remembers was a spyder from pride mobility products she could propel the high wheels with her own hands the second chair was electrical by redman power chairs with five gears and a joystick hopeful as a courting-candle the third an omega trac full of springs and suspension on which she could drive like an armoured tank over a dam wall the fourth was by permobil an ibot 30-2 a throne on gyroscopes that could climb stoep steps apart from electronics inspired by the purposes of a phantom the last is by froglegs an absolutely ordinary chair because even if she wanted to she could no longer go forward on her own and weaned at last of her hands and her feet and her little wheels she rolls every day like a wash of the sluice with her dreams through the frames and lintels and passages of her house
17 February 1954
Agaat reacts to her new name! I say her bedtime prayer: Gentle Jesus my name’s Agaat make clean and pure my heart. She doesn’t close her eyes, keeps gazing at me wide-eyed. Agaat is good, Agaat is sweet, Agaat’s a child of the Lord and He keeps watch over her while she sleeps. Good as gold, as rain, as salt, good as the blaze in the heart of the wood. I don’t know if my words achieve anything, I feel the child must learn to associate herself with beautiful and good things, shame still so small and already so damaged by life. I sing to her: Sleep my child, sleep tight, with roses bedight and Sleep baby sleep, Your daddy tends the sheep. Perhaps I should change the words, the child instead of my child and something I don’t know what instead of ‘your daddy’, I wouldn’t want her to get wrong ideas now, but I don’t suppose it can do any harm, she’s so small still.
20 February 1954
Agaat’s brought me something for the first time, and taken something from me. Truly a big mile-stone!
This morning still half-asleep I had this bright idea. Just suddenly knew it would work given that the hand-bell won’t, something with a greater effect, a more dramatic function it should have, and I thought and I thought and suddenly I knew just the thing! Dug up my father’s old tinderbox, demonstrated how you strike the flintstone till you get a spark. Made a little fire on a piece of corrugated iron in the backyard with wisps of grass and pine cones. Great interest! All eyes! On the haunches tight against me. Go and fetch another pine cone, I say. Would you believe it she actually goes and fetches another pine cone! Actually knows where to find a pine cone! And comes and gives it in my hand!
Do you want it? I ask then, do you want the tinderbox? The little hand appears, and takes it out of my hand, careful not to touch me, but tightly the little hand clasps and tightly the little hand holds and she fiddles with it and smells it, the tinder smell.
In front of me! While I’m there! Praise the Lord!
Taught her one doesn’t play with fire, only when I’m there is she allowed to strike the flintstone or light a match. It may help to exercise the lazy hand because you can’t operate the tinderbox with just one hand. Taught her you say thank you when you’re given a present. And if you can’t say it with your mouth, then you say it with your eyes. Slow blink with the eyes, once and a small bow of the head means ‘thank you’ I teach her. Thank you for jelly, thank you for food and clothes and a house, thank you for a tinderbox. Solemnly went and squirreled it away in her hessian sack.
Phoned home. Could have known what the reaction would be. Watch out, says my mother, everything you put in there, will come back to you.
25 February 1954
Made a fire again! This time with a magnifying glass from Jak’s office. Will have to get him another one, he looks at the maps with it. White-hot outside. I got burnt blood-red on my neck from sitting still in the sun with the lens. A newspaper fire. Go and fetch grass, I say, go on, go and fetch twigs. Gone and back in a flash she was. Knows about making a fire, it seems. Then believe it or not she holds out her hand for the lens. How does one ask? Please, you say. Otherwise you look straight in the eye of the one who must give and you blink twice quickly with the eyelids. We practised till I was satisfied. Big please. Pretty please. Then again thank you, thank you very, very much with the eyes, close the eyelids slowly and nod forward with the head. She put the lens also in the sack with her other things. Must get her another bag, or a little suitcase, the sack stinks.