The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  On 14 July 1916 Colonel Frank Saltwood, fifty-six years old and one of the first volunteers in his country’s expeditionary force, received orders to take and hold d’Ellville Wood. In his command were four of his nephews—Hilary and Roger of the Cape Town Saltwoods, Max and Timothy of De Kraal—and they, too, had volunteered early.

  Throughout four unbroken days the two armies battled, calling upon every great gun in the area until the trenches shuddered from explosives. Without any rest or hot food, the five Saltwoods defended their terrain heroically, with Colonel Frank moving from spot to spot to encourage his nephews.

  On the second day Hilary was shot through the head. On the third day young Max led a valiant charge, which was annihilated. And on the last day Colonel Frank, rushing to an endangered point, was struck full in the face by seven German bullets, and with his death the South African position was doomed.

  But into his place leaped Roger, who at twenty years old assumed command of the battle. He would have led his men to defeat had not Timothy gone totally berserk, as heroic young men sometimes will, and held off a platoon of Germans, killing most of them. And now the two cousins, surrounded by innumerable dead, including three Saltwoods, rallied the South Africians. Ignoring the hailstorm of German shells, grimly preparing for the next attack, they staffed the command post and defended the woods which they had occupied at such fearful cost and held so tenaciously.

  When the South Africans were finally relieved on the fifth day of battle Roger Saltwood, as senior in command, reported: ‘We took 3,150 men into the wood five days ago. We are marching 143 out.’

  Delville Wood, as the battle became known in English, represented perhaps the high spot in human courage during this war. The South African volunteers had given new meaning to the word heroism, but the cost could not even be calculated by critics who were not there. In the pompous tradition of the time, British headquarters issued a statement that was supposed to compensate for the terrible losses, as if this had been a kind of rugby game: ‘In the capture of Delville Wood the gallantry, the perseverance and determination of the South African Brigade deserve the highest commendation.’

  This suicidal action had been devised and ordered by Sir Douglas Haig, one of the young generals who had learned their trade with Redvers Buller during the Boer War. Unfortunately, few of them had acquired his concern for the fighting man.

  The two surviving Saltwoods, Roger of Cape Town and Timothy the V. C. from De Kraal, managed leaves together. They spent them at Sentinels with their Salisbury cousins, and as they sat beside the River Avon and looked across at the timeless cathedral, it was Timothy who told the local Saltwoods, ‘We did lose three of us, yes. But it was only what we should have done for England.’

  At Stellenbosch, as the war in Europe stumbled to an end, there was considerable commotion. One of the university’s most promising recent graduates was announced as offering a series of four lectures on the moral bases upon which any government of the country must rest. Detleef was especially interested in the event because the speaker was Reverend Barend Brongersma, his own predikant. He invited Clara to hear the lectures with him, and her parents asked to come along, as did one of her brothers.

  At Brongersma’s request, the assemblies were held not at the university but in the largest of the local churches, and all seats were taken. Brongersma was now thirty-seven, at the threshold of his powers and the apex of his appearance. He was tall, slim, with a head of dark hair, and he appeared modern in every way as opposed to the older Dutch and Scottish theologians who normally occupied podiums at the university. He was different from them, too, in that he did not address himself to abstruse philosophical problems, but to the down-to-earth difficulties a politician met in running a proper government. His voice was equal to the task; Dutch Reformed congregations appreciated a predikant who could storm and thunder, and he could.

  He was certainly not a coward. At the opening of his first lecture he said that the future of this nation depended upon the way it managed its relationships with the various racial groups, and so that his listeners would know what he was talking about, he invited them to write down the figures he was about to recite: ‘They deal with the actual and projected populations of this country.’ And he gave these data:

  Without comment on the relative strengths of the five groups, he launched into a review of the positions the Dutch Reformed Church had taken on the matter of race during the past two and a half centuries, reminding his listeners of things they might have forgotten:

  ‘Under Jan van Riebeeck, whites and blacks worshipped together, which was sensible because there was no alternative. In the frontier churches at Stellenbosch and Swellendam, similar conditions prevailed.

  ‘Problems arose with the rite of communion, many whites not wishing to drink from the same cup that blacks used, but various ways were devised to get around this, and in general, worship continued to include both white and black. At mission stations especially this was the custom, with whites being invited to attend churches that were primarily black.

  ‘But at the Synod of 1857 pressure was exerted to change this, and a curious solution was proposed. The leaders of our church confirmed that Jesus Christ intended his people to worship as one, and this was to be preferred, “but as a concession to the prejudice and weakness of a few, it is recommended that the church serve one or more tables to the European members after the non-white members have been served.” It was further recommended that whereas it would be healthy and in accordance with Gospel for all to worship together, “if the weakness of some requires that the groups be separated, the congregation from the heathen should enjoy its privilege in a separate building and a separate institution.”

