The Covenant Part 44

'Wait, wait!' Tjaart protested. 'You've seen that men like Saltwood and Carleton are decent.'

'They are good men, but they're here in Grahamstown. Keer is in London, and every law he proposes favors the Kaffirs at our expense. The philanthropist ladies in their London parlors will continue to bleat when they hear we Boers are trying to defend our wives and children against their Kaffir darlings.'

Van Doorn was unable to decide how much of Retief's grievance was justified, how much an understandable animosity springing from his ruined business contracts, but before they parted, Retief raised a new bold topic about which there could be no ambiguity: 'Tjaart, would you contribute rix-dollars to a project that Pieter Uys is contemplating? You know Uys, a very good man.'

Van Doorn did not know him, but De Groot did, and most favorably: 'Maybe the best Boer along the sea. What's his plan?'

'He thinks to go on an exploring trip. Up the coast into the fertile valleys along the Indian Ocean.'

'Why?'

'He thinks that one day the Boers might have to move there. I don't want to quit my farm. And I know you wouldn't want to, Tjaart. But it might be prudent if we looked.'

'To what purpose?' Van Doorn asked, and in years that were to come he would never forget Retief's reply. They had reached a landmark where Retief must turn north for his farm among the mountain ranges. Up there lay the kind of place no man would willingly leave, but Retief said, 'I fear the English are determined to drive us into the ground. Did you read Keer's reports?'

'You know I can't read English,' De Groot said.

'Well, I read them all,' Retief said with great force, 'and you know what I think? After next year there will be no more slavery. They'll take our Coloureds away from us, too, and then how will we farm?'

'What has Pieter Uys to do with this?' De Groot asked.

'A wise man considers many plans,' Retief replied. 'Not for me or you. We can manage. But for the poor Boers who are going to be pressed down by English laws. Uys will look at the lands in Natal and tell us if we can farm them.'

'Aren't the lands already taken?' De Groot asked.

'To the north, the Zulu. To the south, a few Englishmen. But in between, magnificent valleys with ample water, trees, good land.'

He asked again for contributions to the Uys expedition, and Tjaart had to say, 'I have no money now. Advance it for me and I'll pay back.' The English had recently introduced their own monetary system, thinking to replace the Dutch that everyone used, and De Groot did have some of the crisp notes. When he handed his offering to Retief the latter took it, held it in his two hands, and allowed the sun to play upon it.

'I do not like this money,' he said.

Nachtmaal (night meal) was Holy Communion. It was held four times each year, and those living near the church were expected to attend each one. But Boers in remote areas were forgiven if they missed entirely for three or four years, because at the first opportunity they would come swarming in on pilgrimages that might last a month. With them they brought children to be baptized, young lovers to be married, and elders who whispered, 'This might be my last Nachtmaal.'

For such travelers, there could be nothing more exciting and spiritually satisfying than this joyous celebration of the Dutch Reformed Church, for in its companions.h.i.+p there was social renewal and in its religious services a deepened pledge to Calvinist doctrine. A week of Nachtmaal lent grace and harmony to the lives of the Boers and explained why they formed such a cohesive group.

The rite was carefully structured: church service each day for four days, the one on Sunday lasting four hours; public weddings and baptisms; acceptance of new members into the fellows.h.i.+p; much time set aside for buying and selling of properties; and wonderful singing parties at which youths were almost challenged to fall in love.

But what everyone cherished about Nachtmaal was the strengthened friends.h.i.+p of families who had shared common struggles: almost every man had been on commando; almost every woman had lost a baby, or a husband; and all had pondered during the difficult years their relations.h.i.+p to G.o.d. In the English community there was nothing similar to Nachtmaal, which was one reason why the English could never be mistaken for Dutchmen.

In 1833 the Van Doorn wagon was not of the best for this long journey: ninety-two miles over a demanding terrain, with the sixteen oxen able to do at best eight miles a day. The cart had worn wheels and such a tattered canvas that Tjaart had been saying for some years, 'We must find ourselves a new wagon.' Upon his arrival at Graaff-Reinet, capital of the northeast, he was determined to acquire the best wagon possible, even if he had to trade all the sheep he was driving to the town to get it.

