The Covenant Part 20

Over the years the Dutch had had so much trouble with their slaves, who persisted in trying to escape to freedom, that the most bizarre punishments were inst.i.tuted: when one black woman enraged the community, the commander ordered that she be stripped, broken on the wheel, and tied to the ground while her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were ripped off by red-hot pincers, after which she was to be hanged, beheaded and quartered. When certain settlers protested this barbarity, the commander granted clemency: the woman was sewn into a canvas bag and thrown into the bay, where she struggled for half an hour before drowning.

'We must never arm slaves,' a cautious man warned.

'But these aren't slaves,' Boeksma pleaded. 'They're loyal. They believe in me like my own children.'

As he spoke, the armed servants stood silent. One could still be cla.s.sified as a Hottentot, but the other two were Coloureds, and when Boeksma called them part of his family he spoke the truth, for there was no tribe or captaincy surviving in this area to which they could give their allegiance, no homeland, no human being except 'Groot Baas Boeksma.' They had accepted his G.o.d, his church, his way of life, and this was demonstrated daily in the language they spoke, an exciting mixture of Dutch-Malay-Portuguese-Hottentot. It was a good patois and it served them well in field and kitchen. A farmer might not be able to afford many slaves, but every settler was able to attract his complement of Hottentot-Coloured families; they tended the vineyards; they served his meals; they nursed his infants and minded his children, scolding when needed and whispering instructions in the language they were building from their disparate backgrounds.

Still, the idea of arming even such placid dark men was repugnant, and an impa.s.se was reached between Boeksma, who wanted to do so, and the sager heads, who warned against it. It was the Huguenot De Pre who resolved the argument: 'I seem to remember a pa.s.sage in our Bible. In the years when Abraham was still called Abram, his nephew Lot fell into trouble, and there was discussion as to how the commando might rescue him. And did not Abraham arm his servants and sally forth to save his nephew?'

None of the Dutchmen remembered this incident, but all agreed that if Abram really had armed his servants, that would const.i.tute permission for them to do the same, so they consulted Willem, who offered his Bible to the worried men, and in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, De Pre found specific instructions telling them what to do, but when he encountered trouble reading the Dutch he almost spoiled things by saying, 'In French it's clearer.' It had never occurred to his neighbors that G.o.d's word had ever appeared in any language but Dutch: 'And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them . . . And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people.'

What astounded these devout men was that when they added up those servants in the Stellenbosch region capable of fighting, they totaled three hundred and eighteen, and Andries Boeksma shouted, 'It's a revelation a revelation from G.o.d Himself! A thousand years ago, nay, ten thousand, He foresaw our plight and instructed us to arm our servants.' And he asked the men to pray, expressing their thanks for this guidance, and when they rose they organized a punitive expedition, and for every animal the Hottentots had taken away, the Dutchmen brought back three.

From then on, no commando sallied forth without its complement of Hottentot-Coloured fighters, and few farmers would venture into the wilderness without their dark families trailing along with them. For generations this alliance would maintain, fortified sometimes by bloodlines when lonely men needed companionship, but more often based on a kind of acknowledged and gentle servitude, for they were, as Boeksma had said, 'Loyal.' As the Dutchmen traveled, the little dark men and women might not be visible, and they never ate at table, but they were there, one step behind the Groot Baas.

Willem did not accompany the raiders, and he refused for a good reason: he still hoped that some kind of peace might be brought about between white settlers and brown. 'You're no longer a good Dutchman,' Andries Boeksma chided when the victorious commando returned. 'You don't think like a man from Holland, and you don't act like a man from Java.'

'I've thought of that myself,' Willem said. 'I suppose I'm an Afrikaner.'

'A what?' Boeksma cried.

'An Afrikaner. A man of Africa.' It was the first time in history this designation had been used, and never would it apply more accurately. And when the day came that Willem's persistent lung disease, incurred by his hours on the horse, attacked and he lay dying, he counseled his grandchildren never to war with the Hottentots: 'Share Africa with them in peace.'