  ‘So in certain districts separate church organizations were established whose members worshipped in separate church buildings, and in time this custom became universal. It was found that most white church members preferred to worship only with other whites, on the sensible ground that health could thus be protected and the dangers of miscegenation avoided.

  ‘As a result of such pressures, a policy developed of having separate church buildings and church organizations for each of the various racial groups, and this lent strength to the Christian movement, for the Coloured and Bantu now had churches of their own which they could operate according to their own tastes, yet all were united in the brotherhood of Christ.’

  He said much more, of course, in this historical lecture, but he left the impression that the Christian church was one and undivided, that the Coloured and Bantu preferred to have their own church off to one side, and that the present division of the church into its various components was something ordained by God, approved by Jesus, and eminently workable in a plural society. He certainly did not apologize, and would have been astounded had anyone asked him to do so.

  ‘That man is an asset to any community,’ Coenraad van Doorn said when he assembled his family and Detleef at Trianon. ‘He speaks with a clarity one seldom hears.’

  ‘He told me things I didn’t know,’ Clara said. She looked as if she had been crying, and Detleef asked what had happened.

  Her mother answered, ‘The awful deaths in Europe. Clara has many friends there, you know.’

  Detleff said, ‘I didn’t know there were very many Afrikaners fighting in that silly war.’

  ‘There are,’ Clara snapped, ‘and it’s not silly.’

  ‘Any men we have there are certainly fighting on the wrong side. Germany’s bound to win, and a good thing, too.’

  Mr. van Doorn intervened to quash a difficult subject: ‘I wonder what Brongersma will tell us next time?’

  ‘He said in passing that it would deal with the New Testament,’ Clara’s brother said.

  ‘Good. None of us know that section of the Bible well enough.’

  ‘The Old Testament is sufficient, really,’ Detleef said, and again the atmosphere chilled, but when it came time for him to say goodnight, Clara volunteered to walk with him to the c
ar, took his hand and squeezed it. ‘You mustn’t be so contentious, Detleef. A living room isn’t a rugby field.’

  ‘But if a man has beliefs …’

  ‘All men have beliefs. And sometimes they adhere to theirs as firmly as you do to yours.’

  ‘But if theirs are wrong …’

  ‘You feel obligated to correct them?’

  ‘Of course.’

  To his astonishment she leaned over and kissed him. ‘I am glad you’re strong, Detleef. You’re going to need it.’

  He was trembling, and clutched her hand. ‘I don’t want to be obstinate, but … well … even Reverend Brongersma can be wrong sometimes.’

  ‘For example?’

  ‘Well, I felt he was apologetic about the way our church separates into white, Coloured, black. But that’s what God intended. Even the whites separate. Afrikaans for the true believers. English for the others.’

  ‘Detleef, how can you say that?’ When he looked blank in the pale light, indicating that he had no concept of what she was talking about, she said, ‘The Afrikaners and the English as being different religiously.’

  ‘Well, they are!’ he said forcefully. ‘They believe quite differently from us. They don’t pin their faith on John Calvin. They’re almost Catholic, if you ask me.’ He trembled again, this time from the terrible force of his convictions. ‘And surely God entered into no covenant with them.’

  To this extraordinary body of belief, Clara had no comment; her family had developed under quite a different body of faith and had often gone to the Church of England for services when that was more convenient. But now it was time for Detleef to return to the university, and as he held her hand he asked shyly, ‘May I kiss you goodnight?’ but she deftly pulled away.

  ‘No, no! When I kiss you that’s one thing, but when you kiss me that’s another.’ And before he knew what was happening, she touched him lightly with another kiss and skipped away.

  Reverend Brongersma’s second lecture was a revelation to Detleef and a surprise to others who thought they knew the Bible. It dealt almost exclusively with the teachings of the New Testament and the nature of Christ’s church on earth. It was highly theological, but also intensely practical to those Afrikaners who sensed that with a German victory in Europe, and perhaps in Africa, relationships were bound to be different from what they had been in the past. The audience sat in deep, religious silence as he spoke with that fluid breadth of concepts which would characterize this series:

  ‘I told you last time that the orderly development of our church from the days of Van Riebeeck to the present was a good thing, approved by God and consonant with the teachings of Jesus Christ, and that we must always be proud of the high mission of our church. But since it exists in the bosom of Christ, it behooves us to know what exactly He said about our responsibilities and conduct.’

