The Covenant (140 page)

“You are a Boer!” De Groot said.

“They keep telling us at school we’re not Boers any longer. We’re not fighting anybody …”

“We’re always fighting the English,” De Groot said. “In your lifetime we will never stop.”

Detlev returned to the jellies: “Each color in its own level. Order. Neatness.” He had found the guiding secret of life. “We’re Afrikaners, that nice clean color on top.”

“That’s the way it should be,” De Groot said, and that week he launched his campaign to get rid of Mr. Amberson as the Venloo teacher. He had learned to like the Englishman and told him so openly, but he also felt that the time had come for the education of Boer boys … “Afrikaner boys deserve Afrikaner men to teach them.” He liked this Afrikaner business. It bespoke the true heritage of his people. They were not Englishmen, and God knows they were not Dutch. They were men and women of Africa, and the word carried crisp meaning.

Mr. Amberson reacted as one would expect: “I think you have a legitimate concern, General de Groot. Besides, you should be bringing up a generation of your own teachers. I’ve been offered two appointments to the English schools in Grahamstown. My rugby training, you know.”

Even when public meetings were convened to discuss the neccessity of dismissing him, he continued with rugby games, striving in his final weeks to instill his boys with the abiding principles of sportsmanship: “Don’t crybaby … A tooth can be replaced … Be gallant when you win and extend your hand to the man who played opposite you … Fight to the very last second, then give a cheer for the goodness of the game … Be manly … If the other man is bigger, you be more clever … The goal is to win … Always you must win … You must drive for that score … But there are rules you dare not break in trying to score … Be manly …”

In the grand exhibition prior to his departure he was about as capable as a stand-off halfback could be, diving straight into the biggest bully on the town team and being knocked so silly that when he got the ball he ran in the wrong direction. In his farewell speech he paid resounding tribute to General de Groot: “Just as this noble captain led his men through every difficulty, so our team has fought
against all the odds presented by bigger schools and heavier opponents. To General de Groot I give my fullest admiration. He is the spirit of Venloo. To my boys I give the eternal challenge. Be manly.”

It was the consensus that this small town had been lucky in having this scrawny Englishman in the period of transition. He had helped make boys into men, Boers into Afrikaners, and former enemies into relaxed allies.

The week after he departed, the new schoolmaster appeared, a young man of much different stamp. He was Piet Krause, graduate of the new college at Potchefstroom, which would become the most Afrikaner of the universities, and he let it be known on his first day that the nonsense about instruction in English was ended. To the delight of the local farmers, this tense, crop-headed young fellow announced: “The spirit of a nation is expressed in its language. This nation is destined to be Afrikaner. Therefore, its language must be Afrikaans.” This was the first time that word had been used in Venloo, and when he saw the confusion on the faces before him, he explained: “Just as we have created a new people in this cauldron, steeped in Slagter’s Nek, Blood River and Majuba, so we are building a new language, simpler than the old, cleaner, easier to use. It’s our language now, and with it we shall conquer. One day we shall give thanks for this victory, using our own Bible in our language, the Afrikaans Bible.”

General de Groot applauded all but the last sentence; he was not sure that the Bible should be in any language other than Dutch: “That’s the way God handed it down to us. Those are the words He used when He spoke to us. He gave us our covenant in Dutch, and we should keep it that way.”

He and others like him raised such a howl about printing the Bible in anything but pristine Dutch that the project was dropped, nationally, but not in Venloo. Krause rode out from Venloo to meet with the Vrymeer people, and told them, “We must eliminate all areas in which we are subservient. No more English, except what the law demands. No more Dutch. All the damned Hollanders thrown on a ship and sent back to Amsterdam. We are Afrikaners, and whether General de Groot likes it or not, one of these days we’ll have our own Bible.”

He spoke with such force, and in defense of a program so needed in this community, that Johanna van Doorn listened with growing joy. This was what she believed. Her liking for Mr. Amberson had
been physical only; spiritually she had been repelled by his Englishness. But here was a fiery young man whose eye was on the future, the only future that made any sense for South Africa.

