Agaat Read online
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE
Chapter 1
21 April 1960
Chapter 2
Wednesday 12 May 1960
13 May 1960
Chapter 3
4 July 1960 ten o’clock morning
After lunch
Before supper
Chapter 4
12 July 1960 8 o’clock (after supper)
10 o’clock
Chapter 5
12 July 1960 11 o’clock at night
12 o’clock
Half-past twelve
Chapter 6
12/13 July 1960 after midnight
1 o’clock
Twenty to two
Two o’clock
Ten past two
Half past two
Nine o’clock morning 13 July
Chapter 7
12 August 1960 ten past eight
12 August 1960 10 past 10
12 August after lunch
Chapter 8
3 September 1960 after lunch
6 September 1960
10 September 1960
14 September 1960 afternoon
14 September evening
17 September
Chapter 9
Friday 23 September 1960 nine o’clock in the evening.
Saturday 24 September quarter past eight morning
Saturday afternoon 5 o’clock 24 September
Last Sunday of September 1960
3 October 1960
5 October 1960
6 October
7 October 1960
9 October 1960
11 October 1960
13 October 1960
14 October
14 October 1960 1 o’clock.
16 October 1960
Chapter 10
3 October 1961
9 October 1961 half past seven
Quarter past nine
Second day of hearth-building 12 o’clock
After lunch
5 o’clock
13 October
15 October
20 October after eight
Chapter 11
1 October 1964
5 October 1964
23 October 1965
10 November 1965
10 November after supper
11 November 1965
September 1966
Chapter 12
14 December 1966
Witsand 16 December 1966
17 December ’66 morning
17 December ’66 evening
Witsand 18 December ’66
Witsand 20 December 1966
21 December ’66
24 December 1966
1 January 1967 Witsand
Witsand 23 December ’67
Witsand 5 January 1968
Witsand 10 January 1968
Witsand 11 January 1968
Chapter 13
16 May 1968
15 July 1968
12 September 1971
16 September 1971
Chapter 14
Saturday 11 March 1972 four o’clock
11 March six o’clock
1 May 1973
5 April 1974
12 July 1974
14 September 1974
Saturday 15 February 1975 half past six
Chapter 15
14 November 1978
19 November 1978
4 July 1979 Front stoep
4 July 6 o’clock
Quarter past 6
8 July 1979
9 July 1979
Chapter 16
18 December ten o’clock
19 December ten o’clock morning
19 December half past two afternoon
21 December
22 December
27 December half past eleven morning
Half past seven evening
4 January 1954
Still 4 January after supper
6 January 1954
10 January
16 January
17 January
20 January
21 January 1954
22 January
27 January
30 January
1 February
5 February
6 February
7 February
8 February
Chapter 17
17 February 1954
20 February 1954
25 February 1954
27 February 1954
4 March 1954
6 March
11 March
14 March, seven o’clock
Quarter past seven
Half past eight
Ten o’clock
17 March 1954
18 March 1954
20 March 1954
21 March 1954
22 March 1954
23 March ’54
24 March ’54
25 March ’54
28 March ’54
29 March ’54
2 April ’54
8 April ’54 tea-time morning
8 April twelve o’clock
After lunch
12 April ’54
18 April ’54
19 April ’54
21 April ’54
14 May ’54
24 May 1954
Chapter 18
7 June 1954
8 June 1954
9 June
10 June
11 June
15 June
17 June 1954
11 July 1954
12 July half past eight
16 August 1954
13 September 1954
14 September
20 September
21 September
23 September ten o’clock
2 October 1954
5 October
9 October 1954
10 October
13 October
14 October 1954
15 October
16 October
18 October
20 October
23 October
27 October 1954
4 November 1954
15 November 1954 morning
Chapter 19
27 May 1955
28 May 1955
30 May
4 June ’55
4 June ’55
7 June ’55
8 June ’55
10 June 1955
12 July 1955
16 September 1955
17 April 1956
3 May 1956
28 June 1956
10 November 1956
15 November 1956
18 November 1956
22 November 1956
10 February 1957
24 February 1957
23 March 1957
15 April 1957
2 August 1958
25 August 1958
26 August 1958
28 August 1958
29 August 1958
23 February 1959
11 March 1959
10 October 1959
13 October 1959
27 October 1959
3 November 1959
16 December 1959
23 December ’59
26 December ’59
30 December ’59
1 January 1960
2 January 1960
7 July 1960
Chapter 20
EPILOGUE
GLOSSARY OF AFRIKAANS AND SOUTH AFRICAN ENGLISH WORDS
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
Also by Marlene van Niekerk
Triomf
For Lou-Marié
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
Agaat is a hi
ghly allusive text, permeated, at times almost subliminally, with traces of Afrikaans cultural goods: songs, children’s rhymes, children’s games, hymns, idiomatic expressions, farming lore. I have as far as possible made my own translations of these, in an attempt to retain something of the sound, rhythm, register and cultural specificity of the original. Where, however, the author has quoted from mainstream Afrikaans poetry, I have tried to find equivalents from English poetry. I have also taken the liberty of extending the range of poetic allusion. Readers will thus find scraps of English poetry interspersed, generally without acknowledgement, in the text.
