Agaat sent the women and the children home. Dawid and the other labourers had to go and fetch the tractor and a tow-rope and the stretcher. Saar and Lietja had to phone the doctor and fetch smelling salts from the medicine chest.
When everybody had gone, she bent and pulled the letter out of Jak’s trouser pocket, still as crumpled as when he’d stuffed it in there. It was covered in blood. The writing was smudged.
He wanted to go and hand it in to the police, Agaat said. And then he couldn’t get it past his conscience. And then he charged back, and then he couldn’t make the bend.
She separated the sheets of paper and smoothed them, carefully, and put them away in her apron pocket.
Let’s just revive you, then I’ll read it to you, then I’ll burn it, then we won’t know anything more about it.
Then she bent down and with a quick tug-and-push movement she reset Jak’s jaw.
Useful, you thought, she learnt to do it early with sheep emerging skew-jawed from the dipping-trough.
She came and held the bottle of smelling salts under your nose.
Just see how he skidded, Agaat pointed out.
You looked, the muddy track with the kink, the missing kerbstone from the shallow bridge.
When they put Jak down in the backyard, you heard it for the first time, under the keening from the kitchen, the formulation which they would snigger over unto the third and the fourth generation of labourers on the farm.
The baas of Grootmoedersdrift!
Aheu!
And so he saw his arse!
In the drift of Grootmoedersdrift!
they have not heard from me for so long they may well think I am dead it leaves me cold really I cannot deny I have let the world slip by my hand sometimes I still have the urge to call to scream to get up the need walks in waves but congeals an ocean of glassy gel noiseless salty white coast a dream but I am not sleeping am not dead am awake between me and me all hollows are silted shut a mountain without caves storeys without stairwell trapped in a lift the lift is myself no space to lift an arm sound the alarm the alarm is myself no space between me and me I fill myself fully my filling tissue-tension in a stalk would I burst? a pomegranate fall from a tree? messy but disposable? who will sweep up the pips in a scoop, who will scrape the sole of a shoe over the stain on the stone? or shall I leak from myself wind from an inner tube? carried out over an arm to the place of all inner tubes? images no longer offer solace my filling seed soil wind I am who I am impermeable no turn up or down or round possible the sight of a dead wall could relieve me but I am myself the wall am name am flour am history have occurred my damage is dense is black my tongue silts my mouth full of water oh my soul in me there is no room for you to mortify yourself
27 May 1955
Jak says we must make A. move in with Dawid and them and accustom her to her own people. The sooner the better he says, the child will grow up messed-up, she has no playmates. As if he cared one scrap about that. But he is right when he says the white children who come here don’t know any better, they think she’s farm stock & then they snub her.
I protest! She’s an exceptional somebody & she’s developed from the grimmest misery out of just about nothing. Every day I have reason to believe that all my trouble and dedication were not in vain & that the faith I had in the matter and every drop of sweat and tears that I put into her has now started bearing fruit. Everything has a purpose, I say to Jak, she’s been given to me to learn something about myself. To learn what it is that really matters in this life. Jak says I sound like a Jehovah’s Witness on Eau de Cologne. He says he thought I’d achieved total illumination some time ago and it’s not a matter of A. because all I can talk about is myself & and I can really spare him my sickly sentimental stories they give him a pain because all he sees in front of him is the worst case of megalomania & control freakery south of the Sahara.
That’s not true! I play with her & I teach her to sing & dance. If he were only to give her a bit of attention & to take the time to get closer to her he’d see that she’s an extremely interesting little person (perhaps that’s not the right word, rather wilful, intense, complicated, imaginative — too much so — rather a live wire than a flat tyre as Pa always used to say).
28 May 1955
Bought A. 24 new crayons & 10 jars of poster paints. This evening learnt to write & draw sheep hen donkey rooster. Good perception especially the shape & position of ears mouth etc. I teach her to mix the colours & to cover the whole page not just in the one corner. She’s managing well already but I can still see the backlog.
This evening I thought she was sleeping already, she came & showed me a picture of the farm with GROTMODERSDRUF solemnly written at the top. You have wings because you are my angel she says. I had to help with the practising of the wings on a separate sheet. Only Lucifer the rebellious angel has such spindly black wings I say. Jak has a thatch of black hair on his head & thick black eyebrows & two red spots for cheeks, is sitting on the bonnet of a red car with black wheels. She couldn’t quite get the little man into the car I had to show her & so there I was X2 with my red dress & patched-up wings & Jak X2 first on top of & then inside his car in front of the Grootmoedersdrift homestead complete with chimney & gables & green trees & blue mountains & a flower garden full of birds & lambs & butterflies.
There are two of me now & two of Jak & one of every living thing but where are you then? I ask. She’s inside she says. You’re looking for me I’m hiding from you in the fireplace. Shame the poor child can she be altogether happy? I wonder.
30 May
This morning A. jumps up & down on hr bed & suddenly manages to produce a whistle. Now she can’t stop jumping & the whistle comes more & more regularly great excitement!
4 June ’55
New habit of A.’s. She presses her head against me, you always smell so nice she says. Pushes hr head into my jersey drawer when I’m getting dressed & then just now she disappeared into thin air & I search & I search there I find her in my room, half crawled into the bottom shelf & gone to sleep there with hr head on my jerseys. Now I understand why the cupboard is always so untidy. Always find the little red jersey on top & warm from her sleeping on it. What are you doing in my wardrobe? I scold, sorry she says & my heart grows soft, I press her to me. Your body is sweet she whispers in my ear can I also smell like that one day?
4 June ’55
Our best thing nowadays is to walk in the veld & learn the names of things. Insects, birds, small reptiles, small mammals, grass varieties, wild flowers, stones. I take Pa’s old reference books along in a rucksack & a notebook & a pair of binoculars & her magnifying glass & then we identify things & collect examples. I learn remarkable things myself. A. has a good eye, remembers all marks, sees things that I don’t notice, white speckled breast of a lesser kestrel in a tree, pupae in the grass & cocoons hanging from twigs, webs spun between blades of grass, lizard skeletons, droppings of hare & dassie & antelope. The hangings of the fiscal shrike interest her. That’s why its name is Johnny Hangman I explain but then of course I had to explain the death penalty & its reasons as well.