The Covenant (153 page)

“The hour is at hand!” Piet exulted.

It was a sorely divided South Africa that tried to prosecute this war. Johanna van Doorn and her sister-in-law Maria prayed daily for a German victory and hoped that it would be of such magnitude that England would be crushed forever. Detleef agreed with them in principle, but had reservations about Adolf Hitler and real doubts as to whether South Africa would gain much from a German victory in Africa.

The Saltwoods of New Sarum, led by Maud Turner Saltwood, now a feisty sixty-nine, were totally supportive of the Allied cause and were overjoyed when the United States joined in. Her daughter-in-law, Laura Saltwood, Noel’s wife, organized canteens to help England and was distraught when some of them were vandalized by Piet Krause’s storm troopers.

The Saltwoods of De Kraal and the Van Doorns of Trianon faced difficulties in determining their allegiances, for Timothy Saltwood, V.C., was married to Clara van Doorn, a stalwart Afrikaner. Like many similar families, they prayed quietly that the war would end and did not parade their emotions.

The Nxumalos were perplexed. As a family that had always been loyal to General de Groot, they at first favored a German victory, but when the African National Congress pointed out that Herr Hitler thought even less of blacks than he did of Jews, they realized that in his moment of victory they were going to be in trouble, so gradually they transferred their moral support to the English. They were astounded as they watched contending elements within the white population fight each other, and slowly they realized that the Afrikaners would win, here in South Africa if not in Europe, and that when they did, they were going to be very harsh with the blacks. Old Micah, at the end of a long, wild life of fighting great battles without weapons—Majuba, Spion Kop, the raid into the Cape—had sadly assured his family: “Whoever wins, we lose.”

The heaviest burden of moral decision fell upon Reverend Brongersma; as the son of a family that had provided five commandos in
the Boer War, he was staunchly pro-Afrikaner and his whole sympathy had to be with their nationalist and republican aspirations. His lectures at Stellenbosch had not dealt with this aspect of South African life; he had avoided the issue lest he give offense to the English half of his community. But on balance, and looking at the entire world as he was permitted to understand it, he could not see that England had ever exhibited any great moral superiority. Their record in India and South Africa did not impress him, and he suspected that most of what was commendable in the United States stemmed from its non-English immigrants. So he would be quite content to see a German victory—except for the fact that no Christian could remain blind to the awful excesses of Hitlerism. The Nazis had perpetrated crimes against the family, the church, the youth of the nation, and certainly against the Jews. Sitting alone in his study, his tall body hunched over at times, at other times thrown far back as he propped his legs on his desk, he wrestled with this problem: Nazism, using the most exalted impulses of the human race, seems to release the lowest urges of the human animal. Leave Germany out of it. There must be millions of people in America who would gladly staff a Nazi prison. God knows we could find them here in South Africa. And one of the ugliest, I am afraid, is my good friend Piet Krause. Like a dog, he grabs hold of one idea, gnaws at it, worries it, and allows it to obsess him.

He felt that in common decency, but also for the good name of the Broederbond, which did not sponsor such behavior, he must talk with Piet, but when he tried to reason with him, he found the former schoolteacher glassy-eyed with dreams, and in the end he dismissed him as hopeless. But after the disappointing session he did consult with Frykenius, who was still Piet’s superior in the brotherhood, and implored him to summon Krause back to Venloo, where together they might knock some sense into him. This Frykenius agreed to do, because he, too, was worried by the excesses Piet was engineering.

Krause, as an obedient member of the Broederbond, came down from Johannesburg, but as soon as he saw that Reverend Brongersma was with Frykenius he bristled: “Dominee, we do not seek your counsel.”

“Piet,” Frykenius said, “sit down.”

But even after the two older men had spread before him their analysis of the harm he was doing, he refused to accept their rebuke:
“Have you two any idea of the great forces set in motion by the ox wagons? This country is seething with patriotism.”

“Don’t use anything as precious as patriotism for a wrong purpose,” Brongersma cautioned.

“Dominee, there’s to be a great uprising!”

