The Covenant

by James A. Michener

  While H. Steyn was completing his calculations, old Pik was pursuing his: It’s a good stone. It’s worth two thousand rand. And I saw his eyes light up when I placed it on the desk. Damn, I will ask two-five. Look at that diamond. He doesn’t see a diamond that good in a month. It could even go for two-six. Damn, I’ll go for two-six.

  H. Steyn cherished his reputation as dean of diamond buyers, ‘the man who never cheated anyone,’ but did not feel that in order to sustain his good name he had to pay exorbitant prices. He had found it most effective to state an honest price, just a fraction less than some hungry buyer might offer, and then to adjust it slightly upward if he really wanted the stone.

  The more he studied this one, the more he wanted it. This could be a fine stone, he said to himself. The color might turn out to be much better than I think. It won’t cut to more than one-point-four carats, but when it’s done, it could be an exciting diamond.

  ‘Pik,’ he said in the low voice he used in such negotiations, ‘I won’t fool around. You’ve got yourself a very good stone. I’m going to offer you top price. Five thousand, eight hundred rand.’

  Pik stood silent. Mustering all his strength he was able to keep from gasping or staggering backward. His head bent forward, so that Steyn could see only the broken rim of his big hat, and it was very still. Finally Pik gained control of himself, and in what he assumed was a normal voice he asked, ‘Of course, that’s an open offer?’

  Now Steyn had to control himself, not from trembling but from laughing. Here was a man in his seventies, never had a real diamond in his possession before, would probably earn more from this one than he had from all his fragments in the past twenty years. And he was haggling. But Steyn enjoyed such men and wished them well, so if old Pik wanted to haggle, he’d go along.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ he said with a show of irritation. ‘I make you a firm offer of fifty-eight hundred now. I am not making you an open offer, allowing you to go up and down the row, seeing if you can engineer a bid a little higher. I’m warning you right now you won’t. So don’t come back here at nightfall and tell me, “I’ll take your fifty-eight hundred, Mr. Steyn,” because at nightfall that offer don’t stand. You accept it right now, or I withdraw it.’

  Pik said nothing. Steyn’s offer was almost triple what he had realistically expected, more than double his most sanguine hope, and desperately he wanted to accept it, pay off his five backers, and take Netje enough to live on for the rest of their lives. But as a diamond man he also wanted to play the whole game, to go from shack to shack, displaying his incredible find, to hear the other men whispering, ‘Prinsloo’s got himself a diamond,’ and he would not be cheated of this exercise, not even by an offer of great wealth.

  ‘Got to see what the others say,’ he muttered, closing his matchbox and heading for the door.

  H. Steyn rose to accompany him. Ignoring the horrendous smell that radiated like a halo, he threw his arm about the old man’s shoulders, and said, ‘I’m sorry to lose that stone, Pik. It’s a good one. Don’t let them cheat you.’

  ‘Don’t intend to,’ Pik said.

  By midafternoon the backer from Johannesburg was weary of the charade: ‘Damn it, Pik, you got three good bids. Take one of them and let’s get out of here.’

  But Prinsloo was enjoying himself as never before. To walk into a real buyer’s shack, to open the matchbox, to watch the buyer as he studied the find in disbelief, to hear the tentative offers, and then the real bid. Buyer Number Five had offered five thousand, nine hundred, and kept it an open bid: ‘I’d like to get that stone, Pik. Come back, because I know you won’t find any higher.’

  At the seventh shack, Adams and Feinstein, the bid went to six thousand rand even, and this, too, was open. ‘Six thousand rand!’ Pik reported to his backer. ‘God Almighty, that’s more money than you earned in your whole life.’

  ‘We’re taking it, I hope.’

  ‘Nope.’

  The Johannesburg man exploded, did some cursing, then listened, amazed, as Pik said, ‘All my life I dreamed of walking in to H. Steyn’s and selling him a diamond. A real diamond.’ So against the protests of his partner, the old man went back and told Steyn, ‘I got me a bid of six thousand even. Would you consider going along with it?’

