The covenant - James A. Michener [487]
But time was not ripe for such acceptance. Frank Saltwood convinced his board and kept Fazool off the team. He did not appear in England to take his place beside the fabulous bowlers from India, the immortal batsmen from Australia. He continued to play in the darker neighborhoods of Cape Town, and as the rules against interracial competition stiffened, he quit the game altogether. He could often be seen at the docks, in the fish market, tallying not runs but the daily catch of snoek.
Often in the biographies of important women and men one comes across the phrase: 'Like a burst of light, the idea which would animate her life came upon her.' In the case of Detlev van Doorn this simile was literally true. A flash of light struck him, and the course of his life was set.
It happened because of a packet of powdered jellies imported from France. When General de Groot and her father forbade Johanna to see Mr. Amberson, she was left with little to do and began to occupy her spare time with knitting and embroidery. The arrival at the Venloo store of the imported powders excited her, and swiftly she presented her men with acidy orange and lemon desserts. They liked them, and asked for more, so she returned to the store and purchased the large-size packets, and when she reached home she found that she now had some six or seven different flavors. She experimented with each, and the men found them so tasty that they encouraged her to continue.
She was a resourceful young woman, nearing thirty now, and one day as she was pouring the jelly into her glasses it occurred to her that if she poured only a small portion into each glass, allowing it to harden, she could then pour on top of it another jelly of a different color, and repeat the process until she had a multilayered glass which would be not only quite tasty but also attractive to look at.
On her first tries she failed, because she poured the succeeding colors while they were too hot and thus melted any that had already firmed and cooled. Being a provident woman, she mixed the mangled jellies into one melange and decided to try again later, but when the mixture hardened and she served it to her men, Detlev protested: 'This doesn't look right and it doesn't taste right.' She offered no explanation, but did agree with him. That experiment had failed.
Next time, however, when the first jelly was well firmed, and she made the next flavor, she allowed it to cool almost to point of hardening, then poured it in, and her plan succeeded. Indeed, it produced a result much finer than even she had anticipated; it was really quite handsome, for with artistic taste she had placed the black currant layer at the bottom, the light brown apple atop it, then the reds, and finally the orange and the light lemon. The glasses were almost works of art.
When Detlev came into the kitchen they were perched on a window ledge, with one well off by itself, and when rays of sunlight struck that glass, the layers scintillated, each color showing to maximum advantage, throwing delightful patterns of black, brown, crimson, orange and lemon on the opposite wall, and in that moment Detlev understood the grand design of life.
'Look!' he cried, bringing the general and his father into the room. 'How each color keeps to itself. It doesn't muddy the other. It shines like a diamond.' And with one finger he outlined the nature of humanity