Hottentot Venus

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

  I began to smell humans. The road began to fill with people going to or coming from the Cape Fort. I was happy to see faces and hear voices on the dusty road, sending up a cloud of languages and dialects. I had been lonely, I thought, without realizing it. There were dogs and pigs, chickens, goats, squawking cocks and fat-tailed baby lambs. Women carried jars of fired clay on their heads. Men carried cages filled with everything from serpents to parrots. Anything that could walk was on a leash and everything walking was edible. There was nothing that was not merchandise. It ebbed and flowed up to the very walls of the town. Mobs swarmed around the gates that were manned by police and customs officers.

  I remembered from my orphanage days that today, Thursday, was market day. A long caravan, which must have come from the east, passed through the gates. Unending, the trail of heavily laden camels circled the walls, edged on by blue men in saffron and white kaftans, their heads and faces hidden under wide turbans, the unwound ends that fell to their shoulders, pulled across their mouths against the sand, dust and heat, leaving only their eyes to be seen. I slipped into the city with the caravan, keeping to the shadows of the moving animals. Once inside, I tried to get my bearings. I put down my bundle. The main street was brimming with people of all colors and shapes. Some were familiar, Dutch and Afrikaners, English, Xhoas and Bantus, but there were also Indians, Chinamen, Arabs and Semites, yellow, white, red, brown, dark-skinned Africans. They all moved in a different manner, on foot, in carriages, on horseback, and camelback, in litters, sedan chairs, and covered wagons, carts, palankeens and rickshaws. Dogs ran unleashed everywhere. There were white women who carried small tents to shade them from the sun, like those used by certain Africans to denote a prince or person of importance. There were white men in wide straw hats, linen dustcoats and gun belts.

  The odor that rose from the street was a combination of vegetables and spices, the raw pine of new buildings, rotting garbage, cooking oil, garlic, musk, perfume, camel urine, dog shit and smoke from iron forges. In the years I had been gone, everything had changed. I stood in the middle of the road, covered with the red dirt of the street and my journey, dumbfounded. I was barefoot and wore only a short lappa. I picked up my belongings and sat them back on my head. I was like a dog that couldn’t scratch. The horse-drawn carriages, sedan chairs and carts made a detour around me every which way and in both directions. Someone yelled,

  —Get out of the way, you stupid Kaffir!

  I couldn’t tell who had called out, because so many people swirled around me, my head turned: soldiers in bright red uniforms, cowboys, slaves, railroad men. There were sailors from the port, miners from the mountains, caravan men and cattlemen. There were priests and pastors, farmers and gentlemen. All manner of animals roamed or were tethered in front of the pastel brick and wood houses: horses, camels and dromedaries, donkeys, mules, buffalo, longhorns, shorthorns, even a reindeer. Stray dogs, cats and pigs strolled along the wooden planks that served as passageways for those on foot. On each side were shops and stalls of every description in the open air or under the wood and mat arcades: baskets and bread, herbs, salt, grain, sweets, jewelry, cloth. I was overwhelmed.

  I made my way past a white-and-black-painted church with towers like spears piercing the azure sky, the governor’s house of yellow stone, the penitentiary, the police headquarters that I recognized from when I was a little girl. I was more and more apprehensive. Did I have the right to be in Cape Town? Was I a free woman? Did I need a pass? There were also terrible sights: beggars and lepers with no hands or feet, a public gallows with a corpse still hanging, a chain gang of convicts wearing striped pants and shirts, their feet shackled to fifty-pound cannonballs.

  Lost now, not remembering the way to the mission, I felt the hatred all around me, like a thick fog. For the first time, I noticed there was no Khoekhoe on the street. I felt hostile eyes and coarse laughter following me. I stopped in my tracks, thinking, What is it? Am I naked? No. I have covered myself from head to knees. Is it my size? I am the size of a twelve-year-old child. Is it the way I walk? Have I dropped something? Violated some unspoken taboo? Insulted a passerby? Then the words floating around me, rough and contemptuous, became comprehensible.

  —Kaffir.

  —Bushwoman.