But his excitement in heading north was nothing compared to his daughter's, for she had convinced herself that when the Van Doorn wagon overtook the De Groots' in the far middle of nothingness, they would form a kind of royal procession, and at the entrance to Graaff-Reinet, near the miraculous mountain, they would meet Ryk Naude, who would be waiting for her like a young prince. She had practiced her speech of welcome: 'Good afternoon, Ryk. How pleasant it is to see you again.' She would speak to him as if their parting had been two days ago, not two years. She experimented with charcoal to make her eyebrows darker and red clay from the Stevens farm to touch her cheeks. She pestered her mother and the slave women to convince herself that she would be acceptable in Ryk's eyes, and they a.s.sured her that she was a proper little lady whom any man would be pleased to have.

She was experiencing the wonderful days of awakening, and no one watched her with more approval than Tjaart. And he told his wife, 'Jakoba, when a girl is almost fourteen she better think about catching herself a husband. You almost waited too long.' She had been all of sixteen when the Widower van Doorn rode seventy miles to find her, and she could remember how worried she had been. 'Minna's just right for her age, Tjaart. She has a good head.'

The senior members of the family had also been attending to their appearance: Jakoba had made herself a new dress, a new bonnet, and had ordered new shoes for herself and Tjaart from Koos, an old cobbler who moved from farm to farm. Tjaart, in turn, had unpacked his one fine suit of dark clothes: coat, vest, trousers with a big front flap, felt hat with enormous brim. On the final evening, when all the attractive things were spread on the floor prior to being wrapped for the dusty journey, he took down the bra.s.sbound Bible and opened it to Isaiah, where he read:' "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength?" ' And he answered the rhetorical question by saying in his own words, 'It is the family of Tjaart van Doorn. Traveling to Graaff-Reinet for Nachtmaal, to do You honor.'

In the morning they startedfather, mother, two sons and their families, and the girl Minnaall in their oldest, roughest clothes, the three men in broad-brimmed hats, the women in sunbonnets to protect their complexions from the sun. Four Coloureds accompanied them to tend the sixteen oxen, pitch the tents at night, and guard the large flock of sheep Tjaart intended to trade for his new wagon, and three women slaves to do the cooking and watch after the needs of the travelers. They stopped by midafternoon, for the oxen had to be outspanned in daylight hours so they could forage on the rich but spa.r.s.e gra.s.s.

They were traveling over a route with which the Van Doorn people had been acquainted for many years. Their course was a strict north-northwest, but it deviated sharply at times to allow the crossing of ravines or the circ.u.mvention of large hills; so at night, when the Southern Cross appeared, Tjaart had to correct his heading, which he did with confidence that on the morrow they would see familiar hills.

The slow movement of the oxeneach of which responded only to its individual namethe swaying of the wagon, the soft singing of the slaves and the rhythmic walk of the men produced a kind of timeless lethargy in which there was constant movement but little change, just the grand emptiness of the veld across which not even animals moved at this time of year.

But there was excitement! Minna, alert to the increasing nearness of Graaff-Reinet, began to display nervousness; for one thing, she kept strictly in the shade so that her complexion would be as light as possible, for she knew that Boer men treasured this in their women. When the afternoon sun threatened her face, she produced a light goatskin mask which she wore as a s.h.i.+eld. At intervals she also smoothed her rough traveling dress as if she were already preparing to meet young Naude. And often she joined the slave women in their singing, for her heart was fluttering and sought release. She might not be beautiful, but she was inspiring to see as she blossomed in the veld like a gray flower expanding after a long drought, and Tjaart reveled in her happiness.

Her nervousness was caused in part by the delayed departure for Nachtmaal, which meant that the Van Doorns and De Groots would arrive not on the Wednesday as planned, but only on Friday itself, when the ceremonies would be beginning; and it was in those preliminary days, before the preaching began, that the young people conducted much of their courting.

