The Covenant (159 page)

He was especially proud of the way in which two girls in Standard Two took his lectures to heart. Petra Albertyn, aged nine, and Minna van Valck, aged ten, were the kind of students teachers pray for. They were eager and attentive; they behaved themselves without being subdued; they did well in classes requiring memory, but just as well in singing and drawing; and in whatever good thing was afoot, they could be depended upon to take the lead. In addition, as if God sometimes gave certain chosen persons too much, each child was unusually attractive—Petra a handsome dark-haired girl, and Minna a striking blonde with classic Dutch features.

It was arithmetic that started the trouble. Minna, being older than Petra, excelled in most branches of study, which in no way distressed the latter, who told her parents, “I love Minna. She’s so sweet and kind.” But in arithmetic little Petra had uncanny skill; she was really quite brilliant, and her teacher, a woman from Pretoria University who recognized brains when she viewed them in action, reported: “This girl is a precious little genius.” Obviously, she received highest marks, well ahead of her friend Minna.

This did not disturb Minna, for she told her mother, “I don’t like numbers anyway, and I’m not very good at them.”

“But you allowed Petra to excel,” Mrs. van Valck complained with some irritation. “Have you no pride?”

“I beat her in everything else!” Minna exclaimed, but her mother suspected that something might have gone amiss at the school, and
she was determined to ascertain whether or not her brilliant daughter had been improperly treated. Accordingly, she marched to the school and demanded to see the principal.

Roelf Sterk was accustomed to meeting distraught parents; in fact, he rather liked it when they thought enough of their daughters’ progress to interrogate him, but he was not prepared for the harshness with which Mrs. van Valck assailed him: “I’m convinced that Minna must have done better than this Petra, whoever she is, because I myself corrected her exercise book every night.”

“You mean, you helped her?”

“I did not say that. I said that when her work was done I checked it to be sure she understood the problems. And she never had an incorrect solution.”

“That’s why she received such a high mark,” the principal explained.

“But this Petra received a higher. My daughter was penalized …”

“Mrs. van Valck,” the principal explained patiently, “in Petra Albertyn we have a near-genius in arithmetic. She’s extraordinary. There’s no way your daughter could equal her in this one field. Remember, Mrs. van Valck, Minna got highest in all her other subjects …”

Mrs. van Valck was still not satisfied and demanded to see who this superior child was, so Dr. Sterk consented, hoping in this way to defuse the mother’s suspicions. Since Petra, like many of the scholars in this school, lived in a town many miles away, she stayed in a dormitory, which differentiated her from other children like Minna, who stayed at home, and this aroused Mrs. van Valck’s suspicions: “Who is she? Why does she come so far to school?”

Patiently Dr. Sterk explained that more than two-thirds of his best students came from considerable distances: “It was the same in my grandfather’s day. Most of those first scholars who earned this school its reputation, well, they came here by wagon in January and never returned home till June.”

The simplest way for Mrs. van Valck to see what was happening in the school was for her to peek in the door of the classroom, but when she reached that spot from which this would have been possible, Dr. Sterk pushed open the door, interrupted the class, and announced: “This is Minna’s mother.” The students rose and bowed, whereupon Dr. Sterk pointed to a girl in the first row, saying, “And this is Minna’s good friend, Petra Albertyn.”

Later, when he testified before the Race Classification Board, he
would recall: “When Mrs. van Valck first saw Petra Albertyn her jaw dropped and she froze. I noticed it at the time but could think of no reason for this strange behavior.”

That morning in the classroom she said nothing, just stared at Petra, then hastened from the school, going straight to the magistrate’s court, where she swept past clerks, burst into his room, and dropped into a chair. “Leopold,” she said, “there’s a Coloured girl in Minna’s school.”

“Not likely,” her husband, the magistrate of Venloo, said.

“Leopold, I saw her. Not ten minutes ago. If that girl isn’t a Hotnot, I’m not a Potgieter.” She used her maiden name, one of the most revered in Afrikaner history, as verification of her own pure lineage.

“Mother,” her husband said quietly, “Dr. Sterk does not allow Coloureds into his school. The law forbids it. Parents have to show their white I.D. cards before any child is accepted. Sterk and all his teachers are most circumspect in such matters. Now you go—”

“Leopold! This Coloured girl has become Minna’s closest friend. Minna wanted to bring her to sleep in our home last week.”

