The Covenant

by James A. Michener

  ‘Insects,’ Sibisi said, showing the others how the turbulence of the water created air currents that tossed insects aloft, where birds awaited, and for a while as Nxumalo paused to absorb the wonder of this place—a river piercing a wall of rock—he felt that his journey could have no finer moment, but he was wrong. The true grandeur of this trip lay ahead, for as the travelers came out of the gorge they entered upon a place of wonder.

  The land opened out like the vast ears of an elephant, and across it trees of the most outlandish nature scattered. ‘They’re upside down!’ Nxumalo cried, rushing to a massive thing much thicker than any he had previously known. It was fifteen feet through the center, with bark soft and shaggy like the skin of an old dog; when he pressed against it, his thumb sank deep within. But what was truly remarkable were the branches, for this mighty tree reaching sixty feet into the air carried only tiny twigs resembling the roots of some frail plant, ripped out of its soil and stuck back in, upside down.

  ‘It is upside down,’ Sibisi agreed. ‘The gods did it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They made this excellent tree. Perfect in every respect. Big branches like an ordinary tree. But it was lazy, and when they came back to gather fruit, they found nothing. So in anger they ripped it out of the ground and jammed it back in, upside down, as you can see.’

  When Nxumalo laughed at the sight of this monstrosity, Sibisi gripped his arm. ‘No ridicule. Many men owe their lives to this tree, for when you are perishing from thirst you come here, puncture the bark, and out will drip a little water.’ Nor was it only water the baobab gave, for its leaves could be boiled and eaten, its seeds sucked or ground to make a tingling drink, and its spongy wood stripped and woven into rope.

  It was a tree that festooned the landscape, its great pillars of thick glossy bark and tangled branches spreading far into the sky. Wherever he looked north of the gorge, there stood these trees, as if to cry, ‘We are sentinels of a new land. You are coming onto the earth we guard.’

  And it was a new land. The savanna sprouted different grasses, and there were different birds and different small animals running between the rocks. But in the distance there were always the same large animals: elephant and eland and galloping zebra. They were the permanent gods that accompanied men when they journeyed north, and at night when they lit their campfire, Nxumalo could hear the lions prowling near, lured by the smell of human beings but repelled by their flames, and in the distance the soft grumbling of the hyenas. It was as if a man traveling across the savanna carried with him a garland of beasts, beautiful and wild and useful. Nxumalo, peering into the darkness, could sometimes see their eyes reflecting the flames, and he was always surprised at how close they came; on nights when it was his turn to keep the fire alive, he would allow it to die perilously low, and in the near-darkness he would see the lions moving closer, closer, their eyes not far from his, their soft and lovely forms clearly discernible. Then, with a low cry, he would poke the embers and throw on more wood, and they would quietly withdraw, perplexed by this untoward behavior but still fascinated by the wavering flames.

  On the morning of the seventeenth day Nxumalo saw two phenomena that he would always remember; they were as strange to him as the upside-down baobab trees, and they were premonitory, for much of his life from this time on would be spent grappling with these mysteries.

  From a hill three days north of the gorge he looked down to see his first mighty river, the Limpopo, roaring through the countryside with a heavy burden of flood-waters collected far upstream and a heavier burden of mud. The waters swirled and twisted, and to cross them was quite impossible, but Sibisi said, ‘They’ll subside. Two days we can walk across.’ He could not have said this in spring, but he knew that this untimely flooding must have originated in some single storm and would soon abate.

  In the waiting period Nxumalo inspected the second phenomenon, the vast copper deposits just south of the Limpopo, where he was surprised to see women, some as young as Zeolani, whose lives were spent grabbing at rock and hauling it lump by lump up rickety ladders to furnaces whose acrid fumes contaminated the air and shortened the lives of those who were forced to breathe them.

  The tribe in charge of the mines had accumulated large bundles of copper wire, which Nxumalo agreed to have his men transport to Zimbabwe, and now the two who had been carrying nothing were pressed into service. Even Nxumalo, whose burden had been light, took four measures of the wire, since the miners paid well for this service.

