Agaat Read Online Free Page A

the splint and the pen and the board and my hand. She made a ridge in the bedspread to support the whole lot. As you do with a rag doll when you want to make her sit up in a chair. Pummel her in the ribs. Punch her in the chest. Head up. Tail down. Sit, doll, sit. Filled with sawdust. Or lupin seeds. Or clean white river sand.
    Then she put her hand over mine, the strong hand. The effect was comical.
    Ai, Ounooi, you’re making life so difficult for yourself. How on earth do you think?
    I could see what she was thinking. Haven’t you perpetrated enough writing in your life? That’s what she thought.
    Be quiet, I said with my eyes, you just be quiet and leave me in peace. Take away your hand.

    She jutted out her chin and replaced the Foamalite packing and the plastic in the box and closed the lid.
    Tripple-trot out of here. In passing she snatched up her embroidery from the chair. I know what that means. That’s the other punishment. Today I’ll be seeing her only at meal times and medicine times. Otherwise she sits here with me for hours embroidering, a big cloth, I don’t know what it is, looks complicated. She counts and measures as if her life depended on it, the whole cloth marked out in pins and knots. It’s been carrying on ever since I haven’t been able to get around by myself. Otherwise I would have investigated long ago. She’s mysterious about it. Taunting at times. Sometimes she looks at it as if she herself can’t believe what she’s embroidering there. Or like now when she flounced out of here, she grabs it as if it’s a piece of dirty washing that she wants to go and throw into the laundry basket, glares at me, as if I was the one who dirtied it.
    All that was quarter of an hour ago. The grandfather clock in the front room struck. Quarter past eight.
    Now I must begin. Now I must write. Now I must make it worthwhile. What I unleashed.
    I gather my resources. I try to find handholds inside myself. Rye grass, klaaslouw bush, wattle branches to anchor myself against the precipice. Diehard species. I feel around inside me. There’s still vegetation, there’s water, there’s soil.
    To start I need a preamble. The preamble is just as important as the action itself.
    Everything on this farm must be properly prepared, everything foreseen and anticipated so that no chance occurrence can distract you from your ultimate objective. That was the first commandment, has always been. I instructed Agaat accordingly.
    You don’t just blunder into a thing, you examine it from all sides and then you make an informed decision and plan it properly in distinct phases, always in tune with the seasons. And then you round off the phases one by one, all the while keeping an eye on the whole, the rhythms, the movements, just like rehearsing a piece of music.
    That’s how you retain control, that’s how you prevent irksome delays at a later stage.
    That’s the one principle of a self-respecting farmer, especially for mixed farming. That’s how you get results. That’s how you build up property. With built-in rewards in the long and the short term so that you can have the courage to carry on. A foothold.
    But my preamble here is not mine. It’s been marked out for me on the surfaces of the room as Agaat has arranged it. Nothing has been
left to chance. Death is her objective. She has prepared it excellently. I couldn’t have done it better myself.
    First she emptied the room.
    Everything redundant she carried out. To the cellar. I heard her bump and shift, here right under my bed, to make space for the stuff. The sofa and footstools, the doilies and cloths on the dressing table, the ornaments and wall hangings. The clothes horse, the hatstand, the walking stick stand, the walking frame, the wheelchair, the snows of yesteryear, the posies of dried everlastings.
    So that she could move fast and clean easily, she said.
    Because there shall be no dust or