The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  At supper that night Van Riebeeck and Willem discussed with him what ought to be done about the baptism, and Van Riebeeck made a strong plea that his request be honored: ‘We are a Compagnie, Mijnheer van Doorn, not a church. You and I are to determine what happens at the Cape, not some predikant. In Java, as you know …’ Whenever a Dutchman said this magical word he lingered over it: Yaaaa-wa, as if it possessed arcane powers. Whatever had been done in Yaaaa-wa was apt to be right. ‘In Java, as you know, we baptized the children of slaves and raised them as good Christians. They helped us run the Compagnie.’

  ‘I would not want to contradict a doctor of theology—’

  ‘You must!’ Van Riebeeck thundered. He suddenly seemed taller.

  ‘If he wrote back to Amsterdam that we had profaned the Bible—’

  Van Riebeeck pounded the table. ‘The Bible says …’

  And it was these words that sent the three men to Willem’s hut to consult the Bible he had rescued from the Haerlem. Unclasping the brass fittings, he laid back the heavy cover and offered the book to his brother, who turned the pages reverently, probing those noble passages in which Abraham had laid down the laws for his people living in a new land, just as the Van Doorns and Van Riebeecks had to establish principles for their followers in this vast new territory. What was the right thing to do?

  By candlelight they searched the passages, but found no guidance. Karel, accountable for healing this breach, was reluctant to surrender the Bible. Again and again he turned the pages, reading occasionally some passage that seemed to relate to their presence in the wilderness, then rejecting it. In the end he found nothing. They were adrift.

  ‘Could we pray?’ he asked, and the three knelt on the earthen floor, their somber faces illuminated by the candlelight as Karel pleaded for divine guidance. God had led the Israelites through such dark periods and He would lead the Dutchmen. But guidance did not come.

  Then Willem, vaguely remembering passages in which Abraham faced difficult decisions, looked with real intensity through the chapters of Genesis, and after a while came upon those passages in which God Himself, not Abraham, instructed sojourners in the steps they must take to preserve their identity while in a strange land:

  This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised … He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised …

  And Abraham took … all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house; and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day, as God had said unto him.

  ‘It’s what we sought!’ Willem cried, and in the flickering light the two men responsible for this tiny settlement peered over his shoulder to find justification for whatever they might have to propose. Van Riebeeck was delighted: ‘It’s quite plain. Their covenant was circumcision, and God ordered the slaves to be circumcised. Our covenant is baptism, and He orders our slaves to be baptized.’ He was so relieved that he cried, ‘Commissioner, we must go to the ship at once, and have Dr. Grotius baptize the children,’ and when Van Doorn protested at the lateness of the hour, Van Riebeeck jabbed his finger at the Bible and cried, ‘Did not God command that it be done that selfsame day?’

  Carefully Karel studied the Bible, and when he read the words in the selfsame day he knew he was obligated to have these children baptized before midnight. ‘I think we should give thanks for God’s guidance,’ he said, and the three men knelt once more.

  Bearing lanterns against the night, they carried their Bible to the waterfront, aroused the boatmen, and made their way to the Groote Hoorn, where they summoned Dr. Grotius. ‘Dominie,’ Karel cried when the predikant appeared in his nightgown, ‘God has spoken!’ And they spread the text before him.

  For a long time Dr. Grotius studied the passages, reflecting upon them. Finally he turned to his visitors and said, ‘Mijnheeren, I was wrong. Can we pray?’ So for the third time they knelt, while Dr. Grotius, his hands firmly on the Bible, thanked God for His intervention and begged for continued guidance. But Willem noticed that the doctor was lingering over every item of his conversion, so that when Commander van Riebeeck suggested that he return to shore for the infants, so that they could be baptized within the day, Dr. Grotius said, almost triumphantly, ‘That day is now passed. We shall perform the office before this day ends.’

