The Covenant

by James A. Michener

  Nevertheless, twice each year Dutch merchant ships trading throughout the East convened at Batavia in preparation for the long journey back to Amsterdam; each fleet would be at sea for half a year, rolling and dipping with the long swells of the Indian Ocean, sailing close-hauled into the storms of the Atlantic. On occasion a third of the fleet would be lost, but whenever a ship seemed doomed, it would hoist a panic flag, whereupon others would cluster around, wait for clearing weather, and transfer its cargo into their holds, and in this way the precious spices continued their homeward journey.

  The first fleet sailed around Christmas; the second, waiting just long enough to obtain the monsoon cargoes from Japan and China. The holiday sailing was especially popular with the Java Dutch, for just about this time of year they began to be homesick for the wintry canals, and to see the great fleet waiting at anchor was a sore temptation. In 1646 there was no exception; an immense fleet gathered off Batavia under the command of an admiral, and on the morning of December 22 it hoisted sail.

  At the last minute three ships whose smaller size and trimmer rigging would enable them to move more swiftly than the others were detached and ordered to wait for three weeks to serve as the after-fleet to carry important last-minute messages and any Compagnie officials who wished to depart after the Christmas celebrations. Haerlem, Schiedam and Olifant were the ships, and they tied up so that their sailors could roister ashore, and large fights broke out because sailors from the first two ships, which bore honorable names, began to tease those from the Olifant, Dutch for elephant.

  Christmas that year was a noisy time, but at the spacious home of Mevrouw van Doorn it exhibited a lovely Dutch grace. Her musicians were dressed in batiks from Jokjakarta, her serving men in sarongs from Bali. There was dancing, and long harangues from minor officials serving in the Spice Islands, but as the day wore on, with enormous quantities of food being consumed and gallons of beer and arrack, the governor-general found occasion to take Mevrouw van Doorn aside to give her advice concerning her sons.

  ‘They both should sail with the after-fleet,’ he said quietly as his assistants snored away their beer and vittles.

  ‘Deprive me of my staunchest support?’ she asked, directing the slaves with the fans how best to move the air.

  ‘Your sons are no more staunch in their support of you than I,’ the governor said, bowing in his chair. When she acknowledged the compliment, he continued: ‘Karel was born in Holland, and this is a permanent advantage. But he has never served there and the Lords XVII are not acquainted with his talents.’

  ‘Karel will prosper wherever he’s put,’ his mother said sharply. ‘He needs no special attention from Amsterdam.’

  ‘True, an admirable son, sure to reach positions of significance.’ Dropping his voice, he reached for her hand. ‘Positions of eminence, as I did under similar circumstances.’

  ‘Jan Pieterszoon Coen often told us that you were one of the greatest. And you know that Karel is of your stamp.’

  ‘But remember the counsel of prudent men where authority is concerned: “One must stand close enough to the fire to be warmed, but not so close that he is burned.” Karel really must be seen in Compagnie headquarters. There is no alternative, Hendrickje.’

  For some moments she reflected on this advice and knew it to be sound. Jan Compagnie was a curious beast, seventeen all-powerful men who did not know the East at firsthand, making decisions that influenced half the world. She would never want her sons to be members of that tight, mean-spirited gang of plotters, but she did want them to achieve positions in Java and Ceylon which only the Lords XVII could disburse. It really was time for Karel to put in an appearance. ‘But Willem?’ she asked softly, betraying her love for this tousle-headed lad. ‘He’s too young. Truly, he should stay with me.’

  The governor laughed heavily. ‘Hendrickje, you astonish me. This lad has been to Formosa, Cambodia. He fought valiantly at Malacca. He’s a man, not a boy.’ Then he grew serious, asking the servants to withdraw.

  ‘Let us keep the fan-boys. They speak no Dutch.’

  ‘Hendrickje, for Karel to be seen in Amsterdam is policy. For Willem to report there is survival. His entire future life may depend on this.’

