The covenant - James A. Michener [369]
These Voortrekkers spent from January 1842 to September exploring north of the Limpopo, moving out cautiously to ascertain whether or not the land which looked so peaceful contained enemy tribes, and at the conclusion of the fourth such probe, Tjaart said, The Kaffirs we've met all speak of a great city to the north. Zimbabwe. I think we should go see.'
The other families, including Aletta, counseled against this, saying, 'Mzilikazi lies in wait up there.' But to Tjaart's surprise he was supported by Balthazar Bronk, who had heard rumors that Zimbabwe was paved with gold: 'I've asked the Kaffirs. They say Mzilikazi moved far west.' So Tjaart, Balthazar, Paulus and two blacks set forth with six horses to reach Zimbabwe, and as they traveled through low scrub, decorated with euphorbias that looked like Christmas trees with a thousand upright candles, they caught something of the grandeur of this region; it was quite unlike land to the south of the Limpopo, but they noticed also that their horses were weakening, as if some new disease were striking them, and they began to hurry, eager to see Zimbabwe with its golden streets.
At last they could view on the far horizon the vast hills of granite with their exfoliated layers of smooth stone, and they guessed that they were in the general region of the city, but when their horses faltered, they felt that they must turn back, and a serious conclave was held, with Balthazar wanting to return and Tjaart wishing to forge ahead just a little farther. Paulus, too, wanted to try, and his vote decided; Bronk would stay with the sick horses while the two others walked for three days: 'If you see nothing by then, you must come back.'
'Agreed.'
So Tjaart, Paulus and the two servants walked the last miles, and from a hill they saw Zimbabwe, not the flourishing city paved with gold, but the ruins of a notable site, overgrown with trees, captured by vines, and populated by a tribe that knew nothing of past glories. On the ruins where great kings had knelt and along the overgrown streets which Arab traders had trod with bags of gold, baboons played and warthogs shuffled along, grunting and rooting among the fallen stones.
It was a gloomy, sad place and Tjaart said, 'Poor Balthazar. No gold here.'
When they rejoined Bronk, he informed them that two of the horses had died: 'I think a fly is biting them.'
'It's not biting us,' Tjaart said.
'The trip's proved nothing,' Balthazar complained.
'It's proved we don't want to live up here. No gold for you, either.'
So they returned south, three Voortrekkers leading four sick horses, and by the time they reached the Limpopo, two more were dead. Something in the vicinity of this river was inimical to horses, and when they rejoined their families, they found that the oxen were wasting away, too.
'We must leave here,' Tjaart said, and on 20 September 1842 they started slowly south, oppressed by a sense of defeat, which was exacerbated for Tjaart when Aletta began to show a distinct dislike for her granddaughter Sybilla. Because the little girl, now seven years old, was so extraordinarily beautiful, so fragile and so enticing, Aletta saw her as a reminder of her own aging. She was twenty-five now and the hated life of the frontier had attacked both her beauty and her figure, so that she sometimes considered herself actually ugly. 'Won't we ever settle in some town, Tjaart? I want to live with other people.' When he rebuffed her, she took her discomfort out on little Sybilla, who proved a most infuriating child; for when Aletta berated her for some imagined fault, she merely looked at her grandmother, listened obediently, then walked away to find Paulus, who comforted her after such assaults.
It angered Aletta to see the two children together, for obviously they inhabited a private world from which she would always be excluded; Sybilla's habit of clinging to the boy's hand, as she had done that awful night, irritated her, and whenever she saw this she shouted, 'Sybilla, come in here.