The Covenant (91 page)

The senior members of the family had also been attending to their appearance: Jakoba had made herself a new dress, a new bonnet, and had ordered new shoes for herself and Tjaart from Koos, an old cobbler who moved from farm to farm. Tjaart, in turn, had unpacked his one fine suit of dark clothes: coat, vest, trousers with a big front flap, felt hat with enormous brim. On the final evening, when all the attractive things were spread on the floor prior to being wrapped for the dusty journey, he took down the brassbound Bible and opened it to Isaiah, where he read: “ ‘Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength?’ ” And he answered the rhetorical question by saying in his own words, “It is the family of Tjaart van Doorn. Traveling to Graaff-Reinet for Nachtmaal, to do You honor.”

In the morning they started—father, mother, two sons and their families, and the girl Minna—all in their oldest, roughest clothes, the three men in broad-brimmed hats, the women in sunbonnets to protect their complexions from the sun. Four Coloureds accompanied them to tend the sixteen oxen, pitch the tents at night, and guard the large flock of sheep Tjaart intended to trade for his new wagon, and three women slaves to do the cooking and watch after the needs of the travelers. They stopped by midafternoon, for the oxen had to be outspanned in daylight hours so they could forage on the rich but sparse grass.

They were traveling over a route with which the Van Doorn people had been acquainted for many years. Their course was a strict north-northwest, but it deviated sharply at times to allow the crossing of ravines or the circumvention of large hills; so at night, when the Southern Cross appeared, Tjaart had to correct his heading, which he did with confidence that on the morrow they would see familiar hills.

The slow movement of the oxen—each of which responded only to its individual name—the swaying of the wagon, the soft singing of the slaves and the rhythmic walk of the men produced a kind of timeless lethargy in which there was constant movement but little change, just the grand emptiness of the veld across which not even animals moved at this time of year.

But there was excitement! Minna, alert to the increasing nearness
of Graaff-Reinet, began to display nervousness; for one thing, she kept strictly in the shade so that her complexion would be as light as possible, for she knew that Boer men treasured this in their women. When the afternoon sun threatened her face, she produced a light goatskin mask which she wore as a shield. At intervals she also smoothed her rough traveling dress as if she were already preparing to meet young Naudé. And often she joined the slave women in their singing, for her heart was fluttering and sought release. She might not be beautiful, but she was inspiring to see as she blossomed in the veld like a gray flower expanding after a long drought, and Tjaart reveled in her happiness.

Her nervousness was caused in part by the delayed departure for Nachtmaal, which meant that the Van Doorns and De Groots would arrive not on the Wednesday as planned, but only on Friday itself, when the ceremonies would be beginning; and it was in those preliminary days, before the preaching began, that the young people conducted much of their courting.

“Minna!” her father assured her. “He’ll appreciate you more when you do arrive. He’ll be hungry to see you.”

And then came the small miracle which enlivened the prospect of Nachtmaal as nothing else could have done, for out of the east, at a far distance, rose a faint sign of dust: it must have been fifteen miles away, two days of travel, but there it was, a mark in the sky. And all that first day the Van Doorns watched the pillar of dust, and at night they strained their eyes for any indication of light—a campfire perhaps—but none showed, and on the second day they looked with joy as the pillar expanded and assumed the thickness that would be caused by a large team of oxen.

It was the De Groots, coming out of the northeast, leading a herd of cows to Nachtmaal, converging their course with that of the Van Doorns, and before evening the juncture had been made. There were kisses among the women, backslapping for the men, and the jollity of renewed friendships for the servants and slaves.

The two wagons rode together for the next four days, at the end of which De Groot said with some confidence, “Tomorrow we’ll see Spandau Kop,” and Minna was walking at the head of the procession when she cried, “There it is!”

Tjaart had first seen this incredibly beautiful hill as a child, traveling to Nachtmaal with Lodevicus the Hammer, and to him it signified the beacons which God had placed in all deserts of the world for
the guidance of His people. Abraham, coming out of Babylonia, had seen such reassuring signals, and Joseph, traveling home from Egypt, had seen the same. But what Tjaart had not appreciated as a child was the many-turreted chain of taller mountains that rimmed Graaff-Reinet, forming a kind of amphitheater of protection. When one came in from the flat veld, the physical appearance of this little town was overwhelming, and Tjaart saw with pleasure that his daughter was relishing the sight as he had done at her age.

