The Covenant Part 13

'Enough of this.' Van Doorn rose grandly, nodded gravely to his onetime friend, and left the room. He left the fort and returned to the s.h.i.+p, where he penned two recommendations for the Lords XVII that became law at the Cape: There must be no social contact with the Hottentots. The easy entrance that some have had to the fortress area must be stopped. In everything that is done, effort must be made to preserve the three distinctions: the Dutchman in command, the imported slave at his service, and the Hottentot in contact with neither. They are not to be used as slaves and are under no circ.u.mstances to be taken into any family. I would suggest that a fence be built around the entire Compagnie property. It might not be strong enough to repel invaders, but it would serve the salutary purpose of reminding our people that they are different from the Hottentots, and it would forcefully remind the Hottentots that they can never be our equals. It would also impress upon our people that their job is the replenis.h.i.+ng of Compagnie s.h.i.+ps and not the exploration of unknown territories. If material for a fence is not available, a hedge of thorns might be considered, for this would keep our men in and the Hottentots out.

Already serious at this moment, and of the gravest potential danger in the future, is the fact that our Dutch are beginning to use the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Portuguese tongue adopted by slaves and idlers and petty traders throughout the Eastern Seas. During my stay I noticed the introduction of many words not used in Holland. Some were Madagascan, some Ceylonese, many were Malaccan but most were Portuguese, and if this were to continue, our Dutch language would be lost, submerged in an alien tide, to our detriment and the cheapening of expression. Compagnie servants at the Cape must address their slaves in Dutch. All business must be conducted in Dutch. And especially in family life, conversation must be in Dutch, with children forbidden to speak the language of their amahs.

When these new rules were explained at the fort, Commissioner van Doorn judged his responsibilities discharged, and he instructed his captain to prepare the s.h.i.+p for the long trip to Java.

On the evening before departure, a gala New Year's festival was prepared by Van Riebeeck and his gifted wife, Maria. It was attended by their two nieces, attired in the new dresses Kornelia had brought them, and music was provided by Malaccan slaves. Each item of food had come from the Cape: the stock fish, a leg of mutton, cauliflower, cabbage, corn, beets and pumpkin. The wine, of course, was provided by the s.h.i.+p, taken from casks being transported from France to Java, but as Karel said so gracefully when he proposed the toast: 'Before long, even the wine will come from here.' And he nodded toward his brother.

'Now for the dessert!' Van Riebeeck cried, flushed with the good wine. Clapping his hands, he ordered the slaves to bring in the special dish prepared for this night, and from the kitchen came Deborah, heavy with child, bearing in her two hands a large brown-gold earthen crock, straight-sided and with no handles. Looking instinctively at Willem, her grave face expressionless, she awaited a signal from him; with a slight nod of his head he indicated that she must place the pot before Kornelia, and when this was done, and a big spoon provided with nine little dishes, everyone saw with pleasure that it was a most handsome bread pudding, crusty on top and brown, with raisins and lemon peel and orange rind peeking through.

'Our Willem makes it,' Van Riebeeck said proudly as the diners applauded.

'Did you really make this?' Kornelia asked as she poised the spoon above the rounded crust.

'I had to learn,' Willem said. 'But what's in it?'

'We save bits of bread and cake and biscuit. Eggs and cream. b.u.t.ter and all the kinds of fruit we can find. At the end, of course . . .' He hesitated. 'You wouldn't appreciate this, Kornelia, never having lived in Java . ..' He felt that he was not expressing himself well, and turning to his brother and Van Riebeeck, he concluded rather lamely: 'You Java men will understand. When the sugar's been added and the lemon juice, I dust in a little cinnamon and a lot of nutmeg. To remind us of Java.'

'You're a fine cook, Willem.'

'Someone had to learn,' he said. 'You can't eat fish and mutton four hundred days a year.'

At this curious statement the diners looked at one another, but no one thought to correct the speaker. At some spots in the world the year did have four hundred days, and even a small thing like bread pudding helped alleviate the tedium of those long, lonely days.

When the last wine decanter was emptied, two final conversations occurred. They were monologues, really, for the speakers lectured their listeners without interruption. Karel van Doorn told Commander van Riebeeck, 'You must strive very hard, Jan, to comply with all Compagnie rules. Waste not a single stuiver. Make your people speak Dutch. Fence in the Compagnie property. Discipline your slaves. Get more cattle and start the wine flowing. Because if you take care of our s.h.i.+ps, I can a.s.sure you that the Lords will reward you with an a.s.signment in Java.' Before Van Riebeeck could respond, Karel added reflectively, 'Didn't the spices in Willem's pudding . . . Well, didn't they remind you of the great days in Ternate and Amboyna? There's no place in the world like Java.'

At this moment Kornelia van Doorn was telling her red-complexioned cousin, 'Katje, help Willem grow his grapes. Because if he succeeds, he'll be in line for promotion. Then you can come to Java.' With a flood of gentleness and affection, she embraced her unlovely cousin and confessed: 'We haven't brought you to a paradise, Katje. But he is a husband and his hut is temporary. If you keep him at his work, you'll both soon be in Java, of that I'm sure.'

When Willem saw how meticulously the vines from France had been packed and learned how carefully they had been tended on the voyage, he felt that these new stocks would invigorate the Cape vineyard; the hedge of young trees was high enough to break the force of those relentless summer winds and he now knew something about setting his rows in the right direction. Before Karel sailed on to Java the vines were well planted, and one of the last entries the commissioner made in his report to the Lords XVII commended Willem for taking viticulture seriously and predicted: Soon they will be sending casks of wine to Java.

His last entry was a remarkable one, often to be quoted in both Amsterdam and Batavia but never to be comprehended there or in South Africa; it dealt with slaves and their propensity for running away. In his stay at the Cape he had listened to three days of detailed testimony on the frequency with which slaves of all kindsAngolans, Malaccans, Madagascansran away. It was a madness, he concluded, which no measures open to the Dutch could eliminate, and he reported to the Lords XVII: Neither hunger nor thirst, neither the murderous arrow of the Bushman nor the spear of the Hottentot, neither the waterless desert nor the impa.s.sable mountain deters the slave from seeking his freedom. I have therefore directed the officers at the Cape to initiate a series of punishments which will impress the slaves with the fact that they are Compagnie property and must obey its laws. At the first attempt to run away, the loss of an ear. At the next attempt, branding on the forehead and the other ear to be cropped. At the third attempt, the nose to be cut off. And at the fourth, the gallows.

When the Groote Hoorn Groote Hoorn resumed its way to Java, it was decided that since the prompt production of wine loomed so important, Willem ought to have more a.s.sistance at the vineyard, so the slave Jango was excused from his duties at the fort. This was a happy decision, because he quickly displayed an apt.i.tude for handling vines, and when the new plants took root, Van Riebeeck felt that the pressing of wine would soon be a reality. resumed its way to Java, it was decided that since the prompt production of wine loomed so important, Willem ought to have more a.s.sistance at the vineyard, so the slave Jango was excused from his duties at the fort. This was a happy decision, because he quickly displayed an apt.i.tude for handling vines, and when the new plants took root, Van Riebeeck felt that the pressing of wine would soon be a reality.

But Jango had the weakness of every man of merit: he wanted to be free. And when Willem recommended that the chains be struck off his slave, 'so that he can move more freely about the vineyard,' Van Riebeeck reluctantly agreed.

'You may be courting trouble,' he warned Willem, but the latter said he felt sure Jango would appreciate this opportunity of working outside the fort and could be trusted.

He was partly right. Without chains, Jango worked diligently, but as soon as the new vines were pruned, he escaped into the wilderness. Two days pa.s.sed before Willem reported his absence to the fort, where the news caused great agitation. Van Riebeeck was furious with Willem for having delayed the alarm, and in anger dispatched a field force to track down the escapee, but when a muster was taken he found that three other slaves had joined Jango, and their tracks indicated that they were heading directly into Bushmen country, where they would probably be slain. 'And that's the end of Compagnie property,' Van Riebeeck groaned.

But after a three-day search, Jango and the others were discovered huddled at the foot of a small cliff, cold and hungry. When they were roped together and on the march back to the fort, the soldiers began to speculate on how Commissioner van Doorn's draconian laws governing runaways would be enforced. 'You're going to lose your ears,' they told the slaves. 'You know that.' One Dutchman grabbed Jango's left ear and sliced at it with his hand: 'Off it comes!'

But when the lookout at the fort spotted the returning prisoners, and everyone gathered to see the mutilations, they were disappointed, for Van Riebeeck refused to lop off ears: 'I do not disfigure my slaves.' Two a.s.sistants argued with him, citing both the new law and the necessity for drastic punishment, but the stubborn little man rejected their counsel. The slaves were moderately whipped, thrown into a corner of the fortress that served as a jail, and kept without food for three days.

Five days after they were released, Jango ran away again, and Willem was summoned to the fort: 'We have reason to believe that the slaves have again made union with the Hottentots. Go find Jack and warn him that this must not continue.'

'And Jango?'

'We'll take care of Jango.'

So Willem went eastward to confer with Jack, while the usual troop of hunters went after Jango, who this time had taken only two others with him. Willem found Jack at a distant site, unwilling to admit that he was in league with the slaves, unwilling to cooperate in any way.

'What do you want?' Willem, exasperated, asked his old friend.

'What I said at the fort. Work together.'

'You heard my brother. That can never happen.'

'More s.h.i.+ps will come,' Jack persisted. 'More cattle will be needed.'

Willem's frown ended the conversation. There was no hope that the kind of union Jack was proposing could ever be effected; white men and brown were destined to live their different lives, one the master, one the outcast, and any attempt to bridge the gap would forever be doomed by the characters of the persons involved. The white men would be stolid and stubborn like Willem, or vain and arrogant like Karel; the brown men would be proud and recalcitrant like Jack . . .

A visible shudder raced over Willem's face, for he had been accorded a glimpse of the future. Staring down the long corridor of Cape history beyond the fortress and the branding of slaveshe saw with tragic clarity the total disappearance of Jack and his Hottentots. They were destined to be engulfed, overswarmed by s.h.i.+ps and horses. Tears of compa.s.sion came to his eyes and he wanted to embrace this little man with whom he had shared so many strange adventures, but Jack had turned away, rebuffed for the last time. In his ragged English uniform and his big homemade shoes, he was walking alone toward the mountains, never again to approach the Van Doorns with his proposals.

When Willem returned to the fort he found that Jango had been retaken and that the heavy iron chains had been returned to his legs. Henceforth he would work at the vines slowly, dragging monstrous weights behind him. But in spite of this dreadful impediment, he ran away a third time, far to the north, where he survived three weeks prior to his recapture. This time, argued the junior officials, his ears really must be cropped, but once more Van Riebeeck refused to carry out the harsh measures which Commissioner van Doorn had authorized, and one of the commander's subordinates dispatched a secret message to Batavia, informing Karel of this nonfeasance.

The garden-hut in which Katje van Doorn started her married life echoed with an incessant chain of complaints; three were recurrent.

'Why do we have to live in this hut? Why can't we move to the fort?

'Why can't I have four slaves, like the commander's wife?

'How soon can we join Kornelia and your brother in Java?'

Patiently Willem tried to answer each complaint: 'You wouldn't like it at the fort. All those people. What would you do with so many personal slaves? And we'll have to prove that wine can be made here before they let us go to Java.' He deceived her on the last point: he had no desire whatever to return to Java; he had found his home in Africa and was determined to stay.

Katje was not convinced by his arguments, but she did appreciate it when he built a small addition to the hut so that she could have s.p.a.ce of her own. Of course, when time came to finish the floor, and he brought in bucketfuls of cow dung mixed with water for her to smooth over the pounded earth not once but many times, she wailed in protest. So he knelt down and did the work for her, producing in time a hard, polished surface not unlike that of weathered pine. It had a cleansing odor too, the clean smell of barnyard and meadow.

He was startled upon learning that Katje had gone to Van Riebeeck, pet.i.tioning him for a servant. The commander pointed out that the only woman available was Deborah, adding delicately that it would hardly be proper for this girl to move into their hut, seeing that she was far pregnant, and with Willem's child. To his astonishment, Katje saw nothing wrong in this: 'He's my husband now, and I need help.'

'Quite impossible,' Van Riebeeck said, and Katje's complaints increased.

On the other hand, she was steadfast in tending the new vines, and so it was she who patiently watered the young plantings and wove the straw protections which s.h.i.+elded them from the winds. She watched their growth with more excitement than a mother follows that of a child, and when the older vines at last yielded a substantial crop of pale white grapes, she picked them with joy, placed them almost reverently in the hand press, and watched with satisfaction as the colorless must ran from the nozzle.

She and Willem had only the vaguest concept of how wine was made, but they started the fermentation, and in the end something like wine resulted. When it was carried proudly to the fort, Van Riebeeck took the first taste and wrote in his report to the Lords XVII: Today, G.o.d be praised, wine has been made from grapes grown at the Cape. From our virgin must, pressed from the young French muscadels you sent us, thirty quarts of rich wine have been made. The good years have begun.

But the next year, when a heavy harvest of grapes made the production of export wine a possibility, it received a harsh reception in Java: 'More vinegar than wine, more slops than vinegar, our Dutch refused it, our slaves could not drink it, and even the hogs turned away.' And because sailors aboard the big East Indiamen rejected it too, the Cape wine did not even help to diminish scurvy.

As a consequence, Willem fell into further disfavor at the fort; his deficiency was harming Van Riebeeck's chancesas well as hisof getting to Java; Katje, sensing this, constantly railed at him to master the tricks of wine-making, but there was no one from whom he could learn, and the pressings of 1661 were just as unpalatable as those at the start.

Willem had toiled faithfully at the vineyard and deemed himself eligible to become a free man, but he had to acknowledge that the Compagnie retained total control over all he did, so three times he prayerfully pet.i.tioned the commander for permission to proclaim himself a burgher, and three times Van Riebeeck refused, for his own release from this semi-prison depended largely upon Willem's success.

'You're needed where you are,' Van Riebeeck said.

'Then give me another slave to help propagate the vines.'

'You have Jango.'

'Then strike off his chains ... so he can really work.'

'Won't he run away again?'

'He has a woman now.'

Willem said these words with pain, for on those days when Katje upbraided him most sorely, he could not refrain from contemplating what his life might have been like had the Compagnie allowed him to marry Deborah. On trips to the fort he would see her with her two half-white sons, moving through her tasks with placid gentleness as she softly sang to herself, and he would return to his hut and by candlelight finger through the great Bible until he came to that pa.s.sage in Judges which the s.h.i.+p captain had read to him during the long pa.s.sage from Malacca: 'Awake, awake, Deborah, awake, awake, utter a song.' And he would lower his head into his hands and dream of those golden days.

And then one day he learned at the fort that Deborah was pregnant again, not with his child this time but with Jango's, and as an act of compa.s.sion for her he insisted that Jango's chains be struck off, and the next day Jango, Deborah and their boys headed for freedom.

It was incomprehensible to the soldiers that these slaves would dare such a venturepregnant woman and two childrenbut they were gone, headed north for the most dangerous roaming ground of the Bushmen and their poisons. Van Riebeeck, furious at having been talked into unshackling Jango, ordered a troop of soldiers to bring him back at any cost, and for seven days the fort spoke of little else.

No one was more apprehensive than Willem. He wanted Deborah to survive. He wanted his sons to live into manhood so that they could know this land. And curiously, he hoped that Jango would escape into the freedom he had so courageously sought through all the years of his captivity. Indeed, he felt a companions.h.i.+p with this slave who had tended the grapes so faithfully, dragging his chains behind him. Willem, too, sought freedom, escape from the bitter confines of the fort and its narrow perceptions. No longer did he merely want to be a free burgher; he now wanted absolute freedom, out beyond the flats toward those green hills he had first seen from the crest of Table Mountain fourteen long years ago. He was hungry for openness, and bigness, and at night he prayed that Jango and Deborah would not be taken.

'They caught them!' Katje exulted one morning as she returned from the fort, and against his will he allowed her to take him to the gate when the fugitives were dragged in. Jango was quietly defiant. Deborah, not yet visibly with child, held her head up, her face displaying neither anger nor defeat. It was Van Riebeeck who responded in unexpected ways; he absolutely forbade his soldiers to mutilate the slaves. In his regime there would be no cropping of ears, no branding, no nose lopped off. Back went the chains, on Deborah too, but that was all. Physically, Van Riebeeck was a smaller man than any to whom he gave these orders; morally, he was the finest servant the Compagnie would ever send to the Cape.

The more Willem had observed Van Riebeeck, the higher became his opinion of the man's ability. The Lords XVII had a.s.signed him impossible tasks; like the ancient Israelites, he was supposed to build great edifices with faulty bricks. He was given a dozen things to do, but no funds with which to do them, and he was even begrudged his manpower. When he enticed sailors from pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ps to stay at the Cape, he built his garrison to one hundred and seventy men, but the Lords commanded him to reduce it to one hundred and twenty on the reasonable grounds that they were operating a commercial store and not a burgeoning civil community.

But one unexpected reaction startled Willem: 'I want you, and thirty slaves, and all the free burghers to plant a hedge around our entire establishment. I've been ordered to cut the colony off from that empty land out there.' With a broad gesture of his left hand he indicated all of Africa. 'We'll keep the slaves in and the Hottentots out. We'll protect our cattle and make this little land our Dutch paradise.'

He led Willem and the burghers in seeking the kind of shrub or tree that would make a proper hedge, and at last they found the ideal solution: 'This bitter almond throws a strong p.r.i.c.kle. Nothing could penetrate these spikes when the tree grows.'

So a hedge of bitter almond was planted to separate the Cape from Africa.

In 1662 the glorious day arrived when a s.h.i.+p from Amsterdam brought the news that Commander van Riebeeck was at last being transferred to Java. Katje van Doorn immediately wanted to know why she and Willem could not go, too, and was distraught when she learned that Willem had never applied. Upon upbraiding him, she discovered that he had no intention of leaving the Cape: 'I like it here. There's no place for me in Java, with Karel in command.'

'But we must go, and force Karel and Kornelia to find us promotions!'

'I like it here,' Willem said stubbornly, and he refused to plead with Van Riebeeck for a transfer.

The new commander was an extraordinary man, not a Dutchman at all, but one of the many Germans who long ago had sought employment in the Compagnie. He had served in Curacao, in Formosa, in Canton, in most of the Spice Islands and particularly in j.a.pan, where he had been amba.s.sador-extraordinary that year when more than one hundred thousand persons died during the vast fire that swept the capital city of Edo. When he reported to the Cape he was a weak, sickly, irritable man, much plagued with gout and a moody disposition. During the days of interregnum, when Van Riebeeck was making his farewells but before his replacement a.s.sumed command, the German behaved circ.u.mspectly. He had a German wife who had mastered the complexities of Compagnie rule, and together they studied conditions at the Cape. They were therefore well prepared to take charge as soon as their predecessor left. Especially they intended to haltand punishthe evil and costly flight of slaves.

So on the day that Van Riebeeck sailed, his eyes aglow with visions of Java, the new commander faced the problem of a slave who had fled to join a Hottentot camp but had been recaptured by hors.e.m.e.n galloping across the flats. As soon as the escapee was brought within the fortress walls, the commander ordered that his left ear be chopped off and both cheeks branded.

A few days later another slave was caught eating a cabbage grown in the Compagnie gardens; he was promptly flogged and branded, after which both ears were chopped off and heavy chains attached to his legs, 'not to be removed for the duration of his life.' When similar punishments were meted out to other recalcitrant blacks, Willem slipped into the fort to talk surrept.i.tiously with Jango and Deborah: 'I know you still seek freedom. For the love of G.o.d, don't risk it.'

Jango, sitting with Willem's two sons on his knees, laughed easily. 'When the time comes, we'll go.'

'The chains! Jango, they'll catch you before sunset.'

'Of course we'll go,' Deborah said quietly, and Willem looked at her in astonishment. He had lived with her, had sired two children with her, and had known almost nothing about her. He had a.s.sumed that because she had a quiet, placid face and spoke softly that her heart was placid too. It had never occurred to him that she hated slavery as much as Jango, and it appalled him to think that she would risk losing her ears and having her face branded, just to be free.

'Deborah! Think of what they might do to you,' he pleaded, but she merely looked at him, her eyes resolute, her face immobile. Finally she placed her hand on his and said, 'I will not remain a slave.'

On his way back to his hut he prayed: Oh, Jesus, help them come to their senses. But one night when the guards were inattentive, the four slaves set forth once more.

When they were dragged back, the new commander ordered everyone in the little settlement to a.s.semble for the punishment: 'Jango, for the fifth time you have tried to escape your dutiful labors, depriving the Compagnie of its property.' Willem felt sick, wondering what awful thing was about to be done, but when he turned his ashen face to Katje, he saw that she was stretching forward to watch the proceedings.

'Jango, you are to have your ears lopped. You are to have your nose lopped. You are to be branded forehead and cheeks, and you are to carry chains for the rest of your life. Deborah, twice you have run away. You are to be branded forehead and cheeks, and shall wear chains for the rest of your life. Adam and Crisme, you are slaves'

'No!' Willem shouted. The commander turned to take note of who had interrupted him. An aide whispered that this was the father of the two boys, which angered the commander even more: 'You are slaves, and you are to be branded on the forehead.'

'No!' Willem shouted again, determined that such dreadful punishment not be visited upon his children, but two soldiers pinioned him, and the sentences were executed.

A week later the slave Bastiaan stole a sheep belonging to the Compagnie and was hanged, and now the new commander had time to study the case of Willem van Doorn. He learned that he was the younger brother of the powerful Karel van Doorn, but he also learned that Karel had little regard for his brother and knew him to be troublesome. He knew that on four occasions Willem had pet.i.tioned to become a free burgher, stating that he had no desire to work endlessly for the Compagnie, and at the punishment he had, of course, behaved disgracefully. Here was a man begging for discipline, and the commander was determined that he receive it.

'Willem van Doorn,' he said at the public sentencing, 'you've been a disruptive influence. You've consorted with slaves. You were seen only last week slipping in to the slave quarters, and you require discipline. The horse, two days.'

'Oh, no!' Katje pleaded, but the words had been spoken, so Willem was grabbed and bound, while two heavy bags of lead pellets were attached to his ankles. The high wooden horse was dragged in and stationed where everyone could witness, and four men held him aloft while two others kept his legs pulled apart.

In the moment that he was held thus suspended, the mutilated slaves Jango and Deborah were brought forth to watch, and for the first time Willem saw the hideous face of the man, the deeply scarred face of the woman he had loved. 'No!' he screamed, and all who heard, except Jango and Deborah, supposed that he was protesting the cruel punishment he was about to receive.

'Now!' the commander called, and he was dropped. The pain was so terrible that he fainted.

When he recovered, it was night and he was alone, chained to the horse whose rough edges tore sullenly at his crotch, spreading it, cutting it, wounding it horribly. If he moved to alleviate the pain, new areas were affected. Against his will deep groans escaped, and when he tried to move to a new position, the awful weights on his legs pulled him back.

Twice that night he fainted, partly from the pain, partly from the vicious cold that swept in from the bay. When he awakened, he began to s.h.i.+ver, and by the time the dull sun rose, he was feverish.

Residents of the fort came to mock him, satisfied that he deserved what he was getting. They had envied him his home at the garden, the fact that he had a wife and they didn't, and his relations.h.i.+p to a powerful brother in Java. They noticed that he was s.h.i.+vering, and one woman said, 'He has the ague. They all do after the first day.'

That afternoon, when the wind rose, his fever intensified so that when dusk came, with rain whipping in from the bay, he was in grave danger. His wife, unwilling to visit him while others were mocking him, crept up to the horse and whispered, 'How goes it, Willem?' and he replied through chattering teeth, 'I'll live.'

The fact that he had said this made Katje suspect that he would not, so she forced her way into the commander's office and said, 'You're killing him, and Karel van Doorn will learn of this.'

'Are you threatening me?'

'I am indeed. I am the niece of Claes Danckaerts, and he's a man of some importance in Amsterdam. Take my husband down.'

