I can feel her distrust. Beneath the distrust, something else. Can it be true? I feel her withdraw. My feet miss the warmth. I hear the chair creak as she gets up. I open my eyes. She walks to the door. But she doesn’t open it, she just stands there. Her hands are at her sides, the little one and the big one. Her little shoulder sags. She turns round, I close my eyes. She comes back to the bed. I can hear her letting herself down on the chair. Her arms come around my feet, she presses them against her breast, tight, still tighter, she bends her neck, she presses her forehead against the arches of my feet, hard. The wolf and the rat and the pig, the syrinx and the tambourine, the whole merciless music she crumples up with one stroke against my ankles.
Was it the day after Jak’s breakdown that everything changed once more? Was it the morning after?
You didn’t want to remember all the things he’d said the night before. A pig with wings. Was he out of his mind? And the so-called fairytale that he contrived for himself out of it all? How could he distort your lives together like that?
In spite of the sleeping draught you couldn’t sleep. You were too scared to go and see whether Jak was back. At five o’clock you were up. Put on milk for coffee, went out into the backyard to throw away the shards of the earthenware jug that Jak had broken the night before. What goes up must come down, you said to yourself as you dumped the shards in the bin, your father’s words for the aftermath of family clashes.
The upper door of the outside room was open. You heard Agaat mumbling to herself over her ironing, the creaking of the ironing-board, smelt the steam and the starch, the thud-thud of the little iron with which she always ironed, a glimpse of the white apron in the dark little room. She was already dressed in her black dress and cap and shoes. Was ironing the apron, for the second time apparently, the seam, the bands, the pockets on the bib and the stomach.
She was frowning, shaking her head, as if trying to understand something, lost in a world of her own. You put your hands over your ears and fled back to the kitchen. You wanted to hear nothing more, could tolerate nothing more after the night before, suddenly fearful for all of you so constantly getting in each other’s way, trespassing on each other’s private space, beset by each other’s catastrophes. But there the milk was boiling over on the stove and you had to rescue it, clean the hob before it scalded. Then you heard the litany.
Help me with this and help me with that, and then a silence. And after a few thud-thuds of the iron on the board: She wanted him to be the master, she thought badly of herself, thought she was stupid, thought she was weak, she didn’t want to be her own master.
The irons were vigorously changed around on the hotplate.
But this is bad and that is wrong and gibe, gibe, gibe, constantly, whatever you do.
There was a hissing sound as Agaat sprinkled water on the ironing-cloth.
It was Jak’s emphatic strain of the night before.
God, must I listen to this for a second time, you thought, with the cloth drenched with burnt milk in your hands.
And what did he do, the poor man? He just tried harder to be good enough!
And then suddenly there was a another voice, higher, lighter, your voice.
What does that have to do with Agaat? She’s the best in the land, the best governess one could wish for!
You unlatched the screen door from its hook to make it slam.
At the top of her voice it resounded there out of the dark door-hole of the outside room:
Praise the Lord with joy resounding, oh my soul how rich the gift!
An exercise in prayerful attendance indeed. Thunder in the outside room when there’s lightning in the sitting room.
You went out onto the front stoep, the red bakkie was parked outside under the fig tree, its front wheels turned at an angle over the roots. So you must after all have dozed off, you thought, because you didn’t hear Jak come in during the night.
You went to have a peek at Jakkie, snapped on the light for a moment.
Fast asleep with his cheek on Agaat’s embroidered pillow slip, his room full of boy’s smells, his mouth with the slight down on the upper lip slightly skew against the pillow.
Jak was at the breakfast table at the usual time. He was pale. You could see he was winding himself up for something. You said nothing. You hoped it would blow over as it did generally tend to do. But you felt that this time it was different. When he’d finished eating, he folded his napkin and cleared his throat.
Phone, he said, phone now on the spot where I can hear you. Arrange with Jakkie’s school. Tell them Jakkie is going for a week-long scouting and survival trial in the mountains of the Tradouw with the Voortrekkers of the Montagu mountain club. That should satisfy them, or you can think up something better yourself, tell them he has mumps.
He smiled a tight little smile in Jakkie’s direction.
You got up from your chair. Jak did not look at you.
But in fact he’s only going with his father so we can get to know each other a bit better, not so? And so that he can taste a bit of what life’s actually all about. What do you say to that, old man? Go ahead and tell your mother of our plans.
Jakkie was excited. It was obvious that they’d been planning it for a long time.
Agaat came in with the dish of oats. With your eyes you asked: So what do you know about this? She pretended not to see you.
Jakkie started chattering about the route.
From Twaalfuurkop they would climb over the intermediate ranges of the Piekeniers above Swellendam and through the Bergkwagga Cracks and along the bushman caves at the Four Sluices. He carried on about the compass and the ropes and the maps and the leopards in the kloofs, and about the descent into the pass by the red krantzes with the body halters and the bolts and anchors after hiking all along the horizon from the bridge so that you and Agaat would be able to watch their progress over the last stretch through binoculars, and could accompany them along the pass, all the way to where you had to pick them up at the deepest point of the road on the bank of the Huis River.
You looked at Agaat again. Her face betrayed nothing. She cleared the porridge plates and pushed a platter of eggs to the middle of the table. She passed the spatula to Jak and he served Jakkie.
Eat, little man, so that you can build strength, said Jak, you’ll need it. We’re taking only peanuts and water and for the rest we’ll have to hunt dassies.
I won’t allow that, you said.
Come, Jakkie, Agaat said, let’s go and brush your pony, he’s mouldering in the stable by now.
Jak put his hand on Jakkie’s shoulder.
Jakkie’s staying right here, Agaat, he wants to eat his eggs. You go and brush his pony for him and while you’re about it see to the other horses as well, clean their stalls, take the muckrake and a spade and after that you might as well put out new straw in the stables, have the bales ready, just remember to take along the wire-cutter.
Jakkie looked at Agaat with wide eyes. She gave him a wooden eye. She wasn’t perturbed in the least.
Gmf! she said. And Jak grinned.
What were they scheming?
Your eyes she resolutely avoided. What did you want her to do? Jak held Jakkie in front of him like a shield. You went and made the call to the school. You heard them giggling over the lie while you were spinning your tale to the principal. You knew that Agaat was listening in to every word.
There was something different about Jak. You could tell from the grim resoluteness with which the preparations were made.
Jakkie was given a pair of real mountaineering boots with blood-red laces and a compass. He couldn’t sleep with excitement. In the evenings he and Jak calculated their hiking stages with compasses and pencil. Their halters and buckles and belts and slipknots and pulleys and hooks lay in the sitting room where they checked them for three days.