Blood drenched it, Agaat’s apron was red all the way to the bib, Agaat’s cap a cockscomb, there was a plashing in your ears, a poppling, your heart was open. Full and shiny, far and near. A waterfall. From the highest cliff a down-feather twirling on the foam, a little lily bobbing after the haze of your body, a patch of scarlet in black moss, a throat, a tongue, a gong in the dripping sparkling jet.
There was a ride on an open vehicle, the wind was cold on you. You bled on cabbage leaves. You came to every now and again and sank away into a faint again. The mountains fell on you. Agaat was in front with the driver. That you still knew, that she came and told you, close to your ear.
Everything is fine, she said, my même, she said, I’ve got him with me, he’s safe, I’m holding him for you, we’ll be there now-now!
We drive like the wind with you and your child, we ride, we ride, round curves wild and wide, snip-snip went the scissors, snip-snip, and my cap, my cap, how red is its tip.
You came to in the hospital and cried. Where is Jak, you cried, where is Agaat?
Jak’s in his canoe on the Breede River. Agaat’s sitting in the fireplace, she won’t come out.
It was your mother. You did not want to see your mother.
It’s a boy, she said, a fast boy. A real De Wet. All its toes and fingers and a handy spanner. His father’s pretty mouth. You tore badly, along the cut to the top.
She indicated with her thumb and forefinger.
That servant-girl of yours got hold of you a bit roughly. They still have to sew you up.
Your mother’s smile was strange. Was it fright? Shock? Schadenfreude? Judgement? You didn’t understand it. You cried. They brought the bundle, you didn’t want it, you cried.
Bring me Agaat, bring her here, go fetch her, bring her to me, you cried, bring Agaat, I want Agaat.
Blew snot, your hands over your mouth, your hands on your collarbones. You wanted to choke, you wanted to die, you wanted to get back in under the mountain, trail your heart behind you, drag it in, a bloody trail, a fist on bloody cords.
They dosed you with medicine. They said you were suffering from shock. They sewed you up. They brought the bundle and took it away, brought and took away. Your milk wouldn’t come. You were taken to your mother’s house.
Agaat was there in her white apron and her white cap, at the garden gate.
She’d come out of the fireplace.
Not a stipple of soot, not a spot of blood, you heard yourself say, from the water, from the fire, from the hollow under your lip.
She held out her arms.
Give, she said softly, give him to me, I’ll watch.
8
On the trolley next to my bed the hot water is steaming in the washbasin. It smells of Milton. Over the fume of disinfectant I detect the fragrance of lavender. Agaat knows Milton sets my teeth on edge. But she persists with it. She says she prefers it to Dettol. Dettol is for hospitals and for childbirth.
Sometimes she adds lavender to the Milton water, or fennel, to make it more pleasant for me, at other times mint, or lemon verbena. She’s read up in our gardening books, she says, herbs are good for the blood, for the concentration, for the nerves. I get the message. I must concentrate, I must have nerves of steel. And about my blood, I know, I mustn’t worry overmuch, she’ll pep that up for me with mint.
Agaat lifts one side of me. She manoeuvres a triple-folded bath towel in under me. Then she walks to the other side and tilts me and straightens the towels under me. All this she does with the strong left hand. With the right hand she steers and pulls and slips and folds. Like a conductor, with the one hand she beats time, with the other she signals the major entries, for percussion, for the trombone, and with that she gives the feeling, passionato, grazioso, every wash-time a concert.
The little right hand feels different to the left when it brushes against my skin, cooler and smoother. It’s as if recently she’s been touching me more often with the weak hand, a sweep of the knuckles, or a fluttering of the four gathered fingers, a weightless shell-shaped palm resting on my stomach for a moment.
It’s as if she’s less concerned about my seeing that hand of hers. Now and again I catch a glimpse in the folds of the facecloth when she puts it in the washbasin, in the pleat of a curtain as she opens it. Then it steals away before I’ve had a good view of it. It hasn’t changed. A little frizzled paw with a folded-in thumb such as one sees in verrucose chickens.
Every day she wears one of the light crocheted jerseys that she’s made part of her uniform, the right sleeve lengthened so that it covers the hand all the way to the knuckles. But I’ve caught her a few times now stripping back the longer sleeve when she washes me. She knows I see.
Butcher’s sleeve, she says then.
She folds back the bedding all the way and drapes it over the railing at the foot of the bed. She adjusts the bed so that my upper body is marginally more upright. She fits the rigid support so that my head is stable. Head Lock by LimberUp & Co.
We’re doing a full-body tonight, Ounooi, it’s midweek. Then you’ll feel a whole lot better.
She spreads a bathsheet over my body from my feet up to my waist.
And seems to me we’ll have to massage the feet, they feel a bit cold to me.
I feel her hand on the bridge of my foot. It’s the left hand, it feels warm. She does a little rub there, as if my foot needs cheering up. Hang-foot. Sometimes, to prevent my muscles from shrivelling as happened to my hands, she fits the foot-support. Foothold by Feet & All. The stirrups, Agaat calls it. But mainly I ride bareback. Lord, imagine, me in my present state on horseback, hairy death, the ceaseless whinnying, because he’ll know what’s mounted him.
She unties the ribbons of the bed-jacket behind my neck, she pulls it down over my arms until she can take it off over my hands.
It’s thin sleeveless hospital-wear that Leroux brought, for easy effective handling of your patient, I heard him say to Agaat.
But she’ll feel the cold, because the muscles are dead, so always keep her covered under several layers of light covers, even though it’s summer now.
Leroux speaks to Agaat in the passage outside my door. He thinks he’s in a hospital where voices can’t be heard over the rumbling of trolleys and clattering of crockery and buckets and nurses rushing around. He tells her everything about his latest conclusions and proposals and he issues his latest directives. I hear him clearly. It’s only the floorboards that creak as he stands and rocks on his toes, and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the front room. Agaat never says anything in reply and she never asks any questions. She knows I hear it all. And she doesn’t want to tell me herself. About my lungs that are getting weaker all the time. And about my swallowing. She wants me to hear for myself and decide for myself about the appliances and the hospital.
She’s simplified everything to a single question: Do you want another nurse?
To that my answer is no.
Agaat covers me with a large towel before she pulls the tunic, under the towel, from my body. She lifts the washbasin from the trolley onto the serving-top and draws it nearer across the bed, over my body.
First the left, she says, and takes my arm from under the towel and lays it down on the bed close to my body. She handles it like a fragment, something that belongs to me only by loose association. A dead arm, but a life-like replica. Like an artificial arm. But an artificial arm needn’t be washed like this.