She resumed taking Detlev to school on Monday mornings, arriving even earlier than she had in those first tender days with Mr. Amberson, and she came with a firmness Detlev had not seen before. Her eyes glowed as she supported the new teacher in all he attempted, and three times she invited him to Vrymeer for long discussions and good boboties. “I think Mr. Krause has lost the battle,” Detlev joked one night after the schoolteacher had left for Venloo. Johanna, disregarding his teasing, said nothing, and during Krause’s next visit at the lake, Detlev himself fell under the spell of this dynamic man.

“What we must have in this country,” he cried with expanding excitement, “is a system of order. Indians, Coloureds, blacks, all in their proper place, all obedient to the wise laws we pass. And I don’t want Englishmen passing them, either. I want Afrikaners in all positions of decision.” When Detlev heard these words he realized that Mr. Krause, starting from his own experiences, had discovered the principle which he, Detlev, had seen in the glass of jellies. They both believed in discipline and the ascendancy of the Afrikaner Volk.

“What was that?” General de Groot asked when Detlev first used the phrase in the kitchen.

“Mr. Krause uses it all the time. It means the People, the secret force of the Race that makes us different from the English or the Kaffir.”

“I like that word,” De Groot said, and soon he was speaking about the mission of the Afrikaner Volk.

Detlev was not surprised when at the end of only five weeks Mr. Krause came nervously to the kitchen to inform the men: “Johanna and I seek to marry. I know she’s four years older, but we love each other. We have work to do, and I ask your permission.” It was granted—by the general, by her father, and most enthusiastically by her brother.

The wedding ceremony was performed by a newcomer to the community, a man who added much to the quality of Venloo. He was the Reverend Barend Brongersma, a graduate of Stellenbosch, the prestigious university of the Cape, and a most excellent young man. He was thirty-one when he took over the Venloo church, tallish, well
proportioned, with very black hair and deep-set eyes to match. His outstanding characteristic was a resonant voice which he had carefully cultivated so that it could range downward from a high, impassioned plea to a thundering middle accusation to a solid reassuring affirmation. It was obvious, when one heard him preach, that he gave much thought to his sermons and that he was a young man who would surely go far in the management of the South African church. He spoke with great conviction, outlining his arguments so that anyone could follow, and buttressing them so firmly that everyone had to agree. He was as fine a predikant as the Dutch Reformed Church offered in this period, and his stay in Venloo would be limited, for he would be needed in some larger community.

He was married to a woman much like himself: solid good looks, eager, a winning smile, and unafraid to say what she thought. They made an impressive couple, and the three men at Vrymeer were pleased to have them in Venloo.

It was customary now to speak of three men at the farm, because Detlev was growing into such a hefty young fellow that he was assigned a position in the forward line at rugby, where his weight and more than ordinary strength would prove an advantage. Several times his father had said, “Detlev, you’re built just like your grandfather Tjaart. He was a strong man.” There had been a photograph of the old man, with belt and suspenders, tight-trimmed beard from ear to chin, flat black hat, staring straight ahead; it had gone in the flames, but Detlev could remember it and hoped that one day he would look the same.

Venloo had now fallen solidly into place as the prototype of a small Afrikaner community: it had in General de Groot its hero of past wars; in Piet Krause, a fiery teacher who wanted to remold the world; in Dominee Brongersma, a charismatic predikant who could both instruct and censure; and in Detlev van Doorn, the typical young lad of promise. At times it seemed that all the forces of this community conspired to make this boy more intelligent, more dedicated.

At the moment his brother-in-law, Piet Krause, had the greatest influence, for Detlev tended to see society through this vibrant young man’s eyes. Once, coming over the hill, Piet stopped their carriage, looked ahead at the broken farm occupied by General de Groot, and began to rant: “Never forget that scene, Detlev! A man who led us in battle living like the swine, forgotten, unloved, a castaway.”

“He wants to live that way,” Detlev explained. “Every year Father
asks him to move in with us. He says he likes the old place, the old ways.”

“But look at him, a great hero forgotten.” When the teacher spoke like this to De Groot, the old man laughed. “Detlev’s right. I like it this way. You should have seen how we lived on the trek.” He told of his family on that last evening when he elected to stay with the Van Doorns, and thus escaped being killed by Mzilikazi’s men. “Halt the wagon. Spread some blankets. Draw a canvas out from the wagon. Three poles to form a kind of tent. Go to sleep, and have your throats cut before morning. That’s how we lived.”

