The covenant - James A. Michener [425]
'I am Coenraad van Doorn,' he said, pushing Jakob back so he could see him better. 'And this is my wife, Florrie. The two boys are Dirk and Gerrit and the baby is Clara. Now come in.'
With real enthusiasm the young master of the vineyards, only thirty years old, led Jakob through the front door and into the spacious line of rooms which comprised the forward leg of the H. In the center of this line stood the reception hall; to the left, a lofty-ceilinged room for meetings; to the right, the guest bedroom in which Jakob would stay. But once his bags were deposited, he was led back through the crossbar of the H and into the warm, lively room where meals were served, off which the family bedrooms ranged. What was so very pleasing about the arrangement of this house was that gardens proliferated in both squares, so that all rooms were surrounded by flowers. The place had an air of elegance that almost overwhelmed Jakob.
Young Coenraad showed himself to be an able fellow: 'My father died too soon, and someone had to take command. I feel quite submerged. I've never been to Europe, you know, and most of our accounts are there. I must trust the opinions of others.'
'Does the business prosper?'
'Famously. But I'm worried. If this war talk continues . . .'
'I don't think it will stop. Up north many people believe that war with England is inevitable.'
'Wrong decisions, Jakob, are never inevitable. A wise man can always turn back from a precipice.'
'Are you telling meyou, a Van Doornthat we Boers must not fight when an enemy wants to steal our lands and oppress us?'
'What oppression?' He almost laughed as he spoke.
Jakob had no opportunity to pursue the matter, because young Coenraad saw his cousin's visit as an opportunity to unravel the mysteries of the Van Doorns in South Africa, and before Jakob knew what was happening, a large sheet of white paper was laid down before him, with names and lines indicating the various members of the family: 'Willem and Marthinus in the 1600s I have. It's the next generation that confuses us, isn't that right, Florrie?' His wife came to sit with the two men, explaining from the chart how the two sons of Marthinus had separated, one to father the Trianon wine-makers, the other to go out into the veld to form the Vrymeer line. 'But what was your ancestor's name?' Coenraad asked.
Without having the family Bible at hand, Jakob could not trace his line so far back: 'My great-grandfather was a trekboer called Mai Adriaan. There's something they say... he discovered Vrymeer. His father may have been the one who left Trianon, but I don't recall his name.'
'That must have been Hendrik. Who was your grandfather?'
'A famous fighter. They called him Lodevicus the Hammer. He had two or three wives. One was a Wilhelmina, I believe. My mother died only last year. Aletta, eighty-one years old; I think her maiden name was Probenius.'
Carefully Coenraad drew in the lines, making estimates to account for the lost generations. It was a spotty genealogy they constructed, detailed in the case of the Trianon Van Doorns, inaccurate regarding the trekkers.
'But we are cousins,' Coenraad said expansively. 'That much we know.' When Jakob tried again to bring up the question of volunteering during the forthcoming war, the wine-maker laughed easily and cut him off: 'No one at Trianon wants war. We have no quarrel with the English.' And when Jakob started to argue that no Afrikaner would ever be spiritually free till the English were subdued, Coenraad drew his children to his side of the table so that they could inspect the diagram of their family, and said firmly, 'That'll be your war, Jakob, not ours.' And he would permit no further discussion.
In September 1899 England began moving troops up to the Orange River and ordering home regiments and units from other colonies to reinforce the Cape and Natal garrisons. The two Boer republics loaded their arsenals also, importing Mausers from Krupp's