  ‘What can you mean?’

  ‘What you know better than I. Few boys born outside Holland can ever hope to attain a position of power within the Compagnie. And especially no boy born in Java.’

  Mevrouw van Doorn rose impetuously, ordered the fan-boys to leave the room, and paced back and forth. ‘Outrageous!’ she cried. ‘My husband and I came here in the worst days. We helped burn Jacatra and build this new Batavia. And now you tell me that because our son was born while we were here …’

  ‘I do not tell you, Hendrickje. The Compagnie tells you. Any boy born in Java suffers a dreadful stigma.’

  He did not continue, for there was no need. No matter how angry Mevrouw van Doorn became over this tactless reminder that her son Willem suffered a disadvantage which might prove fatal in Compagnie politics, she knew he was right, for Dutch settlement in the East produced contradictions which simply could not be resolved. The Dutch were honest Calvinists who took their religion seriously, and the drowsy rooms in Batavia contained many persons whose forefathers had died protecting their religion. They were the spawn of heroes, prepared to die again if Calvinism were threatened.

  But they were a paradoxical lot. They believed that God in His mercy separated the saved from the damned, and were convinced that the Dutch were saved, not all of them, but most. They firmly believed in sobriety, yet drank themselves into a stupor five days out of seven. They believed in strict sexual deportment, much stricter than the Portuguese or English; they spoke of it; they read those passages in the Bible which condemned lewd living; and their predikants roared at them from the pulpit. They did believe in chastity.

  And there was the difficulty. For they were also a lusty lot; few men in Europe had a quicker eye for a flashing skirt than the Dutch of Amsterdam. They rousted and stormed through brothels, chasing girls brought from Brazil and Bali and from God knows where; but always they did this after protestations of virtue and before prayers of contrition. Few men have ever behaved so lustily between episodes of protective devotion.

  In Java the problem was trebly difficult, for to it came the most virile young men of Holland to serve five to ten years, but with them came no Dutch women, or few, and these of the worst sort. Hendrickje van Doorn had written to at least a hundred young women in Haarlem and Amsterdam, begging them to come out as wives to these splendid young men who were making their fortunes, but she attracted not one: ‘The voyage is too long. I shall never see my mother again. The climate is too hot. It is a land of savages.’ A hundred marriageable girls could recite a hundred good reasons for not going to Java, which meant that the young men would have to work there without wives until such time as they could go home with their wealth.

  Without wives, but not without women. The girls of Java were some of the most attractive in the world—slim, shy, whispering beauties who created the impression of knowing far more about love than they admitted. The girls of Bali were even more seductive, while the wonderful women of China were strong and able as well as beautiful. It was a Dutchman of stalwart character who could listen to his predikant in church on Sunday and keep away from the glorious women of the compounds during the next six nights.

  The Lords XVII and their subordinates were tough-minded businessmen out to make a fast profit, but there arose occasions when they had to turn to other issues, and none was more vexing than this problem of the mixing of races. As the directors agonized over miscegenation, two opposing schools of thought emerged: the enlightened ones who saw considerable merit in encouraging their employees to marry women of the East, thus forming a permanent settlement; and the narrow ones who foresaw the degeneration of their own race. The puritan view prevailed, though in practice it meant little whenever a lonely man needed the warmth of a concubine or slave.

>   The debate would rage for centuries, not only in Java but in other Dutch settlements. At one stage intermarriage was advocated to the extent of offering Compagnie employees a cash bonus if they married local girls and settled permanently; but, bedeviled by conflicting philosophies, the directors were never able to find a satisfactory solution. While they searched their souls for just answers, an endless number of illegitimate children appeared.

  Of course, the most delectable local women would have nothing to do with the invaders; many were Muslim and would rather die than convert or carry the child of a kaffir, an unbeliever, as they termed the Dutch. Thousands of others, less committed or concerned, slept with their masters, and the more liberal Dutchmen welcomed the new brown offspring as an enchanting addition, since the parental combination of handsome Dutch blond of clear white skin and slim Javanese woman with orchid complexion produced clever half-caste boys and irresistible girls.

