The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

  ‘That’s true,’ conceded Robert. ‘But it’s foolish to speak of Khari. He never heard the word of God, and so he never refused it, as you have done. He might have accepted it, for all you know.’

  Makufa’s eyes blazed. ‘Khari loved his tribe’s traditions.’

  ‘Our Queen in England loves her people’s traditions, but she doesn’t imitate the cruel behaviour of her barbarous ancestors.’

  The apparent normality of relations between Mponda and Makufa was unnerving. A stranger seeing them together would have found it hard to credit that the father believed his son had plotted against him, and that the son thought his father a traitor to his own people. Robert was not deceived by the playful little glances that Mponda sometimes exchanged with his handsome son. These looks were really taunts: Didn’t I tell you the teacher would have an answer for anything you might fling at him?

  Makufa finally lost his temper. Spitting out the stem of sorghum he had been chewing, he jabbed an angry finger at Robert. ‘How can you say you love my father?’

  Makufa would murder every Christian in the place if he became chief, but Robert was too angry to feel frightened. Because this arrogant youth had delayed his father’s baptism, Clara’s illusions had been shattered. Robert got up from his stool to be level with Makufa. He found it hard to breathe.

  ‘Do you doubt that I love your father?’

  Every movement of Makufa’s shining body expressed distaste and superiority. ‘Tell me this,’ the youth demanded. ‘If Matabele warriors attack my father, will you lend him your guns and bullets?’

  ‘You know I can never become a party to fighting.’

  Makufa threw up his hands scornfully. ‘So you would let his enemies kill him? You are his friend and teacher, but you would let them do that?’

  ‘I would pray for him.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ jeered Makufa. ‘And while you did that, the Matabele would stab him. A fine way of helping.’ He turned to Mponda. ‘Is that how a man who loves you should behave?’

  Mponda toyed uneasily with the ivory bracelets on his wrists. Robert was horrified. Could the chief’s faith in him be so easily shaken? Mponda caught his eye and asked quietly, ‘If I came to you for help, Umfundisi, what would you do?’

  ‘Welcome you, my chief,’ said Robert, ‘and give you food and clothing.’

  ‘Yes, yes … and if the Matabele followed me to your house and said, “Give Mponda to us so we may kill him,” what would you do then?’

  ‘I would stand in the doorway and say, “If you wish to take Mponda, you must kill me first.”’

  ‘That’s very good!’ Mponda chuckled, touchingly relieved. ‘What do you think of that, Makufa?’

  ‘Think?’ his son sneered. ‘You should try to think, Father. Didn’t we have gods of our own before this white man came? Has he ever met this Jesus he babbles about? Not once. Jesus is just a name in that big book of his. Tell me, Father, if his God is so mighty, why can’t he change me into a Christian at once? If he did that, I wouldn’t have to suffer a fool like your Umfundisi for months.’ The young man picked up his assegai and stalked away, flinging his leopardskin over his shoulder.

  Robert anticipated a furious outburst from Mponda, but the chief said sorrowfully, ‘When I become a Christian, I shall have to kill him, or he will kill me.’

  ‘Of course you can’t kill him.’

  ‘He has killed many men.’

  ‘So have you, my chief.’

  ‘Warriors must. But I have sworn to kill no more.’

  ‘Then you must keep your promise.’

  ‘You whites strangle men with a rope if they kill. If Makufa kills again, I will strangle him.’

  ‘You will not, Mponda.’

  ‘Maybe he will kill you, Umfundisi.’

  ‘I am not afraid to die. Are you?’

  Mponda whispered fervently, ‘I believe in Jesus.’

  ‘Then will you name the date for your baptism?’ Robert waited in an agony of tension.

  ‘You know I cannot tell you until my enemies are in my hand. You know what I wish, Umfundisi.’ Mponda’s misery was plain.

  Robert knelt down beside him and said tenderly, ‘Mponda, these are Jesus’ words: “Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” You will be at peace when your sins are washed away.’ He remained kneeling for several minutes before returning to the cart.

  As they were driving away from the khotla, Simon pointed to some children playing with a top made from a whittled stick and the broken shell of a calabash. Children usually delighted Robert, but today their laughter could not lift his spirits. Even if there were no rifles at the Rungai caves, this would not mean that Makufa’s opposition was at an end. Mponda would certainly be thankful if the caves were empty and unguarded, but he still might not feel strong enough to pledge himself to Christ. And while the chief delayed, the last rags of Clara’s respect were being blown away. Would she try to leave the kraal? First Ruth, then Clara. As if a long-chained beast had slipped his leash, fear of a second desertion overcame Robert.

  ‘Are you ill, master?’ Simon touched his hand.

  Robert shook his head and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Only a toothache,’ he replied, and it was not quite untrue. For several weeks an eyetooth had been troubling him. He said sweetly, ‘When we get back, I want you to try your hardest to please my wife.’

  Simon did not comment. He had been happier before Clara’s arrival. Robert had brought Simon with him in case Nashu or Makufa was tempted by the missionary’s absence to make a second attempt to abduct the boy. Clara, by contrast, would be perfectly safe, with Mponda’s guards watching her every move.

  *

  On the fifth day of their journey, Robert guessed that they were within three days of Mount Rungai. But Dau doubled that. It was beyond Robert how the Bushman could tell. Stretching to the horizon on every side was an unvarying sea of coarse blond grasses. At random intervals, berry-yielding moretloa bushes and white-thorned mimosa rose above the waving tufts.

  One afternoon, Dau pointed to a hole at the root of a certain bush. Across the opening a spider had made a web. Robert and Simon were puzzled. Dau beckoned to them and then thrust his hand through the web, into the earth. He withdrew it at once, holding up, like a conjuror, a large frog.

  Robert applauded. ‘Who but a Bushman would think of searching for a frog under a spider’s web?’

  Dau grinned. ‘After he makes his hole, he will not come out for months, so spiders are safe to use his hole for webs.’

  Simon cooked the frog over the resinous branches of the same bush, and the flesh tasted like delicately flavoured chicken. A few hours later, Robert began to feel ill. Since the others did not suffer, the frog could not have been to blame. He felt nauseated, and his head throbbed painfully. His tooth chose this moment to nag at him.

  As they approached the next water hole, Simon was driving while Robert slept. Dau nudged the boy and pointed into the trembling haze. Simon went rigid. What he had taken to be drinking antelope were really warriors, sitting on the ground behind their cowhide shields. The ‘horns’ he had seen were spears. Before waking Robert, Simon said a prayer: Please God, I know it is sinful for these men to sit behind their shields and threaten travellers at a drinking pool, but do not let my master speak too harshly to them. Jesus spoke harshly to evildoers, and it ended badly for him. Please make my master pleasant and not angry. Keep master safe, or his enemies will kill me and all the Christians. Do not let bad men harm us for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

  Walking unsteadily under his old green umbrella, the missionary approached the waiting tribesmen. Simon tagged after him. God must be watching him, the boy thought. Otherwise he would not dare hold up his head so disdainfully. But Robert did not feel disdainful. He wanted to fall down and beat his fists on the earth. Mount Rungai was being guarded against intruders. The rifles were there, and rebels were assembling. What else could explain this attempt to deny travellers access to water? At l
ast God seemed to have deserted him. The chief’s conversion would not happen this year or even next. Clara would abandon him. The Christians would be driven out.

  A man wearing a long bead necklace stepped forward. ‘Little toto, we will give your mfungu water if he will turn back.’

  ‘Why must he?’ asked Simon.

  ‘No one may visit our holy mountain.’

  ‘He has visited it before. Why can’t he see it again?’

  Another man rose and said very gravely, ‘Our god Mwari forbids him. White men have dug there with picks and have angered the spirits. Mwari did not put pretty things in the ground to be stolen by foreigners.’

  ‘My master has no use for gold. He will not dig.’

  ‘He is white and will defile the sacred shrine.’

  Robert closed his eyes. There was no help for it – they would have to turn back. This water hole would not be the last to be barred. He knew what he and his companions would suffer if they journeyed on – the cracked lips and blackened tongues, the agony as their blood thickened.

  That evening, after Dau had lit their campfire, Simon wept with relief.

  ‘I thought we would go on until we died.’