'Minna!' her father a.s.sured her. 'He'll appreciate you more when you do arrive. He'll be hungry to see you.'

And then came the small miracle which enlivened the prospect of Nachtmaal as nothing else could have done, for out of the east, at a far distance, rose a faint sign of dust: it must have been fifteen miles away, two days of travel, but there it was, a mark in the sky. And all that first day the Van Doorns watched the pillar of dust, and at night they strained their eyes for any indication of lighta campfire perhapsbut none showed, and on the second day they looked with joy as the pillar expanded and a.s.sumed the thickness that would be caused by a large team of oxen.

It was the De Groots, coming out of the northeast, leading a herd of cows to Nachtmaal, converging their course with that of the Van Doorns, and before evening the juncture had been made. There were kisses among the women, backslapping for the men, and the jollity of renewed friends.h.i.+ps for the servants and slaves.

The two wagons rode together for the next four days, at the end of which De Groot said with some confidence, 'Tomorrow we'll see Spandau Kop,' and Minna was walking at the head of the procession when she cried, 'There it is!'

Tjaart had first seen this incredibly beautiful hill as a child, traveling to Nachtmaal with Lodevicus the Hammer, and to him it signified the beacons which G.o.d had placed in all deserts of the world for the guidance of His people. Abraham, coming out of Babylonia, had seen such rea.s.suring signals, and Joseph, traveling home from Egypt, had seen the same. But what Tjaart had not appreciated as a child was the many-turreted chain of taller mountains that rimmed Graaff-Reinet, forming a kind of amphitheater of protection. When one came in from the flat veld, the physical appearance of this little town was overwhelming, and Tjaart saw with pleasure that his daughter was relis.h.i.+ng the sight as he had done at her age.

The entire town was given over to the canopied wagons of men and women who had traveled vast distances for this religious ceremony: sixty groups had already arrived, their canvas tents pitched beside their wagons, their oxen grazing in the nearby meadows, attended by the herdsmen, who were enjoying the noise and the beer as much as their white masters.

The large square in front of the church was crammed with wagons by the time the Van Doorns arrived, but there was a tree-lined street leading to the parsonage which in some ways was preferable, for one's wagon was not surrounded by neighbors, and here the Van Doorns and the De Groots settled down.

It was Friday morning, and before Minna had time to seek out young Ryk Naude, everyone had to convene in the famous white-walled church. The Van Doorns arrived just as the first long service was to begin, and they met with two situations that shocked them. The resident dominee, a Scotsman who had married a Boer girl, spoke more Dutch than English, and would have six sons, five of whom would be ordained at Graaff-Reinet, and five daughters, four of whom would marry domineesthis beloved man, a better Boer than many Boers, was absent in Cape Town, and in his place served a large, red-faced preacher from Glasgow who could barely speak intelligible Dutch; it was something to hear the burgeoning local patois delivered in a heavy Scots accent.

And then Minna saw to her horror that Ryk was sitting with a family that had a girl fifteen or sixteen years old and of remarkable beauty.

'Oh!' she sighed, and when her father asked what was the matter, all she could do was point with trembling finger across the church. It was unfortunate that she did so, for now Tjaart saw the girl, and for the duration of the service he could not take his eyes away. She was a glorious child, and at the same time a woman; her skin was fair, but touched with red at the cheeks; her face was broad and perfectly proportioned; her neck and shoulders were frighteningly suggestive, and despite the fact that he knew he was committing sin, he began to undress her in his mind, and the fall of her clothes was more provocative than anything he had previously known.

'Look at her!' Minna whispered, and he blinked his eyes and began to look at her in a different way, and what he saw boded unhappiness for his daughter, for this girl, whoever she was, had obviously decided that she was destined to marry Ryk Naude, and by every feminine device, was ingratiating herself to him. Tilt of head, movement of arm, deep convincing smile, flash of white teethshe used them all until the young man seemed quite bewildered by what was happening. Tjaart, himself so profoundly affected by the girl, knew that Minna had lost her young man, and to quieten both himself and his daughter he took her hand, and felt its trembling.

