Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [105]
A. says she wants to hold him for the sprinkling isn’t she a baptised child of the Lord as well she says & he won’t cry if she holds him. There she does have a point.
Saturday afternoon 5 o’clock 24 September
Too upset really to write but dear Lord in heaven how on earth could I have proposed it to Ds van der Lught? Perhaps I should really have done it & then she could rather have had it from his own mouth she was in any case listening behind the kitchen door all the time.
So there is the christening robe on the sideboard neatly wrapped in white tissue paper & A. serves the cake all prim & properly with little serviettes & Dominee praises her extravagantly but he doesn’t eat any cake only the elder nibble-nibbles a bit because of course by that time they’d been on house visits all morning & already full of cake & there she had to recite Psalm 23 & Dominee asks her everything about sin & redemption & she knows it all & he praises her to high heaven isn’t she so tidy & in her place & so clean & he can see her heart is as white as driven snow. All I could see was that Jak was going to lose his temper.
All the time she’s signalling to me with her eyes so that only I can see: Show him my christening robe with the result that I ate far too much cake just to show her it’s good thank you you’re my right hand & later she brought Jakkie in & then Jak sent hr out because then we had to kneel & pray & I looked at the chintz on the chair & when it was my turn to pray I couldn’t get out a word & Jakkie started screaming & A. comes & picks him up & soothes him there so that he can have the pre-baptismal blessing pronounced upon him & Dominee prays & the elder prays & they just can’t seem to stop & under the prayer I look at A. & she’s standing there with open eyes big-please asks her mouth but I couldn’t ask & then we still had to sing as well The Lord Bless thee out of Zion & A. joins in with the second voice & Dominee & the elder look at each other & they say let’s sing another verse but I feel ashamed because coloureds don’t sing with white people in the sitting room J. almost has a fit on the spot but he has to behave in front of Dominee & I see he’s threatening A. she must stop but sing she does.
When at last they left I rushed out of there & I walked off in some direction with Jakkie in his pram sick of all the cake & when I got to the dam at the ducks’ landing place there was would you believe it the white parcel; with the christening robe. The same that had just recently been on the sideboard! I thought at first I was seeing things.
Come out! I shouted Come out! because then I knew A. was hiding there somewhere amongst the reeds to torment me. Lord knows how she got there so soon must have taken a short-cut through the little vlei but she wasn’t coming out & then I took the parcel & chucked it far into the dam. Then it took a long time to sink & all the time I knew she was watching. Threw a few clods of earth in there to chase her out but it didn’t work. What a spectacle, good Lord.
So now we’re going to have a whole drama about it again.
Better go & have a look at what’s happening it’s been dead quiet all afternoon. A. nowhere to be seen. Jak had to see to his own lunch. Six o’clock now. Still don’t hear anything stirring in the kitchen. Perhaps she’ll come back when it’s Jakkie’s bath-time. How are we to look each other in the eye?
Last Sunday of September 1960
A. in a mighty huff. As good as her baking was for Dominee