“General,” Krause said with brimming emotion, “Johanna and I want you to come in town and live with us.”

“Oh, no! You two would be arguing with me all the time. I’m happy where I am. If I get hungry, I come over to Jakob, here.”

The Vrymeer farm, with no white woman in attendance now that Johanna was married, faced problems which were solved when Micah Nxumalo and two of his wives moved back from the old general’s place. This did not leave De Groot bereft, for two younger black women looked after him. Five rondavels existed again at Vrymeer, looking much as they had for the past fifty years, and they were occupied by some twenty blacks, half of whom had drifted up from Zululand. They worked at the farm, but it was Nxumalo who remained in charge.

With Van Doorn’s encouragement he had patiently coaxed a herd of blesbok, more than sixty of them, to lodge permanently beside the three lakes. A stranger coming to the farm would see these handsome animals, white blazes gleaming in sunlight, and think that they had wandered in from the veld, but as day waned and they stayed fairly close to the house, he would realize that they lived here. How beautiful Vrymeer was, with the blesbok and the fattening Herefords and the eucalypts attaining enough height to form tall hedges, and sunlight falling across the lakes.

Four or five times a year Van Doorn harvested one or two of the older blesbok, turning the meat over to Nxumalo’s wives for making biltong, and this seemed to help the herd rather than hurt it. Van Doorn usually shot unwanted bucks, but with such care that the other members of the herd scarcely knew that a shot had been fired. Certainly he never stampeded them, for he loved these beasts and felt that they helped tie him and De Groot more tightly to the soil of their ancestors. Nxumalo felt the same.

Piet Krause saw it as his duty to keep the farm and the town of Venloo at the center of Transvaal activity; he forced everyone to follow with careful attention everything that happened, and was always ready to explain its significance. On the memorable day in 1910 when the four disparate colonies—the English Cape and Natal, the Afrikaner Orange Free State and Transvaal—were united by the Act of Union into one nation, with its own governor-general, prime minister and parliament, Krause exulted: “Now boys! Someone in this school may be a future prime minister of a country that is totally free.” He looked at each of the boys, endeavoring to inspire them, but he was thinking of himself.

“We’re not totally free,” one bright lad said cautiously. “We’re still a union which owes allegiance to the king.” Seeing his teacher frown, he added, “We’re part of the British Empire.”

“Don’t use that word!” Krause stormed. “We have no quarrel with Britain. Do we fight against Scotland or Wales or Ireland? Not at all. Our fight is with England.” And from then on, his students used only that word.

“Will we always owe allegiance to the king?” the same boy asked.

“That will change,” Krause said firmly, but for the moment he was not prepared to explore details. However, on his next visit to the farm, Detlev recalled that brief exchange and asked, “Do you think we will break away from England,” and to his surprise, Krause did not respond, but Johanna did. With a fierceness Detlev had not seen before, she orated: “We shall never be free until we do break away. We must have our own flag, our own anthem, our own president, and not some bedamned Englishman like Governor-General Gladstone making believe he’s our king.” On and on she went, outlining a program whereby the Afrikaners would take over control of the nation, as free men and women: “In Pretoria only Afrikaans will be spoken, only Afrikaners will hold positions of power.”

“Will the English allow this?” Detlev asked.

“We will find ways to make them allow it,” Johanna said, at which General de Groot applauded.

“There will be ways,” he agreed, slapping Detlev on the knee. “And this young fellow will discover what they are.”

In private conversations Johanna Krause was always the one who gave fiery direction, but in public, as in any good Afrikaner family, she allowed her husband to take the lead, and one morning in school he excited his pupils by announcing, “I want everyone who can do so
to bring his parents and his wagon, and we’ll ride up to Waterval-Boven to see a magnificent sight.” He would not tell them what, but when he insisted that General de Groot come along, the old man predicted: “He wants you to see where President Kruger ruled this country in the last days,” and when they reached that revered spot, De Groot lectured the children: “The great man lived on these railroad tracks, in Car Number 17, first up here above the waterfall, then down below in the little house next to the hotel. And you must remember one thing,” he warned them in a voice quivering with anger, “no matter what lies the English newspapers print, Oom Paul Kruger did not run away with half a million pounds in gold. It left Pretoria somehow, but he never took it.”