The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Mr. Amberson blanched, then turned bright red. ‘Well, I …’

  ‘It would be better if you didn’t come here any more.’ When the young man started to defend himself, Jakob entered the discussion: ‘Yes, it would be better if you stayed away.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Starting now,’ the general said firmly, and the two men remained at Amberson’s side, edging him toward his horse. The general said, ‘We don’t want an Englishman making up to one of our girls. Now get!’ And he slapped the horse, sending the long-legged teacher back toward Venloo.

  At lunch, when it appeared that Mr. Amberson would not be joining the family, Johanna asked why, and the general said bluntly, ‘We don’t want him fooling around with a decent Boer girl.’

  Johanna blushed, but did not retreat. ‘Did you send him away?’

  ‘We did,’ the general snapped.

  ‘Who are you to send people away, General de Groot? You’re a guest here.’

  ‘I am the protector of this house,’ he said firmly.

  ‘I don’t want your protection.’ She wanted to cry. Badly she wanted to weep, for there were no young men in Venloo, and Mr. Amberson had proved himself to be a generous, understanding human being. The war was over; the camps were over; and she felt a great urge to get on with life, to start a farm of her own with children of her own, and if no one else came along, she was prepared to marry an Englishman, repulsive though it seemed.

  But the three men in her family would not allow it. Detlev spoke for them all when he said, ‘Johanna, you can wait.’

  This observation surprised her. ‘But you like him best of all. You brought him here.’

  ‘As a teacher,’ the boy said. ‘Yes, he is a fine teacher.’

  ‘Unthinkable,’ General de Groot pronounced as the final verdict, and Mr. Amberson was seen at Vrymeer no more.

  At school he betrayed not a single indication of his disappointment; if anything, he treated Detlev with added consideration, which was natural, since this boy was one of the best. In numbers and history and clear handwriting he received good marks, and Mr. Amberson gave him much encouragement, stopping by Mrs. Scheltema’s sometimes at night to assign him further tasks so that he could excel.

  What he did to sublimate his rather strong feelings toward Johanna revolutionized Venloo; it would not be the same after that summer. The metamorphosis started slowly, with his bringing an ovoid football to the school and telling the bigger boys, ‘You must play rugby. And one day, even though you come from this small town, you may be famous like Paul Roos.’

  Up to then the Boers of this little community knew little of the vigorous game that was sweeping the country. Before the war they had heard of the visits of teams from England, first in 1891, when the visitors won every match, and again in 1896. But it had remained an exotic game played principally in the Cape.

  Through rugby Mr. Amberson endeared himself to the locals. Day after day he went onto the playing field, in boots, knee-length socks, short pants and jersey, to go up against the strongest boys in his school. They would race up and down the area, bend down in scrums, and play till they were exhausted. ‘My word,’ he often said as the games ended, ‘that was a good effort. Boys, you’re becoming first rate, absolutely world class.’

  Older men in the community ridiculed the schoolmaster: ‘He’s a man among boys and a boy among men.’ But when he suggested that the older youths, those now out of school, also form a team, he assured them that he was prepared to play with them, and now the entire male population of the town came out to watch the gladiatorial games.

  He was remarkable, a tall, somewhat frail fellow who showed no fear of slamming into the biggest and toughest of the local Boers. Some boy would break loose with the ball and be on his way to a score when Amberson would deteach himself from the pack, fly across the field, and tackle the brute with bone-crunching force, knocking the ball loose, then scrambling to his feet and running with it himself until some mighty Boer brought him down.

  At the end of a game he would sit on the sidelines, panting, his body bruised, his mouth showing flecks of blood, and the hefty men would come by and slap him on the shoulder and say, ‘You know how.’ And he would reply, ‘It was a mighty game.’

  His principal interest, however, remained the boys in his school, and he was delighted when Detlev showed signs of becoming a first-class stand-off halfback, the capable lad who received the ball from the scrum half and passed it along to the speedier backs.