When he heard these words the predikant sat back, his hands folded in his lap. He knew that what Piet had just said was true: there was going to be a tremendous uprising of the Afrikaner spirit, so vast that it would sweep Jan Christian Smuts and his English ways right out of office and keep them out forever, so vast that every aspect of life in the country would be modified. Because of the spirit generated by the ox wagons, the Afrikaner was on the verge of victories which only the idealist had dreamed of. South Africa would quit the empire. No more would bands play “God Save the King,” no more would Englishmen sit in the cabinet. The Afrikaner nation would be free to solve its racial difficulties in its own just way. And strife would end.

“Piet,” the predikant said softly, “you’ve won your victory. Don’t contaminate it with violence.”

“Dominee, the real victory is just beginning! Herr Hitler is about to sweep the English from the seas. America can do nothing, he’ll sink their ships. His principles will rule this land.”

When Frykenius tried to soften this tirade, Piet cried, “You men have a choice you must make in a hurry. Are you for the revolution that’s breaking, or against it?”

“Piet,” Frykenius reasoned, “you know what the aims of the Broederbond have always been. Of course we’re for an Afrikaner triumph. But not on your violent terms. The rioting in the streets, that’s got to stop.”

Piet drew back as if dissociating himself from the timid approach of the Bond. “You men in the Broederbond. I see your kind in Pretoria and Johannesburg all the time. You’re like a pretty girl who gives a boy a kiss, three kisses, a dozen, then runs away when he wants to get down to business. Well, I’m getting down to business. I have work to do, and I doubt that we’ll be meeting any more.”

In a frenzy he dashed out and went to Vrymeer, burst into the kitchen and presented Detleef with an ultimatum: “Either you join us this night or you miss your chance to lead the nation when we triumph.” When Detleef asked for details, Piet thrust a typed card into his hand, crying excitedly, “Take this oath. Now. And tonight you ride with us … if we get instructions from Berlin.” Before Detleef
could respond to such a commitment, Piet said with urgency, “I must use your radio,” and through the shortwave screeching he listened to Radio Zeesen:

Neither he nor Detleef heard the final words, for Piet snapped off the radio and asked bluntly, “Well, Brother, do you join our revolution?” and faced with that moment of decision, Detleef finally concluded that he distrusted Adolf Hitler and doubted his ultimate victory.

“I can’t accept such an oath,” he said.

“Heroes can,” Piet said, and he was off.

He drove recklessly from Venloo to Waterval-Boven, where he picked up two conspirators who had taken the oath, then west to Pretoria, where Wyk Slotemaker, the one-time actor eager to assassinate Smuts, joined them, then down to an army base south of Johannesburg, where they were scheduled to blow up a major ammunition dump. When the actor saw the intricacy of the barbed wire, he drew back, and this also deterred the other two, but Piet, inflamed with memories of Nuremberg and Berlin, and visualizing the same kind of glory breaking over South Africa, crept forward alone, dynamite strapped to his back.

His careless use of wire clippers activated a warning bell in the guardrooms, and seven sharpshooters streamed out as huge searchlights flashed on. An Afrikaner from Carolina who had volunteered for Smuts’ army drew a bead on the dark figure creeping toward the ammunition, and fired. His bullet struck the package on Piet’s back, detonating it and blowing him to shreds, but even so, Krause gained a limited victory, for he had reached a spot so close to the dump that his explosion ignited combustibles—and through the long night shattering concussions threw flames far into the sky.

In 1946, when Detleef and Maria van Doorn were once more peaceful farmers at Vrymeer, they were visited by his sister Johanna, a
widow with a minor job in Johannesburg. She came with a proposal from a group of persons much interested in the welfare of the nation, and although Detleef was suspicious of almost anything she did these days, he had to listen, for whenever he met with her his first impression was of that evening in the camp at Chrissiesmeer when she apportioned the food delivered to the dead Tant Sybilla, and weighed it in her pale hands, giving him the larger share. He was alive today because of her courage and generosity.

