The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  The Van Doorns were delighted. It might be years or never before they saw this daughter again, but at her age it was proper that she ride away. Illiterate, barely able to sew a straight line, a horrible cook, a worse housekeeper, off she went with her illiterate husband to found a new farm, to raise a new brood of tough-minded trekboers to occupy the land.

  Two nights after they departed, Johanna sat with Adriaan again and said, ‘Take the brown horse and be going.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Three people now have told us that Rooi van Valck has a mess of daughters. Ride up and get one.’

  ‘They also say Rooi’s a bad one. Defames the Bible.’

  ‘Well.’ She hardly knew how to say what was required, but she had thought about this matter for some time, keeping her mouth shut lest she irritate her husband. But now she said in a low voice, ‘Adriaan, it’s possible to take the Bible too seriously. I can’t read it myself—never had my letters—but sometimes I think your father makes a fool of himself, scouring that book for instructions. If Rooi van Valck has a daughter, and she looks as if she’d be good in bed, grab her.’ When Adriaan said nothing, for these ideas were shocking to him, raised as he was with absolute faith in the Bible, even though he could not read it for himself, his mother added, ‘Living in a hut is no pleasure. It’s not much better than what the Hottentots have. But to love your father and go to bed with him when you children are asleep. That can be enough to keep a life going.’ With a sudden jerk of her hand she pulled him around to face her in the darkness. With her eyes close to his she whispered, ‘And never forget it. You leave for Van Valck’s at sunup.’

  * * *

  Adriaan took the brown horse and rode far to the north, across the empty plains, across the muddy Touws River, and well to the west of the Witteberge Mountains, until he saw ahead the columns of dust that signified a settlement. It was the farm, the little empire, of Rooi van Valck, and to get to the hartebeest huts in which Rooi and his wild collection of attendants lived, he had to pass through valleys containing twenty thousand sheep, seven thousand head of cattle.

  ‘I’m looking for Rooi,’ Adriaan said, overwhelmed by the magnitude of his wealth.

  ‘Not here,’ a Madagascan slave growled.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Can I speak to his wife?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘His wife. I want to speak with his wife.’

  ‘He’s got four. The white one, the yellow one, the brown one, the black one.’

  ‘Which one has the daughters?’

  ‘They all got daughters, sons too.’

  ‘I’ll see the white one.’

  ‘Over there.’ And the slave pointed to a hut not one bit better than the one the Van Doorns occupied.

  All these cattle, Adriaan said to himself as he crossed the clearing to the hut. And he lives in a hut like us. He was pleased rather than disturbed, and when the white Mevrouw van Valck invited him to sit with her, he was relieved to see that she was much like his mother: old beyond her years, well adapted to the dirt, independent in nature.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked, squatting on a log that served as a bench.

  ‘To see your husband.’

  ‘He’s around somewheres.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  Like the slave, she answered, ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Today? Three days?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Looking at him carefully, she asked, ‘What farm?’

  ‘Hendrik van Doorn’s.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Trianon. Those Van Doorns.’

  The name had a startling effect on her. ‘Trianon!’ she roared, following the name with a string of Dutch and Hottentot curses. Then, going to the open end of the hut, she bellowed, ‘Guess who’s here? A Van Doorn of Trianon!’

  ‘I’m not from Trianon,’ Adriaan tried to explain, but before he could establish this fact, numerous people had erupted from the many huts, women of varied colors bringing with them children of the most mixed appearance.

  ‘This one is from Trianon!’ Mevrouw van Valck shouted, hitting him in the shoulder playfully and ringing out a new string of obscenities. ‘And I’ll wager he’s come to find him a wife. Isn’t that right, Van Doorn? Isn’t that right?’

  And before he could control his blushing and explain in an orderly manner the purpose of his mission, the tough woman had yelled for different people, and a procession of bewildering types came to her hut. ‘You can have this one,’ she shrilled, pointing to a nubile girl of seventeen with dark skin and black hair. ‘But you can’t have that one because he’s a boy.’ This occasioned great laughter among the women, and the parade continued.

