The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘Mister Willem, I’ve been informed that your head has been twisted by the little Malaccan!’

  ‘Not twisted, sir, I hope.’

  ‘And you’ve been acting toward her as if she were your wife.’

  ‘I trust not, sir.’

  ‘Your mother put your safekeeping in my hands, Mister Willem, and as your father, I deem it proper to ask if you’ve been reading the Book of Genesis?’

  ‘I know the Book, sir.’

  ‘But have you read it recently?’ the captain asked, and with this he threw open the heavy book to a page marked with a spray of palm leaf, and from the twenty-fourth chapter he read the thundering oath which Abraham imposed when his son Isaac hungered for a wife:

  ‘And I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife … of the daughters of the Canaanites … but thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife …’

  Slowly the captain turned the pages till he came to the next passage marked by a frond. Placing his two hands over the pages, he said ominously, ‘And when Isaac was an old man, having obeyed his father Abraham, what did he say when his son Jacob wanted a wife?’ Dramatically he lifted his hands and with a stubby finger pointed to the revealing verse:

  And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Neemt geene vrowe van de dochteren Canaans.

  Willem, seeing the words spelled out so strictly, felt constrained to assure the captain that he meant nothing serious with the Malaccan girl, but the older man was not to be diverted: ‘It’s always been the problem in Java and it will soon become the problem at the Cape. Where can a Dutch gentleman find himself a wife?’

  ‘Where?’ Willem echoed.

  ‘God has foreseen this problem, as He foresees everything.’ With a flourish he swung the parchment pages back to the first text, indicating it with his left forefinger. ‘Go back to your own country and be patient. Don’t throw yourself away on local women, the way those idiots in Java do.’ Pointing to the deck below, he added, ‘Nor on slaves.’

  ‘Am I to wait perpetually?’

  ‘No, because when you debark with your slaves at the Cape, this fleet continues to Holland. And when we reach Amsterdam, I’ll speak to your brother Karel and commission him to find you a wife from among the women of Holland, the way Isaac and Jacob found their wives in their native country. I’ll bring her back to you.’

  When Willem drew back in obvious distaste over having his life arranged by others, the captain closed the great book and rested his open hands upon it. ‘It tells you what to do right here. Obey the word of the Lord.’

  The visit to the captain changed nothing. Willem continued to keep his slave girl in his quarters, and it was she who obeyed the Bible, for like the original Deborah, she continued to sing, twisting herself ever more tightly about his heart.

  Then abruptly everything changed. One afternoon as the east coast of Africa neared, Deborah sat on the lower deck whispering an old song to herself, but as Willem approached she stopped midway and told him, ‘I shall have a baby.’

  With great tenderness he drew her to her feet, embraced her, and asked in Javanese, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Not sure,’ she said softly, ‘but I think.’

  She was correct. Early one morning, as she rose from Willem’s bed, she felt faint and dropped to the deck, sitting there with her arms clasped about her ankles. She was about to inform Willem that she was certain of her pregnancy, when the mast-top lookout started shouting, ‘Table Mountain!’ and all hands turned out to see the marvelous sight.

  Willem was overcome when he saw the great flat mountain standing clear in the sunlight, for it symbolized his longing. Years had elapsed since he left it, and he could imagine the vast changes that must have occurred at its base, and he was thinking of them when Deborah came to stand beside him.

  Aware of the hold this moutain had on him, she said nothing, just hummed softly, whispering the words now and then, and when he took notice of her she placed her left hand, very small and brown, on his right arm and said, ‘We will have a baby.’ The mountain, the waiting cave and the indiscernible future blended into a kind of golden haze, and he could not even begin to guess what he must do.