  Without hesitation Steyn said, ‘No.’ But when the old man’s face turned gray, he added, ‘I made you an honest offer, Pik. But let me see the color again.’

  With a rush old Pik produced the matchbox, fumbled awkwardly, and placed the stone once more upon the table. With a show of studious professionalism Steyn picked up his loupe, took the diamond in his left fingers, and studied it carefully. No detectable flaws. A color perhaps one grade higher than he had judged at first. The stone cut from this raw diamond might sell in America for … Who knows what the Harry Winston people could get for such a stone—$32,000?

  Slowly Steyn put down the loupe, shoving the lovely diamond back toward the old man. ‘Best I can do, Pik. Fifty-nine fifty.’

  ‘Sold!’ Pik cried with exultation. But when he reached the car his partner berated him: ‘You damned fool! Adams and Feinstein offered you six thousand. Cash in hand. What in hell are you doing?’

  ‘I want to act like a gentleman,’ Pik said. ‘I like to deal with them. You should know that. When you offered to back me, there in the bar—did I haggle over terms?’ The Johannesburg man made no reply, so Pik finished: ‘Tomorrow you and me find the others. Give them their share. Then we divide a fortune.’

  ‘If you’re going to be rich,’ the partner said, ‘would you consider taking a bath?’ Pik said nothing. He was imagining the look on Netje’s face when he told her that he had walked right into H. Steyn’s office and demanded six thousand rand … and almost got it.

  News of the Swartstroom find flashed across South Africa, and before nightfall was known in Tel Aviv, Amsterdam and New York. It alerted geologists at the Anglo-American offices on Main Street in Johannesburg, and especially the officials at Amalgamated Mines in Pretoria.

  ‘This is our chance,’ the president told the executive board that convened in special session on Saturday morning. ‘What do we know about the Swartstroom?’

  His men knew a great deal: ‘Little stream flowing into Moçambique. Researched many times. Negative. It does lie in the general vicinity of the Premier Mine, but doesn’t seem to be connected in any way. No logical pipe areas near it, and remember that it’s cut off from Premier by those low mountains.’

  ‘You think Prinsloo’s find was an accidental?’

  ‘No find is ever accidental, if it’s been honestly reported.’

  ‘What do we know about Prinsloo?’

  ‘For over fifty years he’s always prospected the possible streams. Never wasted his time where there were no signals.’

  ‘What signals could he have seen?’

  ‘Damned if I know. I’ve been up and down that stream six times. Never even saw garnets.’

  ‘Well, he saw something. And we’d better go back.’

  There was much discussion as to whom to send, and the geologist who made the earlier six explorations eagerly wanted another crack at it, but the president said, ‘There’s that American who’s being expelled from our mines in Vwarda. Isn’t he exceptionally good?’

  When the young man’s file was produced, the man from personnel summarized it rapidly: ‘Born Ypsilanti 1948. University of Michigan. Graduate work at Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Worked at Broken Hill in Australia. Supervisor at Mount Isa. We offered him a job on the strong recommendation of all his professors and superiors. He worked at our place in Sierra Leone, then to Botswana, and finally as field manager in Vwarda.’

  ‘His expulsion from Vwarda?’ the president asked. ‘Did it reflect on him. Morally, I mean?’

  ‘Certainly not from our end. He did a splendid job for us.’

  ‘I mean, was there a public scandal? Would we be hurt if …’

  ‘Sir,’ the personnel man said in a tired voice, ‘it
was the usual. I have the whole nonsense, too damned dismal to repeat. After independence he was kept on at our mines. When Richardson was fired on that trumped-up currency charge he became chief. Did a first-class job for us and for Vwarda. One of the few white men accepted by the new regime. But one day a committee went to the prime minister and accused him of racism. And he was expelled.’

  ‘Is he racist? These southern Americans, you know.’

