The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘Mr. Op t’Hooft, who comes from Amsterdam and works in the education department.’

  ‘Another Hollander! Damn them all, they come out here, take a job and then lord it over us.’

  ‘But Mr. Op t’Hooft intends taking out citizenship. He prefers it here.’

  ‘We don’t want him.’ The mention of another Hollander who was riding roughshod over the local Boers enraged Johanna and sidetracked her from her main complaint.

  ‘Miss van Doorn, I’m sure President Kruger’s government didn’t want to hire so many Hollanders, but it had to, because your people out on these farms …’ He felt that he was getting into deep water, and tried again: ‘The Boers were simply wonderful at warfare, maybe the best free fighters on earth. My brother fought against General de Groot, you know. King’s Own Royal Rifles, you know.’ Johanna stared at him as if he were an imbecile, and he ended lamely, ‘You Boers refuse to learn business procedures, so President Kruger had to invite the Hollanders in to run the government. Absolutely essential.’

  ‘They can go home now,’ she said tartly. And then she changed the subject: ‘Mr. Amberson, I wish you would not again hang that sign about my brother’s neck.’

  ‘He must stop speaking Dutch in class, really he must.’

  ‘Why? If this is to be a Dutch country?’

  ‘Ah, but it’s to be English.’ He hesitated. ‘The language, that is.’

  They had reached an impasse, and when she returned to the farm she sought out the general, asking him if he thought the Dutch spoken by the people of Venloo was as corrupted as Mr. Op t’Hooft, whoever he was, seemed to think.

  ‘Yes. We have a different language now. Our own. Your father and mine fashioned it. Simpler and better.’

  ‘Should we allow the Hollanders who run everything to stay on?’

  ‘Kick them all out. They despise us, and God knows, we despise them. Just because they can speak like Amsterdamers, they think they’re lords and ladies. I say, “Kick their asses out.” ’ He apologized for his rough speech, then repeated it.

  But any worry over the insolent Hollanders, most of whom were going home anyway, since they deplored the barbaric level of society they had to suffer in towns like Pretoria and Bloemfontein, vanished when the real menace showed itself. Word of this disastrous decision had reached Venloo, and when Detlev came home from school he astonished his elders by announcing, ‘They’re bringing in sixty thousand Chinese workmen.’

  ‘What?’ the general shouted.

  ‘Yes. The mine owners say that since the war they can’t get any more Kaffirs, so ships are sailing into Durban with Chinese.’

  ‘Who is doing this?’ the old man bellowed, but despite his fevered questioning he could find no rational answers, so he decided to take the little money he had and ride the train in to Johannesburg and see for himself what the crisis amounted to.

  ‘You’re to come with me,’ he said to Detlev, and when the boy protested that he must report to school, the general said, ‘More important that you see the enemy,’ and he rode with the boy to Waterval-Boven, where they caught the train.

  It was a stunning adventure for Detlev—travelers eating their meals while they sped westward, the sweep of the veld, the farms struggling back into production, and on the far horizon the first sight of a major city. De Groot was welcomed wherever he went, both by his former Boer cronies and by the English, who held him in high regard for his heroic conduct in two wars. From his acquaintances he learned that yes, the government was in the process of importing sixty thousand Chinese to work the mines, and he also heard disturbing rumors about the behavior of these coolies.

  The government and the Englishmen who ran the mines seriously believed that it was possible to import sixty thousand vigorous young men, all of them under thirty, and have them work deep in the gold mines—without their wanting any recreation, or association with women, or any kind of reasonable relaxation for a period of ten or twenty years. When the young men began to gamble, the Dutch Reformed Church was horrified. When they began to form liaisons with black or Coloured or lowly white women, the predikants screamed from their pulpits that God would scourge this land if that were permitted. And when some enraged coolie actually killed another, Englishmen and Boers alike claimed that this proved the Chinese were a gang of animals.

