Beatrice can’t believe it, good heavens, she says, but her praise doesn’t sound genuine, she thinks I’m batty to put so much into the child, she says I’m neglecting my social life, she asks what Jak says about it all and then I’m very cautious what I say. Beatrice is at heart a head-girl. She’ll never do anything that deviates, take a risk or put herself at hazard for something or somebody else. Never take sides. I understand more clearly all the time that I’ll have to believe in this on my own, even though it’s literally what everybody is always preaching and professing. Perhaps their problem is exactly that I’m taking the Word so literally.
16 August 1954
Today we gardened all day, first plaited a garland from tulip stems and sorrel flowers and then sowed herb seeds in the backyard, I make her chew the seeds to teach her the taste of everything: coriander, dill, poppy-seed, she likes dill best. What does it taste like? I ask. Like drop, she says with a clever face, liquorice. You get drop from me when you’re good, soethout, I teach her the Afrikaans word, sweetwood because it’s sweet, Agaat because she’s good. Drop is drop, she says. So what’s a dropper? Perhaps she’s very intelligent, she must have heard us talking at fencing-time. A hanging picket, I teach her, because it’s not anchored, it just hangs in the fence.
13 September 1954
Now that the soul is awakening in her and she’s outgrown the terrors of her origins, at least in body (weight and height normal for the first time now), it’s time for Agaat to be baptised. As long as it’s a private ceremony, says Dominee, it can take place in the white church. He’ll arrange for witnesses. He agrees that it’s time for her to have the faith of her guardian beatified in her so that she can grown up in the mercy of the covenant.
14 September
Difficult to explain to A. about the baptism. Now that she’s nice and grown up and can sing and speak, I said, and is obedient and can wash and dress herself and can fasten her buttons and buckles and knows the Bible stories and says her prayers every evening, she must be branded on the forehead as a child of the Lord with water from the font.
Must I sit in a chair with my mouth wide open? she asks. Didn’t understand at first, only after a while remembered about the tooth-pulling. Must have made a big impression.
I took out the album with my own christening-photos to explain. She was fascinated by the christening-dress, went and dug it up out of the linen cupboard to show her. Moths had got into it, full of holes, will have to get rid of it, will in any case probably never be used on Grootmoedersdrift. Over and over she touched the pleats and frills and double collars of the outfit. Old-fashioned full of frills the old thing, still from Ma’s family. Why a dress like that? she asks.
Christening-dress, confirmation dress, wedding dress, shroud, the four dresses in a woman’s life in Christ, I explained. Showed her my wedding dress with the sewn-on voile sleeves. And there I started crying on the pages. Little brown finger smoothes away the wetness. Then I felt the little hand in mine, the first time so of her own accord.
Nothing to about cry, I hear.
First had to go to the bathroom to regain control of myself. Too much intimacy not a good thing now. She must learn to know her place here.
20 September
Finished smocking Agaat’s white christening-dress. Looks ever so smart in it. Made her try it on tonight before bedtime to pin up the hem.
Must I lie with my legs open before the font? she asks. Still the day of the doctors haunting her.
Tried to explain, it’s not her legs that she needs to open but her heart, it’s not her body but her soul that we’re talking about, as her body was healed by the doctor, the Dominee will now mend her soul so that one day she can get into heaven with the angels. She doesn’t understand.
Are there going to be cold shiny things that they push into me? No, I say, only the service, and she must just answer yes to all the questions, so that her name that she’s been given can be written in the Great Book of Life. Otherwise what? she asks. Otherwise Agaat Lourier will blow around without any purpose, a floating seed in the wind and will never fall to the ground and perish and bear good fruit, I say. She regards me with big eyes.
21 September
Nightmares and bedwetting last night. Agaat says she doesn’t want to be baptised. I say she must, otherwise she’ll burn in the devil’s fiery hell. She asks who’s the devil, does he have bellows, she says she knows fires, she’d rather burn, she’s not scared. I say if she’s good we can make a fire the evening of the christening and dance. I’ll bake an orange cake. She says she wants to take her bellows along to the christening. It must absolutely be polished for the occasion.
23 September ten o’clock
Christening thank God all over late this afternoon! A whole business before the time. Should have expected it, I suppose. Agaat ran away when she had to get dressed. Had to run after her and catch her, Saar and I. Cornered her down in the poplar grove against the bank. Rigid with ferocity again. Had to give her a few good strokes on the buttocks. Didn’t want to dress herself. Had to be stuffed into her new clothes piece by piece, white socks up to the knees and shiny shoes, head drawn into the shoulder because the gauze of the bonnet supposedly scratched her in the neck. Your head must be covered in the house of the Lord, I said. Didn’t want to let go of the bellows when we had to leave. More than quarter of an hour late. You’re disgracing me with your devils on this great day, I said. A Child of the Lord doesn’t behave like this. Remember your name means Good, I said, and today you’re being given that name by the dominee, he’s the servant of the Lord. Does the dominee wear a coat like the doctor’s? she asks.
Ds van der Lught fortunately patience itself. Let be, he said when I wanted to take away the bellows and settle the bonnet. He’d commandeered the verger and the organist and oubaas Groenewald who looks after the gardens for the occasion. And apart from that it was just the principal elder and myself. Jak would have nothing to do with it. Ma neither.
Yellow light through the wrinkled glass of the church window, Agaat’s skin whiter than it is. Cold there in the bare benches, such a thin little tune on one note on the organ from high up in the dark gallery. Agaat all goose pimples when I took her to the front to stand for the service. Bellows drag along. Dominee peers sternly from under his eyebrows as if Agaat and I were guilty of much more than just original sin. We sing:
Jesus, Lord, our hope so true,
we’re here to do as you ordain:
Our children we all bring to you—
their share in you for good to claim.
In the name of God the Father,
Son and Holy Ghost for ever,
Lord, we ask that this child may