The Covenant Part 69

'I can shoot straight.'

'Every Boer boy can shoot straight,' and he would digress to tell the boy of how his men, always outnumbered, would hide behind rocks and pick off Englishmen one by one: 'Ten bullets, you ought to get at least eight Englishmen.'

'I could shoot an Englishman,' Detlev insisted, whereupon the old man clasped him tight and whispered, 'Pray G.o.d you never have to. You'll win your battles in more clever ways.'

'How?'

De Groot tapped the little boy on the forehead: 'By learning. By becoming clever.'

And that was to be the foundation of Detlev's formal education, which began one day when there rode up to the farm a remarkable man: tall, thin, with very big hands that he used awkwardly and knees that protruded from his heavy trousers. He had yellowish hair, not at all becoming a man of his size, and one of the kindest faces Detlev had ever seen. He told the Van Doorns, 'My name is Amberson, Jonathan Amberson, and I've been sent by the new government to open a school at Venloo. I should be most happy to see your son in my cla.s.ses.'

'He can't ride into Venloo every day,' Jakob protested.

'Nor shall he. Mrs. Scheltema will be running a hostel'

'Are you English?' Johanna broke in.

'Of course. It's the new school, the new government.'

'We wouldn't want any English here,' she said bitterly.

'But'

'Out. Get out of this house and off this farm.' Detlev, watching everything, feared that she might strike the tall stranger, who bowed, backed down off the stoep, and departed.

When General de Groot heard of this some days later, he became quite agitated: 'No, no! Not that way at all.'

'He was English,' Johanna snapped. 'Do you think we want our boy to learn English ways'

'That's exactly what we want.' And for the first time young Detlev heard the strategy of his life spelled outand he comprehended every word.

'The problem is this,' the old man said, while Detlev sat on his knee. 'The English know how to run the world. They understand banks and newspapers and schools. They are very capable people... in everything but war. And do you know why, Detlev?'

'At the camp, Dr. Higgins cried a lot.'

'Who was Dr. Higgins?'

'The man who was supposed to keep us alive. When we died, he often cried. Men don't do that.'

'Answer my question. "Why are the English so clever and we Boers so dumb?"'

'My father isn't dumb,' Detlev said quickly. 'And you're not dumb, Oupa.'

'I mean in books and banks and things like that.'

'I don't know.'

'The English are clever because they know things we don't.'

'What things?' Detlev asked, all attention.

'Books. Figures. Big ideas.' These words landed like Krupp sh.e.l.ls in the little kitchen. No one spoke, and Detlev looked at his three elders, each of whom nodded. He would never forget this heavy moment.

'So what you are to do, my young clever one, is go to the English school and find out everything they know.' When Detlev nodded, the old man continued: 'You are to be the brightest boy that teacher has ever met. You are to learn everything.'

'Why?' the somber little boy asked.

'Because when you know as much as they do, you can declare a new kind of war against the English.' The old man's hands began to tremble. 'You are the generation that will win this country back. You will win the war that your father and I lost.'

General de Groot felt so strongly about this that he personally led Detlev in to Venloo, and he was impressed by the efforts taken to improve the old house that now served as schoolroom and hostel, and by the care with which Mr. Amberson had arranged things. There were books, and slates, and pictures on the wall... When he saw the florid portrait in color of King Edward VII he turned away.

'We are honored to have with us this morning,' Amberson said in hesitant Dutch, 'a great hero of this country, General Paulus de Groot, the hero of Majuba, the Avenger of the Veld. We never did catch you, did we, General?'

De Groot was astounded by such words coming from an Englishman, and when the nineteen children applauded he dropped Detlev's hand and retreated.

At the end of the second week, when De Groot returned to fetch Detlev, he asked no questions on the short ride to the farm, but that evening when supper was ended, the three adults sat the boy in a chair, faced him, and asked, 'What happened?'

He liked school and especially he liked Mr. Amberson, who was patient with his young scholars. 'He explains everything,' Detlev said enthusiastically, 'but sometimes I can't understand his words.'

'Does he teach in Dutch?' Johanna asked.

'Of course. We don't know any English.'

'What does he teach you?'

'That King Edward is now our king . . .'

Johanna stomped out of the room.

'Does he teach you how to figure?' De Groot asked. 'Oh, yes!' And with some enthusiasm the little boy began to recite the two-times table, but in English.

'What are you saying?' De Groot cried.

'Two-times,' the boy replied.

'But in what language?' the old man roared.

'In English. Mr. Amberson says that after he learns our language and we learn his, all cla.s.ses will be in English.'

De Groot was so agitated that he began pacing about, but after a while he calmed down and lifted the boy up, sitting him on his knee. 'Of course. You must learn English as fast as you can. Every week you must learn more English, because that's how they conduct their affairs.'

But at the half-year mark, when General de Groot went to fetch Detlev, he found the boy quite distraught but unwilling to talk, so on the way back to the farm he did no probing, but when they were a.s.sembled that night Detlev suddenly burst into tears. 'What is it?' Johanna asked with great solicitude. She allowed the old general to mastermind the lad's education, but she felt responsible for his safekeeping, and when he wept in this manner she knew that something most serious had occurred, for he was a boy who did not cry.

