The covenant - James A. Michener [133]
'Oh!' he cried. 'Can I have some?'
'You can have it all,' Willem said. 'I made it for you.'
The three Huguenots stared at him, unable to conceive that this wrinkled old farmer could also cook, but when the crock was passed to Paul, so that he could serve, he jabbed his spoon into the crust and they applauded.
While the others ate, Paul studied the old Dutchman and was confused. Willem had proved the most generous of neighbors, lending slaves whenever needed; he laughed with the children and now proved himself an able cook. He was in no way the dour and heavy Dutchman Paul had expected, but he did have one mortal failing: he could not make good wine. In a way, this was not surprising, for none of his countrymen could, either. For a thousand years Frenchmen to the south of Holland and Germans to the east had made fine wine, but the Dutch had never mastered it.
'Van Doorn,' Paul said one day in exasperation, 'to make good wine requires fifteen proper steps. And you've done all of them wrong except one.'
Willem chuckled. 'What one?'
'The direction of your vines. They don't fight the wind and the sun.' De Pre studied the lines and asked, 'How did you get that right?'
And then an inexplicable thing happened. The old man stood among his vines, and dropped his hands, and tears came to his eyes. His shoulders shook, and after a long time he said, 'A girl instructed me a long time ago. And they branded her on the face, here and here. And she fled into the wilderness with my sons. And by the grace of God she may still be alive . . . somewhere out there.' He placed his hands over his face and bowed his head. 'I pray to God she's still alive.'
So many things were implied in what the old man said that Paul concluded it was wisest to ask nothing, so he returned to the making of wine: 'Really, Mijnheer, you've done everything wrong, but because your vines know you love them, they have stayed alive, and when my good grapes join them, I do believe we can blend the musts into something good.'
'You mean, we can make wine they won't laugh at in Java?'
'That's why I came,' De Pre said, and his jaw jutted out. 'In two years they'll be begging for our wine in Java.'
Inadvertently he brought dilemmas into the Van Doorn household. One day, while listening to his sons at play, he realized to his dismay that they had shouted at one another for upwards of half an hour without once having used a French word. They had begun to conduct their lives wholly in Dutch, and no matter how carefully he spoke to them in French at mealtime or at prayers, they preferred to respond in Dutch. He recalled the farewell sermon of the clergyman at the Huguenot church in Amsterdam: 'Above all, cling to your language ... It is the soul of France, the song of freedom.'
When it became apparent that no discipline from him was going to make his sons retain their language, he appealed to the Van Doorns for help, but they were aghast at his effrontery. 'You're in a Dutch colony,' Katje said bluntly. 'Speak Dutch.'
'When you want to register your land,' Willem said, 'you'll have to do it in Dutch. This isn't some French settlement.'
'It's quite proper that church services should be in Dutch,' Marthinus continued. 'Ours is a Dutch church,' and when De Pre pointed out that in Amsterdam the Dutch had not only permitted a French church to operate but had also paid the salary of the foreign minister, Marthinus growled, 'They must have been idiots.'
Despite their arguments, Paul still felt that the Compagnie should duplicate the Dutch government's generosity and provide the Huguenots with a church of their own, and he started looking about for fellow Frenchmen, but found none, and for good reason. The Lords XVII, afraid that the immigrants might coalesce, just as De Pre was now proposing, and form an indigestible mass within the settlement, speaking an alien language and demanding extraterritorial