The Covenant (56 page)

The caravan consisted of Dr. Linnart, the two Van Doorns, Dikkop in charge of everything, and ten Hottentots paid by the Swede. Two wagons accompanied the expedition, loaded with small wooden boxes into which the specimens collected by Adriaan went. On four separate occasions Linnart said that he could not credit the wealth of flowers on the veld, and each time Adriaan assured him that if he went farther, he would find more.

But interested as Dr. Linnart was in botany, he was even more captivated by Seena’s remarkable capacity for keeping the camp lively, and he was enchanted one morning when she said briskly, “Biltong’s gone. You, Linnart, shoot us an eland.” So he and Dikkop had gone hunting, and although they failed to get one of the huge antelopes, they did knock down two gemsboks, which they butchered on the spot, bringing back to camp large stores of thinly cut strips of the best lean meat.

“Looks good,” Seena said approvingly as she tended a pot in whose liquor the meat would be marinated.

Linnart, hungry to know the procedures of every operation, asked, “What’s in the pot?” and she showed him: “A pound of salt. Two ounces of sugar. A heavy pinch of saltpeter. A cup of strong vinegar, a little pepper and those crushed herbs.”

“What herbs?”

“Any I can find,” she said. And into this cold mixture she dropped the strips of meat, stirring them occasionally so that each would be well penetrated. When she was satisfied that the gemsbok was properly marinated, she directed Linnart to remove the strips, take them to the sunny side of the camp where the wind could strike them, and leave them there to dry.

When they were hard as rock, with flavor permeating every cell, they were packed in cloth, to be gnawed upon when other food was lacking. “The best meal for the veld,” Linnart exclaimed as he nearly broke his teeth chewing. “Better than the pemmican our Reindeer People make. More flavor.”

The best part of each day came in the late afternoon when Seena and the Hottentots were preparing supper, for then Dr. Linnart sat with Adriaan, discussing Africa and comparing it with other lands he had seen. He liked to take down his atlas and press flat the maps of areas he spoke of, and then little Dikkop would crowd in, look at the incomprehensible pages and nod sagely in agreement with whatever the Swede said. Adriaan, who could not read the words, grasped the geographical forms and he, too, approved.

“Look at this map of Africa,” Linnart told the men one evening. “Your little colony is truncated. It ought to run all the way north to the Zambezi, its natural boundary. And east to the Indian Ocean.”

“Here in the east,” said Adriaan, tapping the map, “are many Xhosa.”

“Who are they?”

“Tell him, Dikkop.” And the Hottentot expressed his apprehension over the large tribes of blacks that Sotopo had described during their meeting in the glade.

“Mmmm!” Linnart said. “If that’s the case, sooner or later …” And with his forefinger he indicated the blacks moving westward and the trekboers eastward. “There’s got to be a clash.”

“I think so too,” Dikkop said.

“But up here? Toward the Zambezi? Have any of you gone up there?”

“The Compagnie wouldn’t allow us,” Adriaan said.

“But the Compagnie lets you live where you are, hundreds of miles from the Cape. What stops you from exploring the north?” When neither of the men responded, he said, “Men should always move out till they reach the final barriers. East to the ocean. North to the Zambezi.”

If he implied that the trekboers were delinquent in comparison with other peoples who had explored other lands, he had some justification, but if he thought that they held back through lack of adventurousness, he was wrong, as he discovered when at the end of seven months they came back south through the mountains, looking for signs of the Van Doorn farm:

It became a tearful moment when this brilliant young man left the Van Doorn farm and headed toward the Cape with his two wagons filled with specimens. Adriaan and Seena did not cry, of course, for they had known for some time that he must leave them. The tears came from Dr. Linnart, who tried three times to make a flowery farewell speech to the effect that he had lived for nearly a year with nature
and with two people who understood it better than he did, but every time he looked at Seena he was so overcome with love and fellowship that tears choked him and he had to start over. It was an expedition, he affirmed, that he would never forget; he ended his comments rather awkwardly: “My cousin, who publishes his books under his Latin name, Carolus Linnaeus, would send you a copy of the volume in which this material will appear, except, of course, neither of you can read.”

