The Covenant

by James A. Michener

  ‘Hendrik van Doorn.’

  ‘The same,’ the tall man said. ‘He alone among you was saved, is that not true?’

  ‘He knew the book,’ Johanna said, pointing to the Bible.

  ‘Let us bury him with prayer,’ the stranger said, and while the commingled family bowed, he launched into a long supplication, beseeching God to forgive the grievous sins of his wayward child Hendrik, whereupon red-headed Seena began to snicker, for if there had been any Van Doorn who was not wayward, it was Hendrik.

  The stranger paid no attention to this irreverence, but continued his endless prayer. The Hottentots who had worked for Baas Hendrik, some from the earliest days, stood respectfully to one side. They had loved the old trekboer as a father, and the old patriarch had often seen them as children, using the whip when he felt it was needed, rewarding the industrious when he returned with cloth and implements from the cattle trading. He never understood why they so readily drank themselves into a stupor, or why their children ran away to become vagrants rather than work for him. He had acknowledged them to be master herdsmen, far better than the pesky Bushmen still out there sniping at colonists with their poisoned arrows. When the prayer finally ended, the stranger said peremptorily, ‘Now you can bury him. He’s on his way to meet his Maker.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Seena said brusquely. ‘He had a damned good life and he’s dead.’

  ‘I take that you’re the daughter of Rooi van Valck. By your red hair, I mean.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I have been sent by the Compagnie to bring the word of God to the wilderness. I am Dominee Specx, of Huguenot lineage, and I have been living at the new town of Swellendam. I am commissioned to marry and baptize, and to bring families like yours back to the ways of the Lord.’

  ‘You’re welcomed,’ Johanna said, as matriarch of the sprawling family.

  ‘You’re on your way to a new farm?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘They’re going to collect the rents on farms now.’

  ‘They’ll get none from us,’ Adriaan said sharply. ‘We’ve farmed where we willed and paid taxes to no one.’

  ‘That’s ending,’ the stranger said. ‘Beginning this year, all will be collected.’

  ‘All but us,’ Adriaan said. ‘We explored this land. We occupied it alone. And it belongs to us, not the Compagnie.’

  Predikant Specx asked if he could ride with them to the new site, and Johanna said, ‘Yes, if you will read to us from the Bible.’

  And it was in this way that Lodevicus van Doorn memorized the great, stirring passages of the Old Testament, the experiences of Abraham and Joshua in their wilderness, the love stories of David and Ruth. Night after night, as the tall dominee sat by the candle, intoning timeless stories of men who wandered into strange lands, Lodevicus reflected on how much he had missed in the years when he could not read the Bible, and he asked Specx how long it would take him to learn, and the dominee said, ‘One week, if God commissioned you.’

  To the surprise of the Van Doorns, he proved to be a congenial traveling companion, eager to share the work, willing to share the hardships. At the riverbanks he was often up front with the Hottentots to guide the oxen across, and he was a strong man with an axe when they settled on their new land and it came time to cut wood. Nor was he reticent, as some predikants were apt to be. He entered any argument, made his statement, and listened to those who tried to rebut him. He was fun at meals, for he had a most voracious appetite and startled the children with the amounts of food he consumed: ‘I do believe I could eat that entire bobotie.’

  ‘I’m sure you could,’ Seena said. She alone displayed animosity toward the predikant, an inheritance from her father, who had fought the church incessantly, and one afternoon he took her aside and said, ‘Seena, I know your father. I’ve fought with him. Last year he threw me off his farm when I went there to talk with him about God. He roared, “I need no God meddling in my affairs.” And now you’re roaring at me.’

  ‘We don’t need you here, Dominee. We’re doing very well.’

  ‘I’m sure you are, Seena. You and Adriaan are falling into the footsteps of your father—’

  ‘Not a bad way to fall,’ she said sharply.

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t. I’ve shared great love and happiness living with you.’

  ‘And great pans full of bobotie, too.’

