The covenant - James A. Michener [589]
'Who?' his wife asked, but before he could respond, there was a commotion in the hall. An official of some kind, you could tell that from his voice, was warning someone: 'You can't go in there. Blacks are not allowed on these floors.'
Marius hurried into the hallway, offered explanations, and soon brought into the sickroom Moses Nxumalo, who carried in his arms the great brassbound Bible. It was impossible to determine which of these gifts from the country pleased the dying man most. He loved old Moses, who had shared so many of the important moments of his life, and he cherished the sacred Bible which contained the record of that life, reaching back through the generations to the young sailor who had planted this Holy Book, actually and figuratively, on South African soil.
He held out his hands to both the black and the Bible.
'I'm so glad you came,' he said weakly.
'I've been weeping for you,' Moses said. 'But now my eyes are cured, seeing you again.' They spoke of old days, of meaningful adventures, and it was impossible for the black to acknowledge that it was this white who had done so much to hedge in his sons, who had promulgated so many laws to restrict and emasculate them. Detleef was merely the good master, and to see him so near death was bitterness.
It was the Bible that brought Detleef back to reality, and he began thumbing its heavy pages, printed so long ago in Amsterdam, its heavy Gothic letters setting for all time the course of right and wrong. It was inconceivable that God had delivered these words in anything but Dutch . . .
He stopped. Not even at the doorway to death could he forgive one insidious enemy who fought both South Africa and God: the infamous World Council of Churches, which refused to see that what Van Doorn and his helpers had done was right and openly made cash contributions to murderous revolutionaries. 'How can they ignore the good things we've done?'
'Who ignores us?' Marius asked.
'Why do they all persecute us?' he whimpered.
And he began to recite the sufferings of the Boers: 'The Black Circuit. Slagter's Nek. Blaauwkrantz. Dingane's Kraal. The Jameson Raid. Chrissiesmeer Camp.' Bitterly he repeated that infamous name: 'Chrissiesmeer!' Then: 'Where's Sannie?'
Impatiently he gestured Moses and Marius aside and reached toward his granddaughter. When he saw her bright face outlined against the stark-white walls he whispered, 'Sannie, never forget what they did to us at Chrissiesmeer.'
Mention of that dreadful place so enraged him that blood drained from his brain and he passed into a strange kind of coma: He saw his bed ringed not with members of his family but with the timeless enemies of the Volk: Hilary Saltwood siding with the Xhosa. The man from America giving orders to the hangman at Slagter's Nek. Dingane giving his bloodstained signal. Cecil Rhodes, implacable foe. Teacher Amberson making him wear the sign: i spoke dutch today. The Jew Hoggenheimer, who had monopolized the mines. The Catholics who had sought to destroy his Martin Luther church. Officials from the United Nations talking sanctions. Was ever a nation so beset by enemies? And among the shadowy figures he saw his own son, who had chosen a scholarship at contaminating Oxford rather than a captaincy of the Springboks. Enemies all.
Then blood returned to his fevered brain and a light seemed to enter the room, illuminating past and future. He rose on his arm and began shouting, 'Laager toe, broers Draw the wagons into a circle!'
'Sannie, tell the drivers to draw ...' He fell back, breathing heavily, and reached for old Moses: 'Warn your sonseveryone must hold to his assigned place . . .'
When it became apparent that he was dead, Marius leaned down to kiss the embattled face, then covered it with a blanket. Closing the old Bible, he said, 'Lucky man. He won't have to watch the consequences of his handiwork.'
On three hundred and fifty-five days a year you could smell Pik Prinsloo at a distance of twenty feet.