  The sun had just gone down, and the pale sand and grasses were still stained a reminiscent pink. What courage the boy had shown! Robert squeezed his hand and murmured, ‘Dear child, I would never risk any life but my own.’ Simon said nothing, but his eyes were troubled. Robert knew that where he led, the boy would follow. It was not possible for him to risk his life alone. His tooth was still hurting, making it hard to think.

  ‘Those men who stopped us,’ he asked Simon, ‘weren’t their faces flatter than yours?’

  Simon nodded. ‘Maybe they were Ajawa, master. They weren’t Venda or Makalaka.’

  ‘They were Manganja,’ declared Dau, who rarely volunteered anything unless sure of it.

  Robert sighed. Whether Ajawa or Manganja, those men had come from the north. And if people from far afield were guarding Mount Rungai, Makufa and Nashu were involved in something larger than a plot against a single chief.

  Scores of whites had been murdered by the Matabele three years earlier, but until now, Robert had believed the northern tribes were incapable of emulation. He thought of the smoothness of his wife’s throat and the softness of her breasts. What could he say to Clara now? Had he even the right to keep her here? The smallest sounds grated on his nerves: Dau chewing tobacco, the cry of a night bird, the cracking of burning logs. He began to pray, and ended with a repeated refrain: From battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord deliver us.

  *

  After Robert had been gone for a week, Clara’s life had settled into a routine. In the morning she would go to Philemon for an hour’s language lesson, and when school was over she would spend another hour with Paul. She also helped the women at the mission with their dressmaking, despite her misgivings about this popular activity. One morning, while Clara was demonstrating how to cut a pattern, Herida stalked past the veranda, a picture of dignity and grace. Coiled around her straight and slender body was a thick string of beads, from which hung a kilt of pressed bark. Elephant-hair bracelets on her wrists and copper bangles on her legs completed an outfit that showed off her body to perfection. Yet if she ever enrolled at the mission, her first task would be to sew a strip of shoddy material into a shapeless garment for herself.

  Since the day when Clara first gave dried meat and milk to little Homani, he had not improved. His skin was still dull and his pixie-like face was no less pinched. His arms and legs were like sticks, and with every breath he took, the skin between his ribs seemed to be sucked in. His eyes welcomed her greedily when she came near him, and after she went home she could not get him out of her mind. It made her feel utterly helpless. But how much worse it would have been if it were her own child lying wasting away. When Robert had proposed marriage, he must have known the dangers that any baby of theirs would have to face. But again he had kept silent.

  Clara went up to Philemon, who was helping Chizuva with her copybook. ‘Why isn’t Homani gaining weight?’ she demanded.

  As usual when pressed about anything, Philemon looked reflective for several seconds. He then drew a wiggling shape in the air. ‘Perhaps he has a worm inside him.’

  ‘Big, big.’ Chizuva laughed, delighted to have understood enough to be able to contribute in English.

  Ignoring her, Clara asked Philemon, ‘Can’t you give him medicine to get rid of it?’

  ‘Only master can do that. He has special scales, and weighs out just enough poison to kill the worm. If I give a tiny bit more, I will harm the child.’

  Chizuva’s laughter had convinced Clara that there could be another explanation for Homani’s condition. So for the next two days she sat with him while he ate. Only on the third day did he no longer snatch at his dried meat, and by then he was definitely a little fatter. As her suspicions hardened into certainty, Clara looked around her in disgust. Could Christians have stooped low enough to steal a sick child’s food?

  Philemon seemed concerned when she complained to him, but he was not outraged. In the dry season, he explained, when the only milk in the village came from the mission’s cows, people valued dairy produce very highly. Homani was an outsider, whose mother was a well-known enemy of the mission, so naturally a boy like Matiyo was bound to resent a stranger’s getting more milk than himself.

  ‘Each day people come begging, Nkosikaas. If all get their desire, we Christians will soon be hungry.’

  ‘That would never do,’ she murmured.

  By the end of the week, there was no denying how much better Homani looked. When Clara changed his bandages, the sores were definitely smaller. The pride and satisfaction in his strange little face as he noted her delight reduced her to tears.

