See what you look like! You like it. Tell me: How do you rape somebody who wants to be raped?
You just wanted not to be seen by anybody. To and fro you stepped as he shoved you, just to remain behind the plume bush. The sharp leaves cut your hands every time you fell against the bush.
Fall, come fall once more, then I’ll have earned some points. Then you’ll notice me! An Oscar for Jack the Ripper!
He slapped your garden hat off your head with one hand and caught you on the cheek with the other hand, and as you ducked away, again on the other cheek. Left, right, left. The slaps burnt on your skin.
A healthy flush! A few good slaps! That’s all you can tolerate from me isn’t it? Otherwise you don’t trust how much I love you.
Papa’s little princess! So scared of the wolf in the dark! Au, stubbed her little toe! That’s where it comes from. That’s the beginning of it all. That’s what you did with Jakkie when he was small. What will you say when your heir turns out a bloody faggot one day? When I was his age, I’d long since lain with girls, but where does he lie? In the outside room, I bet. What’s to come of it?
Jak, you don’t know what you’re saying, I can’t listen to this any longer.
You sat amongst the leaves of the plume bush and pulled up your knees and lowered your head. He bent open your arms, squatted by you, spoke into your face, you could smell him, his unwashed body, his bitter breath.
Sis, you said, sis, you stink, get away from me.
With all the shoving and wriggling the seeds of the plume had come loose, white itchy feathery tips that descended around your heads, clung to your arms.
What’s a bit of sweat, Milla, compared with the smell that hovers here over Grootmoedersdrift?
Look at Agaat! What must she think of you when she hears you allow yourself to be shouted at and beaten up? Every day at her post. Starched and ironed. A masterly maid! She plays you much better than I do, doesn’t twitch a muscle when you find fault. And she learns from it, Milla, I’m telling you today, and don’t forget it, all the time she’s learning from us.
You tried to get to your feet, shouted against his tirade. Then why don’t you go away? Why do you stay with me if I’m so dreadful?
You grabbed at him, thought he would come to his senses if he felt a touch. But he took your hands and threw them from him.
I can’t go away, Milla, even if I wanted to. I’m stuck here! You batten on me! But I’m almost done, do you hear me, almost. Then you can advance again. You’ve provided a reserve, after all. In the hanslam camp. Agaat Lourier. Pre-raped. Yes, don’t look at me like that, it’s the truth! As no man can rape a woman. She’s ready for you! To the bitter end! Because that much I can tell you now, I’m not going to make it all the way with you, Milla, that I know in my bones!
Jak kicked over the seed trays, trampled the new seedlings.
Pansies! he shouted.
The two of you think you can stop me from getting to Jakkie. You think you can scheme behind my back. You think you can make him soft, you and your skivvy. With your caterwauling and your carryingson and your nods and winks. What is to become of him? What am I to tell him about his mother if he asks me? Have you thought of that? He knows more than you think in any case. And do you know how? Your skivvy tells him! Blow by blow!
Jak, you’re out of your mind, you must get help, you said, as calmly and as firmly as you could.
Then he shoved you out from behind the plume bush almost into Jakkie standing there with his white bandage around his leg and a basket of dried pears that he’d fetched from the drying-trays. Jak didn’t see him at first. You signalled at him with your hands behind you to be quiet, but his final sentences sounded out loud in the open. And then you saw Agaat running up the stoep steps and she was pressing her hands to her ears.
Help! What help! I’m not the one who was sick here first, Jak shouted after you, it’s you, you’re the one who’s sick here. I’ll get well, I’ll get myself away from here, even if I have to do away with myself!
Jak looked into Jakkie’s face for a single moment and half brushed over his eyes. Then he walked away in the opposite direction, towards the sheds, his bare upper body white in the sun.
Jakkie walked in front of you to the house. Hobbling.
Walk properly dammit, I know you’re putting it on! you wanted to shout at him.
But how could you? You pressed both your hands to your glowing cheeks. A healthy flush. You looked at the palms of your hands, your forearms, criss-crossed with tiny itchy cuts all the way to the crook of your arm.
Agaat kept the announcement for dessert. Concentration-camp pudding. You could tell from its appearance that it hadn’t been a good day in the kitchen. Baked in too much of a hurry, so that the sauce bubbled out at the sides, burnt black on the edge of the white enamel dish. All the food was burnt. She’d just disappeared in her usual manner in the afternoon and put in an appearance only after five to cook. And then she stood by while you were eating. It was a silence broken only by the rubbing of the creeper against the window frames, and now and again the chittering of a loose gutter in a gust of wind. You had a fire-red rash on your hands and arms and you were full of white streaks where the Lacto Calamine Lotion had dried on you.
You look as if you’ve been in the wars, Ma, said Jakkie.
Jak put his knife down hard.
Agaat carelessly slid the pudding-dish from her oven gloves onto the table.
With the back of his spoon Jakkie tapped the hard crust of the pudding.
Oops, little accident, he said.
Such little accidents will happen from time to time, you said. Why don’t you rather tell us how exactly you hurt your leg? Did somebody tackle you badly, or what?
Then Agaat rammed the serving-spoon into the centre of the pudding and it stayed upright.
Just above Koggelmanklip, she said, to the left of the upper reservoir next to the kloof, there in the dry stubble and all along the protea bushes.
What about that? Jak asked.
There the foothill is burning.
I could swear I’ve been smelling something, Jakkie exclaimed and got to his feet before he remembered about his leg. Agaat darted him a sharp look.
Au! he exclaimed and fell back in his chair.
So why don’t you speak up if you can smell it? she asked, her eyes fixed on Jakkie’s face.
You ran out onto the front stoep. If that was where the fire had started, it had jumped in the meantime. There were several patches on fire all along the flank of the first foothill in front of the house. The flames were leaping up high and moving forward fast in the gusty wind. You could hear the crackling all the way from the yard. The strip of proteas and fynbos stretching from under the reservoir almost all the way to the wattles, was one seething mass of flames. You could hear from the loud cracks how the brittle wood of the wattles and the rooikrans caught fire.
What I’ve always predicted will happen, has happened, you said.
Of course you’ve always predicted it and of course you’ve been saying for a long time we should eradicate the alien invaders because they burn too easily, because of course you’re a nature conservationist but nobody ever listens to you until it’s too late, Jak said without looking at you.
It was clear that there was nothing to be done about the fire. The labourers were arriving in batches on the yard. Dawid hooked the water cart to the tractor. There was a shouting for sacks and spades. But they remained standing there dazed in a little group, pressing their hats to their heads. Now and again looked at you on the stoep. Making a firebreak wasn’t an option with the wind. That everyone knew, extinguishing even less.