  ‘This one you can have,’ she said more seriously, ‘and I’d advise you to take her.’ With these words she brought forth one of her own daughters, a girl with bright red hair that fell almost to her waist. She seemed to be about fifteen or sixteen, not shy, not embarrassed by her rowdy mother. Going directly to Adriaan, she extended her hands and said, ‘Hello, I’m Seena.’ When her mother started to say something obscene, the girl turned in a flash and shouted, ‘You, damn fool, shut up.’

  ‘She’s the good one,’ Mevrouw van Valck shouted, cackling with the other wives, who formed a circle of approbation.

  ‘She has lovely hair,’ a Malay woman said, reaching out to fluff the girl’s red tresses.

  Adriaan, overcome with embarrassment, asked Seena, ‘Is there somewhere …’

  ‘Get away, you …’ The girl uttered an oath equal to her mother’s and chased the women back. ‘We can sit here,’ and she indicated an old wagon chest at the entrance to the hut in which she lived with a ramshackle collection of other children.

  ‘Where’s your father?’ Adriaan asked.

  ‘Out killing Bushmen,’ she said.

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘Who knows? Last time it took him four weeks to clean out the valleys.’

  ‘Can I stay here?’

  ‘Was my mother right? Are you looking for a wife?’

  ‘I’m … I’m … looking for your father.’

  ‘You don’t have to wait for him. He doesn’t care what happens. Have you a farm?’

  ‘I live a long way off.’

  ‘Good.’ That was all she said, but the single word conveyed her longing to get away from this tempestuous place.

  It was worse when Rooi himself roared in from the manhunt. He was a huge man with a flaming head of red hair that gave him his name. He was really Rupertus van Valck, from a family which had settled early at the Cape. Rooi van Valck, Rooi the Falcon, the red-haired terror who submitted to no control, whether from the Cape governor, the Lords XVII, or God Himself.

  The Van Valcks first had trouble with authority in the time of Van Riebeeck, when Leopold, the stubborn soldier who had founded the family, sought permission to marry a Malaccan girl. The Compagnie dillydallied so long that when permission was finally granted, Rooi’s grandfather was a sire twice over. The next serious clash came when Mevrouw van Valck, a lively, independent-minded woman, wanted to dress in a way becoming her prettiness. From Amsterdam the Lords XVII specifically ordered that ‘Mevrouw van Valck must not wear bombazine, and certainly not a bright yellow bombazine, and especially since she is not the wife of a senior Compagnie official.’ When she persisted, with her husband’s encouragement, soldiers were sent to rip the dress apart, whereupon Van Valck thumped the soldiers—and spent a long day on the wooden horse.

  Since he had not been dropped onto the killing horse from any height, he escaped the permanent injury that had marred Willem van Doorn’s later life, but he never escaped the corroding resentment, and when some months later one of the soldiers who dropped him was found with his throat cut, it was assumed that Van Valck had done it. Nothing was proved, but subsequently, when Willem and Katje made their escape through the bitter almond, this Van Valck followed the same route. But he went north.


  There, in a wild and spacious valley, he built his huts, assembled slaves and runaways, and launched the infamous Van Valcks. He had four sons, and they proliferated, but all kept to the initial valley, where they farmed vast herds of animals and planted whole orchards of a single fruit. They sheared their own sheep, wove their own cloth, and tanned their hides to make leather shoes. They timbered, built rude roads, and had a community which needed to move out for nothing except periodic journeys to graze, and into which officials were afraid to enter.

  It was the other side of the African coin. At the Cape, citizens came to attention when the Lords XVII handed down a directive; they lived for the Compagnie’s profit, from the Compagnie’s largesse, and in obedience to the Compaignie’s strict laws. But at Van Valck’s frontier, the red-haired adventurers said, ‘To hell with the Compagnie!’ and enforced it.

  No predikant had ever preached at Rooi van Valck’s, or ever dared to castigate the master for having four wives. For two generations no Van Valck had been legally married, and in this generation none wished to be. The mélange of children could not be distinguished, and their bounding health and good spirits belied the Compagnie’s belief that children must be reared in strict accordance with the Bible. At Rooi’s, there were no Bibles.

