The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

  Chiweru, an old man who, until recently, had advised Mponda, clambered to his feet. ‘Nkosi, what will the chief your father do if you kill his umfundisi?’

  ‘He will awake from his madness,’ said Makufa.

  ‘Will the chief not kill you?’

  ‘No. The mfungu’s spell will be broken, and my father will thank me.’

  Nashu took Makufa’s arm. ‘I cannot agree with you, Nkosi. Nobody must die in this kraal until I tell you that Mwari wishes it.’

  Makufa stayed silent rather than risk quarrelling with the nganga. Because Nashu claimed to be able to speak for Mwari, he could invent any divine command that suited him. Makufa knew that Nashu had his own reasons for saving the missionary, the foremost being his desire to oust Mponda – a goal the nganga would achieve only if the missionary converted the chief. Not until then would the tribe’s headmen agree to depose Mponda. Loving his father, Makufa wanted at all costs to prevent his conversion. If the missionary could be killed in time, Mponda would not be able to drink the fatal medicine.

  Each day, Makufa prayed to his grandfather’s spirit for help. Afterwards, he would put on his black ostrich feathers and war paint, steeling himself to cleanse the tribe. The missionary had used magic to defend himself in his spirit room, but he would be easier to kill in his own square house. That was where the blow should be struck.

  *

  The wagons had stopped at the centre of the khotla and were already surrounded by several hundred Venda by the time Clara and Robert came on the scene. As Clara pushed through the crowd with a thumping heart, she caught glimpses of tall black men wearing red fezzes, blue tunics, and khaki shorts. These men were forcing back curious onlookers with the stocks of their rifles.

  The two white men were sitting on camp stools in front of their wagons like fashionable people watching a play. She let out a cry of disappointment. One of them was about fifty, bald, short, with a snub nose and a trim moustache. His companion was in his late twenties, with sleek black hair and large dark eyes. Both were total strangers, as was the third person, a fluffily feminine woman who sat close to the younger man. Blonde curls spilled out from under the brim of her new bush hat. If only Francis and Fynn were sitting there instead!

  Strangely, Robert seemed relieved at the sight of the visitors. ‘The stocky fellow is the native commissioner for the district,’ he explained, ‘Arthur Bullock by name. He thinks missionaries ruin Africans if they teach them anything at all. The villagers call him Bwana Baboon, because his face is as red as a baboon’s bottom.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  He shrugged. ‘Never seen them. Settlers, I expect.’

  One of the uniformed men was shouting, and soon many of the younger women in the crowd were pressing forward. As a drum was heard, they began to dance.

  Robert’s face was angry. ‘The same story every time he comes here. The women get cloth and beads if they dance for him.’

  ‘What’s wrong if they’re willing?’

  ‘He likes to gape at their breasts and thighs.’

  ‘Is that all?’ she muttered, thinking of the whores in Belingwe, with their refrain of ‘jig-jig two sheeleeng’.

  The women were wheeling fast enough to lift their modesty aprons away from their thighs. The fat man began to toss coins and beads to the dancers as a preliminary to telling the prettier ones to dance closer to him. When he pointed out two particular dancers to his majordomo, Clara felt less sanguine about his intentions.

  Robert and Clara lunched with the newcomers at a table set up between their wagons. The young couple turned out to be a bankrupt French count and his English wife, who hoped to start afresh as tobacco farmers. The commissioner had a gruff and bullying manner. At present, he was undertaking a survey of all the villages in the region. ‘My Domesday Book’, Arthur Bullock called it, and made no secret of the fact that it would enable the colonial administrator to estimate how much hut tax could be levied from the local people.

  Robert’s fork froze on its way to his mouth. ‘Why should they have to pay anything to live in their own country?’

  The commissioner bit into a chicken leg and mumbled with a full mouth, ‘It’s so they can have schools and roads. These things aren’t free.’

  ‘That isn’t why you want to tax them,’ objected Robert. ‘It’s so you can force them to work in the mines.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with work, Haslam. Africans are lazy devils.’ Bullock picked a strand of chicken from between his teeth with a prong of his fork.

