Little old yellow vase for a bit of homeliness with nasturtiums inside should look pretty there. Walls still bare & light-bulb without shade but there’s no point in having her think this is a hotel old bathmat in front of the bed so that she won’t stand on cold linoleum with the getting-up & hung old kitchen curtains a bit skimpy had to undo the pleats but still quite serviceable.
What can she think of it all? Will just have to be good enough. Fortunately nice & sensible.
J.’s office now in stoep room. Desk & filing cabinet & farm papers that used to be in second pantry carried over & his exercise apparatus out of the bedroom thank Heaven. Photos & trophies & things that stood and hung all over the place. Ma’am’s on the rampage baas on the stoep maid’s in her hovel and all’s right with the world sings Jak. Lord the man. At least he’ll be able to face people again now he says. And at a glance see what’s happening in the yard. As if the yard mattered a whit to him. Just as long as he’s satisfied now don’t have time for his nonsense too on top of everything. Expect Beatrice Pulpit-Polish will also want to come and do inspection some time. Missing a brain-bobbin, as Pa would say.
3
The morning sun lights up Agaat’s cap from the back. Full of embroidery holes it is, densely edged with shiny white thread. The points of light in the weft flicker as she approaches. She hesitates over my bed, inclines her head, feels along the high peak with both hands, touches the base on both sides, whether it’s well pinned, whether it’s properly seated. If the cap is on as it should be, she’ll be empowered to walk through fire. Her crown of glorified cotton, her mitre, her fire-barrel specked with light, that gives her dominion over the underworld. She deliberately touches it in such a way that there should be no doubt in my mind regarding her intention. She is mustered, she is prepared, I mustn’t give any more trouble, she’ll sort me out here, she’s the commander of my possibilities.
She’s going to list them for me, the options remaining to me, without skipping anything. As the Spirit moves her, with allusions to my incapacity.
The list gets shorter all the time.
She revises it ever more frequently.
At night on her camp stretcher she ponders what she should delete.
Three years ago the list was full of interesting variations.
Shall we ride to the lands with Dawid?
Would you like a picnic in your wheelchair next to the dam?
Must I take you rowing on the drift? Joke.
Do you want to walk up and down on the stoep in your walking frame?
Do you want to write with the splint on your hand?
Do you want to do exercises?
Do you want to sit on your own in the garden, next to the lavender hedge, next to the rambling rose, under the honey-bread tree?
Do you want to read notes and hum?
Do you want to go for a swim in the reservoir?
Shall I make you some custard with apricot jam and bananas?
But that’s all in the past now.
I close my eyes.
I have a life beyond your lists, is what it wants to say. I have needs that you cannot imagine, even if you were to cast your cap in bronze.
It maddens her. That she can’t meet my every need, that she doesn’t know everything I think, that frustrates her beyond all measure.
To peer into my head at what is playing there, that’s what she desires. There’s protest in her voice when she speaks, but I know that’s only the upper layer, that’s what she can afford to have me hear.
Shall I draw the curtain a bit?
Do you want to listen to the morning service?
A tape?
Wine women and song?
The pan for number one?
The pan for number two?
Too cold?
Too hot?
Sit up straighter?
Lie down flatter?
Eat a bit more porridge?
Fruit pulp? There is cold melon? With a bit of salt?
Water?
Tea with honey and lemon?
After every question she waits for me to reply, but I keep my eyes shut. That means you’re cold, you’re far out, you don’t have a clue, my need is a subtle one.
I open my eyes. I seek her gaze. I widen my eyes.
No! No! and again no!
Everything is swimming before my eyes, but she carries on. She coerces me, I must comprehend the extent of her goodwill. Nothing she wouldn’t do for me. Anything within the bounds of justice and reason.
I close my eyes again.
Her voice rises by a whole tone. Slightly faster it comes now.
Read? Must I set up the reading stand and page for you?
Must I read to you?
Genesis?
Job?
A psalm of David?
Revelations?
The Bible according to Agaat. God’s delirium and man’s tremblement.
I open my eyes but I give no sign, I fix my gaze straight ahead of me. That means: Go away, you’re irritating me.
From the corner of my eye I see her hitch up her shoulder. She rustles a finger through the pile of little blue books on the chair.
Or something from your own pen? That always interests you doesn’t it? The good old days, ‘Agaat and the garden of Grootmoedersdrift 1980’? But this one is empty. It says ‘paradise’ at the top and then it’s just a list of plants.
She runs her finger down the page. Moonflower, flowering quince, silver birch, she reads. She slaps shut the book.
Pity it’s not the whole story, she says, her mouth pleated, it’s just a skeleton. And the gardening was quite pleasant. She taps the front of the book.
Perhaps I should write it up in here myself. But perhaps we should finish furnishing my paradise first before we start on yours, don’t you think? We’re right in the middle of it now. Hr little rm that you fixed up so nicely for hr in the back here, remember? How did the baas always say? Something for the Guinness Book of Records. First time in history. Interior decoration for an outside room. Thought you could hide it from me. Then the ounooi came to do inspection and left the door open. Then Saar saw. But by then I’d known for a long time.
Agaat is trying to provoke me. I give no quarter. I keep my eyes neutral.
Ad nauseam I’ve heard it in a variety of performances. Perhaps she’s going to sing it again this evening. Seven aprons, seven caps, one dozen white socks and a little vase for homeliness.
Perhaps she’ll beat time with her shoe in her hand on the armrest of the chair. That would be better. Anything would be better than her sitting still and reading and glaring at me every now and again as if I’d done her some wrong.
Let her leap, let her dance, let her grab one little book after the other and put it down and spin around in the middle of the room, a starched-aproned dervish without the blessing of release.
As long as she understands I also have my rights.
I want to see my ground, I want to see my land, even if only in outline, place names on a level surface. I want to send my eyes voyaging.
Perhaps you feel like a video?
She’s not looking at me, she’s looking at the books on the little pile. I saw her counting them the other evening. There are sixty-three. I thought there were more.
The one about the snow wolves? Or the black-and-white killer whales? Or the giant bats of the Amazon?
A grimace on her mouth. As if she can see me hooking tiny damp claws into the mane of a horse, how I attach myself to the jugular vein, as if there’s a close-up of my ingurgitating mouth-parts.
Anything rather than having to confess that I’m locked up here as if behind thick one-way glass and she’s out there and doesn’t know what on earth it is that I want.