  —Really? I thought there was a town ordinance prohibiting these people.

  —Look, Mommy, a Hottentot!

  —Pygmy!

  —Savage!

  —Cannibal!

  —We hunt them in the north.

  —My uncle has a stuffed trophy head . . .

  —Can’t you read the sign that says no dogs or Bushmen allowed?

  —Get off the sidewalk!

  Someone shoved me onto the road. I stumbled on in a trance, the hurtful insults hurled at me from all sides. Some were shouted, some spoken plainly. My stomach curled into a ball of fear. My heart accelerated. I walked faster, steadying the bundle on my head, wishing that the red clay dust beneath my feet would swallow me up. Passersby avoided my eyes. They moved away from me as I passed. Children stared and moved closer to the skirts of their mothers. I remembered what the rainmaker had said about not going to Cape Town, that I would lose my soul, my n/um. But now it was too late. Had I been blind to all this at the orphanage or simply too young to understand? Or had things changed in the past years? It was still, I thought, not too late to turn back. To run. But where would I go? How would I live if I didn’t work? Another husband? I couldn’t survive another murder.

  I tried to figure out my way. I finally asked a passerby in Dutch. He looked at me as if I were a talking dog.

  —The St. Luke Orphanage, he repeated slowly in Afrikaans as if he were speaking to an idiot, is on Blacker Street, about a ten-minute walk. Take the next street to the left, all the way to the end, and then turn onto Merriberry Road . . . You’ll see the bell tower . . .

  —Thank you, sir, I said.

  He just kept staring at me. He hadn’t expected me to understand a word he had spoken. Finally, he shrugged, shook his head sadly and went on his way in the opposite direction.

  The familiar sound of the school bell brought me to the gate of the compound. I put down my bundle and rang the gate bell. I knew the guardian who opened the gate, a Bantu.

  —Ssehura, he cried out.

  At least someone was happy to see me.

  —Saartjie, he said, using my Dutch name, how did you get here? What are you doing here?

  —I walked.

  —From home?

  —Yes.

  —And you walked through town?

  —Why, yes.

  We were speaking in Khoe.

  —It’s a wonder you didn’t get arrested! The Khoekhoe are prohibited from entering Cape Town. There are thousands of them camped outside the walls to the north of town. The English, who have defeated the Dutch and taken their colony, have decreed that Hottentots must be in the service of a white person, live in a fixed place and carry a pass in order to enter the town.

  —But this place is built on the People of the People’s land! How can they prohibit us from walking on it?

  —You are prohibited from owning it as well. I heard you got married.

  —My husband is dead. My just-born lived only a few months.

  —Oh, Ssehura. I’m so sorry to hear that. So you are alone in the world once again.

  —Yes. Mambu?

  —Yes?

  —Someone shoved me off the sidewalk coming here.

  He gazed at me strangely.

  —Didn’t you know there’s a war going on? The Hottentots have been attacking white settlers in Namibia. There have been massacres of whites . . . It’s a miracle you got through town without getting killed yourself. All Hottentots are banned from the city.

  —That’s why people stared! Why a man spat on my moccasins!

  —You were lucky, Saartjie. You could be in jail now. Come in, come in before somebody else sees you!

  —I had to come. I need work. My husband died. My baby
died. I couldn’t stay there. I would have died too! There’s no food, nothing. I couldn’t stay there; my life would have been over!

  —What can you do?

  I looked at him blankly. I could “do” nothing that would interest anybody. I could milk goats. I could gather wood and food. I could make a fire. I could have babies and wear lappas. I could build a house with bent twigs and cover it with reed mats. I could walk for many miles without tiring. I owned a slingshot. I could sing and play the guitar. I could herd cattle. I was a shepherdess. I knew a little medicine. I knew a little rain-making. I was a very good archer. I could hit a target at ninety paces. What could I do? I could swim. I could search and find iris bulbs to cook in flour batter. I could . . .

  —I can’t do anything, I said.