  ‘They’re free men and women,’ snapped Robert.

  ‘Free?’ The commissioner chuckled. ‘Free to live in rags and die young? What if they want a pair of boots or a bar of soap?’

  ‘They can work for a few days to earn money.’

  Bullock drained his wineglass. ‘That won’t do for a mine owner or a railway contractor. They want men for a year.’ He smiled reassuringly at the young blonde woman. ‘Even my friends here will need men for months at a time on their farm.’

  As the Frenchman nodded, Robert rounded on him. ‘It’s shameful to tax poor people simply to force them to work far from home.’

  ‘A sad necessity.’ Bullock sighed, refilling his glass. ‘No colony prospers without a regular workforce.’

  ‘Prospers?’ sneered Robert. ‘Who’ll prosper? Not these poor people here.’

  Bullock shifted his weight on his camp stool and remarked jocularly to Clara, ‘He’s a hard man, your husband.’

  ‘No, Mr Bullock, an honest one.’

  Bullock sniffed. ‘I can see that you’re well suited. But then I could be wrong.’ He smiled disagreeably. ‘I thought the same about the first Mrs Haslam. But … I mustn’t go repeating old rumours.’

  After an uneasy silence, the count began to talk about his tobacco-growing plans. His countess turned out to have been a ‘slavey’ in a London boardinghouse before catching her aristocrat. Her name was Nina, and her toughness and determination were in contrast to her sweet appearance. She had brought a new sewing machine to Africa, and laughed as she promised to defend it with her life. Clara had often yearned for the relief of talking honestly to a woman of her own race, but faced with Nina’s bright optimism, she knew she would have nothing to say to her.

  Before lunch ended, the commissioner promised he would call on Robert and Clara at the mission in the afternoon, bringing with him all the mail that had piled up for them at Belingwe. The prospect of reading letters from her father made Clara tearful. Since Bullock would be leaving Mponda’s kraal in two days, she could no longer postpone writing letters of her own. Already she knew that she would not be riding away in one of the commissioner’s wagons. To save the mission from Nashu’s vengeance, she would have to stay on with Robert and somehow persuade him that the nganga’s daughter ought to remain Mponda’s wife.

  While Clara was waiting for Bullock to arrive with the mail, Paul said to her, ‘The first time I saw Bwana Bullock, he was carried in a chair by six Matabele men. My mother told me he owned the country.’

  ‘Were you angry?’

  ‘I thought he was a ghost or a god.’ Paul smiled wistfully. ‘Now he gives me pencils and paper for the school.’

  Clara could guess why. There could be few boys in the colony who spoke better English. Paul would make an excellent clerk. Perhaps she should warn Robert of her suspicion, but first she had something more urgent on her mind. As soon as she could steer Robert out on to the veranda, she asked, ‘Will you tell Bullock about Makufa’s rifles?’

  He shook his head and said, ‘Suppose Bullock sends for soldiers. They’ll arrive in a couple of months, and the guns will have gone by then, so they’ll burn all the huts here because this is a rebel village.’

  At that moment, Bullock came through the gate, closely followed by two of his policemen. Paul and Simon ran forward and took the mail sack.

  ‘Here is something for you, master,’ shouted Simon, holding up a square parcel. ‘And what is this little one? Is this
my watch?’

  When Clara was handed her letters, she could not bear to read those from her father until she was alone. But one posted from Natal she did open and read while Simon and Paul were still pestering Robert to unwrap various packets.

  Dear Mrs Haslam,

  I must regret that Mr Fynn and I were unable to return from the Somnabula Forest by way of Mponda’s kraal. Much though we wished to do so, our supplies were too low to permit it. But no doubt you are now well settled in your new life and will hardly have missed a visit from us.

  I had expected my regiment’s posting to be over before now, but we are detained here in Natal for a few months more in case the Boers kick up a fuss. If they keep quiet, I should be able to come up north again one last time for some shooting and drop in on you. Otherwise I shall have to wait to make Mr Haslam’s acquaintance and to renew our own in the Old Country.

