The covenant - James A. Michener [480]
'It won't be English, Mr. Amberson.'
He was astonished by this statement, for it had never occurred to him that Dutch could persist in competition with the victors' language, but he surprised both Johanna and Detlev by the gentlemanly manner in which he reacted. 'Sit down,' he said graciously, and when she elaborated her complaint, he listened attentively, endeavoring to catch the full meaning of her words, for she would speak only in the language of her people, the vital adaptation of Dutch by generations of her ancestors.
'There is something else we must take into account,' he said courteously, as if reasoning with a child. 'I'm told that the Dutch you do speak in these parts, and throughout the countryI'm told it really isn't very good Dutch and should not be perpetuated.'
'Who told you that?'
'Mr. Op t'Hooft, who comes from Amsterdam and works in the education department.'
'Another Hollander! Damn them all, they come out here, take a job and then lord it over us.'
'But Mr. Op t'Hooft intends taking out citizenship. He prefers it here.'
'We don't want him.' The mention of another Hollander who was riding roughshod over the local Boers enraged Johanna and sidetracked her from her main complaint.
'Miss van Doorn, I'm sure President Kruger's government didn't want to hire so many Hollanders, but it had to, because your people out on these farms ...' He felt that he was getting into deep water, and tried again: 'The Boers were simply wonderful at warfare, maybe the best free fighters on earth. My brother fought against General de Groot, you know. King's Own Royal Rifles, you know.' Johanna stared at him as if he were an imbecile, and he ended lamely, 'You Boers refuse to learn business procedures, so President Kruger had to invite the Hollanders in to run the government. Absolutely essential.'
'They can go home now,' she said tartly. And then she changed the subject: 'Mr. Amberson, I wish you would not again hang that sign about my brother's neck.'
'He must stop speaking Dutch in class, really he must.'
'Why? If this is to be a Dutch country?'
'Ah, but it's to be English.' He hesitated. 'The language, that is.'
They had reached an impasse, and when she returned to the farm she sought out the general, asking him if he thought the Dutch spoken by the people of Venloo was as corrupted as Mr. Op t'Hooft, whoever he was, seemed to think.
'Yes. We have a different language now. Our own. Your father and mine fashioned it. Simpler and better.'
'Should we allow the Hollanders who run everything to stay on?'
'Kick them all out. They despise us, and God knows, we despise them. Just because they can speak like Amsterdamers, they think they're lords and ladies. I say, "Kick their asses out." ' He apologized for his rough speech, then repeated it.
But any worry over the insolent Hollanders, most of whom were going home anyway, since they deplored the barbaric level of society they had to suffer in towns like Pretoria and Bloemfontein, vanished when the real menace showed itself. Word of this disastrous decision had reached Venloo, and when Detlev came home from school he astonished his elders by announcing, 'They're bringing in sixty thousand Chinese workmen.'
'What?' the general shouted.
'Yes. The mine owners say that since the war they can't get any more Kaffirs, so ships are sailing into Durban with Chinese.'
'Who is doing this?' the old man bellowed, but despite his fevered questioning he could find no rational answers, so he decided to take the little money he had and ride the train in to Johannesburg and see for himself what the crisis amounted to.
'You're to come with me,' he said to Detlev, and when the boy protested that he must report to school, the general said, 'More important that you see the enemy,' and he rode with the boy to Waterval-Boven, where they caught the train.
It was a stunning adventure for Detlevtravelers eating their meals while they sped westward, the sweep of the veld, the farms struggling back into production, and on the far horizon the first sight of a major city.