  But such sentiments were rare. Most Dutchmen who ruled the tropics were convinced that the races must be kept apart, lest the superior intelligence of those from Europe be contaminated. That sentiment was used by one of the Lords XVII, who fulminated against half-castes:

  ‘These piebald gentry are the children of the devil, the spews of sinful lust, and they have no place in our society. The men are not to be employed as scribes and the women must not be allowed to marry our employees. They are a disgraceful accident of whom we cannot be proud and against whom we must protect ourselves.’

  The Lords XVII, many of them sons of clergymen, found much delight in exploring the ramifications of this subject, always pointing out that half-castes were a condemnation of orderly rule. They were not unaware that the bulk of those who went to the East were thrown into a society in which they need scarcely lift a finger, and certainly not to labor as they had done in Holland. Such men corrupt easily. Still, the directors consoled themselves with the belief that it was not the laziness of their employees but the lasciviousness of the women with whom they came in contact that threatened Holland’s sons.

  For this reason, the Lords were always cooperative if a young man in their employ wished to go home to find himself an honest Dutch wife. The men did go home; they proposed to the young women of Amsterdam; and they were, of course, refused. So the young men came back to Java alone, the supply of half-castes multiplied, and Java acquired a malodorous reputation which increased the difficulty of finding wives for the men. The most condemnatory reports were submitted by investigators dispatched from Holland to check upon conduct:

  Java is a moral sink, the white women often being worse than the men. They spend whole days in lechery or idleness, eating themselves into insensibility, drinking to excess, consorting with the lowest of the islands, and accomplishing nothing. I know of three wives who in Holland would be exemplary church members who do nothing from one week to the next but eat, fornicate with strangers, and complain about their slaves, of whom they have an abundance.

  Small wonder that the Lords XVII established the iron-clad principle that no position of leadership could be held by a man born in the islands. Such men would lack the moral fiber automatically obtained during an education in Holland; their judgment would be sullied by their contact with the Javanese, their force corroded by the deleterious effects of the East.

  ‘There is one escape for a boy like Willem,’ the governor said, calling for the fan-boys again, since the air was becoming oppressive. ‘If he goes home now, before contact with Asian women, and if he enters the university at Leiden, he may cleanse himself of his Javanese birth. If he remains here, he condemns himself to third- or even fourth-level positions.’

  Disheartened, Mevrouw van Doorn sank into a chair. She was only fifty-one and wanted to keep her sons with her in the big house with the multitude of servants, but she appreciated the dangers of which the governor was speaking. Karel’s progress might be impeded if he did not get back to Holland, but Willem would be disqualified for any advancement. She must send her sons home.

  ‘The after-fleet will sail in January,’ the governor said. ‘I can find them two passages on the Haerlem.’ When she hesitated, he added, ‘God knows, Hendrickje, there’s a dark future for them in Java. At best, marrying some local girl of dubious reputation. At worst, sinking into the gutter.’

  She sighed, rose and went to the doorway to contemplate the flowers in her garden, and said, ‘Arrange for them to go,’ and with that she abruptly turned all her attention to her New Year’s festival. It would be free and open, like the ones her husband had offered Compagnie people when he was alive, with everyone invited.

  She began by borrowing musicians from homes of her friends, and smiled approvingly as the brown-skinned slaves carried their bronze gamelans and bamboo drums into the various rooms where dancing would occur. Then she enrolled cooks from these same houses, until she had more than forty servants in and about the kitchens. The walls she decorated with her own fabrics, hanging them in great festoons until the colors danced. Twenty-four turbaned footmen attended the carriages, and an equal number of women watched after the guests when they entered the halls.

