The covenant - James A. Michener [94]
'The traditions of the Bible,' thundered Grotius, 'are not to be ignored simply because the place is a wilderness. Here more than in a civilized city must the rules be followed, lest we fall into contamination.' He refused to budge, and the ceremony broke up in confusion.
Five participants reacted in five sharply different ways. Dr. Grotius stormed back to the ship, unwilling to stay in the fort where such profanations took place. Deborah showed no concern whatever, her grave, placid face untroubled by the storm she had caused; it had not been her idea to baptize her son; Willem had insisted upon that, coming to her secretly when news of the ceremony became known. Willem was distraught and briefly considered disclosing the fact that the child was his, and that it was he who was insisting upon the baptism. Jan van Riebeeck was just as adamant as Dr. Grotius, except that he was determined that the slave children be baptized for the good of his little settlement. And Commissioner van Doorn, who sensed that sooner or later he would be called upon to break this deadlock, was morally agitated. Quite simply, he was eager to do the right thing. He wanted to be a good Christian patriarch, and when the others were gone, he prayed.
At supper that night Van Riebeeck and Willem discussed with him what ought to be done about the baptism, and Van Riebeeck made a strong plea that his request be honored: 'We are a Compagnie, Mijnheer van Doorn, not a church. You and I are to determine what happens at the Cape, not some predikant. In Java, as you know . ..' Whenever a Dutchman said this magical word he lingered over it: Yaaaa-wa, as if it possessed arcane powers. Whatever had been done in Yaaaa-wa was apt to be right. 'In Java, as you know, we baptized the children of slaves and raised them as good Christians. They helped us run the Compagnie.'
'I would not want to contradict a doctor of theology'
'You must!' Van Riebeeck thundered. He suddenly seemed taller.
'If he wrote back to Amsterdam that we had profaned the Bible'
Van Riebeeck pounded the table. 'The Bible says . . .'
And it was these words that sent the three men to Willem's hut to consult the Bible he had rescued from the Haerlem. Unclasping the brass fittings, he laid back the heavy cover and offered the book to his brother, who turned the pages reverently, probing those noble passages in which Abraham had laid down the laws for his people living in a new land, just as the Van Doorns and Van Riebeecks had to establish principles for their followers in this vast new territory. What was the right thing to do?
By candlelight they searched the passages, but found no guidance. Karel, accountable for healing this breach, was reluctant to surrender the Bible. Again and again he turned the pages, reading occasionally some passage that seemed to relate to their presence in the wilderness, then rejecting it. In the end he found nothing. They were adrift.
'Could we pray?' he asked, and the three knelt on the earthen floor, their somber faces illuminated by the candlelight as Karel pleaded for divine guidance. God had led the Israelites through such dark periods and He would lead the Dutchmen. But guidance did not come.
Then Willem, vaguely remembering passages in which Abraham faced difficult decisions, looked with real intensity through the chapters of Genesis, and after a while came upon those passages in which God Himself, not Abraham, instructed sojourners in the steps they must take to preserve their identity while in a strange land:
This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised ... He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised . . .
And Abraham took ... all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money,