This evening at bedtime she says: They say I come from a drunkcunt on the other side of the mountain. Sis, that’s ugly, I say. Clearly old enough to start asking questions now. She looks at me with big eyes. What would she be thinking in that coconut of hers? How much would she remember? I dosed her so heavily to get her here. And then she slept for days from the valerian. Don’t quite know what story to tell her. Perhaps just the simple truth, but I feel now is not the time yet.
I must in any case first write it down myself before I forget it, what it felt like, how it came about. The commission, the task, spelt out in black and white, for her sake, so that she can read it one day (though I wonder anew every day what exactly I’m trying to bring about here and why I’m doing it as I’m doing it, and what’s going to come of it, Heaven forfend!).
Then, tonight as I was getting up off the bed (must have slumbered in for a while there with her), she woke up. Out of the blue she says: Lys is my sister, she showed me how to catch a mole. How do you catch a mole? You look for the hills, you see which one is fresh and then you squat one mole-day away and you pee on the ground. You wait and you wait and you pee and you pee all the time on the same spot. And then? You have your wire and your stick. And then? Then you wait and you keep your eyes open and you say all the time mole, mole, here’s the hole! And then? Then he pushes a hole in that spot because the soil is soft from your pee. Then he pushes, then he pushes, then you wait until he’s pushed hand-high, then you hook the wire quickly into his hole and you jab with the stick, one blow and pluck, then you get him by the hind leg, he can’t see, but he can bite like anything. And then? Then you flatten his head with a stone, then you skin him. Why do you want the skin? It’s soft. How do you get it soft? You stick your wire through, you wind it with your wire, Lys holds the one point, or you hook it to a thorn bush, then you wring the skin every day until it’s soft.
Dear Lord above! Would rather not think what else lurks in that past!
20 October
Took A. to town with me today, had hair appointment, she kept on wanting to take my hand, walk next to me nicely, I said, you don’t hold hands in town, you’re nice and grown-up now. A. very fascinated with the hairdresser, takes the little broom from the servant there and starts sweeping up my hair into the dustpan, where does hair come from? she asks. Otherwise very good all the time while I was doing shopping.
Then I bumped into Beatrice in Kriel and Co. and she says we must go and have a cooldrink at the Good Hope Café. What about Agaat? I ask. Buy her an ice-cream and tell her she must wait outside, says B. Ai, she can be so unfeeling! The child is so small still. No, I say, I’ll speak to Georgie. Hmph, sea kaffir, says Beatrice, he won’t mind, but he should know who’s really his clientele. Then I asked for a table at the back half behind the screen in front of the kitchen door and then the waitress in her white apron and cap, thud, flap, through the swing doors, brings A. a huge cream soda float with a long-stemmed teaspoon and a straw so that her eyes widen like saucers. Then other waitresses come out as well to look at A. Go away, I say, it’s just a child. And then A. eats the whole thing, I should have known it was too much, but B. had ordered it, from spite or something. Her whole face said, so you want to don’t you, now you’d better eat your way through what’s in front of you and see what comes of it. A. sucks and sucks at the milky green stuff in the long glass, her eyes fixed fast on Tretchikoff’s Dying Swan hanging there against the wall. When we got outside, she puked something terrible on the pavement and I held her head over the gutter and B. marched click, clack, on her high heels away from us as if she didn’t know us. Really, some people.
23 October
I show all the pictures of vehicles. Strange response. Ship? I’ll never get into that! Aeroplane? No never, I’ll run away! Train? See it steam, salt-and-pepper-now-I-go-better, I press the two-tone of the train whistle for her on the piano. No, alla, I’ll jump off! I’d rather walk! But you ride down to the lands in the bakkie with me? Yes, but it’s Même who drives it!
27 October 1954
A. was very naughty today. Stole kindling out of the Aga and set fire in the backyard to an unread newspaper and a lot of brand-new brown-paper bags that I use for storing herb seed, the little blighter! Got to her good and well with the duster. Don’t know what I’m going to tell Jak, he has such a thing about his newspaper. Gave her a good fright, pretended to be phoning the police, made as if I was telling the constable on the phone how naughty she was, asked that they should come and take her away and lock her up in a cell with bars behind a great iron door without food and without pee-pot. Now I really scared the blue heebie-jeebies out of her! That’s right, she should rather be scared than get all forward here. Now she’s good and terrified of the telephone. She listens around the corner every time I speak. I make full use of every opportunity. I ring off when I’ve talked to someone, but I keep the receiver to my ear, and pretend I’m telling the dominee and the police and the magistrate all her tricks and transgressions. This is really a very good way I’ve discovered of keeping her in her place.
4 November 1954
Almost the end of the year again. The first year of Agaat’s life with me. How quickly the time has passed! How different to other years!
I want to write up the beginning of the story but it’s so hot and I’m sitting here on the stoep and I’m feeling exhausted. I try to think back to that day, when exactly the idea got hold of me, why I did it. Because some days I really don’t know any more. We make excellent progress three, four days a week and then there’s some or other setback again. And then she has this way of looking at me that drives me wild. As if I’d destroyed her whole life when for once I have to chastise her! How else must she learn what is good and what is bad?
The Lord is my witness, I don’t know if I’m up to this! I sometimes no longer know myself with this child in the house. How is it possible that the small, deformed, pig-headed, mute child in the back room can make me feel like this? It’s she who’s nothing. And all I wanted to do, was to make a human being of her, to give her something to live for, a house, opportunities, love.
I’m frustrated and impatient and I can’t help it, sometimes she nauseates me (yes, I’m ashamed of myself, but it’s true!). The long jaw, the bulbous eyes that can glare so coercively, the untameable woolly mop, the little crank-handle of an arm, the sly manner at times, the cruelty that sometimes breaks through. How does one make a good heart in a creature that’s so damaged? How will I ever put enough flesh on the puny little body? How do I get all her senses and her mind operative? (Not to mention her conscience!). And a will (but obedient!) and a soul? She resists me, she’s a long way from being tamed.
Sometimes I feel as if the child is a dark little storage cubicle into which I stuff everything that occurs to me and just hope for the best and that one day when I open the door, she’ll walk out of there, fine and straight, all her limbs sound and strong, grateful and ready to serve, a solid person who will make all my tears and misery worthwhile. So that I can show all the world: See, I old you! You didn’t want to believe me, did you?
15 November 1954 morning