The Covenant (179 page)

“Terrorism?”

“We don’t call it that. Sporadic attacks. Harassment. Ridicule. War of nerves.”

“To what purpose?”

“To remind them always that we’re serious. That we will never again go away and lie down like good dogs and not growl.”

“Will that accomplish anything?”

“It will gnaw at their minds. Saltwood, you’ve seen the enlightened Afrikaners. These people are not stupid. They know that accommodation must be made. I think they’re ready to accept us now, on some radically new basis. Not total equality, not yet. And not one-man, one-vote. But a true partnership.”

“Look at what’s happening in Pretoria right now,” Daniel said excitedly. “They’ve built this new theater. With public funds. I understand it’s as good as anything in Berlin or the one in Minneapolis.”

“I’ve been reading the stories,” Philip said. “Public funds, and then they state that only whites will be admitted.”

Jonathan slammed the table. “They doing that again?”

“Yes,” his brother said, “but there’s been this great outcry. From all parts of the public. People you’d never expect have stepped forward to demand that the theater be made available to everyone.”

“Goddamn!” Jonathan cried, and Magubane rose and walked agitatedly about the room. It was the situation they had fought against for the past three years. “We no longer want crumbs from the master’s table,” Jonathan said. “We don’t want a slice of bread. We don’t want the loaf. We want the whole damned bakery. And we want it now.”

“We’re not part of their society,” Magubane said sardonically. “We would not appreciate Shakespeare or Goethe.” He kicked at the chair he had just vacated. “I can recite whole pages of
Othello
, but I can never see it performed.”

Jonathan burst into laughter. “Magubane, you ass.
Othello
is not
really welcomed in South Africa. He’s black, man. He’s black, or didn’t you know?”

Magubane brushed his chin as if embarrassed by his ignorance, then stood by the door, his right hand across his chest—“I am a Moor of Venice!”—and declaimed:

He quit his oratory and said quietly, “We have that ‘drop of patience,’ but only for so long.”

“What I was trying to say,” Daniel Nxumalo continued, “was that right now in Pretoria booths have been set up in many spots. White people, women mostly, manage them …”

“For what purpose?” Jonathan asked.

“They’re collecting signatures, petitioning the authorities to allow non-whites to attend performances in the new theater. And I understand the response has been overwhelmingly in favor.”

“Well,” Jonathan admitted grudgingly, “change does come. Slow—but inevitable.” He rocked back and forth, then asked, “Dan, do you think I’ll ever be free to come back here and live like an ordinary workman?”

“Yes. Without the slightest hesitation I say yes. There’s change in the air. Good things are happening, and I honestly believe we can attain our goals.”

“I don’t,” Jonathan replied. “Not without armed revolution, which will probably not come till I’m an old man.”

“You see yourself living a life of exile?” Philip asked.

“Yes. Magubane here will never see his birthplace free. Tubakwa, when you join us over the border you will never come home.”

“What will you do?” Philip asked.

“Maintain pressure. Goad the Afrikaners into taking an open Hitler stance until the world has to intervene.”

“If the government offered you amnesty—”

“We would reject it,” Magubane broke in. “This is war to the finish. The evil tricks of these people must be ended.”

“But Frikkie and Jopie, the two rugby players. They say almost the same thing. War to the finish. To preserve the kind of government God willed them to have.”

Jonathan started to make a cynical denouncement, but Magubane cut him off, saying to Philip, “That’s why I advise you to marry the girl and get out of here. You Americans proved in Vietnam you had no stomach for the long fight. The Troxels do. And we do. This war will last forty years, and it can only increase in severity and barbarity. That’s why the airplanes are filled with those young people leaving. That’s why you should go.”

Philip turned to Daniel Nxumalo. “But you think there’s still hope?”

“I do! The people signing those petitions in Pretoria are proof.”

