Did she have everybody on her side even then?
Jak could in any case not endure it too long under Agaat and her convicts. He left his bag of bones and tried to assist the vet. You yourself tried to hurry along the bone-collecting. If the singing were to carry on any longer, you felt, the walls of the homestead would tumble down like those of Jericho.
The bonemeal feeds that you administered helped to get the oxen, the bulls and the cows that had not given birth that year back into condition. But the best dairy cows, all of those that would have calved that season and that had been put to graze in the little back camp next to the river, were lost.
Three days long the deaths continued. Over and over the process repeated itself, the staggering gait with which it started, the glassy stare, the puzzled gaze, the drooping ears, the tangled coat, and the dried-up nostrils. One after the other they lay down. One by one the heads became too heavy there where they were lying in the grass. They turned their noses into their flanks trying to support their heads. The flanks collapsed. The jaws were paralysed, the tips of the tongues lolled on the teeth in front, drool and foam glistened around the mouths, heavily the great brown gullets moved up and down. One after the other soft, pining death you accompanied, your hand on the flank, your hand on the little crown between the ears. You wept by your cows. The best of them were descendants of the animals you had known as a child. Aandster’s great-great-grandchild, Pieternella’s distant cousins, all the meek caramel-coloured mothers.
When the convicts had gone and all the cows were buried, Agaat came to you. She came to sit by you in your room with Jakkie drinking his bottle in her arms. She put the old green Handbook on your lap. Her voice was neutral. Her eyes shone.
Open on page 221, she said, open, and ask me anything, I am fully learned now, about anything that can possibly happen to a cow.
the countenance of doctors is the seat of dissimulation the whispered consultation behind the screens i don’t add up on any side am wrong geometry am failed electricity am vapour before the sun am nothing more than particles and waves my irradiated skeleton a room-divider my head in a tunnel my neck in a hole my leg in a bath my arms weightless groping for nothing in sleeves of lead in cylinders full of pink water wild and waste is death before death in a solution of salts i am dipped painted with mediums contending for dominance water earth fire and air a quadruple judgement hangs over my neck invisible eels prick the skin of the fingertips skin that provisionally enshrouds my failure a fascicle of breath engirdled by fate against him the intact the voluble the preserved in his coat of whitewash i fear mrs de wet the worst oh my soul you are audited by a battery of stethoscopes gallery of savants who are gauging the woman who cannot break an egg the woman who cannot sweep with a broom the one in hundredthousand mrs de wet oh genuflecting deeply edified congregation of god in swellendam all in the twinkling of an eye compassionate in tones of gloating resounds the intercession she must fall safely as rain in winter o Lord must descend soughing like a manna of edible butterflies while silent assistants connect me to electrodes transilluminate me weigh me the specific gravity of my spirit which i must surrender if i correctly understand the explanation of gradual enfeeblement on the dials of the control panels of the angels with flaming swords the electromyographers their needles in my flesh they whisper in unison the sickness of charcot the sickness of lou gehrig now the sickness of Grootmoedersdrift the mother of all sicknesses you are besieged in your head a tongueless bunker with loopholes
10
In the grey light of morning the rainbow looks different. Darker than last night by lamplight. Then it looked like an empty bright stage-set where actors were due to appear, singers, to bring life to it. Now it looks like a hole in the plastering, a dark plane against the white wall. Dark rainbow.
Agaat is tired this morning. Her face is withdrawn. She appears by my bedside less frequently than usual. She avoids my eyes. Her embroidery lies folded on the chair. On top of it lies the little blue book open at where she was last reading before I fainted. The building of the fireplace.
Sometimes I think it’s no longer I who am the target of the reading. She does it for herself, to generate energy. To squeeze anew from history a last pressing of indignation, but not so as to destroy me with it the more easily, but as a shot in the arm, as fuel for herself to carry on nursing me every day.
Because her arms are tired. I can feel how she struggles when she has to turn me, lift my legs, my hands.
Her feet are sore, I can hear she walks with difficulty. She’s burnt out.
How valiant was she not at the start, in those early days when we had just heard what was wrong with me. Fired with enthusiasm even. She thought she would handle it, as she had handled all illness and death in her life.
She was upset that I wouldn’t take her with me to Cape Town, alarmed when I came back after a week.
Leroux came to fetch me and brought me back again. I pretended to be sleeping in the car. I didn’t want to listen to his chatter. I thought of Agaat, how I was to convey it to her. A few times I felt the wind buffet the car, heard him swear, felt the car swerve as he corrected. It was a wild wind typical of the change of season and it raged all the way from Groote Schuur to The Spout. When we got out in the yard I could see the willows by the dam being blown to one side. I could smell the fennel, sharp as always when the wind blew just before the rains.
12 May 1993 it was. A Wednesday afternoon. Agaat served tea and rusks in the sitting room.
In her eyes the full orchestra was playing.
So here you are again! Alive and kicking! Pure affectation! Didn’t I tell you! Or what am I saying? Let’s have it! If there’s more to know, I want to know it! Now! This minute! Winter pains? Frozen shoulder?
I shuttered my regard, answered cautiously, later-later-clear-out-now.
It was what he’d suspected all along, said Leroux and added milk to his tea.
Not hypochondria. Not this time.
Small smile, quickly wiped away. In front of him lay the papers with the results of the tests.
I must plan, he said.
One and a bit of sugar.
I must make provision.
Doctor Stir-well.
I must start formulating a living will.
Doctor Dunk-a-rusk.
You’re never done with such a testament. You can always change it again. In the end it really only has to state in black and white what must happen one day when you can no longer change anything yourself.
T chirr-tchirr, the creeper against the pane.
Who must do it then. .
Picks a crumb out of the tea.
Who may change something then. .
I heard a dog’s bark downwind blow away right out of its mouth.
Who may change something on your behalf. . take decisions on your behalf. . now do I understand what he means?
Ticks, with the teaspoon in the saucer.
I must consider it well, I have enough time, he said. Three years, maybe five in my case. I must realise he himself does after all think very progressively about these matters, he always wants only to alleviate all and any suffering as much as possible and he is at my service I need only speak the word, do I understand?
As far as possible. Alleviate he wants to.
Up-and-down with his eyebrows. Read-me-I’m-an-open-book-my-name-is-Euthanasia-Leroux-MB Ch.B.
Well, in my book there’s little scope for speculation, Doc. I was born Redelinghuys, house of reason.
I beg your pardon?
I said, time will tell.
I wanted him to leave. Agaat was listening from behind the kitchen door. I could hear the floorboards creak. She had taken a dislike to the man from early on, could imitate his would-be fatherly blanditudes to a nicety.