  ‘I think Michigan is in the north. When Richardson was kicked out, the government insisted upon placing in all the second echelons Vwardians who could scarcely read or write. But they were cousins of the prime minister. So one day, when the entire operation threatened to collapse, our man fired them all. Said he had to have someone in command who could manage without coming to work at eleven in the morning in a Mercedes-Benz.’

  ‘And those men,’ the chairman suggested, ‘formed the committee that charged him with racism.’

  ‘The same,’ the personnel man said.

  ‘What’s our chap’s name again?’

  ‘Philip Saltwood.’

  ‘Related to that Saltwood woman who keeps provoking the government?’

  ‘Not likely.’

  ‘We can’t afford to go looking for scandal, you know.’

  ‘This Saltwood’s an American.’

  He was summoned from Zambia, to which he had fled after his expulsion from Vwarda, and he arrived one morning at the Swartstroom driving a white Toyota with the gold monogram AMAL. He was followed by two other white cars bearing the famous letters, and then by two white trucks carrying five workmen each. A team of eighteen would now work every bend of this little stream, for it was imperative that the industry know whether a new source of alluvial diamonds had been found, and if so, where the master pipe might be hiding that produced them. It would be Philip Saltwood’s responsibility to answer these questions, and he had seventeen assistants and twelve months in which to do it.

  When he first arrived at the Swartstroom that sunny November morning in 1978 he seemed ideally suited for the task. A theoretical geologist well trained in America and Australia, he had acquired broad experience in the oil fields of the former country and the gold mines of the latter. In recent years his specialty had become diamonds, as a result of his intensive work in places like Sierra Leone, Botswana and Vwarda, and he brought to his present task a considerable knowledge.

  He was thirty years old, bright, hard-working, and because of his American-Australian diet, much more solid than the average South African Saltwood. He had always known vaguely that his family stemmed from Salisbury in England, with a major branch in South Africa, but none of his relatives had ever made contact with either branch.

  He was divorced from an Australian girl, and since they had had no children, there were no lingering emotional ties. They had met while he was working at Broken Hill and had courted while chasing brumbies across the Outback. They had spent their honeymoon on the ski slopes in New Zealand, and as long as Philip worked Down Under they were a happy pair.

  But when he was sent back to America, she could not adjust. The oil fields of Oklahoma had broken her spirit, and prospecting in central Wyoming had proved intolerable, so one afternoon she fled those barren regions in a Quantas plane to Australia, informing Philip of her departure only when she reached the safety of civilized Sydney. There she obtained a divorce on the grounds that he had deserted her, and sometimes he could scarcely remember her name.

  He established his camp quickly and with stern authority: ‘At the beginning we work three weeks unbroken, then a week off. Spend that week as you will, but come back sober. Workday starts forty minutes after sunrise, so get up early and hit the chow line. Good on you.’ His speech was an amalgam of Texan, Australian and African diamond field; his manner, international-mine-field. He was a bold man determined to whip this crew and this rivulet into shape, and when he surveyed the six white tents in which he and his men would live for the following months, he took satisfaction in the secure way they had been pegged to the ground and the orderly manner in which they lined up. He knew of no other way to work.

  There was great excitement in surrounding towns like Venloo when it was learned that Amalgamated Mines was making a serious probe of the Swartstroom, and curious businessmen kept trying to discover whether any further diamonds had been uncovered: ‘They work from sunrise to sundown, and they got all kinds of machinery. They’ve an American in charge, and he drives them.’

  ‘But did they find any diamonds?’

  ‘Not from what I hear. That stream’s been worked before, you know. Back in the thirties, I been told. They found nothing then, either.’

  But old Pik Prinsloo had found his diamond, now reported to have been eleven carats in size. ‘Yes, but sometimes I wonder. He’s a canny old coot. You suppose he salted it?’