  —If you stay here, the headmistress can fit you out for housework. You remember your lessons from the time you were here? You speak a little Dutch and English from those days? You can learn to sew, to cook, to clean, to be a nursery maid or a laundress. The Reverend Freehouseland taught you some English, didn’t he?

  —Dutch and English.

  —Yes, well, that’s all to the good.

  —He left me an inheritance.

  —I know the story. But he’s dead now. His family has returned to England. Nobody remembers about it anymore, and it’s just as well. What would you have done with the money he left you anyway?

  The porter Mambu opened the double doors onto a large highceilinged room where thirty or more colored women all dressed the same in white smocks stood behind rows of white-draped tables with coal irons on them. Each had a shirt in her hand. Each had a bonnet on her head. At the front of the room stood the teacher on a raised dais. She spoke in Khoe, then in Dutch. She shouted as if raising her voice would force them to learn faster. The rows of black faces were intent, perspiring with the heat of the irons. The windows were wide open and the white curtains stirred. The teacher’s voice resounded against the vaulted ceiling.

  —First, take the collar of the washed shirt with two fingers, this one and this one, turn it towards you . . .

  —They are learning to be laundresses. You could start here with ironing, then washing, bleaching, mending . . .

  All eyes were lowered onto the white shirts, held with thumb and forefinger. Each pair of hands clutched the cloth, clutched and smoothed it carefully, bringing down the hot weighted irons with a dull thud, forcing out every wrinkle, every ridge, every imperfection.

  They resembled a troop of penguins with their white starched bosoms and their white starched caps, black arms flapping, heads bobbing in rhythm with the teacher’s lips, not able to make any sound themselves. Perhaps, like penguins, they had no vocal cords.

  —I’m glad you’ve returned, Saartjie, poor orphan . . . poor widow now—We’ll find you a home . . . a good family of Boers.

  That night, I pulled the thin cotton sheet up under my chin as I lay on the narrow plank bed in the women’s dormitory where thirty other inmates slept. The scent of warm female flesh, like baked bread, rose all around me as they snored softly. The day for them had begun at half past four. Tomorrow it would for me as well.

  I stared up at the dirty brown wooden ceiling as I would have stared at the night sky only a day ago, and thought of the wooden boxes called coffins the English and the Dutch used to bury their dead. I was as dead as the dead in those coffins. These sleeping colored women were dead. For twenty-three nights I had slept on the fragrant earth with only the stars above me. How long before I would sleep again under the moon, wrapped in my husband’s antelope skin, my headrest caressing the nape of my neck, the amulet given me by the thing-that-should-never-have-been-born dropped onto my heart, which beats and beats and beats? Not the sickening pounding of a long-distance runner, but the steady, steady rhythm of an unborn child in his mother’s womb, muted, fragile and determined to live.

  The days following that first night blended into one. I learned cooking, cleaning, flower arranging, silver polishing, washing, ironing, napkin folding, gardening, preserve making, even a bit of hairdressing and wig making. I tried to think only of the task at hand. I was found to be not apt for housework and it was decided I would become a children’s nurse. My breasts sometimes ached for my own little one and it didn’t displease me to hold one of the mission orphans in my arms.

  Sometime later, at the approach of Star Death moon, Mistress Van Loott, who had taken the Reverend Freehouseland’s place, called me into her office. It was a Sunday.

  —Saartjie, I think I have a family for you. They will tend to your pass and your registration. This is Colonel Caesar, a planter from the Flat Mountain Valley. He’s looking for a nurse for his children.

  A tall cherry-faced white man stepped from the shadows.

  —Colonel Caesar, this is Ssehura. We call her Saartjie, little Sarah.

  —How do you do? I said in English.

  He didn’t hold out his hand, but placed his wide straw planter’s hat on Mistress Van Loott’s desk.

  —How do you do? I said in Afrikaans.

  —You understand Afrikaans? he asked.

  Mistress Van Loott answered for me.

  —Yes, she was at the mission as a child. She went back to her tribe but she hasn’t forgotten your language.

  —Indeed. Fine. She can’t read or write, can she?

  —No.