“Are you still angry about the arithmetic grade? Forget this silly accusation, and let’s go home.”

That night the Van Valcks interrogated Minna, who said, “Well, she’s darker than me. But she talks like me.”

“You mustn’t say anything about this, Minna. This is an important secret, but tomorrow ask her about her parents. Where do they live? What do they do?”

So Minna became a spy, and after much interrogation, was able to report to her parents: “Her family is all right. Her father is foreman in a garage. Her mother runs a store. She says that’s where she learned to add so fast, in the store.”

This did not appease Mrs. van Valck, who arranged for her husband to visit the school so that he, too, could see the suspected child, and when he did, his jaw dropped and he would utter no further words inside the school, but when he joined his wife in their car he said, “My God! That girl is Coloured.”

The Van Valcks stayed awake most of that night, trying to decide what decent course they must pursue. For a Coloured child to pass as white was immoral, illegal, and crucially dangerous to their daughter, since the two were not only thrown together, but had established bonds of friendship, if not downright love. A thing like this could
ruin a white girl, could tarnish her for life if it became known in the community. And it was not only the Van Valck family that was endangered; any school had to be constantly protective of its reputation, and the easiest way to lose it would be for it to harbor children of the wrong color.

Toward morning the Van Valcks decided that they must place this difficult problem in the lap of Dr. Sterk, a man of demonstrated competence and a stout defender of Afrikanerdom. Indeed, many supposed that he must be the head of the local Broederbond. So after Minna was safely in her classes, they drove inconspicuously to the school and slipped in to the principal’s office. “Dr. Sterk,” Mrs. van Valck said sternly, “we have reason to believe that Petra Albertyn is Coloured.”

He choked. “Mevrou van Valck! That’s a serious charge to make.”

“We’re making it. That girl is not white.”

“Impossible.”

And then something happened that sent a chill down his spine. The two Van Valcks simply sat there, firm in their chairs, their fists clenched, staring at him. They said nothing, made no threats, just waited. Finally he coughed, then said, “You really are serious about this.”

“We are,” Leopold van Valck said.

“You’re charging Petra Albertyn with being Coloured?”

“We are.”

“You’re aware of the grave consequences? To the girl? To her parents? To the school?”

“We are.”

“Let me consult with her teachers.”

“That’s not necessary,” Mrs. van Valck snapped. “You can tell by looking at her that she’s trying to pass. And she’s endangering our daughter.”

“I need time to consider this,” he said firmly. “Now you return home and I’ll visit you tonight, after I’ve spoken with my people.”

That night, at half past eight, he came to their door, accepted the coffee and biscuits they offered, and reported: “Not one of our teachers ever suspected Petra of trying to pass. She’s a splendid little girl—”

“She’s Coloured,” Mrs. van Valck said firmly.

“We find absolutely no evidence—”

“Have you checked her family?”

“I do not know her family,” Dr. Sterk confessed. “Their I.D. cards say they are white.”

“I shall visit them tomorrow,” Mrs. van Valck said. “Can you give me their address?”

“They live at Blinkfontein.”

On Friday afternoon she drove forty-eight miles north of Venloo to a crossroads village with a single store, Albertyn Super Shop. Parking her car, she looked for the police, but there were none. She walked to the post office and asked to see the man in charge, whom she swore to silence: “It’s a most important matter, Meneer. Things are being said about those people across the road. Back in Venloo. Their child Petra is in school there.”

“What are you talking about, Mevrou?”

“What do you know of the Albertyns?” Shrugging one shoulder toward the store, she added, “Over there …”

“They’ve lived here for—”

“Where’d they come from?”

“They’ve always lived here.”

Receiving no help from the postmaster, she went to the store itself, in search, she said, of Trotter’s jellies. The assistant, a man suspiciously dark, said he had none, and she asked, “Will you have some later, Mr. Albertyn?” and he replied, “I’m not Mr. Albertyn. He works at the garage. I just help here.”

“Could I see Mr. Albertyn? Or Mrs.?”

“You can see them both. They’re out back.”

