The covenant - James A. Michener [144]
Quickly another farmer corrected him: 'What you mean, Andries, it's all right for white men to sleep with black women. Never white women with black men.' When this was enthusiastically approved, Boeksma endeavored to prohibit the marriage, and might have succeeded except for two reasons: local people needed the wine Marthinus made and the wall closets Bezel built. So the slave became free, the dark man married the white woman, and in a score of unexpected ways the community profited.
Not long after the wedding, Boeksma approached Annatjie with an interesting proposition: 'Mevrouw, would you allow your slave to build me a stinkwood closet?'
'He's a free man. Ask him direct.'
Bezel accepted the commission, and Annatjie was pleased to see the beauty of the gigantic piece. It was, she believed, the best work her son-in-law had ever done, and she watched with wry amusement as he loaded it on his cart for delivery to the man who had been his adversary.
With her daughter married, Annatjie's concern turned to little Sarel, whose reticence had worried her from cradle days. As long as he had to be compared only to Hendrik, who was himself quiet, she could rationalize: 'Sarel's a good boy. He just doesn't attract much attention.' But when he had to be judged against the De Pre lads, his deficiencies became apparent. He spoke more slowly, reacted tardily to externals, and never showed anger the way boys should. She was not yet prepared to admit that Sarel was slow-witted and would have fought anyone who said so, but she did worry: 'He's a slow developer. Not to be compared with the others.'
Annatjie herself was without vanity, or envy, or senseless anger. She was a woman born without prospects who had stumbled into a life infinitely better than she could have anticipated, with a young husband who appreciated her, an older son who gave promise of becoming outstanding, and parents-in-law who had been exceptional. Furthermore, she lived in a valley that had no equal in South Africa and in a house that would one day be hailed around the world as a masterpiece of Cape Dutch invention.
She was therefore quite capable of handling Paul de Pre's obvious determination to gather all the land in this valley into one vast holding, of which the principal part would be the vineyards of Trianon. The Van Doorns now owned their original sixty morgen, plus an additional hundred and twenty acquired since coming to the valley. Paul de Pre owned only the sixty granted him by Karel van Doorn in lieu of cash, but already he had plans to pick up another farm, and had sharp eyes for several bits of unclaimed land beyond that.
He had tried to marry Petronella in order to establish some kind of claim on Trianon, and had been rebuffed. Indeed, he had been ridiculed by Annatjie, who had told him he was making a fool of himself, but this had not deterred him from proceeding with his ambition, and one evening some months after the funeral of old Willem he came to the Van Doorns with an astonishing proposal: 'Why don't we merge the two farms? I'll contribute mine so that we can operate the vineyards as a single unit.'
'But what would you do?' Marthinus asked.
'Work with you. We can make this the best wine farm outside of France.'
'You'd give up your morgen?'
'We'd be partners. What difference does it make who owns this piece of land or that?'
Marthinus said, 'But we own one eighty morgen. You have only sixty. What kind of partnership is that?'
'If I stop tending the grapes, how much are yours worth, eh?'
'We'd farm it, some other way. But we'd never give up our land.'
'Think about it,' De Pre said, and after three weeks, when the subject was not returned to, he announced one night, 'I now have a hundred and six morgen and will soon have two hundred.'
When he was gone, Annatjie sent the boys to bed and talked seriously with