  Believe me with kindest regards,

  Yours sincerely,

  Francis Vaughan

  Clara stared at Francis’s letter. What possible meaning could the civilities of ordinary life ever have for her again?

  On getting back to the house, she read through her father’s letters and found them more upsetting than she had anticipated. Every day he had feared that she was dead, every day he had hoped for news and every day he had been disappointed. Recently he had spotted a dark-haired young woman in the street bearing such a striking resemblance to her that he had called out Clara’s name, only to be faced, as she turned, by a stranger. Until taking up her pen, Clara had imagined writing to him honestly. But now she realized that even if she could be sure of coming home alive, it would still be pointless to tell him anything that would increase his anxiety while he waited for her. So she wrote a warm and optimistic letter, wondering, as she did so, whether Robert had always been wrong to keep things from her.

  The following morning, Countess Nina, in a sky-blue fitted outfit with a matching bonnet, gave a demonstration of revolver shooting. Her husband had set up an array of tins and bottles and proudly summoned the Haslams and Commissioner Bullock to watch as his young wife knocked them down at an astonishing rate.

  ‘She shot a lion last month,’ he told Clara, admiringly. ‘He was an old one, who came near our camp at night. But our boy, he misses with his rifle, and Nina, she says, ‘If you will take all night, here goes!’ and she shoots him in the neck at ten paces.’

  The commissioner applauded loudly and swore that all white women in Africa ought to learn to shoot. Then he smiled lugubriously at Nina and added, ‘Always keep one bullet back. Never fall into the hands of savages alive.’

  ‘I thought you killed all the rebels in ’93,’ said Nina with a tight little frown.

  ‘They were given a bloody nose,’ agreed Bullock, adding sotto voce for Robert’s benefit, ‘though not by me, you understand.’

  Unlike the commissioner, the small crowd of villagers watching the proceedings from a discreet distance did not applaud or smile as Nina snapped off the necks of wine bottles. Their sullen faces scared Clara. We know why you have learned to shoot so well, they seemed to say. We know that blacks are your real targets.

  Noticing this glowering audience, Bullock started to harangue Robert about the ill effects of educating Africans. ‘Makes them discontented. Look at the blighters.’ He stabbed a finger in their direction. ‘They don’t know if they belong to the whites or the blacks, so they live in bars and stores and learn to cheat and drink.’

  Robert looked at the man pityingly. ‘Wherever they go, my boys and girls will lead others to Jesus.’

  Bullock turned to Paul. ‘What about you, my boy? Will you do that?’

  ‘Yes, sah, I will.’

  ‘Why not come and work for me, eh? I’ll pay you forty shillings a month and your board. What do you say?’

  All eyes were upon Paul. Forty shillings was a fortune. Paul owned no more than two old shirts, a pair of shorts, and a threadbare blanket, worth perhaps two shillings altogether. The commissioner was promising him a world of untold luxury.

  At last Paul said, in a tone of quiet apology, ‘I think I will stay here, thank you very much, sir.’

  Bullock said sharply to Robert, ‘Very touching, I’m sure, but you’re wrong to let him stay. He’d earn an honest wage with me and even get a government pension.’

  ‘He’d be hated by his fellows.’

  ‘Don’t fool yourself, Haslam. He’s hated already. Bush kaffirs can’t stand mission boys.’

  ‘You’re behind the times, Bullock. His chief will soon be converted, and Paul will become a valued adviser.’

  The commissioner grinned derisively. ‘Pigs’ll be flying too. I’ll ask the lad again in a month or two.’

  Robert glanced at Clara with tears in his eyes, as if to say: Now do you understand what loyalty is? She too had a lump in her throat.

  Before the count’s ox wagon trundled away into the brown and dusty landscape, Nina sent a boy to the mission with an invitation. She would be honoured if Mr and Mrs Haslam would come to see them at Mungora in the autumn. By then they should have built their house.

  Mungora was eighty miles away – nothing by African standards. But though Clara knew they would never visit their new neighbours, the image of wasp-waisted Nina, defying a continent with her little gun, moved her.

