If I could suddenly find my tongue, I’d be able to tell it to you in so many words: All that we could think up to do, you and I, all our lives, was to unbosom ourselves in our inner chamber before the Lord. Oh hearken to me, your little girl-child meek and mild, oh preserve me, your bleeding virgin, bless me, woman of your nation, but what did that make Him? An insurance agent placating his policy-holders? A panjandrum of the harem? I don’t know about you, friend, but in my married life God was not on the side of the unmaskers. He was the great Mask himself. Our polygamous Heavenly Spouse. Do you remember Mrs Missionary van der Lught’s recommendation? That we should pray to Him in our Overberg Version of Psalm 119, Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity and quicken thou me in thy way. Indeed. Here I lie now, biered for the fatherland.
Would you understand that, Beatrice? In your book, I imagine, the dying may not mock?
Nevertheless, dear neighbour, note, my mask nowadays is made of hard green plastic. My life has changed. I am harmless to you, impervious to that God of mutually humbugging neighbourliness and pretentious poets. I am delivered to the mercy of my diary of former days. And it runs deeper than little kitchen secrets, I can tell you. And at present God is vengeful as in his youth, and it feels a whole lot more honest. Indeed, He has become a woman. He is now named Agaat, not that I think you can understand Greek. ‘Agaat’, do you know what else it also means apart from the name for a semi-precious stone?
I can feel Beatrice shying away from me. Unsatisfied. What did she expect? The Ave Maria in sign language?
How would she have got in here? What’s happened to Agaat?
Through half-closed eyelids I can make out that the curtains are drawn. But it’s not the morning light shining through, it’s not morning.
It’s afternoon, late afternoon. What’s Beatrice doing here? She was supposed to come in the morning, tomorrow morning. Then Agaat would be away in town.
But Agaat didn’t come to say goodbye, didn’t say she was leaving now. She put on the oxygen mask for me. That was the last time I saw her.
She said, rest a while, breathe easily.
She said, just don’t faint again, please not.
That was after lunch. It was today after all. Could the days be starting to play tricks on me? First spoon of jelly then I almost choked. So then she had to thump me again to get it out, first come and sit behind me to do the Heimlich, several times in succession. The first time that Agaat has entered my bed in broad daylight.
Today it was, I’m not confused.
Her heart thumping against my back. Her legs on either side of my body. Her arms around my stomach. A trace of anxiety mingled with her starched medicinal smells. After she’d got me calmed down, she was pale, didn’t want to look me in the eye.
She put on the mask, her hand on my chest, regulated the oxygen, drew the curtains.
Rest a while.
Let me die, I asked with my eyes.
No, Agaat said with her eyes, don’t be otherwise.
The elastic of the oxygen mask pulls my hair at the back painfully. No way that I could convey this to Beatrice. And what could she do about it? She’d sooner touch the tail of a crocodile than me. And I have one Tamer. She who can open the doors of my face.
I hear the chirping of sparrows. Late afternoon. Exuberant sparrows that can breathe again after the scorching day. Thirty-eight degrees, Agaat said. Oh, for the breath of the tiniest sparrow! If I could inhale it into me. I would live the better for it. I’d be able to spit in the face of the inquisitive wife of my neighbour. By her sneezings a light doth shine.
Could we open the curtains just a bit?
We. Overberg plural. The fact that Beatrice can consult the realm of death on domestic matters makes her light-headed. Light streams into the room. I can feel her watching my face.
I’m sorry if I gave you a fright. I thought I might as well come this afternoon. I’ll stay over if you like. I spoke to Agaat on the phone this morning. She wants to go to town tomorrow, she asked if I would stay with you in the morning. But then she didn’t sound altogether together to me. So I came over quickly to see if you’re managing here. You never know what the creatures will get up to if you don’t keep an eye on them. And with you so helpless here, for all you know they’re robbing you blind, I don’t mean Agaat of course, I mean the others. It’s not as if she can be everywhere all the time. I wonder where she is. Somewhere in the back I suppose. I knocked but nobody came. And the front door was wide open. And there’s a whole pile of loose stuff in the sitting room, looks as if it’s been put out to be carried off. I’ll tell her she should really lock the doors, my goodness, you two women so alone here in the place, nowadays you can’t be sure of your own life. I must say, Milla, I’ve often wondered whether she’s really competent enough to look after you here on her own, but I hear from Mrs le Roux that Doctor is very satisfied. She’s better than a nurse apparently, knows every need of yours, and is very meticulous with everything. Ai, one can just be grateful that some of them are still like that.
Beatrice opens the curtains further.
Is it too light?
I open my eyes as wide as I can.
Lord woman! Can you see me then?
She comes nearer. Looks me in the eyes. I can see the plan forming in her head. She holds a finger in front of my nose, moves it from left to right. I follow my neighbour’s wife’s finger with my eyes.
Heavens, she says, so you can really still see. . and. . everything.
Yes, see and everything, hello Beatrice, I blink. She wants to giggle, swallows it quickly.
She closes the curtain slightly again. Nervous, uncomfortable with me, can’t face it. I can’t face her either. So much embarrassment on the face, so much fear and aversion, all at the same time. She’d look at me much more readily if I were a stuffed pig with an apple in my mouth. She did look at me more readily when I was stuffed. Mrs de Wet with a sentinel in her mouth. Would Beatrice ever have given Thys a blow job? She certainly always could open her mouth wider than anybody else on the church-choir gallery. To articulate with emphasis. Thy praise shall linger on my lips.
Shall I open the doors a bit, it’s a bit close in here.
Beatrice tripples to the stoep doors, opens them.
Here comes a play for voices. And for smells. For neighbour’s wife, sparrow-fart and the intimations of mortality.
A-g-a-a-a-t! she calls in a little high-pitched voice. A-g-a-a-a-t! first to this side and then that side of the stoep.
A swarm of sparrows takes off from the bougainvillea. Beatrice’s dress is the wrong shade of blue next to the purple.
I wish she would leave. I wish Agaat would come and take her to the sitting room and say she’ll manage thank you and give her tea so she can get herself gone. I’ll signal off, off here with the Neighbour’s Wife in search of a Drama, she can keep her heartfeltness for when I’m cold and coffined, thank you. I’ll blink my eyes until Agaat understands: I’ll be content with Saar, Saar can sit with me tomorrow when she goes to town, I’ll go mad with such sanctimonious blethering in my ears all morning, stark staring mad. All that Saar ever says is ‘oumies’. When she sweeps the passage, she stops for a moment, straightens up, and looks in here. ‘Oumies,’ she says then, an acknowledgement of my existence, on the same small scale, the single word, as the scale on which I now live. She looks at me as one looks at a sheep that has long since lain down with bluetongue. ‘Oumies’. Ounooi. Indeed. What more is there to say? It’s honest at least.
Sickbed comforters generally don’t talk to you but to themselves, especially if you’re in the process of dying. You’re a trial run for their excuses.
I wonder where Agaat can be, says Beatrice. I hope she doesn’t often leave you on your own like this now, after all, you can at any moment. . you can at any moment need her. Ai Milla that you should lie here so at the mercy.