  ‘So you come looking for a bride?’ the huge man said as he studied Adriaan. ‘You the one they call Mal Adriaan?’

  ‘How did you hear of me?’

  ‘The smous. In what way are you crazy?’

  ‘I like to wander. I study the animals.’

  ‘Eh, Seena! Kom hier, verdomde vrouw.’ When she came to him, he rumpled her hair and said, ‘No question she’s my daughter. Look at that hair! I don’t have to worry the smous got to her mother.’

  When Adriaan blushed a deeper red than Rooi’s shock of hair, the renegade tossed his daughter in the air, catching her under the arms. ‘If you get her, you’re getting a good one,’ he cried. And again he snatched her up, throwing her far into the air, but this time she fell not back to his arms, but across the open space into Adriaan’s. The first time he touched Seena, really, was as she came flying at him.

  ‘She’s yours, son, and don’t go wandering too much, Crazy Adriaan, or the smous will catch her when you’re not looking.’

  ‘Shut up, damn you!’ the girl cried, making a face at her father. ‘If Adriaan was bigger, he’d thrash you.’

  With a huge hand, Rooi reached out, grabbed Adriaan, and almost broke his collarbone. Shaking him like a dog, he said, ‘He better not try. And, son, you treat this girl right, or I’ll kill you.’ It was obvious that he meant it, but to Rooi’s surprise, Adriaan broke loose, swung his fist in uncontrollable fury, and smashed the huge man on the side of his face. It was like a monkey swatting an elephant, and Rooi roared with delight.

  ‘He’s a spunky one, Seena. But if he tries to hit you, kick him in the stomach.’ And with a sudden swipe of his right boot, he aimed a shot at Adriaan’s crotch. Perhaps the fear of the awful pain that impended activated the young man, for deftly he sidestepped, caught the up-swinging foot, and toppled the big redhead.

  While still flat on the ground, Rooi lashed out with a swinging leg, caught Adriaan at the ankles and brought him down. With a leap, the big man fell upon him, wrestling him into a position where he could gouge his eyes with big knuckles. As Adriaan felt the man’s superhuman strength and saw the dreadful knuckles coming at him, he thought: I am wrestling with the devil. For the devil’s daughter. And he jerked his knees up to smite the evil one in the gut, but Rooi fended off this last attack.

  ‘I’ll teach you,’ he grunted, and he would have done so had not Seena grabbed a log and struck him on the head, knocking him quite silly. When he recovered, blinking his eyes and spitting, he roared, ‘Who hit me?’ and Seena said, ‘He did.’ And there stood Adriaan, fists clenched, waiting for what might come next.

  ‘By God!’ the huge redhead shouted as he raised himself to his knees. ‘I do believe Seena’s got herself a good one.’ And when he hoisted himself back onto his feet, still groggy, he embraced Adriaan in one huge arm, Seena in the other, and dragged them into his hut, where he broke out a jug of brandy.

  They drank through the night, and toward four in the morning, when Adriaan was almost insensible, Rooi insisted that the bridal couple be given a hut to themselves, so children were swept out of the hovel occupied by the Malayan wife, and onto her filthy pile of straw the young pair were thrown. At first Adriaan wanted only to sleep, a fact which was circulated through the camp by youngsters who watched from a peephole, but Seena certainly did not propose to spend her wedding night in that manner. So, as the children shouted to the elders, she roused him from his stupor and indoctrinated him into the duties of a husband.

  ‘That’s good, that’s good!’ Rooi van Valck said when the children reported to him. ‘I think Seena’s got herself a man to be proud of. He’s a little crazy, that’s obvious, but he’s quick with his fists, and I like that. What’s his name again?’

  ‘Adriaan,’ the children said. They knew everything.

  Sotopo’s achievement of manhood did not come easily. As his brother Mandiso had predicted when the matter of the boy’s joining the exodus to the Fish River was discussed, the new settlement had no guardian to supervise the circumcision rites, no other boys to share it, and certainly no large community to arrange a celebration. But Sotopo knew that the ceremony had to be performed, and it was, in a lonely and gruesome way.