The commander knew enough of Compagnie politics to appreciate the influences that might be brought against him if a determined Dutch family declared war upon a German hireling, and from the manner in which Katje spoke, he suspected that she would pursue her threat, so against his own best judgment he put on a cloak and went out into the storm.

He found Willem unconscious, his body trembling with fever, and when he twice failed to rouse him, he gave the brusque order: 'Cut him down.'

The stiff body was carried to the garden-hut and placed on the dung-polished floor, where Katje brought him slowly back to consciousness: 'You're home. It's over, Willem.' And their love, awkward and strained as it would always be, dated from that moment.

The ordeal of the wooden horse had a powerful impact on Willem van Doorn. For one thing, it crippled him; he would always walk with his body slightly twisted, his left leg not functioning like his right. And he would be susceptible to colds, a deep bronchial malaise affecting him each winter. An even more powerful result, however, was that he began to frequent the smithy in the fort, stealing pieces of equipment, which he kept sequestered behind the shed in which the vines were grafted.

One evening, when he had a.s.sembled a heavy hammer, a chisel and a bar for prying, he grasped Jango's arm as he dragged his chains homeward. Without speaking, he kicked aside a covering of gra.s.s, displaying the cache. Jango said nothing, but his eyes showed Willem his grat.i.tude.

It was not easy to look at Jango. Instead of ears he had lumpy wounds. His face, lacking a nose, lost all definition. And the three bold scars on forehead and cheeks imprisoned the glance of anyone who saw that ugly, repulsive face. Willem looked only at the eyes, which glowed.

The two men never confided in each other. Jango refused to tell Willem what his precise plans were, or how he would carry out his final attempt. The instruments for his freedom lay there under the grape cuttings and would be called upon when time was proper, but how and where he would cut away his chains and Deborah's, neither man knew.

Then one afternoon, half an hour before sunset, Jango quietly quit his work and dragged his chains to the grafting shed, removed the covering gra.s.s and wrapped the chisel in a canvas bag. With strong blows, well m.u.f.fled, he cut the chains that bound his legs, then tied them inconspicuously back together. Secreting the tools under his sweaty s.h.i.+rt, he walked unconcernedly past Willem, as he always did at close of day, and for a brief moment the two men looked at each other, one with face terribly scarred, the other with heart in turmoil. It was the last time they would ever be in contact, black and white, and tears came to Willem's eyes, but Jango refused to allow emotion to touch him. Clutching his tools, he moved toward the fort.

'You're very nervous,' Katje said when her husband limped in to supper, and when he stayed for a long time reading his Bible, she said, 'Willem, come to bed.' Desperately he wanted to go to the fort, to stand upon the wall, to witness how Jango and Deborah and the boys made their escape, and where her chains would be struck off, but he knew that he must betray nothing. He was not afraid of the punishment that would be meted out to him if the commander deduced his role in this escape; he was afraid only for Jango and Deborah and his sons. At nine, when Katje went to bed, she saw her husband still at his Bible, his head lowered as if in prayer.

They fled into the desert lands northeast of the fort, Jango the black from Angola, Deborah the brown from Malaya, Adam and Crisme, half-brown, half-white, and the baby girl Ateh, half-black, half-brown. When they were well away from the hedge of bitter almond, Jango struck off his wife's chains, then discarded his own, but she picked them up, thinking that they would be useful in trading with the Hottentots or Bushmen.

This time they escaped. As they entered into a wilderness unknown, uncharted, they exemplified that reverberating report of Karel van Doorn: Neither hunger nor thirst, neither the murderous arrow of the Bushman nor the spear of the Hottentot, neither the waterless desert nor the impa.s.sable mountain deters the slave from seeking his freedom.

They survived, and in time the descendants of Adam and Crisme and thousands like them would not have to flee to freedom bound in chains. They would be able to live in places like Cape Town, where they would come to know a greater bondage, for they would be stigmatized as Coloured. They would be preached against by predikants, because they would be living testimony to the fact that in the beginning days whites had cohabited with brown and black and yellow: 'They are G.o.d's curse upon us for the evils we have done.' The land of their birth would be the home of their sorrow, and they would be ent.i.tled to no place in society, to no future that all agreed upon, but they would forever be a testimony.