The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

  A sharp throbbing in his knee made him look down. Blood. He had ripped his riding breeches and gashed himself. Sweat ran down into his eyes and into the cracked corners of his dry and panting mouth. The elephant suddenly ceased his meanderings around the base of the tree and raised his trunk in the air, working it from side to side as if scenting an enemy. When the breeze had died, Francis had never considered the possibility of its return from a different quarter. As this appalling prospect occurred to him, he felt a dab of air on his neck, lighter than the touch of a feather duster. Aghast, he crumbled some dry earth and let it fall from his hand. The dust drifted sideways. Then he heard the first bellow of rage.

  At any moment the beast would charge. Clara put down the telescope and prayed. Yet after more trumpeting, the elephant remained motionless, except for his ears, which flickered at intervals like the wings of a dying moth.

  If charged in his present position, Francis knew he was doomed. He scrambled to his feet and ran for the rocks, which offered the only possible vantage point from which to kill the creature. His heart was pounding so violently that he wondered how he was still able to breathe. In this condition, would he ever manage to hold his gun steady? Yet he must shoot this bull in the brain if he wished to live.

  Even as he ran, he imagined himself tossed skywards, gored on those cruel curving tusks, then caught by the creature’s trunk and flailed against trees and rocks until his limbs were torn from his body. But somehow his legs moved under him, negotiating stones, roots, even a pile of dung, while he himself was scarcely aware of his soles making contact with the ground. How had he strolled into this insane predicament? Had his years spent showing troopers the way an officer faced danger left him unable to admit to any weakness?

  Clara lifted the telescope again. As she gazed at the tusker, the creature suddenly and inexplicably lowered his trunk and tugged idly at a sapling, as if forgetting what had disturbed him. In a daze, Clara saw Francis sprint towards some rocks. Yards from his goal, his knee buckled and he fell.

  The elephant spun around, a blur of grey menace, gashed by the arc of his mighty tusks. As Francis hit the ground, he saw his gun fly away to his left. Empty-handed now, he was wrenching the strap of his other rifle from his shoulder even while staggering to his feet. Gasping, he jammed the stock into his shoulder and stared down the wavering sight at the heaving pink triangle that was the beast’s mouth. The creature loomed above him as he charged. No chance of hitting the brain from so low; and one in the lungs would never stop him. The ground was reverberating, the beast’s ears flapping like canvas at sea, trunk flung upwards as he roared. No hope of piercing the skull, but fire, fire anyway, between the eyes. As his finger tightened on the trigger, the brute veered aside.

  Incredulous, trembling, Francis tracked the great head, passing him yards away. As one vast ear swung forward, he sighted the lethal spot and fired, hearing one moment the report and the next the earthshaking crash as the elephant’s legs folded and his tusks gouged into the earth. For a moment the beast started to regain his feet, but then he staggered back and rolled on to his side.

  Almost too weak to stand, Francis caught sight of Fynn, astonishingly close to him and directly in the line of the tusker’s last charge.

  ‘Good thing you shot straight, Vaughan,’ said the American. ‘I’d be dead meat now if you’d missed.’ He smiled. ‘Ought to thank you, I guess.’

  But Francis knew that he ought to thank Fynn for attracting the elephant’s attention. If Fynn had fired at the creature instead of running forwards, he could not have killed him from that angle, and a wound might have maddened the beast without changing the line of his charge. Francis knew that Fynn had placed himself in grave danger to save his life. He looked straight at the American. ‘I thought you never risked your skin for anyone.’

  ‘I don’t.’ He grinned at Francis. ‘Not even you could have missed that close.’

  And that was that. Though Francis wanted to acknowledge Fynn’s bravery, he sensed that the hunter felt guilty about letting him go after a wounded elephant – just how badly injured became apparent when they examined the carcass.

  Francis felt like vomiting. Near the animal’s anus was the snapped shaft of an assegai, and from there almost to the foot, the flesh was seething with maggots. For how many months had he endured this? The tusks he had paid so dearly for possessing were a poor colour, too cracked and pitted for Fynn to consider removing.

  When they returned to the wagon, Francis was gratified by how relieved and pleased Clara seemed. She offered to bandage his leg but, having thanked her, he said he dealt with cuts and gashes himself.

  ‘Why did you take such a risk?’ she asked at last, as he gingerly washed his knee.

  Her puzzlement made him laugh. ‘I wanted to impress you.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Her frown told him he had miscalculated.

  ‘You might as well ask people why they gamble.’

  ‘You did it for excitement?’ She was truly horrified.

  ‘Men test themselves, you know. I’m not a freak.’

  ‘No?’ Fynn’s burly shoulders shook with amusement. ‘A man who runs at a rogue bull not a freak? Who could be crazier? Damned if I know.’

  They were all up on the box again when Fynn started telling Francis and Clara how, after a kill, Bushmen always carved a path, like miners, deep inside the body of a dead elephant.

  ‘They race each other for the best organs, hacking with knives. Met a little guy near Kuruman last year. He’d lost his testicles inside an elephant – cut off by a friend who thought they were part of the creature’s spleen.’

  ‘Nice story for a lady,’ remarked Francis.

  ‘She don’t mind. Do you, ma’am?’ Fynn uncorked a flask of Cape brandy and handed it to Mrs Haslam. To Francis’s amazement, she took a generous gulp.

  ‘The only drink I’m used to,’ she confided, wiping her lips on her sleeve.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ muttered Fynn.

  ‘You shouldn’t keep saying that,’ reproved Clara, without a trace of a smile.

  Was she serious? wondered Francis. This brandy-swigging, brave, priggish, fragile-looking girl? Did she believe it all: Judgment Day, the loaves and fishes? Or was she just infatuated with doing good? He groaned within himself. Either way, she was irresistible, but if he ever gave her the least sign he thought so, he would loathe himself. Like nuns and lepers, missionaries’ wives were untouchable.

  *

  Since dawn, Clara had suspected that this might be the last day of her journey, but Fynn had underestimated the distance, and they were still travelling at dusk. Clara was tense with anticipation, expecting, moment by moment, to see the village looming in the half-light. The American had ridden on ahead in the late afternoon to see if he could find a shorter way; and night had fallen before he returned. Soon afterwards, Fynn pointed into the gloom.

  ‘Chief Mponda’s kraal.’

  Ahead, Clara could just make out a low hill and a line of huts straggling across its brow. Against the paler sky, the peaked roofs of the village looked like the black serrations on a dinosaur’s back. Wisps of smoke could be seen twisting upwards. Women would be preparing evening meals on wood fires. A yellow moon glowed beside a great crag of jumbled granite, which dominated the village.

  Looking at Clara, Francis was choked. Her face mirrored the inner struggle between fear and hope. How little she could know what awaited her. Missionaries often spoke of years of contentment among primitive tribesmen, but it was beyond Francis how any English woman, be she servant girl or manufacturer’s daughter, could experience anything but misery in an African kraal.

  Moonlight flowed down on the bush, silvering the wagon and matching each pair of oxen with twin shadows. The trees fell back in velvet blackness, while granite quartz glittered in star fragments where rocks shelved. Suddenly Francis lost the sense of his earlier thoughts. Rarely had the world seemed more beautiful. Clara’s face bore the same wonder; it came to him that if
he were journeying through this alien land to join a beloved spouse, he would at last know happiness.

  Soon there was drumming: soft to start with, then rising to a climax, before fading once more. A solo voice broke the silence and was joined by a deep chorus. Clara remembered Robert describing the ‘degrading attitudes’ that the women often adopted during their songs and dances. But the chanting was strange and haunting.

  When Fynn shouted instructions to Ezekiel, his driver, and to the boy on the leading ox, Clara was shocked. Within sight of her destination, he seemed to be ordering his men to stop.

  ‘We can’t stop,’ she cried. ‘Not now.’

  ‘Could start a panic if we ride in at night.’ Fynn was obdurate. ‘Best camp here and ask the chief’s permission to take in the wagon tomorrow.’

  ‘Why not send in the driver on foot now?’ suggested Francis. ‘Ezekiel can give a message to Mr Haslam, surely?’ Clara smiled her gratitude.

