Beatrice clicks her tongue. She looks round the room. Her eyes dart swiftly, scrutinisingly over everything. She thinks I’m not all there. She thinks I can’t really see, I’m just a reflex of pupils. She thinks I can’t see how she slides open the drawer of the dressing table and peeks into it while she’s talking, how she picks up the folded towels from the two bedpans and looks into them, how she picks up the medicines from the trolley and screws up her eyes to read the names on the little bottles, how she runs her finger along the bedpost, how she glances askance at the camp sretcher against the wall.
Must say everything looks nice and tidy here, she says, clean and all. I suppose it’s better than the hospital, familiar isn’t it, I suppose one would rather just be at home.
The volubility of the living. Her cup runneth over. Bountiful she wants the harvest to be from death’s dominion, from death’s antechamber. She wouldn’t have wanted to come for nothing, that’s clear. I can just hear her account: Nothing in the bedpans, doesn’t look as if they’ve ever been used. I suppose everything has just about ground to a halt in that department. The woman eats almost nothing. The maid says just little-little bits of thin gruel.
What the one madam wishes the other: thin gruel and a seized-up internal mechanism. I can see it, the smugness of the impeccable messenger, the primly-pleated pout, it would take more than a bedpan under her backside to conquer her conceit.
Shall I go and see if I can find Agaat?
Beatrice comes to loom over me. She looks as if she wants a twig to prod me. She should just open her eyes, there are sticks on the trolley, flat ice-cream sticks and ear-buds, she can choose. I want to say boo! I want to put out my tongue. I open my eyes, wide, suddenly, and then I peel them back for her, and I flicker for my neighbour’s wife by my bier of death, the flicker of death, sustained and unmistakable, the vibrating blackwhite eyelash butterfly. Leminitis camilla. Map butterfly. Liberated in the occluded valley. Haven’t felt so lively in a long time. The effect is all one could desire. It is sung. Mezzo-soprano in The Spout.
O Lorrrd Mil-la, Oh Go-o-od he-e-l-ep! Steps back, back, her eyes glued to my face. Boer diva in stage shock, Jak would have said.
Yes, don’t look away, Beatie, look, that’s what you get for coming to stand by my bed with a fastidious smirk on your face. Look how my eyeballs quake! It’s my last little bit of muscle power! With that I can move worlds!
She runs down the passage. Gaat! she screams. Her voice is shrill.
Gaat, come quickly, Gaat! Help! The oumies!
Out at the back door. Cat-twah! the screen door slams. I hear her hammer on the outside room’s door, a window is pushed open. A scream. I count the seconds. Then the screen door slams again. Another scream.
Lorrd Jesus please, help! Beatrice exclaims. She’s by the telephone in the passage. I hear the back door open again. I know who it is. I know who’s waiting surreptitiously in the kitchen to hear what’s going on, I know who’s standing behind the door and listening attentively. I want to laugh. I wish I could laugh. Water comes to my eyes. Beatrice the emphatic, Beatrice whom Agaat could imitate so well since childhood. We eavesdrop on her together, Agaat and I. We wait behind the curtains.
Thys, Thys is that you Thys? Thys, yes listen Thys I’m here with Milla de Wet and I think she’s on her deathbed the woman, and I think that maid of hers is dead already.
Agaat, yes.
No, I told you don’t you remember, she phoned this morning and asked I should come tomorrow she has to go to town for all sort of business and funeral arrangements.
Thys, no, listen to me now!
No, I thought I’d rather come and have a look this afternoon already, the maid sounds half odd to me.
No, towards five o’clock. Didn’t you get my note that I left you on the sideboard?
No, when I got here everything was wide open and the yard deserted and Milla was lying all on her own in a pitch-dark shut-tight room with a green thing over her face.
Over her mouth and nose, yes.
In any case so then her eyes peeled back and her eyelids started fluttering, something terrible.
No, Thys, I didn’t touch her.
No, that’s what I’m telling you, she was nowhere to be found, so I went to see where the creature could be when you needed her and then I found her in the outside room lying with exactly the same green thing on her face!
No, through the window, the door was locked, but I could see, the girl’s bed is next to the window.
No, I don’t know, I was out of there so fast.
A tube? No, I don’t know about tubes, Thys.
What?
Poison? No, Lord, Thys, I don’t know, but now is not the time.
Yes, I hear you. Just come. No, Thys, gas or poison, it doesn’t matter.
No, the point is that I’ve now arrived here unexpectedly, don’t you see? Perhaps I’ve just come upon it too soon, if you understand what I mean.
No, Lord, Thys, why must I always have such a time getting something into your head, my dear husband. Suicide! Suicide! That’s what I say yes. Perhaps they both, you know, how do they say? a joint, a shared, how does one say? a linked, perhaps they decided it’s the only way out of the misery, a team effort, ai, what is the word again? Because I tell you it’s crawling with pills and pans in there and it smells of dead!
No, Thys, I’m not going into that room again!
No, Thys, please. I’m not going to revive Agaat, I don’t doctor coons!
No, I want to leave now I feel too weird here. It’s a. . a. . double-decker! How does one say it?
Well then just come immediately please!
No fine, fine, I’ll wait till you come, I’ll wait outside. And Thys, ring the doctor and ring the police and ring Dominee van der Lught. I’m going to ring off now Thys, I have to get out of this house, it gives me the creeps, I’m waiting for you in front, just come, bring Magda along, she lays out bodies doesn’t she, tell her it’s a twin, bye Thys bye!
Beatrice picks up speed down the passage. Trot-trot slip-slide into the sitting room as she cuts the corner. Clicks-clicks go the heels. Rattles the front door. Must have locked behind her when she came in. Neighbour’s wife incarcerated with cadavers. My cadaver, your cadaver, us together in our palaver.
Here comes Agaat now. Heard the whole phone conversation, that I can tell from the footsteps. From the kitchen she comes, from behind the door where she’s been eavesdropping, down the passage, quickly. She looks agitated when she comes into my room, cap at a crazy angle. She comes and stands close to me, looks into my eyes.
What do I hear you’ve been flickering here? What kind of flickering with the eyes and what kind of peeling back? Are you feeling faint?
No, Agaat, it’s a joke.
She’s too alarmed to read me correctly.
Sorry, Ounooi, I overslept, completely, I’m sorry. Ai.
She takes off the mask, wipes away my drool, smoothes cream on my face where the edge of the mask has pressed against my cheeks.
I flicker with my eyes, everything’s fine Agaat, I could die laughing, I laugh.
She doesn’t see it.
Nooi Beatrice, she must have got a fright, I was lying there in my room with the oxygen mask, with the extra one, I wanted to see how it works, whether it works well, whether you can breathe from it. If I get extra breath from it, how it feels to get extra breath. Then I went to sleep, must have been from too much breath, then I went into such a deep, deep sleep, I’m sorry. Then I woke up from the window. Then nooi Beatrice pushed open the window from the outside.
Agaat fiddles with my eyelids, she draws the upper lid over the lower, presses on the soft spots under my eyes, as if she wants to arrange them properly, living eyes, that don’t just peel back for nothing.