The covenant - James A. Michener [216]
That was bad enough, but soon a man rode in from Swellendam announcing himself as a patriot, and he lectured the Van Doorns about America, where England had once had colonies and where the citizens had risen in revolt against English rule. 'What I learned when I was in New York,' he said, 'is that when English magistrates come ashore, English troops are always ready to follow. Mark my words, you'll see Redcoats on your frontier before the year is out. They'll not have Lodevicus van Doorn telling them how to handle Kaffirs.'
From a corner of the room, where he had been sitting with Tjaart, Lodevicus spoke of the real problems facing the Dutch in Africa: 'New rulers who have not our traditions will attempt to alter our church, recast it in their mold, destroy our ancient convictions. To preserve our integrity, we shall have to fight ten times as hard as we fight against the Xhosa. Because the English will be after our souls.
'Since they do not speak our language, they'll force us to speak theirs. They'll issue their laws in English, import books printed in English, demand that we pray from their English Bible.' Pointing like an Old Testament prophet at the various children in the room, he said with an ominous voice, 'You will be told that you must not speak Dutch. That you must conduct your affairs in English.'
In later years Tjaart would say, 'First thing I remember in life, sitting in a dark room while my father thundered, "If my conqueror makes me speak his language, he makes me his slave. Resist him! Resist him!" '
And when the Redcoats came, followed by the magistrates, the Van Doorns did resist, and looked very foolish for having done so, because within a few years everything was thrown again into wild confusion, for the same messenger came galloping eastward over the same route with news more startling than the first: 'We're all Dutch again! England and Holland are allies, fighting a man called Napoleon Bonaparte. You can ignore English laws.'
So the Redcoats were withdrawn; Van Doorn's fears proved groundless; and life resumed its orderly way, which on the frontier meant without any order at all. Guzaka continued his raids across the Great Fish, and Vicus hammered him for his insolence. Killing became so commonplace that often it was not even reported to Swellendam.
Restoration of Dutch rule had one curious side effect: a minor but condescending official came out from Holland to inspect the frontier, and upon finishing his tour he commented on the sad deterioration of speech in the colony: 'At times I would scarcely know I was listening to Dutch, the way your people mishandle the language.' From his pocket he produced a slip of paper on which he had noted certain unfamiliar words. 'You borrow words with a most careless abandon, adopting the worst of the native languages and forgetting your good Dutch words.' And he read off neologisms like kraal, bobotie, assegai and lobola. 'You should purify yourself of such abominations,' he said, proceeding to criticize also the local word orders and mispronunciations. When he was finished, Lodevicus said with some asperity, 'You make us sound like barbarians,' and the visitor said, 'That's what you'll become if you lose your Dutch,' and that was the beginning of the Van Doorn family's distrust of the homeland Dutch. They were a snobbish, metropolitan, unpleasant lot, with no appreciation of what frontier life involved.
When the stranger left, Lodevicus called his group together and said, 'We'll speak Dutch the way we want it to sound.' And the result was that they drove an even deeper wedge between their inherited Dutch language and the new tongue they were building.
Despite these years of uncertainty and war, Lodevicus prospered as a stock farmer, extending his acres far beyond mountain-girt De Kraal. When he required more help and found it impossible to lure Xhosa warriors to work his farm, he grumbled about their arrogance, then drove his wagon to Swellendam, where he purchased slaves: two Madagascans, three Angolans. Because of his visible wealth, he was appointed