“Detleef, and this concerns you too, Maria. In business the English are proving much more clever than we suspected. We’ve made almost no headway in penetrating their offices of power. We just don’t have enough trained young men. Damnit all, our best people go down to Stellenbosch, and what do they study? Religion, of which we have far too much. Philosophy, which is of use to no one. Some history. Some literature. A little science. What we need is accountants and bankers and managers.”

“I certainly have no capacity in those fields,” Detleef protested.

“Of course you don’t. Because you wasted your time at Stellenbosch. Playing rugby.”

“Wait a minute! Don’t you say anything against rugby.” When she had railed against religion a few moments before, he had remained silent, but he could not do so if she spoke against rugby.

“Forget that. We’ve decided that what we must do is place men like you who can speak good English … Well, what I mean is … you must take one of the permanent secretaryships with the committees in Parliament.”

“That pays nothing!”

“Of course it doesn’t. That’s the point. We slip you in there. Nobody notices because no Englishman would want the job. And you serve there twenty-five or thirty years …”

“I’m already fifty-one.”

“So you serve twenty years. In time you make enormous inroads. It’s you who will be drafting the laws. And we will gain by indirection what we can’t win head-on.”

She had with her a list of some forty inconspicuous vacancies, not one of which would be mentioned in the newspapers when it was filled: a series of jobs which might have tempted a boy out of high school, but not Detleef. They were mostly in agencies of the government dealing with financial or business affairs, in which he felt no competence, but as he was returning the paper to her, his eye fell
upon one line, off to itself, relating to an office so small it provided only one vacancy: Commission on Racial Affairs. Idly he said, “Now, if a man had to accept an assignment …”

“Which?” she pounced.

“That one.”

“A man could do much good there, Detleef.”

“No! No!” He dismissed the invitation absolutely and would say no more about it, so dutifully she gathered her papers, smiled at Maria, and left.

Three days later Mr. Frykenius summoned him to Venloo. The two Broederbonders had grown so close since the deplorable death of their mutual friend, Piet Krause, that they attacked any subject without formalities: “Detleef, they want you to take the position with the Commission on Racial Affairs.”

“I can’t leave the farm.”

“But you can. The Troxels can manage, and you and Maria can divide your time between Pretoria and Cape Town.”

“Really, I can hardly …”

“So many times have you and I discussed what to do with the Bantu and the Coloureds. Here’s a chance to put our principles into operation.”

“I don’t want to leave Vrymeer …”

“Detleef, you and I have only a limited number of years remaining. Let’s spend them on things important.” When Van Doorn hesitated, the butcher said, “Remember when you told me about your vision for this country? The sun striking the glass of jellies. Each on its own level, clean and separated? Now you have an opportunity to achieve that dream.”

“I shall have to speak with Maria.”

“Detleef, on crucial matters, leave the women to themselves.”

“But how did you hear about this job? Surely it was my sister Johanna who told you.”

“I never speak with women. This came as an order from Pretoria.”

Detleef smiled and thought: But who told Pretoria to send the order? It had to have been Johanna, and he remembered the debt he owed her: She broke the rations in half, then added to one portion and gave it to me. She kept me alive. She helped form my beliefs.

“So the problem we have is of our own making,” Frykenius was explaining. “In order to get the little jobs in government, we insisted
that every employee must be bilingual. It worked. We got all of them because the English wouldn’t bother to learn Afrikaans. But now the big jobs are opening up and we damned Afrikaners have too few bright people who can speak English well. We’ll get them when our universities get going. But right now we must depend on people like you.”

When Detleef remained silent, the butcher said, “I have written this letter for you, accepting the assignment. Sign it.” And he pushed forward the document that would ultimately make Detleef van Doorn one of the most influential men in the nation.

Because there had been fierce antagonisms among cities when the Union government was established in 1910, each insisting that it be the capital, Detleef’s new position required him to maintain three homes: the permanent farm at Vrymeer, a six-month home in Cape Town, and a year-round pair of rooms in a Pretoria hotel. Fortunately, he had the funds for such extravagance.