The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  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 Pré 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 Japan. The De Pré 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 God, 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 amusement 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 Pré 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 anticipated, 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 Pré’s obvious determination to gather all the land in this valley into one vast holding, of which the principal 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 Pré 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 Pré 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 said—working 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 Pré 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 Pré 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 Pré is sure he can outwit Sarel. De Pré 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 Pré himself—yes, 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 Prés.’ 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 o
ld Willem. One of these days he’ll be gone.’

  ‘So how do we protect ourselves against De Pré?’

  ‘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 Pré?’

  ‘I am, but I think that together you and I will prove a match for him.’

  So to De Pré’s astonishment, the Van Doorns came to him and said that papers should be drawn combining the two holdings and that De Pré should go to the Cape to formalize the documents, 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 collar—these were the people that formed the Cape parade. While the elder De Pré 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 Pré was not such a pioneer; he was haunted by the gracious canals 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 assistant. 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 passing 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 Naudés 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 stock—Malan, whose ancestors had fled persecution from a small town in southern France.

  In 1700 Louis de Pré left the aggrandized vineyards of Trianon and settled in at the Cape, where, according to plan, he married a Dutch girl and prospered in all he attempted. He would have seven sons, who would in time be called Du Preez.

  His father’s plans fared less well. He was forty years old, the best wine-maker in the district, full partner in the profitable Trianon winery, but a man now without children or a wife. He lived alone in his small house, took some of his meals at Trianon, and fended off the Van Doorns when they persisted in trying to find him a wife. ‘Why is he so obstinate?’ Marthinus asked one night after Paul had left to walk the short distance to his lonely house.

  ‘You know what I think?’ Annatjie said to her husband. ‘I think he is interested in only one thing—he still hopes that Hendrik will leave us and that he can bring Louis and his sons back here to take over. He intends that this shall be a De Pré farm before he dies.’

  ‘He is dreaming.’

  ‘I saw him the other day drawing designs in the dust—uniting all the little huts into fine buildings stretching out like arms from this one. It could be quite fine, as he plans it.’

  ‘Let him do it. Bezel likes nothing better than to start carpentering a new building.’ The wings that De Pré had sketched could easily be erected between seasons, but Annatjie guessed correctly that he would not start until the farm was more securely in his grasp.

  Trianon now comprised about three hundred and eighty acres, all with access to water. It owned more than thirty slaves from various parts of Africa, the eastern ocean and Brazil. Fifty Hottentots and Coloureds worked also from five-thirty at dawn till seven at night, receiving no wages; they were given food, tobacco, an occasional blanket, and the right to graze the few animals that remained from their once-vast herds. Once each day they would queue up with the slaves for a splendid reward: a pint of raw wine.

  One evening Farmer Boeksma arrived to buy a cask of Trianon at the very time the slaves and servants were lined up for their tot, and he observed, ‘Maybe they have bartered away their freedom, but what a marvelous way to forget the past.’ Marthinus, thinking of what old Willem had told about Jango’s lust for freedom, and the prices he had been willing to pay, said nothing.

  And then the Bushmen struck. The little brown people had watched with dismay as white farmers kept extending their holdings farther into traditional hunting grounds. At first they had merely observed the invasion, retreating ten miles ahead of the plow, but now they were beginning to fight back, and on many mornings a farmer on the outskirts of Stellenbosch would awaken to find his kraal broken, a prize ox slaughtered in a gully, and the spoor of Bushmen leading north toward the open country.

  Every tactic had been used to combat the voracious raiders: armed Hottentots had been sent against them, commandos had been mounted, guards had been posted on twenty-four-hour duty, but the little men loved animal meat so much, and the placid cows of the Dutchmen were so inviting, that they circumvented every device the farmers tried. Losses were beginning to be intolerable, and in August of 1702 most of the farmers of Stellenbosch decided they must eliminate the pests.

  They were led by Andries Boeksma, who argued that since the Bushmen were not human, they could be wiped out ruthlessly. Others, guided by Marthinus van Doorn, contended that Bushmen did have souls and must not be shot down like wild dogs; he was willing to have the worst offenders disciplined and even hanged if they persisted, but their basic humanity he defended. At first the community divided evenly, the tougher old men insisting that the Bushmen were not much different from dogs or gemsbok, the younger granting that they just might be human.

  After a week of debate it was agreed that the argument be settled by recourse to the Bible, but no guidance could be found there, because little people with enormous bottoms and poisoned arrows had never molested the Israelites. When a vote
was taken, it stood eleven-to-six in favor of exterminating the Bushmen, since it was decided that they were animals and not human. But before the commando could be started north, young Hendrik van Doorn, twenty-one years old, startled the assembly by volunteering a special piece of evidence:

  ‘When I was tracking with the Hottentots we followed a rhinoceros for some days, and when we had it well located in a valley, we went to bed expecting to shoot it in the morning, but when we reached its resting spot, we found that the Bushmen had slain it in a pit. This angered us, and we started tracking the Bushmen, and at last we came upon where the clan was camped, and we saw that they had tame dogs with them, and we concluded that if they could tame dogs, they must be human beings like us and not animals as many had proposed.’

  His evidence stunned the eleven men who had voted to kill off all the little people in the way hyenas were destroyed if they came too near a farm, and Andries Boeksma said gravely, ‘If they can tame dogs, they’re human, and we cannot shoot them all.’ To hear the leader of the commando reason thus impressed the others, and the final vote was sixteen-to-one that the Bushmen were human, the lone dissident arguing, ‘Human or not, if they steal my cattle, they have to be dealt with.’ He would say no more in public meeting, but he planned to kill every Bushman he saw.

  The seventeen horsemen found a substantial spoor to follow, the trail of five or six Bushmen dragging cattle parts back to camp, and for several days they narrowed the gap between the two parties. On the fourth day Andries Boeksma saw signs which satisfied him that the Bushmen must be close at hand, hiding perhaps behind low rocks: ‘They know we’re after them, so they won’t lead us to their camp. That proves this bunch are scavengers, and we can kill them all.’ This was agreed upon, even by those who had defended them: the little things might in principle be human, but this particular group were cattle thieves who must be slain.