  Nothing that the government would do in the first decade after the English victory would so excite the Boers as this importation of Chinese, and when Paulus de Groot actually saw the yellow men going down into the mines he experienced an anger that would not be assuaged. In fact, he was so outraged that when he returned to his quarters in the city, a Boer friend, who shared his emotion, suggested that they go see General Koos de la Rey, who had tormented the English for three years during the late war. When Detlev met this famous man, not so tall as General de Groot but gentler of face, he realized that he was seeing a significant part of his nation’s history, and when later General Christiaan Beyers joined them, Detlev saw a grand triumvirate.

  They discussed how they might force the government to rescind the law which allowed the importation of the Chinese. ‘More important,’ De la Rey said, ‘is how we kick-those already here out of the country.’ It was agreed that everyone must work for the repatriation of the Chinese, but then talk turned to an even more serious point.

  ‘I am disgusted with the mistakes this government is making,’ De Groot said bluntly. ‘Do you know what they’re doing with our children? Tell them, Detlev … about the dunce’s cap.’ When the little boy did, the generals listened soberly, but De Groot said, ‘The sign. Tell them about the sign.’ When this humiliating incident was related, they shook their heads, and after a long while De Groot said quietly, ‘One of these days we will all be riding again. Against the English, for they do not know how to govern.’

  Neither of the other generals responded to this, but De Groot repeated his prophecy: ‘You will be back in the saddle, both of you. And do you know why? Because Germany is stirring. Germany is on the march, and sooner or later we’ll see an expeditionary force landing in South-West Africa. What’ll they do? They’ll march this way and consolidate with their colony in East Africa. And what do we do? We join them. And in that moment we kick the English out of here forever.’

  Detlev would remember that somber moment: De Groot, De la Rey, Beyers looking ahead to the wild twists and turns of war, and he suspected that each man hoped that when Germany began to play a vital role in Africa, all decent men would side with her against the hated English.

  ‘If it were to happen,’ General Beyers asked carefully, ‘would the others join us?’

  De Groot was sure that the great hero De Wet would support Germany, and so would others. ‘The man we’d have to fear is that young upstart Jan Christian.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Detlev broke in.

  ‘Smuts,’ De Groot said. ‘A brave general, but I despise his politics.’

  After this informal meeting, De Groot walked the boy around Johannesburg, pointing to the large buildings dominated by the English business leaders. When they came to one group of important offices he made Detlev stand there and read off all the names of the lawyers, the insurance men, the business negotiators, and when the boy reached FRANK SALTWOOD, AGENT, he said, ‘That was the spy who burned our farms. Never forget.’ And once more the boy symbolized the contradictions in which nations and people find themselves, for he said, ‘Mrs. Saltwood saved my life.’

  The most important lesson General de Groot taught Detlev came not from what he said but from what he did. When the English government released the captured Boers who had been interned in distant places like Ceylon, Bermuda and St. Helena, from the latter island came a great hulking man, taller than De Groot, on whose sloping shoulders rested a heavy burden. He was General Pieter Cronje, who in 1900 had surrendered at Paardeberg his entire army of nearly four thousand troops, the most disastrous loss in the war.

  A photographer had happened to catch a stunning shot of the surrend
er, from which an artist working for the Illustrated London News made a most effective sepia wash, which eventually was seen throughout the world, becoming the traditional depiction of Boer-English relationships. There came Cronje, looking six feet seven, in rumpled field trousers, vest, coat and overcoat, bearded, dirty, and wearing a huge broad-brimmed hat. Waiting for him stood little Lord Roberts, one-eyed, one hundred and thirty pounds, bristling mustache, all spit-and-polish boots and leatherwork, jaunty expeditionary cap at a sharp angle. ‘The Giant Surrendering to the Midget’ the picture was sometimes called.

  The copy which General de Groot kept on the wall of his house showed signs of having been spat upon; it was also punctured where the old man had thrown a fork at it. This version was titled ‘Cronje Meets His Master,’ and when De Groot explained its significance to Detlev he said, ‘A man should rather die with six bullets in his belly than face such a moment. Don’t ever surrender.’

  Detlev was surprised, therefore, when he looked up one morning at the farm and saw the gigantic figure of General Cronje waiting on the stoep. It could be no one else, and when the deep voice rumbled, ‘Waar is die generaal?’ Detlev replied, ‘He lives at the house.’ He led Cronje to De Groot’s place and was present when the two generals met. They did not embrace in the French manner, but stood respectfully apart, inclining their heads slightly out of mutual respect.