  With this he launched into a patient hour-and-a-half analysis of New Testament teachings, drawing upon the soaring texts in which Christ set forth the essence of his thought. He said, when introducing the focal passage from Matthew, ‘If we live in a land with divided populations, almost every question we face will pose special problems which other more homogeneous nations can evade. We cannot, and how we solve these problems of race will determine the character of our existence.’ He then read the passage:

  ‘Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

  He cited so many passages in Christ’s teaching bearing on this issue that Coenraad whispered to Clara and Detleef, who sat together, ‘He sounds like an LMS missionary,’ and none could discern what he might be driving at:

  ‘For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.’

  And if anyone felt reluctant to accept this teaching, he threw at them a text which emphasized the message. It came from Colossians:

  ‘Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.’

  This led him to what he warned was the key text of his entire series, the noble passage on which a God-fearing nation should build its patterns. It came from Ephesians and summarized, he said, the whole teaching of Jesus:

  ‘There is one body, and one Spirit … one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

  ‘The spirit of Jesus Christ resides in the bosom of every man and woman and child living in this nation,’ he said in rising voice to indicate the conclusion of this lecture. ‘It takes no cognizance of white or black, of Indian or Coloured, of woman or man, and certainly it does not distinguish between Englishman and Afrikaner. We are all one in Jesus. He loves us equally, He cares for us evenly.’

  There was some restiveness in the audience at this revolutionary doctrine, for members felt that whereas these precepts did undoubtedly occur in the New Testament, their application was a more delicate matter than Reverend Brongersma appreciated. When he concluded with the stern warning that Christianity required its adherents to apply these fundamental strictures in their private and public lives, and especially in the organization of their societies and nations, there was actually a rumble of disapproval, but he stalked from the podium without taking cognizance of it.

  That night there were no hearty invitations for him to join suppers at Stellenbosch homes, and the Coenraad van Doorns were so agitated that they did not even invite Detleef to Trianon; before they parted Mr. van Doorn said, ‘Your predikant hasn’t learned much up north,’ and Detleef, without endeavoring to defend him, admitted, ‘It all sounded so woolly. I like more order in society than that,’ and even Clara, who had liked parts of the lecture, grumbled, ‘He doesn’t seem to understand his audience. We face real problems in this country, and he talks mealie pap.’

  But Barend Brongersma did not graduate from Stellenbosch with honors because he was stupid. He had intended his long second lecture to create the effect it did because he wanted it to serve as preparation for what he knew would be one of the most important performances of his life, and when he stepped boldly to the podium for the third lecture he quickly told his audience why:

  ‘Tonight I am addressing the young men who in the years to come will govern this nation. Look about you, I pray. The lad sitting next to you may be your prime minister one day. That fellow over there will preach in the mother church at Cape Town. You will be chancellor of this university, and you will be ambassador of our independent country to Paris. It is important that you think about the future, that you ponder the nature of a free society.

  ‘Jesus addressed himself to this grave problem, and so did St. Paul, and in the New Testament they provide us with guidance. To govern well, we must govern justly, and to govern justly, we must govern wisely. What does Jesus tell us to do?’

  Before he cited the relevant texts, he asked his audience a series of blistering hypothetical questions, until everyone present was aroused, leaning forward to catch what solutions he was about to propose. Then, with low voice and gentle patience, he began to unfold the teaching of Jesus, and the text he chose was so recondite and arbitrary that someone not from South Africa would have been at a loss to understand its application, but he claimed it to be the very foundation of the law, the most vital text in the entire Testament, insofar as the governance of nations was concerned. It came from the second chapter of Acts:

  ‘And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting … And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other
tongues, as the spirit gave them utterance … every man heard them speak in his own language.’

  What could be profound about that? How could the policy of a nation be built upon such an esoteric base? As he elucidated the text, it became clear: God created all men as brothers, but he quickly divided them into distinctive groups, each man to his own kind, each nation separate and off to itself, and here he thundered forth that wondrous sequence of names appearing in this all-important chapter:

  ‘Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak …’

  He explained that God willed this diversity and applauded the strangeness that existed among nations. He wanted tribes to be different, to retain their distinctive qualities, and Brongersma suggested that if South Africa had been in existence when Acts, Chapter 2, was delivered, the litany might have ended thus:

  ‘Afrikaners and Englishmen, Coloureds and Asians, Xhosa and Zulu, all spake in their own tongues.’

  Detleef snapped bolt upright, for these local names were recited in the exact order he had seen them that morning when sunlight struck the glass of jellies. His world was in order; the races were distinct and they were separated, each in its proper place. He heard the remainder of this remarkable oration in a kind of majestic stupor; this was a confirmation that would last a lifetime, and others in the audience that evening would say the same when they governed this nation, as Brongersma had predicted they would: ‘One lecture unfolded the future for me.’ Brongersma now cited some fifteen pertinent texts, one of the most powerful coming from another chapter in Acts: