The Covenant (48 page)

Once removed from the room, she ran into the one adjoining it, pressed her ear against a small hole in the wall, which had been covered at the other end by the flowers, and listened nervously as Sarel
started the discussion. “Please, God,” she whispered, “forgive me for when I was insolent. Help Sarel to do what we planned.”

In the opening minutes Sarel’s interrogators were quite insulting, treating him as if he were indeed defective, but when Boeksma completed his charges of mismanagement at Trianon, Sarel surprised them by answering slowly and intelligently, “Gentlemen, aren’t you referring to the days when we all suffered … from the loss of servants to the plague? We have none of those problems now.”

Boeksma started to refute this claim, and Geertruyd listened anxiously to hear how her husband would handle him, and she was relieved when Sarel said firmly, “So I have asked our servants to bring before you a selection of our wines.”

He waited until Boeksma started to protest that these had to be wines that Paul de Pré had been responsible for, then added quietly, “I know that you must suspect … that I am offering you wine laid down by De Pré.” He laughed. “That would be a naughty trick. These are my wines, as you shall see … when we visit the cellars.”

Geertruyd, hearing this complicated statement, left her listening post and ran to where Annatjie waited. Taking her mother-in-law by both hands, she exulted: “He’s even better than we had hoped!”

The visitor from Java tasted the new wines and was impressed: “This is very good, really.”

“And next year it will be great,” Sarel said. “We intend to make great wines … at Trianon.”

Geertruyd, back at her post, clasped her hands and held her breath. What Sarel was to say next represented an enormous gamble, but also a vindication, and as a fighting woman, she had deemed it a proper risk. “Honorable Commissioner, we at Trianon have no desire to force our product on Java. That’s unfair … to Java. So what we did two years ago was make quiet inquiries of European …” He hesitated, trembling at the bold thing he must say next. Then he smiled and continued: “What we did was seek buyers in Europe. And I am pleased to inform you that both France and England will buy our wine … at an excellent price.”

“Wait!” the commissioner protested. “If you can make wine this good, we would …”

“But where did you get the authority,” the governor asked, “to make inquiries in Europe?”

“Not in Europe, your Excellency. My wife carried samples to captains
when their ships docked at the Cape. I wanted to save you trouble, your Excellency.”

And there the discussion ended as Geertruyd appeared in the doorway. “Oh,” the man from Java cried. “Here’s your wife now, coming with tea and rusks. You must be very proud, Mevrouw van Doorn, of the excellent wine your husband is making.”

“I am,” she said, and when the interrogators were gone, and Sarel had laughed at how Andries Boeksma had tried to insert irrelevant probes, Geertruyd took her husband’s hand and led him to where Annatjie, exhausted, slumped in a chair.

“Your son was magnificent,” Geertruyd said. “He saved our vineyard.”

“Did I?” Sarel asked, and from the way he straightened up when he spoke, his women were satisfied that he was at last ready to be the master of Trianon.

I
N
1702 H
ENDRIK VAN
D
OORN BECAME A TREKBOER
,
ONE OF
those wandering graziers who moved eastward across virgin land at the slow pace of an ox.

Turning his back on any further claim to Trianon, because his mother had married the Huguenot only eight days after his father had been slain by Bushmen, he had penetrated the mountains, taking his wagon apart and carrying it piece by piece up precipices, then reassembling it for tortuous descents into the valleys.

He kept on till he reached a stream where kingfishers flashed blue as they dived toward crystal water, and when he saw the good pastures nearby, he knew he had reached his temporary home. For the first years he grazed his cattle and sheep, lived himself in the meanest reed-and-mud hovel, and shared his austere food with the one slave and the two Hottentot families who had come into exile with him.

Each spring he swore, “This summer I shall build me a real house,” but as the season lengthened, his resolve weakened, and he watched idly as his Hottentots ranged deep into surrounding valleys, seeking their own people who still dwelt in the region, raising their own cattle, which they would readily barter. His herd increased, and every other year he was able to drive some of his stock back to a Compagnie buying-station; there he would acquire the supplies
needed for the approaching two years, then vanish, for he was growing to treasure the freedom he had attained and feared contact with the merchants of the Cape.

Each year, two or three wandering white men might pass his way, or some other young trekboer “finished with the Cape,” or one of the hunters who ventured far into the interior for months at a time, seeking his fortune in ivory or hides. Once Hendrik joined with a hunter who probed far to the south, where a mighty forest of stinkwood and yellow-wood concealed a herd of elephant.

In the fourth year, drought struck, spreading its ashen terror, choking the river where the kingfishers danced and destroying the pasture. The Hottentots, always aware of water, led them sixty miles to the edge of a great pan containing a little water, and here Hendrik remained with two other trekboers. When the rains finally came, he returned to his stream, but it was never quite the same again, for in the evenings when he sat near the fire with the Hottentots and his slave he felt a sense of restlessness, of loneliness. It never occurred to him that this feeling might terminate if he married, for there were no Dutch girls in that vast region.

In 1707, on a journey home from the cattle station, the Hottentot who guided the oxen realized that Hendrik was not pleased. There had been talk among the Compagnie buyers of a proposed rent for farms such as Van Doorn occupied—nothing definite … no legal placaats … just rumors of rix-dollars to be paid. “Verdomde Compagnie!” the Hottentot heard the baas mutter over and over, and it was in this mood that Hendrik stomped alongside his wagon as it approached his hut. It helped his temper none to see another trekboer outspanned there.

The man shuffled toward him and held out his hand. He, too, had braved the mountains and carried his wagon piece by piece down the precipices. The difference was that he had women with him, a haggard wife and a pigtailed daughter named Johanna. Hendrik was twenty-six that year, the girl sixteen, and during the three months the itinerant family stayed at the hut he became enraptured of her. She was willow-thin, a most energetic worker, and the one who held her small family together, for her father was irresolute, her mother a complainer. It was Johanna who mended the clothes and did the cooking. Hendrik, who had lived off the simplest fare, learned to enjoy the curries this girl made; she had acquired the trick of making even the poorest meat taste acceptable by adding the fragrant spices
concocted by the Malays at the Cape. She carried with her a plentiful supply, and when Hendrik asked, after a particularly fine supper based on steenbok flanks, “On eastward, how will you find curry?”

“We have enough for three or four years. You don’t use very much, you know. By that time traders will be coming through, won’t they, Pappie?”

Pappie was an optimist: “Smous … two, three years, there’ll be a flow of such peddlers.”

One evening at supper, when they were rested and well prepared for the journey ahead, the father said, “Tomorrow we move on,” and it was then that Johanna became aware that she did not wish to leave Hendrik. At the edge of the mysterious wilderness she had found a man, sturdy, gentle, and reasonably capable, and although he had said or done nothing to reveal his interest in her, for he would always be hesitant about his own capacities, she felt assured that if she could stay with him a little longer, she would find some way to encourage him.

She was not yet distraught about the passing years—sixteen years old and no husband—but she did foresee that if her family moved far east, it might be some time before a marriageable man came along, so after everyone had gone to bed she crept close to her parents and whispered, “I would like to remain here with Hendrik.”

The old people fell into a frenzy: “Would you leave us alone? Who will help us?” They had a dozen reasons why their daughter must not desert them, and each was compelling, for they were an inadequate pair and knew it. Without Johanna they saw little chance of survival in the bleak years ahead, so they pleaded with her to come with them. Tearfully she said she would, for she knew that without her they could perish.

But when she was alone, staring at the empty years ahead, she could not bear the thought of the solitude that was being forced upon her, so she moved silently to Hendrik’s litter and wakened him: “Our last night. Let’s walk in the moonlight.”

Trembling with excitement, he slipped into his trousers, and barefooted they left the hut. When they had gone where none could hear them but the ruminating cattle, she said, “I don’t want to leave.”

“You’d stay here? With me?”

“I would.” She could feel him shivering, and added, “But they need me. They’ll not be able to survive without me.”

“I need you!” he blurted out, and with that she dropped any
maidenly reticence and embraced him. They fell on the ground, grappled hungrily with each other, and assuaged the loneliness and uncertainty that assailed them. Twice they made fumbling and inconclusive love, aware that they were not handling this matter well, but also aware that gentleness and love and passion were involved.

Finally she whispered, “I want you to remember me.”

“I’ll not let you go. I need you with me.”

She wanted to hear these reassuring words, to know on the eve of her departure for strange fields that she had been able to inspire such thoughts in a man. But now when Hendrik said in a loud voice, “I’m going to speak with your father,” she grew afraid, lest a confrontation occur that could have no resolution.

“Don’t, Hendrik! Perhaps later, when the farm …”

Too late. The stocky trekboer marched to the hut, roused the sleeping pair and told them bluntly, “I’m going to keep your daughter.”

Perhaps they had anticipated such a denouement to their extended stay; at any rate, they knew how to deal with it. With tears, accusations of filial infidelity and pleadings they besought her to stay with them, and when morning came she had to comply.

After they left, Hendrik experienced the most difficult days of his life, because now, for the first time, he could imagine what it would be like to live with a woman; he would lie in his hut and stare at the rolling land she had traversed, picturing himself on horseback galloping after her. He went so far as to worry about how they could marry, with no predikant in the region.

Four times he resolved to leave his hut and herds in care of his servants and ride east to overtake her, but always he fell back on the dirty paillasse he used for a bed, convincing himself that even if he did find her, she might not want to come back with him. But then the awful reality of how impoverished his life would be if he had no wife overcame him, and he would lie for days immobile.

After a year he conquered this sickness, and had almost forgotten Johanna, when his slave came running with news that people were approaching. Leaping from his bed, he instinctively looked to the west to see who had come across the mountains, and when he saw nothing, the slave tugged at his arm and cried, “This way, Baas.” And from the east, shattered and nearly destroyed by their experiences on a bleak and distant tract, came Johanna and her family.

For two weeks Hendrik and his servants treated the sick, defeated
travelers: “Our Hottentots ran away with most of our cattle. We planted a few mealies, but in the wrong soil. The winds. The drought and then the flooding rains. We had to eat our last sheep.”

The father assailed himself. His wife complained bitterly of their wrong choices. And Johanna, pitifully thin, lay exhausted on Hendrik’s paillasse, blaming no one, but obviously near death from having had to do all the work. For ten days Hendrik tended her gently, washing her wasted body and feeding her with broth made by the Hottentots at their open fires; on the eleventh day she got out of bed and insisted upon doing the cooking.

This time the family stayed for six months, and when it came time for them to resume their westward journey to the Cape, Hendrik gave them four oxen, a small cart and a servant, but as they were preparing to depart, Johanna moved to his side, took him by the hand, and without speaking to her parents, indicated that this time she would stay with him. Her thin face showed such anguish at the thought that they might force her to go with them that they could make no more protest; they knew that she loved this man and had lost him once through filial obedience, but she would not surrender him a second time. It was a solemn moment, with no minister to confer society’s approbation, no ritual of any kind to mark one of the great rites of human experience. There was no talk, no prayer, no chanting of old hymns. The girl’s father and mother faced a perilous mountain traverse on their retreat to the Cape, and there seemed little chance that they would ever return to see their daughter.