The Covenant (93 page)

Ironically, it was Van Doorn’s oldest slave who announced the long-awaited decision on slavery. “Baas, Baas!” he cried. “Die big baas Cuyler, he here.” And that remarkable man from Albany, New York, Colonel Jacob Glen Cuyler, strode heavily into the De Kraal farmhouse. The two men with him did not presume to enter, but remained respectfully outside: Saul, the Xhosa deacon at Golan, and Pieter, son of Dikkop. The first was old and gray, the second hastening in that direction.

They were at the first stage of an incredible venture: Cuyler had fetched them from the mission village and was taking them to Port Elizabeth, whence they would go by ship to London as guests of Dr. Simon Keer, who wanted them to participate in one of his grand lecture tours. Hesitant about entering the home of a Boer, they would be entertained at Buckingham Palace.

Colonel Cuyler, now a respected magistrate and soon to be a lieutenant-general, had a message which was brief and shocking: “Parliament have passed a law that says all slaves will be emancipated next year. On December 31, 1834, every slave in the empire will be freed.”

“Good God!” Tjaart cried. “That’s revolution!”

“Oh, you’ll be compensated, fully. Every penny you spent. And the slaves must work for you during the first four years, so they can move in an orderly way into their freedom.”

Cuyler saluted and departed. For three days the Van Doorns and their neighbors discussed the new laws, and at the end of that time they still could not grasp the full meaning of this radical change—that it defined a whole new way of life—and to their surprise it was not any of the men who saw clearly the new landscape, but Jakoba van Doorn, the quiet, unlettered woman who had been ignored both at Nachtmaal and in these discussions. Now she spoke with fierce determination: “The Bible says that the sons of Ham shall work for us and be our slaves. The Bible says there shall be a proper difference between master and slave. The Bible says we shall keep apart, His people to themselves, the Canaanites to themselves. I have never struck a slave. I have always tended my slaves and my Coloureds when they were sick. And I think I have shown that I love them. But I do not want them at my table and I do not like the sight of them in my church. For God has ordered me to live otherwise.”

Driven by her forcefulness, the illiterate men urged Tjaart to consult the Bible, desiring to hear for themselves what the strictures of good Christian life ought to be, and he found and recited those satisfying passages upon which their social order was so securely founded:

After he had read a dozen such passages, which proved conclusively that God had ordained and blessed the institution of slavery, Jakoba, a woman fierce in righteousness, demanded that he seek further for two verses which predikants had explained to her, for upon them she based her belief that the Boers were special people, set free by God to behave in their own special way. After some searching in Leviticus, a book whose laws governed Boer life, Tjaart uttered the statement:

“See,” Jakoba cried with grim satisfaction, “God Himself wanted us to be apart. We have special obligations, special privileges.” And she urged her husband to uncover that particular verse on which she hung the main body of her belief. He could not find it, and with some impatience she riffled the large pages of the book she could not read, then pushed the Bible back to Tjaart, with the command: “Find it. It deals with tribute.”

It was this word that reminded Tjaart of a passage in Judges dealing with the establishment of Israel in a new land—an exact parallel to the situation of the Boers—and with a good deal of useless help from the men, he finally located what Jakoba wanted to hear:

“And that,” said Jakoba, “is how it should be. We have conquered the land. We live here. We are to be just to the Kaffirs, but they are tribute to us.”

“The English say that’s all done for.”

“The English know nothing about Kaffirs,” Jakoba said. She was a small woman, daughter of a trekboer who had defended his land eleven times against black marauders, and in the harshness of her family’s hut she had learned the principles by which a Christian lives, and to such a life she was committed. She was honest, hard-working, a good mother both to her own daughter and to Tjaart’s children by his first marriage, and although she could not attend church each Sunday, for the nearest was many miles away, she did hold personal services in which she thanked God for His merciful guidance. What He wanted in the matter of relationships between white masters and black slaves was so clear that an idiot could understand, and she proposed that she, her family and her nation obey those precepts.