None of the Van Doorns paid much attention to the Scots minister, who was delivering one of the dullest sermons they had ever heard; he lacked the fire of a true Calvinist predikant, keeping his voice to a monotone, with none of the tumultuous raging the Boers liked, and often his words could not be easily understood. The true fire that day rested on the benches occupied by Ryk Naude and his new girl.

When the sermon ended and the Boers had come out into the square, Minna, without any sense of shame, moved swiftly toward Naude, posted herself where he could not escape her, and said boldly, 'h.e.l.lo, Ryk. I've been waiting to see you.'

He nodded bleakly, well aware that he had promised two years ago to attend Minna at the next Nachtmaal they shared, but also aware that any such promises had been obviated by the dramatic arrival in town of the girl he now presented: 'This is Aletta.' He did not give her last name, for he had already determined that before this Nachtmaal ended, she would take his.

Aletta was as charming to Minna as she had been to Ryk during the service, and when Minna's father lumbered up, she was equally gracious, extending her hand and greeting him with a ravis.h.i.+ng smile: 'I'm Aletta Probenius. My father keeps a store.'

'He's the man I seek,' Tjaart said, pleased that his business would keep him in touch with this exciting girl. 'Is it true that he has a wagon for sale?'

'He has almost everything,' Aletta said with a fetching toss of her head, and in the various events that accompanied Nachtmaal she demonstrated that, like her father in his store, she, too, had almost everything: smiles, witticisms, grace, and enormous s.e.xual magnetism.

For Minna that first Friday was agony. One close look at the radiant Aletta warned her that chances for catching Ryk Naude had vanished, and this so confused her that she did a series of things that made her look quite foolish. First she sought Ryk at his wagon to remind him of what he had promised her two years ago . . . 'We were children then,' he said.

'But you told me.'

'Things have happened.'

'But you told me,' she repeated, clutching at his hand, and when he tried to pull away, she grabbed at him. She wanted him, desperately she wanted him, terrified by the prospect of returning to isolated De Kraal for another span of years, after which she might be too old to catch herself a husband.

Ryk, at eighteen, had never experienced anything like this, for Aletta had permitted him only to hold her hand; he became so confused he did not know what to do, but his mother came up, deduced what was happening, and said calmly, 'h.e.l.lo, Minna. Hadn't you better be joining your parents?'

'Ryk said that he'

'Minna,' Mevrouw Naude said, 'you'd better gonow.' 'But he promised'

'Minna! Go home!' And she thrust the bewildered child away.

The following days were torment. In church Minna, like her father, stared at Aletta, and one evening as service ended she followed the girl to her father's store and confronted her: 'Ryk Naude is promised to me.'

'Minna, don't be foolish. Ryk and I are going to be married.'

'No! He told me . . .'

'Whatever he told you,' Aletta said with a sweetness that would have mollified anyone else, 'was two years ago. You were children, and now he's a man and he's going to marry me.'

'I won't let you!' Minna cried, her voice rising so sharply that Mijnheer Probenius came out from his shop to see his daughter being a.s.saulted by a strange girl much her junior in years.

'What goes on here?' he cried, and when it became apparent that the girls were fighting over a man, he laughed heartily and said, 'You ask me, that Ryk's not worth the trouble. You'd both be better off without him.'

Placing his arms about the two girls, he sat with them, telling Minna, 'You can't be more than thirteen. In Holland, where I came from, girls don't marry till they're twenty. Minna, you have seven years.'

'Not in the wilderness. And Ryk promised me . . .'

'Men promise a lot of things,' Probenius said. 'In Holland right now are three girls I promised to marry when I returned home to Haarlem. And here I am in Graaff-Reinet with a daughter sixteen years old who's to be married on Tuesday.'

'Married!' Minna cried, and she dissolved into tears, the shattering, soul-wrenching tears of a little girl striving to act like a woman.