'What is it, Detlev?'

'I had to wear the dunce's cap.'

He knew the word only in English, and when the three demanded further explanation, he fas.h.i.+oned with his hands the long, thin paper hat he had been required to wear four times that week.

'What for?' the general exploded.

'Because I used Dutch words.'

'You what . . .'

'Yes. New rules. Any boy or girl who speaks Dutch instead of English must stand in the corner, with the tall hat and a sign which says "I spoke Dutch today." '

'But Mr. Amberson himself speaks Dutch. You said so.'

'Not any more. He said we'd been in cla.s.s half a year now and must never again speak Dutch.'

'That monster!' Johanna snapped. She was twenty-three, a fierce, hardworking young woman, and if this schoolmaster was mistreating her brother, she would teach him a lesson.

'No,' Detlev said quietly through his tears. 'He is not a bad man. He is very kind, and he helps me with my numbers. But he says that our country is now Englishthe war decided thatand we must forget we were ever Dutch.'

'Good G.o.d!' Johanna cried, but to her surprise it was General de Groot who pacified her.

'We must remember that this is still war,' the old man said, and he took from his pocket a newspaper containing a new set of Hoggenheimer cartoons, proving that the Jews were stealing the country. It carried also a statement by the English high commissioner, which unknowingly outlined the nature of the insidious battle the Boers now faced: If ten years hence there are three men of British race to two of Dutch, this country will be safe and prosperous. If there are three of Dutch and two of British, we shall have perpetual difficulty.

Coldly, De Groot explained the next level of strategies: 'The English are doing everything they can to bring in more of their people. Bring them in and drown us in a wave of English books, English plays, English education.'

'But you said you wanted me to learn English,' Detlev said.

'I do. Detlev, I want you to learn all of everything. Whenever he offers you a new English word, take it and say to yourself, "This is a knife I shall use against you."'

'When?'

'Every day of your life from now on. When you are twelve, use your knowledge against the English boys that age. At eighteen, use it against the young men in college. At thirty, against the Hoggenheimers in Johannesburg. At fifty, against the government people in Pretoria. And when you're an old man like me, keep using it. The enemy is the English, and they can be destroyed only by cleverness.'

Johanna, deeply angered by the psychological abuse heaped on Detlev by the dunce's cap and the degrading sign, wanted to ride right in to Venloo and confront Mr. Amberson, but the old general had more to say: 'Accept English in your mind, but keep Dutch in your heart. For if a conqueror once makes you accept his language, he makes you his slave. We were defeated . . .'

He had never voiced that admission before. He had said, 'We've lost the battles. We've lost the war.' But he had never conceded that he had been defeated. Now, as he uttered the terrible words, he rose from his chair and stamped about the little kitchen. 'We have been defeatedyour father, I, Oom Paul, General de la Rey, General s.m.u.ts . . .' He stopped speaking, for the words were grinding in his throat. Then with a great roar he cried, 'But the next war we shall win. The war for ideas. You and I will see the day when Dutch is the only language in this landthe only one that counts. There will be no English spoken where men of power a.s.semble.' Towering over Detlev, he pointed a long finger at him: 'And you will be responsible.'

Johanna felt her own responsibility, and early Monday morning when the time came for General de Groot to take the boy back to school, she surprised him by saying sternly, 'I take him today.'

She arrived at the school half an hour early and found that Mr. Amberson was there, arranging his materials. The first thing she saw, waiting in the corner, was the dunce's cap and the elegantly lettered sign: I spoke dutch today I spoke dutch today. Walking directly to them, she said, 'Why would you dare use these?'

'I use the cap every day. For numbers missed, for words misspelled.'

'But this?' she demanded, shaking the sign at him. 'It's half a year now, Miss van Doorn. The children must begin seriously to learn the language under which they will live for the rest of their lives.'

'It won't be English, Mr. Amberson.'

He was astonished by this statement, for it had never occurred to him that Dutch could persist in compet.i.tion with the victors' language, but he surprised both Johanna and Detlev by the gentlemanly manner in which he reacted. 'Sit down,' he said graciously, and when she elaborated her complaint, he listened attentively, endeavoring to catch the full meaning of her words, for she would speak only in the language of her people, the vital adaptation of Dutch by generations of her ancestors.

'There is something else we must take into account,' he said courteously, as if reasoning with a child. 'I'm told that the Dutch you do speak in these parts, and throughout the countryI'm told it really isn't very good Dutch and should not be perpetuated.'

'Who told you that?'

'Mr. Op t'Hooft, who comes from Amsterdam and works in the education department.'

'Another Hollander! d.a.m.n them all, they come out here, take a job and then lord it over us.'

'But Mr. Op t'Hooft intends taking out citizens.h.i.+p. He prefers it here.'

'We don't want him.' The mention of another Hollander who was riding roughshod over the local Boers enraged Johanna and sidetracked her from her main complaint.