When she met Petra’s parents they seemed as white as any Afrikaner, but she noticed something she found most ominous: in spite of the sun, Mrs. Albertyn had no freckles.

Back home she told her husband, “As clear as the lines in the palm of your hand, that woman’s Coloured.”

“How can you be sure?”

“No freckles.”

The Van Valcks returned to the school to present their hard evidence to Dr. Sterk, who laughed nervously and said, “Really, I can’t act upon freckles.”

His use of this word angered the Van Valcks, who rose to leave. “My husband knows what to do,” Mrs. Van Valck said. “The life of our daughter is endangered.”

“Now wait,” the principal said, inserting himself between them
and the door. “A public charge could hurt this school. It might even rebound against your daughter.”

“It’s our daughter we’re thinking of,” Mrs. van Valck said.

“Will you grant me two days? Please?”

“We’ll grant you two months,” Leopold van Valck said generously. “But only if you take this seriously.”

“I do. I do. I’m thinking of the great damage that might be done to the Albertyn girl if your charges are made public …” He tried vainly to find some good way to end this sentence, but none surfaced. “And are found insubstantial,” he added.

This angered both the Van Valcks, but it was the wife who replied, “They are substantial. That girl’s Coloured. Now get her out of here.”

“It had better be two days,” Mr. van Valck said sternly.

That afternoon Dr. Sterk held a meeting with three of his wisest teachers, two women and one man, good Afrikaners all, and their counsel was crisp and clear: “The Van Valcks are troublemakers, especially the mother. She raised the merry devil last year when Minna received a caution on her deportment. If she’s threatening to bring public charges, she’ll do it. Better get the Albertyn girl out of here quietly and forget the matter.”

“But is the girl actually Coloured?”

“No sign we’ve ever seen,” the arithmetic teacher said, “but she’d better go.”

“Mrs. du Plessis, you’ve always told me what a splendid child Petra is.”

“I did and I love her. But in a case like this, it may be best for the child’s sake if she leaves.”

The three teachers were adamant. The welfare of this important school superseded all other considerations, and whereas to suspend Petra might be heartbreaking for the girl, even the rumor that she was Coloured might have disastrous consequences for the school if circulated by determined people like the Van Valcks.

But Dr. Sterk refused to accept such advice, and next afternoon drove out to the Albertyn store, where he asked the owners to get into his car so that he might take them to some isolated spot on the veld where they could talk privately. As they drove in silence the Albertyns could only speculate on what painful thing might have happened at school: Petra had done something warranting punishment, and they were distressed, but they were also prepared to support Dr. Sterk and
school discipline. Mrs. Albertyn placed her hand in her husband’s and took deep breaths as the car stopped and the principal turned toward them. He looked ill-at-ease, distant, and finally he came out with it.

“Charges have been made that Petra is Coloured,” he said.

“Oh, Jesus!” Mr. Albertyn gasped.

“Most serious charges, by persons prepared to press them publicly.”

“Oh, my God!”

The anguish expressed by Mr. Albertyn was an indication of the gravity of this accusation. To make such a charge in South Africa was not like someone saying in Hungary, “I think Lazlo’s a Rumanian.” Or saying in the west of England, “If you look into it, you’ll find that Masterson is really Irish.” In normal countries such charges were matters of social judgment; in South Africa they determined life and sometimes death.

“Is there any foundation to the charge?” Dr. Sterk asked.

“None whatever,” Mr. Albertyn said, and right there the great suspicion began, for the principal noted that whereas Mr. Albertyn leaped forward to defend his family and his daughter, Mrs. Albertyn did not, and he said to himself: Why is the woman so quiet? She must be hiding something. I do believe Petra is Coloured!

At the conclusion of the interview on the veld Dr. Sterk suggested, “I think under the circumstances you’d better take your daughter out of our school.”

“I refuse,” Mr. Albertyn cried. “Have you any idea what it would mean to the child? Thrown out of school for doing nothing wrong?”

“I understand your sensitivities,” Dr. Sterk said with a certain unctuousness. “But have you considered the consequences if a public charge is made? There would have to be a Race Classification inquiry. The effect on Petra …” He paused, not ominously, but with just the hint of a threat: “The terrible consequences to yourselves?”