The covenant - James A. Michener [120]
'What's that mean?' Paul asked.
'Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie,' he recited proudly. 'Jan Compagnie. Behind those doors sit the Lords XVII.' And he explained how this powerful assembly of businessmen had started more than eighty years ago to rule the East.
'But the Germans?' Paul asked, pointing to the rabble that waited silently outside the courtyard.
'There's nothing in Germany,' Vermaas explained. 'These are men who fought for some count... some baron. They lost. For them there's nothing.'
'But why here?'
'Jan Compagnie always needs good men. The clerk will come out tomorrow morning, look them over, try to spot those likely to survive. And poof! They're off to Java.'
'Where's Java?'
'Haven't you seen the big Outer Warehouse of the East Indies Company?'
'No.'
'Well, after we weigh the goods here and assess the taxes, they're stored in the proper warehouses,' and on Sunday he took Paul on a leisurely stroll along various canals, past the house in which Rembrandt had lived and the place once occupied by Baruch Spinoza before he had to grind lenses to keep himself alive. They crossed a footbridge to an artificial island that contained a vast open space surrounded by row upon row of warehouses, a very long rope-walk and a majestic, five-storied building for holding valuable importations.
'The treasure chest of the Lords XVII,' Vermaas said, and he summoned a watchman, who granted admission. In the darkness the two men moved from one stack of goods to another, touching with their hands casks and bales worth a fortune.
'Cloves, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon.' Vermaas repeated reverently the magic names, and as he spoke De Pre grew sick at heart for contact again with the soil, the real soil of trees and vines and shrubs.
'Now, these bales,' Vermaas was saying, 'they're not spices. Golded cloth from Japan. Silvered cloth from India. Beautiful robes from Persia. This is from China, and I don't know what's in it.'
'Where's it come from, all this richness?'
'From the gardens of the moon,' Vermaas said. All his life he had wanted to emigrate to Java, where a purposeful man could make his fortune. He had an insecure idea of where Java was, but he proposed one day to get there. Grasping De Pre by the arm, he said in a whisper, 'Paul, if you can't marry a rich widow, for God's sake, get to Java. You're still young.' And the sweet promise of this dark warehouse was overpowering.
In the morning De Pre asked permission from the widows to visit the offices of Jan Compagnie. 'Whatever for?' the women asked.
'I want to see what the Germans are up to. About Java.'
'Java!' The women laughed, and the older said, 'Go ahead. But don't you start dreaming of Java.'
So he walked only a few blocks to the Hoogstraat, where the crowd of Germans was vastly augmented, men extremely thin and pinched of face, but willing to undertake the severest adventure if only it would provide sustenance. He stood fascinated as clerks came out of the Compagnie offices to inspect the supplicants, selecting one in twenty, and he saw with what joy the chosen men leaped forward.
But when he returned to his work the widows said that they wished to talk with him: 'Don't get Java on your mind. For every guilder that reaches us from Java, six come from the Baltic. Yes, you'll see the big East Indiamen anchored off Texel, transshipping their spices and cloth-of-gold, and you'll hear that one cargo earned a million of this or that. But, Paul, believe us, the wealth of Holland lies in our herring trade. In any year our seven little ships serving the Baltic bring in more money than a dozen of their India-men. Keep your eye on the main target.'
They spoke alternately, with one making a point and her sister-in-law another, but when the roundish one repeated, 'Keep your eye on the main target,' the taller wished to enforce the idea: 'We've been watching you, Paul. You and Marie have been chosen by God for some great task.'
No one had ever spoken like this to him before; he had for some time suspected that he was among those elected by God for salvation, the basic