  —Don’t want any Kaffirs that can read or write around the farm. Too much damn trouble—too dangerous. They teach it to the Kaffir children . . . Learning spoils the best niggers in the world.

  —No, I assure you, she can’t read and she can’t write.

  —How old is she? She looks no more than ten or twelve . . .

  —I’m sixteen, sir.

  —Oh, she’s a grown woman, Colonel Caesar, a mother and a widow.

  —Oh, I see, not a maiden at all . . .

  Mistress Van Loott looked confused.

  —Oh, no, she’s a widow, and I assure you she can’t read and she cannot write, she repeated.

  I thought of the mute book that wouldn’t answer black people but I said nothing.

  —We’ve got three small children under six. Clare, Karl and Erasmus.

  I was content. I loved children. I would take care of the three as if they were my own.

  —I love children, sir, I said, still speaking Afrikaans.

  —Is that so, Saartjie. Well, that’s fine. My wife’ll be real pleased. She likes Hottentot servants even if they do have a reputation for running away.

  —She won’t run. Will you, Sarah?

  —No, ma’am.

  Run where? To the Khoekhoe garbage heap outside of town? To the famine in Namibia? Into the sea? Run where? I was a prisoner in my own country.

  —Well, Saartjie, get your things together. You’ll be leaving with Colonel Caesar at sunset. His wagon train’s traveling by night.

  I was overjoyed to leave this coffin of a house. The idea of returning to the outdoors, of sleeping once again under the stars, of being close to a herd of cattle, pleased me greatly. The image of my father flashed before me.

  —I herd cattle, sir. I was brought up to do it.

  —As small as you are?

  —Yes, sir.

  Miss Van Loott laughed.

  —You’d think she would have trouble even standing up. Some of them look as though they are going to fall over backwards. But Saartjie is amazing. She runs like a man. Long distance.

  —Well, fancy that! A shepherdess. Well we have lots of fat-tailed sheep too. Maybe you can mind the sheep when you’re not minding Clare, Karl and Erasmus!

  A moment of awkward silence fell.

  —I’d like to speak to Saartjie alone, Miss Van Loott.

  —Of course, I’ll go and sign her release.

  Mistress Van Loott left the room and Colonel Caesar ordered me over to the window.

  —Come here, Saartjie, I want to see you in the light.

  —Colonel Caesar . . .

  —Call me Master.<
br />
  —Master . . .

  —Walk over here by the window.

  I approached him, my heart in my mouth.

  —Just want to feel you up a bit, Saartjie. I’m a good Christian, faithful to my wife . . .

  He opened his breeches, took out his organ wild with red hairs like an orangutan’s posterior. I stared at it with horror. His organ had two testicles . . . I wondered if all white men were so deformed.

  —What you staring at, Saartjie? Can’t tell me you ain’t never seen a man’s penis before—you a married woman. Now kiss it.

  I knelt down before this horribly deformed man, not knowing what he expected from me. But before I could act, his free hand groped under my smock, clutching my backside, and it was over.

  —Ahhh, he gurgled. You’ll do nicely, Saartjie, he said when he had come to himself.

  I got up off my knees, wondering if I should tell Mistress Van Loott what had happened.

  —Now, no need for you to tell Miss Van Loott. It won’t happen again. Not like you’re a virgin or anything. Correct?

  My silence was taken for consent. I had three choices, I thought. I could stay here in this coffin and hope for another employer or I could run away to the Khoekhoe camp outside of town and starve or I could take my chances with Mrs. Caesar’s children and Mrs. Caesar’s vigilance over her husband. Surely a white Christian woman would protect me?

  When Mistress Van Loott entered, she couldn’t meet my eyes.

  —Here are the papers, Colonel, all in order, was all she said, despite my ashen face and his red one. She didn’t care. She didn’t want to know. After all, masters had certain rights over their servants and I was, after all, of that race. It was strange to feel that in the judgment of those above you, you were scarcely human: I even wondered if their belief was more than half right—that I really mattered less than a camel, less than a dog, without a n/um, that even my shape was not human according to civilized people.

  —That’s all, Saartjie. You’re dismissed, get your things.