  An hour later, Ezekiel returned. He was accompanied not by Robert Haslam but by a tall, white-haired African and a boy dressed in a bleached calico cassock. As the old man caught sight of Clara, he went down on his knees and thanked God for her arrival. He prayed aloud in his own language, then added in English, ‘May the good Lord bless you, Nkosikaas.’

  ‘May He bless you too,’ she murmured, distraught at not seeing her husband.

  ‘You know what he called you just then?’ asked Fynn. ‘Princess. That’s what nkosikaas means.’

  The old man had stopped some distance away from her, perhaps out of respect. Clara was frantic that Robert had not come to greet her. What had happened? The boy was gazing at her without making any effort to conceal his fascination. The old man was staring too, in a most disconcerting fashion, since one of his eyes squinted and a cataract covered the pupil of the other. This must be Philemon, Robert’s only native preacher. Clara had gained the impression from Robert that Philemon was exactly like an English minister. Yet here he was wearing torn trousers, a dirty old black coat, and no shoes or shirt.

  ‘Mr Haslam is well?’ she faltered.

  ‘Yes, mistress. He is at the cattle post for a few days.’

  Clara was weak with relief. She knew that the cattle grazed many miles from the village in the dry season and that Robert liked to visit the herdsmen. He was safe, and she would see him soon. Nevertheless she wanted to rage and weep. How could he have gone away, just when she was likely to arrive? What could possibly justify it?

  Fynn lit a cigar and exhaled twin tusks of smoke. He said to Clara, ‘You’d best stay with us till Mr Haslam meets you.’

  She said steadily, ‘I’ll be safe with these people.’

  ‘With these people, I guess so. It’s those folk yonder I’m considerin’.’ Fynn indicated the general direction of the singing. ‘That ain’t a prayer meeting, ma’am.’

  ‘I don’t need your advice, Mr Fynn,’ she replied softly.

  ‘D’you think she needs it, Vaughan?’ demanded Fynn.

  ‘Can’t say I do,’ replied Francis, flicking at the ground with his riding crop.

  ‘She’ll be safe in the care of this gentleman?’ Fynn glanced contemptuously at Philemon.

  Francis said, ‘If the natives want to harm her, they’ll do it whether her husband’s around or not.’

  ‘Want to know why missionaries don’t get killed, Vaughan? The natives think they’re wizards. Don’t you, boy?’ The youth in calico studied the ground. ‘Leopard got your tongue?’

  The boy half shut his eyes, as if praying. ‘I think Lord Jesus saves each man with his blood.’

  ‘He’s saved you with his blood, has he, boy?’

  ‘I believe he done that, yes, sah.’

  Fynn grinned broadly at Francis. ‘If that ain’t hocus-pocus, I’d like to know what is.’

  Francis frowned. ‘Sounds like Holy Communion to me.’

  Fynn threw down his cigar butt. ‘Reckon I’m the odd man out.’ He sighed as if suddenly too weary to go on arguing. ‘Better be gettin’ your baggage, ma’am.’ Then he began shouting instructions to Conate and Ezekiel.

  As the Africans lifted down her things, Clara moved closer to Francis. Around them, cicadas sang.

  ‘That was very kind of you, Captain Vaughan.’

  ‘I hope it was.’ Francis felt wretched. He did not want to leave her here any more than Fynn did; but to force her to remain with the wagon against her will would simply be to humiliate her.

  ‘My husband will be here tomorrow or the day after.’

  Francis knew that she was trying to be brave. ‘I’m sure he will,’ he said with a smile.

  A bat flitted low over Clara’s head, but she scarcely noticed. Francis found her unhappiness distressing. He would have liked to shake her husband until his teeth rattled. He said gently, ‘I wouldn’t mind starting a new life myself. Most of us would leap at it if we had the guts.’ She gave him a smile of heartfelt gratitude that he would treasure for a very long time.

  Flanked by the gangling ancient and the calico boy, Clara walked into the night, as Conate and Ezekiel staggered after her with the luggage.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 5

  Robert Haslam woke when the stars were still out in a mother-of-pearl sky. A white mist hung over the land. In a few hours the heat would be fierce; but now, just before dawn, Robert shivered. Expecting Clara at any time, he would not have left the village even for a few days, had not compelling events forced his hand. His favourite mission boy had either gone into hiding or been abducted, after being accused of sorcery. His life was probably in danger.

