Hottentot Venus

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

  —Want to leave the Cape of Storms? it seemed to say.

  —We’ll see about that. You would like your life back? You will have to get past me. For I rule here, not white men. The sea is mine and no man, white or black, can outrun me or outstare me . . . just try it . . .

  The HMS Exeter seemed to stand at attention, magnificent and immobile on the waves, contemplating what the storm had just told her, then she dipped sickeningly deep into a tree-high wave that struck it like a palm striking a drum and made the old ship groan and cry out. There were faint cries also from the frightened passengers. We were alone in the immensity of the ocean. In the middle of nowhere. Ten days or more from the Cape. The birds had left. The swaying masts infested with squirming men riding up and down them, bent like reeds before the wind. The ship’s wake, long and white and straight, trailed to the west as if we were going backwards. The sun was gone like the birds, disappeared beneath the heavy rain clouds. The squall, coming from behind, finally caught the ship and dissolved itself in a deluge of hissing, drumming, stupendous rain. The heavens opened up its entrails and rained down all the piss of God. It left the deck glistening clean and the sails darkened. I shivered in delight. Was this happiness I asked myself? The ship began to race before the storm, trying to outrun the white-capped waves, urged on by the shouts and worried whispers of the sailors as they ran back and forth moving things and tying down ropes and affixing everything on deck. Then came the horror.

  Master Dunlop came out on deck, calling me by name.

  —Sarah, Sarah, for God’s sake! I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Get into the common room with the others! This is a real hurricane!

  The pale green eyes held fear. But I was happy. I was indifferent to the storm as if a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I had steeled myself against the worst and found my fate so fascinating that I felt an overwhelming dislike for Master Dunlop, who wanted to take me away.

  I heard Master Dunlop crying into my ear, but the wind got between us, suddenly I was hanging on to him like the weight of a stone and the sides of our heads knocked together.

  —Sarah, Sarah, you’re going to drown! Get in there!

  But my heart had been corrupted by the storm and I rebelled against leaving it. I would not obey any order except the mysterious craving for its fury I had found in my soul.

  Master Dunlop pulled and half dragged me below, bellowing orders to sailors at the same time that he shoved me into the crowded room. The white passengers looked up, cowering in various corners, some had slight wounds where they had bumped against the furniture or hit their head against a beam. There was not a greeting amongst them. They spoke not a word to me and moved away from my person. Many turned their backs, trying to look unconcerned; others, with averted eyes, sent half-reluctant glances out of the corners of their eyes. One or two stared at me frankly, but stupidly with their mouths open in indignation. They resembled thieves caught in the act. They didn’t want a Hottentot to share even their own destruction. They’d rather I be anywhere else, safe and dry, than amongst them partaking their fate. I, for one, was convinced we were all going to our watery graves together.

  Outside, the full force of the storm struck the ship. The decks had become too dangerous. Dazed and dismayed, sailors as well as passengers, except for Master Dunlop and the captain, had now taken shelter under the bridge, which was pitch dark and flooded. At each rise of the ship, we would all groan together in the blackness, and outside, tons of water smashed against the belly of the whale. The passengers were as safe as they could be, but they did nothing except grumble, complain peevishly or scream in terror like sick children. They pleaded for light, for air, because all the hatches were battened down. They cried for their mothers and vomited. The odor of urine and shit pervaded the air. No one could see his neighbor, so that we were all equal, all black, all smelling the same, all speaking the same common language of terror; we cried and screamed, shouted and prayed, or were silent. Since we were all part of the same blackness, I thought, did this mean that I no longer had a color? In this miserable hull, in this black hole, was I at last a person? Or was there something even in blindness that exiled me from humanity? I could hear the storm plainly. Its howls and shrieks seemed to take on a human sound of rage and pain. I felt like crying, not out of fright, although I was frightened, but out of sympathy for the storm’s pain. The whistles, clicks, howls of the wind mixed with terrible bumps and shattering thumps that rattled my ear as if sea monsters beneath us had risen from the depths and were demanding entrance. The monsters knocked and knocked on the hull, either begging to be let in or commanding the sniveling, whining, screaming passengers to shut up. The ship rolled on its side and a great collective groan pierced the darkness as we thrashed from side to side, sliding against the wet, slippery walls of our coffin. Suddenly, our cries ceased as if we had obeyed the monsters of the deep. The wind died down. There was the sound of water seeping through the portholes and hatches. There was water up to our knees. My skirts pulled me down. We were sinking.

  A trance fell over everyone like a numbness of the spirit. The bodily fatigue of holding on to existence had pierced the hearts of all of us within the tumult of the struggle. It was a cold, penetrating fatigue brought on by the suspense of expectations of catastrophe, and it struck deep in that space where the soul was supposed to reside. In a second the waters would wash over us and it would all be over. I felt Master Hendrick’s heavy arm across my shoulder. I was wet and cold and stiff in every limb, swift visions of my former life passed before my eyes: my father corralling cattle, my mother’s laugh, the pull of !Kung nursing at my breast, a sword or was it a rifle reflecting the sun . . . and then, nothing.

  The darkness was suddenly pierced by a radiant beam of light. The hatch was unlocked and the head of Master Dunlop appeared in its halo.

  —It’s over! he shouted into the darkness. We’re taking on water, so you must come up before you drown. But we can make it to St. Helena for repair!

  There was only stunned silence from below as we raised our faces to the light. We were saved.

  A blank rocky wall blocked the horizon, which in the distance appeared totally without trees, shrubs or even grass. I could not detect the smallest dot of a bird in the vastness of the sky overhead and the rocky islet lay on the sea like a loaf of bread floating on the naked line of the horizon. The black formation resembled a huge castle, its height towering to the low clouds, the cliffs leaning over the ocean. Their sides rose higher than Table Mountain, above the level of the sea. They looked like the ridge of a saddle with the pommel to the north, and as we approached nearer, the dark, somber mass of rock lifted like a forbidding hand. It was impossible to imagine anything more menacing or uninviting; as if the underworld monster who had so chastised us at sea had risen up out of the depths to frighten us once again.

  This was St. Helena, Master Dunlop told me, the last piece of Africa, the only thing that stood between us and England. The wounded ship, half adrift, two masts broken, sails tattered from the winds, a hole in the keel, made for the dark reefs, sending out a tender to announce our arrival and a God Save Our Souls because we would have to be towed into the harbor. The sailors told me that notice had to be given to the governor of the island before we could pass the battery of cannons and reach safety. Nevertheless we managed to salute the fort with the one cannon that had not been jettisoned overboard, and when the fort returned our salute, the terrible echo was truly grand. On a distant height stood the citadel high above the sea. Just under the summit was a cave and a small beach where the passengers of the HMS Exeter finally reached dry land.

  The frightened, exhausted white people limped onto the beach of the fortress. They were saved, they all cried as they set their feet on solid earth. Was this, I thought, part of Master Dunlop’s odyssey? This detour back to Khoekhoe land? This island had always been ours, and the small group of whites who inhabited the island were far outnumbered by the Khoekhoe. I imagined this was h
ow the first group of white men had arrived at the Cape of Good Hope: cold, forlorn, starving and afraid. We had lost all of our supplies and reserve of water in the storm. But the captain had saved the cargo. Master Dunlop’s giraffe skin was safe. So was I. Master Dunlop had taken charge of the weary passengers while the captain and the ship’s doctor had gone to the governor’s mansion escorted by soldiers. Soon there would be more soldiers and food and clothing, but for the moment, we all stood huddled together on a white beach, surrounded by mountains, ravines and forest that seemed to have been created yesterday. To the west, I could see the square stone tower of the lookout, but on the other three sides, there was only ocean, thick jungle, dark volcanoes and swept sky.

  Even in catastrophe, I was still ostracized by the white passengers. I stood apart from them and contemplated the mystery of this island. This was the last soil that could be called Africa. This was the last Khoekhoe territory in the world. Why, I thought, were the English occupying a fortress and a harbor when the People of the People outnumbered the garrison by hundreds. Why, I wondered, hadn’t the Khoekhoe driven the English and the Dutch into the sea? The island was owned by the Dutch East India Company and everyone on the island either worked for or was a slave to the company. A few Hottentots still herded, but most were captives alongside those from Goa, Malaya and Madagascar. In the beginning, the Khoekhoe had inhabited all the land, but with the arrival of the Portuguese, the French and the English, any land which was worth preserving had been snatched from their hands.

  From the only landing place, the road ran along the foot of a perpendicular cliff from the pier to the Government House and over a draw-bridge past a battery of heavy guns. There, through an alley of trees, was the reinforced gateway, which led to St. James Valley. Near the opening, between the two mountains, was the valley, which divided the island. The left side of the island was clothed in woodlands and greenery to the very summit of the rise. By contrast, on the right side was the wild nakedness of harsh rock, desert and boulder. The beauty of one half and the horror of the other astonished everyone that took this road. The history of the island was clear from where we stood, it had erupted from the depths of the sea, forced up by the underworld fires of volcanoes. It was as if the Reverend Freehouseland’s Garden of Eden existed side by side with the reverend’s vision of hell. The soldiers came to escort the passengers by mule and horseback through the rift of the valley, where we passed the barren, treeless rise of volcanic rock on one side and a paradise of flowering trees, shrubs, waterfalls, green pastures, woodlands and flora on the other. This great divide, like many things in nature, had no explanation, said Master Dunlop, just as night and day or black and white didn’t.

  All this time, Master Dunlop had been a changed man, never complaining once. Treating injured passengers and sailors, laying up medicines, organizing and comforting as if he were the ship’s surgeon. In fact, there existed a ship’s doctor for the HMS Exeter, a Mr. Harley with whom he played trente-et-un. But the passengers had faith only in Master Dunlop. After the storm, I had once again become a maid of all work to the sickened and weak women passengers. Suddenly, reinstated as a servant, I was again greeted with friendly smiles, polite demands, easy first-name intimacy, as if now that the world had been turned upside down by the storm, and then right side up, everything had fallen back into place.

  The ship was towed into the harbor under the direction of the captain and put in repairs, which would last, if all went well, ten days. The captain was anxious to get under way. He had saved most of his precious cargo, although all the exotic wood was waterlogged. There were several fleets anchored at the fort, and a multitude of small vessels. All the passengers from the HMS Exeter were housed in the town and Masters Dunlop and Caesar took lodgings in a rented house near the town square. Just as the captain fretted about his expensive cargo, so Master Dunlop fretted about his giraffe skin and his Hottentot while he spent most of his time with the governor. St. Helena, however, was deemed safe enough and secure enough to allow me to ramble around the island escorted by the sailors from the HMS Exeter. It was in this way I discovered the paradise of Fairyland and amused myself by picking watercress in the early morning in a place called Lemon Valley. The midshipmen of different ships met and fraternized together there, sometimes having long arguments about some point of politics or history, sometimes ending in a boxing match. Fairyland on the south side of the island consisted of softly rolling green pastures and woodlands out of which rose columns of smooth grayish rock that appeared to be sculpted by an invisible hand. From the top, the view descended in splendid ridges of wildflowers, waterfalls, ravines and eminences to the sea. The beauty and grandeur of Fairyland amazed and astonished me. One day I took Master Dunlop to see this wonder of nature. He rewarded me by singing the same strange ballad he had once begun to sing to me on the farm. He sang it in an astonishing deep and beautiful voice that gave me chills:

  In the bay of St. Helena

  Stands the island of St. Helena

  Where surrounded by my comrades

  I behold a strange lass with skin so black

  Who fled in fright to see men so white

  She couldn’t speak our tongue

  Nor we that of her tribe

  She was more ferocious than

  The horrible Polyphème

  As naked and black as twilight—

  Unavowed by God, soulless it’s true

  A death sentence justified

  A Cyclops for Ulysses—

  We returned to our fleet

  Informed of the abject perfidy

  Of the obnoxious designs

  Of this bestial, cruel and perverse people—

  Hottentots.

  He spit out the last terrible word, “Hottentots,” with a kind of glee as if he were happy to wound me.

  —But that’s what I am, a Hottentot, I protested.

  —Yes, that is indeed what you are, and soon all London will know it— you’ll be famous and so will I for discovering you.

  One night we went to the sandy beach of the island to spy on the spawning giant turtles who crawled ashore during the night to lay their eggs on the beach. We watched them come out of the sea, many at a time, to deposit two, three thousand eggs in the sand and then return once more into the ocean. At dawn the sun hatched the eggs and small gray newborn creatures pitifully and desperately made their way out of them, crawling on their bellies towards the sea while flocks of seagulls and eagle hawks swooped down on them, breaking their shells, tearing at their flesh, as orphans they struggled to return to the deep. The beach was strewn with carcasses and the broken shells of baby turtles eaten by birds of prey.

  —Look how majestic! The mystery of evolution! he said. This is nature in action, the survival of those who are most fit to survive.

  —It’s horrible. Mother turtles who abandon their young on the beach to die.

  —Don’t humans do the same, after all? Don’t mothers bring their children into a world to become cannon fodder in wars, fought over beaches like this one? Do they have a choice really? he sighed.

  —The question is do the turtles know they are acting in this cruel manner by leaving their young to die? Have they chosen this despicable act or do they really believe their progeny will make it back into the sea and live? Or is it some instinct, some great hand that pushes them to do what they do despite themselves? Even knowing it is wrong? And is it wrong? What is murder exactly? The strong will make it to the sea, or at least some of the strongest; those that crawl faster; that break their shells first; some that even crawl over their fellow turtles—just like men do. A few of the thousands will survive to mate and produce more turtles, who will in turn abandon their young on this same beach. Why do you think the mothers lay so many eggs? Because she knows most of them are doomed. Would it be, for example, more human to make her choose which ones? To force her to decide between this egg and that egg, who would live and who would die? Do the larva of this earth, our own species, mankind, have
this power of decision? No? Then, why should a turtle have it? So our turtle leaves all of them on the beach to let the laws of nature decide . . . And once in the sea, do they know where to go? Or do they go blindly in search of their progenitors? Or do they accept their fate—that they are completely alone in the world, that they have been spawned not by mothers, but by monsters.

  —Why do you show me such a fearful thing?

  —It isn’t so horrible—there are a lot of things more horrible. There’s a terrible beauty in this struggle for life.

  —Is this law of nature you speak of your so-called God? Jehovah?

  —I don’t know that nature and God are the same thing.

  —I don’t believe in God, I said, I believe in the turtle.

  —I don’t believe in either God or the turtle, replied my master.

  —In what do you believe?

  —I am a man of science. I believe in objective truth. I believe in dispassionate reason.

  —What does dispassionate mean?

  —Hard. Cruel. Without mercy. And without recourse.

  —Are you like that?

  —Yes.

  We sat side by side in silence, the terrible scene before us. We remained for many hours like that, without exchanging a word. That night was a night of felicity. I made love to Master Dunlop, my future husband, Khoekhoe style, in the manner of the goddess after whom I was shaped. I reached down into my entrails and brought forth ecstasy. My master was astounded, amazed, happy and humbled.