The Covenant (25 page)

One of the slaves was a girl named Ateh, seventeen years old and beautiful in the tawny manner of most Malayan women. She pouted when the sailors confined her and the others in a caged-off section belowdecks, and she protested when food was thrown at them. She demanded water for washing, and the sailors heard her commanding the others to behave. And at some point in each day, no matter how dismal it had been, she broke into song, whispering words she had learned as a child in her sunlit village. They were songs of little consequence, the ramblings of children and young women in love, but she made the dark hold more acceptable when she sang.

By the time the journey was half over, this girl Ateh was so well known that even the captain had to take notice of her, and it was he who gave her the name by which she would later be known: “Ateh is pagan. If you’re going to sing in a Christian church, you’ve got to have a Christian name.” Thumbing through his Bible, and keeping to the Old Testament, as the Dutch usually did, he came upon that lyrical passage in Judges which seemed predestined for this singing girl: “Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song …”

“Prophetic!” he said, closing the book reverently. “That shall be her name—Deborah,” and henceforth she was so called.

Since it was Willem’s responsibility to deliver the slaves and since he wished to keep them alive if possible, it being usual in these waters
that thirty percent died on any passage, he was often belowdecks to satisfy himself that they were properly cared for, and this threw him always into consultation with Deborah. Before he came down the ladder, she would be huddled in a corner reviling the ill fortune that had brought her there, but when she saw him coming she would move forward to the bars of the cage and begin to sing. She would feign surprise at his arrival and halt her song in mid-note, looking at him shyly, with her face hidden.

Since the fleet had now entered that part of the Indian Ocean where temperatures were highest, the penned slaves were beginning to suffer. Food, water and air were all lacking, and one midday, when the heat was greatest, Willem saw that Deborah was lying on the deck, near to prostration, and on his own recognizance he unlocked the gate that enclosed the slaves and carried the girl out to where the air was freer, kneeling over her as she slowly revived.

He was amazed at how slight her body was; and as she lay in shadows her wonderfully placid face with its high cheekbones and softly molded eyelids captivated him, and he stayed with her for a long time. When she revived he found that she could speak the native language of Java, with its curious tradition of forming plurals by speaking the singular twice. If
sate
was the word for the bamboo-skewered bits of lamb roasted and served with peanut sauce, then two of the delicacies were not
sates
, as in many languages, but
satesate;
to hear natives speaking rapidly gave the impression of lovely soft voices stuttering, and Willem began to cherish the sound of Deborah’s voice, whether she sang or spoke.

On most days he arranged some excuse for releasing her from the cage, a partiality which angered both the Dutch seamen and the other slaves. One evening, when the time came for her freedom to end, he suggested that she not go back into the cage but remain with him, and through the long, humid night, when stars danced at the tip of the mast, they stayed together, and after that adventure everyone knew they had become lovers.

This posed no great problem, for scores of Dutchmen working in Java had mistresses; there was even a ritual for handling their bastard offspring, and no great harm was done. But the captain had been commissioned by Mevrouw van Doorn to look after her son, and when he saw the young Dutchman becoming serious about the little slave girl he felt obligated to warn him as a father might, and one morning when sailors reported: “Mijnheer van Doorn kept the little
Malaccan in his quarters again,” the older man summoned Willem to his cabin, where he sat in a large wicker chair behind a table on which rested another of those large Dutch Bibles bound in brass.

“Mister Willem, I’ve been informed that your head has been twisted by the little Malaccan!”

“Not twisted, sir, I hope.”

“And you’ve been acting toward her as if she were your wife.”

“I trust not, sir.”

“Your mother put your safekeeping in my hands, Mister Willem, and as your father, I deem it proper to ask if you’ve been reading the Book of Genesis?”

“I know the Book, sir.”

