The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

  ‘He is your creature, Umfundisi,’ objected one of the older men. ‘You have bewitched him.’

  Clara was impressed by the restraint shown by the counsellors. When at last they shuffled away, sad and disappointed, she longed to call them back. They could have understood little of Robert’s reasoning and would think him vindictive. To them his decision looked like a death sentence.

  That afternoon, Robert had told Simon and Paul to smear beeswax into the thatch of the mission house to make it waterproof. And only moments after the counsellors had gone, he urged them to get started. He himself clambered up on to the thatch to help.

  ‘Master expects big rain soon,’ Paul explained joyfully, revealing the gap between his front teeth.

  ‘Do you believe everything he says, Paul?’

  ‘Master is God’s prophet, Mrs Robert.’

  Though Paul’s Christian faith had cost him Hannah’s love and many friendships, trusting Robert was still second nature to him.

  While Clara often worried about Paul, and also about Simon, whose dependence on Robert had become greater since their time away together, she felt far more anxious about Herida. Her father, Nashu, was surely planning to punish her. Yet Robert rarely addressed a word to her or even smiled in her direction. He often told Clara how upset Chizuva had been after Herida was permitted to learn at the mission.

  When Robert climbed down from the roof, Herida was regaling the mission ‘children’ with a comical fable about a warthog and a hyena. While they were still quaking with laughter, she placed a thimble on the end of each of her fingers and tapped out an astonishingly complicated and catchy rhythm on the table. Dazzled by her performance, Clara offered congratulations. Robert walked away.

  Speaking slowly so that Clara would understand, Herida whispered, ‘Those men who came to your wooden prayer house. Makufa sent them to kill you all. I know he will try again.’ Without waiting for a response, she returned to her group of admirers.

  Robert, who had not heard what Herida had just said, came up to his wife and murmured, ‘You know she’s only pretending to be a Christian. Already she’s put off dozens of ordinary people from coming here.’

  Though shaken, Clara said fiercely, ‘Why believe her enemies instead of her? She’s just told me that those men in the chapel came to kill us on Makufa’s orders.’

  Robert’s eyes narrowed. ‘Her father probably asked her to tell you that. It’s meant to scare me so much that I’ll stop trying to convert Mponda.’

  Clara felt sick. And the awful thing was that she couldn’t think of a single argument that would change his mind. In the end it was a matter of trust. She trusted Herida, and he didn’t.

  Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, ‘Mponda’s right to wait till after the rains. Perhaps you should civilize the Venda first, before trying to convert them.’ She paused, realizing that she had mouthed the ultimate blasphemy. The idea that colonization ought to precede mission work was anathema to him. She cried, ‘How can any good come of a baptism that leads to killing?’

  ‘You think there’s no killing now?’ he demanded. ‘A month ago, just yards from this house, a man thrust a spear through his wife’s throat. His supper wasn’t as he wished. And today he’s still free. Not even shunned. He paid four cows to his wife’s father. She was lazy, he said. Four cows were too many.’ Robert’s voice shook. ‘How can I civilize him? Only God’s Grace can do that. If Mponda falters, his people will wade in blood for generations. Think of the twins who’ll be murdered, the children whose top teeth grow first, the so-called witches, the mutilated girls.’

  After Robert had left for the dam, Herida came up to Clara and took her hand. Her beautiful face was full of sympathy. She asked huskily, ‘Would you like to see a bride prepared by her women?’

  Without hesitation, Clara said she would. Paul stared at her with a worried frown. ‘Master will not like you to watch pagan ceremonies.’

  Clara said firmly, ‘You took me to the boyale dances, Paul.’

  He looked away. ‘I think you will not like the things they do. But if you go, I will come with you.’

  Herida made shushing movements in his direction. ‘Ey-ye! Men can’t see a bride prepared.’

  ‘I will wait outside,’ muttered Paul.

  As they approached a newly built hut, separated from its neighbours by an area of burned grass, they were greeted by the sound of the full-throated singing Clara had heard with Paul at the dancing.

