Look! Look! Jakkie called. It was a klipspringer that had come over the river. The first one, with bewildered zig-zag leaps. As you stood there, more and more small game scattered over the yard. Hares, buck, skunks, even a jackal or two. You sent two farmboys to the river to rescue the tortoises. You knew how they could run from fire.
My goats, Agaat said suddenly. Her hands flew to her cap. She pulled it deeper over her forehead, My goats, my goats, she mumbled. Jakkie gazed after her anxiously but she didn’t return his look. Agaat’s goats were tethered on the other side of the river in a patch of lucerne that she had sown there for her herd. Every year her cows calved and her handful of slaughter-lambs she could sell well to the butcher in Swellendam. The goats were the latest addition, bought from the Okkenels.
The poor things are perishing of neglect down there at the huts, she’d said, the workers can rather buy cheap healthy goat’s meat from me than have them suffer from mange and blowfly and get slaughtered before they’re properly dead.
Gone she was with her quirt to go and untether her goats and drive them out.
Jak had the roofs of the sheds watered and the vehicles moved out. You had wet newspaper packed on the hay in the shed. You felt as if you were drifting a few centimetres above the ground. In a stupor you packed a few cases and put in food so that you could get out if need be. The yard was dry, there were bales of hay, dry lucerne in the shed. One spark on the thatched roof of the homestead could spell the end. All the stubble-fields further to the back, all the newborn lambs. But you couldn’t feel anything more that day. A paralysis had come over you, a bafflement as you stood there on the stoep next to Jakkie. Nailed to one spot he was through his own lying, too proud, or too scared, to give in.
You watched him closely. What kind of man is this, this child of yours, who can in a crisis like this put up a front, who can persist so in his own deceit? How scared must he not be that his father will find out that he’s been lying about his leg? How scared must he not be to leave Agaat in the lurch? How many such conspiracies had there been in the past of which you didn’t even know?
Ma, I smell rain!
That was Jakkie’s voice next to you. Little tongues of flame were licking through the oaks next to the drift. You pointed with your finger, more to silence him than anything else. You didn’t want him to talk. There was something pleading in his tone, as if he wanted to console you, apologise to you. His gaze was anxious, he couldn’t even start confessing.
The rain splashed out of the gusty south-easter. Fat plopping drops. A stray cloud, an evaporated day, scooped up by a rogue wind on the open sea and left exactly there where a fire was raging inland, a freak, something that didn’t even happen in books because it didn’t conform to any pattern of probability.
The three of you stood there on the stoep and watched the fire being rained into oblivion in front of your eyes.
A wet black soot covered the whole yard the next morning. The foothill in front of the house was burnt down from Luiperdskloof all the way to the slopes on The Glen side. From far away, there where you saw her standing at the crossing-place by the river, Agaat showed up against the blackened tree trunks. She was doing her rounds, making a survey of the damage. You turned around and went inside. You didn’t want her to see you. But you noticed when she came in by the kitchen door, that her whole apron all the way to her cap was covered in fine black specks. You stretched out a hand. She jerked away her head.
Don’t wipe, she said, it streaks.
Dawid came and told you an hour later in the backyard that one of Agaat’s kids was lying with a broken neck there by the river and he didn’t understand it, it wasn’t tethered any more, and its mother had been driven to safety in the hanslam camp behind the house that night.
It’s sopping wet and full of mud, Nooi. Dawid hesitated, cleared his throat.
Seems to me it stayed behind there, it seems somebody got at him quite badly, drowned it on purpose or something. There are skid marks there in the mud on the little bank. It was dragged in there, seems to me.
Agaat appeared in the doorway of the outside room with a black-and-white bundle of freshly laundered clothing in her arms.
Take it for yourselves, Dawid, clean it well before you slaughter, you have to make the best of such accidents. I suppose it lost its bearings in the fire.
She pressed past you. You could hear the clothes pegs rattling in her apron pocket.
Only later that day did you pick up the flat piece of river mud on the sitting room floor. Jakkie was sitting on the green sofa with Agaat on her knees in front of him. She was rubbing in his sore leg with Deep Heat.
Now what mud is this lying here? you wanted to ask but their faces forbade you.
The piece of trampled mud was grooved with the pattern of Agaat’s school shoe. You said nothing. You went and threw it into the drain in the backyard. You stood there for a long time contemplating her washing, strange so on a Sunday, on the line. White and black it billowed and slapped there in the gusty south-easter. Two aprons, two pairs of socks, two caps, two black dresses. You went and took them down before they could blow full of soot again. You were surprised at the weight of the wind-dry material in your arms. Lighter than one would think, you thought at first, but when you hung it over the lower door of the outside room, it suddenly felt heavier, as if immediately drenched with the smell of the outside room: Red soap, Jik, Omo, Reckitt’s Blue, starch, mothballs, borax, linoleum, body, bed, hair, Mum, calamine, rooibos tea, wool, thread, cloth.
You stood there for a long time in front of the dark hole of the door before you could turn away.
all at last cleared up the dominee the doctor the attorney attest now my last will and testament my farm on leasehold and also the homestead go to agaat until when she reaches eighty she has to hand it over to my son who must make further provision for her up to her death here is her funeral scheme their share as earlier to sow reverts to the okkenels they are henceforth answerable to agaat and she to them as mutually agreed the money from furniture cattle and yard sales and savings of the last seven years she may farm with on a modest scale to meet all her needs and requirements and to fall back on there is her pension reinforced herewith by hundred thousand rand plus extensively enlarged personal-nursing fee
my life I give into her hands for as long as she can carry me no hospital no pumps tubes wires except if I should want to determine differently later only for pain and inconvenience to relieve me of them I ask as I always have my drops agaat must dose me I am her sick merino sheep her exhausted soil her fallow land full of white stones her blown-up cow and acre of lodged grain her rusty wheat her drift from now on in flood she must have my hole dug and have the ring wall neatly whitewashed carve the meaning of everything on my headstone in her mouth I place my last word and in her eye over my departed body the last curse or blessing
because she knows what it is to be a farmer woman: windmill siphon corner post gate-latch and keystone the index of everything how do you convince her of her end how does one clear her up for death how does one get her switched off?
ask agaat that’s how it’s done
when her testament is at last written and her codicils when her estate has been wound up her herds diminished her yard tidied up and her cupboards and drawers cleaned out her giveaways sorted her workers given notice the whole rest of her personal detritus lipsticks powder-boxes nail polish empty tissue-boxes burnt her funeral planned to the last detail her hole dug her coffin in the attic lined with satin