His sickbed stood in the left-hand room facing Bezel Muhammad's first cupboard, and he pa.s.sed the pain-choked hours by studying afresh the lovely relationship between the two woods, dark and light. They seemed an augury of what the country he had discovered and settled might become.

No amount of Biblical glossing helped when the Van Doorns faced their real catastrophe, nor were the teachings of the Dutch Reformed Church of much a.s.sistance, either. One spring morning when Marthinus was working at the vines and the three De Pres were far away, he was summoned by the frantic ringing of a bell, and suspecting that this meant fire, he ran toward the big house, shouting, 'De Pre! De Pre! Where in h.e.l.l are you?' But when he reached the house, and found only Annatjie, tall and red-faced, standing in the kitchen with Petronella, he was glad he had come alone.

'Send the boys away,' his wife said brusquely, and the two lads were dismissed, even though Hendrik, now thirteen, could guess that the emergency had something to do with babies.

When the boys were gone, Annatjie gasped, 'This one wants to marry Bezel Muhammad!' And when Marthinus looked at his fifteen-year-old daughter, she nodded so vigorously that her pigtails bobbed, giving her the look of a child.

Marthinus sat down. 'You want to marry a slave?' When his daughter nodded again, he asked, 'Does he know about this?' And before she could reply, he demanded, 'Do you have to get married?'

She shook her head and held out her hands to her father. 'I love him, and he's a good man.'

Marthinus ignored this for the moment and said, 'I could find you a dozen husbands at the Cape.'

'I know,' Petronella said, 'but I would not be happy with them, Father.'

The way she said Father Father melted Van Doorn. Extending his arms, he said, 'Before he died, old Willem told me he had wanted to marry a slave. Said he regretted not doing so every day of his life. Oh, he loved old Katje, you could see that . . .' melted Van Doorn. Extending his arms, he said, 'Before he died, old Willem told me he had wanted to marry a slave. Said he regretted not doing so every day of his life. Oh, he loved old Katje, you could see that . . .'

'Then, I can marry him?'

Marthinus looked at his wife, a woman who had contracted a marriage almost as bizarre: in her case she accepted a white husband she' had never seen; Petronella was taking a black-brown man she had known for three years. When Annatjie shrugged, the girl took it as a sign that her marriage was approved, but her father said quietly, 'Leave us now, Petronella,' and when she was gone he raised questions too delicate for her ears: 'You know how the Compagnie feels about white and black . . .'

'The Compagnie's worried only about their sailors and soldiers who creep to the slave quarters.' Annatjie sniffed.

'And about men like Boeksma.'

'We all know about Boeksma and his servant girls.'

'With Petronella it is different. She's in love with her slave.' In his confusion Marthinus turned to his Bible, but found no guidance. Abraham had married his slave girl Hagar, and her offspring had populated half the earth, but they could find no account of an Israelite woman's taking a slave husband. There was, of course, constant fulmination against Israelite men marrying Canaanite women, but nothing about the reverse, and it began to look as if G.o.d was much more concerned about young men than about their sisters. They even found the obscure text in Ezra in which G.o.d, speaking through His prophet, commanded all men to put away their strange wives. They read aloud that extraordinary list of nearly a hundred men who had taken wives from among the Canaanites: 'And of the singers also; Eliashib: and of the porters; Shalum, and Telem, and Uri. . . And they gave their hands that they would put away their wives; and being guilty, they offered a ram of the flock for their trespa.s.s.'

In the end Marthinus realized that the decision must be made by the Van Doorns alone, and when reached, must be defended by them against whatever opposition the community might organize, so one afternoon he asked his wife to sit with him at the kitchen table, to which they summoned the young lovers.

'Are you determined to marry?' Marthinus asked.

'We are.'

The Van Doorns sat with folded hands, looking at the couple, and the more they studied Bezel the more acceptable he became. 'You are clean and hard-working,' Marthinus said. 'You're a good carpenter. You never praise your own work, but I can see you prize it.' Annatjie said, 'It's as if you combined the best of your two races, durable like the blacks, poetic like the Malays.' But then Marthinus observed ominously, 'And you also represent two very difficult problems.'

