The Covenant by James A. Michener
Jopie was different. Well under six feet, he was built like a Roman wall, one massive building block set down upon another. He was broad, in all respects. He had a wide face and very wide mouth from which massive square teeth showed. His shoulders and hips were enormous, for although he was much shorter than Frikkie, he was also much heavier, but what startled Philip was the fact that Jopie had no neck. As with many of the historic rugby forwards, Fanie Louw and Frik du Preez among them, Jopie Troxel’s head was set square upon his shoulders, giving his body a battering-ram quality which he used to powerful effect, but in no way was he a gross or insensitive person, and he had in the middle of his chin a deep dimple which quivered when he laughed. His humor was robust, and it was obvious that Sannie van Doorn appreciated it.
Her father had introduced Frikkie; she took charge of Jopie: ‘This is my dear friend, who wears his hair forward, like Julius Caesar, and that isn’t the only thing forward about him.’ With a massive right hand Jopie grabbed Philip’s and said, ‘Did Jimmy Carter and Andy Young send you over here to tell us how to run our country?’
Philip stiffened. ‘I came to find diamonds.’
‘Finding any?’
‘No. You damned people keep everything hidden.’
‘We’d better,’ Jopie said, ‘or you and the English would steal it.’
‘How was the border?’ Marius asked, aware that these three young men were behaving like bulls caught up in the heat of spring. He suspected that daughter Sannie was about to experience a difficult spell.
Frikkie dropped into a chair and accepted the beer that Sannie brought. ‘It’s rotten work. You patrol fifteen days in the bush and see maybe one terrorist. Ta-ta-ta-ta. He’s gone, but you know there’s a dozen back there somewhere.’
‘But we’re holding our own?’
‘Definitely. There’s this Kaffir from here, this Jonathan Nxumalo. He issues a threat now and then on Radio Maputo, as you know. Going to storm Johannesburg. But he’s damned sure to stay clear of our patrols.’
‘You mean there was real fighting?’ Sannie asked.
‘Whenever the black bastards gave us a chance,’ Jopie said.
‘How long were you at the border?’ Philip asked, and Jopie looked at his cousin to check whether this was privileged information.
‘Six months. It’s our obligation.’
‘We certainly missed you on the team,’ Marius said, hoping to change the conversation, but Philip asked, ‘How long can this go on? I mean, with so many young men taken out of productive work?’
‘You ask two questions which only an American would ask,’ Frikkie said sharply. ‘How long? As if everything had to be completed in a hurry. We can guard our borders for the next hundred years. And is it productive? No, it isn’t, in the sense of making things at a factory. But what could possibly be more productive than protecting one’s country?’
‘That subject is closed,’ Marius said. ‘Now tell me, how soon can you men get back into shape for the big matches facing us?’
‘On the border,’ Jopie said, ‘you’re always in shape. I could play Saturday.’
‘Do you mean that?’
‘Me, too,’ Frikkie said, and when Philip looked at the young commandos he knew that they were telling the truth.
The game was against a team from Bloemfontein, and when the Troxels ran onto the field the crowd cheered wildly, for newspapers had hinted at their exploits at the frontier. They displayed the poetic abandon for which they had been famous, but they lost, rather badly, as a matter of fact, 23–9. They did have a great time and in the drinking bouts after the game they smashed a few windows.
When they returned to Vrymeer, there was serious talk as to what they might be doing in the future, and as Philip listened he learned to his surprise that they were suited only for farming. Frikkie had been to the university at Potchefstroom but had learned nothing of practical value, nor much of anything else, while Jopie had shown no interest in going beyond high school. Their two families, offshoots of the Troxels whom Detleef van Doorn had rescued from the slums of Vrededorp, had not acquired much land, so that both boys could not look forward to farming their own fields, but they were capable, and Marius suggested, to Philip’s dismay, that they think seriously of assuming responsibility for the extensive acres at Vrymeer. Logically, this would imply that one of them should marry the Van Doorn daughter, and this each was eager to do.
Sannie’s intentions were not entirely clear. She was more than fond of her American geologist; her excursions with him had been instructive to her, too, and some of the nights in Kruger Park rondavels or country hotels had been rapturous. He was by no means an improbable suitor, for many South African girls of her generation had breathed sighs of salvation when their marriages carried them away from this turbulent cauldron; she had personal friends who proposed to spend the rest of their lives in places like Toronto and the University of Southern California, and those who wrote spoke often of homesickness for the veld, but more often of the freedom they enjoyed in their adopted homes. She could be happy in Texas and at times had a positive longing to see it.
Also, she might be tempted to emigrate with Saltwood because she was sometimes painfully reminded of her mixed heritage. Her father had sprung from impeccable Afrikaner roots but had gone whoring after a Rhodes scholarship, and in so doing, had acquired an English wife. This killed his eligibility for membership in the Broederbond, nor had he been selected an elder in the local church. Mrs. van Doorn was openly pro-English, but Sannie felt no attachment whatever to England and had refused two opportunities to spend vacations there.
