Never mind, I won’t do anything to you, you said.
The child started trembling.
I really won’t do anything to you, you tried again and extended a hand but the child pressed her head between her knees, and pulled the hidden arm from behind her back and clamped it around her head.
It was a deformed arm, thin and undeveloped, the hand bent down from the wrist, the fingers half squashed together, the thumb folded in so that it looked like a shell, like the hand that your father taught you to make by candlelight when you wanted to imitate the flat head of a snake.
You got to your feet and leant forward in the hearth-opening towards the child.
What’s your name? you whispered softly, tell the kleinnooi what your name is, won’t you? For a long time there was silence, only the child’s breath coming faster.
What do they call you? Tell me, then you come to me, then I’ll stop them hurting you, the oumies says they do bad things to you.
In the silence you heard the man groan and turn over in his sleep. Must I ask your father, hmmm?
Then you heard it, from the cavern of the child’s body where she’d stowed her head, a guttural sound.
Say again, I couldn’t hear so well, say?
You went still closer. Of iron she smelt, of blood, of soot and grass and through the holes of her clothes you could see the skin moving over her ribs. You saw the small spasm of the diaphragm as the child said her name.
Again all you could make out was a scraping sound.
Ggggg-what? you asked, that’s not a name, say it again for the kleinnooi so that I can hear nicely, come. Gogga? Grieta? Gesiena? Genys?
You turned your head with you ear against the child’s face and imitated the ggggg-sound. You could feel her breath on your face. This time you heard the ggggg clearly, like a sigh it sounded, like a rill in the fynbos, very soft, and distant, like the sound you hear before you’ve even realised what you’re hearing.
That was the beginning. That sound. You felt empty and full at the same time from it, felt sorrow and pity surging in your throat. Ggggg at the back of the throat, as if it were a sound that belonged to yourself.
You stood back and clasped your arms around your body. Something convulsed in your lower belly. You put your hands to your face as if you wanted to trace with your fingers the expression that you felt there to make sure.
You didn’t want to go home right away, wanted to hold it fast a while longer. In such a mood you could only arouse suspicion in your mother’s house. And you wanted to gather it, fold it away inside yourself in a place from which you could safely retrieve it, at night in your bed, in the half-hour of privacy while you were having your bath, on your evening walk.
You walked to the old dam, to the willow trees, the ruin of the little pump house on the water’s edge behind which you would be invisible. There you found a place to sit down, on a tree-root with your feet in the water, and tried to fathom the feeling, the vague sweetness and sorrow. The heat of the summer’s afternoon overwhelmed it, the dizzying sound of the cicadas, the call of the kingfisher on the dry branch in the middle of the dam.
From their grazing on the shallow side of the dam the ducks came swimming towards you. You closed your eyes, tried to melt yourself into the cloudy dark-red that one sees inside one’s eyelids when the sun shines on them.
Ggggg, you said over and over, as softly as you could, under the tone of the cicadas. Under the low chattering of the ducks, under the trail of the willow’s foliage on the bank.
When you opened your eyes the world was bright and strange. You held your breath. You were waiting for something, you looked down at the water in front of you. There was nothing except fine circles on the surface, the water insect and its little twin shadow, the hooked scribble-claws, broader around the ankles as if wearing boots, with also their reflections, and between the two sets of claws, between above and below, a single ripple inscribing the surface of the water with rapidly successive perfect circles, overlapping, circling against one another, fading away, starting anew, a weltering writing on water. A fugue it reminded you of. You could hardly imagine that it was the work of a single creature.
When you got home hours later, your mother was predictably upset.
Where have you been wandering on this blazing Sunday? Something could have happened to you!
Something did, you wanted to say. I myself happened, my almost forgotten self. But you said nothing and went to the pantry and hand on hip inspected the contents of the shelves while trying to steel yourself against the tone of her voice.
Milla, are you going to tell me what’s happening? Just look at your face! You mustn’t come and try your nonsense here with me. No wonder Jak can’t get along with you. What are you blubbering about now?
Your voice sounded heavy and shaky.
I’m blubbering about whirligigs, Mother, about the beauty of their existence, however insignificant, wrinkles on water, circles that vanish without ever having been anything, except that I’ve seen them.
What are you talking about in God’s name, Milla?
I’m talking about the fact that down there in the cottages there’s a child suffering in the most appalling manner, and because you know it and don’t do anything about it!
Oh, good Lord, I should have known! she said, all I meant was that you must tell Maria to get a grip on herself and tell her to get her house in order. Don’t interfere in the affairs of the workers, Milla! All you do is incur trouble and misery. Listen to what I’m telling you today. What are you looking for here in the pantry, anyway?
You’d opened the bread-tin already and had started cutting thick slices of bread.
What do you think you’re doing, Milla? That’s this morning’s freshly-baked bread, there’s day-before-yesterday’s bread in the chickens’ feed-bag.
You ignored her, took butter out of the fridge and started spreading it on the slices with apricot jam. You took the leftover leg of lamb from lunch-time out of the fridge and started carving slices from it.
You’re just creating trouble here, Milla. Tomorrow we’ll have a string of children in front of my door saying they want bread and they want meat. Where is it to end? The people know their place on this farm and I’m not going to allow your rashness to foul up my affairs here!
You brought the whole leg of lamb to your mouth, thought you wanted to bite into it and spit it out in her face. But you just lifted the joint in both hands and let go of it so that it fell on the floor by her feet.
Keep your meat then, Ma, keep it and guzzle it on your own while the children around you are perishing of hunger!
You were out of there with a basket in which you’d thrown the slices of bread, roughly stuck together, and a few pieces of fruit that you’d grabbed from the fruit platter in the front room.
Around the workers’ cottages everything was quiet. You went in by the front room and found the child there in same position. You placed the basket by her feet.
Here, just look what I brought you! It’s just for you, you hear? Eat it quickly before they take if from you. I’ll tell your mother not to bother you.
Maria? a man’s voice called harshly from the bedroom. You went out quickly and walked round the back where a bickering conversation fell silent as you came round the corner.
You kept your voice even and commanding.
Maria, I’ve brought food for the little one, see to it that she eats it. I want to see you at the house, tomorrow morning, nine o’clock, and you bring her along, d’you hear. We must have a little talk, you and I.
The woman gazed at you.
Have you understood me well, Maria, nine o’clock, not a minute later. And remember to bring back the basket.