  When the missionary crawled from his tent, his Bushman servant, Dau, was still curled up close to the ashes of the night’s fire, but he stirred as soon as his master moved. Dau searched in the fire’s ashes for its glowing core. Then, with his face almost touching the ash, he blew a tiny flame into life and fed it with twigs and kindling. As the fire burned he sat back and grinned, eyes screwed up against the smoke.

  It being winter, the cows were lean and there was no milk to be had. Because the days were short, the cattle were watered before dawn to give them more time to search for pasture. Already in the riverbed the herdboys were digging holes and scooping up water into long wooden troughs. The cows lowed as they smelled the water, and the boys sang to calm them when they plunged forward. A younger boy walked by with three goats. These pastoral scenes made Robert feel that he shared a dusty road with Jesus in a land like Galilee.

  The sun was up by the time Robert and Dau slid down the crumbling bank into the riverbed. The dust raised by the departing cattle still hung thickly in the air. A group of young men had remained behind. With much shouting and laughter, they were breaking a young ox for riding.

  The man Robert was in search of, and yet dreaded to find at the cattle post, was not among them. Robert had arrived too late the previous evening to look for Nashu; but this morning he found him with ease. The witch doctor was basking in the sun, in a spot where the floods had cut away the bank, leaving tree roots curling in the air like snakes. He had been smoking wild hemp and was red-eyed.

  As the missionary approached, he coughed and spat. Still squatting, he bellowed with strange politeness, ‘Welcome, Umfundisi.’

  ‘Thank you, Nashu,’ Robert answered in Venda. It always surprised him that Nashu should call him ‘teacher’ when everything Christian was anathema to him. The witch doctor – or nganga – was sitting with two other men: Rozi, his informer, and Makufa, the chief’s ambitious son and heir.

  ‘Why is that dog here?’ asked Makufa, eyeing Dau.

  ‘Don’t call him that. You know very well why I brought him.’

  ‘He’ll find no tracks here,’ said Nashu.

  Robert could never understand how Venda people could think Bushmen scarcely human – mere dogs, in fact – and yet fear their formidable tracking skills. Dau had been owned by a Venda headman, who had beaten him almost to death before dragging him into the bush for lions to dispose of. Found barely
alive, he had been brought to the mission, where he had remained.

  ‘Why will Dau find no tracks?’ asked Robert.

  ‘Ganda was never here,’ said Rozi, refusing to pollute himself by uttering the mission boy’s Christian name.

  Robert looked from man to man, each one as still as a Buddha, with his knees folded under him. Were they really recent murderers? Nashu, with his kilt of monkey skins and his smallpox-pitted face? Rozi, whose pointed skull looked like a coconut? Makufa, so handsome in his leopardskin kaross? In the past, they had forced dozens to undergo the ordeal and drink poison, so why make an exception of poor Simon? The innocent vomited. The guilty – and they were far more numerous – did not. Robert thought of Simon’s naive and trusting nature, his delight in pleasing. He longed to roar out his grief at the boy’s disappearance.

  Two weeks before, Chief Mponda’s baby son by his youngest wife, Herida, had died of diphtheria. Herida was the witch doctor’s daughter. Since witchcraft was blamed for roughly a third of all deaths in the tribe, it had surprised nobody when Nashu, whose duty it was to seek out witches, had detected a witch in this case. Robert had suspected that Nashu would accuse a relative of Chizuva, Mponda’s principal wife. This was because Chizuva’s family stood to gain most if her husband converted to Christianity. As a Christian, the chief would put away all his other wives, including Herida, leaving Chizuva as sole wife. Nashu and his family expected to be the tribe’s principal losers if the chief converted – and not just because Herida would be divorced. Her father’s services would no longer be required as mediator with the ancestral spirits, as rainmaker, or even as seeker of witches. The missionary would have become the tribe’s spiritual leader.

  Having thought that Nashu would accuse an adult member of Chizuva’s family, Robert had been taken aback when her thirteen-year-old nephew had been named. Since Robert’s fondness for the boy was well known, Nashu had obviously meant his accusation to hurt the missionary. When news of Simon’s peril had reached the mission, it was rumoured that he had fled to the cattle post, so Robert set out at once.