  Herida took Clara’s hand again. ‘For girls life is sad, they tell us in their song. When we marry, our husbands won’t let us dance with our friends. Instead we must grind mealie meal till our arms ache. Before marriage, there are hopes and dreams; after it, life is harder. They tell the bride, Be fruitful. Fill your homestead with children. May your enemies drink sand, and may all disease be burned up in the sun.’ Herida paused as the singer’s tone became plaintive.

  Clara understood the next verse as they sang to the young bride, ‘Don’t forget you leave at dawn for your husband’s village.’ She turned to Herida. ‘Must she go far?’

  ‘Very far. Three days’ walking. They say, “Don’t forget you have a mother, don’t forget you have a father. You must go when the sun rises.”’

  ‘Does this girl know the man she’s going to marry?’

  Herida laughed. ‘How could she?’ She paused and studied Clara’s face. ‘No girl ever does. Her first husband is chosen when she is a child. Did you know your husband?’

  ‘I thought I did.’

  As soon as the singing stopped, Clara followed Herida into the hut. Some of the women were anointing the naked bride with oil; others were braiding her hair and threading beads among the braids. Next they took red earth and pressed it on to her skin, as if making a cast of her whole body. They moulded her breasts, and fashioned a muddy crown, before handing her a green bough exuding sap.

  ‘Leaves from the milk tree,’ murmured Herida. ‘The leaves are her unborn children. She will take them to her husband … I took leaves to mine.’

  Herida’s eyes were moist, and Clara realized with a jolt why she had been brought here. I too was married, Herida was silently telling her. Why should my marriage, which was performed with all the proper rites, be set aside because your Christian customs are different?

  Clara said gently, ‘Mponda may decide to keep all his wives.’

  Herida shook her head. ‘He will keep one only. You will tell your husband I am a Christian woman. You will tell him, please?’ The urgency of the question shook Clara.

  ‘I’ll talk to him about it, yes,’ she promised.

  Herida laid her tear-stained cheek against Clara’s for a moment and then left her in the hut with the bride and her attendants.

  *

  Given Robert’s prejudices, a particularly favourable moment would have to be found in which to talk to him about Herida. But since his toothache had recently been spoiling his sleep, that moment might not be for a while. As they were finishing their breakfast, Simon ran in with the news that Nashu was about to make rain on the khotla.

  ‘What a surprise!’ muttered Robert sardonically, pointing to a ridge of heavy cloud that had been thickening since dawn.

  As they were walking between the huts, Clara asked, ‘Why shouldn’t they pray to their gods for rain?’

  ‘Because their gods are false ones.’ Robert’s amazement at her question was unfeigned.

  ‘How can we blame them if they think the same of our God?’

  He was very angry. ‘They came to kill us in God’s house. You told me so. Then do not tell me I mustn’t blame them for this and for that.’

  The nganga was dancing as they arrived at the khotla. On his head Nashu wore a cap of baboon skin. Around his neck, waist, and ankles hung many strange objects: cowrie and tortoise shells, teeth and claws of wild beasts, strips of skin and inflated gallbladders. Nashu was sailing through his dances, twisting and jumping, quivering and contorting. Then he beat the ground with his hands a
nd feet and sprang up as if grappling with an unseen foe. His leaps became wilder, and sweat poured from him. The women began a shrill ululation. With a great leap, Nashu whirled high in the air and fell prone to the ground, where he twitched and shuddered.

  As soon as he was on his feet and breathing evenly again, Nashu lit a small fire and burned some herbs and strips of hide, chanting all the while. Only when he stopped did Robert greet him.

  ‘What a lot of medicines you have here.’

  ‘You think I should not make rain?’ The menace in the witch doctor’s voice was naked. His face was wizened, but his eyes radiated immense power.

  Robert said calmly, ‘Only God moves the clouds.’

  ‘Of course Mwari makes the rain,’ growled Nashu. ‘But what use is that unless my medicines persuade him to send it down to earth as well?’

  ‘Send it down? All you do is wait till you see clouds. Then you burn your charms and take the credit for what God does by Himself.’

  People pressed closer to the disputants, listening attentively to the debate, nodding eagerly as Nashu made his points but looking darkly at Robert whenever he spoke. Clara had understood enough of Robert’s remarks to wish he knew the meaning of fear. He was deliberately annoying this dangerous man.

  Nashu flicked at the missionary with his giraffe-tail fly whisk. ‘You whites believe in medicines too. You give them to a sick man. If he gets well, you boast how you cured him. But maybe God did it all. You can’t tell. It’s the same with my rainmaking.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t. A man takes a pill and we see it go into his body. But your medicines never go near the clouds.’

  ‘Maybe you can’t see them well enough to observe it. You can’t see your Jesus up there either. But you still say he’s there.’

  Loud laughter greeted this sally. Robert asked, ‘How can you be sure you’ve ever made rain? Have you, for instance, made it rain on one spot and not on another?’

  ‘Why would I want to do that? I like to see the whole country green and all the people glad.’

  More loud laughter goaded Robert. ‘You deceive both them and yourself,’ he shouted above the jeers.

  Nashu suddenly drew himself up straight and chanted in a singsong voice: ‘I make sickness do my bidding on men and cattle. I end life when I choose. I can blight the crops and dry up the milk of cows. I can make my enemies run like bucks chased by dogs.’ The nganga’s followers gazed at the missionary with horrified sympathy, as if to say: Now look what you’ve done. But Robert simply turned away with a dry laugh. Nashu roared, ‘Before the new moon shines you will die.’

  Robert spun around. ‘No rain will fall till Mponda is Christ’s follower.’ Ignoring incredulous mutterings, he pushed through the ring of scandalized spectators, carving a path for himself and Clara.

  Behind them, Clara heard Nashu declaim to the crowd: ‘I am the hyena. If I dance, what will you give me?’ The people cried joyfully: ‘We will give you a dead body.’

  Hurrying after Robert, Clara gasped, ‘How can you possibly know when the rains will come?’

  But Robert did not answer her.

  They were passing the blacksmith’s hut when she saw a dreadful spectacle. A goat had been skinned alive and was tottering about, dying in its pink and bleeding nakedness. Robert looked for a stone.

  After splitting its skull, he wiped his hands on the earth. Blood was splattered on his shoes. He said without anger, ‘When they make a bellows from a goat’s skin, they think the creature must be skinned alive. Otherwise the metal spoils. Only Christ can end such cruelty.’

  At that moment, a man flung a stone. Meant for Robert, it hit Clara above the temple. She saw a flash of light and fell. The cicadas went on with their grating song. Waves of heat still shimmered. Something warm was trickling from her hair across her cheek. She looked up at the sky as if an angel might help. Instead she saw Robert. He lifted her like a child.

  *

  A week later, Clara – out and about for the first time since her injury – was walking with Robert to the dam. Whenever she spotted any movement, however small, between the huts or in the scrubby bushes, Clara felt faint. Her head still hurt if she moved abruptly. Robert had stitched her wound skilfully, and the scar did not show through her hair. She was taken aback to feel so frail and vulnerable. It seemed incredible that two weeks earlier she had tried to chase a group of warriors near the well.

  The cracked mud of the riverbed stretched away for miles on either side of Robert’s sturdy bastion. Would grass ever sprout again, or trees break into leaf? Closing her eyes behind her veil, Clara tried to imagine a lake shining here. The rains were two months late already; maybe they would simply miss a year. It had happened before.

  ‘Look,’ commanded Robert, pointing to some ants running about with their usual mindless vivacity. He seemed as pleased as if he had created them himself. ‘You know they can make water out of the oxygen and hydrogen in their food?’ Clara nodded dumbly, and did so again when he showed her that the leaves of the mimosa trees were furled as tightly now, in the heat of the day, as they were at night. ‘How well God fits his humblest creations to live in this world.’

  Are we humans so well fitted? she asked herself. People are hungry here. They die of numerous diseases. Can that be part of God’s plan? And if Mponda fights his son, and Herida lives out the rest of her life in misery, what will that prove about anyone being fitted for anything? But Robert was invulnerable. In his ragged waistcoat and cut-off moleskin trousers, he still looked like an Old Testament prophet. If he went back to England, he would again inspire the faithful. And why not? He was as selfless now, and as dedicated, as when Clara had first seen him. I must be the one who’s changed, she thought.

  Waves of heat were rising from the mud as if from a great oven. Although the building of this dam was an incredible feat, Clara could not find the words with which to praise him. Instead she blurted out what was uppermost in her mind. ‘Why can’t Herida be Mponda’s one wife when he converts?’

  Robert said firmly but pleasantly, ‘If she’d married her husband first, I would accept her gladly.’ He reached for her hand. ‘Imagine the chaos if we don’t have one firm rule for everyone.’

  Across the dried-up river, close to the spot where a dust devil had just swept by, Robert spotted something square and white beside some fig trees. Through half-closed eyes he made out a second pale shape. Wagons. Traders. Dear God, why now, when the moment could hardly be worse? These men could be drunkards or sceptics. They might insult the chief and tell him missionaries were fools. Something worse occurred to Robert. After the attack on her, Clara might want to go away with these strangers. He could hardly breathe at the thought.

  Clara was staring at the distant wagons with tears spilling from her eyes. Had his own problems blinded him to the depths of her suffering? Her tears of thankfulness made Robert’s heart ache. Her skin was burned brown, and her hair had lost its lustre. He prayed that the newcomers would not pity her. If they did, she would know it. But what could he say to arm her against condescending sympathy?

  He said insistently, ‘I want you to understand that Mponda’s baptism is only weeks away. Things are different now.’

  CHAPTER 12

  As soon as Makufa had heard that two white men, a white woman, and six black men wearing red hats and sand-coloured short trousers had arrived outside the village, he called a meeting of headmen in the chota, or men’s house. These men were mainly his supporters, and all were opposed to Mponda’s plans for baptism. Makufa loved the chota’s curving thatch and the way it dipped and crested like a bird’s back. The roof swept out from the sides of the building to form a wide veranda supported on wooden posts. Inside, wattle ribs showed through the clay.

  Nashu had told Makufa that the traitors with the red hats were exactly like the black soldiers he had seen six months before in Bulawayo. These men carried guns and obeyed whatever orders the white people gave them. They counted how many people lived in different vill
ages and then asked them to give grain or animals so they would be allowed to go on living in their huts. If any nganga killed a witch, the black soldiers came and choked him with a rope. If anyone called another person a witch, he was shut up in a stone house. Makufa had heard of such injustices but had looked upon them as misfortunes confined to the lands of the Matabele and the Tswana. Now he wanted to go out and kill these people, before they could contaminate his tribe. Years earlier, Nashu had predicted such humiliations if Mponda was foolish enough to let a missionary settle at his kraal.

  The defeat suffered by his warriors in the white man’s spirit house had made Makufa determined to avenge their disgrace. The white man’s religion had been designed to part Africans from their land without a struggle. They were asked to love their enemies and to turn their other cheek. Nashu had heard a bitter joke in Gwelo. ‘When the white man came here, he had the Bible and the black man had the land. Now the black man has the Bible and the white man has the land.’ These Christians were clever and dangerous. Their strength was disguised as weakness.

  Nashu rose and raised his hand. Between the leathery folds of his face, his dark eyes glinted. ‘My friends, I thank you for coming to this council. Mponda has permitted our enemies to enter the village. Our ancestors are weeping, but I ask you to raise no weapon now. Friends, it is the inexperienced ox that kisses the axe. If we kill these people, many soldiers will come to slaughter us. We must act together with all our brothers. We must kill the white men in every part of our country. We cannot strike alone. When the day of vengeance comes, you will know it. Till then, be calm. The earthworm is slow, but he reaches the well.’

  A rumble of assent greeted these words. Makufa could make out eyes and teeth gleaming in the chota’s dim interior. He stepped forward and said, ‘These people are very evil. They say our sacred customs are wrong and that we live in darkness. Would we go to a foreign place to steal goats and land? Never! The missionary tells us that his god has a son but no wife or concubine. Who has heard such nonsense before? This god’s son died and moved a great rock away from the cave where he was buried. He asked his men to drink his blood. The white men tell our children such things.’ Makufa looked around, pleased by the revulsion his remarks had caused. ‘Nashu says we must not kill the newcomers, and I agree. Other white men will know that they have come here. But the missionary can be killed without danger as soon as the others have left.’ He drew himself up and shouted, ‘If a man fouls your hut, you do not thank him.’