Hottentot Venus by Barbara Chase-Riboud

errand. Men whose lives were over. I could have taken any of them in a fight for I was strong and fast and fearless. Kx’au had taught me how to use a bow and arrow, to defend myself with my walking stick, how to run, how to scale a tree, swim a river or camouflage myself with leaves and river silt when I wanted to hide.
    I began to smell humans. The road began to fill with people going to or coming from the Cape Fort. I was happy to see faces and hear voices on the dusty road, sending up a cloud of languages and dialects. I had been lonely, I thought, without realizing it. There were dogs and pigs, chickens, goats, squawking cocks and fat-tailed baby lambs. Women carried jars of fired clay on their heads. Men carried cages filled with everything from serpents to parrots. Anything that could walk was on a leash and everything walking was edible. There was nothing that was not merchandise. It ebbed and flowed up to the very walls of the town. Mobs swarmed around the gates that were manned by police and customs officers.
    I remembered from my orphanage days that today, Thursday, was market day. A long caravan, which must have come from the east, passed through the gates. Unending, the trail of heavily laden camels circled the walls, edged on by blue men in saffron and white kaftans, their heads and faces hidden under wide turbans, the unwound ends that fell to their shoulders, pulled across their mouths against the sand, dust and heat, leaving only their eyes to be seen. I slipped into the city with the caravan, keeping to the shadows of the moving animals. Once inside, I tried to get my bearings. I put down my bundle. The main street was brimming with people of all colors and shapes. Some were familiar, Dutch and Afrikaners, English, Xhoas and Bantus, but there were also Indians, Chinamen, Arabs and Semites, yellow, white, red, brown, dark-skinned Africans. They all moved in a different manner, on foot, in carriages, on horseback, and camelback, in litters, sedan chairs, and covered wagons, carts, palankeens and rickshaws. Dogs ran unleashed everywhere. There were white women who carried small tents to shade them from the sun, like those used by certain Africans to denote a prince or person of importance. There were white men in wide straw hats, linen dustcoats and gun belts.
    The odor that rose from the street was a combination of vegetables and spices, the raw pine of new buildings, rotting garbage, cooking oil, garlic, musk, perfume, camel urine, dog shit and smoke from iron forges. In the years I had been gone, everything had changed. I stood in the middle of the road, covered with the red dirt of the street and my journey, dumbfounded. I was barefoot and wore only a short
lappa.
I picked up my belongings and sat them back on my head. I was like a dog that couldn’t scratch. The horse-drawn carriages, sedan chairs and carts made a detour around me every which way and in both directions. Someone yelled,
    —Get out of the way, you stupid Kaffir!
    I couldn’t tell who had called out, because so many people swirled around me, my head turned: soldiers in bright red uniforms, cowboys, slaves, railroad men. There were sailors from the port, miners from the mountains, caravan men and cattlemen. There were priests and pastors, farmers and gentlemen. All manner of animals roamed or were tethered in front of the pastel brick and wood houses: horses, camels and dromedaries, donkeys, mules, buffalo, longhorns, shorthorns, even a reindeer. Stray dogs, cats and pigs strolled along the wooden planks that served as passageways for those on foot. On each side were shops and stalls of every description in the open air or under the wood and mat arcades: baskets and bread, herbs, salt, grain, sweets, jewelry, cloth. I was overwhelmed.
    I made my way past a white-and-black-painted church with towers like spears piercing the azure sky, the governor’s house of yellow stone, the penitentiary, the police headquarters that I recognized from