  With that he closed the Bible, but as he did so, a corner of the cloth upon which it had been resting caught in the leaves, and he fingered the pages to set the cloth loose, and this led him to reopen the book to the page on which Willem had inscribed the birth-facts of his first-born: ‘Son Adam van Doorn born 1 November 1655.’

  ‘Have you a son?’ Dr. Grotius asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Willem said frankly.

  ‘But …’ There was a painful silence, after which the predikant asked, ‘Wasn’t the dark child to be baptized named Adam?’

  ‘He is my son.’

  The awfulness of this admission, that the brother of a distinguished merchant who was serving as commissioner for the Lords XVII should have been consorting with a pagan slave girl, struck Dr. Grotius and Karel dumb. Twice the former tried to form words of condemnation: ‘You … you …’ But he could think of no damnation proper for the crime. He had never served in the East and had little comprehension of the anxieties and hunger Dutchmen could feel. Karel, however, did know Java and the miseries that could ensue when men of promise married with native women …

  ‘Oh, my God!’ he cried suddenly. Looking at Dr. Grotius with shock, he indicated with his shoulder another cabin and cried, ‘She’s in there.’

  ‘Oh, goodness!’

  Whipping about, Karel jutted his face into his brother’s and asked, ‘Are you married?’

  ‘I wanted to—’

  ‘I wouldn’t permit it,’ Van Riebeeck said.

  With fervor Karel clasped the commander’s hands and cried, ‘You were so prudent.’

  ‘But Deborah—’ Willem began. Karel brushed him aside and said petulantly, ‘I wanted this to be a surprise.’ With grandiloquent gestures he pointed to his right: ‘Your future wife is in there, asleep … waiting to meet you in the morning.’

  ‘My wife?’

  ‘Yes. My wife’s cousin. A girl of fine family, come all the way from Amsterdam.’ And on the spur of that moment Karel rushed from the little cabin, ran down the hallway, and banged on a door: ‘Katje! Come out!’

  Katje, whoever she was, did not appear, but Kornelia did, tall and formidable in her night clothes. ‘What’s this noise?’

  ‘Go back to bed!’ Karel pushed her roughly away from the door. ‘I want Katje.’ And in a few moments came the girl—short, ill-favored when sleep was upon her, with frizzled hair and red face.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked peevishly.

  ‘You’re to meet Willem.’

  ‘Not like this,’ Kornelia said from the rear.

  ‘Come!’ Karel cried, agitated beyond control. And he jerked the protesting girl down the passageway and into the predikant’s cabin, where with red eyes and sniffling nose she met her intended husband: ‘Willem van Doorn, this is your bride, Katje Danckaerts.’

  She was a country girl, a daughter of the poor Danckaerts, but a full cousin of Kornelia’s and thus someone to be cared for. A year ago when Kornelia had asked, ‘Whatever will we do with Katje?’ her husband had said impulsively, ‘We’ll take her with us to the Cape. Willem needs a wife.’

  So it had been arranged, and now the ungainly girl, twenty-five years old, stood in the cramped room where so many others were crowded and mistook Van Riebeeck as her betrothed, but when she moved toward him, Karel said sharply, ‘Not him. This one!’ and even the predikant had to laugh.

  At this moment Kornelia appeared, wrapped in a coat and demanding to know what was happening. ‘Go back to your room!’ Karel thundered, hoping to prevent his wife from learning about
the scandal, but she had been ordered about enough and elbowed her way to Katje’s side.

  ‘What are they doing to you, Katje?’ she asked softly.

  ‘I’m meeting Willem,’ the girl whined.

  Kornelia surveyed the men and realized immediately that they were making a botch of whatever it was they were trying to accomplish. Willem looked especially inept, so she said gently, ‘Well, if you’re meeting your husband, let’s meet him properly,’ and she pushed her cousin forward. Willem stepped up awkwardly to greet Katje, but she held back, and it was prophetic that the second utterance he heard her speak was also a complaint: ‘I don’t want to get married.’

