The covenant - James A. Michener [314]
For such travelers, there could be nothing more exciting and spiritually satisfying than this joyous celebration of the Dutch Reformed Church, for in its companionship there was social renewal and in its religious services a deepened pledge to Calvinist doctrine. A week of Nachtmaal lent grace and harmony to the lives of the Boers and explained why they formed such a cohesive group.
The rite was carefully structured: church service each day for four days, the one on Sunday lasting four hours; public weddings and baptisms; acceptance of new members into the fellowship; much time set aside for buying and selling of properties; and wonderful singing parties at which youths were almost challenged to fall in love.
But what everyone cherished about Nachtmaal was the strengthened friendship of families who had shared common struggles: almost every man had been on commando; almost every woman had lost a baby, or a husband; and all had pondered during the difficult years their relationship to God. In the English community there was nothing similar to Nachtmaal, which was one reason why the English could never be mistaken for Dutchmen.
In 1833 the Van Doorn wagon was not of the best for this long journey: ninety-two miles over a demanding terrain, with the sixteen oxen able to do at best eight miles a day. The cart had worn wheels and such a tattered canvas that Tjaart had been saying for some years, 'We must find ourselves a new wagon.' Upon his arrival at Graaff-Reinet, capital of the northeast, he was determined to acquire the best wagon possible, even if he had to trade all the sheep he was driving to the town to get it.
But his excitement in heading north was nothing compared to his daughter's, for she had convinced herself that when the Van Doorn wagon overtook the De Groots' in the far middle of nothingness, they would form a kind of royal procession, and at the entrance to Graaff-Reinet, near the miraculous mountain, they would meet Ryk Naude, who would be waiting for her like a young prince. She had practiced her speech of welcome: 'Good afternoon, Ryk. How pleasant it is to see you again.' She would speak to him as if their parting had been two days ago, not two years. She experimented with charcoal to make her eyebrows darker and red clay from the Stevens farm to touch her cheeks. She pestered her mother and the slave women to convince herself that she would be acceptable in Ryk's eyes, and they assured her that she was a proper little lady whom any man would be pleased to have.
She was experiencing the wonderful days of awakening, and no one watched her with more approval than Tjaart. And he told his wife, 'Jakoba, when a girl is almost fourteen she better think about catching herself a husband. You almost waited too long.' She had been all of sixteen when the Widower van Doorn rode seventy miles to find her, and she could remember how worried she had been. 'Minna's just right for her age, Tjaart. She has a good head.'
The senior members of the family had also been attending to their appearance: Jakoba had made herself a new dress, a new bonnet, and had ordered new shoes for herself and Tjaart from Koos, an old cobbler who moved from farm to farm. Tjaart, in turn, had unpacked his one fine suit of dark clothes: coat, vest, trousers with a big front flap, felt hat with enormous brim. On the final evening, when all the attractive things were spread on the floor prior to being wrapped for the dusty journey, he took down the brassbound Bible and opened it to Isaiah, where he read:' "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength?" ' And he answered the rhetorical question by saying in his own words, 'It is the family of Tjaart van Doorn. Traveling to Graaff-Reinet for Nachtmaal, to do You honor.'
In the morning they startedfather, mother, two sons and their families, and the girl Minnaall in their oldest, roughest clothes, the three men in broad-brimmed