Joubert The Hunchback Missionary

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-86842-633-1
Verlag: Jonathan Ball
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten

At a prayer meeting on a cold Rotterdam night, the young clerk Aart Anthonij van der Lingen - a pale, sickly, hunchbacked 'fish from the North' - is held in the charismatic Reverend Johannes Kicherer's thrall. Lured by Kicherer's passion, he leaves his grey and loveless life to land at the Cape of Good Hope as a lay missionary in 1800. But when the Missionary Society draws lots to determine where to send the new arrivals, Van der Lingen is sent east and Kicherer north. The hunchback missionary must make his own way in a place that, on the surface, God has forsaken - until, as the pitiless landscape and the blank faces of his would-be congregants strip Van der Lingen incrementally of his pride, he learns that he has nothing to give to the Africa that is ultimately his salvation. Based on historical figures drawn from the Cape Town Church Archives, The Hunchback Missionary by Elsa Joubert, world-renowned author of The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena, is a sweeping narrative of vanity and humility, of the sacred and the profane, of how Europe's rampant strides across newly colonised Africa led to the abyss from which a continent still struggles, today, to retreat.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Joubert, Elsa

Weitere Mitwirkende

King, Michael

Leseproben

2

Caabstad/Cape Town

I must surely have had a premonition that morning when I climbed the paved steps to the high veranda of the whitewashed, flat-roofed house on the Waterkant, belonging to Mr Bruckner. I knew that the house and its inhabitants were to play a major role, perhaps even a decisive role, in my life.

Perhaps not a premonition. Call it, rather, a hypersensitive consciousness of place. I wonder, sometimes, whether the inhabitants of Cape Town realise what an overwhelming effect that enormous rock mass has on a Lowlander. At times it appears to be tilting over. Inspiring fear, certainly. Mountains fall on me, ye heavens cover me. Mountains like these we do not know.

And the brilliance of the light. If I think of Rotterdam, even in the summer, there is nothing comparable to a September morning at the Cape.

Perhaps my whole process of observation had been sharpened by my dreams of the sick fiancée, the reunion with Kicherer, the strangeness of the people around me, the flavours, colours, light. Brilliant blue heavens, with great structures of white clouds moving around and over the blue mountainous mass. The bright sparkle from the bay almost immediately in front of us, where the five of us stood on the stoep, slightly out of breath from climbing the steep steps. The masts of the ships in the bay moved up and down as if in some slow dance, the red, yellow, green, blue and white flags of many lands fluttering on the masts like scarves on the fingers of dancers. Before us in the street, the crack of a whip, the sound of slow oxen beginning to pull a wagon, the gravelly noises of the wheels over the cobblestones.

My second morning at the Cape.

Kicherer let the brightly polished, yellow copper door-knocker fall thrice on the dark-green door. We stepped inside.

We walked through a dark front entrance hall, the upper half of a back door thrown open. A fleeting glance into the back garden showed the same streaming quality of light – whitewashed walls, offset by a vast, languid tree, laden with still, dark-green leaves in tightly packed clusters. And the figure of a stoutish young woman, with a basket on her arm, reaching up with both arms to pluck its fruit. The fruit was strange: oval, yellow, as big as golden plums, hanging in clusters between the leaves. She did not look up at us. At her feet lay a circle of skins, the fruit having been sucked from them, and then spat out. And dark-brown pips, wet with spit, sprayed out over the light-red tiles.

‘Loquats, a fruit from the East,’ said Mr Bruckner as he came in from the back garden, closing the upper door behind him and blotting out the picture. ‘That was my foster daughter plucking them. At a later stage, we can arrange for you to taste them.’

He walked through to his study in the right wing of the house. ‘The other gentlemen of the Society are waiting. Please sit down.’

They took their places at a round table. The smell of tobacco was strong. The room was obviously that of a physician: the skull, other parts of the human anatomy on a shelf, rows of books bound in leather. Where the wall was not covered with bookshelves hung maps and an etching of the classical alchemist bent over his scales. Bruckner was the Surgeon Major at the Castle, as well as being a fellow-worker in the Missionary Society.

Pride of place on the table went to a chessboard, its corners inlaid, the pieces carved from ivory and jet, and set out ready for play.

‘Do you play chess?’ Bruckner asked me. He was a lean, neatly dressed man, of swarthy complexion, with deep lines between the sharp nose and the corners of his mouth. His hands were well shaped and his eyes restless. His gaze weighed up the newcomers, and came to rest on me. He was waiting for an answer. His restless fingers shuffled papers on the table.

I shook my head. ‘No, I do not play chess.’

