The covenant - James A. Michener [593]
What to do? He sat for some time with the diamond in his cupped hands, convincing himself that it was as fine a stone as he had first believed: Hell, this one'll bring two thousand rand! The thought staggered him, so he studied the stone again. It was a good one and it really could bring as much as two thousand rand: God Almagtig! We're rich! Trembling, he spit on the diamond, polished it, and was sitting with it in the sun when he became aware that a drop of moisture had fallen upon it. He was sweating, and it was then that he buried the diamond beneath a well-marked rock and returned feverishly to the stream.
He dug and sieved and gravitated all that day, but found nothing. At dusk he returned to the house-wagon, tethered the mules, and came in to supper. 'Why you so nervous?' his sister asked, and he said his head ached. But when he got up twice during the night to stand barefooted outside the door, staring toward the rock where his diamond lay, his canny sister whispered as he came back in, 'You found one, didn't you?' And he could not repress his surging excitement.
In mumbles that came rushing forth through his toothless gums, he told her of his legendary find: 'Bigger than my thumb. Fine color, fine color. Netje, this one could bring two thousand rand.'
'Don't be a damned fool,' she growled.
'It could. Honestly it could. When you see it . . .'
'So you hid it under a rock?'
'I want to search the stream.'
'You want to go to jail. You enter it in the book, proper. You take it to the police.'
'I got to protect myself.'
But she was adamant, and as soon as enough light showed in the east for them to see, she marched to the rock, and when the diamond was placed in her hands, and its true weight and color were evident, tears came to her eyes. 'It's a real diamond,' she conceded, but the concept of two thousand rand was beyond her.
In the house-wagon it was she who took down Pik's register and in an almost illiterate scrawl wrote: 'Swartstroom, by the three acacias, n October 1978, about five carats, color good. Maybe two thousand rand.' That afternoon she and Pik walked six miles to the nearest police station to register their find.
Once the diamond was legally registered, it became Pik Prinsloo's property, to dispose of as he wished, but only through established channels. If he allowed this stone to fall into the hands of some I.D.B., both he and the buyer would go to jail; he must take it personally to the diamond market at Boskuil, two hundred and sixty miles to the west. The trip could be made by trainfour hours to Johannesburg, five more to Boskuilbut old Pik felt that with such an impressive stone, he ought to travel by private auto, so with great difficulty, because he hated telephones, he called his backer in Johannesburg: 'We got the biggest diamond in my life. Let's go to Boskuil and sell it for two thousand rand.'
The man said he could break free late Friday afternoon 'Stop right there!' Pik shouted. 'We got to be in Boskuil Friday morning. Only day the buyers come.'
So early Thursday his backer came for him and they got in the car and started for a location which had no equal in the world: a remote farm lost in the barren lands south of Johannesburg, where by tradition diamond buyers from all over the nation clustered in a collection of rough corrugated-iron shacks to see what the local adventurers might have found. The trip was not easy, for whenever Pik and his diamond left one magisterial jurisdiction to enter a new, he had to be prepared to produce his registration papers so that the authorities could trace this one diamond across the country and be assured that it made its way into the hands of a licensed buyer. And when Pik reached the jurisdiction in which it was to be sold, he must register it anew.
The halts were tedious enough, but this October day was turning out to be one of the hottest of the new spring season, so that the car steamed inside, and Pik's habit of not bathing now became a penetrating problem.
The Johannesburg man tried opening his window, then