'Miss van Doorn, I'm sure President Kruger's government didn't want to hire so many Hollanders, but it had to, because your people out on these farms ...' He felt that he was getting into deep water, and tried again: 'The Boers were simply wonderful at warfare, maybe the best free fighters on earth. My brother fought against General de Groot, you know. King's Own Royal Rifles, you know.' Johanna stared at him as if he were an imbecile, and he ended lamely, 'You Boers refuse to learn business procedures, so President Kruger had to invite the Hollanders in to run the government. Absolutely essential.'

'They can go home now,' she said tartly. And then she changed the subject: 'Mr. Amberson, I wish you would not again hang that sign about my brother's neck.'

'He must stop speaking Dutch in cla.s.s, really he must.'

'Why? If this is to be a Dutch country?'

'Ah, but it's to be English.' He hesitated. 'The language, that is.'

They had reached an impa.s.se, and when she returned to the farm she sought out the general, asking him if he thought the Dutch spoken by the people of Venloo was as corrupted as Mr. Op t'Hooft, whoever he was, seemed to think.

'Yes. We have a different language now. Our own. Your father and mine fas.h.i.+oned it. Simpler and better.'

'Should we allow the Hollanders who run everything to stay on?'

'Kick them all out. They despise us, and G.o.d knows, we despise them. Just because they can speak like Amsterdamers, they think they're lords and ladies. I say, "Kick their a.s.ses out." ' He apologized for his rough speech, then repeated it.

But any worry over the insolent Hollanders, most of whom were going home anyway, since they deplored the barbaric level of society they had to suffer in towns like Pretoria and Bloemfontein, vanished when the real menace showed itself. Word of this disastrous decision had reached Venloo, and when Detlev came home from school he astonished his elders by announcing, 'They're bringing in sixty thousand Chinese workmen.'

'What?' the general shouted.

'Yes. The mine owners say that since the war they can't get any more Kaffirs, so s.h.i.+ps are sailing into Durban with Chinese.'

'Who is doing this?' the old man bellowed, but despite his fevered questioning he could find no rational answers, so he decided to take the little money he had and ride the train in to Johannesburg and see for himself what the crisis amounted to.

'You're to come with me,' he said to Detlev, and when the boy protested that he must report to school, the general said, 'More important that you see the enemy,' and he rode with the boy to Waterval-Boven, where they caught the train.

It was a stunning adventure for Detlevtravelers eating their meals while they sped westward, the sweep of the veld, the farms struggling back into production, and on the far horizon the first sight of a major city. De Groot was welcomed wherever he went, both by his former Boer cronies and by the English, who held him in high regard for his heroic conduct in two wars. From his acquaintances he learned that yes, the government was in the process of importing sixty thousand Chinese to work the mines, and he also heard disturbing rumors about the behavior of these coolies.

The government and the Englishmen who ran the mines seriously believed that it was possible to import sixty thousand vigorous young men, all of them under thirty, and have them work deep in the gold mines without their wanting any recreation, or a.s.sociation with women, or any kind of reasonable relaxation for a period of ten or twenty years. When the young men began to gamble, the Dutch Reformed Church was horrified. When they began to form liaisons with black or Coloured or lowly white women, the predikants screamed from their pulpits that G.o.d would scourge this land if that were permitted. And when some enraged coolie actually killed another, Englishmen and Boers alike claimed that this proved the Chinese were a gang of animals.

Nothing that the government would do in the first decade after the English victory would so excite the Boers as this importation of Chinese, and when Paulus de Groot actually saw the yellow men going down into the mines he experienced an anger that would not be a.s.suaged. In fact, he was so outraged that when he returned to his quarters in the city, a Boer friend, who shared his emotion, suggested that they go see General Koos de la Rey, who had tormented the English for three years during the late war. When Detlev met this famous man, not so tall as General de Groot but gentler of face, he realized that he was seeing a significant part of his nation's history, and when later General Christiaan Beyers joined them, Detlev saw a grand triumvirate.

They discussed how they might force the government to rescind the law which allowed the importation of the Chinese. 'More important,' De la Rey said, 'is how we kick those already here out of the country.' It was agreed that everyone must work for the repatriation of the Chinese, but then talk turned to an even more serious point.

'I am disgusted with the mistakes this government is making,' De Groot said bluntly. 'Do you know what they're doing with our children? Tell them, Detlev . . . about the dunce's cap.' When the little boy did, the generals listened soberly, but then De Groot said, 'The sign. Tell them about the sign.' When this humiliating incident was related, they shook their heads, and after a long while De Groot said quietly, 'One of these days we will all be riding again. Against the English, for they do not know how to govern.'

Neither of the other generals responded to this, but De Groot repeated his prophecy: 'You will be back in the saddle, both of you. And do you know why? Because Germany is stirring. Germany is on the march, and sooner or later we'll see an expeditionary force landing in South-West Africa. What'll they do? They'll march this way and consolidate with their colony in East Africa. And what do we do? We join them. And in that moment we kick the English out of here forever.'

Detlev would remember that somber moment: De Groot, De la Rey, Beyers looking ahead to the wild twists and turns of war, and he suspected that each man hoped that when Germany began to play a vital role in Africa, all decent men would side with her against the hated English.