The covenant - James A. Michener [320]
Fortunately, at this moment an extraordinary man came along looking for Van Doorn, and this gave Tjaart an excuse to defer the negotiations: 'Think it over, Probenius.' And he threw out a price markedly lower than
the one the storekeeper had just proposed, but not enough to be insulting. 'I promised to talk with this gentleman.'
It was a curious use of words, for if there was anyone at the Nachtmaal who was not a gentleman, it was this odd fellow Theunis Nel, forty-eight years old, short, rumpled, unshaven, poorly dressed, and with a pitiful little mustache that made his upper lip tremble when he talked. Three times during Nachtmaal he had come seeking guidance from Tjaart, and thrice he had been put off. Now he arrived at a time when Tjaart found it convenient to interrupt his bargaining with Probenius, and to the little man's surprise, he was welcomed warmly.
'Theunis, my trusted friend, what can I do for you?'
In addition to his other infirmities, Nel had two which irritated many persons: he lisped slightly, and his left eye was both cocked and watery, so that anyone speaking with him had a confusing time looking first at one eye and then the other without ever knowing which one was functioning, and whenever a decision was reached, Theunis would interrupt the conversation by taking out a grubby handkerchief and wiping his eye: 'I have a cold, you know.' Now he said in pleading voice, 'Tjaart, please speak one more time with the predikant.'
'It's quite useless, dear fellow.'
'Maybe things have changed. Maybe he'll be more compassionate.' 'Haven't you got a job? Aren't you eating?'
'Oh, yes! I'm teaching school ... for several families . . . beyond the mountains.'
'I'm very happy that you have work, Theunis.'
And then the terrible fire that burned in the heart of this little man manifested itself. In words that tumbled upon each other, and with his lisp worse than usual, he said, 'Tjaart, I am indeed called of God. I have a mission. I feel driven to pass through this community, helping and praying. Tjaart, God has spoken to me. His voice echoes in my ears. For His sake if not for mine, beg the predikant to ordain me.'
He was a pitiful man; refused entrance to any real theological school back in Holland, he had been half trained at a kind of missionary school in Germany. He was certainly not a predikant, which was why he sought ordination so compulsively, but he was not a layman either, because he had been on his way to Java to work in a mission when the last Dutch governor at the Cape had plucked him off his ship to serve in that capacity in South Africa. Itinerant teacher, wandering scholar, frontier sick-comforter, busybody, aspirant, his only virtue was that of all the Dutch sick-comforters in Africa and Java, he was the one who truly brought comfort to the dying. Insignificant, without pomp or pretense, but convinced that he was touched directly by the finger of God, he came into the meanest frontier hut and said, 'Life runs its course, Stephanus, and now the commando saddles up for the last charge. I have watched you for a dozen years, down and up, and I am convinced that God has His eye upon you. Death has not yet come. You have days and days to reflect upon the providential life you've enjoyed. Those children. The fields. Stephanus, you are quitting one glory to enter another, and I wish I could go with you, hand in hand, to see what you're about to see. Spend these last days in reflection. Would you like me to read you a sermon preached in Amsterdam about the nature of heaven?'
And that was the constant anguish! As a sick-comforter, Theunis Nel could read the sermons of others but never preach one of his own; the church laws which governed his deportment were severe. If he had ever presumed to preach in those early days when Holland governed, he would have been thrown in jail; now, under English law, he would escape jail but not the ostracism of his own people. So he