‘What would that one do with a wife?’ he repeated, and Annatjie, wanting most earnestly to slap his insinuating face, left the house.
She ordered slaves to inspan her horses, then asked Bezel Muhammad to accompany her to the Cape, where she would greet the arriving bride. ‘Why not take Sarel?’ he asked, and without thinking, she replied, ‘He might not know what to do.’
She would. When they reached the Cape, the promised ship had not yet arrived, but others of its convoy assured the officials that it was on the way, so she waited. And then one morning guns fired, and a pitifully small ship limped into harbor with almost half its passengers dead. For a dreadful moment she feared that she might have lost her orphan, but when the survivors came ashore Geertruyd Steen was among them, twenty-two years old, blond, squared-off in every aspect, and smiling. She had a large square face, a stout torso, big hips, sturdy legs. Even her hair was braided and tied so that it accentuated the squareness of her head, and Annatjie thought: Dearest God, if there was ever a woman destined to breed, she is it.
The girl, not knowing what to expect, looked tentatively about her for some young man who might be awaiting a wife, but saw only sailors and Hottentots, so she took hesitant steps forward, saw Annatjie, and knew instinctively that this woman must be her protector. There was a slight pause, after which the two women ran at each other and embraced almost passionately.
‘You’ve come to a paradise,’ Annatjie told the girl. ‘But it’s a paradise you must build for yourself.’
‘Are you to be my mother-in-law?’
‘I am.’
‘Is your son here?’
‘It’s an important story,’ Annatjie said, and on the spur of the moment she directed Bezel Muhammad to take one of the horses and ride on ahead. It was important that she talk with this girl, and a long ride across the flats would give her just enough time.
She whisked Geertruyd out of the Cape that morning, afraid lest she be infected the way Louis de Pré had been, and as they entered the flats, she began talking: ‘I shall have to tell you so much, Geertruyd, but every sentence is important, and the order in which it’s told is important, too. My husband, your father-in-law, is a remarkable man.’
She explained how he had fled persecution in France, the courage with which he had made his way to Holland, and his great bravery in risking a return trip to fetch the vines which now accounted for the prosperity of Trianon. She told how tough old Willem van Doorn and his nagging wife had ventured out into the wilderness to build their farm, and how Paul de Pré had transformed it into a rural palace.
The first hours were spent in these details, but when they stopped to have their midday meal, Annatjie changed the tone of conversation completely: ‘You’ll see a dozen kinds of antelope, and hear leopards at night, and maybe one day you’ll find a hippo in the river. We have a flower called protea, eight times as grand as any tulip, and birds of all description. You’ll live in a land of constant surprises, and when you’re an old woman like me you still won’t have seen everything.’
She asked Geertruyd to look about her at the endless flatness. ‘What do you see?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Always remember this moment,’ Annatjie said, ‘for soon you’ll see such a place of beauty that your eyes will not believe it.’ Geertruyd leaned forward as her mother-in-law-to-be added, ‘If you do your work well, you’ll build a little empire here, but only you can do it.’
All elderly people claim that the future lies in the hands of the young people, but few believe it; Annatjie de Pré knew that alternatives of the most staggering dimension depended upon how this particular young girl behaved herself and with what courage she attacked her problems.
‘What problems do you mean?’ Geertruyd asked.
‘Inheritance,’ Annatjie said. ‘Yesterday you were an orphan girl owning a few dresses. Tomorrow you’ll be a significant factor in the ownership of the finest vineyard in the land.’
Geertruyd listened and did not like what she heard. ‘I am not penniless,’ she said. ‘I have guilders in my package.’
Annatjie liked her response, but goaded her still further: ‘You come bringing nothing. Except your character. You’re being offered everything, if you demonstrate that character.’
‘I am not a pauper!’ Geertruyd repeated, her square face flushing red.
‘I was when I came across these flats,’ Annatjie said, and without emotion she told the girl of how she, too, had left that orphanage, and of how her first man had rejected her, and of how she had slaved to improve the farm. ‘You say you have a few hidden guilders. I had nothing.’