  When he was rowed ashore, leaving Deborah behind, for she must wait till an owner was assigned, he found a settlement much smaller than expected; only a hundred and twenty-two people inhabited the place. There was a small fort with sod walls threatening to dissolve on rainy days, and a huddle of rude buildings within. But the site! Back in 1647 when the shipwrecked sailors lived ashore, their beach headquarters had been nine miles to the north, and Willem had seen only from a distance the delectable valley at the foot of Table Mountain; now he stood at the edge of that good land, protected by mountains on three sides, and he believed that when sufficient settlers arrived this would be one of the finest towns in the world.

  He was greeted by the commander, a small, energetic man in his late thirties of such swarthy complexion that blond Dutchmen suspected him of Italian parentage. He wore a rather full mustache and dressed as fastidiously as frontier conditions would allow. He spoke in a voice higher than usual in a mature man, but with such speed and force that he gained attention and respect.

  He was Jan van Riebeeck, ship’s chirurgeon, who had served in most of the spice ports, winding up in Japan after abandoning medicine to become a merchant-trader, a skill he mastered so thoroughly that he was making profits for both the Compagnie and himself. For each hour he spent in the former’s interests, he spent an equal time on his own, until his profits grew to such dimension that the Compagnie had to take notice. Accused of private trading, he was recalled to Batavia, where he was dealt with leniently and shipped back to Holland for discipline. Forced into premature retirement, he might well have finished his life in obscurity had not a peculiar circumstance thrust him back into the mainstream and an honored place in history.

  When the Lords XVII decided to establish a recuperation spot at the Cape, they selected as their manager one of the men who had guarded the trade goods following the wreck of the Haerlem. He had been chosen because of his familiarity with the area, but when he declined, a wise old director said, ‘Wait! What we really need is a merchant of proved ability.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Van Riebeeck.’

  ‘Can we trust him?’ several of the Lords asked.

  ‘I believe he’s a case of what we might call “belated rectitude,” ’ the old man said, and it was Jan van Riebeeck who got the assignment.

  In effect, his instructions were simple: ‘Establish a refreshment station which will feed our ships, but do so at no cost to this Compagnie!’ That charter, in force for the next hundred and fifty years, would determine how this land would develop: it would always be a mercantile operation, never a free colony. The charter already accounted for what Willem was seeing on his brief walk to the fort with Van Riebeeck, but he had the good sense not to share his observations: This is much finer than Batavia, but where are the people? The land beyond those hills! It could house a million settlers, and I’ll wager it’s not even been explored.

  ‘I often saw your brother Karel in Amsterdam,’ Van Riebeeck said.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Married to a wonderful girl. Very wealthy.’

  Willem, observing that the commander evaluated even marriage in terms of commerce, changed the subject. ‘Will there soon be more people?’ he asked.

  Van Riebeeck stopped abruptly, then turned as if to settle once and for all this matter of population, and from the sharp manner in which he spoke, Willem suspected that he had made his speech before: ‘You must understand one thing, Van Doorn.’ Although only six years older than Willem he spoke patronizingly: ‘This is a commercial holding, not a free state. We’re here to aid the Compagnie, and we’ll enlarge the colony only when it tells us to. As long as we allow you to stay ashore, you work for the Compagnie. You do what t
he Compagnie says.’

  Within the next few hours Willem learned his lesson. He was ordered where to put his bag, where to make his bed, where to eat, and where to work. He found that a farmer could till a plot of land but never own it, and that whatever he grew must produce profit for the Compagnie. Of course, as an old Java hand he was not alarmed by these rules, but he did recall that in Batavia there had been a lusty freedom, epitomized by his mother, whereas here at the Cape there was somber restriction. Worst of all, the tiny settlement suffered under two sets of masters: from Amsterdam the Lords XVII laid down the big principles, but from Java came the effective rules. The governor-general in Batavia was an emperor; the commander at the Cape, a distant functionary. In Java, grand designs effloresced; at the Cape, they worried about ‘radishes, lettuce and cress.’