  She had barely finished this sentence when she felt Kornelia’s firm hand in the middle of her back, giving her such a sharp push forward that she fairly leaped into Willem’s arms. In that brief moment he looked at her and thought: How different from Deborah. But as he caught her he felt her womanliness and knew that he would be responsible for the years of her life. ‘I’ll be a good husband,’ he said.

  ‘I should think so,’ Karel muttered, and then sensible Kornelia, who had acquired confidence from associating with the best families of Amsterdam, said forcefully, ‘Now I demand to know what you men have been doing,’ and Dr. Grotius, realizing that further dissembling was fruitless, directed her attention to the revealing entry in the Bible. She read it carefully, looked up at Willem, smiled, then read it again. Summoning Katje to her side, she showed her cousin the damaging news, then said quietly, ‘It seems your husband has had another wife. But that hardly signifies.’

  ‘She’s pregnant again,’ Willem blurted out.

  ‘Oh, Jesus!’ Karel moaned, whereupon Dr. Grotius reprimanded him.

  ‘Neither does that signify,’ Kornelia said.

  ‘He’s not really married to the slave girl,’ Van Riebeeck said reassuringly, and Karel added, ‘But they shall be married now.’ When everyone turned to stare at him, he added lamely, ‘I mean Willem and Katje.’

  ‘They certainly shall,’ Kornelia said, and it was she who proposed that the marriage ceremony take place right now, at one in the morning. But the predikant objected that it would be illegal to solemnize any marriage until banns had been read three times, at which Kornelia said, ‘Read them.’ So Karel rattled off the rubric, repeating it twice: ‘Katje Danckaerts spinster Amsterdam and Willem van Doorn bachelor Batavia.’

  ‘Cape,’ Willem corrected.

  ‘Marry them,’ Karel snarled at the predikant, so the Bible was opened, with three witnesses to verify the sanctity of the rite about to be performed. In flickering light, while Katje and Willem kept their hands upon the open pages, the glowing phrases of the sacrament were intoned.

  When the ceremony ended, Willem startled everyone by demanding a pen, and when it was provided, he turned to the page which had given such offense, and in the little spaces decorated with cupids and tulips where weddings were to be inscribed he wrote: ‘Katje Danckaerts, Amsterdam. Willem van Doorn, Kaapstad, 21 December 1658.’

  Through the mysterious system of communication that always existed in a frontier area like the Cape, the Hottentots learned that an Honorable Commissioner had arrived to adjudicate matters, and that he was older brother to the man who tended the vineyard. The news was of little significance to most of the brown men, but to Jack it was momentous, for it meant that he could pursue his major objective with someone capable of accepting it. Accordingly, he took his sailor’s clothes from the bark-box in which he kept them, dusted off the heavy shoes he had made from cowhide, put on his wide-brimmed hat, and with a heavy stave cut from a stinkwood tree came westward to the fort.

  On the parapet a lookout turned at intervals, scanning the land for signs of any trouble from the Hottentots, and the sea for the English or Portuguese ships that might some day attempt to capture the little Dutch settlement. Since the fort itself now contained only ninety-five men of fighting age, plus nine women and eleven children and the slaves, it was unlikely that any enemy from Europe could be repelled by them and the fifty-one free burghers, but a lookout was maintained nevertheless, and now he spotted Jack coming through the dust.

  ‘Hottentot!’

  Commander van Riebeeck ran to the wall and quickly saw that it was his old nemesis Jack, shuffling in with some new chicanery. ‘Call the commissioner,’ he instructed his orderly, and when Karel was rowed ashore and saw the newcomer, he cried, to Van Riebeeck’s irritation, ‘That’s Jack!’

  ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘We were together in Java.’ And he hurried out to meet the little fellow.

  They did not embrace, Karel was too studious of his position for that, but they did greet each other with unmistakable warmth. ‘I’m to be in charge at Java,’ Karel said.

  ‘Cinnamon, nutmeg, tin, cloves,’ Jack recited, evoking the days when he had known the Van Doorn brothers at the Compagnie warehouses.

  ‘All that and more,’ Karel said proudly.