Certain Afrikaans words I have judged too culturally specific to be translated into English; indeed, almost all the Afrikaans words I have used in this translation occur either in the Oxford English Dictionary or the Oxford Dictionary of South African English, as having passed into South African English usage. For readers not having ready access to these sources, a glossary of Afrikaans words is appended.
I am grateful to Lynda Gilfillan for her meticulous editing of this translation, and to Riana Barnard for her efficient and cheerful administration.
—M.H.
‘This new volume seeks to interpret the growth, passion and expansion of the soul of the nation. May the indefinable element—the force and flavour of this Southland—be found, felt and experienced, then the nation will press it to their hearts and adopt it as their own.’
From the Introduction to the first edition of the FAK-Volksangbundel [National Anthology of Song of the Federation of Afrikaans Culture Organisations]. H. Gutsche, W.J. du P. Erlank, S.H. Eyssen (eds.). Firma J.H. De Bussy Pretoria, HAUM. V/H Jacques Dusseau & Co, Cape Town, 1937.
‘That is the beauty, the value of this book: that it was born out of love and inspires to love, that nobody can doubt. And with that a great service is done to the nation, for who feels for beauty, on whatever terrain, has a contribution to make to the cultural development of the nation.
‘The area this book makes its own, is a specifically feminine one and through that contributes to the refinement and beautification of the domestic atmosphere. Such an atmosphere distinguishes the culturally aware nation from the uncivilised.’
From the Foreword by Mrs E. (Betsie) Verwoerd to Borduur So [Embroider Like This], Hetsie van Wyk, Afrikaanse Pers-boekhandel, Johannesburg, 1966.
‘This Handbook . . . serves as a key to the unlocking of the treasure chambers of climate, soil, livestock and marketing potential on each of the 93,000 farms of our country.
‘Just as the Bible points the way to spiritual perfection so will this Handbook also point to ways and means to more profitable farming and to greater prosperity for every farmer in every part of the country.
‘I should dearly love to see this Handbook finding its way into every farm dwelling and coming into the hands of every person who farms or who is interested in agricultural matters, because it is a rich mine of useful information.’
From the Foreword by His Honour General J.G.C. Kemp, Minister of Agriculture, to the Hulpboek vir Boere in Suid-Afrika [Handbook for Farmers in South Africa]. Written by civil servants and other experts, Government Printing Works, Pretoria, 1929.
PROLOGUE
Matt-white winter. Stop-start traffic. Storm warning. And I. In two places at once, as always. Snow on my shoulder, but with the light of the Overberg haunting me, the wet black apparitions of winter, the mirages of summer. Tumbling lark above the rustling wheatfields. Twitter machine. A very heaven, the time of my childhood. How could I tell that to anybody in this city? Heaven is a curiosity here. Hereafter. Strange word in my head. My reaction to the telegram strange too. First numb, then anxious, tears later. An aperture in the skull. Now the memories are a stream, unquenchable.
For parting is no single act, it is like a trailing streamer.
That first descent here eleven years ago, stiff in all my joints. Didn’t close an eye on the whole fourteen-hour flight. Fear, worry, feelings of guilt. What was I? Who was I? A ten-day beard, a vacation visa in a passport, a loose cannon without letters of accreditation. A farmer seeking asylum, as far as the Canadian bureaucracy was concerned. A deserting soldier with his training certificates, his pilot’s licences, his oath of secrecy. What more could I give them? A confession?
Left home without greeting or explanation. That morning, still dark, the smell of wet soot, Gaat giving me the little key to the sideboard so that I could take out my papers. Her face grey and sad, her cap askew. Four o’clock in the morning, the only one who knew where I was headed and why. Will I ever be able to forgive myself? For saddling her with such a responsibility?
White drifts of snow banked on both sides of the road. Windscreen wipers at full speed. I can’t wipe away the images. Banded watermelon under the Herrnhuter knife, Boer pumpkins nestled in hairy dark-green leaves, a brown-tipped fleece of merino wool breaking open, heavy with oil, on the sorting table. Blue lupins chest-high in flower, yellow cream of Jersey cows, the sound when you crack open a pomegranate, the white membranes gripping the clustered pips. Red and white, just like blood on freshly shorn sheep.
Lord, I sound like my mother. Melancholy over-sensitive Ma. Now dying. Will she recognise me? With the beard? Gaat will. Willy-nilly.
