Hottentot Venus by Barbara Chase-Riboud Page B

strangely.
    —Didn’t you know there’s a war going on? The Hottentots have been attacking white settlers in Namibia. There have been massacres of whites . . . It’s a miracle you got through town without getting killed yourself. All Hottentots are banned from the city.
    —That’s why people stared! Why a man spat on my moccasins!
    —You were lucky, Saartjie. You could be in jail now. Come in, come in before somebody else sees you!
    —I had to come. I need work. My husband died. My baby died. I couldn’t stay there. I would have died too! There’s no food, nothing. I couldn’t stay there; my life would have been over!
    —What can you do?
    I looked at him blankly. I could “do” nothing that would interest anybody. I could milk goats. I could gather wood and food. I could make a fire. I could have babies and wear
lappas.
I could build a house with bent twigs and cover it with reed mats. I could walk for many miles without tiring. I owned a slingshot. I could sing and play the guitar. I could herd cattle. I was a shepherdess. I knew a little medicine. I knew a little rain-making. I was a very good archer. I could hit a target at ninety paces. What could I do? I could swim. I could search and find iris bulbs to cook in flour batter. I could . . .
    —I can’t do anything, I said.
    —If you stay here, the headmistress can fit you out for housework. You remember your lessons from the time you were here? You speak a little Dutch and English from those days? You can learn to sew, to cook, to clean, to be a nursery maid or a laundress. The Reverend Freehouseland taught you some English, didn’t he?
    —Dutch and English.
    —Yes, well, that’s all to the good.
    —He left me an inheritance.
    —I know the story. But he’s dead now. His family has returned to England. Nobody remembers about it anymore, and it’s just as well. What would you have done with the money he left you anyway?
    The porter Mambu opened the double doors onto a large highceilinged room where thirty or more colored women all dressed the same in white smocks stood behind rows of white-draped tables with coal irons on them. Each had a shirt in her hand. Each had a bonnet on her head. At the front of the room stood the teacher on a raised dais. She spoke in Khoe, then in Dutch. She shouted as if raising her voice would force them to learn faster. The rows of black faces were intent, perspiring with the heat of the irons. The windows were wide open and the white curtains stirred. The teacher’s voice resounded against the vaulted ceiling.
    —First, take the collar of the washed shirt with two fingers, this one and this one, turn it towards you . . .
    —They are learning to be laundresses. You could start here with ironing, then washing, bleaching, mending . . .
    All eyes were lowered onto the white shirts, held with thumb and forefinger. Each pair of hands clutched the cloth, clutched and smoothed it carefully, bringing down the hot weighted irons with a dull thud, forcing out every wrinkle, every ridge, every imperfection.
    They resembled a troop of penguins with their white starched bosoms and their white starched caps, black arms flapping, heads bobbing in rhythm with the teacher’s lips, not able to make any sound themselves. Perhaps, like penguins, they had no vocal cords.
    —I’m glad you’ve returned, Saartjie, poor orphan . . . poor widow now—We’ll find you a home . . . a good family of Boers.
    That night, I pulled the thin cotton sheet up under my chin as I lay on the narrow plank bed in the women’s dormitory where thirty other inmates slept. The scent of warm female flesh, like baked bread, rose all around me as they snored softly. The day for them had begun at half past four. Tomorrow it would for me as well.
    I stared up at the dirty brown wooden ceiling as I would have stared at the night sky only a day ago, and thought of the wooden boxes called coffins the English and the Dutch used to bury their dead. I was as dead as