The covenant - James A. Michener [137]
'That's what Katje always wanted.'
'We'll do it for her,' Paul said, but often as Willem watched the energy with which the Huguenot worked he gained the impression that Paul was building not for Katje, but for himself. On important points the Huguenot was adamant.
'The front must be kept long and low, but over the door we want a beautiful gable, like the ones I knew in Holland.' He sketched the graceful curves that would define the gable and determine its height, and although he consulted the two Van Doorn men on what materials Bezel Muhammad should use, it was he who directed each stage of the construction.
It was De Pre's idea also to build a wing projecting backward from the front door, so that the house took the form of a T, with the kitchen and serving areas in the stem at the rear. When the house was completed, he found a way to finish off its long clean walls with cow manure, which hardened like stone, and then to whitewash them so that they gleamed pure-white. But because the mud-and-manure produced an uneven surface, when the whitewash was applied, it assumed magnificent planes and dips and protuberances which reflected light in a thousand different ways. Like a crystal jewel set among trees, the gabled whiteness symbolized the scintillating Dutch-Huguenot alliance which, with its strong German component, was forming a new society.
'And now the surprise!' De Pre announced as all looked with pleasure at their new dwelling. 'What I have in mind is something else Katje would have liked.' And he sketched in the dust his plan for a stoep, a front porch on which to rest when the sun went down behind Table Mountain. It was agreed by all that Katje would indeed have liked this, would have sat there at the end of day; so the gallant old woman, who had rarely been given a moment to rest while alive, was memorialized by a stoep on which her descendants would sit doing nothing.
'It mustn't be a high stoep,' De Pre cautioned, 'for that would mar the face. Just two courses of stone and only wide enough for two rocking chairs.' When it was finished, the Van Doorns applauded, and on the first evening when Annatjie tested the rockers, looking out to Table Mountain, she told her son Hendrik, 'It will be your job to care for these fields when your grandfather and your father are no longer here.' Later she would remember that when she said this, her son had turned away from the Cape and said, 'Grandfather always wanted to go that way. Didn't you?' And old Willem had agreed with his grandson: 'Go beyond the mountains. If I were younger, I'd build my farm out there, and to hell with the Compagnie.'
Bezel Muhammad had his own surprise for his new family. Having found several large stinkwood and yellow-wood trees, he had built a standing clothes cabinet, nine feet high, with finely polished swinging doors in front, a set of four drawers below, and feet carved in the form of an eagle's talon grasping an orb. In simple design the closet would have been handsome, but when the two woods, near-black and glowing gold, were alternated, the result was quite dazzling. It was a gift for Annatjie, but everyone agreed that Katje would have loved that armoire.
When De Pre used this word the Dutchmen looked at him askance, and even when he explained its meaning they resented it. 'That thing's a wall cupboard,' Marthinus said, and he was aghast at what De Pre suggested next. Leading the entire family to a spot well west of the remodeled house, he asked them to look at its quiet perfection as it nestled among its hills: 'See how all things fit together. The gable not too high, the stoep not too big, the walls reflecting the light. It's our palace in Africa.'
The Dutchmen did not like the analogy. Palaces were occupied by Spaniards and Frenchmen, and they had meant death to Calvinists. 'I want no palace on my land,' Marthinus said.
De Pre ignored him: 'There's a new palace building near Paris. Trianon it's called. Our African palace should be called that, too.'
'Ridiculous!' Marthinus cried, but De Pre said quietly, 'Because when we start to