Or a story movie? Before I go to exchange them tomorrow?
A Passage to India?
Where Angels Fear to Tread?
On Golden Pond?
How many syllables can you speak without saying an ‘m’? Utter how many sentences without using the word ‘map’? Think how many thoughts before you stumble upon the idea of a schematic representation of the world?
You’d think it would be indispensable, like the air that you breathe.
My cheeks are wet.
I close my eyes. I keep them shut. I give up. I flicker my eyelids without opening them. Cheeky, that’s supposed to mean, surely you can see it’s something completely different, get the hell out of my room with your damned lists.
I hear her turn on her heel. Rapid steps down the passage to the bathroom. She returns with a warm cloth. She wipes my face in two swipes.
Stop blubbering, you’ll choke, say her eyes.
It’s tooth-polishing time, says her mouth.
I flicker through my tears, polish yourself.
Aitsa! says Agaat, how-now.
She pushes the plug of the electric toothbrush into the socket. She holds the green toothbrush with the rotary head in the air to test it. Tsiiimmm, it goes, tsiiimmm-tsoommm. She unscrews the lid of the powder-stuff. She presses the head of the toothbrush in it. It’s a dry polish. It tastes of lime, of dust, of blackboard chalk. Against the light I can see the dust particles eddying around her hands.
Right, says Agaat, the full piano, tooth by tooth, from the middle down the front to the back, first cheek-side then tongue-side, we start at the top.
She puts down the toothbrush in a bowl on the trolley. She puts on a pair of latex gloves. The rubber clicks and snaps. The small hand looks like a mole. It burrows blindly into the glove. The other hand looks like pliers.
The monkey mourns the monkey’s mate, she sings on a held-in breath.
She takes the mouth-clamp out of the sterile water. She lets it drip. Then she spins the screw closed. Wrrrr, it turns back on its thread. The drops spatter my face.
I flicker with my eyes, please watch what you’re doing!
Ag so sorry, she says. She swabs my cheek with a piece of cotton wool. Swab, swab, swab. Left right left.
And monkey tears are cold and wet, she carries on singing.
Lord, I say with my eyes, Lord you.
I beg yours? asks Agaat.
She compresses the spring of the screw and manoeuvres it into my mouth. The flat cold foot of stainless steel rests on my tongue, the curved upper part fits into the hollow of my palate. She releases the spring. My mouth starts to open.
Jacked up, says Agaat.
She looks out of the door while she winds open the screw in my mouth. She knows the procedure. She likes Leroux’s gadgets. The dry-polish toothbrush was a real winner. It gives her an opportunity to get into my mouth, under my tongue, behind my teeth.
Dry polish spares you, she said that day when she unpacked the toothbrush, we must use that mouth of yours for nothing but swallowing.
Now, she says, concentrate, breathe.
My jaws creak.
A bit more, says Agaat, she turns the screw, so that we can reach everywhere nicely, she says.
With the last few turns she looks at what she’s doing. She avoids my eyes. Her gaze is fixed on my mouth cavity. There’s a flickering on her face.
In the road is a hole, she says.
I know the rest. In the hole is a stone, in the stone is a sound. Riddle me ree, perhaps you can tell what this riddle may be.
Now she’s looking into my eyes.
We do it in one go, she says. That’s better than stopping half-way. Otherwise you taste the nasty stuff, right? And then you want to swallow, but we’re saving your swallowing for food, right?
Tsiiiimmm, goes the brush, tsiiimmm-tsoommm in the air.
I close my eyes. I feel Agaat pulling away my upper lip from my front teeth. It can take half an hour or five minutes. It depends. If she sees tears, I’m punished. The toothbrush is on its slowest setting. It makes a low drilling sound when it touches my teeth. My whole head vibrates with it. The powder drifts up my nose. I concentrate. I breathe. I mustn’t choke.
And day and night in sun and moon, she takes up the song, as if nothing has intervened. She works her way through the teeth in my upper jaw. She lifts up my lip like the edge of a carpet.
The monkey sings the same old tune.
She peels away my lower lip from my guns. For my lower jaw she has a hymn.
Delay not, delay not, o sinner, draw near, she sings, the waters of life are now flowing for thee. She switches off the toothbrush.
Keep still, she says, I hear a dog barking. She pulls off one glove, shrrrts.
I lie with my mouth prised open. The air is cold in my mouth, the chrome plate presses against my palate. On my tongue seeps the chalky taste of the powder.
I hear no dog barking. Turtledoves are what I hear.
The doves of my yard.
Everything carries on as always, everything will be as it was, the shadows of the bluegums, the doves of morning. The next morning even, when I am gone, will be filled with the usual sounds, as if nothing had happened. The bail will jingle against the bucket, the storeroom door will scuff the threshold, the laughter of the farm boys down by the drift playing with their wire cars on the little bridge, you’ll hear it all the way from the yard, as now, the screen door will bang with the morning’s in-and-out around the kitchen.
Agaat scrapes her shoes on the front-door mat. She comes down the passage. I heard the bakkie come back. Perhaps Dawid had gone to fetch post from town. Perhaps there was a letter from Jakkie. Or a tape with some kind of pigmy music.
But when she comes in, her gaze betrays nothing of the kind.
Where were we? she says.
Every surface is attended to. She says nothing further about the dogs. I know her by now. She goes away and leaves me like this just so that she can come in at the door again. So that she can have a fresh view of her patient. Of the progress of the operation.
In the stone there is no sound.
Gone is the sun and gone is the moon.
The monkey’s mouth’s in a metal mount.
She undoes the screw, whirrrrs it in my mouth, pulls it out, plops it back into the water.
There’s a mite too much attitude to the wrist. As if she’s arranging flowers before an audience.
Right, she says, now for the dusting. She dips a swab in water. She wipes my gums, my palate, the corners of my mouth. There’s a special sponge to remove scurf from my tongue.
Say ‘ah’ for doctor, says Agaat.
I close my eyes. What have I done wrong?
The little mole-hand nuzzles out my tongue. The screw has squashed it in my mouth. My shrunken tongue, fallen in, deformed by the paralysis. There was a time when I could put it out and look at it in the mirror, read the signs myself. Your tongue betrays everything about your intestines.
I feel a tugging at my tongue. The grip tremors with a faint temptation: Where is it fixed? how firmly? with what strings? how long is it?
My tongue is being staked out for its turn at ablution.
The sponge is rough. With vigorous strokes my tongue is scrubbed down. It tastes powerfully of peppermint. Three times the sponge is recharged before Agaat is satisfied. My tongue feels eradicated.
There, she says, pulling away my lips from my teeth to inspect her handiwork.
Ounooi, she says, full piano.
She lets my lips slump back, arranges them decorously over my teeth so that I don’t smirk, and regards me hand on hip.
The only other option is simply to pull all your teeth. All in one go. Then the tooth fairy will put money in your shoe. The question is, she says, a glint in her eye, how much does one pump into you so that you feel absolutely nothing?