The covenant - James A. Michener [308]
In the most remote corners of southern Africa huddling blacks would dream of the day when mighty Shaka would return to lead them into their heritage. His military prowess was magnified; his prudence as a ruler exalted. Out of his personal tragedy Shaka offered his people a vision.
At Vrijmeer, well north of Zulu power and safely south of Mzilikazi's burgeoning kingdom, Nxumalo, one of the few men who had known both kings intimately, came to realize as he grew older that the really glorious time of his life had been when he led Shaka's iziCwe into battle in its new formation of body-arms-head. Then he and his men, held in vital reserve with their backs to the fray, waited for the imperial command to storm forth. 'What a moment!' he told his children as they sat beside the lake, watching the animals come down to drink. 'Spears flying, men hissing as they killed the enemy, consternation, turmoil, then the calm voice of Shaka: "Nxumalo, support the left flank." That's all he said. And with a cry we leaped to our feet, turned to face the battle, and sped like springboks to destroy the enemy.'
The children were ordered to forget the rest: Shaka's murder of their mothers; the savagery of the Dark Time; the terrible denouement when assassins stalked the king in order to save the nation.
'The thing to remember,' Nxumalo said one evening in 1841, when he had white hair and his children were older, 'is that Shaka was the noblest man who ever lived. The wisest. The kindest. And never forget, Mbengu. Carry yourself tall, because Shaka himself was once married to your mother Thandi.'
When the children asked why, if he loved Shaka, he had not returned to Zululand, he explained: 'You've heard the old rumors. Dingane murdering his own brother Mhlangana, who had helped him gain the throne. If we had gone back, Dingane would have murdered us, all of us. He was always treacherous.'
He preferred nobler thoughts: 'When our nation falls into trouble, Shaka will return to save us, and we'll shout "Bayete!" and if you are men and women of character, you'll respond and Zululand will throb with marching feet, for he will always be our great leader.'
'But didn't you kill him?' a grandson asked.
There are some questions that cannot be answered intelligently, and Nxumalo did not try.
IN 1828 Tjaart van Doorn was about as happy as a man could be. His farm at De Kraal was nourishing. His second wife, Jakoba, had begun to soften her harsh ways. And his daughter Minna was as pleasing a child as a father could have in his middle years. He was thirty-nine, stout, stocky, with a full black beard that started near his ears, covered his cheeks and chin, but left his upper lip clear. He wore heavy clothes: short jacket, calfskin vest, tieless shirt and stiff pants made of moleskin, with a huge flap that came across his middle and buttoned at his right hip. The pants were held up by a wide belt and stout suspenders, but the characteristic that identified him immediately, wherever he stood, was a low-crowned hat, with a very wide, sloping brim, whose underside was bright blue.
Since he was a man of few words most of the time, having been overawed by his volcanic father Lodevicus, he gave the impression of a gruff, grumpy man with a firm-set countenance. He did not, however, seem a large man; there were many in his district who were taller, but few were more sturdy.
He had a right to take pride in his farm; from the fine start his father had given, he had augmented De Kraal in all respects. The basic holding was still that splendid valley set within protecting hills, with the copious stream running from the southwest right through the middle of the land to an opening at the northeast, from which it wandered on to make junction with the Great Fish River some miles farther on.
What Tjaart had