  He had a natural aptitude for the game, and while he did not love it with the passion Mr. Amberson exhibited, he did appreciate the fellowship, considering it an attribute to a good life. This was helpful, because South Africa was in the process of becoming one of the world’s fanatic sports centers, and if a boy like Detlev ever made a national team, his future would be assured.

  It was this mania for sports which made it necessary for Frank Saltwood to issue an edict which went far in determining the social structure of his country. Like all Englishmen, he was dotty about games and served as chairman of the board governing cricket. He was a good player himself, having been a sometime member of the Oxford eleven, and in South Africa, had dedicated his spare time and surplus funds to encourage the game. Whenever a team was chosen to play visitors from Scotland and Wales, he was apt to serve as manager of the tour, ensuring that his men comported themselves within the grand traditions. He was insistent on this: ‘Cricket is the game of gentlemen, and its rules apply even more to life than to the playing field. I like to see men extremely energetic, but within the set rules.’

  This posed a dilemma in the postwar years when the great clubs of England extended an invitation to their former enemies to come home and play a set of gala matches; more than anything else, this would make the peace treaty a conclusive fact to families who had lost sons in the war. But a serious problem arose, in the person of Abu Bakr Fazool, a Coloured Muslim gentleman from Cape Town who was probably the best bowler in the world. When C. Aubrey Smith, himself a stalwart bowler and future motion picture star, captained his cricket team on a tour of South Africa, he said of Fazool, ‘Has the fastest riser I’ve ever seen. Much better at the tricky stuff than I am.’ He promised Fazool that if the latter ever came to England, he’d find a place for him on one of the county teams.

  So now the question was: Should Abu Bakr be a member of the team visiting England? And at first it was assumed throughout South Africa that he should. Local enthusiasts predicted that he would mow down the English batters; but gradually people in rural areas began deploring the possibility that a Coloured might represent South Africa abroad, and articles appeared in the better papers, asking: ‘Have the board really sorted this thing out?’

  The burden fell squarely on Frank Saltwood, and had he stood before his board and said, ‘We would appear stupid before the world if we omitted Abu Bakr,’ they would have agreed, but after he had studied the matter from all angles, he became cautious and gave the board members craven advice:

  ‘It is acknowledged here and abroad that Abu Bakr Fazool is perhaps the best bowler alive today. As C. Aubrey Smith said at the end of his successful tour, “That young man is ready for country cricket right now.” So we would be doing our side, and the mother country, a favor by including him. I am enthusiastic about doing so. But we must consider carefully certain objections to such an act. The scars of our recent war are slowly healing, thanks to the good conscience of both sides, and it would be almost criminal to do anything at this early date which would reopen those scars. Our Boer brethren have certain clear-cut traditions about handling their Coloured and Kaffir neighbors, and it would ill-behoove us to offend those traditions. Such consideration would dictate that we not take Fazool to England with us.

  ‘A more serious aspect, in the long run, is “What kind of impression do we wish to make upon the mother country when our team takes the field?” I know that dark-skinned Indians have played at Lords with distinction, but all England knows that In
dia contains Indians, and it would be ridiculous if none appeared. In the same way very dark West Indians have represented the Caribbean colonies, but again that is the color of those colonies. With South Africa it is different. It is important that we present ourselves to the mother country in garb as like hers as possible. This is a white man’s country and always will be. Our welfare depends upon the good opinion the mother country holds of us, and when our team appears on its sacred pitches, it would be better if it represented what we want to be: England’s white colony, safe, secure, well-educated, loyal to European tradition, and to be trusted. I am afraid the appearance of Abu Bakr Fazool among our players would not enhance that image.’

  Had Frank Saltwood in that moment of great, though unrecognized, crisis come out in favor of sending Fazool to England, and had the gifted athlete performed as might be expected, a whole pattern of acceptance might have been launched. There were other Coloured cricket players who could have made those touring teams, and when their white colleagues observed how well they played and with what ease they fitted into mother country festivities, an attitude of approval would have been generated throughout South Africa; and if gifted blacks had been trained for the rugby teams, smashing their opponents about in the scrums and running like antelope for scores, the nation would have seen that they were little different from the Boers and the Englishmen who played beside them.