As she matured, she found herself becoming more and more an Afrikaner. She understood why Frikkie and Jopie were willing to serve on the border, and she shared their love of this land. She had known these young men all her life, had played with them as a child, and felt she could be happy with either of them on this enchanting farm with its tumbling lakes and wild blesbok. Which of the cousins she preferred she could not say, for up to now she had never been required to choose between them.
There was one further complication. She was almost in love with Philip Saltwood. Intuitively she sensed that he was a finer-grained human being than the Troxel boys, a man who was going to take life seriously. Besides, she had enjoyed sharing a bed with him. For the time being she postponed divisions, trusting that things would sort themselves out.
They were in the kitchen drinking beer and telling Van der Merwe stories. Frikkie said, ‘Van der Merwe and two rascals from Krugersdorp went to Paris to hold up a bank. But on the way to the job, Van der Merwe dropped the dynamite and the three were arrested. All of them sentenced to the guillotine. But when the knife came thundering down on the first man, it stuck and he was miraculously spared. French law declared him free. So the second man was strapped down, and again the knife came roaring down and again it jammed. He was set free. Now came Van der Merwe’s turn, and he was so curious about what had happened that he looked up as they laid him on the plank, and just as the executioner was about to pull the lever that released the knife, Van der Merwe shouts, “Hold everything! I see what’s wrong with this crazy machine!” ’
Jopie said, ‘Van der Merwe, as you know, always had a low opinion of Englishmen, and one day he watched in disgust as three of them spent more than two hours digging a hole for a fence post and setting it in the ground. “Lazy bastards! Two hours for a job like that. I could do that by myself in fifteen minutes, you give me nine Kaffirs.” ’
‘Jopie!’ Sannie warned. ‘Government says we’re not to call them Kaffirs any longer. The legal word now is Plural.’
Frikkie said, ‘You know what Van der Merwe calls a Bushman rock painting? Under the new law, that is. “A rural plural mural.” ’
Jopie said, ‘You know what Van der Merwe says to a Kaffir holding a machine gun? “Good morning, Baas.” ’
Frikkie said, ‘Van der Merwe had a flagpole lying on the ground. He propped it in its hole, got a ladder and a tape
Jopie said, ‘Speaking of width. Air France sent out its top pilot to see if Van der Merwe was ready to fly to Paris and London. Van der Merwe made one of the greatest landings in aviation history—his 747 touched down at the front edge of the tarmac … screamed to a braking stop, its front wheels three inches from the other end of the landing surface. “Absolutely magnifique!” the Air France inspector said. “This man is ready for any airport in the world. But tell me, why does South Africa make its runways so short?” “I can’t explain it,” Van der Merwe said. “And look at the crazy thing. It’s almost five miles wide.” ’
Koos van der Merwe was the prototypical Afrikaner boob on whom all jokes about rural stupidity and childlike simplicity were hung. Everyone had his favorite, so that a session like this could run for hours, with an endless chain of hilarious insights into the stolid Afrikaner mind. It was interesting, Philip thought, that most of the jokes were told by Afrikaners themselves, and not by Englishmen, although he had discovered, from several such affairs, that any really ugly jokes were usually told by the latter.
After Frikkie, Jopie and Sannie had each reeled off half a dozen stories, some of them very rough on their fellow Afrikaners, they turned to Philip and asked him what his favorite was. ‘I rather fancy one I heard at the diggings. “What do the numbers 1066, 1492 and 1812 have in common?” ’ When Sannie pointed out that they were dates important in history, Philip replied, ‘Wrong. They’re adjoining rooms in Van der Merwe’s motel.’ Then he asked, ‘Why do you tell such jokes?’ and each of the three had a sensible explanation. Frikkie felt that any people who were essentially rural took refuge in two kinds of comedy: ‘Barnyard-sexual, and the Afrikaners have some very funny stories in that style, and country-bumpkin. In the first we’re laughing at the dominee and the domination of the church. In the second we’re laughing at ourselves. You hear the same jokes in each category, I’m quite sure, in rural Germany … or Norway.’
Jopie had quite another theory: ‘We know that the Englishmen laugh at us. So we beat them to the punch and do it better.’
Sannie thought otherwise: ‘We do it out of affection. Every one of us has in his family somewhere a Koos van der Merwe. He never comes exactly into focus. But we love him just the same. How many pieces in Van der Merwe’s jigsaw puzzle? Two.’
When Sannie said this, Jopie broke into wild laughter, quite out of proportion to the merits of the joke. Frikkie looked at him and asked, ‘Have you gone bonkers?’
‘No! I just happened to think of something terribly funny.’ When the other three turned to stare at him, he said, ‘I was in Pretoria when Andy Young and two of his assistants from the State Department were there making speeches and giving interviews about the rights of blacks in South Africa. And I burst into laughter.’
‘Why?’ Saltwood asked defensively. ‘Sometimes Young makes sense.’
‘Granted. But not that day. Because it suddenly occurred to me, when I had a chance to look at him, to see him … You know, he’s not black at all. Neither of his two aides were black. I’ve never seen a black American. Everyone who comes here is Coloured.’ Here he broke into convulsive laughter, and after a moment Frikkie joined him. The two athletes punched each other and almost gagged on their merriment.