Several of his comments regarding his trip to the Cape were widely circulated in Europe and America; after recounting his horrendous experience in crossing the final mountains, when his specimens ran the risk of being lost in a sudden fog, he told of coming to Trianon:

Adriaan and Seena had four children, who were reared in the same slapdash manner that prevailed at Rooi van Valck’s, and to a degree, at the hartebeest huts of the Van Doorns. They were raised with love and boundless physical affection, much as if they were young puppies, and they showed signs of becoming close copies of their wandering father or their rowdy and profane mother. The first and third had red hair inherited from the Van Valcks; the second and fourth, light blond hair like the Van Doorns; and in 1750 it seemed probable that they would be frontier nomads like their parents, illiterate, contemptuous
of Compagnie authority, and delightfully tied to the soil of which they were a part. In a few years strange young men would wander in to court the girls and then start eastward to launch loan-farms of their own, stepping off the six thousand acres to which they felt they would always be entitled. “The land out there is limitless,” the trekboers proclaimed. “We can keep moving till we meet the Indian Ocean.” And if a man kept his farm for about ten years before leapfrogging to virgin soil, the process could continue for another hundred years.

“Of course,” Adriaan said when such predictions were being made, “sooner or later you’re going to run into the Xhosa.”

“The what?” the newer trekboers would ask.

“The Xhosa.”

“And what in hell are they?”

“The blacks. They’re out there, beyond the big river.”

But since he was one of the very few who had seen them, and since the farms were prospering in the new lands, the Xhosa barrier was ignored.

In many ways the Van Doorn farm now resembled that of Rooi van Valck: grandfather, grandmother, Adriaan’s family and his brothers’, the numerous grandchildren, and many servants, and the large herds of cattle. Life was good, and when one of the women cried at midmorning, “I want someone to chop this meat,” any man in hearing distance was eager to help, because this meant that the cooks were going to make bobotie, and there was no dish better than this on the veld.

Seena, who had often made it for her father, usually took command. In a large, deep-sided clay baking dish she placed the chopped beef and mutton, mixing in curry and onions, all of which she allowed to brown while she pounded a large handful of almonds mixed with additional spices. When all was blended and seemingly done, she whipped a dozen eggs in such milk as was available, and threw this on top, baking the entire for about an hour. While the smell permeated the area, she boiled up some rice and took the lid off her crock of chutney. No matter how big the baking dish, no matter how few the diners, there were never any scraps when Seena made bobotie. “All credit to the curry,” she always said.

To sit at a table after a hard day’s work and to have a mug of brandy and a huge plateful of bobotie was the kind of treat that kept a farm contented.

Occasionally Grandfather Hendrik brought out his big Bible, hoping to instruct the children in their alphabet, but they felt that if their parents and their uncles and aunts survived without reading, so could they. But once or twice the youngest boy, Lodevicus, who was now eleven, showed signs that he might be the one who would return to the earlier scholarship of the Van Doorns who had lived in Holland. He would ask his grandfather, “How many letters must I learn if I want to read?” and Hendrik, referring to the Dutch alphabet, would reply, “Twenty-two.” And he would show the boy that each letter had two forms, small and capital, taking unusual care in explaining that in Dutch, unlike other languages, capital IJ was not two letters but one. It was all too confusing for Lodevicus, and soon the boy was out rampaging with the others.

However, old Hendrik noticed that it was this same Lodevicus who was beginning to show impatience whenever Adriaan disappeared on one of his explorations: “Why isn’t Father here to help with the work?” And he became quite agitated if Seena accompanied her husband, as she liked to do: “Mother ought to be home, making us bobotie.” The three other children accepted their father’s strange behavior and showed no concern when he was absent for months at a time. Moreover, they enjoyed it when their parents began to say, “People are crowding in. Too many Compagnie rules. That valley where the cattle grazed last year looks better.” But Lodevicus said, “Why can’t we stay in one place? Build us a house of stone?”

Hendrik and Johanna, always willing to move when they were younger, now sided with their grandson: “Lodevicus is right. Let’s build a house of stone.” And they argued that this piece of land was good for another twenty years, if properly managed. But Adriaan became increasingly restless, and red-headed Seena backed him up: “Let’s all get out of here!” So the wagons were loaded, the huts were abandoned, and with little Dikkop in the lead, everyone moved eastward, but along the way, Hendrik whispered to his grandson, “Lodevicus, when you’re older, you must stop wandering and build your house of stone.”