Why do people want to eat when somebody’s died?
When have I seen her eating seated at a table?
In the dining room of old, at the far end of the table, Abba, Father bless this food for our everlasting good, the little silver shovel in the little hand, the little blunt silver fork in the other.
At the kitchen table, early evenings with me, an extra spoon in my hand: Come, another bite. Stories and rhymes to make it go down.
And when the clock struck twelve,
her dish was of enamel made,
her mug of tin,
her knife her fork her spoon
hidden under the kitchen sink.
Here, your things, in case of need,
They have their place as you do now,
You are of another breed.
With nail polish I painted a capital A on the underside of the plate, on the underside of the mug, so that they couldn’t get mixed up with those of the other servants.
She always packed it, her cutlery, even for a picnic, a church bazaar, for the holiday at Witsand, wrapped in a white cloth.
She eats her picnic behind a tree, her bazaar food behind the verger’s garden wall. Behind a closed kitchen door she eats when the house has fallen silent. The trunk of the tree says forbidden, the door says no trespassers. How high the wall is there under the seringas.
I went and peeped through the kitchen window one evening. Her place set with enamel, the long-pronged fork, the old bone-handled knife, the tin mug of water. The blue plate from the warming oven, the pulling-out of the chair, the sitting-down as if to boiled human flesh, the hands to the cap, if it’s settled squarely, the hands to the apron bands, if they’re running at right angles across the shoulders, the measured forkfuls, the steady pace, the spot at the furthest edge of the table where her eyes are fixed when she chews, her mouth shut tight, with scarcely visible movement of the jaws, straight back, straight head, without a sign of gulping, except for the small sip of water afterwards, as if it’s salt water, or bitter water, or blood.
She knew there was somebody, warned me, set down the knife and fork in the plate, folded her hands in her lap, and gazed in front of her, and waited. I was slow to understand, slow to get away from the window, the dogs were jumping up against me. She got up, came and drew the curtain in my face, little tugs, unhurried, as if I weren’t there, as if the only face she had seen was her own reflection in the pane. And later it was Jakkie’s riddle, the solitary dining of his nêne.
Why can’t I look when you’re eating, Gaat?
Because my teeth are so big, Boetie!
Why can’t I see when you’re drinking, Gaat?
Because I milk the kitchen snake into my mug, my child!
Why do you always sit alone?
Because I’m the one in alone!
Why do you draw the curtains?
So that my fork shouldn’t hook the lightning!
Why do you close the door?
So that my knife shouldn’t run away through the door!
What do you eat then, Agaat?
Steamed frog, baked lizard and soup made of the tears of stones!
Stop it, the child has nightmares!
Carry on, because your même must die!
Is it a song? Why does is sound so familiar?
The table is singing at the end of my bed.
The starched sheets are singing.
Death’s divinities.
The lids are removed, the steam arises.
My eye that can’t blink becomes all-seeing. No moth or rust can destroy such a sight.
Agaat carves for herself.
Agaat dishes a plateful. White and green and yellow and red.
My mouth that cannot speak, now epicurean.
Eat me a psalm of pumpkin and sweet potato, the orange and the ochre, dig a pyramid over me, an underground silo, pierce peep-holes for the stars, mill the angles of the moonbeams in the grooves.
Is the right oar in the rowlock, and the left, is it there, is it greased? What about the meat with the shiny fatty rind, has it been wrapped for me in the white muslin? Who gets the knuckle bone? Who delivers the dumplings? Where in heaven’s name to go with the cabbage rissoles? What to do with the baked bat?
The cave wall suppurates.
Pick the umbrella membranes off the wing-spokes with your teeth!
Because she must become other and roast through all the way to the pips and dispose of her whole self and selfishness must become her own master no longer hunger after otherman’s heart or liver no longer thirst after otherchild’s tears full-steam ahead to the whiter of the twin lights beware of the black and red roofs of damnation thus is it written in the Book of Death. Where did I read it?
I get between her teeth. My body, my blood. She traces the four quarters of the wind on her bib, with her fork she sounds a gong of crystal.
She gets up from the table.
Look, it is finished, she says. She unfolds it. She holds the big cloth before me. The one at which she’s been labouring all this time.
It will just have to be finished now, she says, I can’t do more than this. But before I wash and starch it, I must first put it on and go and lie in your grave with it. This very night is the trial.
My ear that can’t hear, what was that?
She holds the smock above her head like a tent. Over the white apron and over the black sleeves drapes the densely embroidered cloth. Her cap goes under, her cap comes up through the neck-hole.
Oh where did you get that frock, where did you get that shroud?
I spy with my single eye, I spy.
I spy on the frock the sea at Infanta, I spy the land at Skeiding.
In laidwork and blackwork and braiding and cross-stitch and canvas.
It’s the fire, it’s the flood, it’s the feast.
The shearing, the calving, the way of the women, a heron against the sky, a blue emperor in the forest, everything from here to the Hottentots Holland, all the scenes of Grootmoedersdrift.
They swirl before me, they twirl before me, the last merry-go-round. Ritornello.
And here my herald, who tries it on for me and displays it. The fourth dress of woman.
Out onto the gangplank she strides. The ship lies ready, the whistles blow.
Oh, my old piano, I don’t know her, her face a sorrowing ruin.
Is it good enough to be buried in? she asks with her eyes.
With her mouth she says: It’s the best I could do. Do you remember the cloth? The Glenshee linen? For one day when I’m a master, you said. First the history of South Africa you said, and then heaven.
She tightens the drawstrings around her neck.
She smiles a substitute smile. Oh, my most macabre Agaat! I see it in her eyes, only I can see it, I who fattened those eyes! The eye of the master, to the brink of the grave!
Breastwork against the worms, says Agaat’s gaze. Joke! And the hem I’ll sew shut once you’re in, then they can’t get in at the bottom either, at any rate not while your hair is growing that last little bit!
But for the time being the nether regions must remain unstitched.
For the scout goes by foot.
Two black noses of school shoes peer out. Steam rises from the cap. Diabolus in musica! She genuflects, she departs for that white-walled place. Tchi, thci, tchi, go her soles on the track.
The beginning of the end. That’s what you felt all the time during that last feast, that last visit of Jakkie’s. The end that is always a repetition of the beginning. A charging-around in vehicles, a sightseeing tour, a dead sheep, a live sheep, a remembered sheep, a shepherd with staff, birds’ eggs in a bowl, an aeroplane, a fire, the blue birthday-mountains, the white arum lilies in the vlei, the mother, the father, the son, the dishes overflowing, the people, the coming and the going.