Abruptly she turned to the problem of her son, the proposed husband: ‘Sarel is a fine, honest young man. He’s always been overshadowed by the four children he grew up with. My husband, who despises him because he’s afraid of what he might become, will tell you within the first ten minutes that Sarel’s an imbecile. Sarel will be especially afraid of you, and if you believe my husband, you may shy away.’ She paused and took Geertruyd’s hands. ‘But we never know, do we, what a man can become until we treat him with love?’ They talked no more.
When they came off the flats, and the river hove into view, and the horses entered the long lane leading to Trianon, Geertruyd Steen saw for the first time the stunning sight of those enveloping arms, the clean white façade of the house and the two Delft benches defining the ends of the stoep. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered.
‘And remember,’ Annatjie whispered back, ‘it was Paul de Pré who made it this way.’
‘Halloo there!’ Paul cried as he bounded out of the door to greet his wife and the stranger from Amsterdam. As soon as Geertruyd stepped forward, shining like a red Edam cheese, he thought: Mon Dieu! That one was bred for having children. ‘Sarel!’ he called. ‘Come out and meet your bride!’
These were words well calculated to embarrass the young man, and Annatjie sought to soften them by calling, ‘Sarel, here’s the most pleasant girl I’ve ever met.’
From the doorway came the young man, twenty-six years old, weighing not much more than his intended and many times as shy, but when he saw Geertruyd and the frank joy that wreathed her face, he was drawn to her immediately and came forward, stumbling in his eagerness.
‘Mind your step,’ Paul said, extending a hand to help.
Sarel brushed aside his stepfather’s hand as he moved to greet Geertruyd. ‘I’m Sarel,’ he said.
‘My name’s Geertruyd.’
‘Mother says you come … from the same place she did.’
‘I do,’ the girl said, and the meeting was so agreeable that Sarel was put at ease. He wondered if he should volunteer to kiss the girl, but the question was resolved for him; she stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. ‘We’re to be married soon, I think,’ she said.
‘Let’s not rush things,’ Paul said cautiously, but Annatjie said, ‘It will be arranged. The banns will be read.’
Paul objected seriously to having Petronella and her husband attend the wedding, but when Annatjie insisted, a compromise was worked out. Petronella and Bezel would sit in the rear of the church but not participate; Annatjie said that this was a strange way for Paul to act, seeing that he had given the young couple his house, but Paul said, ‘What we do at home’s one thing. What we do in public is quite another,’ and he simply would not listen to Annatjie’s further plea that the couple be allowed to sit in the family pew.
When the wedding party returned to Trianon, Paul said graciously, ‘Isn’t it lucky we built the extra two rooms? The young people can have one of them.’ So they were installed, and he began to watch Geertruyd meticulously, to see if she showed any signs of pregnancy, for with the birth of her first child, the Van Doorns would have a potential inheritor of the vineyard, and his own design would fall into confusion.
He knew it was inevitable, yet the possibility made him irritable, and one night at supper he threw down his spoon and cried, ‘Damnit all, it’s been
four months since I’ve spoken a word of French. Everybody in this house speaks Dutch, even though I own the place.’
‘You don’t own the place,’ Annatjie reminded him, ‘You own part of it.’
‘Then we should speak part French.’
‘I know not a word,’ Geertruyd said, and this simple statement angered him further.
‘They’re even threatening to halt the sermons in French,’ he wailed. ‘Every time I attend a funeral, it means one less French voice in the colony. And none to come to replace it.’
‘Paul,’ his wife said with a certain harshness. ‘Stop this. It’s long past the time to acknowledge what you already are, a good Dutchman.’ The tone of her voice, her easy assumption infuriated him, and he stomped from the room and slept that night among the wine casks.
There in the darkness the ugly thought leaped forward in his mind: Annatjie can’t live forever. She’s almost sixty. One of these days she’s got to die. He had respected her for all she and her family had done for him, and had honored his obligation to treat her with civil affection, but now the world that he had built was being threatened, and he wished that she were dead—and he began to watch her health as closely as he did Geertruyd’s.