“But have you read it recently?” the captain asked, and with this he threw open the heavy book to a page marked with a spray of palm leaf, and from the twenty-fourth chapter he read the thundering oath which Abraham imposed when his son Isaac hungered for a wife:

Slowly the captain turned the pages till he came to the next passage marked by a frond. Placing his two hands over the pages, he said ominously, “And when Isaac was an old man, having obeyed his father Abraham, what did he say when his son Jacob wanted a wife?” Dramatically he lifted his hands and with a stubby finger pointed to the revealing verse:

Willem, seeing the words spelled out so strictly, felt constrained to assure the captain that he meant nothing serious with the Malaccan girl, but the older man was not to be diverted: “It’s always been the problem in Java and it will soon become the problem at the Cape. Where can a Dutch gentleman find himself a wife?”

“Where?” Willem echoed.

“God has foreseen this problem, as He foresees everything.” With a flourish he swung the parchment pages back to the first text, indicating it with his left forefinger. “Go back to your own country and
be patient. Don’t throw yourself away on local women, the way those idiots in Java do.” Pointing to the deck below, he added, “Nor on slaves.”

“Am I to wait perpetually?”

“No, because when you debark with your slaves at the Cape, this fleet continues to Holland. And when we reach Amsterdam, I’ll speak to your brother Karel and commission him to find you a wife from among the women of Holland, the way Isaac and Jacob found their wives in their native country. I’ll bring her back to you.”

When Willem drew back in obvious distaste over having his life arranged by others, the captain closed the great book and rested his open hands upon it. “It tells you what to do right here. Obey the word of the Lord.”

The visit to the captain changed nothing. Willem continued to keep his slave girl in his quarters, and it was she who obeyed the Bible, for like the original Deborah, she continued to sing, twisting herself ever more tightly about his heart.

Then abruptly everything changed. One afternoon as the east coast of Africa neared, Deborah sat on the lower deck whispering an old song to herself, but as Willem approached she stopped midway and told him, “I shall have a baby.”

With great tenderness he drew her to her feet, embraced her, and asked in Javanese, “Are you sure?”

“Not sure,” she said softly, “but I think.”

She was correct. Early one morning, as she rose from Willem’s bed, she felt faint and dropped to the deck, sitting there with her arms clasped about her ankles. She was about to inform Willem that she was certain of her pregnancy, when the mast-top lookout started shouting, “Table Mountain!” and all hands turned out to see the marvelous sight.

Willem was overcome when he saw the great flat mountain standing clear in the sunlight, for it symbolized his longing. Years had elapsed since he left it, and he could imagine the vast changes that must have occurred at its base, and he was thinking of them when Deborah came to stand beside him.

Aware of the hold this moutain had on him, she said nothing, just hummed softly, whispering the words now and then, and when he took notice of her she placed her left hand, very small and brown, on his right arm and said, “We will have a baby.” The mountain, the
waiting cave and the indiscernible future blended into a kind of golden haze, and he could not even begin to guess what he must do.

When he was rowed ashore, leaving Deborah behind, for she must wait till an owner was assigned, he found a settlement much smaller than expected; only a hundred and twenty-two people inhabited the place. There was a small fort with sod walls threatening to dissolve on rainy days, and a huddle of rude buildings within. But the site! Back in 1647 when the shipwrecked sailors lived ashore, their beach headquarters had been nine miles to the north, and Willem had seen only from a distance the delectable valley at the foot of Table Mountain; now he stood at the edge of that good land, protected by mountains on three sides, and he believed that when sufficient settlers arrived this would be one of the finest towns in the world.

He was greeted by the commander, a small, energetic man in his late thirties of such swarthy complexion that blond Dutchmen suspected him of Italian parentage. He wore a rather full mustache and dressed as fastidiously as frontier conditions would allow. He spoke in a voice higher than usual in a mature man, but with such speed and force that he gained attention and respect.

