The Covenant (55 page)

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 Doom’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.”

“That’s what my uncle said. My job is to collect the new plants. The ones we haven’t heard of yet in Europe.”

“What do you mean, collect?” Adriaan asked, but before the
young doctor could explain, Hendrik shouted, “Come on! There’s lots more to take before she sinks.” And the two young Van Doorns continued with the plunder, but when there was nothing left and the ship started to break apart, Adriaan was drawn back to the scientist, and while the other trekboers helped the shipwrecked passengers build temporary huts to protect themselves till rescue ships arrived, he and Seena stowed the precious books upon their two horses and started walking back to the farm, accompanied by the young Swede.

They traveled farther east than Adriaan had gone on his first exploration, then due north into a type of land which not even he had ever seen. It lay well north of the mountain range and was desert, yet not desert, for whenever rain fell, a multitude of flowers burst across the entire landscape, submerging it in a carpet of such beauty that Dr. Linnart was amazed: “I could spend a lifetime here and identify a new flower every day, I do believe.” When Adriaan inquired further as to why the Swede was collecting so avidly, Linnart spent several
nights endeavoring to explain what the expedition signified, and in his report he referred to this experience: