Breathe calmly, Ounooi, says Agaat, and tests the water with her left elbow, as I taught her with Jakkie long ago.
Her grip is gentle but firm. She anticipates on my behalf the impact of the wet warm cloth by keeping constant contact with my body, a hand on my shoulder, a hand on my hand. She hasn’t forgotten a single one of her lessons.
Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow, she sings on the in-breath.
She soaps the cloth, wrings it half dry and washes the arm with firm soapy strokes up to the armpit. She swivels the wrist, the wrist can still swivel. She washes it as if it could still be stained from the silver bangles that I used to wear, and my palm that she folds open, that she washes as if I’d just deboned a chicken. And between my fingers, which she straightens, and up against the cuticles she washes as if I’d been working in black garden soil.
She washes with conviction, just as if I’d lived a full day as of old and were good and dirty, and she talks of lavender.
She says the bushes are flowering this year as if they’re paid to do it and the bees are buzzing about like mad there amongst the purple florets and she thinks they’ve nested in the hollow of the burnt-out bluegum she’ll have Dawid take a look and how would I like a little taste of honey, lavender-flower honey fresh from the comb? There’s nothing, she says, to touch comb honey, and she must remember to get a jar ready for Jakkie when he comes, as he likes it. Illuminated campaniles, it seems, remind him of honey in the comb. That’s what he wrote to her once from Canada.
Agaat wipes the soapiness from the arm with another cloth, a soap-wiping cloth. She dries the arm, puts it back next to the body and drapes the towel over it.
Now the leg on the same side. The leg looks blue towards the foot. She washes vigorously between the toes so that I can feel how much life there is in my foot.
You know, Ounooi, she says, it took me a long time to figure out why you’re forever looking at the wall, at the mirror, to and fro like a lizard taking its bearings on a rock, but now I understand. This wall next to your bed is too bare. You want something else to look at here by your bed than this old calendar, perhaps it only irritates you. The mirror in the corner over there, I reckon, is not enough by a long shot, even though you can see the bits of garden that I chose for you.
As she works, Agaat covers the clean leg and arm with the towel as if nothing’s the matter. Straight face. Butter wouldn’t melt. As if I’d imagined it all about the quarrels. As if it had been a squabble with the nightingales.
Was I too slow? Are you cold yet? she asks.
That’s her camouflage enabling her to look me in the eye, to catch a response from me without her having to ask anything directly. Catch a fly from the old mare’s back, ha.
I play dumb. No, I flutter with my eyebrows, I’m not the least bit cold and what are you talking about now?
She folds away the large towel from my trunk, so that the washed arm and leg and my abdomen remain covered. She sets her gaze to neutral. That’s her way with my nakedness. Well heavens, she says teasingly, you’d really like to know that, wouldn’t you, what I’m talking about, as if you haven’t for days on end been leading me a dance with your blinking and fluttering, so, you can forget about it then, all I’m pleased about, madam, is that you’re not cold!
She soaps my trunk from the base of my throat to the navel. She lifts my breasts and washes under them. One for you, she says, and one for me. She wipes away the soap under them. She swabs me dry, but under the breasts she dries twice with a fresh towel.
The animals went in two by two, she says as she dries them.
I note the inspection. There fungus threatens, there she keeps a sharp eye. Sometimes she checks there with her magnifying glass, mould is like a thief in the night, she says, a lurking menace.
Agaat covers my trunk again. She moves around the bed to the other side. As she moves past the foot of the bed, I manage to catch her eye.
Come on, you can tell me, I flicker with my eyes at the wall and back. You win, I admit, you’ve guessed right, of course, you always guess right, and good for you, you’re wonderful, you’re fantastic, as ever, standing ovation!
Hmmm? she says with a straight face, hmmm? Just in passing, she pretends. She juts out her chin just a touch.
I know what she’s doing. She’s making the washing easier for both of us with a gripping story and she’ll postpone the denouement until we’ve finished. As reward she’ll present it. Triumphantly. As consolation. For the exposure. For the shame. For the blue feet. For the tremendous art that it is to treat a half-dead relic like a whole human being.
Right, says Agaat before she bares the other arm, we’re on the home stretch. She’s cheering herself up. There’s still all of the back.
Are you still holding out, Ounooi? She leans over me and looks into my eyes while she begins to wash my arm.
And so I thought to myself, she says, and looks away again, let me collect everything that I can think of that can hang or be pasted that you want on your wall, everything that you said I should throw away in your great clear-out, everything that I kept and stored in the cellar, and everything that’s still here in the house to be inherited or given away, as you directed, and hang them one by one on your wall here next to your bed until you’re satisfied!
As an afterthought it comes, love will find a way to get the camel through the needle’s eye.
She covers the arm and takes out the leg, peeps at me for the effect, but the effect has been spoilt.
I protest. I am not a camel! And I’m not yet ready for the needle’s eye! Please watch your language! And don’t sound so smug, it’s not appropriate!
Sorry, Ounooi, don’t take exception now, it’s just a proverb, says Agaat, but she’s put off her stride immediately. She drops the cloth into the washbasin.
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise, she says, a penny saved is a penny earned.
Every time the stress on the last word. As if she’s defending herself with prefabricated sentences that she appropriates to her purpose through tone and emphasis. Old trick. She has no respect for what the proverbs really mean, she invents her own language as she goes. That’s her way when she’s discombobulated. The old parrot ways. Double-barrelled mimicry.
Oh come now Agaat, in God’s name, don’t be so touchy, I’m the one who’s dying here, look at me dammit, I flicker, but she doesn’t look.
Speech is silver twixt the cup and the lip, when the cat’s away we throw out the baby with the bathwater.
She pushes the bridge with the bowl of water across my body to the foot of the bed.
Almost, she says.
She pushes her chin far out, moves my legs apart and washes my abdomen with quick soapy strokes.
But don’t count your chickens yet.
Once more she rinses the cloth and once more she wipes.
Where there’s smoke there’s fire, she says.
She dries my loins. The towel feels hard.
I’m sorry I protested. Don’t step on the toes of the living dead. Feeling starts at the feet.
I wish I could talk back, counter with my own idioms.
Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all.
I plead with my eyes.
She doesn’t want to look at me. She’s looking at her towels.
Let’s turn you on your side then we thump out the phlegm before I wash the back.
Businesslike she is all of a sudden.
She rolls three towels into sturdy bolsters to support me from the front. Firmly she wiggles them in next to my side. A self-conceived plan. Leroux said she couldn’t do it alone, especially not with one hand, she needs help, she will need help in future, he’ll send a nurse, don’t I want a live-in nurse.