  A small hut was built, big enough for one boy. Since white clay could not be located, red had to suffice. There being no older man familiar with a sharp cutting edge, a young amateur volunteered, and with a dull assegai performed a hideous operation. Without the proper herbs to medicate it, the wound festered so badly that Sotopo almost lost his life. For a hundred days he remained in isolation, only his brother slipping in occasionally to share the experience he had had when he was inducted into manhood.

  When the seclusion ended, the small hut was set aflame, as custom required, and time was at hand for him to dance. He did so alone, with no gourd, no stringed instrument; tail feathers projected from the rear as he waved his buttocks, and the shells about his ankle reverberated when he stomped. At the conclusion he delivered a speech of profound import. Looking at the adventurous little band, he said in a loud, clear voice, ‘I am a man.’ It was toward men like him that the trekboers were advancing.

  Seena and Adriaan met Nels Linnart of Sweden in a most improbable way. In 1748 a horseman came rushing up from the south with the exciting news that a great ship had foundered off Cape Seal, with so much cargo to be salvaged that all farms in the area could replenish their stocks for a dozen years. At Van Doorn’s, every able man saddled his horse to participate in the looting, and when Adriaan galloped south, Seena rode with him, her long red hair flashing in the wind.

  They arrived at the wreck about two hours before sunset the next day, to find an even richer store than the messenger had indicated. Some thirty trekboers had formed a rescue line with ropes and were bringing the ship’s passengers ashore, but as soon as the lives were saved, these same men rushed back through the waves to plunder the ship, and the eager Van Doorns arrived in time to reach the foodstuffs before the water damaged them. Whole barrels of flour and herring were rafted ashore. One family concentrated on every item of furniture in the captain’s cabin, and when he protested, a huge trekboer glowered at him and said, ‘If you’d kept your ship off the rocks, we wouldn’t be plundering it.’

  All that night, with the aid of a shadowy moon and rush lanterns, the avaricious trekboers ransacked the ship of its movable treasures, but at dawn a young man not over thirty came to Adriaan and said, in highly accented Dutch, ‘Please, sir, you and your wife look decent. Will you help me get my books?’

  ‘Who are you?’ Adriaan asked suspiciously.

  ‘Dr. Nels Linnart, Stockholm and Uppsala.’ When Adriaan’s blank face showed that he understood nothing, the young man said, ‘Sweden.�
� Adriaan had never heard of this, either, so the man said, ‘Please, I have fine books there. I must save them.’

  Still Adriaan registered nothing, but Seena said impatiently, ‘He needs help,’ and in the doctor’s wake the two Van Doorns swam out to the ship, clambered up the side and boarded the vessel that could not stay afloat much longer. To them it was a weird universe of dark passageways, pounding waves and the dank smell of steerage. The treasured books were in a cabin, forty or fifty large volumes published in diverse countries, and these Dr. Linnart proposed to move ashore, but to get them through the waves without destroying them posed a problem.

  Seena devised a way. She would jump down into the waves, grasp the rope, then accept an armful of books, which she would hold aloft as Adriaan struggled beneath her, holding her above the waves as they moved slowly ashore. ‘Bravo!’ cried the doctor from the deck as he saw the couple deposit his books well inland and come back for another cargo.

  In this manner the little library was rescued; it would form the foundation of a notable collection of books in southern Africa: Latin, Greek, German, Dutch, English, Swedish, and fourteen in French. They covered various branches of science, especially mathematics and botany, and among them was Systema Naturae by Karl von Linné, also of Stockholm and Uppsala. ‘He’s my uncle,’ the young doctor said, stamping the water out of his boots.

  ‘What kind of book is this?’ Adriaan asked, for it was the first one other than his father’s Bible that he had ever held in his hands.

  ‘It deals with plants and flowers.’

  And there on the beach by the wrecked ship Adriaan said the words that would determine the remainder of his life: ‘I like plants and flowers.’

  ‘Have you seen many here?’ the young scientist asked, concerned always with his basic subject even though his ship had sunk.

  ‘I have walked many miles,’ Adriaan said with immediate recognition of the young man’s intense interest, ‘and wherever I went, there was something new.’