When Petronella asked what these were, he said, 'First, he can't marry a white woman while he remains a slave.'

'That's simple,' she said. 'Set him free.'

'Not so simple,' Marthinus said. 'Bezel, you must buy your freedom.'

The slave, having antic.i.p.ated this impediment, nodded to Petronella, who from the folds of her dress produced a canvas bag containing coins, which she emptied onto the table.

'How did you collect them?' Marthinus asked.

'From the wall closets he makes,' Petronella explained. 'I save the money for him.'

Head bowed, Marthinus fumbled with the coins but did not count them. After a while he cleared his throat and pushed the money back toward his daughter. 'He is free. Keep the coins.' Then, sternly, he added, 'But the marriage will still be impossible unless he's a Christian.'

'He's willing to become one,' Petronella said.

'I was speaking to Bezel.'

'I think I'm already a Christian,' Bezel said, and when this was explored, the people at the table were satisfied that he told the truth, but when they approached the predikant to have him verify the fact, Paul de Pre heard of the negotiation and fell into a rage.

He was so eager to gain possession of Trianon, a house he had practically built, with vineyards he alone had saved from decay, that he had been quietly devising his own plans for Petronella. True, she was only fifteen and he thirty-four, but on a frontier where wives often died in childbirth, it was not uncommon for a patriarch to take himself four wives in sequence. The bride was always about seventeen, the man growing older and older. He had been giving serious thought to Petronella and now he heard with dismay that she was about to be married to a slave.

Frantic, he ran across to Trianon, bursting through the doors he had rebuilt. 'I've come to seek your daughter's hand in marriage.'

'She's already taken,' Annatjie said.

'Muhammad? The slave?'

'Yes.'

'But there hasn't been a wedding!'

'Perhaps there was, perhaps there wasn't,' Annatjie said calmly. 'You would never allow a slave . . .'

'Perhaps we will, perhaps we won't,' she said, and when he started to rave, she said without any show of anger, 'Neighbor De Pre, you're making a fool of yourself.'

Paul appealed to Marthinus, but he remembered too vividly his father's dying comment on what marriage meant at the edge of a wilderness: 'Tell Hendrik and Sarel to find the best women they can and cling to them. I could not have lived my life without Deborah's singing in my ears. I could never have built this refuge without Katje's help.'

'I think we'll let things work themselves out,' Marthinus said, and for five months he did not see De Pre at the vineyard, but when the time came to blend the wine, with Trianon's harsher grapes giving character to De Pre's gentler ones, Paul could not stay away, and it was he who made the final selections: 'This wine in barrels, for the slaves in Java. But this good one we put in casks for Europe.' And it was with this vintage that Trianon became an established name, even in Paris and London.

It was Annatjie who first detected Paul de Pre's grand design. She was a hard-minded woman who even as a child had learned to calculate what others might be wanting to do to her. Other unmarried girls at the orphanage had been afraid of emigrating to Brazil or South Africa, but she had perceived this as her only avenue of escape and had never moaned over the consequences of her act. When the man who chose her first at the Cape rejected her, she did not fly to tears, satisfied that someone else would want her in this lonely outpost, and when Marthinus stepped forward to claim her, she was not surprised.

She remembered that first long ride across the flats; how bleak they seemed, how destructive of hopes! But at the worst part of the transit she had known that something much better must lie ahead, and she had gritted her teeth, held fast to the reins, and thought: He wouldn't have settled here if the land were all like thisso that when the river appeared, with ibis and cranes gracing its banks, and ducks of wild variety diving to its bottom, she did not feel triumphant relief, but only that this was what she had expected.

Her life with Katje had been difficult at times, for that quarrelsome woman loved to complain, accusing her daughter-in-law of being too lazy or too careless, but after two or three harsh battles in which Annatjie stood her ground, Katje realized that she had a strong woman in her house, and the two mistresses worked out compromises. Occasionally it had been necessary for Annatjie to shove Katje aside, when something had to be done quickly and in what she thought was the proper way. When this first happened, her mother-in-law exploded, but Annatjie said, over her shoulder as she did the work, 'Yell your heart out, old lady, but don't get in my way.' In later years, when the younger Van Doorns had three children, Annatjie appreciated Katje's presence, for she proved a loving grandmother, instilling decent behavior into the children while stuffing them with goodies.