But when Philip reached his camp he found his workmen excited by a news flash from the capital. Rural Afrikaners calling themselves the Avengers of the Veld had stormed into Pretoria, dynamited the kiosks in which the theater petitions were being signed, and burned the rubble, threatening to donder the women if they persisted in this unpatriotic effort to mix the races. The spokesman for the Avengers explained: “God has forbidden us to accept Canaanites in our midst, and if this effort continues, we shall have to burn down the theater.”

When Sannie and the Troxel boys returned home, they were elated.

Philip wasted much of his leisure time at the diggings trying to fathom why—above all else—the men at Vrymeer were so devastated by the cancellation of the New Zealand tour. He reached no conclusion, but one morning he was summoned to Pretoria for an evaluation meeting with Amalgamated Mines. The principal officers convened at the Burgers Park Hotel, and as they sat in the lounge with drinks, Philip saw coming through the door a man whose face was vaguely familiar. “Who’s that?” he whispered to one of his superiors.

“That’s the minister of finance,” the Johannesburg man said without taking further notice, but apparently there was some kind of governmental meeting, for within a few minutes the new prime minister came bustling in. He had been in office such a short time that Philip only vaguely recognized him. “Is that who I think it is?” he whispered.

“Yes, that’s the prime minister.” And again no one moved.

A little while later an extraordinary man walked past them. It seemed to Philip that one of the Drakensberg Mountains had come to Pretoria, for the man was gigantic, not in height, although he was quite tall, but in the girth of his body, the enormous spread of hips, the lower jaw that jutted at least four inches farther than normal. He had black hair and great dark eyes.

“Who’s …” Philip started.

“My God!” the chairman of Amalgamated cried. “That’s Frik du Preez!” At this, all the businessmen stood up and nodded at the great Springbok who had played in more international matches than any other South African. Like an Alp wading across the Mediterranean, he moved majestically through the lobby to enter the dining room, and everyone in Saltwood’s party marked his progress.

“That was Frik du Preez,” the chairman repeated.

“I think my family had some doings with the Cape Town Du Preezes,” Saltwood said, and at this news all the men regarded him with additional respect.

The most revealing incident concerning rugby occurred one morning at the camp when Philip received a day-old Pretoria newspaper, across the front of which appeared four excellent photographs depicting one continuous play in Saturday’s game against Monument. The left-hand picture showed Frikkie Troxel being savagely tackled by a Monument brute named Spyker Swanepoel, who was using what American football called “the clothesline tackle,” in which a man with the ball running full speed east is grabbed about the neck by a bigger man running full speed west. In this photograph it looked as if Frikkie was about to lose his head.

Shot two showed him flat on the ground, unconscious, ball flopping away, while Spyker Swanepoel delivered a savage, heavily booted kick with full force right at his temple. It was a blow which would have killed a mere human being, but rugby players were something beyond that.

Shot three was the precious one. Frikkie lay almost dead, spreadeagled. The triumphant Spyker was striding away. And up behind him could be seen Jopie Troxel, leaping off his left foot, his right fist swinging forward with terrifying force and striking Spyker so fiercely that it was clear that his jaw jumped sideways three inches.

Shot four was total bedlam. Frikkie lay dead, or almost so. Spyker Swanepoel lay unconscious, his jaw awry in such a way as to impart
a beatific smile. And seven Monument men, engulfing Jopie, were knocking him to the ground and kicking him. In other parts of the photograph some half-dozen major fistfights were taking place, with one Venloo man neatly kneeing his opponent in the crotch. The series was entitled
SPIRITED PLAY AT LOFTUS VERSFELD
.

When Frikkie regained consciousness in the hospital, sports reporters wanted to know how he felt about the game, and he said, “We should’ve won.”

“You did,” they told him.

“Hooray!” He tried to get out of bed, but could not control his movements and fell back.

“Did you know that Spyker kicked you?”

“What if he did?”

“Did you see the papers?”

“I haven’t even seen daylight.” They showed him the four photographs, and he spent some time on the first one. “That Spyker made a strong tackle, didn’t he?”

“But the kick?”

“Jopie took care of that,” he said, pointing to the ferocious blow in the third shot. Then he studied the last picture: “I’m down. Spyker’s down. Jopie’s going down. I’m glad we won.”