  ‘We’ve always traded our copper with Zimbabwe,’ the mine overseer said, ‘and when you reach the city you’ll see why.’ His words excited Nxumalo, and he was tempted to ask for more details, but he kept silent, preferring to find out for himself what lay at journey’s end.

  When the Limpopo subsided and its red-rock bottom was fordable, the seventeen men resumed the exciting part of their march, for now they were in the heart of a savanna so vast that it dwarfed any they had known before. Distances were tremendous, a rolling sea of euphorbia trees, baobabs and flat-topped thorn bushes, crowded with great animals and alluring birds. For endless miles the plains extended, rolling and swelling when small hills intervened, and cut by rivers with no name.

  At the end of the first day’s march from the Limpopo they came upon the farthest southern outpost of the kingdom of Zimbabwe, and Nxumalo could barely mask his disappointment. There was a kraal, to be sure, and it was surrounded by a stone wall, but it was not the soaring construction that Old Seeker had promised. ‘It’s larger than my father’s wall,’ Nxumalo said quietly, ‘but I expected something that high.’ And he pointed to a tree of modest size.

  One of the herders attached to the outpost said, ‘Patience, young boy. This is not the city.’ When he saw Nxumalo’s skepticism he led him along a path to a spot from which a valley could be seen. ‘Now will you believe the greatness of Zimbabwe?’ And for as far as his eye could travel, Nxumalo saw a vast herd of cattle moving between the hills. ‘The king’s smallest herd,’ the man said. Nxumalo, who had been reared in a society where a man’s status was determined by his cattle, realized that the King of Zimbabwe must be a man of extraordinary power.

  When Sibisi and the outpost headman settled down with their gourds of beer, Nxumalo, uninformed on the topics they discussed, wandered off, to find something that quite bewitched him: one of the herdsmen, with little to do day after day, had caught a baby eland to rear as a pet. It was now full grown, heavier than one of Nxumalo’s father’s cows and with twisted horns twice as long and dangerous, but it was like a baby, pampered and running after its mother, in this case the herdsman, who ordered it about as if it were his fractious son.

  The eland loved to play, and Nxumalo spent most of one day knocking about with it, pushing against its forehead, wrestling with its horns and avoiding its quick feet when the animal sought to neutralize the boy’s cleverness. When the file moved north the eland walked with Nxumalo for a long time, its handsome flanks shining white in the morning sun. Then its master whistled, called its name, and the big animal stopped in the path, looked forward to his new friend and backward to its home, then stamped its forefeet in disgust and trotted back. Nxumalo stood transfixed in the bush, staring at the disappearing animal and wishing that he could take such a congenial beast with him, when the eland stopped, turned, and for a long spell stared back at the boy. They stayed thus for several minutes, consuming the space that separated them, then the animal tossed its head, flashed its fine horns, and disappeared.

  Nxumalo now carried only two bundles of wire, for Sibisi had said quietly, ‘I’ll take the others. You must prepare yourself for the Field of Granite.’ In the middle of the plains, blue on the far horizon, rose a line of mountains, and marking the pathway to them stood a chain of ant hills, some as high as trees, others lower but as big across as a baobab. They were reddish in color and hard as rock where the rains had moistened them prior to their baking by the sun.

  On the twenty-ninth day as they ne
ared Zimbabwe they saw ahead of them two mighty granite domes surrounded by many-spired euphorbias, and as they walked, bringing the domes ever closer, Sibisi pointed to the west, where a gigantic outcropping looked exactly like some monstrous elephant resting with its forelegs tucked under him. ‘He guards the rock we seek,’ Sibisi said, and the men moved more quickly to reach this vital stage in their progress.

  Between the twin domes and the sleeping elephant lay a large field of granite boulders, big and round, like eggs half buried in the earth. Nxumalo had often seen boulders that resembled these, but never of such magnificent size and certainly none that had their peculiar quality. For all of them were exfoliating, as if they wished to create building blocks from which splendid structures could be made; they formed a quarry in which nine-tenths of the work was done by nature, where man had to do only the final sizing and the portage.