  Three days later, when Willem stood before the commander in the fort, Van Riebeeck thought him a poor replica of his brother: Karel was tall and slim, Willem shortish and plump; Karel had a quick, ingratiating manner, Willem a stubborn suspiciousness; and Karel was obviously ambitious for promotion within the Compagnie, whereas Willem was content to work at anything, so long as he was free to explore the Cape. In no comparison was the difference more startling than in their choice of women: Willem, if the ship captain could be trusted, had formed an alliance with a Muslim slave girl, while Karel had married the daughter of one of the richest merchants in Amsterdam.

  ‘Wonderful match,’ Van Riebeeck said. ‘Daughter of Claes Danckaerts.’ And again he added, ‘Very rich.’

  ‘I’m happy for him,’ Willem said. Actually, he could scarcely remember his brother and could not possibly have guessed how Karel had changed in the eight years since he had quit the wreck of the Haerlem to sail homeward. From what the commander said, he must be prospering.

  ‘What we have in mind for you,’ Van Riebeeck continued, ‘is the vineyard. Have you ever grown grapes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re like the others.’ When Van Doorn looked bewildered, the energetic little commander took him by the arm, led him to a parapet from which the valleys lying at the foot of Table Mountain were visible, and said with great enthusiasm, ‘This soil can grow anything. But sometimes we approach it the wrong way.’ He winced, recalling one early disaster. ‘From the start I wanted grapes. I brought with me the seeds, but our gardener planted them the way to plant wheat. Scattered them broadside, plowed them under, and six months later harvested weeds.’

  ‘How do you grow them?’

  ‘Rooted vines, each one separately. Then you make cuttings …’

  ‘What are cuttings?’

  Patiently Van Riebeeck explained the intricate proceedings whereby tiny plants imported from Europe turned eventually into casks of wine headed for Java. ‘Why do we bother?’ Willem asked, for he saw that fruit trees and vegetables would flourish.

  ‘Java’s demanding wine,’ the commander said sharply. Hustling Willem back to his rude office, he pointed to a large map that showed the shipping route from Amsterdam to Batavia: ‘Every vessel that plies these waters wants wine. But they can’t fetch it from Holland, because that wine’s so poor it sickens before the equator and reaches us as vinegar. Your task is to make wine here.’

  So Willem van Doorn, now thirty years of age, was settled upon a plot of ground belonging to the Compagnie and given nine basketfuls of small rooted vines imported from the Rhineland. ‘Make wine,’ Van Riebeeck said peremptorily, ‘because if you succeed, after twenty years you’ll be free to head for Holland.’

  ‘You also?’ Willem asked.

  ‘No, no! I’m here for only a brief time. Then I go back to Java.’ His eyes brightened. ‘That’s where the real jobs are.’

  Willem started to say that he preferred the Cape to either place, but since he had never seen Holland, he concluded that this might be presumptuous; still, the fact that Van Riebeeck thought well of Java made him more attractive.

  For a man who had never done so, to make wine presented difficulties, but Van Riebeeck showed Willem how to plant the precious roots, then provide them with poles and strings to grow upon, and finally, prune them along the lines required. He learned how to use animal fertilizer and irrigation, but most of all, he learned to know the howling southeast winds that blew incessantly in some seasons, making the high ground near the mountain a grave for growing things.

  ‘It didn’t blow like this when we were here before,’ he complained, but the Compagnie gardeners laughed at him, for they were weary of hearing his constant recollections.

  ‘We were up there,’ he said, pointing some nine miles to the north, where the winds had been gentler. The men ignored him, for in their opinion there could be no spot in this forlorn land where the winds did not howl. But they showed him how to plant trees to give protection, if they survived, and offered other encouragements, for they, too, needed wine.

  Willem realized that he had been handed an unrewarding assignment in which failure was probable, but it gave him one advantage which he prized: everyone else at the Cape lived within the fortress walls in cramped, unpleasant quarters, while he enjoyed the freedom of living in his own hut beside his vines. True, he had to walk some distance for food and companionship, but that was a trivial price to pay for the joy he found in living relatively free.