Annatjie's relationship with Willem had been more placid. She felt sorry for the crippled old farmer and admired the stalwart way he tended his vineyard, never complaining of the pain that kept him walking sideways, always ready to help any newcomer get started in the Stellenbosch area. She had worked with him in building the huts that had acc.u.mulated about the farmhouse: one shed for pigeons, one for farming tools, one for the storage of grain. She enjoyed that heavy work, for with every building that went up, she felt that the Van Doorns were securing their hold upon the land; she, more than his son Marthinus, was a projection of Willem's dream for South Africa.

With her three children she was a firm-minded mother, insisting that they work on the land with the slaves and Hottentots during the day and learn their letters at night after the table was cleared. She was desperately afraid they would be illiterate, and made them read with her from the only book the family owned, the big Bible whose Dutch words were printed in heavy Gothic scriptand for a child of seven to try to decipher them was much like unraveling a secret code, but the ability to do so was the mark of a good human being, and patiently she drilled her offspring. In this she succeeded, but in her determination to make them hard-working farmers, like the ones she had known as a girl in Holland, she failed, for as the years pa.s.sed, the white men of Africa grew accustomed to seeing black bodies bent down over the fields. It seemed G.o.d's ordination that labor be divided so that men like the Van Doorns could supervise while slaves and servants toiled. The expression 'Oh, that's slave's work' became current.

Annatjie was distressed when Hendrik showed no real interest in reading, and learned only under duress. For some reason that she did not understand, he inclined toward the wilderness, the tracking of animals and the exploration of valleys yet unsettled. She often wondered what would happen to him, for he was not tractable like the De Pre boys; he had a quick temper, a stubbornness much like his grandfather's; indeed, the only hopeful aspect of his character had been his affection for Willem. It was he who had listened most intently to what the old man had said about the siege of Malacca and his voyages to j.a.pan. The De Pre boys were hungry for news of the France their father had known, but her children were content with Africa.

Petronella she always loved with special affection; the girl was much as she had been, stubborn, helpful, considerate of others and with a vast capacity for love, and it was with this in mind that Annatjie had approached her daughter's marriage to Bezel Muhammad, a free man and a Christian. She had learned to look not at a man's skin but at his soul, and she was quietly amused when Farmer Boeksma revealed his. A hypocritical man, he ranted in church, but at home had three little servant girls who bore a remarkable resemblance to him; their black grandfathers had ridden at his side on commando; their black mothers had served at his table. But now he denounced the proposed Van Doorn marriage: 'It's all right, when the pressure's on a man, to sleep with a slave, but, by G.o.d, you never marry them.'

Quickly another farmer corrected him: 'What you mean, Andries, it's all right for white men to sleep with black women. Never white women with black men.' When this was enthusiastically approved, Boeksma endeavored to prohibit the marriage, and might have succeeded except for two reasons: local people needed the wine Marthinus made and the wall closets Bezel built. So the slave became free, the dark man married the white woman, and in a score of unexpected ways the community profited.

Not long after the wedding, Boeksma approached Annatjie with an interesting proposition: 'Mevrouw, would you allow your slave to build me a stinkwood closet?'

'He's a free man. Ask him direct.'

Bezel accepted the commission, and Annatjie was pleased to see the beauty of the gigantic piece. It was, she believed, the best work her son-in-law had ever done, and she watched with wry amus.e.m.e.nt as he loaded it on his cart for delivery to the man who had been his adversary.

With her daughter married, Annatjie's concern turned to little Sarel, whose reticence had worried her from cradle days. As long as he had to be compared only to Hendrik, who was himself quiet, she could rationalize: 'Sarel's a good boy. He just doesn't attract much attention.' But when he had to be judged against the De Pre lads, his deficiencies became apparent. He spoke more slowly, reacted tardily to externals, and never showed anger the way boys should. She was not yet prepared to admit that Sarel was slow-witted and would have fought anyone who said so, but she did worry: 'He's a slow developer. Not to be compared with the others.'

