Agaat couldn’t talk fast enough.
Chased them out of the grazing shut the gate so that they can’t get to the river but there’s a small drinking trough in that dosing-camp where they are now it’s probably also been drunk dry they’re thirsty they’re shitting green strings their eyes are watering they’re going to die off Hamburg’s in the holding pen in front of the crush pen but he won’t take one pace farther will have to get him in the headclamp quickly!
She was right. A bull like that, even when he’s ill, couldn’t just be doctored in the open. One swing of his head and you’d all be sent sprawling in the mud.
You wanted to know where Dawid was, where Kadys and Julies were.
I had them called down there by the cottages, they don’t come out.
How did she get the bull into the holding pen single-handedly?
Agaat was trotting down the passage to the pantry. Jakkie put up a bawl. Jak was gone, would only be back from tennis by milking-time. Saar and Lietja arrived heavy with sleep at the kitchen door with a cluster of littl’uns. Big and small stretched their necks to see into the kitchen if under the licence of irregularity there was something to loot.
Hey you, back! Agaat scolded them.
You had your hands in your hair. That sort of time on Grootmoedersdrift. Agaat gave you a look of pull-yourself-together-on-the-spot.
So listen well now, she said to Saar and Lietja, the new cattle have eaten tulips. Do just what I say and do it quickly! Coffee first, four cans full, double-strength, with sugar!
She looked at you. It could mean only one thing. Hamburg was critical. Sweet strong coffee was all that could save the most valuable animals.
Agaat issued orders non-stop while she worked. The little canister of raw linseed oil she’d already had rolled out of the pantry and the bag of linseed had also been dragged out. In the big white basin with the red roses on the bottom she measured out three measuring jugs of linseed oil and added hot water and stirred with a spatula as she talked. In another gallon-drum she ordered ten measuring jugs of barley and water.
You just stood there, your legs paralysed.
Brandy! she shouted at you! Quicklime! Five double handfuls!
You managed to secure the child in his pram. He would just have to scream now.
Four dozen eggs, whites and yolks separated! she ordered Saar.
Four cups of brandy with the whites! Stir! In the hanslammers’ bottles! Screw shut! When the coffee’s brewed, get it cooled down! Pour it into cooldrink bottles! Be quick quick quick! Bring the roll of rubber piping with the elastic ring around the end behind the pantry door! And a knife! Have it ready! Get a move on!
Now you felt the adrenaline, quickened your pace, grabbed Jak’s ten-year-old brandy out of the cabinet, went and dragged the bag of lime out of the storeroom. You understood everything that Agaat commanded. You just couldn’t have remembered it all yourself so exactly. You knew what was at stake. The new bull was a champion and had cost tens of thousands of rand. You threw a few handfuls of lime into a canister. How much water? you called.
Fifteen jugs! Mix well!
Agaat was already measuring off the raw linseed oil in the big glass rusk canister.
Together you added the lime-water to the oil and shook it up in the bottle, you with your hands above and below, Agaat with her unbalanced grip round the sides.
First to and fro! Agaat directed. Up and down!
Now it’s right, leave it, put down! she called when it had formed a thick cream.
The vet! she called after you. Ring him, give him a list of our medicines, ask him if it’s right, tell him to come, quickly!
In the topsy-turvy you hadn’t even thought of that. But she was right. There had to be a control. So that nobody could say that you’d made mistakes.
Doctor is playing golf, said Mrs Vet.
Take a pen, sweetheart, you heard yourself say, and write! Raw linseed, lime, barley, tannic acid, coffee, brandy, Hamburg tulip poisoning, crisis Gdrift, 13 September, 5 p.m., have you got it? You rang off before she could reply.
You went and fetched the bakkie and parked it in the backyard. Agaat had the bakkie loaded with bottles of sugared coffee and the bottles of egg-whites with brandy, the big rusk bottle full of lime-and-oil cream, the drum of barley water and the drum of slimy raw linseed on water, all sorted into boxes. And the thin rubber tubes, the Coopers dosing-syringes from the shed, a bottle with tannic acid, a measuring spoon, the thicker rubber tubes and cans for the enemas, plastic funnels, tins full of boiled water and bottles with screw-tops and extra bottles and containers.
The whole rescue mission was ready to roll within an hour. Everybody wanted to bundle into the back of the bakkie. Agaat looked at you, now you had to speak. She tried to calm Jakkie. He was bawling his head off with the hubbub.
That they had to be very calm not to frighten the animals, you said, that they had to work slowly and with a plan to your and Agaat’s orders nothing more and nothing less, that they must not talk loudly, and make no restless movements, that everybody first had to go and scrub their hands and rinse them every time between every animal. And that Saar and two big boys and one littl’un were in your team. And Lietja and two striplings and the other three littl’uns in Agaat’s team. And that they should remain behind you when you arrived in the camp because you first had to get to the bull in the holding pen to doctor him.
O-alla-got, Saar said and tied her headscarf tighter.
Don’t come and o-alla here now, where are your menfolk? you scolded. Why can’t you keep them on track?
Saar looked away. But was there also something else in her attitude? Because she’d seen Agaat ordering you about and you doing everything exactly as she said, a little servant-girl of hardly thirteen? Her face was cunning. There wasn’t time to say arrange your face. In any case you thought twice before saying that to the kitchen-maids.
You sent one of the boys to go and commandeer OuKarel. You knew Agaat had everything right about the medicine and you had learnt from your mother about the procedures with tulip poisoning, but experience was what was lacking. You needed OuKarel’s eye there, you felt. You remembered your mother’s belief that a bull, not to mention a new one, wouldn’t co-operate if there wasn’t a man in the company.
In the camp the animals were huddled around the drinking trough as Agaat had predicted.
And there was Hamburg, his hump seven hands high above the rails of the holding pen. He’d be able to flatten it like nothing. His head was hanging, strings of drool from his mouth, and the piss and the thin slimy dung ran out of him. He pressed himself against the back of the partition.
How had Agaat got him in there? How would you move him to the threshold of the crush pen? Would the headclamp be in working order?
Wide-eyed the maids stood staring. Agaat trotted off to test the lever of the clamp. Up and down she pressed it so that the flat shaft first bent at the hinge in the middle and then lifted up. Open and shut she operated it, the steel arms of the clamp flashing in the sunlight over there at the far end of the crush pen.
How are we going to get him in there? you asked her.
He’s already half dead, Agaat said, look how deep his eyes are, he’s wonky in the front legs, he won’t give us grief.
How? you asked with the eyes.
Agaat hooked the index finger of her strong hand in front of her nose.
With the bare hand on his nose-ring?
That’s how I got him there in the pen, Agaat said.
You didn’t believe her. The holding pen’s gate was wide open. You were sure she’d prodded him in there from behind.