He opened the fleece in two other places.
Just see, everywhere the same, even to the belly, and well-oiled throughout.
Jakkie was more interested in his father’s tone than in the information, that you could deduce from the way in which he started leading him on.
Just look at that head! Jakkie said. Only you heard the mockery.
Yes, now isn’t that spiff, Hannibal, Jak said, and turned to the sheep, we’re talking about your head.
Jak was on one knee next to the ram and took its jaw in his hands.
Big, strong, open face, alert and masculine.
He pulled open the mouth a bit so that one could see the gums and the teeth.
Broad mouth, free of blemishes. And just feel that silky-soft skin on the nose.
Jakkie rubbed over the nose with cautious fingers.
He’d never realised, he said, that a sheep had such a long nose.
As it should be, Jak said, long and finely-curved, and just see how wide a curve the horns make around the head and how big the ears are, lively soft ears for his baas.
Here and there and everywhere Jak touched the ram, as if he were sculpting something.
Broad in the shoulders, broad in the chest, deep ribcage. Sturdy flanks. See how spacious the leap of the ribs, how straight the topline from the neck to the tail, square across the rump, well-filled buttocks, enough place for the balls.
He squeezed the soft downy scrotum lightly.
The ram picked up its back foot and step-stepped when Jak touched its nuts. Jak caught the paw and steadied the ram by the horn with his other hand.
Wait, Hannibal, he said, we’re inspecting your feet. Straight and strong from the heel to the knee, he won’t stumble or twist, this sheep. Just look at that hoof, nice and amber in colour.
Jak got up and closed up the wool where he’d opened it.
Jeez, Pa, Jakkie said, you should become a praise-singer for sheep, that was quite a text for the prodigal son.
You weren’t surprised that evening at table when Jak got going.
So what do you say about the political situation these days? he asked Jakkie.
Really, is it necessary, you tried to intervene, we’re enjoying our meal so much.
For Agaat’s sake you said that, to console her where she was standing with a guarded expression over her dishes. Because we weren’t enjoying our meal. There was a silence around the table.
Agaat’s hand. It was impressive what she’d brought about there. Extra special just for the family, on top of all the preparations for the great feast the following day. All the old favourites, the choice dishes that Jakkie had grown up with, were on the table. A steamed river eel on spinach to start. Chicken pie, ox tongue, roast hare with field mushrooms that she’d dried the previous autumn, stewed dried peaches and roast potatoes, green beans with onion and shiny sweet-potatoes and cauliflower with mustard cheese sauce and pumpkin fritters, and a salad of baby beetroot in a vinegar reduction, and baby onions in a sweet-and-sour sauce. Everything dished up in the best porcelain and garnished with fresh parsley and chives and rosemary and mint.
She hadn’t as usual first asked permission to use the best table linen and the crystal glasses and the silver. There were two candelabra with candles and a flat table arrangement of cinerarias and creeper shoots. Around Jakkie’s plate she’d made a birthday garland of the first blue wine-cup babiana that she’d gone to gather in the fynbos-kloof.
What made you think that it was for herself as well? You tried to remember why you’d forgotten her birthday. Twelfth of July. The thought made the food congeal in your mouth. The day of the telephone conversation? Had that been the birthday?
You could find out if you wanted to. You’d be able to get Jakkie on his own, could ask him if she’d really been talking to him that day. Whether it was on the twelfth of July. But you said nothing then, you remained silent. You felt it welling up around you, the tide of things that had to be said. Your arms felt numb. You felt hot. Your whole body was itching.
I’m asking, what do my son’s politics look like these days? Jak insisted. Jak had drunk too much. You placed your hand on his, but he shook it off, gesticulated with his fork in the air.
He’s in the Air Force after all, surely he must know more than the man in the street.
Jakkie twirled his glass in his hand. You caught his eye, signalled: Be quiet, just ignore. You beckoned to Agaat to clear the table.
Jak threw his hands in the air.
Are you all going to ignore me now? Have you swallowed your tongue, Jakkie? Then answer me when I’m speaking to you, chappie. Agaat, put down the dishes, you’ll just have to hear as well what your pet says to us. Kleinbaas Jakkie here, it seems he wants away, a little bird told me, away from his beloved nursemaid with whom he speaks in secret on the telephone.
Then Jakkie let go of his glass and it tilted out of his hand, and the wine splashed a long red stain on the white tablecloth.
Pa, he managed, and then Agaat was in between with cloths and water and salt, you could see her touching Jakkie, how she was trying to calm him with her body, now this side of him, now that, now over one shoulder and then over the other. She brought a clean glass from the kitchen and poured it full of wine for him and topped up Jak’s glass. A whole bustle she organised there around the glasses, as if she were trying to distract their attention by sleight of hand.
Our beloved Gaat, Jak continued, our baker and butler, just like a hen trying to keep her chickens together. Look at this dabchick, Gaat, he gets quite out of kilter when his father wants to catechise him.
Jakkie got up, threw down his napkin. Jak leant over the table and pushed him back into his chair.
No, have a seat first so that I can tell you something, man, he said, as if he were at a congenial gathering of farmers.
He started in a roundabout way, with Elsa Joubert’s book about which people were writing letters in the press at the time. The one your mother bought and never finished, he said, ostensibly because it was too sad, as if your mother’s ever had problems with any sadness. His eyes played mockingly over you, but you weren’t the one in his sights. Jakkie must explain to him what structural violence is, he said.
Jakkie looked up and looked away, his body was quaking with the trembling of his legs under the table. Agaat tried to sidle away towards the kitchen.
Then Jak got up and pulled out the chair at the far end of the table, tap-tapped his hand on the backrest.
Come, Gaat, come and sit down for a while, this was always your place, wasn’t it, he said. You must listen very carefully now, your kleinbaas, Captain de Wet here, is going to give us an exposition. I don’t see any structural violence or any other violence against you except that little half-way arm of yours. Fucked crooked or kicked crooked, doesn’t matter. No long journeys for you, only a nice servant’s room with a fireplace, settled for life here on Grootmoedersdrift. Structural advantages, I’d say. White people’s food, white people’s language, a white apron, white sheets and here’s your little white pet who shares his little secrets with you that his own mother and father aren’t allowed to hear. They hear only the little white lies. Come on, Jakkie, tell us, what is structural violence?
Jak walked around the table and gestured to Agaat to sit down on the chair. For a moment you thought he was going to take her by the thin arm, but he didn’t, he just gestured with his head. Agaat shut off her regard. Very upright, very rigidly she sat down on the edge of the chair.
White tablecloths, white candles, fragrant white flowers, Jak said and gestured with open arms, so white is she that she plays back all the little white things as she knows we like them. Exactly what old Poppie Whatsername also did, recounted her miseries as she knew the writer wanted to hear them, a story that could be sold, it’s being translated into all kinds of languages nowadays, they say. Even shares in the profits, the kaffir-girl. Remarkable business, Afrikaners making a name for themselves with coon stories that they pick up in the backyard and spread far and wide as gospel truth.