The covenant - James A. Michener [192]
My visit to the Cape occurred two years prior to my collecting tour in the English colonies of America. These colonies were launched more or less at the same time as the Dutch venture in Africa, and I was constantly oppressed by comparison of the two. The colonies had scores of printing presses, the most lively newspapers and journals, and books in every town. I was able to consult with scholars at several fine colleges, Harvard, Yale and Pennsylvania among them. But my most doleful concern grew out of my extended meeting with Dr. Franklin in Philadelphia, that self-educated genius. He reminded me precisely of Adriaan van Doorn, for the two had identical casts of mind. But because of the cultural opportunities in the English colonies, Dr. Franklin is acknowledged to be a great scholar, while Van Doorn, who can neither read nor write, is called at home Mai Adriaan, Crazy Adriaan . . .
It was my own ignorance that caused a major disappointment. Although I knew some Dutch, I had expected to speak mostly French, because of the large number of immigrants who reached the Cape from that country. I had taken mainly French books with me, but when I tried to use the language, which I speak moderately well, I found no one to talk with. Custom and the stern measures of Compagnie rule have eradicated the language, and throughout the colony no sound of French is heard.
Adriaan and Seena had four children, who were reared in the same slapdash manner that prevailed at Rooi van Valck's, and to a degree, at the hartebeest huts of the Van Doorns. They were raised with love and boundless physical affection, much as if they were young puppies, and they showed signs of becoming close copies of their wandering father or their rowdy and profane mother. The first and third had red hair inherited from the Van Valcks; the second and fourth, light blond hair like the Van Doorns; and in 1750 it seemed probable that they would be frontier nomads like their parents, illiterate, contemptuous of Compagnie authority, and delightfully tied to the soil of which they were a part. In a few years strange young men would wander in to court the girls and then start eastward to launch loan-farms of their own, stepping off the six thousand acres to which they felt they would always be entitled. 'The land out there is limitless,' the trekboers proclaimed. 'We can keep moving till we meet the Indian Ocean.' And if a man kept his farm for about ten years before leapfrogging to virgin soil, the process could continue for another hundred years.
'Of course,' Adriaan said when such predictions were being made, 'sooner or later you're going to run into the Xhosa.'
'The what?' the newer trekboers would ask.
'The Xhosa.'
'And what in hell are they?'
'The blacks. They're out there, beyond the big river.'
But since he was one of the very few who had seen them, and since the farms were prospering in the new lands, the Xhosa barrier was ignored.
In many ways the Van Doorn farm now resembled that of Rooi van Valck: grandfather, grandmother, Adriaan's family and his brothers', the numerous grandchildren, and many servants, and the large herds of cattle. Life was good, and when one of the women cried at midmorning, 'I want someone to chop this meat,' any man in hearing distance was eager to help, because this meant that the cooks were going to make bobotie, and there was no dish better than this on the veld.
Seena, who had often made it for her father, usually took command. In a large, deep-sided clay baking dish she placed the chopped beef and mutton, mixing in curry and onions, all of which she allowed to brown while she pounded a large handful of almonds mixed with additional spices. When all was blended and seemingly