The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

  Now he noted with distaste the magical amulets of lions’ and lizards’ claws around Nashu’s neck. ‘Where is he?’ His anger made him so breathless that his intended roar came out as a whisper.

  Nashu pulled at his thin beard. ‘His brother is with the young men.’ He waved his zebra-tail fly whisk in the direction of the warriors. ‘Perhaps he knows.’

  ‘Why do you say that Simon bewitched Herida’s child?’

  Nashu’s wizened face creased into a shocked grimace. ‘You know very well, sir, that we ngangas never reveal our medicines.’

  ‘I’m not interested in that. Did you see Simon betwitch Herida’s baby?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Did anyone see him do it?’

  ‘What if they didn’t? I see things in here.’ He raised a hand to his forehead.

  ‘You threw your bones and they told you?’

  ‘Bones tell nothing unless the spirits move them.’

  ‘So God moved the bones to tell you that Simon killed the child?’ Robert’s anger made him tremble.

  ‘The spirits spoke through the bones, Umfundisi.’

  ‘Spirits? Evil spirits, don’t you mean?’

  ‘I protect the people from evil spirits, sir,’ said Nashu, as if deeply hurt by such disrespect.

  Rozi, who had been struggling to contain himself, burst out: ‘The boy you call Simon, he looks at a paper and speaks the words of a man who died years ago. This man was born in a goatshed and came alive after dying. Ganda talks to his ghost.’

  ‘He prays to Jesus Christ.’ Robert corrected him fiercely.

  Rozi shouted, ‘He entered Herida’s hut at night and said words. I saw him.’

  So Simon had prayed for the sick child. How cruel that the boy’s good intentions might have cost him his life. Robert remembered Simon shortly after he first came to live at the mission – a boy of five, laughing when he saw people on their knees, praying. ‘Is your God under the earth, master?’ He had tried so hard to understand everything.

  Robert hurried away to question Simon’s brother, but the young man was too frightened to say anything. Robert and Dau spent the rest of the morning searching vainly for Simon’s tracks, which the Bushman knew from memory. In the rainy season, witches were sometimes drowned in the river close to the cattle post. Perhaps executions by other means took place there in the dry season. But the riverbed was too densely crisscrossed by cattle tracks for Dau to draw any conclusions. Certainly, if Simon was still alive, Nashu would be eager to kill him as a warning to other wellborn persons who might be thinking of baptism.

  Robert was acutely anxious about Clara’s arrival. In his letters to her, he had claimed in good faith that Mponda would soon accept Christ. Yet would Nashu have dared strike directly at the Christians if Mponda was really about to convert? It seemed unlikely.

  Robert knew he should have left a note for his wife in case she arrived during his absence. But what could he have told her? Not the real reason why he had gone away. To confess the danger of their position within days of her arrival would be unforgivably cruel.

  As his Cape cart rattled homewards across the bushveld, a herd of hartebeest was on the move. Usually their tarnished copper coats and graceful movements spoke to him of the Creator’s purpose. But not today. They moved as a herd, obeying brute instinct. And the people were no less caged and confined. Inexperienced missionaries might see these blinkered men and women as free children of nature. Yet in any village they cared to visit, they would find evidence of total conformity. Every pointed roof and every granary for a thousand miles would be the same, every pot and mat identically designed. Custom dictated the great events and the smallest minutiae of their lives. No deviation was possible without the chief’s consent. Unless Mponda accepted Christ, the tribe would remain pagan forever. This was what Robert most dreaded having to tell Clara.

  O Lord Jesus, he prayed, if Mponda has turned against Thee, incline his heart once more towards salvation, so that those he rules over may be redeemed and know the joy of serving Thee. May Thy Holy Spirit enter and transform us all, including Thy humble servant Robert Haslam.

  CHAPTER 6

  After Philemon had lit the lamps and left Clara in her husband’s house, she gazed around her in bemusement. In the yellow lamplight, the room looked mean and cramped. Clara lifted the oil lamp and saw above wattle-and-daub walls a roof thatched with tambookie grass, like any native hut. Crawling along the rafters were large brown spiders with long, hairy legs.

  The floor felt gritty underfoot. She lowered her light – no boards, only smoothed and beaten mud. Around the glass chimney of her lamp, a dense cloud of moths and insects bumped and fluttered. The unglazed windows were covered with stretched calico. For sitting, there were just a rush-bottomed ladder-back and a Windsor chair. Some crude shelves accommodated Robert’s books. Moffat’s Apprenticeship at Kuruman, Charles New’s Life, Wanderings and Labours in Eastern Africa, Livingstone’s Missionary Travels, Shakespeare’s sonnets, a life of Charles Wesley, a Tennyson collection. Could this be all Robert needed to pass his evenings? The strangeness of the room and her husband’s absence made her feel locked in a dream. Why had he gone to the cattle post at a time when he must have been expecting her? What could justify such a visit?

  On the table below Robert’s books were a tin box and a large Bible with brass hasps. It was open at the 139th Psalm. ‘If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.’ As she read these words, Clara could hear Robert speaking them in his rich, vibrant voice. She lifted the lid of the box and found pens, paper, and several marble-backed notebooks. There were also statements of account from various traders and letters from the directors of the mission society. Under these were several photographs. In one, Robert was standing with some Africans in front of a square thatched house. In another, he was in shirtsleeves, working on a building with another white man. Two photographs were of a young woman. In the smaller one, she was wearing a long striped dress and was standing in a group of naked African women. Her fair hair was cut short, and she was gazing unsmilingly at the photographer. ‘Ruth 1886’ was pencilled on the back. Ten years ago. In a larger, studio portrait, Ruth was leaning against a balustrade, wearing more elaborate clothes. Her hair was long. The picture was undated. Perhaps it had been taken in England shortly before she came to Africa. She looked happy rather than apprehensive.

  As Clara studied the unsmiling picture, she realized she could not even answer the most basic questions about the woman. For example, had Ruth ever become used to the life? Had she often been ill before fever finally carried her off? Or had she died from another disease entirely? It seemed incredible to Clara that she had never questioned Robert directly about his wife’s last days. Considerations of delicacy had influenced her, but only up to a point. The truth, she now admitted, was simpler: she had never dared ask anything that might have obliged her to estimate the risks involved in becoming the second Mrs Haslam.

  The bedroom was divided from the sitting room by a curtain of sacking. A massive mahogany bed dominated the room, and Clara had to wonder whether Ruth had died in it. She pushed aside the mosquito curtains and lay down. Eyes closed, she summoned up Robert’s lean and muscular body and imagined him murmuring endearments.

  At length she left the bedroom for the lean-to shed that housed the kitchen. A cloud of gilded insects moved with her lamp. Metal bins contained flour, oatmeal, and sugar; there was a meat safe hanging from a rope, a well-scrubbed table, an earthenware water filter, and a wood-burning oven. Ants swarmed everywhere, except on the table, which was protected by cans of water under each leg. Rat-traps were scattered on the floor.

  A door led out into a small fenced area. Beyond a sprawling woodpile was the privy. Gripping the lamp more tightly, Clara crossed the yard and went into the tiny hut. From beneath the
seat came the furious buzzing of flies. The smell made her gag, but she swallowed at once, before doing what she needed and tipping down earth from the bucket.

  Having eaten with Fynn and Francis earlier in the evening, she did not regret having rejected Philemon’s parting offer to cook something for her. Instead she drank some water in the kitchen and splashed her face before going to bed. Since marrying Robert, she had resumed her childhood ritual of praying before sleeping, but, tonight, tears of loneliness leaked from behind her clasped hands. She had not lain long in the dark when an eerie squeaking in the thatch began to grate on her nerves so badly that she was obliged to relight the lamp.

  Determined to root out the nuisance, she fetched a broom from the kitchen and placed a chair on the dressing table. As she clambered up, a rodent-like creature scuttled into the thatch. Clara struck out at it fiercely, and something fluttered to the ground. She jumped down and turned it with her foot. Not a rat at all, but a bat, and a hideously ugly one. Its single twisted tooth made it look more like a small devil than one of God’s creatures.

  Wishing profoundly that she had stayed with Fynn and Francis for the night, Clara returned to bed. After an hour or so, she fell into a fitful sleep, in which breathings and snufflings outside the flimsy calico windows entered her dreams and merged with images of her weeping father. Sometime before dawn, she was awakened by the sound of light footfalls in the next room. Her heart sounded too loudly in her ears for her to judge exactly where the intruder was. She had been led through the village in darkness and had only the vaguest idea about her immediate surroundings. Not knowing whether screams would bring aid or encourage the stranger to bludgeon her to death, she lay as still as she could.

  ‘Master, help me,’ she heard someone call. ‘It is me, master. It is Simon.’

  Only a boy, rejoiced Clara, amazed that this child should be speaking English. Relieved and thankful, she leapt up to comfort him. But as she approached in her white nightdress, the boy let out a shriek and fled. She gave chase at once, horrified to have driven away anyone in trouble. Before she could catch him, the boy darted through the kitchen and out into the yard, where he scrambled over the reed fence. By the time she emerged in the lane, it was deserted.

  A light breeze rattled the fronds of the banana plants. Clara looked in desperation between the moonlit huts. Perhaps Philemon lived in one. Clara called his name, softly at first, then louder. A woman crept out from the nearest enclosure, looked at Clara and froze with horror. Her hair was greased and twisted into strings like a mop. A man followed her, wearing nothing at all. Other men and women came out of huts and stared at Clara. She backed away and tripped over a horn stuck in the ground. A man pointed angrily at her and began waving his arms. Others joined in. Several of the men had spears in their hands. Whether they were angry to be woken or were cursing her in a more sinister way, she had no idea. A strong smell of sweat and cowhide wafted from them. One of the shouting men had glazed and damaged eyes and a dusty, hairless body. Helpless to communicate with these people, Clara simply walked back into the kitchen yard and into the house. Inside, she listened in case the shouting people came closer – though what she would do if this happened, she did not know. In fact silence returned very quickly.

  In bed again, Clara could not sleep. Somehow she had imagined that Robert’s villagers would be different from the natives she had seen in other remote places. But they had looked just as scruffy and underfed as any of the tribes along the way. Could she really have expected Robert to have transformed them? What a fool I am, she thought. What a silly little fool. She was still tossing and turning when the first cock crowed. Not long afterwards, the bleating of goats made further rest impossible.

  *

  It was still early morning when Philemon arrived with bread and coffee. Philemon might look like an old tortoise, with his wrinkled scalp and nodding head, but she had rarely been more pleased to see anyone. She had soon blurted out an account of the night’s happenings.

  ‘Who is the boy,’ she asked, ‘and why was he so scared?’

  Philemon shrugged his shoulders. ‘He’s master’s houseboy. He ran away, Nkosikaas. I cannot say why.’

  Clara was sure that Philemon knew a great deal he had no intention of telling her. ‘How can we find him?’

  ‘I will ask many people where he is.’

  ‘Chief Mponda will surely help us.’

  Philemon said, quite sharply, ‘Nkosikaas, you must wait to see chief till master returns.’

  ‘The boy may be dead by then.’

  ‘We will ask at the school and at the mission. Then master will be here, and he will tell all you wish.’

  As Philemon led her through the village, Clara screwed up her eyes against the dazzling sunlight. Philemon’s reluctance to talk to the chief seemed inexplicable. A new doubt assailed her.

  ‘Has Mponda been baptized?’

  ‘Not yet, Nkosikaas.’

  ‘But he has accepted Christ in his heart?’

  Philemon lowered his eyes. ‘You will please ask master.’

  Clara followed him in stunned silence. In his letters, Robert had been so confident of Mponda’s conversion.