Coffee was served in small cups. A female slave brought in a tray, and sweetmeats were handed to her at the door to bring in to the room. I noticed the figure of the woman in the garden. She stared at the slave before turning and walking away. Something in the sway of her dress, something in the fall of the heavy silk brocade caused me, unexpectedly, to remember my nostalgia of the previous night for the wife of the merchant in Rotterdam. The same posture, the same lethargic body movements.

An old man, Mr Zulch, leant forward in his chair, and joined his hands as if in prayer. He pressed them against his chest, and lowered his head, which was bald and fair, almost like a baby’s. He was clean-shaven, and toothless. He started praying, gently at first, then more fiercely.

‘We falter in the dark, O Lord, at the foot of this great continent. You must direct us. You must tell us to whom we must go. We struggle through the desert of our ignorance of this great land. Show us the path, not only through the earthly desert of sand and bush and stone, but through the desert of our incomprehension of the spiritual life of our fellow creatures in this land. O Lord, I do not use the word “barbarian” or “heathen”. For who knows the heathen in his own heart better than I? Grant us redemption, before we take Your message like water in a flask to the thirsty ones of the wilderness.’

I was deeply moved by this old man’s words – perhaps with some foreknowledge of how they might apply to me. They humbled me, and I felt unworthy. With my eyes closed and my head bowed, I resolved to carry his words with me wherever I went.

Bruckner was more businesslike.

‘There are two areas of mission with which the Society is mainly concerned. The first is among the Amakoosa tribes and the Hottentotten situated on the Eastern Frontier. Dr van der Kemp has been there for one year and he labours on. The second area is in a north-westerly direction from the Cape, and this is where the Reverend Kicherer is working, on the Zak River, among the Bosjesmannen. To the north of the Zak River we encounter the Bastaarden, a half-breed race: some Christianised, and well disposed towards us; the Korannas, who are heathen; and, much further north, the Biriquas, a nation of whom we know only by report. Both missions need workers. There is a third requirement, evangelising the slaves and heathens at the Cape itself.’

‘As is our custom,’ continued Bruckner, ‘we decide where to send you by drawing lots. The decision will be the Lord’s.’

I remembered the Surgeon Major’s words: ‘Do you play chess?’ I tried to reject the thought. The element of manoeuvring that his question suggested did not appeal to me. I looked fixedly at the still-bowed forehead of the old man, Mr Zulch.

It was to this old man that the black velvet bag with the names of the four missionaries was taken. His eyes remained half-closed, and he reached into the bag, bringing out the first slip of paper.

‘To go to the Eastern Frontier. James Read.’

Again, the hand was thrust into the bag, but this time the eyes remained open, watching the three remaining men carefully.

‘To go to the Eastern Frontier. Aart Anthonij van der Lingen.’

I heard it in silence.

Despite the moment of dedication that I had just experienced, I was deeply disappointed. After all my prayers, almost begging God: Just let me go with Kicherer to work with him. This was what I had come to Africa for … Now it is not even Anderson, but Read with whom whom I have to work. Do I have to accept this lottery? A bad move in the game of chess? My whole being rebelled against it. I looked to Kicherer to see whether he accepted it, but no sign of opposition came from him. That mortified me. And out of this mortification there grew the germ of a challenge. A sense of anticipation welled up in me. Would this not perhaps be something more, something greater, if I, alone, in spite of my disability, in spite of my fear, were to tackle my own specific darkness?

But with Read in one harness?

Another paper was opened.

‘Anderson. Northwards to help Kicherer with the Bosjesmannen.’

Then it would be Tromp who would stay at the Cape to work with the slaves.

‘Later,’ Tromp said to me, ‘I will join you. At the Eastern Frontier.’

The rest of the morning was painful. Kicherer was animated.

‘Allow me to emphasise the indispensable help that I received from the farmer Floris Fisscher at the Zak River station,’ he was saying to the group. ‘Good farmers will come to services together with converts, and they are a help to us. Not so the farmers who don’t know God; they are cruel to the Hottentotten; they exterminate the Bosjesmannen and they are opposed to the mission.’

Anderson asked, ‘How do we reach the people? How do we preach to them?’

‘We simply sow the seed,’ said Kicherer. ‘I am sometimes deeply moved. They call me Ebo, which, according to William Fortuin, my Hottentot interpreter, means “Father”. They do not know my real name. I am ashamed to admit that I do not have the capacity to remember their names. So many come to the Zak River, and I must take them in, but how can I remember their names? I take chalk and write a name, any name, on the back of each newcomer. When they approach me, they come with their backs turned towards me that I may identify them. Again, I say it, it moves me powerfully: in the immeasurable desert, the human need to belong, to be identified.’

When the meeting ended, we walked back to the inn. Kicherer took us on a detour to the Boeren Square where the wagons for the interior were outspanned. He made inquiries about the wagons, what storage space, what provisions they had for the long journey...