  ‘I would gladly pay, Seena, had I the money. But I travel alone, I travel with nothing, like the original men who did the work of Jesus.’ When Seena started to comment scathingly on his acceptance of charity, he took her by the hands and said, ‘For myself, I am ashamed to come to you with nothing. But I bring you a gift greater than any you will ever know. I bring you the love of God.’

  ‘We have His love,’ Seena said harshly. ‘He prospers our farm. He increases our flocks. We worship Him in our way.’

  ‘But you cannot always accept everything and give nothing.’

  ‘You seem to.’

  ‘I give you the greatest gift, salvation.’

  ‘You just said the greatest gift was love, or something. Now it’s salvation. Dominee, in some ways you’re a fool.’

  He was not insulted by her rejection. Without ever trying to divert her criticism, he plodded on with his message: ‘Seena, I’ve come to marry and baptize. I want the first marriage to be yours.’

  ‘I need no prayers said over me. I have four children …’

  ‘Legally, if you are not properly married, and Adriaan died …’

  ‘Adriaan dies, I keep this farm,’ she said defiantly.

  Specx ignored this bravado and said, ‘But your children should be baptized, Seena.’ And when she started to protest that they were getting along all right as it was, he interrupted sharply: ‘Seena, the world’s changing. Swellendam has legal offices now. Soon there’ll be an effective arm of government out here. Taxes will be collected. Laws will be enforced.’

  ‘You mean this noble land will be hammered down till it looks like the Cape?’

  ‘Exactly. God and law and decency follow each the other. Seena, allow your children to be baptized.’

  But Seena was adamant, and for the time being, Specx dropped the subject. Working alongside them, he helped the Van Doorns establish themselves on what might be called a double farm: six thousand acres to Adriaan van Doorn, six thousand to his brothers, side by side. But when the hartebeest huts were started, the dominee returned to the matter of baptisms: ‘I most urgently plead with you to have your children brought into the holy family of the church. You owe it to them. They’re not going to live out their lives in this wilderness. There will be churches here before they marry, and they must belong or their lives will be cut off.’

  ‘I’ve lived without churches for thirty-four years,’ Seena said. ‘Now get back to work and leave me to my cooking—so that you can gorge yourself before you leave.’ He replied that he did not intend to depart before the children were baptized.

  The argument changed dramatically when Seena’s two daughters rode up from the south, accompanied by their husbands and two baby girls: ‘We want to be married. We want our children to be baptized.’

  ‘God be praised,’ the dominee said, and Johanna said, ‘We’ll make one of Willem’s bread puddings to celebrate,’ and Adriaan was surprised at how vigorously his mother participated in the preparations, for Johanna was visibly delighted that her granddaughters were to be properly married, that her great-grandchildren were to be baptized.

  None of the huts was finished when the various ceremonies were performed, but this did not stop the women from preparing a grand feast of mutton, dried fruits, baked cauliflower, carrots, pickled cabbage and pudding, with a whole ox roasted for the servants. And the conclusion of the day was marked by a strange occurrence: the boy Lodevicus came before the dominee and said, ‘I, too, wish to be baptized.’ And when this was done, he added, ‘I want it written in the Bible.’

  So the old book was brought out, and Predikant Specx shu
ddered when he saw how it had been neglected, lacking a whole generation on the page of marriages and births; he called for some implement for writing, but of course there was none.

  So he sat with the Bible on his lap and pointed at the various squares where Johanna should have been entered as the wife of Hendrik, and Seena as the wife of Adriaan. He showed them where the daughters and their husbands should be printed, and then where Adriaan’s two sons should be placed: ‘Lodevicus, this is your square, right here, and when you learn to write, you’re to put your name here, and your wife’s here, and your children down here. Do you understand?’

  Lodevicus said he did.