  In spite of her pleasure over Homani, Clara was too bound up with her worries about Robert to experience a more general contentment. Even if she managed to forgive his lack of compassion for little Homani and his deliberate attempt to mislead her about his present expedition, would she ever be able to trust Robert again? His failure to be frank about Ruth had been shameful, and yet, because of his present peril, she felt guilty. And if he was dead, it was herself she would not forgive, for spending the days of his absence in listing his shortcomings.

  When she entered the mission the following morning, an argument was raging between Chizuva and someone partly hidden by Philemon’s back. The old man stepped aside, and Clara saw it was Herida. As soon as the young queen spotted her, she advanced angrily, hurling abuse all the time. Clara asked Philemon for a translation, but he drew in his wrinkled old neck, more than ever reminding her of a tortoise, and muttered, ‘I cannot tell you, Nkosikaas.’

  ‘You must,’ she demanded, more enraged by his obstinacy than by the woman’s insults.

  Philemon sucked in quivering cheeks. ‘She says she has cursed you.’

  ‘What sort of curse?’ Clara was too surprised to be angry.

  ‘She says you will be sterile.’

  Clara could not help laughing. ‘Tell her I’m grateful. Go on, Philemon. I’d hate the anxiety of giving birth here.’

  When this was relayed to her, Herida looked as if she might faint. Sterility was a disaster for an African woman. Her husband would reject her, and her family would probably refuse to take her back. Herida whispered something.

  ‘What does she say, Philemon?’

  ‘That you are cruel to mock her, Nkosikaas. You have a husband who never will turn his back.’

  Clara was dismayed to see this harpy of moments before melting into tears. ‘Tell her I was offended but didn’t intend to hurt her. Please apologize.’

  Herida’s expression softened as Philemon spoke to her. She looked wonderfully regal in a blood-red cloth that covered one breast and fell in pleated folds to her ankles. She began to speak again, in her rich and husky voice.

  At length Philemon said, ‘Herida won’t believe you’re sorry unless
you ask master to tell Mponda not to send her away. She says she will come and learn to be a Christian woman if Mponda lets her continue to be his wife.’

  Upon hearing Herida’s promise, Mponda’s senior wife, Chizuva, began to shout. When Philemon could make himself heard, he told Clara that Chizuva was warning her not to be fooled by Herida’s vows to become a Christian. Personal advantage was what Herida had in mind. Although this was plausible, the prosperous plumpness of the chief’s senior wife and her sanctimonious manner appealed less to Clara than the younger woman’s emotional volatility. Hadn’t Chizuva come to the mission out of self-interest too? Christianity seemed set to make her the chief’s only wife.

  A shouting match began between Philemon and Herida. Clara guessed it must be about whether Herida could stay and learn. The arguing ended only when Herida stormed from the room. Clara touched Philemon on the arm. ‘Did you refuse to let her stay here?’

  Philemon shuffled uneasily from foot to foot. ‘I cannot allow her. Only master can decide.’

  Clara’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You’re refusing to teach her the Gospel? Oh, Philemon.’

  ‘She is our enemy’s daughter, Nkosikaas.’

  ‘We must forgive our enemies.’

  Philemon burst out, ‘If Herida comes, Chizuva will not be a Christian any more. Mponda will never be baptized without her.’

  The old man looked so unhappy that Clara did not argue, but she doubted whether Herida would continue to accept defeat as meekly as she had today.

  *

  Early the following morning, Clara and Philemon walked through the village to the well. The old preacher’s language lessons helped her most when he described village scenes in Venda. Like distant shadows, Mponda’s guards brought up the rear, using huts and bushes to keep out of sight whenever possible. Out in front, a group of women from the mission were walking with empty water pots on their heads.

  It was not long after sunrise, and the slight dampness in the air intensified the smell of fowl droppings and rotting garbage. From a distance the funny little woven-grass fences and thatched granaries struck Clara as picturesque, as did the people: half-grown children, all legs and smiles; men standing around, leaning on spears; graceful women carrying loads on their heads. Yet closer to them, less edifying details intruded. The thatch was rotting; in a darkened doorway, a woman was shaving her pubic hair with a shard of glass; a baby with snot smears on its upper lip was sticking handfuls of chicken droppings and earth into its mouth. Outside a hut, a woman was squeezing the milk from her breasts on to the ground.