To her surprise, Probenius took her round, tear-spattered face in his two hands, brought it up, and kissed it. 'Minna, this world is full of young men who need a wife like you.'

'Not in the wilderness,' she repeated stubbornly as Probenius got her to her feet, saying, 'Let's no one speak of this.' And he gently moved her along toward her parents' wagon.

Of course, everyone spoke of it, and when Tjaart reported at the store to d.i.c.ker about the exchange of his sheep for a new wagon, he found Probenius, a man somewhat older than himself, disturbed that gossip should have struck so hard at little Minna: 'She's a fine child, Van Doorn, and I'm sorry this has happened. But she'll find a host of young men.'

'Her heart was set on Ryk. What kind of fellow is he?'

'The usual. Talks big. Acts little.'

'Are you happy with him?'

'Are parents ever happy with anyone?'

'Aletta's an impressive girl.'

'I sometimes fear for her. Back in Haarlem she'd be all right. Many young men to court her, for she is pretty. But also many young women just as attractive to break her heart now and then.'

'How are things in Holland?'

'Like everywhere, confused.'

'Will you go back?'

'Me? Leave paradise for those cold winters?' He came from behind his counter and stood with Tjaart. 'They warned us that after Jan Compagnie gave your land to the English, no Dutchman from Holland would be welcomed here. We came anyway. You should give thanks every day that you live in this wonderland.'

In trading, Probenius was a hard man, which accounted for his conspicuous success, but Tjaart was equally difficult, which explained his successful farm. At the end of the Friday negotiation no agreement had even been approached: Tjaart had some of the finest sheep Graaff-Reinet had seen, and Probenius had a new wagon superior in every way to what Van Doorn had been using.

'You don't build wagons,' Tjaart said. 'Where'd you get it?' 'From an Englishman in Grahamstown named Thomas Carleton.' 'I know Carleton. I could get it cheaper by going to Grahamstown.' 'True, but your sheep are here. So you must trade here. And the price is what I said.'

On Sat.u.r.day, Tjaart brought his family to inspect the wagon, and they found it to be even better than Tjaart had reported. It was a handsome piece of workmans.h.i.+p, so constructed that it could be disa.s.sembled for transporting down ravines, and then rea.s.sembled easily. It was nicely balanced, too, and the disselboom was so attached to the front axle that the whole would respond quickly to any turning of the oxen. Even the curved hoops that covered the body and to which canvas would be applied were nicely sanded to remove rough edges. It was in every respect superior, and the Van Doorns needed it.

There could be no bargaining on Sunday, of course, nor would there have been much time for it, for in addition to the four-hour service and the acceptance of new members, the predikant offered to conduct a special service for the baptism of those babies who had missed the Sat.u.r.day rite, and the entire Van Doorn family had to attend because the De Groots were offering their new son for baptism. He was Paulus, a l.u.s.ty, squared-off little boy with powerful lungs and a rowdy nature. The Scots minister was so taken with him that at the conclusion of the service he kissed the little fellow on the forehead, saying, 'This one will be a staunch fighter for the Lord.' The De Groots were not entirely happy that their son had been welcomed into the Boer church by this Scotsman, but nevertheless they gave the dominee two sheep in thanks for the special service.

On Monday, Tjaart returned to the store for some serious bargaining, and as it happened, Probenius himself was not there, but his daughter Aletta was, and for the better part of an hour Tjaart talked with this lively, attractive girl, noting every particular. She had a musical voice and laughed easily when a.s.suring him that her father never reduced a price, once set: 'You'll face difficulties, Mijnheer, if you pursue that line.'

'I face difficulties in all I do,' he a.s.sured her, watching the enchanting way her gingham dress defined her figure when she reached for articles on the higher shelves. 'You people in Graaff-Reinetyou're getting to be a real town. Must be three, four hundred houses here.'

'But it's not like Cape Town, is it? That's where I'd like to go.'

'I wouldn't know. I've never been there.'

