If I can’t break her with sweating blood I’ll get into her mind then we can see at the same time if she’s really as clever as she thinks.
I’m humiliating myself. God in heaven.
14 October
Instructed D. to move the McCormick seeder onto the tarpaulin in the shed & to jack up one wheel & to loosen all the gears & to put out a few bags of wheat seed. 150 pounds is what we must sow per morgen I said to A. Now you calculate how we must set this machine’s gears so that it’s going to sow the right density & how much seed we need to sow 16 morgen & while you’re about it teach D. as well & you needn’t come home & you needn’t be given food before you’ve done the sum go & read your Handbook & help yourself to pen & paper in the baas’s office. Since you tell me you know how to multiply & divide. Bless me if she doesn’t talk back & tell me it’s not sowing-time it’s almost harvest-time don’t I rather have a sum for harvest-time. I restrain myself. The labourers are watching me with eagle eyes. Tsk I hear behind my back. They look at me as if they don’t know me.
Do I know myself?
14 October 1960 1 o’clock.
A.’s light is still burning & there’s been a droning on three notes all evening. I know what she’s struggling with. They don’t say how many square yards in a morgen & how many feet to a yard. If she’s clever she’ll look on the farmer’s almanac tables behind the kitchen door.
Have dried up completely now. Jakkie full of colic from drinking cow’s milk.
16 October 1960
Heard a to-do in the shed early this morning & D. is in & out of the door. So there was the seeder sowing on the tarpaulin & A. is turning the jacked-up wheel with a piece of rope tied to one of the spokes so that she can count the revolutions & there is the Handbook & the almanac with tables & I see hr papers with the sums. By then they were setting the seeder’s gears for the third time already to try & arrive at exactly 150 pounds a morgen. So then I relented & gave back the rowel that I’d removed & then the machine worked properly & the sum worked out & A. all but put out her tongue at me. D. gives me a straight look & says lord Mies but nothing further & next thing I see Lietja is giving A. a plate of rice & mince with vegetables in the kitchen & I happen to hear her say never mind it’s over now you’re terribly clever. Like a serpent as clever as a cat as sharp as needles but now just must start eating slowly otherwise your stomach will get a fright & then you must go to bed in your room you look like a ghost shame.
Made myself scarce because next thing I heard sniffling there in the kitchen & I don’t know whether it’s Lietja or A. that’s bawling but A. doesn’t cry of course. Then I heard J. there in the kitchen egging A. on: Go & sing your white stepmother a little song, go on: Anything you can do I can do better.
A. in the outside room all afternoon. Very quiet.
There’s not a single farmer of my acquaintance who could do that sum.
How can I do it to her?
That October after Jakkie’s birth, after the battle with Agaat over the christening robe, five things happened that changed everything on Grootmoedersdrift. First Jak had the cattle-troughs with licks & the salt blocks removed from the lands. And then you noticed one day that the farm boys’ wire cars were no longer built from wire but from bones. White vertebrae, white ribs, white collarbones, little white carts of death rattling over the yard. Without your putting two and two together. The third thing was Jak’s new hunting rifles. What was he on his way to do when he left the house with the long leather bags? You didn’t want to know. And then there were your diaries. Somebody was reading your diaries. Or that’s what you thought. But most important of all was the change that came over Agaat. You saw her looking with new eyes at the two of you. But mainly at Jak, as if she was noticing him for the first time.
Five things that preceded that first catastrophe. Five things that helped shape all future catastrophes.
In the evenings there were the squabbles over the farm as usual, over your compost heaps, over your pumpkins amongst the pear trees.
It’s not a laboratory, Jak, you said, it’s mixed farming, the surfaces can’t be bare and sterile without a sign of the processes that keep a farm healthy.
There he sat, pushed away his plate of food, taking apart his rifles and putting them together again, firing silent shots at the ornaments in the sitting room. Through the sights. Click. Click. You thought it would drive you mad. It fascinated Agaat. Not the rifles. Jak’s face, his hands.
Then she brought home the story one evening. End of October 1960 it was.
The cows are eating tins.
Just as Jak was taking his first mouthful.
What tins now?
You had Jakkie in your lap, were trying to get him to take to his bottle.
Paraffin tins, car-oil tins, turpentine tins, sheep-dip tins, molasses tins, she said.
That they pick up where, Agaat? you asked.
You were incredulous. Why would cows eat tins? You thought she was inventing it to pay you back for the punishments she’d suffered.
Agaat was silent.
Ag, the stupid cows of yours, said Jak, probably calving again, you know they’re always full of shit then, if it’s not the trembles, then it’s something else.
I’m just asking, where do they find that particular collection of tins to eat? Do they select them in the supply shed?
You looked at Agaat.
The tins are lying in the little grazing at the back next to the river amongst the stones, Agaat said.
Full sentence with prepositions. From a grammar book for second-language speakers.
She jutted out her chin.
Jak pointed his fork at Agaat. They’re my tins, leave them just there where they are, or you’ll be given another field to plough!
You handed Jakkie to her. He wouldn’t drink so well with you. She just stood there with the child in her arms.
It’s my shooting range, dammit, I do target-shooting at the bloody tins! Jak exploded. And that’ll be the day that I let myself be put off by a bunch of silly cows from enjoying the little bit of healthy recreation that I’m allowed in this internment camp.
You gestured to Agaat that she could leave. At her leisure she walked out, her ears flapping backward under her cap.
She must keep her nose out of my business, I’m telling you here and now, she’s carrying on as if the farm belonged to her. And. . and. .
Jak was red in the face. With an oil cloth he polished furiously at the barrel of his rifle.
Yes, Jak, and what else?
You were used to it. Always in such situations he brought it up. Agaat was the cause of everything that went wrong, and you were the cause of Agaat. With your finger to your lips you signalled he should lower his voice.
And, he said, if I ever have to hear again that my child, my little Jakkie. . I’ll cut off her two tits for her one by one and throw them to the pigs! What must the people think? Jak de Wet’s child is being. . suckled by a. . by a cast-off kitchen-goffel!