  The celebrations lasted three days, and were especially vivacious in that many of the leaders of Batavian society had departed on the Christmas fleet, so that those who remained felt obligated to show extra enthusiasm to replace that which had been lost. People ate and drank till they were near senseless, then slept sprawled on beds and floors until the soft music awakened them so that they could sing and dance and eat themselves into another stupor. At times some amorous woman, having dreamed of this party for weeks, or one whose husband had left on the fleet, would catch a stout burgher as he was about to go to bed, and she would join him in one of the smaller rooms, often retaining the fan-boy to keep the humidity lowered.

  Mevrouw van Doorn’s two sons watched the New Year’s celebrations with detached interest; stern Karel had observed the carryings-on in previous years and judged them to be the inevitable release of spirits by people who were far from home and sentenced to live among natives they did not respect. He had no wife as yet, nor any intention of finding one for the present, and whenever some lady far in drink wanted to drag him into a corner, he smiled wanly and moved away. In previous years young Willem had usually been kept away from the rowdier celebrations, but now that he was both a practiced ambassador and a frontline soldier, to do so any longer would be incongruous, so he wandered among the guests, listened to the music and watched with unusual attention the prettier slave girls.

  ‘It’s time he should go,’ his mother conceded as she saw him follow one serving girl into the kitchens, and when the party was over, and the borrowed musicians had returned to their accustomed places, she ordered her carriage with its six attendants and rode down the streets of Batavia to the Compagnie headquarters.

  ‘I should like the two passages on the Haerlem,’ she said crisply, and the documents were handed over.

  Since the three swift vessels would not depart until the seventeenth of January, overtaking the main fleet somewhere in the vicinity of St. Helena, where fresh stores would be taken aboard, the brothers had two full weeks of farewells. Young Willem spent his in visiting numerous friends, but Karel reported each day to the Compagnie offices, mastering details of that year’s intended sales and purchases. He took note of the various fleets that would sail east and north, and of the captains who would command them; at times, as he studied the complex operations, he felt that he was sitting like a spider at the heart of a web, controlling the destinies of half a world. There were now no Portuguese in Malacca; those Straits were Dutch. There were no other Europeans at Nagasaki, either; Japan was now exclusively a Dutch concession. English vessels still stopped at their little entrepǒt but were no longer allowed in the Spice Islands; and even the occasional French merchantman, its sails ragged from the long voyage out, had to obey regulations set down by the Dutch.

  ‘We rule the seas,’ he exclaimed one morning when the full power of Jan Compagnie was reve
aled.

  ‘No,’ an older man cautioned. ‘The English are beginning to rule India. And the Portuguese still control Macao and the China trade.’

  ‘Let them have the tea and ginger,’ Karel conceded, ‘so long as we keep the spices.’

  When the brothers approached the three ships, they could smell the spices from a considerable distance, for the holds were crammed with last-minute sacks and bundles from the eastern islands; the ships moved in a splendid ambience, reeking of fortunes and the promise of gold. They were taking the heart of Asia to the center of Europe, and each ship represented a greater wealth than many small nations would handle in an entire year. Jan Compagnie controlled Java, and Java controlled the seas.

  On the fourth day, after the little ships had passed through Sunda Strait, a vigorous storm arose, with visibility almost nonexistent. Great winds raged for three days, and when the low clouds lifted, the Haerlem was alone. The captain fired cannons, listened for replies, and when none came, followed the basic rule of navigation: ‘If separated, proceed to the point of rendezvous.’ Without further apprehension as to the fate of the Schiedam and Olifant, he headed for St. Helena and the body of the fleet.

  It would take more than two months to negotiate this distance, and as the Haerlem sailed westward, sunrise at her back, sunset glowing ahead, spars creaking and sails filled by reassuring winds, the brothers speculated as to what might have happened to their sister ships. ‘They’re good captains,’ Karel said. ‘I know them, and they know the oceans. They’re out there somewhere, because if we survived, so did they.’