  But time was not ripe for such acceptance. Frank Saltwood convinced his board and kept Fazool off the team. He did not appear in England to take his place beside the fabulous bowlers from India, the immortal batsmen from Australia. He continued to play in the darker neighborhoods of Cape Town, and as the rules against interracial competition stiffened, he quit the game altogether. He could often be seen at the docks, in the fish market, tallying not runs but the daily catch of snoek.

  Often in the biographies of important women and men one comes across the phrase: ‘Like a burst of light, the idea which would animate her life came upon her.’ In the case of Detlev van Doorn this simile was literally true. A flash of light struck him, and the course of his life was set.

  It happened because of a packet of powdered jellies imported from France. When General de Groot and her father forbade Johanna to see Mr. Amberson, she was left with little to do and began to occupy her spare time with knitting and embroidery. The arrival at the Venloo store of the imported powders excited her, and swiftly she presented her men with acidy orange and lemon desserts. They liked them, and asked for more, so she returned to the store and purchased the large-size packets, and when she reached home she found that she now had some six or seven different flavors. She experimented with each, and the men found them so tasty that they encouraged her to continue.

  She was a resourceful young woman, nearly thirty now, and one day as she was pouring the jelly into her glasses it occurred to her that if she poured only a small portion into each glass, allowing it to harden, she could then pour on top of it another jelly of a different color, and repeat the process until she had a multilayered glass which would be not only quite tasty but also attractive to look at.

  On her first tries she failed, because she poured the succeeding colors while they were too hot and thus melted any that had already firmed and cooled. Being a provident woman, she mixed the mangled jellies into one mélange and decided to try again later, but when the mixture hardened and she served it to her men, Detlev protested: ‘This doesn’t look right and it doesn’t taste right.’ She offered no explanation, but did agree with him. That experiment had failed.

  Next time, however, when the first jelly was well firmed, and she made the next flavor, she allowed it to cool almost to point of hardening, then poured it in, and her plan succeeded. Indeed, it produced a result much finer than even she had anticipated; it was really quite handsome, for with artistic taste she had placed the black currant layer at the bottom, the light brown apple atop it, then the reds, and finally the orange and the light lemon. The glasses were almost works of art.

  When Detlev came into the kitchen they were perched on a window ledge, with one well off by itself, and when rays of sunlight struck that glass, the layers scintillated, each color showing to maximum advantage, throwing delightful patterns of black, brown, crimson, orange and lemon on the opposite wall, and in that moment Detlev understood the grand design of life.

  ‘Look!’ he cried, bringing the general and his father into the room. ‘How each color keeps to itself. It doesn’t muddy the other. It shines like a diamond.’ And with one finger he outlined the nature of humanity as God had ordained it: ‘Here at the bottom the black. Then the lighter brown. Then here the Indian …’ Already he had translated the colors into racial groupings. ‘Up here the Englishman, he’s orange. And on top of them all, the Afrikaner, clear and …’

  ‘You are a Boer!’ De Groot said.

  ‘They keep telling us at school we’re not Boers any longer. We’re not fighting anybody …’

  ‘We’re always fighting the English,’ De Groot said. ‘In your lifetime we will never stop.’

  Detlev returned to the jellies: ‘Each color in its own level. Order. Neatness.’ He had found the guiding secret of life. ‘We’re Afrikaners, that nice clean color on top.’

  ‘That’s the way it should be,’ De Groot said, and that week he launched his campaign to get rid of Mr. Amberson as the Venloo teacher. He had learned to like the Englishman and told him so openly, but he also felt that the time had come for the education of Boer boys … ‘Afrikaner boys deserve Afrikaner men to teach them.’ He liked this Afrikaner business. It bespoke the true heritage of his people. They were not Englishmen, and God knows they were not Dutch. They were men and women of Africa, and the word carried crisp meaning.