“We will not abide by English laws,” she said as she left the men, “if they run counter to the word of God,” and when she was gone, Tjaart called after her, “What have you in mind?” and from the kitchen she replied, “Leave here. Go over the mountains and form a nation of our own.”

•  •  •

Late one morning as Tjaart returned from inspecting his flock he was alarmed to find five horses tethered at his house, and he assumed that new troubles had erupted on the frontier: “Damn! Another commando!”

But when he entered the kitchen he found no sense of urgency. Five neighbors were drinking gin and joking with Jakoba and Minna as the two brought large platters of food. “Veldkornet!” the men cried noisily as Tjaart entered, and there was ribald joking as to why he had been absent when they arrived.

Leader of the group was Balthazar Bronk, a man Tjaart instinctively distrusted. Bronk endeavored to be two quite different persons at the same time: with superiors he was obsequious; with others he tried to dominate in various pompous ways; and sometimes he was downright objectionable. He could never be simply Balthazar Bronk, farmer.

“Veldkornet,” he said humbly as Tjaart reached for a glass of gin. “We’ve come to enlist your services.”

“No commando. I’m tired of fighting those damned Xhosa.”

The men laughed, for they knew that the first man to saddle up if trouble came would be Van Doorn, but Bronk continued: “We’re worried, Veldkornet. With English rule—”

“Stop right there!” Van Doorn snapped, slamming his two hands down on the table. “The English are in command, and slowly they’re learning to do things right. Accept them.”

“Exactly what I said,” Bronk cried eagerly, and when he looked to the others for confirmation, they nodded. Then he coughed, adjusted things on the table, and went on: “Under English rule our children will have to know more—to compete, to make us proud.”

Tjaart could not guess what would come next, but a quiet member of the group said, “You’re the only one of us who can read. None of our children can read—”

“We need a teacher,” Bronk interrupted. “Find us a teacher.”

“Who would pay him?” Tjaart asked cautiously.

“All of us. We have so many children.”

A census was taken, and when the numbers were announced they gave a good picture of Boer life: “Eleven, nine, nine, seven.” And proudly Bronk declared: “Seventeen.”

“You mean they all want to go to school?”

“Only the young ones,” Bronk said. “Six of mine are married.” Then he smiled unctuously at Tjaart and said, “You have how many?”

Tjaart swigged on his gin, then said, “First wife, two boys. They’re past schooling, but they have children. Jakoba, tell them how many you have.”

Wiping her hands on her apron, she said, “Minna here.”

Five heads turned toward the girl, who blushed deeply, for she could see that they were thinking: Why isn’t she married?

“Mejuffrouw Minna is not for school,” Bronk said with a wide smile, and the others returned to the task of finding a master, and as expected, Tjaart was of help: “At Nachtmaal, I was speaking with Theunis Nel …”

Bronk groaned. “We want a real teacher. Not a squint-eye.”

Another said, “We must have a school. Go see him, Van Doorn.”

When Tjaart reined his horse at the northern farm of Gerrit Viljoen, he was astonished by what the owner said: “Welcome! Have you come to talk with us about emigrating north?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Six wagons passed here the other day. Men like you and me.”

“Why would you go north?”

“Freedom.”

“I’m staying where I am.”

“I’d expect you to. All those good stone buildings.”

“They are good,” Tjaart agreed, not catching the challenge to his worldliness.

“You might have to reach a decision sooner than you think, Tjaart.”

“Why?”

“Freedom. Boers love freedom. And ours is being stolen from us.”

“Gerrit,” Tjaart said abruptly. “I came here to steal your schoolmaster.”

“No complaint from me. He’s about done his job at these farms.”

“Do you recommend him?”

“I do. I do. Knows his numbers. Knows his Bible.”

“Have I your permission to speak with him?”

“I’d be relieved if he found a good job.” He paused. “A man so ill-favored needs help.”