  Adriaan made a fearful mistake when he confided to his four children the thoughts he’d had while wrestling with Rooi van Valck for the hand of his daughter: ‘You have no idea how big your grandfather was. Tell them, Seena.’ And with profane descriptions she told the awe-struck children of her life at the Van Valcks’, and of the numerous wives and the score of children. Three of the young Van Doorns relished these tales, for they explained the red hair in their family and the lustiness of their mother.

  But when Lodevicus, the youngest child, robust, white-haired, very Dutch in appearance, heard his father actually say, ‘I knew I was wrestling with the devil, and he would have gouged out my eyes, except your mother bashed him in the head with a log,’ he was overcome by a feeling of loathing, for he was convinced that Rooi van Valck was the devil. Judging his mother and her harsh ways, he was convinced that she was the devil’s daughter, and that if he did not exorcise himself, he would forever be contaminated with hellish sin.

  In 1759, when he was twenty years old, he experienced a theophany so palpable it would dominate the remainder of his life. Whenever a crisis approached he would be able to evoke this sacred moment when God spoke to him beside the stream, commanding him to go to the Cape to find for himself a Christian wife who would counteract the satanic influence of his mother: ‘You cannot read. Go to the Cape and learn. You live in sin. Go to the Cape and purify yourself. Your father and mother are of the devil. Cross over the mountains, go to the Cape and find a Christian wife to save them.’ The Voice stopped. The night fell silent. But a light glowed to the north toward the mountains, and he fell on his knees, begging God for strength to obey His commands, whereupon the light intensified and the Voice returned: ‘You are the hammer who shall slay the infidel.’ There was no more.

  For the next few weeks Lodevicus walked by himself, pondering how he might get to the Cape to fulfill God’s commandments, and he spent much of this time watching his parents for signs of their satanism. He found none in Adriaan, whom he dismissed as an ineffectual, but he did see in Seena’s robust paganism much evidence of her damnation. She swore. She drank gin whenever any was available. And she was most offensive in teasing him about when he was going to find himself a wife.

  ‘Get on a horse, ride in any direction, and grab the first young thing you see,’ she said. ‘One’s about as good as another, when it comes to running a farm.’

  He shuddered at such blasphemy, remembering that the Voice had told him that he was destined for a special bride who would bring light and Christianity to the trekboers. And one night, when he could bear his mother’s abuse no more, he went to the kraal, saddled a horse, and rode westward in the darkness.

  He moved from farm to farm, always aware that when he and his bride returned they would bring decency into this wilderness. On two occasions he stayed with families that had marriageable daughters, and there was a flurry of excitement when he rode up, for he was a big and handsome man, with broad shoulders and blond, almost white, hair, but he had no eye for these girls, dedicated as he was to his commission. At this stage in his life he knew the Bible imperfectly, but he imagined himself to be a son of Abraham heading back to the homeland to find a bride of decent heritage.

  In this frame of mind, his entire being focused on the Cape, he approached the small settlement of Swellendam, nestled among hills and distinguished by some of the loveliest white houses in the colony. As he entered the village he wondered where he might stay, for already people in towns had become less hospitable than those in the country, where a traveler could expect an enthusiastic welcome wherever he stopped, and he was walking aimlessly when he heard the resonant voice of Dominee Specx: ‘Isn’t this Lodevicus of the Van Doorns?’ When Vicus said, ‘Yes, Dominee,’ the predikant asked, ‘And what brings you to this fair village?’ and the young man made the startling explanation: ‘Because God has ordered me to the Cape to take a wife.’

  By no gesture did Predikant Specx betray any reaction to this extraordinary statement; instead he invited Lodevicus to the parsonage, informing him that a widow nearby would provide him housing for a small fee; then, sitting him upon a chair, he asked, ‘Now what was it that happened to you?’ When the epiphany was described, Specx said, ‘I believe God has visited you.’ And he suggested that they pray, but before they could do so, a young woman of twenty-two, her hair drawn tightly back against her head, revealing a face of calm austerity, came into the study with a forthright question: ‘Who came here with you, Father?’

  ‘Lodevicus, of those Van Doorns I told you about.’

