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By Root 3727 0

sometimes I think your father makes a fool of himself, scouring that book for instructions. If Rooi van Valck has a daughter, and she looks as if she'd be good in bed, grab her.' When Adriaan said nothing, for these ideas were shocking to him, raised as he was with absolute faith in the Bible, even though he could not read it for himself, his mother added, 'Living in a hut is no pleasure. It's not much better than what the Hottentots have. But to love your father and go to bed with him when you children are asleep. That can be enough to keep a life going.' With a sudden jerk of her hand she pulled him around to face her in the darkness. With her eyes close to his she whispered, 'And never forget it. You leave for Van Valck's at sunup.'

Adriaan took the brown horse and rode far to the north, across the empty plains, across the muddy Touws River, and well to the west of the Witte-berge Mountains, until he saw ahead the columns of dust that signified a settlement. It was the farm, the little empire, of Rooi van Valck, and to get to the hartebeest huts in which Rooi and his wild collection of attendants lived, he had to pass through valleys containing twenty thousand sheep, seven thousand head of cattle.

'I'm looking for Rooi,' Adriaan said, overwhelmed by the magnitude of his wealth.

'Not here,' a Madagascan slave growled.

'Where is he?'

'Who knows?'

'Can I speak to his wife?'

'Which one?'

'His wife. I want to speak with his wife.'

'He's got four. The white one, the yellow one, the brown one, the black one.'

'Which one has the daughters?' 'They all got daughters, sons too.'

'I'll see the white one.'

'Over there.' And the slave pointed to a hut not one bit better than the one the Van Doorns occupied.

All these cattle, Adriaan said to himself as he crossed the clearing to the hut. And he lives in a hut like us. He was pleased rather than disturbed, and when the white Mevrouw van Valck invited him to sit with her, he was relieved to see that she was much like his mother: old beyond her years, well adapted to the dirt, independent in nature.

'What do you want?' she asked, squatting on a log that served as a bench.

'To see your husband.'

'He's around somewheres.'

'When will he be back?'

Like the slave, she answered, 'Who knows?'

'Today? Three days?'

'Who knows?' Looking at him carefully, she asked, 'What farm?' 'Hendrik van Doorn's.' 'Never heard of him.' 'Trianon. Those Van Doorns.'

The name had a startling effect on her. 'Trianon!' she roared, following the name with a string of Dutch and Hottentot curses. Then, going to the open end of the hut, she bellowed, 'Guess who's here? A Van Doorn of Trianon!'

'I'm not from Trianon,' Adriaan tried to explain, but before he could establish this fact, numerous people had erupted from the many huts, women of varied colors bringing with them children of the most mixed appearance.

'This one is from Trianon!' Mevrouw van Valck shouted, hitting him in the shoulder playfully and ringing out a new string of obscenities. 'And I'll wager he's come to find him a wife. Isn't that right, Van Doorn? Isn't that right?'

And before he could control his blushing and explain in an orderly manner the purpose of his mission, the tough woman had yelled for different people, and a procession of bewildering types came to her hut. 'You can have this one,' she shrilled, pointing to a nubile girl of seventeen with dark skin and black hair. 'But you can't have that one because he's a boy.' This occasioned great laughter among the women, and the parade continued.

'This one you can have,' she said more seriously, 'and I'd advise you to take her.' With these words she brought forth one of her own daughters, a girl with bright red hair that fell almost to her waist. She seemed to be about fifteen or sixteen, not shy, not embarrassed by her rowdy mother. Going directly to Adriaan, she extended her hands and said, 'Hello, I'm Seena.' When her mother started to say something obscene, the girl turned in a flash and shouted, 'You, damn fool, shut up.'

'She's the good one,' Mevrouw van Valck shouted,