Annatjie herself was without vanity, or envy, or senseless anger. She was a woman born without prospects who had stumbled into a life infinitely better than she could have antic.i.p.ated, with a young husband who appreciated her, an older son who gave promise of becoming outstanding, and parents-in-law who had been exceptional. Furthermore, she lived in a valley that had no equal in South Africa and in a house that would one day be hailed around the world as a masterpiece of Cape Dutch invention.

She was therefore quite capable of handling Paul de Pre's obvious determination to gather all the land in this valley into one vast holding, of which the princ.i.p.al part would be the vineyards of Trianon. The Van Doorns now owned their original sixty morgen, plus an additional hundred and twenty acquired since coming to the valley. Paul de Pre owned only the sixty granted him by Karel van Doorn in lieu of cash, but already he had plans to pick up another farm, and had sharp eyes for several bits of unclaimed land beyond that.

He had tried to marry Petronella in order to establish some kind of claim on Trianon, and had been rebuffed. Indeed, he had been ridiculed by Annatjie, who had told him he was making a fool of himself, but this had not deterred him from proceeding with his ambition, and one evening some months after the funeral of old Willem he came to the Van Doorns with an astonishing proposal: 'Why don't we merge the two farms? I'll contribute mine so that we can operate the vineyards as a single unit.'

'But what would you do?' Marthinus asked.

'Work with you. We can make this the best wine farm outside of France.'

'You'd give up your morgen?'

'We'd be partners. What difference does it make who owns this piece of land or that?'

Marthinus said, 'But we own one eighty morgen. You have only sixty. What kind of partnership is that?'

'If I stop tending the grapes, how much are yours worth, eh?'

'We'd farm it, some other way. But we'd never give up our land.'

'Think about it,' De Pre said, and after three weeks, when the subject was not returned to, he announced one night, 'I now have a hundred and six morgen and will soon have two hundred.'

When he was gone, Annatjie sent the boys to bed and talked seriously with her husband. 'I'm sure Paul has plans to take over Trianon. He rebuilt our house to his taste. He named it. He designed the motif for our casks. And his slaves work the fields better than ours do. I often wondered why he never planted a hedge between our properties. Now I know.'

'I think he just wants a good relationship. As he saidworking the fields as a single unit.'

'Marthinus, he's a peasant. A French peasant. And French peasants do not surrender their land easily. Never.' When her husband started to uphold the Huguenot, she interrupted: 'Remember how you defended your land when he proposed a partnership? "We'd never give up our land." What made you say that? Old Willem's sacrifices to get the land? Old Katje's long years of hardship here? Well, if you love your land, Paul de Pre worships his. And if he's willing to give us his, it's only because he thinks he sees a way to gain control over the whole estate later on.'

Marthinus pondered this. He and Annatjie were older than De Pre and would probably die sooner. But there were the three Van Doorn children to inherit Trianon.

'Don't count on that,' Annatjie warned. 'If Petronella has a dark husband, they won't try to hold the land. And I've had grave suspicions that Hendrik won't want to stay here. He's like his grandfather. Eyes to the east. One day he'll wander off and we'll see him no more.'

'There's still Sarel. He loves the soil.'

'De Pre is sure he can outwit Sarel. De Pre knows that Petronella and Hendrik don't count. It's him against Sarel, and he intends to win.'

'But he could well be an old man before this happens. You and I aren't going to die tomorrow.'

'De Pre himselfyes, he will be old, but his boys will be young. And able. And older than Sarel. Three determined Huguenots against one young Dutchman who's not . . .'

'Not what?' Marthinus asked aggressively, and the words she had sworn never to utter came forth: 'He's not too quick.'

'What do you mean?' He spoke in anger, for his wife had opened a subject he had for some time been trying to avoid, and he reacted defensively: 'There's nothing wrong with Sarel!'

