The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘God that made the world and all things therein … hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord … and find him, though he be not far from every one of us.’

  From this passage he derived the principle that God wanted each race to have its own boundaries and not to trespass on the territory of others; this applied both to physical boundaries, such as where people lived, and to mental, so that each race retained its own customs and laws. He then pointed out that religion asked all groups to accept the limitations placed upon them, especially people in the lower ones:

  ‘As the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk … Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant.’

  And then he came to the crucial issue: ‘Are all groups equal in the eyes of God?’ He reminded his listeners of what he had said in Lecture Two, that unquestionably all men were brothers, but he went on to say that not all brothers stand equal in the sight of God. On this the New Testament was most specific; there were good nations and bad nations:

  ‘When the Son of man shall come … then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom … then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire …’

  He ended superbly, looking with flashing eye at his listeners, as if to challenge each one personally: ‘In the time of judgment, which is now, will Jesus Christ set our nation on His right hand among the sheep, or throw us on His left side, among the goats? For the nature of our society we must look to the Old Testament, which I shall do in my concluding lecture.’

  That night the audience was ecstatic as it left the church, for listeners could be sure that the Afrikaner nation was saved, while the English and the Bantu were probably lost. More than a dozen families wanted Brongersma to come with them to share supper, but he elected to go with the Van Doorns, and it was then that he saw the dangerous waters into which his young friend Detleef from Vrymeer was heading. He said nothing that night, but he wondered what good could come from this country boy’s falling so blindly in love with a young woman who obviously lived in a much different world, and thought in much different ways. Detleef had said nothing about his deep affection for Clara, nor did he need to.

  In his last lecture, like a healing balm, the predikant soothed all spiritual strains by reverting to the marvelous texts of the Old Testament, reminding his Afrikaners of who they were and the special obligations they owed God. He started by assuring them that in the Calvinistic sense they were among the elect, for God had specifically said so:

  ‘Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine.

  ‘If you are a peculiar treasure, what follows?’ he asked, and in the thundering passage from Leviticus he provided the answer:

  ‘But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people.

  ‘It is right that you should be separated, for you have special tasks to perform’—and he elucidated them: ‘To rule justly. To be fair to all men. To love your neighbor as yourself.’ On and on he went, instructing the future rulers of the country as to how they must behave when they assumed power. ‘I tell you these rules, young men,’ he cried in his most powerful voice, grasping his lapels with two hands and leaning far forward, ‘because God is most specific as to how he will punish you if you ignore his teaching,’ and he set forth the unmistaken call for obedience:

  ‘If ye forsake the Lord, and serve strange gods, then he will turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after that he hath done you good.’

  He concluded this lecture and his series with a crisp twenty minutes of what this all meant to the governance of a church, and specifically the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. He dealt briskly with the most trying problems, brushing them away as if adherence to basic principles eliminated difficulties. When he came to the question as to whether it was proper for the white church to prevent blacks from worshipping side by side with them, he cried, ‘Certainly it is proper. What does Deuteronomy say? “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people.” Almost the last words of the Old Testament, the final verse of Zechariah, address this problem: “And in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts.” We are separate. We are wonderful each in our way. God has assigned us our proper places and our proper tasks. Let us live accordingly. But I would close with these words of Jesus Christ which launched these talks: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” ’

  In these four lectures, among the most important ever delivered at Stellenbosch, Brongersma spelled out the dilemma facing any theocracy: How does one organize a society so as to attain the order of the Old Testament and the freedom of the New? Detleef van Doorn, whose advanced education started with these lectures, heard only the first half of that question.

  When the speculative and philosophical aspects of Detleef’s education fell into place, thanks to that penetrating series of lectures by Barend Brongersma, and when his position at the university was securely established because of his excellence as a rugby player—at Stellenbosch that would always be determinative—he felt that it was time to start thinking seriously about a wife. He was twenty-three now, much older than the Voortrekkers when they married, and his thoughts turned to two young women.

  He had not seen much of Maria Steyn, for she had remained on her family farm at Carolina. With her mother dead in the camp, and her father shot as a traitor, she had to assume heavy responsibilities and was able to travel little. She had never visited the university, and from the nature of Detleef’s few letters she deduced that they were growing further and further apart; she pondered most carefully how best to reveal through the post her continued affection for him, but she found no womanly way to do this. She simply could not write: ‘I love you deeply. Please come and rescue me from this prison of the spirit.’ But that is what she felt, and as the years passed and she realized that she would never want to marry anyone but him, she experienced all the anxieties an uncertain young woman of twenty could feel. Desperately she awaited his letters, weighing each phrase to detect hidden meanings, but she found little to console her. Morning after morning she awakened at the farm, dreading the possibility that on this day she would learn that he had married someone else.