  But his freedom accentuated the slavery in which Deborah lived, and often at night, when he would have wanted to be with her, he was in his hut and she in the fort, locked in the guardhouse. The Malayan slaves had been thoughtfully placed by Van Riebeeck: ‘One man and woman will work for my wife. The strongest man will work the ships. The other woman can do general work for the Compagnie.’

  Deborah was the latter, and as she moved about the fort, Van Riebeeck saw that she was pregnant. This did not trouble him, for like any prudent owner, he hoped for natural increase, and since Deborah was proving the cleverest of his slaves, he assumed that she would produce valuable children. But he was distressed that the father of the unborn child was Van Doorn.

  ‘How did this happen?’ he asked Willem.

  ‘On the ship … from Malacca.’

  ‘We need women. Badly we need them. But proper Dutch women, not slaves.’

  ‘Deborah’s a fine person …’

  ‘I’ve already seen that. But she’s Malay. She’s Muslim. And the Bible says—’

  ‘I know. The captain read me the passages. “Thou shalt not take a wife from the Canaanites. Thou shalt go to thine own country and find a wife.” ’

  ‘Excellent advice.’ Van Riebeeck rose from his desk and paced for several moments. Then threw his hands upward and asked, ‘But what shall we do here at the Cape? At last count we had one hundred and fourteen men, nine women. White men and women, that is. What’s a man to do?’

  He wanted to bar Van Doorn from visiting with his slave girl, but he refrained because he knew that to exact such a promise in these close quarters would not be sensible. Instead he warned: ‘Keep marriage out of your mind, Van Doorn. What happens in Batavia will not be encouraged here. The child will be a bastard and a Compagnie slave.’ Van Doorn, suspecting that what was law now would be altered later, bowed and said nothing.

  But when he saw how far with child Deborah had come, he felt a pressing desire to stay with her and make her his wife, even though his experience in Java should have taught him that these marriages often turned out poorly. Such memories were obliterated by his recollection of those exceptional marriages in which Javanese women had created homes of quiet joy, half-Christian, half-Muslim, in which the husbands relinquished all dreams of ever returning to a colder Holland and a more severe society.

  Deborah, to his surprise, seemed unconcerned about her future, as if the problems of pregnancy were enough. Her beautiful, placid face showed no anxiety, and when he raised questions about her status, she smiled: ‘I’m to be a slave. I’ll never see my village again.’ And he supposed that this was her honest reaction, that she did not prize freedom the way he did.


  ‘I want to care for you,’ he said.

  ‘Someone will,’ she said, and when his emotion flared, tempting him to steal her from the fort, she laughed again and said that when the time came, Commander van Riebeeck would find her a man.

  ‘Will he?’

  ‘Of course. In Malacca the Portuguese owners always found men for their slave women. They wanted children.’

  ‘I’ll be that man.’

  ‘Maybe you, maybe someone else.’

  As the time neared for the birth of their child, Willem endeavored to visit with Deborah as much as possible, and it became known to everyone that he was the father. She walked with him sometimes to the vineyard, thinking with amusement of how a Portuguese grandee at Malacca would have scorned any fellow countryman who dipped his hands into the earth. But she was acquainted with growing things and said, ‘Willem, those vines are dying.’

  ‘Why? Why do they die?’

  ‘The rows run the wrong way. The wind hits them too strong.’ And she showed him how, if he planted his vines along the direction from which the winds blew, and not broadside to it, only the lead plants would be affected, while the sun would be free to strike all the vines evenly.

  She was at the vineyard one day, singing with that extraordinary voice, when Van Riebeeck came to inspect the German vines, and he, too, saw that they were dying: ‘It’s the wind.’ And he added grimly, ‘No wine from these plants,’ but he assured Willem that replacement plants were on their way from France. He was determined to produce wine for the Compagnie, even if he had to import new plants constantly.