In fact I know what she wants to achieve with her noisy preparations. She wants to attract attention. She wants to build up tension. She wants me to know that she’s advancing. With a ruffle of drums. Tralalee tralaley!
Is it for my sake or for hers? Perhaps by this time she can’t believe that she’s held out so long with me so ill. Three years’ dying. A lifetime’s diaries. Perhaps she herself feels like a ghost by this time. Perhaps I’m sustaining her with my dependence.
The one old ghost had a very hard time and the other old ghost did its bit. Long live the two! Tralalee tralaley! Tralalee tralaley!
Who then thought up this pretty little song?
Two geese brought it over the sea.
Mach Toten lebendig.
Macht Kranken gesund.
The Farted Bride. The Three-cornered Pan.
What would Agaat be without her overtures?
The prunes have been stewing since early morning. I heard her take the packets out of the grocery cupboard, one, two, three. I heard her plop them in the water to soak before she put them on, heard her squeeze out the pips, plinks, plinks, into an enamel bowl.
Here they come, Mrs De Wet. Thou shalt behold thine prunes. More nourishing than sour grapes.
Perhaps she will relent. Perhaps she’ll make a souffle. Just for the beauty of it. Would that be the reason for the march-tempo that I hear approaching down the passage? A risen light-green puff of a spinach souffle in a white dish?
No. She’s selecting a tape. Thwick thwock, she pushes it into the player. Volume. Balance. Not a souffle. The Slave Chorus. The Grand March. Va pensiero.
I know this, this out-of-the-blue music-making. Accompaniment to the meal if she doesn’t feel like talking to me.
Camouflage, the music is at times. When there are visitors. To chase them away she deliberately chooses the chickle-chockle on little drums and tin guitars that interests Jakkie so much. So that I shouldn’t hear what she’s discussing with them in the sitting room. But what’s this all of a sudden that I’m not supposed to hear when all day I’m allowed to hear spinach pureeing and prunes plopping? I prick up my ears. Tchick, I hear under the music.
And another tchick. Open with the sideboard and shut.
What could it be? Whatever it is, it proceeds at a leisurely pace, to the beat of the music, down the passage.
I mustn’t hope for it. Fantastic timing it would be.
What do I see?
Yes I see. My eyes are open. I must believe them. With the rolls of maps held out in front of her on her arms she marches into the room solemnly. An offering. She stops just inside the door for me to take good note. She drags up a chair with one arm. Her face absolutely straight. She gets onto the chair. One by one she takes the rolls, hangs them by the loops from the picture rail. Doesn’t open them. Everyone rolled up and still secured with little bows.
Right, Agaat, Mrs de Wet here understands the trade-off!
An evacuation for an exposition! Fair enough!
A poop for a peep!
A panful for a panorama of Grootmoedersdrift!
Who else could think up that anagnorisis should coincide with catharsis?
Yes, Agaat, right enough, what is Mrs de Wet going to see? Mrs de Wet is going to see her arse. I know how your mind works. First Jak and now I. Calculated in such a way that we have only ourselves to thank.
Now she wants me to applaud. Now that I’m tired and worn out with everything that she’s been pushing under my nose. Now that I’ve become so feeble and so heavy of breath. Now that I must shit for old times’ sake. Without any pressure of my own. A mere sewer.
And here my spinach is now. Steaming in a saucer on the bridge. A bit of bicarbonate of soda to make it green.
But first there is another manoeuvre.
A shake manoeuvre. Little brown bottle. Shiny teaspoon.
First the Pink Lady, says Agaat, then the spinach.
The Lady is pink as the gums of dentures are pink. She is deposited on the seam of my tongue. She tastes of chalk and chewing gum. Three times she enters me. Agaat pleats her mouth.
Yuck, she says, I don’t know how you get it down.
Never mind, Agaat, I know.
Just a spoonful of spinach makes the medicine go down, Agaat sings.
Three sips of chlorophyll.
With every teaspoon her excitement increases. She can’t hide it. Could never. From the beginning her area of expertise. Ever since I’ve been unable to get onto the toilet seat myself, clean myself, she started formulating her rules and regulations, more and more complicated as my paralysis increased. Clean and unblocked she wanted to keep me all through my sickbed.
As if the second coming itself would take place along that passage.
Three sips of sweet black cellulose.
Tasty, the little prunes, says Agaat.
My dosing is a hurried business tonight. Who wouldn’t start becoming impatient for a denouement? Agaat has switched off the music. Doesn’t want to miss anything. Especially not my crapulent opening chords.
It’s explosive, I know, the mixture of pink and green and black gunge. A rainbow preceding the deluge. An old Grootmoedersdrift recipe.
My stomach starts churning. Ghorrr! it goes. Ghorrr! and gharrr! and gu! and blub! And in between the little singing sounds, zimmm-zoommm.
Agaat’s merry-go-round. Music to her ears.
Strike up, she says with a straight face.
She pulls the sheets from me. No nonsense tonight. We’re going to make doubly sure. She puts on latex gloves. She pops a suppository from its silver container. Translucent it is. Glycerine. For the laxation of the sensitive system. It has the shape of a bomb.
Not even time to turn me on my side tonight. A short cut will do as well. She pushes a hand in between my legs from the front. She runs a finger through the split of my buttocks to find the right entrance. She pushes in a finger to relax the sphincter.
Nothing wrong with the arse, she mutters. Old nag’s arse. Wouldn’t say it’s been cut open. Mommy’s mattress button.
The point of the pill is hard. She pushes it in without ceremony.
Take it, she says, take, swallow it. Otherwise I’m taking the horse’s pill-gun.
Listening is all very well, but who has ever argued with a sphincter?
She pushes it in still deeper.
I feel the muscle slip shut, contract the pill into my anus. Immediately I feel the effect.
Plop, plop, Agaat discards the gloves into the bin. She doesn’t cover me again with the sheet.
Hold on, she says to me, I’m just returning the tray.
As casually as if-you-please.
Hold on.
Am I Atlas? The myth is the wrong way round. The earth like heaven is not above us, but inside us. For us to retain in our cavities and to surrender through our orifices.
What do I hear Agaat sing as she marches down the corridor? Not Italian, no.
Tho’ there’s one motor gone we will still carry on, We’re coming in on a wing and a prayer.
There the pan perches covered with its clean white cloth. There hang the maps rolled up against the wall. There’s a merry rattling in the kitchen. Small arms. Beyond the ridge the regiment is mustering. What do I hear, is Agaat singing there? Singing so that I can hear where she is?
The Braun is being packed away in its box in the pantry.
Are you still holding on? the call comes, I’m just putting the spinach in the fridge quickly!
As if I could call back.
It cramps. A cloudburst somewhere higher up. A burgeoning mass. Completely fluid. Definitely a risk trying to pass wind.
Just don’t, Agaat calls through the clatter of dishes, just don’t go and squitter all over your bed, I put on clean sheets this morning.
I start to sweat.
The prune saucepan is scraped out. Slap, goes the lid of the rubbish bin. Heavy artillery!