  Far in the back of his mind, Detleef sensed that this must be the situation, and he sometimes admitted that in a proper world he would long since have been married to this stalwart girl he had liked so much that spring in Bloemfontein; whenever he mailed her a letter he visualized her as a married woman in church, or attending her duties, or caring for children. He never thought of her as beautiful, which she was not, but as some fine, solid human being for whom he had a steady affection.

  But with Clara! That was different. For one thing, she was here in Stellenbosch, not in some distant Transvaal country town. She was alive with information, awake to changes occurring in the countryside. Her family had a new car, imported from America, and in it she loved to tour over the mountains to Fransch Hoek, where the Huguenots had clustered, or
down to Somerset West, where the fine houses were. She was one of the first to learn that the war had ended in Europe, not with a German victory, as many had supposed, but with a smashing Allied triumph. For her own reasons, this gave her considerable satisfaction, but she did not annoy her father or her brothers by expressing this preference.

  During the victory celebrations, in which the English settlers around the Cape were downright obnoxious, Detleef confided to her his disappointment: ‘It would have been much better had the Germans won. They would have brought order to Europe.’

  ‘And here, too, I suppose?’ When he realized that she was goading him, he said no more, but when church services were held at the university to give thanks for the cessation of battle, he stayed away.

  He began his serious courtship of Clara at Christmas time, 1918, spending most of his pocket money on a present for her. After considerable reflection he decided upon a small, fine leatherbound Bible published in Amsterdam, in which he wrote, facing the page on which their marriage and their children would be recorded: To Clara, the best of the Van Doorns.

  She was embarrassed by the gift and wanted to return it, deeming it most inappropriate, but her father would not permit this: ‘He gave it to you as a sincere expression. Accept it on that basis.’

  ‘If I do,’ she said, ‘it can only mislead him.’

  ‘That’s the risk we all take when we give or accept things,’ he said, and that night at supper he said to Detleef, ‘I cannot imagine a finer gift.’

  As the year drew to an end, Detleef became quite tense, rehearsing how he could best make his declaration to this exciting girl: I surely have the money to support a wife. Even Piet Krause, who doesn’t farm very well, is showing a profit at Vrymeer. I have an education, so I can talk with her. I’m accorded a certain respect because of rugby. And I’m a good Christian.

  But then he would in honesty list his deficiencies, and they seemed to weigh down the balances, but nevertheless, he decided to plunge ahead. However, there was to be no New Year’s celebration, at least not with the Trianon Van Doorns, for they all drove in to Cape Town to greet a troopship that arrived on the last day of the year. It brought back to South Africa those gallant men who had volunteered to fight for king and country, and among them were some forty soldiers who had fought at Delville Wood.

  As they came down the ramps, led by Timothy Saltwood, V.C., there was a curious silence. Most men and women in the crowd, English and Afrikaner alike, were overcome with emotion; but a few Afrikaners were, like Detleef, silent because of perplexity. These men were heroes, unquestionably, but they had fought on the wrong side. Then a wave of sentiment swept over the crowd as the men actually landed on home soil, and cheers deafened the Van Doorns as they applauded the men.

  When the party returned to Trianon, with the tidy buildings appearing more secure than ever, there were celebrations, to which Detleef was not invited, but on the third of January, 1919, he bicycled out to the vineyards, prepared to make his formal proposal: I’ll speak to Coenraad first, and then Clara’s mother, and when I have their permission, I’ll go to Clara herself. But as he pedaled his way down the long lane, he saw at the end of the little houses on the left a young woman who looked much like Clara kissing rather ardently a young man in military uniform. In great confusion he rode on, staring ahead, but from the corner of his eye he saw the woman break away when she noticed him, then move quickly back for another kiss.

  ‘It’s you!’ Coenraad cried happily from the stoep. ‘Come in, Detleef. It’s a real celebration. Timothy Saltwood’s home, covered with medals.’

  ‘Is he in uniform?’

  ‘Of course.’

  When Clara and young Saltwood came into the hallway, Detleef felt weak, for the officer was a handsome fellow, lean, bemedaled, eager. ‘This is Timothy Saltwood, of De Kraal,’ Clara said. ‘He tells me your family used to own his farm.’

  ‘Long ago,’ Detleef mumbled, and as soon as he could manage it, he whispered to Clara, ‘Can I speak with you?’

  ‘Of course! What?’ She must have guessed what he was about to ask, but she gave him no help, standing firm in the middle of the room.

  ‘I mean, can we talk … alone?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said brightly, leading him into her father’s office.

  ‘Clara,’ he said. ‘I gave you the Bible … I mean …’

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘I want to marry you.’

  She placed her fingers on his lips: ‘Don’t, Detleef.’

  ‘To ask you to marry me,’ he muttered.