  Why and from where would a seventy-one-year-old man salt a trivial little Transvaal stream? From time to time Saltwood would hear rumors that he was hauling his house-wagon to some new site, but none of the workmen had ever actually seen the filthy old fellow. They attended their power-driven scoops, their mechanized gravitators as they moved methodically from one bend in the stream to the next, finding nothing.

  ‘Hell,’ a long-time Amalgamated field man growled, ‘we aren’t even finding garnet or ilmenite.’

  And then, in late November, Pik Prinsloo, working on his own at an unpromising site, came up with a find that was in some ways more exciting than his first: at locations well separated he uncovered two diamond chips, the largest only one-tenth of a carat, both together worth only seventy rand. The significance of this find was that it confirmed the fact that the Swartstroom was indeed diamantiferous.

  Saltwood’s men, working at the Amalgamated camp, were even more pleased by this unexpected find than was old Pik, and although the week of their vacation was upon them, they agreed to work straight through and delay their off-time till December. For the first six days they found nothing, then, on Saturday, they produced a third chip, about one-eighth of a carat, so small the layman would barely have noticed it, and they telephoned the stirring news to Pretoria. They had confirmed a new diamond site.

  Philip Saltwood spent his week of vacation in the small town of Venloo eating good food at the neat hotel run by a Jewish couple, and since on Sundays there was absolutely nothing to do there, he attended the morning service at the Dutch Reformed church, where he caught his first glimpse of the real South Africa.

  He wandered in a few minutes after the service had started, and by good fortune the congregation was singing a hymn he had grown to love, popular in both Australia and America. It was Martin Luther’s ‘Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,’ and although it was being sung in Afrikaans, its noble message was the same in any language, and he bellowed his version in English. As he did so, he became aware that a most lovely Afrikaner girl, her hair in Saxon braids, was laughing at him. Turning his head quickly, he caught her eye, and she blushed and buried her face in her hymnal. But since she knew this greatest of the Afrikaans hymns by heart, she soon looked up and he saw the golden face that would haunt him during the remaining months of his dig. It was squarish, characteristically Dutch, with broad forehead, blue eyes, generous lips and pronounced chin. She was not a tall girl, but she gave the impression of being extremely solid, like some tidy Cape Dutch farmhouse nestled against the berg. She was dressed in white, so that her flaxen hair and golden complexion shone to good advantage, and in no way could she discipline her mischievous smile.

  He ended Luther’s rousing hymn, this battle cry of a new religion, with his voice in full power, then sat so that he could watch the girl with the Saxon braids, but before long his attention was drawn to the pulpit, raised high above the congregation, from which a young predikant with brilliant forcefulness had begun to deliver his sermon, leaning down on his black robes to castigate, implore, inspirit, deride, cajole, threaten and bless.

  I haven’t heard preaching like that since the Holy Rollers in
the Oklahoma oil fields, Saltwood said to himself, and for the moment he forgot the girl as he tried to follow what the predikant was saying. He knew only such Afrikaans as an engineer would acquire in a mining camp, but this was sufficient for him to pick out the main ideas: Joshua was on a hilltop looking down at Jericho, facing a great obligation placed upon him by the Lord, and the people of this congregation, every man, woman and child, stood this morning upon a similar hilltop staring down at his or her obligation.

  The theme of the sermon was powerful, but it was the delivery that overwhelmed Saltwood: This isn’t your basic Episcopalian homily. This is by-God religion. That man’s the best I ever heard.

  And then he saw something which had escaped him at first. In a special section of pews at the right hand of the predikant sat a group of older men, solemn-faced and rigid, each dressed in somber black with white shirt and gleaming white tie, and each word that the young predikant uttered seemed to be recorded mentally by these thirty men, who nodded when they approved what he said, or sat grimly silent when they did not. Because they were seated well below the pulpit, which was hung suspended from the ceiling of the church, they had to raise their faces to see the predikant, so that they looked like a group from some Ghirlandaio fresco in Florence or the figures from a dark terracotta casting by one of the Della Robbias.