Have been having the same dream, over and over recently. Gaat calling me, us calling each other. Awake. Disturbance. An abyss where sleep should be. The calling with our hands cupped in front of our mouths, she in the yard down below in her white apron, visible to me where I’m hiding in the kloofs above the house. Later long whistlings that you could pick up on the dryland at the back if you were below the wind. Later still the blowing on Hubbly Bubbly bottles.
Slowly to the surface, awake to wind-borne whistlings. Sleepless in Toronto. Night music. Till I drift off again, dreaming that we signal to each other on the ram’s horn, soft low notes. How careful we had to be when we were looking for the purple emperor in the woods. Grey-black, folded shut in the shadows till it opened its wings, blue on one side only, scintillating, vapoured with silver, blood shaking my heart.
Leaking heart.
On and on the blue flickering sliced by the sharp sweep of the wipers. Salt on the road, broth of snow-slush on the windscreen, on the rear window. Lapis lazuli, it flickers, the colour of the dream, a blue iridescing from moment to moment, between inhaling and exhaling, first on one wing, then on the other. Book of vespers. Apatura iris. The giant purple emperor butterfly.
Miracles. Catastrophes. Continent that tops up its water level with blood, and that fertilises with blood. Who wrote that?
Here the blood has long since been spilt. Cold. The massacres efficiently commemorated, functionally packaged, sanitised. Only I, more freshly cut by history, trying to find my own way in the cool archives. Cut grass lies frail. My smell attracts other vulnerabilities. Found the Sainte Marie files yesterday, Bleeding Heel, Broken Shoulder, Wounded Knee, for the new instrument studio in Toronto. A percussion theatre where the visitor will rattle seed pods, brush the tin cymbals with a handful of grass.
When I got home, there it was. On the doormat, in the snow. Post office envelope.
MÊME DYING STOP CONFIRM ARRIVAL STOP LOVE AGAAT.
Eleven, almost twelve years. Will I still recognise Ma? In the last photo Gaat sent, she was tiny amongst the panache plants in the front garden, eyes deep in their sockets. Almost completely grey. Had a book with her, index finger between the pages, The World’s Famous Piano Pieces. Recognised it by the dusky pink cover. Always used to sit and sing to herself from the sheet. So as not to get rusty, she used to say.
Ma and her airs, Ma who dreamed: Little Jakkie de Wet, the lieder singer, famous from Hottentots-Holland to Vienna. Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. Indeed!
And Agaat, poker-faced, her pop-eyed glare with which she could flatten you without a single word, the glance which she could switch off for days to punish you. Wooden eye. How old was she when I left the place in ’85? Thirty-seven?
Gaat, Ma’s nurse.
Lord, what a piece of theatre that must be. Mourning Becomes Kamilla. Or, better still, The Night of the Nurse.
Gaat with her starched cap, distant snowy peak which she sometimes inclined towards me so that I could look at it from close by, so that I—only I—might touch it, the fine handiwork, white on white, of which I never could have enough. The needle flashing in her hand in front of the fireplace, Gaat’s left hand with which she fed logs into the Aga’s maw, stoked it so that it roared, strong warm hand on which I explored the world—pure fennel! The little hand on the wrong-way-round arm hidden further than usual when she had to serve Ma’s friends, or the dominee on his house call.
And I, having to sing to the guests, Ma accompanying. Good Lord. O bring me a buck in flight o’er the veld, Heidenröslein, depending on the audience.
What’s it like, there where you grew up? Your country? The eternal question when I first arrived. Always had Larkin’s reply ready: Having grown up in shade of Church and State . . . Took me years to fashion my own rhymes to bind the sweetness, the cruelty in a single memory. Later nobody asked any more. Only then could I fantasise about an alternative reply.
Pass under the boom, a red elbow. Parking disk in my hand, cold, smooth, obol with lead strip. Fare forward, traveller! Not escaping from the past. International Departures.
Was it on Ma’s behalf, or secretly dedicated to her, the fantasy of a song, an alternative reply to my inquisitive interlocutors?
Look, Mother, I’ve forgotten nothing of it. I’ll sing for you. Of the foothills fronting the homestead, one piled on the other, the varied yellows and greens of fynbos, pink and purple patches of vygie and heather. Or of the mountains I’ll sing, but in a sparser register, a wider perspective, the powder-blue battlements furnishing a fastness to the eye of the traveller along the coastal route.
My fantasy. Always the exordium on the rivers, the vleis full of fragrant white flowers in spring. This music crept by me upon the waters. A cantata of the great brown river, the Breede River, its catchment deep in the Grootwinterhoek, the great lair of winter, fed by the run-off from fern-tips, from wind-cut grooves in stone, to a hand’s-breadth rill, a leap-over-sluit amongst porcupine-rush, a misty waterfall where red disas sway in the wake of the water. Until all waterfalls flow together over a base of black rock, and the stream starts cutting into the dry land, finding a winding of its own making, at last becoming a waterway, wide enough for shipping, deep enough for bridges, for ferries, for landing-stages and commerce.
Triomf