  ‘Detleef, I’m-so sorry. I’m going to marry Timothy.’

  He gasped. ‘But he’s an Englishman!’

  ‘He’s a very brave young man.’ When Detleef tried to speak, she placed her hand over his mouth and said firmly, ‘If you do care for me, come out now and behave like a gentleman.’

  ‘I am not a gentleman,’ he said harshly, pushing her hand down. ‘I’m not some fancy Englishman.’ He looked at her in anger, and said accusingly, ‘You knew this all the time. You let me make a fool of myself.’ He fumbled for words and said a most stupid thing: ‘You let me give you that Bible.’

  ‘I think,’ she said with asperity, ‘that you had better take your damned Bible back,’ and she hurried from the room.

  He was aghast that a young woman he loved should use such a word in such a connection, and when she flounced back into the office, thrusting the Bible into his hands, he dumbly accepted it, then watched as she recovered it, opened it, and ripped out the page on which he had written his dedication. ‘Give it to someone else,’ she said sternly, and with that she left him.

  For some minutes he stood there, holding the maimed book. He did not know what to do. He heard voices in the house, people talking gaily as if nothing embarrassing had happened, and then he made up his mind. Stalking from the room, looking at no one, he went out the front door for the last time in his life, and marched to his bicycle. Holding the Bible first in his right hand, then in his left, he pedaled down the long driveway, then jammed the book under his belt and went back to Stellenbosch.

  Two days later Coenraad van Doorn came to see him, and said quietly, ‘Detleef, things like this happen to everyone. My wife and I want you to attend the wedding. Clara wants it, for she considers you her good friend.’

  With a hatred that burned his throat, Detleef said, ‘All you English-lovers will be driven from power.’

  Coenraad was a man who had worked hard to keep his vineyards solvent through war and peace, and to him such talk was shameful, for Afrikaners could prosper best if they cooperated with the English who had made South Africa their home, and he for one was pleased that his daughter was forming an alliance with one of the strongest English-speaking South African families. He wanted such conciliation to be repeated across the country, and since it was imperative that young Afrikaner men appreciate this, he swallowed the rebuke and begged Detleef to reconsider: ‘Lad, don’t you see that sometimes a gap can be too wide for ordinary measures to bridge? You saw Christoffel Steyn shot because he sided with Germany. The Saltwoods saw their men slain at Delville Wood because they sided with England. Such wounds can only be healed by men of good will—like you and me.’

  ‘I hope England perishes.’

  Coenraad would accept no more. With contempt he snapped, ‘Detleef, you’re a tight-minded fool. Get out and see the world. I’ll have no more of you.’

  As Detleef might have guessed, the Van Doorn-Saltwood wedding did not take place in Stellenbosch. It was performed with high ceremony and lavish celebration in the English cathedral in Cape Town.

  Like many a young man before him, Detleef found vengeance in sports. He played rugby with a fury that astounded older men, throwing himself about with special abandon when pitted against teams like Somerset West, which had a more than average proportion of English players. Against the Ikeys he played like a wild man, for he suspected that somehow the Jews were involved in his loss of Cl
ara. In fact, he played so magnificently that several newspapers predicted that when South African rugby teams resumed touring England and France, he would have to be included: ‘Pound for pound, he may be the best forward playing today.’

  At the same time he did well in his studies, and there was renewed interest in having him transfer to divinity school. Indeed, Reverend Brongersma himself came down to Stellenbosch to talk with him, but not on that subject. In fact, for the first half-hour of their conversation Detleef could not fathom what the visit was about.

  ‘Your brother-in-law Piet is no farmer, Detleef. You must come back and take over, because he wants to find other employment.’

  ‘He’s not paying much attention to the farm?’

  ‘You’re not to worry.’ He coughed, then said in an entirely different voice, ‘What you should worry about, Detleef, is finding yourself a wife.’ Before the bewildered young man could respond, Brongersma said hurriedly, ‘Detleef, I have great affection for you. No boy from Vrymeer has ever shown more promise. I’ve heard about you and Clara van Doorn. I could see it happening when I gave my lectures. You’ve behaved miserably, Detleef. Like a damned fool, if you’ll forgive me that word. But you have been a damned fool, and I’m ashamed of you.’

  It was a blast Detleef had not expected. On the rugby field he had been knocked about by the biggest—mouth cut, eyes blackened—but the dominee’s words were blows to his pride, and he gasped.

  ‘There’s a fine young woman in Carolina who is wasting her life for love of you. Maria Steyn, daughter of heroes, a heroine herself. For God’s sake, Detleef, open your eyes. It was never intended that you marry Clara van Doorn. It would have been wrong. It would have ruined your life to have beat your head against that wall. And all the time you had a sweet, good woman waiting for you, and you were too blind to see.’