The covenant - James A. Michener [595]
'Pik,' he said in the low voice he used in such negotiations, 'I won't fool around. You've got yourself a very good stone. I'm going to offer you top price. Five thousand, eight hundred rand.'
Pik stood silent. Mustering all his strength, he was able to keep from gasping or staggering backward. His head bent forward, so that Steyn could see only the broken rim of his big hat, and it was very still. Finally Pik gained control of himself, and in what he assumed was a normal voice he asked, 'Of course, that's an open offer?'
Now Steyn had to control himself, not from trembling but from laughing. Here was a man in his seventies, never had a real diamond in his possession before, would probably earn more from this one than he had from all his fragments in the past twenty years. And he was haggling. But Steyn enjoyed such men and wished them well, so if old Pik wanted to haggle, he'd go along.
'Wait a minute!' he said with a show of irritation. 'I make you a firm offer of fifty-eight hundred now. I am not making you an open offer, allowing you to go up and down the row, seeing if you can engineer a bid a little higher. I'm warning you right now you won't. So don't come back here at nightfall and tell me, "I'll take your fifty-eight hundred, Mr. Steyn," because at nightfall that offer don't stand. You accept it right now, or I withdraw it.'
Pik said nothing. Steyn's offer was almost triple what he had realistically expected, more than double his most sanguine hope, and desperately he wanted to accept it, pay off his five backers, and take Netje enough to live on for the rest of their lives. But as a diamond man he also wanted to play the whole game, to go from shack to shack, displaying his incredible find, to hear the other men whispering, 'Prinsloo's got himself a diamond,' and he would not be cheated of this exercise, not even by an offer of great wealth.
'Got to see what the others say,' he muttered, closing his matchbox and heading for the door.
H. Steyn rose to accompany him. Ignoring the horrendous smell that radiated like a halo, he threw his arm about the old man's shoulders, and said, 'I'm sorry to lose that stone, Pik. It's a good one. Don't let them cheat you.'
'Don't intend to,' Pik said.
By midafternoon the backer from Johannesburg was weary of the charade: 'Damn it, Pik, you got three good bids. Take one of them and let's get out of here.'
But Prinsloo was enjoying himself as never before. To walk into a real buyer's shack, to open the matchbox, to watch the buyer as he studied the find in disbelief, to hear the tentative offers, and then the real bid. Buyer Number Five had offered five thousand, nine hundred, and kept it an open bid: 'I'd like to get that stone, Pik. Come back, because I know you won't find any higher.'
At the seventh shack, Adams and Feinstein, the bid went to six thousand rand even, and this, too, was open. 'Six thousand rand!' Pik reported to his backer. 'God Almighty, that's more money than you earned in your whole life.'
'We're taking it, I hope.'
'Nope.'
The Johannesburg man exploded, did some cursing, then listened, amazed, as Pik said, 'All my life I dreamed of walking in to H. Steyn's and selling him a diamond. A real diamond.' So against the protests of his partner, the old man went back and told Steyn, 'I got me a bid of six thousand even. Would you consider going along with it?'
Without hesitation Steyn said, 'No.' But when the old man's face turned gray, he added, 'I made you an honest offer, Pik. But let me see the color again.'
With a rush old Pik produced the matchbox, fumbled awkwardly, and placed the stone once more upon the table. With a show of studious professionalism Steyn picked up his loupe, took the diamond in his left fingers, and studied it carefully. No detectable flaws. A color perhaps one grade higher than he had judged at first. The stone cut from this raw diamond might sell in America for . . . Who knows what the Harry Winston people could get for such a stone$32,000?
Slowly Steyn put down the loupe, shoving the lovely diamond back toward