Quite satisfactory under the circumstances, says Agaat, a slight little cloudiness, but nothing to fret about.
She pages the calendar back, taps on it once before she replaces it in the hole for November. She replaces the magnifying glass in the drawer. Ting, go the dressing table’s swing-handles as she slams shut the drawer with her thigh. She knows I’m peeping at her.
She throws off my covers. She wrings out the washcloth, gives me one quick wipe between the legs. It’s too hot. She knows very well it’s too hot.
I keep my eyes shut.
Pees like a mare, says Agaat, nothing wrong with the pee.
I wait for her to cover me again, I’m cold.
She waits for me to take the bait.
A pretty light yellow. Clear except for the little trail. And not at all over-sharp on the nose, she says, just about perfect pee.
What can I reply to that? What acrobatics of eyelids to convey: Your sarcasm is wasted on me. If I could die to deliver you, I would do so, today. Go and find somebody else to pee perfection for you on command. You’re the one who wants to be perfect. You want me to be perfect. We must not be lacking in any respect. If you can do without, I must be able to do without, that’s what you think.
A perfect nurse. A perfect patient.
As I taught you.
According to the book.
What more can anybody expect? you think. And what sticks in your gullet is my surplus neediness, and that you no longer know who I am, and that I’ve changed, that I’m still, every day that I lie here, changing. And that I require something specific from you.
I open my eyes. She’s standing next to my bed with one hand folded into the other.
Everything’s fine, Agaat, I signal, don’t get so het up about nothing, I’m as contented as a little snail in a salad.
But that’s too easy. She’s not looking for an easy victory. She wants to see me angry. She wants to see insurrection. She wants to see what insurrection looks like in the spine of a paraplegic. In my chest I feel a sigh. I have too little breath to sigh. A groan escapes me. I feel tears. I hold them back, but it’s too late, she’s already caught me at it.
Time for your exercises, she says, the chin jutting out. Nothing like movement to lift the spirits, she says, and to get those old guts of yours going.
Your arse, I signal.
Seize the day, says Agaat. She opens the curtains, light streams into the room.
The bedclothes are all pulled off the bed, yanked out at the foot-end, the mattress quakes under me, the bedsocks are stripped off my feet.
No, I gesture, please not now, I’m tired. I close my eyes again, slowly. Last defence, play dead, play at aestivation. Wild pea.
Tired, what’s with tired! Doctor’s orders are doctor’s orders! says Agaat.
Cunt.
Hey! says Agaat, such language! Come now, pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake.
She bends over me and picks my arms up by the wrists and moves my hands in a slow applauding motion.
One, two, three, one, two, three, we greet, we greet, the mighty sun!
Nice deep breaths, she says.
She brings my wrists next to my sides, suddenly drops them.
Oops, she says.
She’s at the foot of the bed. Fast. This is still just warming-up. She presses her fists against the undersides of my feet in a kneading motion, a mimic of pedals under my soles. One pedal is weaker than the other.
Busy little feet, she says.
Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Any complaints so far, Mrs de Wet? She doesn’t look up from my feet.
She moves around quickly to the side of the bed, faces me head-on. Her voice a parody of gentle persuasion.
You get sore, you get stiff, your blood doesn’t flow properly, you get cold, your feet get blue, look how blue they are already, you get constipated, your general condition deteriorates if you won’t allow me to exercise you.
Allow, I say with my eyes, allow!
She grabs one arm by the wrist, straightens the elbow with the little hand. Wide circular movements she makes, first one way round and then the other way round.
Windmill in the south-east, she says, windmill in the north-west. Ickshee, ickshee, ickshee. Water in the dam, mud in the ditch, step on her head, dirty rotten bitch.
My arm terminating in its stiff claw swings through the air. Agaat is breathing faster, her eyes are shining.
Now bend, she says. She works the elbow joint.
Knick knack knick, she says, bend the tree, snap the stick.
My other arm is a lighthouse tower. It sweeps over wild waves. Agaat blows the horn. Two bass notes.
What do you say, Missis? We’re having fun, aren’t we? Now we’re giving this old body of yours a run for its money.
My bonnie lies over the ocean, she sings, my bonnie lies over the sea.
Agaat’s colour is high. Her breath comes panting. I catch her eye.
Agaat, you’re hurting me!
Just don’t be touchy, she says.
Slowly, I flicker, slowly with what’s left of me.
Shuddup, now the legs, says Agaat, but no sound comes from her, only her lips move.
Giddy-up, Shanks’ pony, she says aloud, and with my legs she forms an angle of ninety degrees above my torso. She bends my dangling feet up and down.
Her feet are going east, she sings, but she is going west.
Agaat plants corner posts. She puts them into holes. She hammers them in with a ten-pound mallet. She anchors them with braces, she paints them silver, she hangs the droppers. I smell tar. She sets up the drawbar. She tightens the wire till it sings. My ankles, my toes.
We have take-off, she says as she propellers them in her hands.
And now, she says, now to rise above this earthly vale of tears. Nourish also our souls with the bread of life, oh Lord.
She gathers me, the little arm under the backs of my legs, the strong arm under my arms.
Dough, dough, she says, rise for us. Hup! she says and lifts me, almost lifts me up, off the bed.
Kneaded well, waited long, she says, hup once more.
Shake out the raisins, she says, shake them out, God-hup helpyou!
I bounce slightly on the bed as she lets go of me.
She stands back. Arms akimbo. Her chest rises and falls.
Lighter by the day, she says.
She extends the little hand to me. With her strong hand she extracts the stunted little finger from the bundle of fingers of her crippled hand. She keeps the little finger apart between thumb and index finger, in the air before my nose.
Soon, she says, soon I’ll lift you with my little finger.
The first seven years on Grootmoedersdrift. Every day of the month you adjusted yourself again. Took iron pills and ate radishes. Prayed and spread your legs for Jak.
During the day you worked yourself silly on the farm. Tennis elbow from cutting silage, wrist infections from helping with the milking, cramps in your calves from walking the contours on the steep slopes with the surveyor day after day. In the evenings you had to lie in the bath for hours on end with the mustard extracts that Ma had given you.
Why do you drudge yourself like that? Jak asked, you’re not a bloody slave!
He was furious when you were ill. You could feel it in the body that he rammed into you.
Modern appliances are the answer, Milla, he said, these aren’t the Middle Ages any more. Why churn on with lucerne and lupins and compost when there’s fertiliser?