The forbidden subject having been broached, she plowed ahead: 'He's a wonderful child and we both love him, but he's not too quick. No match for the De Pres.' And when she began slowly to recite the deficiencies which could no longer be masked, Marthinus had to admit that his young son was limited: 'Not a dull boy. I'd never confess that to anyone. But I do sometimes see that he's not. . . well, as you say . . . quick.' Then he voiced the hope that kept him working so hard at the vineyard: 'One of these days Hendrik will see the light. When the time comes for him to take command.'

'Hendrik has seen other horizons,' Annatjie said. 'He talked too long with old Willem. One of these days he'll be gone.'

'So how do we protect ourselves against De Pre?'

'I think we look first at the land,' she said. 'What's good for the land?'

Marthinus sat for a long time, staring at the flickering candle, and finally said, 'The sensible thing would be to join the two farms, operate them as one, and make some really fine wine.'

'I think we should do so,' Annatjie said.

'But you said you were afraid of De Pre?'

'I am, but I think that together you and I will prove a match for him.' So to De Pre's astonishment, the Van Doorns came to him and said that papers should be drawn combining the two holdings and that De Pre should go to the Cape to formalize the doc.u.ments, for such joining of land would never be permitted without Compagnie sanction. And it was this trip which altered everything at Trianon, for when Henri and Louis had a sustained opportunity to see the bustling town, now with about a thousand inhabitants of myriad coloring, they were enchanted by it.

Malays in turbans, Javanese in conical hats, swarthy Madagascans in loincloths, handsome dark women from St. Helena, and high Compagnie officials in fine suitings with lace at the collarthese were the people that formed the Cape parade. While the elder De Pre arranged for the uniting of the farms, a French East Indiaman put into the bay, and stately parties were held at the fort, and one night the Huguenots, as fellow Frenchmen, were invited to attend, and the boys heard their native language spoken with elegance, and saw for themselves what a superior group the French were.

The captain of the French vessel, impressed by the manliness of the boys, invited them to visit his ship, where they ate with the officers and spoke of France. When the ship departed, the boys stood on the quay, saluting, and after that they had no interest whatever in working the fields at Trianon or inheriting the grand design their father was putting together.

In 1698 Henri announced that he was sailing back to Europe. This was not unusual; every return fleet which stopped at the Cape enticed a few free burghers to abandon the settlement, disgusted with the difficulties of farming or terrified by the prospect of being forever lost in the African wilderness. Soldiers, too, who served at the Cape without acquiring land usually wanted to return home at the earliest possibility, and over ninety percent of Compagnie officials quit the Cape when their tour of duty ended. It was the unusual man who followed the steps of Willem van Doorn, choosing the Cape once and for all as his future home and committing himself totally to its development. Young Henri de Pre was not such a pioneer; he was haunted by the gracious ca.n.a.ls of Amsterdam, the good fields of France, and he longed to see them once more.

As for young Louis, eighteen years old, the sights and adventures of the Cape had corrupted him. He wanted no more of the wilderness farm or the placid offerings of Stellenbosch: 'I want to work at the Cape.'

'But what can you do, with no land?'

'The Compagnie's wine contractor needs an a.s.sistant. I'll join him. I'll work with the men at Groot Constantia, and learn the wine trade. The Huguenots at Paarl will need help.' With that quickness of mind that Annatjie had detected, the boy had visualized a complete way of life: 'I'll marry some Dutch girl.' He could have said, had he wished to confide his entire dream, 'And we'll have many sons and our name will live here forever.'

It was in this way that the Huguenots, that small group of refugees, would make their mark on South Africa. Their names, modified in pa.s.sing generations, would reverberate in local history and would at times seem to monopolize elite positions: the athletic DuPlessis; the legalist DeVilliers; Viljoen, adapted from the name of the poet's family Villon; Malherbe; the poet Du Toit, who would help build the Afrikaans language; the military Joubert; the Naudes of religious fervor; the extensive, rugged Du Preez family. All of them were devout Calvinists, dedicated to learning and to conservatism. It was no accident that the man who would lead the Afrikaners to their final nationalist victory and become prime minister came from this stockMalan, whose ancestors had fled persecution from a small town in southern France.