Am all of a sudden not allowed in the bathroom when Jakkie is having a bath. Not J. either. No, he’s too big now says Jakkie but not for A. no she’s allowed. In & out with pyjamas and clean towels all bustle and display for my benefit. Sits with him on an apple box while he baths & chatters (have already removed the chair from there to discourage hr but she takes no notice). Had to go and fetch a bag of down in the little store for two new pillows and stuff them there in the backyard otherwise J. will complain of the mess & then I saw through the steam the movements. A. adding water or getting up to wash his back. Then I heard him ask her: Where do you come from? what does your name mean? Long stories she spins him. Couldn’t make out everything. She teases him he laughs and giggles he persists with his questions. A. says: I crawled out of the fire. Isn’t true says Jakkie you’re lying he says. Is true she says I was dug out of the ash stolen out of the hearth fell out of a cloud came up with the fennel washed down in the flood was mowed with the sickle threshed with the wheat baked in the bread. No seriously asks Jakkie what kind of a name is that? nobody else has a name like that. Baptised like that left like that. But it’s actually A-g-g-g-g-gaat that goes g-g-g-g like a house snake behind the skirting board. Gaat Gaat Gaat says Jakkie, sounding the g in his throat as if he’s gargling, it’s a name of nothing. That’s right says A. it’s a name of everything that’s good. It’s everything and nothing six of one and half a dozen of the other.
So there she was singing him an odd little song with Scripture thrown in an odd tune I’m writing it up here what I remember of it. Perhaps J. is right A. not a good influence on Jakkie. Can’t put my finger on it. After all she got it all from me but what she makes of it is the Lord knows a veritable Babel. Doleful in a way that makes me want to hide my head somewhere. This person! — how in God’s name did she get like that?
I’m the ear of the owl
I’m the eye of the ant
I’m the right of the rain
The song started off quite low & went higher & higher & faster & faster. Made me think of a choral piece. Which composer? Can’t think that I would ever have told her about it can hardly remember it myself it was so long ago at university. I write your name on the sand & the snow on the white loaf of my days. Everywhere on everything that is dear to me, I write your name. And by the power of this word I shall start my life anew. I was born to call you by your name: Freedom. Something like that. But A.’s song was about something else. Couldn’t make head or tail of it.
I stand sentry at the meal of the mealy-mouthed jackals (here she
sings in high head-tones)
I’m the meal of the first milling
Rejoice oh young man your joy is short-lived
I’m the rising of the dough
The lump in the throat
I’m the mouth of the mother
I’m the faith of the father
And the babble of the baby in the bath
Come come bath in my hands
my hands my song of deformity (could that be? perhaps I mis-
heard here? & it just went on and on)
I’m the riches of the ridges
The palms of palmyra are mine
Where’s the what of the wattle?
Where the fen of the fennel?
With me!
I’m the end of the river-bend
And the breadth of the Breede
I’m the why of the whynot
I’m the where of the nowhere
I’m the blood of the bluegum.
Stop stop! Jakkie shouted please stop that’s enough! No that’s what you wanted isn’t it! A. said now you must listen! & she teases him because he doesn’t want to get out of the bath naked in front of her & he can’t run away & he just has to stay and listen there until she’s finished singing & then she sang even louder to irritate him & then she patched together a little tune with talking in-between a whole performance there in the steam condensing ever more densely on the windows.
I’m my brother’s keeper
His white apron strings
And the ash that turns to ashes
I have the tongues of fire of men and of angels
The riddle of riddle-bread I know
But my tongue is a stake in my mouth
Coals of fire I heap upon my head
Yes, less than lesser
The least amongst you
Bushwillow cedar and wild olive
The turn of the wheel is
the curl
of the tip
of the maidenhair fern
am I
On and on it went in that vein. Jesuschrist Agaat says Jakkie but you really can sit and sing a lot of shit on a box get going I want to get out now! but I heard him just now mutter-muttering in his voice that’s starting to break — my child! — growing up so fast! — there in his room heard him singing over & over on A.’s contrived tune her heathenish song that carries on to all sides.
the why of the whynot
the where of the nowhere
the mouth of the mother
the faith of the father & the blood
the blood of the bitter bluegum.
14
A church hat, a stuffed lynx head, a ram’s horn, a silver sugar-bowl, a braying-stone, a mouldboard. What a mess here in my room. I no longer want to look at anything, no longer want to be distracted by the light of day, the things of the light. They press on my eyeballs when I open my eyes. From now on I’m keeping my eyes shut, from now on I am gazing at the inside of my eyelids.
Unseeing in a more silent silence, in the black-red of shut eyes I want to lie, a cello in its case, in this made-to-measure niche that my body has become for me, here I want to dream my way to that whiter light of which the book of death speaks. Here I want only just to hear the last hurried footsteps in the passages, and there far away in the front of the hall, behind the last door swinging shut, the sounds of tuning, the concert, that without me may at last commence. I want to drift away from it all, replaced by a substitute who is following the conductor’s baton out there with shining eyes.
This savage parade, the last illuminations.
I have seen enough, heard enough of this procession. What must I still know or try to understand here? What is the message of the moribund air in this vault? Or is this how the sheet of a last summer rests on one, a white drift blown backward from the comb of the wave? As if it wants to tie the wave back into the body of the sea, so that its breaking is aborted, begrudging the final spuming, rushing foam?
Unfathomable that which still weighs on me here. A warmth on my cheek at times, on my forehead, on my stomach, on my ankles, a hand that hovers above me with the weight of a longing, longing to pluck a string, to touch the shady side of a stone. As a stone would feel it, I imagine I feel it, the subtle longings, longings of a mountain wind, or a wind-blown seed, of a stray drop or a tiny lizard, of a blade of grass leaning against me. To what do they seek to edify me, these delicate bodies that waver around me? To what do they seek to move me when they measure their insignificance against mine, sink their all-but-insensible weight into my weight?