‘I don’t get it,’ Philip said.
‘Don’t you see?’ Sannie explained as her two suitors tried to control their raucous behavior. ‘If Andy Young and your other black leaders in America lived in South Africa, and if they got their way—one-man, one-vote— and the blacks took over, the very first people to be done in would be Andy Young and his gang.’
‘Now wait!’ Philip snapped. As a loyal American, he felt obligated to defend President Carter and former Ambassador Young when they were attacked, which in South Africa was almost daily. ‘I don’t approve of Andy when he shoots from the hip, but on basic African policy he makes sense.’
‘How could he?’ Frikkie asked. ‘One-man, one-vote?’
‘I mean his view of the continent as a whole. There are three million Afrikaners at most. Three hundred million blacks at least. Should we support you few against so many?’
‘Of course you should, since our interests are the same as your interests,’ Frikkie said.
‘But what was your point about Young being in danger?’
‘My dear stupid American,’ Frikkie said, winking at Jopie. ‘Don’t you know that Zulu, Xhosa, Fingo, Pondo—all of them—dislike Coloureds even more than they dislike whites?’
‘Why?’
‘Because they feel that when decisions are made, Coloureds will side with whites. They’re seen as traitors to the black cause.’
Jopie broke in: ‘You may have heard. When the blacks rioted at Paarl. Quite a few dead. The Coloureds didn’t raise a finger to help. Believe me, Philip, when the crunch comes, Andy Young would be in a lot more danger than me. The blacks know they’ll need men like me to help organize their new world. But they’ll have no place whatever for Andy Young and his light-skinned Coloureds.’
Frikkie became quite serious: ‘We’ve watched this in many former English colonies. When the natives assume power, they ostracize the lightskins … if they don’t slaughter them. The reason’s simple. “If we must do business with people other than ourselves, let’s do it with the best of the lot, the real white people.” The Coloureds in this land—how many of them? Three million, perhaps. They have no future except with us. So if your Ambassador Young wishes to help his kind, he better come to Jopie and me and say, “Afrikaners, save me!” because the blacks will do him in.’
Jopie broke the tension by tickling Sannie under the chin as she finished her beer. ‘You know, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an American black. I wonder if anyone in South Africa ever has. We made a big to-do over Arthur Ashe, and the rock musicians, and what not. But when the crunch comes, everyone like them will be dead. Because there’ll be no place for those cats in the new South Africa.’
Sannie said, ‘Would you like a Van der Merwe cocktail? Perrier and water?’
It was language, which tyrannizes us all, that converted Laura Saltwood into a major criminal. It began accidentally during a trip home to England; she had stopped at a store in Salisbury and the shopkeeper had said, ‘I can’t deliver it today, Mrs. Saltwood. My temp didn’t report.’
‘Your what?’
‘My temp. The boy who comes in occasionally.’
On her way back to Sentinels she used a footpath through the cathedral grounds, and as she glanced about her she thought: How we English do corrupt our language. Mr. Dixon has a temp. I go to the hairdresser’s for a perm. My cousin leaves the telly, goes to the fridge to get herself a snack of meat and veg. How awful.
In succeeding days she paid extra attention to what was being said around her, and heard such words as perks for perquisites, grungey for objectionable, grotty for distasteful, and what was probably the ugliest verbal invention of all time, brolly for umbrella.
When she spoke about this debasement with her cousin she noticed approvingly the precise English pattern of Lady Ellen’s speech: ‘Mustn’t be put off by the odd bit of verbal invention, must we?’
‘I was thinking of how the Dutch language deteriorated at the Cape. Became quite debased, you know.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder if they’d done a good thing, Laura. Mark you, languages change. You say the Afrikaners blotted their copy book. I say they’ve kept up with the times, and a good thing, too.’
‘But there’s a grandeur about language. I don’t like to see it cheapened.’
‘The odd bit of improvement never hurt any language. I relish some of the changes the Americans have made. Mortician’s a delightful word. Custodian’s much higher-toned t
‘It offends me to see signs in my dress shop which say, “Wear U get tru value,” and in Afrikaans, “U is welkom.” I may sound chauvinistic, but they seem silly.’
Since Lady Ellen knew nothing of Afrikaans, Laura dropped the subject, but three nights later when they drove north to see the Oxford Players do King Lear at Stonehenge, and the great monoliths glowed somberly in the night shadows, she surrendered to the glories of Shakespeare and actually trembled when the old King, huddling against the darkest pillars, shared his pity with those less fortunate:
‘Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?’
It seemed to her that words could not be more glorious, and later, when the young man tried to frighten the crazy blind Earl of Gloucester by describing the cliff and the workman climbing perilously down its face, she sighed with the terrible power of the words:
‘How fearful
And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire—dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head …’
Unaware of the dangerous path she was treading, she sat there in the shadow of Stonehenge and gave herself over to the magic of great-fashioned words hurled into the night and became drunk on them, and when old Lear at the end confessed his weakness, she had tears in her eyes from suffering with him: