The covenant - James A. Michener [616]
'I don't mean that. You can never stop my mother from doing what she wants.'
'What do you mean?'
'I think she's going to fall afoul of the law. Everything she says and does strengthens the impression.'
'Then why are you leaving?'
'Because she insists. Says things here are bound to go to hell Here she comes.'
Laura Saltwood was sixty-seven that day, tall, white-haired, thin as in her youth, and clear-eyed. She was quite content to see her family leaving 'for a better climate,' as she phrased it, and she did not intend showing tears as they departed. She was somewhat disconcerted to meet Philip, for his unexpected presence made the departure one degree more grave than she had intended; however, she greeted him cordially and asked him to join them in the lounge to await the plane's takeoff.
'I have these friends with me,' he apologized, and when he called them over she widened her conversation to include them, using Afrikaans when introductions were made. The situation was strained, for the Craig Salt-woods were embarrassed at leaving the country, while Frikkie and Jopie were obviously disgusted with them for doing so.
Now the plane was wheeled into position, a modified version of the standard 747, shortened so it could fly non-stop to London, since South African planes were not allowed to refuel anywhere in black Africa. An all-white flight crew took their places in a land that was eighty percent non-white, and after formal goodbyes another family left the country, its children never to return to the land which had nurtured them and which sorely needed whatever contributions they might have made.
Jopie said as the plane soared off, 'The Englishlast to land, first to flee.' And Frikkie said, 'A wise farmer weeds out his weak mealies.' They made no attempt to hide their bitterness.
They might have been even more upset had they chanced to see at a far edge of the airport an unscheduled Boeing to which a sequence of small automobiles reported during the space of about an hour. No announcements were made over the loudspeakers regarding this plane; no uniformed stewardesses flourished through the airport, heralding it. Quietly it filled with passengers, quietly it taxied to the far end of the runway, and without notice of any kind it took off, circled, and flew directly westward on a very long flight to South America. It contained one hundred and eighty businessmen and farmers, most of them Afrikaners, who were going with their wives to visit Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to investigate farmlands of the interior against the day when they might wish to quit South Africa for a new frontier. Of these passengers, forty-three families would like Brazil so much that they would make arrangements to purchase vast fincas, holding them in reserve for the day when they might be needed. The others would make their decisions later. As for the secret plane, after an appropriate rest it would load up with Afrikaner and English doctors and fly them to Australia to register with that country's medical association, so as to ensure a refuge . . . when the crunch came.
On May 30 Laura Saltwood appeared at the black school in the Transvaal to find that publicity regarding her visit had encouraged some thirty or forty black principals and school officials to drive substantial distances to hear her. They knew her to be a remarkable woman, a quiet worker in a score of worthy causes. She had the reputation for both good sense and fearlessness, and they knew she would not have come so far unless she had something pertinent to say.
Although she had written her speech in detail, suspecting that it might be the most important she would ever deliver, and perhaps the last, she did not refer to notes but spoke extemporaneously. She announced her subject as Language, one of the most mercurial topics in the world, and eased the apprehensions of the older conservatives by praising Afrikaans:
'As you know from the Old Testament, South Africa and Israel have much in