I signalled such a one would never in a month of Sundays survive with the two of us.
Agaat translated it for him as: Mrs de Wet says no thank you all the same, she’s too particular.
Bolster me with rolled-up towels because I’m over the hill, Agaat, translate me, I’m sick with remorse.
She rolls up another few towels to support me from behind as well.
How many towels does Agaat have? How many does she have washed every day? How does she keep tally of all the linen that passes through here? How does she keep sane?
She covers my body completely with an extra towel, large enough for a king.
I hear her scrubbing her hands, is it possible to get any cleaner?
She returns with white sterile cloths over her shoulder. She places them under my cheek so that I can spit on them.
She turns her back and puts on two new gloves of white-powdered latex.
She unscrews the caps of three jars, her hands are pale, the right glove fits like loose skin.
She mixes two ointments and a liquid in a saucer with a rod of stainless steel. She rubs it on the base of my neck and under my nose. It smells of eucalyptus and friar’s balsam. It’s to help the mucus rise, to help dissolve it.
She pours warm water into the hollow of a silver kidney.
She places mouth sponges at the ready in a row.
She screws in the mouthpiece of the phlegm-pump.
How much slime does she expect to get out of me anyway? My cough reflex is almost completely gone.
She extends the arm of the bedside lamp as far as it will go.
She turns the head so that it shines full on my back, I feel the glow. It’s to keep me warm, I know, she could knock my phlegm loose with her eyes shut.
Ounooi, open your eyes and listen well now.
Her eyes are soft again. Her voice is soft. Close to my face she talks. Through the eye of the needle she’d want to help me. That’s really all, I can see it now. And bring me back.
All the way to the cow-shed.
Iron on the hoof.
Pumpkin on the roof.
As it was, always, as it was in the old song.
But was she happy with how it was?
You remember how we do it? asks Agaat. You take a breath, I turn you on your side, you hold your breath until I’ve propped you up nicely, three rolls behind the back and three rolls in front, then you exhale, then you rest first, then you take another little breath. Just as long as you need. There’s no hurry. We just work at our ease until we’ve finished. You warn me with your eyes, you blink them slowly if that’s enough for now, then we take a pause, then I suck out what there is, then I make us some tea. Then we do the other side. Or we do the other half tomorrow. It doesn’t matter. Have you understood well, Ounooi? Get ready for the first breath. On your marks, get set, go!
Lord, Agaat, what race? And how many rounds before the knockout? And what bell? And what white tape against my chest? And the one who sets the pace, will she drop out before the end? Head between the knees in the slow track, too exhausted even to watch how the record is broken?
Record in long-distance dying, best time in cross-country with obstacles. All the way to where the strokes fall one-by-one from the white tower in the throbbing heat of afternoon with cicadas in the pepper trees and a procession escorting me. Or no, it will be different, everything here on the farm, Agaat will carve my headstone.
Don’t perform like that, says Agaat when she catches my eye, into every life a little rain must fall, just co-operate, I’m asking pretty please. Come now, ready?
With a firm yank of the towel under me she gets me toppled onto my side. She keeps me in position with her strong forearm pressed lengthwise behind my back. I feel her inserting the rolled-up towels behind me, the back of the weak hand nudge-nudging against me, like a muzzle.
She works fast. No sound issues from her. She holds her breath with me. She begins the auscultation. Down below on the short-rib she cups the little hand. She knocks on it with the other hand. Up, up, up come the knocks, to under my shoulder-blade and then again from below. After every third sequence she vibrates over the ribs with the strong hand. She’s firm. It’s not unambiguously pleasant what she’s doing. I can feel something coming loose in my lees. It feels like old solid pieces of me. This is the critical stage. Now she’ll stop and with the Heimlich manoeuvre help me try to cough. And then she’ll suck the product out of me with the phlegm-pump.
I feel faint. Stones and grass glide below me, as if I’m approaching a landing strip, one foot without a sandal. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
Agaat exhales. Right we are, she says, she joggles the towel out and makes me roll back slowly. You’re hanging on nicely, Ounooi. Come let’s sit you up straight first so that I can help you cough.
I can feel her seeking out my face.
Look at me Ounooi, so that I can see what’s going on.
I try to open my mouth. I want to say, a piece, you are a piece of me, how am I to quit you? The landing strip is approaching how am I to land? The urge to cough stirs in me, but it’s vague, un-urgent, a phantom cough, like an amputated hand with which in an unguarded moment you think you can still lift something.
I feel pressure in front against my teeth, on both sides I feel pressure on my jaws under the ear, my mouth is being opened for me, a flat stick inserted between my front teeth to separate them, I feel fingers on my tongue, pulling threads out of me, I feel the suction of the phlegm-pump, the sound of my fluids, and then a damp sponge that wipes out, my cheeks, under my tongue, inside between my lips and my gums, and then a new sponge, drool runs out of me, another sponge, cool, damp on my tongue, and a strong arm that lifts my head and a voice that says:
You can breathe now, the slime is out, get ready to swallow, you’re thirsty.
And a spout of small finger-tips between my lips that squeeze out the drops for me. One, two, three on the back of my tongue.
I can’t swallow it, I can’t.
Jak was angry with embarrassment at his absence from the birth of his son.
An apology he couldn’t get past his lips.
He’d won the race, yes. He’d been first in the senior class out of forty-six contestants who were all younger than he. The tide had come in. The wind had come up on the river-mouth. Twice he had capsized and got stuck under his canoe. Exceedingly tough had been the inclines on the cycle routes. He’d grazed and bruised himself falling. His knees, his elbows. Look. Raw. He’d had to change a wheel all on his own in the gale-force wind. He’d been just about knackered. And on top of that, yomping across the loose sand of the dunes, for seven miles.
Ad nauseam you had to listen to it. But when you started recounting how Agaat had kept her wits about her, how brave she’d been, how she’d cut you with the strong hand and delivered the child with the other, how she’d done everything right from beginning to end and stopped a vegetable lorry to take you to hospital and how with hands and apron red with blood she’d helped stack cabbages to make space for you to lie, and how you’d bled on the cabbage leaves, and how she’d got into the front with a complete stranger with the baby, he interrupted you.
He’s just glad that you’re safe and sound, he said, and he’s so proud of his son.
It was the same lay-by, you said.
What lay-by?
Where we the first time, where we almost that time, when we were on our way together, the first time, do you remember, the day after my mother had harangued you so, when we almost in broad daylight in the open sports car, do you remember, when you pressed your head between my breasts, the waterfall was in flood from an unseasonable shower, just like the other day, as if there’d been no time in between.