The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘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 sexual magnetism.

  For Minna that first Friday was agony. One close look at the radiant Aletta warned her that chances for catching Ryk Naudé 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, ‘Hello, Minna. Hadn’t you better be joining your parents?’

  ‘Ryk said that he—’

  ‘Minna,’ Mevrouw Naudé said, ‘you’d better go—now.’

  ‘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 Naudé 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 Mjinheer Probenius came out from his shop to see his daughter being assaulted 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 dicker 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 Saturday, 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 workmanship, so constructed that it could be disassembled for transporting down ravines, and then reassembled 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 Saturday 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 lusty, 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 assuring 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 assured her, watching the enchanting way her gingham dress defined her figure when she reached for articles on the higher shelves. ‘You people in Graaff-Reinet—you’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 t
hat 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 bluster 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 passions 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 folly—for he knew that the storekeeper needed the sheep—but 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 God 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 Naudé, 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.

  Fortunately, at this moment an extraordinary man came along looking for Van Doorn, and this gave Tjaart an excuse to defer the negotiations: ‘Think it over, Probenius.’ And he threw out a price markedly lower than the one the storekeeper had just proposed, but not enough to be insulting. ‘I promised to talk with this gentleman.’

  It was a curious use of words, for if there was anyone at the Nachtmaal who was not a gentleman, it was this odd fellow Theunis Nel, forty-eight years old, short, rumpled, unshaven, poorly dressed, and with a pitiful little mustache that made his upper lip tremble when he talked. Three times during Nachtmaal he had come seeking guidance from Tjaart, and thrice he had been put off. Now he arrived at a time when Tjaart found it convenient to interrupt his bargaining with Probenius, and to the little man’s surprise, he was welcomed warmly.

  ‘Theunis, my trusted friend, what can I do for you?’

  In addition to his other infirmities, Nel had two which irritated many persons: he lisped slightly, and his left eye was both cocked and watery, so that anyone speaking with him had a confusing time looking first at one eye and then the other without ever knowing which one was functioning, and whenever a decision was reached, Theunis would interrupt the conversation by taking out a grubby handkerchief and wiping his eye: ‘I have a cold, you know.’ Now he said in pleading voice, ‘Tjaart, please speak one more time with the predikant.’

  ‘It’s quite useless, dear fellow.’

  ‘Maybe things have changed. Maybe he’ll be more compassionate.’

  ‘Haven’t you got a job? Aren’t you eating?’

  ‘Oh, yes! I’m teaching school … for several families … beyond the mountains.’

  ‘I’m very happy that you have work, Theunis.’

  And then the terrible fire that burned in the heart of this little man manifested itself. In words that tumbled upon each other, and with his lisp worse than usual, he said, ‘Tjaart, I am indeed called of God. I have a mission. I feel driven to pass through this community, helping and praying. Tjaart, God has spoken to me. His voice echoes in my ears. For His sake if not for mine, beg the predikant to ordain me.’

  He was a pitiful man; refused entrance to any real theological school back in Holland, he had been half trained at a kind of missionary school in Germany. He was certainly not a predikant, which was why he sought ordination so compulsively, but he was not a layman either, because he had been on his way to Java to work in a mission when the last Dutch governor at the Cape had plucked him off his ship to serve in that capacity in South Africa. Itinerant teacher, wandering scholar, frontier sick-comforter, busybody, aspirant, his only virtue was that of all the Dutch sick-comforters in Africa and Java, he was the one who truly brought comfort to the dying. Insignificant, without pomp or pretense, but convinced that he was touched directly by the finger of God, he came into the meanest frontier hut and said, ‘Life runs its course, Stephanus, and now the commando saddles up for the last charge. I have watched you for a dozen years, down and up, and I am convinced that God has His eye upon you. Death has not yet come. You have days and days to reflect upon the providential life you’ve enjoyed. Those children. The fields. Stephanus, you are quitting one glory to enter another, and I wish I could go with you, hand in hand, to see what you’re about to see. Spend these last days in reflection. Would you like me to read you a sermon preached in Amsterdam about the nature of heaven?’

  And that was the constant anguish! As a sick-comforter, Theunis Nel could read the sermons of others but never preach one of his own; the church laws which governed his deportment were severe. If he had ever presumed to preach in those early days when Holland governed, he would have been thrown in jail; now, under English law, he would escape jail but not the ostracism of his own people. So he carried with him always a small book of sermons, which he had memorized but which prudently he continued to read, because only this was permitted.

  ‘Please, Tjaart, the years slip by and I am not yet ordained. Will you speak with t
he predikant?’

  ‘Have you a Bible?’ Tjaart asked. Theunis nodded eagerly, so they went to his wagon, and there in Leviticus, Tjaart found the citation he needed; it was terrifyingly explicit:

  And the Lord spake unto Moses saying … Whosoever … that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God … Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or hath his stones broken … he shall not come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries.

  Leaving the book open so that Theunis could see for himself, if he so wished, Tjaart said, ‘There it is. You have a blemished eye. You give the impression of being crookbackt. It’s impossible for you to be a predikant.’

  ‘It’s just a cold,’ the little man said, daubing at his offending eye. And then the pretense ended and he scratched at his eye, crying, ‘I would to God I could pluck it out.’

  ‘Then you’d be blind,’ Tjaart said, ‘and the blemish would be even greater.’

  ‘What can I do?’ Nel pleaded, and all Tjaart could say was ‘You’re a teacher. You are God’s sick-comforter. That’s the way you must serve.’

  ‘But I could do so much more. Tjaart, did you hear those dreadful sermons the fat Scotsman gave? No fire. No touch of God. It’s a disgrace.’

  ‘For reasons of His own, God has forbidden you to preach. Be content.’

  And he shoved the difficult little man away, watching him as he returned to the wagon that would carry him to the four farms where he conducted his school, and when those children were grown, to four other farms, and then four others, until some younger sick-comforter should in due course come to him to ease his dying. He was the man of God whom God rejected.

  On the way back to De Kraal in the new wagon, Tjaart thought several times that he would burst into tears before his entire family, something he had never done. But his anguish over the despair of little Minna was almost more than he could bear, and even as he tried to console her he felt himself coming apart, and he would leave before he made a fool of himself. Walking beside the lead oxen, he would try not to think of her sorrow, and his mind would fix on Aletta as she worked in the store, stretching to find a box, or as she appeared on the day of her wedding like a spirit risen from the veld, all gold and smiles and enchantment. He was entertaining such visions one afternoon when he heard a sudden cry from the wagon, and when he rushed back he found that Minna had undone the cloth in which her new dress was being carried and was tearing the garment apart, throwing the bits upon the veld.