The entire town was given over to the canopied wagons of men and women who had traveled vast distances for this religious ceremony: sixty groups had already arrived, their canvas tents pitched beside their wagons, their oxen grazing in the nearby meadows, attended by the herdsmen, who were enjoying the noise and the beer as much as their white masters.

The large square in front of the church was crammed with wagons by the time the Van Doorns arrived, but there was a tree-lined street leading to the parsonage which in some ways was preferable, for one’s wagon was not surrounded by neighbors, and here the Van Doorns and the De Groots settled down.

It was Friday morning, and before Minna had time to seek out young Ryk Naudé, everyone had to convene in the famous white-walled church. The Van Doorns arrived just as the first long service was to begin, and they met with two situations that shocked them. The resident dominee, a Scotsman who had married a Boer girl, spoke more Dutch than English, and would have six sons, five of whom would be ordained at Graaff-Reinet, and five daughters, four of whom would marry dominees—this beloved man, a better Boer than many Boers, was absent in Cape Town, and in his place served a large, red-faced preacher from Glasgow who could barely speak intelligible Dutch; it was something to hear the burgeoning local patois delivered in a heavy Scots accent.

And then Minna saw to her horror that Ryk was sitting with a family that had a girl fifteen or sixteen years old and of remarkable beauty.

“Oh!” she sighed, and when her father asked what was the matter, all she could do was point with trembling finger across the church. It was unfortunate that she did so, for now Tjaart saw the girl, and for the duration of the service he could not take his eyes away. She was a glorious child, and at the same time a woman; her skin was fair, but touched with red at the cheeks; her face was broad and perfectly proportioned;
her neck and shoulders were frighteningly suggestive, and despite the fact that he knew he was committing sin, he began to undress her in his mind, and the fall of her clothes was more provocative than anything he had previously known.

“Look at her!” Minna whispered, and he blinked his eyes and began to look at her in a different way, and what he saw boded unhappiness for his daughter, for this girl, whoever she was, had obviously decided that she was destined to marry Ryk Naudé, and by every feminine device, was ingratiating herself to him. Tilt of head, movement of arm, deep convincing smile, flash of white teeth—she used them all until the young man seemed quite bewildered by what was happening. Tjaart, himself so profoundly affected by the girl, knew that Minna had lost her young man, and to quieten both himself and his daughter he took her hand, and felt its trembling.

None of the Van Doorns paid much attention to the Scots minister, who was delivering one of the dullest sermons they had ever heard; he lacked the fire of a true Calvinist predikant, keeping his voice to a monotone, with none of the tumultuous raging the Boers liked, and often his words could not be easily understood. The true fire that day rested on the benches occupied by Ryk Naudé and his new girl.

When the sermon ended and the Boers had come out into the square, Minna, without any sense of shame, moved swiftly toward Naudé, posted herself where he could not escape her, and said boldly, “Hello, Ryk. I’ve been waiting to see you.”

He nodded bleakly, well aware that he had promised two years ago to attend Minna at the next Nachtmaal they shared, but also aware that any such promises had been obviated by the dramatic arrival in town of the girl he now presented: “This is Aletta.” He did not give her last name, for he had already determined that before this Nachtmaal ended, she would take his.

Aletta was as charming to Minna as she had been to Ryk during the service, and when Minna’s father lumbered up, she was equally gracious, extending her hand and greeting him with a ravishing smile: “I’m Aletta Probenius. My father keeps a store.”

“He’s the man I seek,” Tjaart said, pleased that his business would keep him in touch with this exciting girl. “Is it true that he has a wagon for sale?”

“He has almost everything,” Aletta said with a fetching toss of her head, and in the various events that accompanied Nachtmaal she
demonstrated that, like her father in his store, she, too, had almost everything: smiles, witticisms, grace, and enormous sexual magnetism.