  *

  The following day, the commissioner’s wagon also departed. Soon afterwards, Clara heard someone tapping lightly at the kitchen door. Herida was standing outside, by the woodpile.

  ‘You have asked your husband, my missus?’ she inquired breathlessly. As usual, hoping to please Clara, Herida had put on her ugly mission dress. ‘He will let me be Mponda’s one wife?’

  ‘My husband hasn’t decided,’ she replied after a brief silence.

  Herida stared at Clara as if unable to bear the pain. ‘You lie to me,’ she said in a dull, flat voice.

  ‘I swear I’ll go on trying to persuade him.’

  Hope shone briefly in Herida’s eyes. ‘Tell him this, my missus: A man’s parents choose his first wife, but he chooses the others. So why must Mponda put away the wife he chose for love and keep the one his parents chose? You will ask this, please?’

  ‘Of course I will.’ Herida’s humility upset Clara more than her arrogance ever had. If she could only explain to her why Robert hated polygamy, perhaps Herida would stop seeing his beliefs as a personal attack.

  Yards away, flies were buzzing loudly in the privy as the sun beat down. Herida said brokenly, ‘Your man has no heart. My child died, my only child. Will your husband stop me bearing another baby for my beloved? Ask him what I have done to offend his God. Why must I lose my man now, as well as my child? Tell him I will pray to his Jizzus every day.’

  ‘Listen to me, Herida: I want you to keep your husband.’

  Herida grasped Clara’s arm. ‘Then why won’t he listen to you? Aren’t you good to him? Does he breathe hard and shiver when he lies down with you?’

  ‘You don’t understand how he thinks.’

  Herida was offended. ‘You are wrong. All men are dissatisfied unless their wives prepare their bodies.’ She lifted her dress and squatted. ‘You see? When we are little girls we pull our lips down. Look.’ Blushing, Clara glanced down at Herida’s hanging labia – like a drooping pink butterfly. ‘You show me now,’ demanded Herida.

  ‘It isn’t the custom in my country,’ faltered Clara, who was especially embarrassed since, because of the heat, she had stopped wearing underwear weeks before.

  Herida demanded sternly, ‘Do you put your feet around his back when he pushes? Do you hold him in your mouth? Do you play at love till he moans for you?’

  Clara shook her head. How could Herida understand the inhibitions of Sarston? ‘My husband likes me to seem …’ She broke off helplessly, not knowing the Venda words for ‘pure’ and ‘angelic’. Did they even exist in the English sense?

  Herida clasped Clara’s hand. ‘No man loves his wife till she conceives. Did yo
u drink the medicine I brought?’

  Clara said, ‘My husband loves me, and I won’t stop trying to persuade him.’ Then she turned back into the house, leaving the young woman standing alone in the sunlight.

  CHAPTER 13

  Two days after the white official and the young man and woman had gone, Makufa decided to act. For months he had been eager for this moment, yet now that it had come he was afraid. But with his black war feathers on his head, he swore not to show his fear to anyone. Shortly before dawn, he had killed a goat under the dark branches of the sacred mugumo tree, offering beer and blood to the ancestors. ‘Nyalhuana, ancient mother, guard these warriors,’ he had prayed. ‘May the morning star preserve us.’

  And now, just outside the village, with his men around him, Makufa could see a spark of light above the peaked roofs – the morning star. ‘O light of initiation and all beginnings, help me,’ he murmured. ‘May I live to save my father and cleanse this tribe.’

  To feed his anger, he thought of the fat, red-faced bwana who had made the women wriggle and shake for him. Although he should have been hacked to death, Nashu had warned against the killing of whites. But Makufa knew he must kill the teacher to save his father from the disgrace of baptism. The men sent to the chapel to murder him on the last singing day had failed because they had stared straight into his eyes. But if he was sleeping, his eyes would be closed. Rather than defy the nganga directly, Makufa had ordered a dozen followers to kill the missionary, while he himself attacked the spirit house and the mission. Later, he would tell Nashu that hotheads had run amok.