  The rounded domes, fifty and sixty feet high, had been laid down a billion years ago in layers, and now the action of rain and sun and changing temperature had begun to peel away the layers. They were like gigantic onions made of rock, whose segments were being exposed and lifted away. The result was unbelievable: extensive slabs of choice granite, a uniform six inches thick, were thrown down year after year. Men collecting them could cut them into strips the width of a building block and many yards long. When other men cut these strips into ten-inch lengths, some of the best and strongest bricks ever devised would result.

  There was only one drawback to this operation: the Field of Granite lay in the south; the site where the bricks were needed was five miles to the north. To solve this problem the king had long ago decreed a simple rule: no man or woman traveling north to Zimbabwe was permitted to pass this field without picking up at least three building blocks and lugging them to the capital. Strong men, like Sibisi’s, were expected to carry eight, and even couriers like Nxumalo, son of a chief, had to bring three. If their other burdens were too great, they must be laid aside, for no man could move north without his stone bricks.

  Masons working at the site tied the stones in packages of four, binding them with lianas found in the forest, and these were waiting for the southerners as they arrived. When the masons found that a chief’s son was in the train, they prepared a bundle of only three bricks for him, and with this new burden he set off.

  At first the stones were not oppressive, but as the hours passed, the men groaned, particularly those who had already been burdened with the copper. That night four men had to share the watch, tending the fire and fighting exhaustion, and when Nxumalo stood guard, he was so tired he forgot the animals and watched only the stars that marked the slow passage of his watch.

  At dawn the punished men climbed the last hill, and at its crest they received a reward which made the drudgery acceptable, for there in a gracious valley, beside a marsh, stood the city of Zimbabwe, grand in a manner no one from Nxumalo’s tribe could have imagined. There stood the mighty edifices built of rock, pile after glorious pile of gray-green granite rising from the valley floor.

  ‘Look!’ Sibisi cried in awe. ‘That must be where the king worships!’ And Nxumalo looked to the north where a hill of real size was crowned by a citadel whose rough stone walls shone in the morning sunlight. The men from the little village stood in silence, gaping at the wonder of the place. From a thousand huts in the shade of the mighty walls and parapets the workers of the city were greeting the dawn of a new day.

  ‘This is Zimbabwe,’ Nxumalo said, wiping his eyes, and no one spoke.

  No group of visitors from beyond the Limpopo could expect to enter any of the handsome stone enclosures, so after dutifully depositing the rhino horns with the authorities, Nxumalo and his men were led to the section of the city occupied by the common people, and there they rested for fifteen days before starting their return journey. On the day of departure Nxumalo left his lodgings with a sense of sadness, for he had enjoyed this city and its manifold offerings, but as he reached the area where his men assembled, he felt his arm taken by a firm hand.

  ‘Nxumalo, son of Ngalo,’ a voice said, ‘this is to be your home.’ It was the Old Seeker, come to rescue the boy in whose future he had taken such a deep interest. ‘You are to work on the walls.’

  ‘But I am the son of a chief!’

  ‘Since when does the smallest calf run with the bulls?’

  Nxumalo did not reply, for he was learning that this old man was far more than a dreamy wanderer exploring the Ridge-of-White-Waters. In Zimbabwe he was a full-fledged councillor at the king’s court, and now he told his young protégé, ‘In Zimbabwe you do not force your way, Nxumalo. Our walls are built by the finest men in the city. They will not tolerate fools at their side. Satisfy them, and you will gain entrance.’ And he pointed to the stone towers in the valley and the walls of the mountaintop citadel.

  Zimbabwe in the year 1454 was certainly no duplicate of a European city like Ghent or Bordeaux. Its architecture was much ruder; it contained no Gothic cathedral; and its palace was infinitely simpler. Although its principal ritual and royal centers were made of stone, its houses were of clay-and-thatch construction. No one in the city could read; the history of the place was not written; there was no nationwide system of coinage; and society was less complex by many degrees than that in Europe.