He was Jan van Riebeeck, ship’s chirurgeon, who had served in most of the spice ports, winding up in Japan after abandoning medicine to become a merchant-trader, a skill he mastered so thoroughly that he was making profits for both the Compagnie and himself. For each hour he spent in the former’s interests, he spent an equal time on his own, until his profits grew to such dimension that the Compagnie had to take notice. Accused of private trading, he was recalled to Batavia, where he was dealt with leniently and shipped back to Holland for discipline. Forced into premature retirement, he might well have finished his life in obscurity had not a peculiar circumstance thrust him back into the mainstream and an honored place in history.

When the Lords XVII decided to establish a recuperation spot at the Cape, they selected as their manager one of the men who had guarded the trade goods following the wreck of the
Haerlem
. He had been chosen because of his familiarity with the area, but when he declined, a wise old director said, “Wait! What we really need is a merchant of proved ability.”

“Who?”

“Van Riebeeck.”

“Can we trust him?” several of the Lords asked.

“I believe he’s a case of what we might call ‘belated rectitude,’ ” the old man said, and it was Jan van Riebeeck who got the assignment.

In effect, his instructions were simple: “Establish a refreshment station which will feed our ships, but do so at no cost to this Compagnie!” That charter, in force for the next hundred and fifty years, would determine how this land would develop: it would always be a mercantile operation, never a free colony. The charter already accounted for what Willem was seeing on his brief walk to the fort with Van Riebeeck, but he had the good sense not to share his observations: This is much finer than Batavia, but where are the people? The land beyond those hills! It could house a million settlers, and I’ll wager it’s not even been explored.

“I often saw your brother Karel in Amsterdam,” Van Riebeeck said.

“How is he?”

“Married to a wonderful girl. Very wealthy.”

Willem, observing that the commander evaluated even marriage in terms of commerce, changed the subject. “Will there soon be more people?” he asked.

Van Riebeeck stopped abruptly, then turned as if to settle once and for all this matter of population, and from the sharp manner in which he spoke, Willem suspected that he had made his speech before: “You must understand one thing, Van Doorn.” Although only six years older than Willem he spoke patronizingly: “This is a commercial holding, not a free state. We’re here to aid the Compagnie, and we’ll enlarge the colony only when it tells us to. As long as we allow you to stay ashore, you work for the Compagnie. You do what the Compagnie says.”

Within the next few hours Willem learned his lesson. He was ordered where to put his bag, where to make his bed, where to eat, and where to work. He found that a farmer could till a plot of land but never own it, and that whatever he grew must produce profit for the Compagnie. Of course, as an old Java hand he was not alarmed by these rules, but he did recall that in Batavia there had been a lusty freedom, epitomized by his mother, whereas here at the Cape there was somber restriction. Worst of all, the tiny settlement suffered
under two sets of masters: from Amsterdam the Lords XVII laid down the big principles, but from Java came the effective rules. The governor-general in Batavia was an emperor; the commander at the Cape, a distant functionary. In Java, grand designs effloresced; at the Cape, they worried about “radishes, lettuce and cress.”

Three days later, when Willem stood before the commander in the fort, Van Riebeeck thought him a poor replica of his brother: Karel was tall and slim, Willem shortish and plump; Karel had a quick, ingratiating manner, Willem a stubborn suspiciousness; and Karel was obviously ambitious for promotion within the Compagnie, whereas Willem was content to work at anything, so long as he was free to explore the Cape. In no comparison was the difference more startling than in their choice of women: Willem, if the ship captain could be trusted, had formed an alliance with a Muslim slave girl, while Karel had married the daughter of one of the richest merchants in Amsterdam.

“Wonderful match,” Van Riebeeck said. “Daughter of Claes Danckaerts.” And again he added, “Very rich.”

“I’m happy for him,” Willem said. Actually, he could scarcely remember his brother and could not possibly have guessed how Karel had changed in the eight years since he had quit the wreck of the
Haerlem
to sail homeward. From what the commander said, he must be prospering.

“What we have in mind for you,” Van Riebeeck continued, “is the vineyard. Have you ever grown grapes?”