At the conclusion of their conversation Tjaart thought that he had never before met a girl so totally charming, and he was somewhat irritated when her father appeared to talk about the wagon: 'Let's get one thing straight, Van Doorn. Once I set a price, I never lower it.'

'Let's get a second thing straight,' Tjaart responded. 'I am perfectly prepared to herd my sheep right back home and go to Grahamstown myself. You may not know it, but last month I served on commando with young Carleton, and when I left, his wife said that I would always be welcomed back. Can you guess why she said that?'

There were in South African life two events that struck terror in the hearts of ordinary men: when two bull elephants raged in low scrub, knocking down trees in their feud; and when two Boers engaged in a business deal. Awed Englishmen, watching the trickery, the deceit, the conniving, the bl.u.s.ter and the outright falsification of evidence that occurred when one artful Boer was trying to outsmart another, sometimes wondered how the new nation survived the pa.s.sions and near-strangulations. 'I do believe,' Richard Saltwood wrote home to his brother in Parliament, 'that they are the most contrary people I've met. Rather than yield the slightest advantage, they dig their heels in like a dozen stubborn mules and won't budge, neither back nor forward, not till kingdom come.'

'The reason why the Carletons would welcome me back,' Tjaart was saying offhandedly, 'and offer me their best wagon at a low price, is that during the commando I saved his life.'

'Then you should certainly drove your sheep back one hundred miles and drove them another fifty for the slight advantage you'd get.'

'I'm prepared to do just that,' Tjaart said, and at this point he should have left the store to allow Probenius time to consider his follyfor he knew that the storekeeper needed the sheepbut now Aletta returned, and she was so like a gazelle resting along a stream that he was imprisoned. He stayed, and her father quickly understood why, and while she was there he did not mention the wagon, but when she left he said, 'Now, when will you be delivering the sheep?' and Tjaart said, 'Never, at your prices.' And he stomped from the store, exactly as Boer custom required.

On Tuesday there was no negotiation, because that was the day of the marriages, when gaunt couples in from the distant hills stepped before the predikant with their three and four children to have their unions recognized of G.o.d and confirmed by the community. It was a solemn time; the frontier church was filled with witnesses who used this ceremony to renew their own vows, and girls nine and ten watched wide-eyed as the words were said and the marriages were blessed.

But the highlight of the day was more traditional, for at the conclusion of the marriages already in existence came the young couples, and on this Tuesday, Ryk Naude, a handsome fellow, was taking as his bride the bewitching Aletta Probenius. They stood before the predikant like two golden creatures, blessed in all ways, and their youthful beauty lent grace to all the ceremonies that had gone before; they represented what marriage should be, and Minna van Doorn wept as they were wed.

On Wednesday, Probenius the storekeeper came to Tjaart's wagon, kicked at the wheels and said, 'Do you seriously think you could get this thing back to De Kraal?'

'Yes,' Tjaart said, 'because once you tell me our business is ended, I drive my wagon to Viljoen the blacksmith and have him tighten it up.'

'Did you see Viljoen at Nachtmaal? Didn't anyone tell you that he is carting ivory back to Cape Town?'

'Didn't anyone tell you that I knew this, and made arrangements for my boys to use Viljoen's forge to make the repairs?'

Who was lying? In a Boer negotiation that could never be determined, for truth was elastic, and what men hoped would happen became a prediction which had to be weighed in scales quite different from those used by a jeweler in weighing gold. Boer commercial truth was negotiable, and after judging the situation carefully, Probenius said with a show of honest summation, 'Tjaart, you need my wagon.' Here he kicked a wheel with such force that it nearly fell apart. 'And I could use your sheep, scrawny though they may be. Let's talk seriously of a proper price.'

'But we must not think only of Graaff-Reinet,' Tjaart countered with the same display of absolute honesty, 'because I am not forced to trade my fat, prime sheep. I can still take them back to Grahamstown for a better bargain.'

'I don't want to see you waste your time,' Probenius said as if he were engaged in a transaction with his own mother. And he offered a new price.