Jak, you said, let’s give it up and go to bed, everything’s in any case under control again, as well and as badly as possible.
That was when Gaat came in again. She had awaited her opportunity. You could always hear her calculating her entrance. Her footsteps were soft, for the first time that day.
Is the child still not in bed? you asked when she stood there again with Jakkie on her arm, in the heavy silence that hung suspended between you and Jak.
She put the child down next to the sideboard whose drawers he opened every day, the one with his favourite handles. He pulled himself up by it immediately.
She went and crouched a few paces further diagonally behind him. Jakkie swivelled back his neck. First to one side and then the other, his mouth a rosebud as Agaat had taught him.
Come, she said, come to Gaat. She held out her arms.
Terrifyingly, he turned around. The little hand let go of the handle, the first wobbling solo stance it was.
Come, said Agaat, show your father-him how well you can walk already.
His little face broke into one radiant laugh.
’Alk, he said.
Yes, walk, Agaat said, walk walk walk!
And there it was, the unmistakable independent sequential first steps.
With the last steps he let himself fall, crowing with laughter, into his nêne’s arms. She got up with him, shook him up onto her hip, laughing into his eyes.
Pa’s little bull, Jak said, and opened his arms to receive him from her.
1 October 1964
They disappear like mice nowadays. Only have to take turn away once & to call when I miss them & then I know it’s too late for searching they want to be GONE. Wind & cloud they are together fern & water. Long hours together & full of secrets. Something about it makes me anxious. They’re chronically there around the drift & the dam or they hide in the forest. A. can’t swim & there are still baboons & leopards in the kloofs & A. with only one good hand & Jakkie not yet five & so attached to her one would swear she was his actual mother. Perhaps she is. I know she would protect him with her own life & yet.
Jak has plenty to say about it says I’m abandoning my child to wrong influences. He’s just jealous. I’m the one & only influence even if it is indirect. But now I’ve stipulated that she may not disappear anywhere without telling me where to exactly & at what time they’ll be back. After all, she has hr own watch that I gave hr for hr last birthday. She says she’d rather read the time from the sun but I tell hr put on your watch so that you can be back at the prescribed time I don’t want hassles.
In fact it’s not a hassle at all. Probably just needlessly concerned. After all she just takes him to all the little old places that I showed hr myself that were my places when I was small here on the farm & that pa had shown me. The tortoise cemetery the workshop of the elves the approach of the waterbuck the island with the blackest brambles where the dragonfly comes to nest on your shoulder a brooch of sapphire if it’s blue of rubies if it’s red but in reality the embodied breathing out & in of Him who dreams Holy dreams. I know in my heart that that is really all that Agaat tells him.
5 October 1964
Light-years says Jakkie. Prospect he says year-rings & krakadouw. He asks: Do eels also feel sad why do they stand up straight like that in the stream & what do whispering poplars whisper about & where’s the brack in the brackbush what do the whirligigs write in the water & why do they wear boots? I know where he gets it from. What can I say? My father taught me & I taught A.
At full moon as a child I used to be able to see two bay horses in front of a buck-wagon with a wedding couple on their way to a place called Eendekuil. I suppose it’s all really quite harmless. But there’s something dogged about Agaat’s way with Jakkie. Something about her energy that scares me.
Dreamt that she suffocates him & bashes his head to pulp with a brick. Not something I can tell Jak. Even less Agaat. Lord help me. I must attune myself to the beautiful & the good. Must pray that everything will conspire towards good here.
23 October 1965
A. is sixteen & I want her to be confirmed. So took hr last Sunday to the mission church in Suurbraak when we ourselves were on our way to church in Swellendam. Could see when we picked her up again that it hadn’t been a good idea. Had warned her that she couldn’t go to church in her cap & apron now she says she’s not going again the people laugh at her. Spoke to Dominee van der Lught. Now she goes to church with us in town. Sits in the mothers’ room with Jakkie. At least she now hears the sermon.
10 November 1965
Now I must feign blissful ignorance. Followed them all morning & ran home when they began to prepare to leave the forest. Must quickly get the afternoon meal ready otherwise A. will smell a rat but I can hardly contain myself. Am I jealous or angry or glad about what they saw?
10 November after supper
Great mysteriousness all day all parties under the cloak of secrecy. Why would they not want to tell me they’d seen it?
Agaat has been singing her own compositions all the time since they’ve been back & Jakkie is just about ready to explode with the secret but he’s under strict oath.
This morning just after ten I caught A. taking two bananas from the fruit bowl but I pretended not to see because then I knew immediately what she was planning & then I looked in the liquor cabinet & then I saw the rum that I use for caramel sauce already a tot down. She could at least have asked me. Probably shy that I’ll laugh at her how long did the two of us not sit & wait way back there in the forest with the stinking bait without seeing anything? & I really didn’t want to spoil the whole adventure for the little one.
We’re going to the Keurtjiekloof A. tells me with a straight face to look at the waterfall & we’ll be back just before lunch. My washing & ironing have been done & the vegetables peeled & the beetroot is cooked & the meat is in the pot just add water at eleven everything in one breath to prevent me from raising an objection but I say nothing & don’t bat an eyelid & I await my opportunity until they’re well & gone. Put on my walking shoes & take the high road through the Boesmanskloof to the forest because I knew then she would take the easy road lower down with Jakkie even though it’s longer. Estimated their pace accurately & lay in wait for them & when they had passed followed them to where A. decided to wait. A little clearing not far from where she & I that time sat for a whole week’s mornings & then I had to creep up very slowly to get a good view but without their noticing me. A. I know can hear a ghost walking.
So there she takes out the bananas from her apron pocket & a small bottle full of rum probably about five tablespoons & two paint-tin lids & a fork. Mash, she says to Jakkie. He likes little goblins like you to mix his food & Jakkie presses with the fork & she holds his hand so that he can get it fine enough. Then a few drops of rum with it on each lid. Here taste she says to Jakkie he spits sis yuck. I’m glad says A. he’s not here yet to hear you spitting because for him it’s food for a king the more stinky the better & he’s the emperor & she puts the lids in spots of sun so that the bananas can ferment.