Annatjie did show signs of rapid aging. Her hands were withered and heavy lines marked her face. She moved more slowly than when he had married her, and her voice cracked now and then. Her deficiencies were the more notable in that he continued as young as ever—a vital, hard-working man with a smooth face that displayed his enthusiasm: After all, I am nine years younger. If I had this place by myself … He was thrilled by the prospect of what he could accomplish; and this was not fatuous, for one had only to look at the buildings of Trianon, those handsome, well-proportioned masterpieces, to realize what this man could achieve.
And now the battle for Trianon began. Sometimes at meals De Pré would seem to strive for breath; he felt surrounded by enemies who were trying to wrest his vineyard from him, and all he could see in the kitchen were hostile faces. Annatjie he could dismiss; she was almost sixty and must soon die. Sarel showed no signs of improving because of marriage, and could be ignored. With peasant cunning Paul saw that his real foe was Geertruyd, this deceptively quiet orphan from Amsterdam. Watching her closely, he found to his dismay that she was watching him. No matter what he did to make his good wine, he could feel Geertruyd spying on him, noting how he acted and why.
She never confronted him, for in the orphanage it had been drilled into her that the sovereign quality in any woman was meekness. So when De Pré railed at her, she kept her eyes lowered and made no response. She also refrained from trying to defend Annatjie when Paul shouted at her, for she was determined to avoid diversionary squabbles. But when De Pré, in his strategic assault, humiliated Sarel, trying to convince the young man that he was incompetent, she felt her anger rise. But still she fought to maintain self-control.
Four times, five times at supper Paul scorned his stepson, without rebuttal from Geertruyd or Annatjie, and this convinced him that he could beat down these women. One evening he launched a series of destructive attacks: ‘Sarel, wouldn’t it be better if you kept away from the slaves? They ignore your orders.’
Sarel said nothing, only fumbled with his spoon, so De Pré stormed on: ‘And don’t meddle with the wine casks. Certain things around here have to be done right.’
The young man reddened and, still silent, looked down at his plate, but when De Pré dredged up a third humiliating point—‘Stay clear of the new vines’—Geertruyd had had enough. Very quietly, but with frightening determination, she interrupted: ‘Monsieur de Pré …’
‘Haven’t I told you to call me Father?’
‘Monsieur de Pré,’ she repeated menacingly, ‘since Sarel will take over the vineyards when you are dead …’ She delivered the word with such brutal finality that De Pré gasped. He had often contemplated his wife’s death, never his own.
‘So Sarel and I have decided,’ she continued, her face flushed with anger, ‘that he must become familiar with all stages of making wine.’
‘Sarel decided?’ De Pré burst into derisive laughter. ‘He couldn’t decide anything.’
Everyone turned to look at Sarel, and he realized he ought to respond, both to combat his stepfather and to support his wife, but the pressure was so ugly that he could not form words.
So in her first attempt at defiance, Geertruyd lost, and she noticed that this made De Pré even more arrogant. For the first time he put aside his pledge to treat Annatjie with the respect due a wife and became publicly contemptuous. This grieved Geertruyd, for quite properly she placed the blame on herself; she went to Annatjie and assured her: ‘I shall do whatever I must. Let his wrath fall on me, but you and I together are going to make Sarel strong. You’ll see the day, Annatjie, when he runs this vineyard.’
‘Have we the time?’ Annatjie whispered.
‘I hoped last month I was pregnant,’ Geertruyd confided. ‘I was wrong, but one of these days you’ll have a Van Doorn grandson. This vineyard must be protected for him.’
