The covenant - James A. Michener [84]
'We were up there,' he said, pointing some nine miles to the north, where the winds had been gentler. The men ignored him, for in their opinion there could be no spot in this forlorn land where the winds did not howl. But they showed him how to plant trees to give protection, if they survived, and offered other encouragements, for they, too, needed wine.
Willem realized that he had been handed an unrewarding assignment in which failure was probable, but it gave him one advantage which he prized: everyone else at the Cape lived within the fortress walls in cramped, unpleasant quarters, while he enjoyed the freedom of living in his own hut beside his vines. True, he had to walk some distance for food and companionship, but that was a trivial price to pay for the joy he found in living relatively free.
But his freedom accentuated the slavery in which Deborah lived, and often at night, when he would have wanted to be with her, he was in his hut and she in the fort, locked in the guardhouse. The Malayan slaves had been thoughtfully placed by Van Riebeeck: 'One man and woman will work for my wife. The strongest man will work the ships. The other woman can do general work for the Compagnie.'
Deborah was the latter, and as she moved about the fort, Van Riebeeck saw that she was pregnant. This did not trouble him, for like any prudent owner, he hoped for natural increase, and since Deborah was proving the cleverest of his slaves, he assumed that she would produce valuable children. But he was distressed that the father of the unborn child was Van Doorn.
'How did this happen?' he asked Willem. 'On the ship . . . from Malacca.'
'We need women. Badly we need them. But proper Dutch women, not slaves.'
'Deborah's a fine person . . .'
'I've already seen that. But she's Malay. She's Muslim. And the Bible says'
'I know. The captain read me the passages. "Thou shalt not take a wife from the Canaanites. Thou shalt go to thine own country and find a wife." '
'Excellent advice.' Van Riebeeck rose from his desk and paced for several moments. Then threw his hands upward and asked, 'But what shall we do here at the Cape? At last count we had one hundred and fourteen men, nine women. White men and women, that is. What's a man to do?'
He wanted to bar Van Doorn from visiting with his slave girl, but he refrained because he knew that to exact such a promise in these close quarters would not be sensible. Instead he warned: 'Keep marriage out of your mind, Van Doorn. What happens in Batavia will not be encouraged here. The child will be a bastard and a Compagnie slave.' Van Doorn, suspecting that what was law now would be altered later, bowed and said nothing.
But when he saw how far with child Deborah had come, he felt a pressing desire to stay with her and make her his wife, even though his experience in Java should have taught him that these marriages often turned out poorly. Such memories were obliterated by his recollection of those exceptional marriages in which Javanese women had created homes of quiet joy, half-Christian, half-Muslim, in which the husbands relinquished all dreams of ever returning to a colder Holland and a more severe society.
Deborah, to his surprise, seemed unconcerned about her future, as if the problems of pregnancy were enough. Her beautiful, placid face showed no anxiety, and when he raised questions about her status, she smiled: 'I'm to be a slave. I'll never see my village again.' And he supposed that this was her honest reaction, that she did not prize freedom the way he did.
'I want to care for you,' he said.
'Someone will,' she said, and when his emotion flared, tempting him to steal her from the fort, she laughed again and said that when the time came, Commander van Riebeeck would find her a man.
'Will he?'
'Of course. In Malacca the Portuguese owners always found men for their slave women. They wanted children.'
'I'll be that man.'
'Maybe