  ‘Come in, Cronje,’ De Groot said, ushering him into the sparsely furnished room. ‘How was St. Helena?’

  ‘Napoleon died there. I didn’t.’

  ‘What happened at Paardeberg?’

  The general seated himself uneasily on an upended box and shrugged his shoulders. ‘From babyhood we were taught “When you face trouble, go into laager.” I faced trouble, Kitchener hammering at me like a madman, Roberts waiting. So I went into laager, but the old rules no longer applied. Not when they had cannon to rim the laager and blow its insides to bits.’

  ‘Now, that’s curious,’ De Groot said. ‘My family lost its life against Mzilikazi because it didn’t go into laager. You lost everything because you did.’

  ‘Times change.’ He shook his head, then got down to business. ‘Paulus, you’ve living like a pig. Things aren’t good for me, either. But we both have a chance to earn a lot of money.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Have you ever heard of St. Louis? The American city?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m told it’s important, bigger than Cape Town.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with us?’ De Groot asked suspiciously.

  ‘They’re having a large World’s Fair. Biggest of its kind.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They’ve seen the drawing of me and Lord Roberts. They’ve sent a man here, untold funds. He wants me to collect a small commando of Boers who can ride well and shoot from the saddle. Blanks, of course. They’ll have American soldiers dressed like Englishmen, and in a big arena you and I will come in riding and shooting. There’ll be a mock fight, and then there’ll be a tableau.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Everybody stops … dead still. And the audience sees that it’s a representation of my surrender to Lord Roberts.’

  De Groot simply sat there, arms folded, legs spread apart, staring at his old companion. Cronje had helped storm Majuba back in 1881. He was a verified hero, but he was also the man who had behaved poorly at Paardeberg. If such a tragic twist in fortune had been forced upon De Groot, he would have shot his brains out. Cronje was proposing to go to St. Louis, wherever that was, and ride his pony into an arena firing blank cartridges, and then surrender again, twice a day, six days a week, to Lord Roberts.

  Slowly the old man rose, indicating that Cronje must do the same. Sternly he edged the huge warrior to the hut doorway, where he said, ‘Piet, dear comrade, as you can see, I need the money. But there’s never been a time in my life when I fired blank cartridges, and I’m too old to learn.’

  Cronje had no trouble in conscripting other fine horsemen, who went to St. Louis and put on an exhibition that dazzled the locals, improving considerably their estimation of Boers. But whenever the band stopped dramatically, and two small cannon roared, and the lights came on, General Cronje stepped forward in the costume he had worn in the photograph and surrendered to a taut little major on detached duty from Fort Sill who wore a fake mustache and a replica of an English uniform.

  When photographs of this tableau filtered back to South Africa, they caused anguish, but in St. Louis the approval was so marked that Cronje’s contracted salary was raised. General de Groot found one of these photographs and tacked it to the wall, beside the original version.

  ‘Remarkable,’ he told Detlev when the boy first compared the two. ‘How could they get the surrender so accurate?’ Detlev was afraid the old man was going to tear the wall apart, so strained became the muscles on his neck, but all he did was tap the two pictures gently, as if they were of value. ‘Never surrender, Detlev,’ he said. ‘Not even in play.’

  The people at Vrymeer were so obviously concerned about Detlev’s education that Mr. Amberson fell into the habit of riding out from Venloo now and then to report on their boy’s progress, and as he sat in the kitchen at the farm, Detlev noticed two things about him. Unlike the hefty Boer farmers of the area, this thin young man could sit in a chair, twist his left leg over his right knee, and then hook his left toe under his right ankle, as if he were made of rubber. Detlev could imitate this, but none of the chubby larger boys could, and certainly none of the elders. Also, Mr. Amberson was interested in everything, and that was why Vrymeer acquired an additional beauty which made it somewhat different from the other farms.

  ‘They have a new system now,’ he said with some excitement. ‘They come from Australia, mostly.’

