The Covenant (58 page)

“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.”

When they rode into the farmyard the first voice they heard was Seena’s, loud and raucous, shouting to her husband, “Adriaan! He’s back. With a bride.”

When the family assembled, Lodevicus, with new-found assurance, attempted to share with his parents the miracle of his epiphany: “God called to me to go to the Cape to take a wife.”

“Adriaan heard a call like that once,” Seena said, “but I doubt God had much to do with it.”

“So I stopped at Swellendam to pray with Dominee Specx, and Rebecca taught me the letters and how to put them together …”

“I’ll warrant that wasn’t all she taught.”

The young couple ignored these interruptions, and Lodevicus continued: “And when I learned to write, I got down on my knees and thanked God and told Him that as soon as I returned home I would write our names in the Bible. Fetch it.”

He issued this request as a command, and Seena was somewhat irritated when her husband complied. Going to a wagon chest in which he kept the odd valuables that accumulate even in a hartebeest hut, he brought forth the old Bible, opening it to the page of records between the two testaments. “This time,” Lodevicus said gravely, “we have a pen,” and with everyone watching, he carefully inscribed the missing names: “Adriaan van Doorn, born 1712. Seena van Valck born …”

“Maybe 1717,” she said.

“Father, Rooi van Valck. Mother …”

“I never knew for sure.” Lodevicus and Rebecca stared at her, and he said, “We’ve got to put something.”

“Put Fedda the Malayan. I liked her best.”

“Put Magdalena van Delft,” Adriaan said. “You know she was your real mother.”

Seena spat: “That for Magdalena.”

Hurriedly Lodevicus wrote in the names of his brother and his two sisters, then, with a flourish and a smile for his wife, he wrote: “Rebecca Specx, Swellendam, daughter of the Predikant.”

When he put the pen aside, satisfied with his work, Seena asked, “When you reached Swellendam, were you married?”

“Oh, no!” her son said. “When I had learned to write I marched on to the Cape, as God had directed.”

“Over the mountains?” Adriaan asked, showing respect for such a trip.

“Over the tall mountains, but when I reached the Cape, I found Sodom and Gomorrah. Indecencies everywhere.”

“What indecencies?” Seena asked.

Again he ignored her, telling of his revulsion, his rejection of the town and his return over the mountains. “We were married and spent the next weeks in a revelation. The four of us, Dominee Specx and his wife, I and my wife, we sat together and read the entire Bible.”

For the first time Rebecca intruded. In a low voice, but with great firmness, she said, “The Old Testament, that is.”

“And we discovered,” Lodevicus continued, “how we trekboers are the new Israelites. That we have reached the point where Abram was when he changed his name to Abraham and settled in Canaan while Lot chose the cities of the plain, to be destroyed. And I learned that the time of our traveling is ended. That we must settle and build our houses of stone.”

“Did you and the dominee,” Adriaan asked, “ever discuss the fact that you new Abrahams would be building your houses of stone on land that can be worn out? That we have to move on from time to time to find ourselves better land?”

“They’re not moving at Swellendam,” Lodevicus replied, whereupon his mother said, “We are. This verdomde farm is worn out.”

And while the old couple planned their next leap eastward, the young couple journeyed to the southern farms, there to advise the people how they ought to live.

It was on their return journey that Lodevicus first shared with another human being the mysterious fact that at the stream God had told him that he was to be the hammer, the trekboer who brought order into shapeless lives, and as soon as he said the words, Rebecca understood. With great excitement she said, “It was why Father and I prayed that you would return from the Cape. And take me with you. That we could perform the tasks that lie ahead.”

“God spoke to you, also?”

“I think He did. I think I always knew.”

It was with this common understanding of their salvation and
their mutual reinforcement that the younger Van Doorns came back to the farm, secure in their knowledge of what was required, and the first person their wrath fell upon was Dikkop, now fifty-seven years old and as inoffensive as always. Because of the many years they had shared, and the adventures, Adriaan gave the little fellow unusual prerogatives, and Lodevicus decided that this must stop: “He is of the tribe of Ham, and he must no longer live with us or feed with us, or in any way associate with us, except as our Hottentot servant.”

When Adriaan protested such a harsh decree, Lodevicus and Rebecca explained things carefully, step by step, so that even Seena would understand: “When the world started the second time, after the flood, Noah had three sons, and two of them were clean and white like us. But the third son, Ham, was dark and evil.”