  It was, however, a thoughtfully organized, thriving community with a brilliant business capacity, evidenced by the teeming marketplace to which a network of producers and traders gravitated. A mild, healthful place with a fine water supply, it enjoyed the most advanced amenities of that day, right down to an ingenious system of drains. It had a particularized work force and a government which had been more stable than most of those in Europe. But even as it stood supreme over this heartland of southern Africa, dangerous undercurrents threatened the continuance of the place, for it was stretching its control and resources to the limit at a time when other regional forces were in movement, and no one could predict how much longer this great capital would continue to prosper.

  It was into this center of grandeur and uncertainty that Nxumalo was projected, and as he labored on the wall, tapping into place rocks like those he had transported, he watched all things.

  He saw how a constant stream of porters arrived from the compass points, each man bearing whatever valuable goods his district contributed to the capital, and he began to detect the variations that marked the different regions. There were, for example, noticeable shades of blackness among the men: those from the north, where the great rivers flowed, being darker; those from the west, where there had been more of the little brown people to mate with, being shaded toward brown. And one tribe from the east sent men who were conspicuously taller than the others, but all seemed capable.

  They spoke in various tongues, too, when they were among themselves, but the variations in language were not great, and all could manage the speech of Zimbabwe, with amusing dialect differences betraying the fact that some were of the swamps and others from the empty plains. It was the residents of the city who attracted Nxumalo’s principal notice, for they moved with an assurance that he had previously seen only in his father. They were in general a handsome people, but among them moved a cadre of officials who were outstanding. Usually taller than their fellows, they wore uniforms made of the most expensive imported cloth into which had been woven strands of gold and silver; they were never seen carrying anything except staffs indicating their office, and even these they did not use as walking sticks but rather as formal badges. Ordinary people moved aside when they approached, and one of these officals came each day to inspect the work being done by the stonemasons.

  He was a considerate man who wanted to like the work for which he was responsible; only rarely did he order any section torn down and rebuilt, and one day when he was standing over Nxumalo, pecking at the young man’s work with his staff, he suddenly burst into laughter, and no one knew why. ‘We should get him to do the heavy work,’ he said with a wave of his staff, indicating a baboon shuffling al
ong on its hind legs and front knuckles, stopping to root in the ground near the post of the chief stonemason, who had found the creature abandoned at birth.

  The inspector watched the tame baboon for some moments, then tapped Nxumalo with his staff: ‘Your job will be to train him.’ Chuckling at his joke, he moved along to inspect another part of the wall.

  Having identified Nxumalo among the temporary sojourners who came great distances to labor at the walls before returning to their homes, this inspector formed the habit of asking him each day, ‘Well, how are we progressing with the baboon?’ then laughing generously. One day he asked, ‘Aren’t you the chieftain’s son?’ When Nxumalo nodded, he said, ‘Old Seeker wants to see you. He says it’s time,’ and he ordered Nxumalo to lay down the board on which he had been carrying adobe.

  The boy was about to descend when he saw a sight below which staggered him, for moving toward the marketplace came two men of astonishing appearance. They were not black! Like the cloth that Zeolani bleached in the sun, the skin of these men was not black at all, but a pale honey-tan, almost white, and they were dressed in flowing robes even whiter than their skins, with filament protection for their heads.

  He was still staring when Old Seeker came up, bustling with importance. ‘What’s the matter, son?’ he asked, and when he saw the strangers whose appearance had so shocked Nxumalo he laughed. ‘Arabs. Come up from the sea.’ And taking Nxumalo by the arm, he teased: ‘If we follow them, you can waste the fortune you’ve been earning on the walls.’

  Nxumalo and his mentor fell in behind the two white men as the latter proceeded regally toward the marketplace, followed by thirty black slaves who had carried their trade goods up from the seacoast. Wherever the procession appeared it was hailed with shouts, and hundreds of city residents trailed along behind to watch the strangers halt at a compound, where they were greeted effusively by a short, rotund black who dominated the market.