The covenant - James A. Michener [55]
While the Acorn lay at anchor, waiting until the next fleet formed for the journey to Europe, Jack had an opportunity to explore the trading center that the Dutch had established on Java. He lounged by the waterside, learning to identify the varied craft that worked these Asian waters: car-racks with their bristling guns, swift flutes from Holland, the amazing proas from the islandsby shifting the location of their mast, they could sail in either direction with equal speedand best of all, the towering East India-men.
It was while watching one of these monsters unload that he became aware of a tall, thin Dutchman who seemed always to preempt the best cargo for his warehouse, which stood close to the harbor. Traders called him Mijnheer van Doorn, and he seemed a most austere person, overly conscious of his position, even though he could not have been more than twenty-three. Jack was awed by his stiff dignity and spoke to him in broken English, which Van Doorn as a trader had to know.
'Where you from?' the Dutchman asked, looking down as if from a great and sovereign height.
'Many days.'
'You're not black. You're not yellow. Where?'
'Setting sun.'
The interrogation was so unsatisfactory that Van Doorn summoned a sailor from the Acorn and asked, 'Where's this fellow from?' and the man replied, 'Picked him up at the Cape of Good Hope.'
'Hmmmm!' Van Doorn stepped back, looked down his long nose at the little fellow, and said, 'The Cape, is it a fine place?' Jack, understanding nothing of this, laughed and was about to retreat when he spotted a white person about his own size, a boy of thirteen whom Van Doorn treated affectionately.
'Your boy?' Jack asked.
'My brother,' Van Doorn replied, and for the last two months that Captain Saltwood idled off Java, Jack and this white lad played together. They were of equal size and equal mental development, each striving to understand the complex world of Batavia. They formed an attractive pair, a thin little brown man with bandy legs, a stout Dutch lad with blond hair and wide shoulders, and they could be seen together in each of the quarters allocated to the different nationalities: Malay, Indian, Arab, Balinese, and the small area in which the industrious Chinese purchased almost anything offered for sale, but only at the prices they set.
One day young Van Doorn explained that Dutch children had two names; his other one was Willem. 'What's yours?' he asked.
'Horda,' his playmate said with a blizzard of click sounds. 'And his name?' he asked, pointing to the older Van Doorn.
'Karel.' And while Jack was repeating the two names, Willem produced his surprise. Having noticed that Jack owned only the clothes he wore, he had procured from the Compagnie warehouse an additional pair of trousers and a shirt, but when Jack put them on he looked ridiculous, for they had been cut to fit stout Dutchmen, not dwarfish brown persons.
'I can sew,' Jack said reassuringly, but after the clothes were altered he reflected that aboard the Acorn whenever one man gave another something, the recipient was supposed to give something in return, and he very much wanted to give Willem van Doorn a gift, but he could not imagine what. Then he remembered the ivory bracelet hidden in his pouch, but when he handed it to Willem it was too small to fit his stout wrist. It was dour Karel who solved the problem. Taking a silver chain from the Compagnie stock, he fastened the ivory circle to it, then hung the chain about Willem's neck, where the combination of silver, ivory and the lad's fair complexion made a fine show.
That night Captain Saltwood, richer than he had ever dreamed because of the trade he made on the rhino homs, informed his