  Mr. Amberson reacted as one would expect: ‘I think you have a legitimate concern, General de Groot. Besides, you should be bringing up a generation of your own teachers. I’ve been offered two appointments to the English schools in Grahamstown. My rugby training, you know.’

  Even when public meetings were convened to discuss the neccessity of dismissing him, he continued with rugby games, striving in his final weeks to instill his boys with the abiding principles of sportsmanship: ‘Don’t crybaby … A tooth can be replaced … Be gallant when you win and extend your hand to the man who played opposite you … Fight to the very last second, then give a cheer for the goodness of the game … Be manly … If the other man is bigger, you be more clever … The goal is to win … Always you must win … You must drive for that score … But there are rules you dare not break in trying to score … Be manly …’

  In the grand exhibition prior to his departure he was about as capable as a stand-off halfback could be, diving straight into the biggest bully on the town team and being knocked so silly that when he got the ball he ran in the wrong direction. In his farewell speech he paid resounding tribute to General de Groot: ‘Just as this noble captain led his men through every difficulty, so our team has fought against all the odds presented by bigger schools and heavier opponents. To General de Groot I give my fullest admiration. He is the spirit of Venloo. To my boys I give the eternal challenge. Be manly.’

  It was the consensus that this small town had been lucky in having this scrawny Englishman in the period of transition. He had helped make boys into men, Boers into Afrikaners, and former enemies into relaxed allies.

  The week after he departed, the new schoolmaster appeared, a young man of much different stamp. He was Piet Krause, graduate of the new college at Potchefstroom, which would become the most Afrikaner of the universities, and he let it be known on his first day that the nonsense about instruction in English was ended. To the delight of the local farmers, this tense, crop-headed young fellow announced: ‘The spirit of a nation is expressed in its language. This nation is destined to be Afrikaner. Therefore, its language must be Afrikaans.’ This was the first time that word had been used in Venloo, and when he saw the confusion on the faces before him, he explained: ‘Just as we h
ave created a new people in this cauldron, steeped in Slagter’s Nek, Blood River and Majuba, so we are building a new language, simpler than the old, cleaner, easier to use. It’s our language now, and with it we shall conquer. One day we shall give thanks for this victory, using our own Bible in our language, the Afrikaans Bible.’

  General de Groot applauded all but the last sentence; he was not sure that the Bible should be in any language other than Dutch: ‘That’s the way God handed it down to us. Those are the words He used when He spoke to us. He gave us our covenant in Dutch, and we should keep it that way.’

  He and others like him raised such a howl about printing the Bible in anything but pristine Dutch that the project was dropped, nationally, but not in Venloo. Krause rode out from Venloo to meet with the Vrymeer people, and told them, ‘We must eliminate all areas in which we are subservient. No more English, except what the law demands. No more Dutch. All the damned Hollanders thrown on a ship and sent back to Amsterdam. We are Afrikaners, and whether General de Groot likes it or not, one of these days we’ll have our own Bible.’

  He spoke with such force, and in defense of a program so needed in this community, that Johanna van Doorn listened with growing joy. This was what she believed. Her liking for Mr. Amberson had been physical only; spiritually she had been repelled by his Englishness. But here was a fiery young man whose eye was on the future, the only future that made any sense for South Africa.

  She resumed taking Detlev to school on Monday mornings, arriving even earlier than she had in those first tender days with Mr. Amberson, and she came with a firmness Detlev had not seen before. Her eyes glowed as she supported the new teacher in all he attempted, and three times she invited him to Vrymeer for long discussions and good boboties. ‘I think Mr. Krause has lost the battle,’ Detlev joked one night after the schoolteacher had left for Venloo. Johanna, disregarding his teasing, said nothing, and during Krause’s next visit at the lake, Detlev himself fell under the spell of this dynamic man.