  A film of blue wood smoke rose through the thatch of the round, windowless huts. Women were carrying bundles of firewood or big black pots on their heads. Others were using besoms to sweep goats’ dung away from the bare earth in front of their huts. Small groups of men were smoking or chatting in the shade of the few trees that had not been chopped down for fuel.

  As Philemon approached a large shedlike building with a taller box structure added at one end, he pointed proudly.

  ‘Our church. Master builded with his own hands.’

  A sudden rush of emotion swept over Clara. That a remarkable man should have laboured to produce this ramshackle building was both sad and moving. Sad because he would know only too well the limitations of his workmanship; moving because he had nevertheless persevered. The spirit, not the outward form, was what mattered. Stencilled letters were plainly visible on the walls of Robert’s church. The place had been made out of old boxes and packing cases. At last she understood what a blow the death of the carpenter John Dukes was going to be to Robert.

  Next door to the chapel was the schoolhouse, its sagging walls plastered with crumbling clay. About a dozen boys and girls sat on earth mounds; their desks were upended logs. Most of the pupils were eleven or twelve years old. They wore calico loincloths or grey blankets draped from their shoulders like plaids. The children’s teacher was the youth who had come with Philemon to the wagon to greet her the night before.

  As Clara entered the school, this boy said some words of greeting, which everyone repeated. The teacher’s name was Paul, Philemon told her. He was seventeen and lived at the mission. He had been a Bulawayo shop boy before his conversion. Philemon looked increasingly agitated as he talked to Paul in Venda. The only word Clara recognized was ‘Simon’. Philemon then questioned the children, but Clara could see from his expression that no satisfactory answers were given.

  While Philemon and Paul talked together, the children looked slyly at Clara and giggled. She turned to Philemon.

  ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘That your skin is as white as a flower, Nkosikaas. That you are like a queen.’

  Clara smiled. ‘I can’t believe that’s all they’re saying, Philemon.’

  ‘They say that you are thinner than we like our beautiful women.’ She turned in surprise, not having realized that Paul also spoke English. If Philemon had spoken to Paul in Venda, it was only so she would not understand what they were saying.

  There was something immediately attractive about Paul’s smiling face. He was wearing a grey flannel shirt without a collar and a pair of much-patched striped trousers. He lowered his eyes. ‘They also say your skin looks soft and they would like to touch it.’

  ‘They should not say so,’ said Philemon, who lost no time in leading Clara across the lane to a fenced compound on
the other side.

  After pushing open a gate, they crossed an abandoned vegetable garden and headed for a long, low clapboard house.

  ‘This is the mission, Nkosikaas.’

  A sick man was lying on the dilapidated veranda at the back. They walked past him into a room that ran the length of the building. Some people were lolling on mats or blankets on the floor, while others sewed or read books at a table. All wore frayed and dirty items of European clothing, but they themselves looked cleaner than the people in the village. The room echoed with noise and laughter. At Clara’s appearance, silence fell.

  A boy of eight or nine came forward and bowed low. ‘We welcome you here, our mother.’ These well-rehearsed words turned out to be all the English he knew. His name was Matiyo. As he walked away, he hid one of his hancs. Later, Clara saw that most of his fingers were missing. His stepfather had caught him stealing and burned away half his hand After being nursed at the mission, Matiyo had begged to stay on and had finally been accepted as one of ‘God’s children’. Everyone who lived at the mission, regardless of age, liked to be called a ‘child of God’. According to Philemon, this elevated a person far above the casual mission servants, who worked for payment in food or cloth.

  While most of the women wore crude dresses of white or blue trader’s calico, a large and imposing female, whose face glistened as if freshly oiled, stood out in a dress of printed fabric with a matching headdress. As Clara approached, the woman closed her book and rose from the table. Clara was taken aback when Philemon introduced her as Queen Chizuva, Chief Mponda’s principal wife. She could speak no English but smiled and squeezed Clara’s hand. The queen was attended by a female relative and a male slave, who fanned flies from her face.