“Now, Ham,” Rebecca continued, “was the father of Canaan and all black people. And God, acting through Noah, placed a terrible curse on Canaan: ‘Cursed be Canaan! A servant of servants shall he be to his brethren.’ And it was ordained that the sons of Ham shall be hewers of wood and drawers of water, for as long as the world exists. Dikkop is a Canaanite. He is a son of Ham, and is condemned to be a slave and nothing more.”

It really didn’t matter to Adriaan and Seena what the Hottentot was called; he was necessary to their lives, and as such, he was well treated. Seena especially liked to have him in the hut when food was being prepared or eaten, and it was this that caused the first open rupture with her daughter-in-law, for one day Rebecca said in some exasperation, “Seena, you must not allow Dikkop in the hut ever again.” Then she added, in a voice of honest conciliation, “Except, of course, when he cleans up.”

“But he’s always been with me when I cook.”

“That must stop.”

“Who says so?” Seena asked belligerently.

“God.”

With the snap of a cloth and a sharpness of tongue that invited trouble, Seena said, “I doubt that God troubles Himself over a woman’s kitchen.”

“Lodevicus!” Rebecca called. “Your mother refuses to believe.” And when Vicus came into the hut to hear the complaints, he, of course, sided totally with his wife, taking down the Bible and turning to those short, inconsequential books that end the Old Testament, and there in Zechariah he found the concluding passage which had
loomed so large in the teaching of Predikant Specx at Swellendam: “ ‘And in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of Hosts.’ ” He added that from this time on, the hut was the house of the Lord, and since Dikkop was clearly a Canaanite, he must be banished.

Curiously, Adriaan did not support his wife in this argument, for he was coming to believe that Rebecca spoke for the future; it was time that order be brought to the frontier, although he himself wanted none of it. The truth was, he rather liked his daughter-in-law, for she was capable, intelligent and forthright, and he suspected that Lodevicus had been lucky to catch her. Seena, however, saw her as a moralizing menace to be consistently opposed: “You think your Bible has an answer for everything?”

“It has.”

“Well, when you and Vicus make the Xhosa mad, and they come clicking over that hill armed with assegais, what does your Bible say about that?”

With absolute assurance Rebecca said, “Vicus, fetch me the Bible, please,” and in later years he would often remember this moment, when his wife and his mother argued over what might happen if the Xhosa struck.

Turning the pages expertly, Rebecca came to that passage in Leviticus which formed a keystone of her father’s belief, and read triumphantly: “ ‘And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. And five of you shall chase an hundred …’ ” And then, as if this solved all problems of the frontier, she glared at her mother-in-law and said, “We will have five to defend this farm.”

Of course, the little brown men knew nothing of this prophecy and had no difficulty whatever in breaking through. One night a clan of Bushmen living beyond the mountains crept down, found large numbers of cattle roaming freely, and made off with some sixty fine beasts.

“That’s enough,” Lodevicus said, his voice betraying iron but no fire. “That’s just enough. And now we settle the problem of the Bushmen.”

He organized a commando, all the men from thirty miles around, and he set forth, inviting Adriaan to come along but ignoring him when decisions were required. They went north about seventy miles, so far that Adriaan was certain they had left the Bushmen far behind,
but when he started to alert his son to this fact, Vicus, grim-lipped, sat astride his horse, saying nothing.

The old man was right. The commando had far outrun the little brown raiders, but Vicus had devised a super strategy, and when the riders reached a spot where whole families of Bushmen might be expected to congregate, he ordered his men to dismount and hide themselves near a spring that broke out from between the rocks. Adriaan, unable to discern his son’s plan, expected the hunting party to arrive with the stolen cattle and walk into an ambush, but instead, just at sunset, a huge rhinoceros lumbered in to catch his evening swill of water, and as he drank noisily, switching his wiry tail, Lodevicus dropped him with one powerful shot behind the ear.

There the great beast lay, beside the spring, and before nightfall vultures gathered, perching in trees and waiting for the dawn. They were seen, of course, both by the Bushmen families awaiting the return of their men and by the cattle stealers coming north, so that by midafternoon some sixty Bushmen, counting the women and children, had gathered at the spring to gorge upon the unexpected feast of the dead rhino.