What have we left of all that? Of all the twirling of the stick in the hole?
A fireplace, this bed, a stealthy little smoke arising.
A frock in which to bury me.
Sulphured conservation cloth.
Tried on and tried out.
A rat is what I smell!
I see it’s now been hung here next to my bed on top of the maps. Washed and ironed and starched. The white embroidery is luminous. If one were to turn it over, all the threads on the other side would be sewn back and tied down and worked away. Otherwise it wouldn’t be Agaat’s work.
I would like to ask, ag, if I could speak I would now like to ask: Do you remember how Jakkie used to sit by you when he was small? He just couldn’t believe that a picture could emerge from under the needle.
How do you do it, Gaat?
Do you remember how he persisted?
You couldn’t really answer his question.
You fetch it and stretch it and tie it together, you said, you prod it and prick it, you slip it and snip it, you slide it in cotton-thread frames, you hold it and fold it, you pleat it and ply it, you bleach it and dye it and unravel again, you stitch on the stipple, you struggle with pattern, you deck it and speck it in rows and in ranks, in steps and in stripes and arches and bridges, and crosses and jambs of doors and of dams, you trace it and track it and fill it and span it and just see what’s come of the cloth, a story, a rhyme, a picture for the pillow, for the spread on the bed, for the band round the cuff, for the cloth on the table, for the fourth dress of woman.
Will Jakkie still see me in it, Agaat? Will he remember me in it one day? Laid out and dressed in the Glenshee?
I think I recognise the weft. So it’s true what she said? My great present to her for her first embroidery lesson? For one day when she will have mastered the art?
My eyes are drying out. Will she add drops once more so that I can try and make out everything she’s embroidered there? So many tiny details, in places it looks like musical notation. A piece of sheet music? What could it be? If Agaat could compose? A symphonic tone poem?
Or programme music, like Carnival of the Animals? An aria for two female voices and farm noises?
But no, it’s not as pretty as that. Here around the central portion it looks like a page from a manual, a guide to dying, a do-it-yourself book with illustrations, all the information in captions around the body embroidered there in the coffin position, the hands already folded on the chest. A woman in a frock in a woman in a frock I’d be.
Ounooi, says Agaat, your people have come to say goodbye to you. In one hand she has something, I can’t see what it is. The Bible? With the other hand she beckons down the corridor. I hear the clicking of dogs’ toenails on the floorboards.
What must I see? To whom is she beckoning there at the other end of the passage? Come! Come! The dogs? Boela and little Koffie? Who? There at the door? Who’s there? Dawid, Julies with the drag-foot, Saar, Lietja, Kadys, a few well-grown young ones, a few little ones. All in Sunday best, a smell of cheap soap in the room, satin ribbons in the little girls’ hair, their mothers in floral scarves, the men with their hats in their hands.
So these are all the ones I’ll be farming on with here on Grootmoedersdrift, Ounooi, says Agaat.
Her voice is factual. As if she’s leading evidence. She’s showing them, I’ve been alive all this time, three years long in this bed. She shows I’m now moving on. She shows the reins, at the moment of changing hands.
Good morning, um, says Dawid. His cool light-green gaze rests in mine for a moment. He doesn’t know which one of my eyes to peer into. He rotates his hat in his hand.
Oumies, says Saar, we’ll look well.
Oumies was good to us, says Lietja. We will, we will. . stay here under Agaat.
The message is clear. I see how they look at each other, how they assess it, the new order. We’ll have to see. We’ll just have to make the best.
I see the hands of the adults resting on the shoulders of the children.
Look children, look, that’s what it looks like.
The children are standing dead still, the little girls in their still new unbleached dresses, the unironed shirt collars of the boys, white against the brown skins. Their eyes are big. One of them is holding Boela by the scruff of the neck. The little dog is making whimpering noises under the bed.
Agaat takes up position at the foot of the bed. She looks at me.
It’s good, Agaat, it will go well, I wish you good cheer, and as much peace as is possible.
The ounooi says, Agaat interprets, she says thank you that you’ve come to greet her. You are all good people, she says. She wishes you all peace and prosperity, also for the coming Christmas and a blessed new year. She says that from now one you must be given two sheep every Christmas and a whole tolly as well and a vat of vaaljapie as always. She says she knows you’ll work well with me. Just as well as I’ve worked with her all my life here on Grootmoedersdrift.
Amen, says Kadys in a professional mourner’s voice. Amen, the others mumble under their breaths. Dawid squashes his hat on his head.
A suppressed giggle? I see one child nudging another in the ribs. The group is starting to disintegrate.
Agaat opens the book where she’s been holding her finger. The cover is worn, dark blue. She announces:
From the section Soil and factors that can influence plant growth, from the chapter An unchecked danger, from the paragraph, The erosion process. Page three hundred and fifty-five.
It is written there:
Many of us will still remember that not so many years ago there were in certain districts very beautiful large and famous vleis covered in wild clover, vlei grass, and other useful plant species; in which there were also to be found pools and pans filled all year round with clean clear water. Surrounding these pans were bulrushes (Prionium serratum), sedge (Cyperus textilis) and other beautiful plants. Where are the vleis today? They have altogether disappeared and in their stead you find only a nest of hideous ditches, and where of old wild clover displayed its pretty flowers, there is now just here and there a hideous little bitter-berry (Chrysocoma tenuifolia). There is no drop of water to be found because the network of ditches forms such a perfect conduit that, as soon as the rainwater touches the earth, it is flushed away to other and bigger ditches that can take it away further until it ends up in the sea. This whole vlei area that once upon a time could carry and fatten more cattle than any other part of the veld, of the same size on the farm, can nowadays hardly feed a mountain tortiss.
She closes the book. She smiles at me.
Tortiss.
She takes her little scissors out of the top pocket of her apron, cuts a strip of plaster, sticks down the stare-eye. She pulls off the tuft of Vaseline-soaked cotton wool holding the other eye open. I feel the upper lid descending slowly. Firmly she starts singing. I feel her breath on my face. I feel the dogs bumping against the bed. A wet snout burrows in under my hand.
Abide with Me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Behind Agaat they fall in, drawn-out, they drag the notes, through bone and marrow, the women just about weeping.
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;