  Blowing out his breath, Jack asked, ‘You got any cloves?’

  ‘No,’ Karel said with a thin laugh. Together they walked to the fort, where Jack asked, ‘Willem, he here too?’ When the younger Van Doorn was sent for, with Van Riebeeck in attendance, Jack repeated the proposal he had made many years before.

  ‘Time that you men, Hottentots work together.’

  ‘Fine,’ Karel said, sitting stiffly in his big chair. ‘If you trade us cattle, we’ll—’

  ‘Not that,’ Jack said. ‘We need our cattle.’ He was speaking English with a heavy Portuguese overlay and occasional Dutch words acquired lately—that grand mélange which was on its way to becoming a unique language—but everyone in the room understood him and was able to respond in the same vernacular.

  ‘What, then?’ Karel asked.

  ‘I mean, we come here. Live with you. Have pasture here, huts, run your cattle, our cattle.’

  Willem broke in: ‘Nobody tends cattle better than a Hottentot.’

  With considerable disdain Karel stared at his brother. ‘Live here? You mean … Hottentots living in this fort?’

  ‘They learn trades very rapidly, Karel. Those who become carpenters might live in the fort, or bakers, or shoemakers. Look, he made his own shoes.’

  With disdain Karel looked at the shoes, big, misshapen affairs, and they epitomized his view of the Hottentot: capable of mimicking a few outward traces of civilization, but worthy of no serious consideration. He was dismayed at the way the meeting had turned, and without ever addressing himself seriously to Jack’s proposal, he returned to the problem of the runaway slaves.

  ‘What you can do for us is organize your people for tracking down our runaways. We’ll give you weights of metal for every slave you bring back.’

  Jack thought, but did not say: When we hunt, we hunt animals, not men. We’re shepherds and cattlemen, and we could help you so much.

  ‘As to the possibility of your moving into the vicinity of the fort,’ Karel said with a deprecatory laugh, ‘I fear that will never happen.’

  ‘Commander …’

  ‘He’s the commander,’ Karel said, indicating Van Riebeeck. ‘I’m the commissioner.’

  ‘Commissioner, sir. You white men need us. Not today maybe. Not tomorrow. But the time comes, you need us.’

  ‘We need you now,’ Karel said with a certain generosity. ‘We need your help with the slaves. We need your cattle.’

  ‘You need us, Commissioner. To live with you. To do many things.’

  ‘Enough of this.’ Van Doorn rose grandly, nodded gravely to his one-time friend, and left the room. He left the fort and returned to the ship, where he penned two recommendations for the Lords XVII that became law at the Cape:

  There must be no social contact with the Hottentots. The easy entrance that some have had to the fortress area must be stopped. In everything that is done, effort must be made to preserve the three distinctions: the Dutchman in command, the imported slave at his service, and the Hottentot in contact with neith
er. They are not to be used as slaves and are under no circumstances to be taken into any family. I would suggest that a fence be built around the entire Compagnie property. It might not be strong enough to repel invaders, but it would serve the salutary purpose of reminding our people that they are different from the Hottentots, and it would forcefully remind the Hottentots that they can never be our equals. It would also impress upon our people that their job is the replenishing of Compagnie ships and not the exploration of unknown territories. If material for a fence is not available, a hedge of thorns might be considered, for this would keep our men in and the Hottentots out.

  Already serious at this moment, and of the gravest potential danger in the future, is the fact that our Dutch are beginning to use the bastard Portuguese tongue adopted by slaves and idlers and petty traders throughout the Eastern Seas. During my stay I noticed the introduction of many words not used in Holland. Some were Madagascan, some Ceylonese, many were Malaccan but most were Portuguese, and if this were to continue, our Dutch language would be lost, submerged in an alien tide, to our detriment and the cheapening of expression. Compagnie servants at the Cape must address their slaves in Dutch. All business must be conducted in Dutch. And especially in family life, conversation must be in Dutch with children forbidden to speak the language of their amahs.