For Minna that first Friday was agony. One close look at the radiant Aletta warned her that chances for catching Ryk Naudé had vanished, and this so confused her that she did a series of things that made her look quite foolish. First she sought Ryk at his wagon to remind him of what he had promised her two years ago … “We were children then,” he said.

“But you told me.”

“Things have happened.”

“But you told me,” she repeated, clutching at his hand, and when he tried to pull away, she grabbed at him. She wanted him, desperately she wanted him, terrified by the prospect of returning to isolated De Kraal for another span of years, after which she might be too old to catch herself a husband.

Ryk, at eighteen, had never experienced anything like this, for Aletta had permitted him only to hold her hand; he became so confused he did not know what to do, but his mother came up, deduced what was happening, and said calmly, “Hello, Minna. Hadn’t you better be joining your parents?”

“Ryk said that he—”

“Minna,” Mevrouw Naudé said, “you’d better go—now.”

“But he promised—”

“Minna! Go home!” And she thrust the bewildered child away.

The following days were torment. In church Minna, like her father, stared at Aletta, and one evening as service ended she followed the girl to her father’s store and confronted her: “Ryk Naudé is promised to me.”

“Minna, don’t be foolish. Ryk and I are going to be married.”

“No! He told me …”

“Whatever he told you,” Aletta said with a sweetness that would have mollified anyone else, “was two years ago. You were children, and now he’s a man and he’s going to marry me.”

“I won’t let you!” Minna cried, her voice rising so sharply that Mjinheer Probenius came out from his shop to see his daughter being assaulted by a strange girl much her junior in years.

“What goes on here?” he cried, and when it became apparent that the girls were fighting over a man, he laughed heartily and said, “You
ask me, that Ryk’s not worth the trouble. You’d both be better off without him.”

Placing his arms about the two girls, he sat with them, telling Minna, “You can’t be more than thirteen. In Holland, where I came from, girls don’t marry till they’re twenty. Minna, you have seven years.”

“Not in the wilderness. And Ryk promised me …”

“Men promise a lot of things,” Probenius said. “In Holland right now are three girls I promised to marry when I returned home to Haarlem. And here I am in Graaff-Reinet with a daughter sixteen years old who’s to be married on Tuesday.”

“Married!” Minna cried, and she dissolved into tears, the shattering, soul-wrenching tears of a little girl striving to act like a woman.

To her surprise, Probenius took her round, tear-spattered face in his two hands, brought it up, and kissed it. “Minna, this world is full of young men who need a wife like you.”

“Not in the wilderness,” she repeated stubbornly as Probenius got her to her feet, saying, “Let’s no one speak of this.” And he gently moved her along toward her parents’ wagon.

Of course, everyone spoke of it, and when Tjaart reported at the store to dicker about the exchange of his sheep for a new wagon, he found Probenius, a man somewhat older than himself, disturbed that gossip should have struck so hard at little Minna: “She’s a fine child, Van Doorn, and I’m sorry this has happened. But she’ll find a host of young men.”

“Her heart was set on Ryk. What kind of fellow is he?”

“The usual. Talks big. Acts little.”

“Are you happy with him?”

“Are parents ever happy with anyone?”

“Aletta’s an impressive girl.”

“I sometimes fear for her. Back in Haarlem she’d be all right. Many young men to court her, for she is pretty. But also many young women just as attractive to break her heart now and then.”

“How are things in Holland?”

“Like everywhere, confused.”

“Will you go back?”

“Me? Leave paradise for those cold winters?” He came from behind his counter and stood with Tjaart. “They warned us that after Jan Compagnie gave your land to the English, no Dutchman from
Holland would be welcomed here. We came anyway. You should give thanks every day that you live in this wonderland.”

In trading, Probenius was a hard man, which accounted for his conspicuous success, but Tjaart was equally difficult, which explained his successful farm. At the end of the Friday negotiation no agreement had even been approached: Tjaart had some of the finest sheep Graaff-Reinet had seen, and Probenius had a new wagon superior in every way to what Van Doorn had been using.