The covenant - James A. Michener [496]
'Now, there's a man, not so?'
'Do you know his name? No? Well, it's James Barry Hertzog, that's what it is.'
'He ought to change it. With his ideas, he ought to change it.'
'It's the name God gave him.'
'It isn't at all. Some damn-fool English name, that's what it is.'
The young man seemed to have so many positive ideas that Detlev wanted to know what he was doing on the train to Cape Town. 'I'm going down to work in Parliament. I'm to be a clerk of some sort, and one day I'll be head of a ministry, telling you farmers what to do.'
'How did you get the job? How old are you?'
'I'm twenty-one, and the country is hungry for bright young men who can speak Afrikaans and English. You might say that I am needed in Cape Town.' He said his name was Michael van Tonder and that one day he would be as famous as Jan Christian Smuts, but Detlev never heard of him again.
At Bloemfontein he was met by a committee of women wearing sashes; they were in charge of the ceremonies and had brought with them bold sashes for the twelve young survivors of the camps to wear. Across each was lettered in red: concentration camp survivor, and when Detlev was handed his the woman said, 'Wait here. We have to find a girl coming down from Carolina. Her father was a hero of that commando and her mother and two brothers died in the camp at Standerton.'
So he stood alone on the platform, his sash across his chest, while the committee searched for the girl; and when they found her, they placed a ribbon on her, too, bearing the same words but in blue. She was introduced as Maria Steyn of Carolina. 'We're neighbors,' Detlev said and she nodded.
For three days they were together, young people caught up in the tormented memories of the camps and proud of the performances of their mothers and their siblings struck down by disease and hunger, and especially their fathers, who had served in the great commandos. 'My father,' Maria said, 'is Christoffel Steyn. Of the Carolina Commando. Many said they were the finest unit in the war.'
'We all know Christoffel Steyn and Spion Kop. My father rode with General de Groot in the Venloo Commando. They didn't accomplish much at first.'
'Oh, but they were heroic! That dash down to Port Elizabeth.'
'That didn't accomplish much, either, from what they tell me.'
'But such willingness!'
At the dedication they stood facing each other, Maria with the young women, Detlev with the young men, and he noticed that when the solemn words of remembrance were spoken, she had tears in her eyes as he did in his.
'I wouldn't want to do that again,' she said, but then they were taken to a church where a very old predikant delivered a marvelous oration, preaching forgiveness and the love which Jesus Christ extended to all his children:
'And I would say to you young people who bear across your bosoms the sash that tells us that you were in the camps, that Jesus Christ personally saw to it that you were saved so that you might bear witness to the forgiveness that marks our new nation.'
This was followed by a sermon of a much different stripe, for at the conclusion of his prayer he announced that one of the most brilliant of Stellen-bosch's recent ministerial candidates had been asked to speak of the new South Africa that would be erected upon the spirit of the Vrouemonument. It was Barend Brongersma, who spoke in a deep, controlled voice of the dedication 'which we the living must accept from the hands of those dead':
'Not a day dare go by without our remembering the heroic dead, the loving wives who would see their husbands no more, the beautiful children who were destined to cruel death before they could welcome their fathers home from defeat.
'Yes, it was defeat, but from such defeat great nations have risen in the past, and a great one will rise today if you have the courage to ensure it. You must build on the crucifixion of your loved ones. You must take to your hearts the covenant your forefathers received from the Lord. You must ensure and send forward the convictions of the