  ‘Oh, yes. How are your parents?’

  ‘Poorly,’ Lodevicus said, and before she could say she was sorry, he added, ‘They know not God.’

  ‘Yes, Father told me.’

  ‘He has been called of God,’ the dominee said, ‘and we were about to give thanks.’

  ‘May I join?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Of course. This is my daughter, Rebecca,’ and the first thing young Van Doorn did in the presence of this quiet, stately girl was kneel beside her and pray.

  When they rose, Specx explained to his daughter: ‘The Lord commanded him to learn how to read and write. I think we could teach him.’

  So for the next four weeks father and daughter instructed Lodevicus in his letters, and by the end of the period he was reading in the Bible. He also attended every service conducted by Specx, and later asked for extensions of the sermon’s main theses. It was a time of great awakening, with ideas ricocheting about the white walls as the young man formulated the large concepts that would animate him the rest of his life. So powerful was the influence of his epiphany that not once in these days did he contemplate terminating his journey at Swellendam and asking for Rebecca’s hand in marriage; the Lord had said that his bride awaited him at the Cape, and he intended setting forth for that town as soon as he was satisfied that he could read.

  But when he reached the Cape he felt like one of the angels who looked down upon Sodom and Gomorrah. Sailors roaring off the ships to riot with the slaves and Coloureds. Indecencies at night. A world so alien that the idea of taking a wife from these quarters was repellent, and he prayed for guidance. He had been instructed to come here and take a wife, but to do so was repugnant. And now he did not know where to turn.

  For three weeks he remained in this state of indecision, obedient to God’s major dictate but unable to accept the detail. Again and again he walked along the shore, expecting another revelation, but none came. He saw only the vast and frightening sea and he wanted to run from it to recover the sweet assurance of the valleys across the mountains, and he was reminded of that lovely phrase in the Bible, ‘the other side Jordan,’ where he felt sure goodness would be found.

  In profound conflict of spirit, he decided to quit the Cape, recross the mountains, and seek counsel from Predikant Specx; it never occurred to him that he was seeking not the dominee, but his daughter. All he remembered in later years was that when he came down off the hills and approached the beautiful town, he broke into a run, galloped like a runaway animal down the main street, and burst into the parsonage with the cry: ‘Dominee Specx, I’ve come back.’ But all members of the predikant’s family knew why he had come back.

  Three prayerful sessions were held, with Lodevicus laying bare his inability to obey the final detail of his conversion and Dominee
Specx explaining that God often moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform: ‘When you departed, I prayed that you would return because I knew that you and Rebecca were destined for majestic things.’

  ‘Rebecca?’ Lodevicus asked.

  ‘Yes, she planned to marry you from the day you arrived.’

  ‘But the Lord told me to find my wife at the Cape.’

  ‘Exactly what did the Voice say?’ Dominee Specx asked, and when Lodevicus replied that he could not remember exactly, the clergyman said, ‘You told me that it said, “Go to the Cape …” and then “Find a Christian wife.” That doesn’t mean that you must take your wife from the Cape. It merely means that God wanted you to have the experience of the Cape. And you were quite right to come back here for your bride. God directed you, don’t you see?’

  The explanation was so logical that Lodevicus had to accept it, and neither then nor afterward would he admit to himself that he had returned to Swellendam to marry Rebecca, for she had seemed too mature and superior to be attainable.

  They were married by her father in the newly built church, and after a honeymoon that revealed the quality of the two young people—he fanatically determined to exhibit God’s handiwork, she unflinching in her resolve to take Christianity to the frontier—they saddled two horses, and with a minimum of possessions, set forth to tame the wilderness.

  Their reception at the Van Doorn farm was not a pleasant one. On the trip east Lodevicus had warned his bride that Seena might prove troublesome: ‘Adriaan’s an infidel, but he’s quiet. My mother’s the daughter of Rooi van Valck, and she’ll be difficult, even hostile.’