There is a saying that it might be strange to see a clothed person shake hands with a naked one: it is like the meeting of two utterly different tribes.
What could then be said of the spectacle of a white South African shaking hands, proverbially speaking, with her black servant during the heydays of Apartheid?
Marlene van Niekerk's novel Agaat, speaks of such a meeting, between Jakkie De Wet, heiress and owner of a farm in the Cape Province of South Africa, and Agaat, a farm hand slash servant whom Jakkie had taken in when she (Agaat) was but a slip of a girl.
Agaat is black.
The novel spans an entire historical spectrum, ranging from Apartheid to post-apartheid, and the "meeting" between white master and black servant hangs over into an extended relationship between the two: After political normalcy returns to South Africa and the black majority of the nation enters the phase of self-governance, Jakki suffers A.L.S, a degenerative disease of the nervous system. She is now in the keeping of Agaat. Agaat looks after Jakki who is immobile and cannot speak.
Jakki can think, however, and the following are her thoughts caged inside her; her thoughts are now Agaat-centric:
If I could suddenly find my tongue, I'd be able to tell it to you in so many words: All that we could think up to do, you and I, all our lives, was to unbosom ourselves in our inner chamber before the lord. Oh hearken to me, your little girl-child meek and mild, oh preserve me, your bleeding virgin, bless me, woman of your nation, but what did that make him?
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