Viljoen dispatched a slave to fetch the itinerant teacher, and when Tjaart saw the man again—crookbackt, and almost fifty years old—he shuddered: This man could never teach! But when he consulted the families, he found that all spoke of Nel with affection. One
mother said, “He’s small and he has a high voice, but he’s a man of God,” and the oldest Viljoen boy said, “Any of us in class could have whipped him, but he kept order.”

“How?”

“He told us that Jesus was a teacher, too, and we listened.”

That night Tjaart offered Nel the job, and the little man wiped his watery eye and blessed him. “But if I handle the children well, will you ask the predikant to ordain me?”

“Theunis,” Van Doorn said as if talking with a child, although the schoolmaster was older than he, “you’ll never be a dominee. I’ve told you that. We need you as a schoolmaster.”

“How many children?”

“Thirty, maybe.” Tjaart was afraid this might sound like too many, but Nel smiled broadly.

“It’s better when there’s lots. Then the school doesn’t end too soon.”

“How many schools have you conducted?”

“Eleven.” Quickly he added, “I was never discharged. The children grew up and I moved on.” He looked at the two farmers. “I move on,” he said.

During Tjaart’s absence it had been agreed that the new master, if found, would live with Balthazar Bronk and his many children, but when Jakoba heard of the arrangement she snorted: “No charity there. Bronk wants him to help discipline the children. They’re rhinoceroses.” And when Nel saw where he was to domicile, he, too, understood.

Bronk’s farm lay nine miles east of De Kraal and proved quite suitable; it was central to the participating families, and had a small whitewashed storage shed that could be converted into a schoolroom. Here Theunis collected his thirty-three youngsters to teach the alphabet, the Bible and the counting tables. Nel had only the slightest knowledge of history, literature, geography and such related subjects, so he did not presume to teach them, but whatever he did attempt carried a heavy overlay of moral instruction.

“Bronk, Dieter. Stand and recite the First Psalm.” After the oafish lad had stumbled through, Nel would ask, “Bronk, Dieter, suppose you walked in the counsel of the ungodly. What would you be doing?”

“I don’t know, Master.”

“You would be breaking commandments.” And here Nel would launch into a small sermon about not lying, not stealing, not coveting another man’s wife; though forbidden to deliver large sermons in church, he was free to deliver small ones in school.

All his pupils, age five to fourteen, met in one squarish room furnished only with benches, and often the school seemed more riot than rote, but patiently Nel established order, and with various groups sequestered in odd corners, he taught first the five-to-seven, then the eight-to-eleven, then the twelve-to-fourteen, but the best part came each morning at eleven and each afternoon at three, for then he assembled the students in one big group. In the morning he discussed the Bible, especially the Book of Joshua, which proved that God had chosen the Boers for some special task; in the afternoon he taught Dutch, or rather, the semi-Dutch of the frontier. He was a lively actor and would tell his children, “I can speak English as well as anyone at Graaff-Reinet.” And here he would become a magistrate or a Scots minister, offering a fairly garbled English. “But when I am a true man, I speak Dutch. Learn this manly language. Hold on to it.”

In a year of Nel’s teaching a child might learn what he or she could have mastered in two weeks at a real school, but would certainly learn a wealth of moral instruction which children in better schools never acquired.

He had one weakness as a schoolmaster, and the farmers who employed him could not correct it. “I am,” he told them, “first and last a sick-comforter,” and if anyone in the region fell ill or approached death, he felt obligated to appear at the bedside. This meant that his school went unattended, and for this he was rebuked, but he told Balthazar Bronk, “God has two concerns in the Graaff-Reinet district. That his young people get started right on their journey through life. That his old people get started right on their journey to heaven. In both instances I am the teacher.”

He was indeed a sick-comforter. With dying men he recalled their vigorous contributions to Boer society; with women he reminded them of the essential role they played in producing and rearing good people. He made the termination of life respectable, proper, inevitable, a thing to be as much appreciated as a beginning: “You have seen the meadows fill with grain. You have seen six cattle multiply to sixty-six. These have been the signs of a good life, and through them God has marked you for salvation.”