The covenant - James A. Michener [319]
There were in South African life two events that struck terror in the hearts of ordinary men: when two bull elephants raged in low scrub, knocking down trees in their feud; and when two Boers engaged in a business deal. Awed Englishmen, watching the trickery, the deceit, the conniving, the bluster and the outright falsification of evidence that occurred when one artful Boer was trying to outsmart another, sometimes wondered how the new nation survived the passions and near-strangulations. 'I do believe,' Richard Saltwood wrote home to his brother in Parliament, 'that they are the most contrary people I've met. Rather than yield the slightest advantage, they dig their heels in like a dozen stubborn mules and won't budge, neither back nor forward, not till kingdom come.'
'The reason why the Carletons would welcome me back,' Tjaart was saying offhandedly, 'and offer me their best wagon at a low price, is that during the commando I saved his life.'
'Then you should certainly drove your sheep back one hundred miles and drove them another fifty for the slight advantage you'd get.'
'I'm prepared to do just that,' Tjaart said, and at this point he should have left the store to allow Probenius time to consider his follyfor he knew that the storekeeper needed the sheepbut now Aletta returned, and she was so like a gazelle resting along a stream that he was imprisoned. He stayed, and her father quickly understood why, and while she was there he did not mention the wagon, but when she left he said, 'Now, when will you be delivering the sheep?' and Tjaart said, 'Never, at your prices.' And he stomped from the store, exactly as Boer custom required.
On Tuesday there was no negotiation, because that was the day of the marriages, when gaunt couples in from the distant hills stepped before the predikant with their three and four children to have their unions recognized of God and confirmed by the community. It was a solemn time; the frontier church was filled with witnesses who used this ceremony to renew their own vows, and girls nine and ten watched wide-eyed as the words were said and the marriages were blessed.
But the highlight of the day was more traditional, for at the conclusion of the marriages already in existence came the young couples, and on this Tuesday, Ryk Naude, a handsome fellow, was taking as his bride the bewitching Aletta Probenius. They stood before the predikant like two golden creatures, blessed in all ways, and their youthful beauty lent grace to all the ceremonies that had gone before; they represented what marriage should be, and Minna van Doorn wept as they were wed.
On Wednesday, Probenius the storekeeper came to Tjaart's wagon, kicked at the wheels and said, 'Do you seriously think you could get this thing back to De Kraal?'
'Yes,' Tjaart said, 'because once you tell me our business is ended, I drive my wagon to Viljoen the blacksmith and have him tighten it up.'
'Did you see Viljoen at Nachtmaal? Didn't anyone tell you that he is carting ivory back to Cape Town?'
'Didn't anyone tell you that I knew this, and made arrangements for my boys to use Viljoen's forge to make the repairs?'
Who was lying? In a Boer negotiation that could never be determined, for truth was elastic, and what men hoped would happen became a prediction which had to be weighed in scales quite different from those used by a jeweler in weighing gold. Boer commercial truth was negotiable, and after judging the situation carefully, Probenius said with a show of honest summation, 'Tjaart, you need my wagon.' Here he kicked a wheel with such force that it nearly fell apart. 'And I could use your sheep, scrawny though they may be. Let's talk seriously of a proper price.'
'But we must not think only of Graaff-Reinet,' Tjaart countered with the same display of absolute honesty, 'because I am not forced to trade my fat, prime sheep. I can still take them back to Grahamstown for a better bargain.'
'I don't