Was there a trilling? Did I feel the chill under my back? Was there an unevenness under my shoulders? Were my wings properly folded under me? Were the four corners of the Milky Way squared? And the sides, were they dug down plumb?
And the song? Did I hear it then? The song of which the ending is like the beginning? Arising muffled from a dark place?
A tree grows in the earth
And blooms in beauty—
O tree!
For hours it went on, sometimes at long intervals. I sang along, in my dream I could sing, a second voice.
And on the tree grows a branch,
a comely branch,
a lovely branch!
Later the words submerged in the depths soared up and from the heights floated over the yard, a great coloratura voice out of the mountain, words that tied the long rope of cause and effect together in a noose.
Then the child laughed,
a comely laugh, a lovely laugh!
Then the child laughed with the woman,
the woman sits on the bed,
the bed comes forth from the feather,
the feather comes forth from the dove,
the dove hatches from the egg,
the egg lies in the nest,
the nest is on the branch,
the branch grows on the tree,
the tree grows in the earth,
and blooms in beauty—
o tree!
In my end is my beginning. Now it’s morning.
A new sound!
The new footfall of Agaat, as if she’s lost weight overnight.
What do I hear? The locks of a suitcase being opened, old-fashioned sprung clips that click as if they’ve been oiled? When is she going to approach and open my eyes so that I can see what’s happening?
Her shadow falls on my bed, on my skin. Out of the coolness materialises a hand. How light her hand is on my forehead! And now on my cheeks, how different are her palms!
They are poised now for the final chord. For the last kneading. As good as it gets, they say. No more we can do for you. A bread is a bread mixed like that and risen like that and at some point it has to be baked. And music isn’t music if it carries on for ever. There’s an introit and an amen. That’s the minimum for a mass. Even the fantasy for solo harp has to conform to the requirement of closure. Once touched, once sounded, even the last note must eventually die away.
Here we have now the taking-off of my eyepatches, the pulling-off of my plasters, the casting-off of the cotton wool. Shaft by shaft the light opens up. Pale red is the dawn behind my lids. The pitch is soaked off with cool wet swabs. And here are her finger-tips now on my eyelashes. To pull them apart. To risk it. As I taught her.
She arose out of that grave of mine last night.
She went up into the mountain. Now it’s my turn, now she’s coming to fetch me from the water. I strain to keep up, to get where she is, to do my bit.
Ag, that I could speak now! I would want to ask her if she remembers. The butterflies we picked out of pools. After the showers that fell so unseasonably that first year after I got her. Too heavy to fly, trapped by the rain. We took them out of the mud, blew on the stuck-together wingtips until we found fingerholds, carefully, carefully like wet scraps of tissue paper we pulled the wings apart so that one shouldn’t come off on the other.
Slowly we did it with much tsk-ing and ai-ing from me, because she herself wasn’t yet speaking then. For hours on end we kept at it there with the dripping of the last drops and the calling of the frogs in our ears. We placed the butterflies in the sun, dozens of them, as we opened them up, on the earth wall of the irrigation furrow. Then we sat down on the other side with our chins on our drawn-up knees and waited.
Who’s the first to see something move, I played with her. We stared fixedly. As if dead the little creatures lay.
I wasn’t sure. I was taking a chance. I remembered vaguely from my childhood that it could work. I saw her looking at the half-dead little things in the puddles, with a sullen face, her chin far out, her lips pursed, as if she’d prefer to step on them.
It took half an hour.
First the colour returned. Some were orange and white and black, others yellow and black and blue. Then one stirred, then another, then two, three, till the whole wall seemed to be breathing with wings opening and shutting.
See, I signalled to her with my eyes, you didn’t want to believe me!
Then she smiled.
I remember the day. She must also be able to remember it, she read it out, quite recently, from my diary. February, 28 February 1954. Would she still be able to remember it? Her fingertips on the lashes of my upper lid?
That was the first time I saw her smile. With the chin drawn in and an inward pinching of the little lips, a reluctant smile, but it was a smile. I looked away not to embarrass her further. But I remember thinking it was a miracle. I saw more colours than there in fact were because everything was swimming before my eyes. First one butterfly flew up, then two, three, then all together in a cloud shimmering over our heads before they eddied up next to the quince avenue, and then in amongst the trees of the old orchard.
Now it’s my turn. My upper lash is pulled up, fingertips pull down the lower lid. My eye is lost, I can’t find the seeing-slit.
Up, Agaat whispers, look up!
She presses on my eyeball, light rolling movements upwards.
Come, eye, come!
There it is!
I see you!
And I see you!
In the staring eye she puts some drops. The lids of the other one she sticks open, above and below, with strips of plaster. At first her eyes are only on her hands where she’s working. She takes her time. I wait for her to look at me again. Both my eyes feel stretched open slightly too wide.
I must look to her like an extremely surprised person.
That brown case full of my things, remember? It was as if I’d buried it there yesterday. As if it’d been sulphured.
I can’t close my eyes to listen better. I must look at her, her face is right above mine. She looks at me as one would look at a dam full of water. She doesn’t prick through my cornea. She doesn’t penetrate me with a blunt object. She doesn’t fish in vain for the end of the rainbow.
She’s accepted that it’s beyond her, me and my dying.
She smiles at me.
I see my reflection in her eyes.
Everything is still there, she says, exactly as you packed it. Clothes, boots, ribbons. And shells and eggs and stones and bones, my lists, my story books, everything. Only the insects have disintegrated, and the pressed flowers are a bit ragged. And look here, even my sack with which I arrived here on Grootmoedersdrift. Do you remember? In the beginning you hid sweets inside for me.
To get me going.
I was terribly timid, wasn’t I?
And just see what else is inside!
Agaat places something against my cheek before I can see what it is.
Feel, she says, there’s nothing as soft as a moleskin.
She nestles it in my neck.
Even my wheel and my stick, she says.
She pushes the point of the stick into the rim of the wheel, rolls it over the covers over the incline of my body. I can feel it tracking over the skin of my belly.
Down the road to open the gate for me so long, with her white ribbons fluttering and her white bobby socks and her green dress. And her wheel and her stick.
My eyes can’t stay open like this for too long. You must be able to blink. And the mountains freeze in that moment. It’s life that passes in the blinking of an eye. While dying itself can last for an eternity.
Poor Jak. Never had time to pose. Flew through the air. Shrike-spiked on a branch. Never looked back. Stayed stuck in the drift.
Would I have preferred it like that? Instantaneous? Without deferment?
And Agaat, how would she prefer it if she could choose? On impact rather than this clearing-up and fitting-in, this emptying-out and filling-in, this never-ending improvisation? Hip-up hop-down in slow motion? With the bellows-book opened wide to blow out one long sustained blast of air, to keep the ember alive for as long as may be necessary?