So in the second year of Sarel’s marriage the two women intensified their efforts in educating him to be a responsible man and themselves to be masters of viticulture. They studied everything about the process and compared notes at night, but what gave them greatest hope was that Sarel appeared to be learning, too. ‘He’s not dull,’ Geertruyd whispered one night when De Pré had left the table, ‘it’s just his inability to express his thoughts.’ They found that he was developing sound ideas on how to tend vines, make casks, protect the must, and manage slaves effectively, and one afternoon, out in the bright sun, Geertruyd cried joyously, ‘Sarel, you’ll run this vineyard better than De Pré ever did.’ He looked at her as if she had voiced some great truth, and he tried to convey his appreciation, but words did not come easily. Instead he embraced her, and when he felt her peasant body, warm in the sun, he was overcome with love and said haltingly, ‘I can … make wine.’
That night Paul was unusually obnoxious, for he sensed that Geertruyd, this orphan from nowhere, was on the threshold of transforming Sarel, and it embittered him to think that all the good things he had done at Trianon—and he had done many—would ultimately be for the benefit of strangers. ‘Sarel!’ he lashed out. ‘I told you to stay clear of those casks—’
‘Monsieur de Pré,’ Geertruyd interrupted instantly. ‘I told Sarel to mind the casks. How else can he run these vineyards when you are dead?’
There was that horrid word again, thrown at him by this twenty-three-year-old peasant girl. He beat on the table till the spoons rattled, and cried, ‘I want no imbecile meddling with my casks.’
‘Monsieur de Pré,’ Geertruyd said with an infuriating smile, ‘I think Sarel is ready to take complete charge of the casks. You won’t have to bother any longer.’
‘Sarel couldn’t …’
Annatjie had heard enough. Sternly she said, ‘Paul, must you be reminded that I still have authority in this place? It was I who decided that Sarel must learn how to run it.’
Geertruyd, strengthened by her mother-in-law’s support, said firmly, ‘Sarel will start tomorrow.’
‘That one couldn’t line up three staves,’ De Pré snarled, and he was about to hurl additional insults, but under the table Geertruyd quietly pressed her hand against her husband’s knee, and with courage thus imparted, Sarel spoke slowly: ‘I am sure that I … can build good casks.’
The battle for the control of Trianon was interrupted by an event so arbitrary that men and women argued about it for decades: it seemed that God had struck the Cape with a fearful and reasonless scourge. One day in 1713 the old trading ship Groote Hoorn docked with an accidental cargo that altered history: a hamper of dirty linen. It belonged to a Compagnie official who had been working in Bombay; upon receiving abrupt orders to sail home, he had been required to depart before he could get his shirts and ruffs washed, so he tossed them into the hamper, proposing to have them laundered wh
ile he stopped over at the Cape. Unfortunately, the hamper was stowed in a corner where men urinated and where a constant heat maintained a humidity ideal for breeding germs. This condition was pointed out to the owner, who shrugged and said, ‘A good washing ashore and more careful stowage on the rest of the trip will correct things.’
At the Cape the hamper was carried to the Heerengracht, the canal where slaves did the laundry. Six days later these slaves began to show signs of fever and itching skin; three days after that, their faces erupted in tiny papules, which soon enlarged to vesicles and then to pustules. The lucky slaves watched these festering sores change to scabs and then lifetime scars; the unlucky ones died of shattering fevers. Smallpox, that incurable disease, was on the rampage, and whether an afflicted person lived or died was not related to the care he was given.
Forty out of every hundred slaves died that year. Sixty out of every hundred Hottentots at the Cape perished, making their survivors totally dependent on the Dutch. The turbulent disease traveled inland at the rate of eight miles a day, ravaging everyone who fell within its path. One strain leapfrogged the flats to strike at Stellenbosch, and on some farms half the slaves died. The Hottentots of this region were especially susceptible, and many white farmers perished also.
It struck with peculiar fury at Trianon, killing Petronella in the first days and annihilating more than half the slaves. No one in the area tried more diligently to stem the awful advance than Paul de Pré; he went to every afflicted house, ordering the people to burn all clothes related to the dead, and in certain instances, when an entire family had died, he burned the house itself. He quarantined the sick and dug a clean well, and in time the tide abated.
The Covenant Page 34