And then she came upright. Her strong hand under my buttocks so that I couldn’t slide off her. Her clothes against my stomach and breast hard and coarse before I could feel the warmth of her body.
On my horse my shiny dappled ho-o-o-rse, with a brand-new saddle ’n bit! How now, she asked softly on the in-breath.
Had she cursed?
There was something by which I could feel the decision.
A ridge that gathered in the cloth of her dress.
And then something beyond the ridge, a boundary, a step, right through herself.
Then she got into the bath with me.
Shoes and all.
Squats with me lower and lower, arranges my legs on either side of her until we both can sit, with a plash, a splash, her dress a bladder of air around her, a black rampart against my stomach, the black blacker yet as far as the water is sucked up her back, the white bow wilted.
I could still hear the tap, plink-plink, in the water, could hear the bluegums siffling through the chink of the bathroom window, a plover flying up, the dog nosing its dish over the cement of the backyard.
How long did we sit like that? I felt her breath against me, a support under mine. Deep breaths with intervals between.
I must have fallen asleep like that with my head against her back.
I woke up when she opened the tap to add hot water. She stirred it with her hands on both sides to distribute it, closed the tap, still remained sitting like that. The grandfather clock chimed. Quarter past eight. My time expired.
Then she straightened her legs and pushed back so that I could lean against the back of the tub. And she got up, with the dress clinging to her lower body. She pulled it away from her legs but the heavy cloth clung again, her thighs like two tree trunks.
Dripping out of the bath.
Sit just like that and don’t go to sleep again I’m coming now, she signalled with her eyes. Without twitching a muscle. As if she got into the bath with me fully-clothed every day.
Schlup-thud, schlup-thump, slowly down the passage in the wet shoes.
Never have I heard her walk so slowly. Never so heavily, a horse under a coat marching two legs to a side through a drift, hearse and drummer following.
But that was my mother’s funeral, her theatrical directions.
What will mine be like?
It’s in Agaat’s hands.
Does one wash a body before laying it out? With soap? With carbolic?
Agaat will wash me, I’m sure, pure I shall meet my Maker, whiter than snow before she crosses my hands for me.
Will she be able to resist straightening my fingers?
Perhaps she’ll splint my hands.
Perhaps she’ll break my fingers.
What will it be like when the funeral eaters have left?
I see her standing at the gate when the last guests have left, when Jakkie’s gone back to Canada. The gate will hold her, its silver inner cross, the tensed wires and the pipes of which it’s constructed.
She won’t be able to turn back immediately.
She’ll feel the hasp with the fingertips of the little hand, even though she knows it’s in place, feel the black iron ring, the double wire hook over which it slides. Her other hand, the strong one, will enclose the upper pipe, let go and grasp again so that the knuckles show white.
It won’t be the first time. So she stood every day when Jakkie went to school by bus, and every time after that when he went away after weekends or holidays. Then I had to go and fetch her there, or call her back from the stoep.
Come, Agaat, we must go and pull potatoes! Come, we must go and plait onions, come, the hanslammers are bleating for their bottles!
Come, little Agaat, we have to slaughter your last hanslam and the ear you may keep this time.
She’ll stand there and nobody will call her.
The dogs will sniff at her hems. They’ll press their wet muzzles into the backs of her legs. Jump up against her so that she’d be thrown slightly off balance.
Come, Agaat, whatever are you standing like that for.
The gate of Grootmoedersdrift. Yard gate.
Gate of Agaat’s world.
She’ll lift the black iron ring of the hook and then let it drop back.
The gate is closed, the road is white, the way is back and forward. And even further back to its undiscoverable beginning.
When she lets go of the iron ring, she’ll bring both hands to her head. She’ll press her cap closer to her head.
I’ll be there, Agaat. For a moment there’ll be a smell of fennel. I’ll touch the white embroidered edge of your cap with new fingertips. Just so that you’ll wonder, along the rippling of your gills: What Christmas breeze now?
And I tell you: To notice a breeze there where you’re standing will be a new beginning, a fern-tip of courage, a thimbleful.
But what will I be able to do about the motherless dust, about the empty road beyond the gate, the barren summered world around Grootmoedersdrift, the white heat, the ashen fallow-fields, the sheep with their snouts on the scale, their lips scavenging for the dry pods of vetch? What would I be able to do about the dry little pit-dams, the black shadows of bluegums, what about the white eviscerate boulders on the Heidelberg plain, the black rocks in the Korenland River?
It will feel too large and lonely for you. You will step back from the gate. You will turn round. The yard, the house, will feel too small. Small and deserted and inexorable. You will want to shut your eyes. You will open them again. You will want to crawl into your hearth. You will crawl out again. You won’t know what you’re about. You’ll go round the back, past the sheds to the backyard. Your feet won’t feel as if they belong to you, your steps will feel too long, your legs too loose. The milk-can there next to the screen door will seem to you like a thing you’ve never known. You will lift its lid by the chain and let go of it again. You will push open the door of the little creamery. The smell will drain you of your strength. With the front end of your cap against the separator’s cool shiny chrome you will stand for a while. Blindly you’ll feel for the handle and start turning till the high keening sound is released and you feel the vibration against your forehead.
Oh, my little Agaat, my child that I pushed away from me, my child that I forsook after I’d appropriated her, that I caught without capturing her, that I locked up before I’d unlocked her!
Why did I not keep you as I found you? What made me abduct you over the pass? What made me steal you from beyond the rugged mountains? Why can I only now be with you like this, in a fantasy of my own death?
Why only now love you with this inexpressible regret?
And how must I let you know this?
See, in the twilight I lead a cow before you, a gentle Jersey cow, the colour of caramel, the colour of burnt sugar, she smells of straw and a cud of lucerne. I place your hands on her nose, your palm on her lips. You are the eye-reader. There it is, bucketfuls of mercy in those defenceless pupils. I bring you in the vlei to the whitest arum lily rolled up. Take it by its ragged edge and whistle. It will open as the poet says with star-light in its throat. Here a bokmakierie hiccoughs in the wild mallow, all love contained therein, too much to endure. Just smell the buchu, and imagine the soft wet winter that will once more penetrate the soil. Let yourself be consoled, Agaat, now that language has forsaken me and one eye has fallen shut and the other stares unblinkingly, now I find this longing in my heart to console you, in anticipation, for the hereafter.
Am I vain in thinking you will miss me? That you will long to look after me, to wash me and doctor me and dress me in my bed, your last doll with whom you had to play for four years? Who is consoled by the thought that you will long for me as I was at the very end? Which me, which one of my voices will you want to commemorate? Look well, listen well, you will know when I depart. If you are sleeping, you will be woken up by it.