  ‘What does?’ the general asked suspiciously. He did not like Mr. Amberson, but Detlev noticed that he appeared whenever the tall Englishman visited, because he enjoyed arguing with him.

  ‘The trees. The government are importing millions of trees to spruce up the veld.’

  ‘Who pays for them?’

  ‘I think they’re free. Eucalypts, I believe, and something they call wattle.’

  ‘Free?’

  ‘Yes, but you must plant them. That’s only fair.’

  Mr. Amberson used that phrase a good deal, for he saw many things in life that could be adjudicated easily on that principle: ‘It’s only fair.’

  ‘Is it fair for you to make our boys learn English?’ De Groot asked, as usual.

  ‘I’ve learned Dutch.’ He coughed modestly. ‘Such as it is. I do this out of respect. But Detlev must learn English for a better reason. Because the world runs on English, that’s why.’

  On this basic point he would make no concessions. English was the language of the great world, and provincial Boers stuck off in their corner must learn it, if they presumed to participate in world affairs. On all else he was conciliatory, granting that the Boers probably won the war through their obstinate heroism and conceding that Dutch cooking was much better than English. He was really rather a likable chap, and when he sat with his legs twisted in knots, rocking back and forth on his haunches, arguing abstruse points, he lent a touch of congeniality and culture to what was otherwise a dull existence.

  The farm was in good condition now. With help from Nxumalo’s people, all buildings were roofed; the Herefords were maturing; the wool clip was coming in at a satisfactory level; and the black farmworkers had gouged out two small lakes, or catchments, below the big lake, so that on sunny days the three bodies of water shone like a necklace of jewels. Detlev was especially pleased with them, for he saw that by this device the water that came down from the hills behind the farm was used three times—four, really: ‘It runs past the house as a stream, then builds our big lake, then goes on to make the two smaller ones for the cattle.’

  It was to the north shores of these attractive lakes that Mr. Amberson brought the thousand saplings when they arrived at Durban from Australi
a. They were, as he predicted, mostly eucalypts, those shaggy-barked wonderful trees whose leaves when crushed had a minty odor. But he also delivered some two hundred wattles, the bushlike trees whose golden flowers would adorn the landscape.

  ‘That many trees is a monstrous task,’ he warned the men, and to help them with the planting he excused his entire school one Thursday and Friday, bringing all the boys out to work by the lakes. ‘Practical learning’ he termed it, and he worked hardest of all, dashing here and there to satisfy himself that the trees were in line. The only charge to the Van Doorns for this unusual service was a barbecue for the lads, and it was after the boys and their teacher had returned to Venloo that Detlev first voiced his suspicion. The two older men were sitting in the kitchen while Johanna cleaned up, and when she left the room, Detlev said quietly, ‘I think Mr. Amberson is in love with Johanna.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘He comes here to argue with you, General de Groot, but he really comes to be with Johanna.’ He mimicked the way in which the Englishman pronounced her name, not Yo-hon-na, like a Boer, but Jo-hann-a, in the English manner.

  This news was so frightening that General de Groot whispered ‘Shhhhhh’ lest Johanna hear that they were discussing her indiscretion, and when she returned to the kitchen six eyes studied her cautiously. When she left again, De Groot snorted: ‘Unthinkable! A Boer girl in love with an English …’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Detlev protested. ‘I said he was in love with her.’

  ‘A fine girl like Johanna,’ the general said. ‘She’d never do a thing like that.’ He uttered the words with such contempt that he might have been speaking of prostitution.

  ‘She is twenty-six,’ Jakob said thoughtfully. ‘She’s a precious girl and ought to be finding herself a man.’

  ‘You need her here,’ De Groot said, meaning that he needed her.

  ‘She mustn’t wait much longer, though,’ Jakob said. ‘But I agree I don’t want an Englishman in my family.’

  Everything these three male spies saw in the next weeks confirmed their suspicion that Johanna van Doorn was falling in love with an Englishman, and one weekend when he appeared at the farm to inspect the young eucalypts, General de Groot bearded him: ‘Young man, did you come here to see the trees, or did you come to see Johanna?’