The kick to the head had temporarily deranged the mechanisms which enable a human being to maintain equilibrium; it was as if someone had set in motion a gyroscope which held to one course, no matter what the lateral pressures. Frikkie would start walking in a given direction, and when the time came to make a turn, he would continue straight ahead, sometimes going right into a wall.

The doctors were more alarmed than he. “I’ll get it back into control,” he said, and added that he fully intended to play in Saturday’s fixture against a team from the Orange Free State, but by midweek it was quite clear that he would not even be out of the hospital. It was then that Sannie began attending him regularly, and as she observed the straightforward manner in which he accepted his punishment, and the determined way he went about recovering, she felt increasingly that he represented the best in South Africa. Was there a job to do on the Moçambique border? He would go do it. Was there a tackle to be made? He would make it. Did the government require some new approach to old problems? He was the man to effectuate it. He was direct, uncomplicated and trustworthy.

She was at his side when Spyker Swanepoel came to visit, his jaw wired back into place. “That was a strong tackle, Spyker” was all Frik said.

“You still got ringing in your ears?”

“Something’s out of balance. It’ll fall into place.”

“What you need, Frikkie, I’ve seen it a dozen times. A little sharp exercise and a dop of brandy.”

“I think so, too,” and he allowed big Spyker to pull him to his feet, steady him, give him a drink, and then run him right at the farthest wall.

“Whoa!” Spyker cried, and back they came the other way.

“Frikkie!” Sannie protested, but she could not stop these two great hulks, and out into the hall they went. She watched as they started down the long passageway, running and dodging as if they were on a rugby field. “Hey! Hey!” Spyker grunted, shouting encouragement, and soon he was in the lead, allowing Frikkie to run by himself, but as before, the internal gyroscope prevented Frik from making a turn and he ran right into the end wall.

“Jesus Christ!” Spyker bellowed through wired teeth. “Don’t run into the goddamned wall.”

“What in the world?” the matron in charge of the floor cried as she saw two huge men coming back down the hall, Spyker in front, Frikkie dodging along behind and going great until he again plowed into the wall.

“We’ve got to work on it,” Spyker said as he led Frikkie back to bed. “How do you feel?”

“That damned wall …”

By now the hospital staff had crowded into the room, and the head doctor was upbraiding Sannie for allowing such a dangerous situation. “You should have stopped them,” he blustered.

“Have you ever tried to stop them?” and when Spyker was led away, and she was alone with Frikkie, she went to the door and locked it. “You’re all right,” she said, returning to the bed, where she took his hands and pulled him to her. “You’re a little weak on turns to the left, but who cares?”

And as she slipped into bed with him she whispered, “As soon as you can walk straight, we’re getting married.”

“I’m playing next Saturday,” he announced, and it must have been the therapy she provided, because on Friday morning he left the hospital, on Saturday he sat with her watching his team play, and the next
Saturday he was on the field against Natal. It was during the celebration following that game, which he played like a ghost looking for a lost glen, that Sannie announced that she was going to marry him.

Jopie poured champagne over his rival, then kissed the bride-to-be and said, “I always suspected he’d be the one.” But when Philip Saltwood heard the news, he dashed in from the diggings to beg Sannie to reconsider.

“I did,” she said. “In the hospital. I love you, Philip, and will never forget how good life with you could have been. But Frikkie is South Africa. And so am I.”

When Sannie van Doorn, firmly and finally, rejected Philip Saltwood’s offer of marriage and indicated that either of the Troxel boys would have been accepted ahead of him, he slipped into a profound melancholy, unable to force his tangled values into sensible patterns. He felt discarded not only as a suitor but also as a human being; for some years now he had been working in suspension, not attached to any specific country, or enterprise, or woman. He was a man in limbo, and the growing affection he had felt for Sannie was caused partly by her unusual attractiveness, partly by her promise of being a solid anchor for his drifting boat. He liked her and he liked her country; its challenges did not frighten him, for he would enjoy participating in its violent development.