Hottentot Venus (25 page)

Tens of thousands of pounds had changed hands in less than an hour. The boards were taken down, the trestles were gone, the market was empty, its cobblestone square as clean as a whistle. This happened, we learned, twice a week. There were no beggars in Halifax, no idle people, only fresh healthy air, prosperous good people, all employed. This was how I had imagined England to be when I left Cape Town. What I thought I would find in the Reverend Freehouseland’s Manchester. Alice Unicorn was also fascinated by Halifax.

—The clothiers live in splendid, neat houses, surrounded by grazing land for their cattle, Alice told me. Every clothier has a horse to fetch wool and provisions, to carry yarn to the spinners and his goods to the market. The workers and their families live in cottages on their own land, all spinning, carding, dying cloths . . . It brings tears to my eyes, she concluded, this is how the world should be . . .

Halifax was only a few miles from the sea and connected to it by canals, which brought the great ships almost into the city. Breezes opened my nostrils to the salt air. A strange calm settled over us and the circus. Master Dunlop spent a great deal of time gazing at the schooners in the harbor, traveling the thirty miles to the sea to inspect them. It was a good place for theater. The multicolored canvas tent we now performed in was full every night. Halifax had a handsome temple and next to it a public square where the tent could be set up. It also had a rich population. We sent an unshelled Victor out with the handbills. We didn’t stay in the caravans but in a comfortable inn in the center of the town. Master Taylor ordered new clothes for everyone. I ordered new dresses for myself and Alice. The receipts in such a city would be good. I could demand anything of my husband and master, I reasoned.

The large sums of money that circulated in Halifax attracted adventurers and gamblers. There was a gaming house, a casino and a private club where cards were played. And so it was that Master Taylor was happy to settle in peaceful, prosperous Halifax as well. Even little Victor was happy. I was lulled into a state of peace that could almost be described as contentment. We now had enough money to return to the Cape. I hoped Alice would come with me.

When neither Master Taylor nor my husband came back to the inn one night, I thought nothing of it. They often stayed out all night gambling with their cronies and drinking at the pubs which lined the quays of the canal. It was not until the afternoon of the second day that I heard loud male voices singing “The Ballad of the Hottentot Venus for the Ladies of Bath” as their heavy footsteps slowly climbed the creaking wooden stairs.

Fair Ladies, I’ve sail ’d, in obedience to you,
From BATH, since the last Masquerade, to PERU:
There, to guard ’gainst all possible scandal to night,
I turn’d Priest, and have conjur’d my Black-a-moor white.

A strange Metamorphosis!—Who that had seen us
T’other night, would take this for the
Hottentot Venus;
Or me for poor Jack?—Now I’m priest of the Sun,
And She, a quere kind of Peruvian Nun:

Though in this our Novitiate, we
preach
but so, so,
You’ll grant that at least we
appear
comme il faut.
In pure Virgin robes, full of fears and alarms,
How demurely she veils her protuberant charms!

Thus oft’, to atone for absurdities past,
Tom Fool turns a Methodist Preacher at last,
Yet the Critics, not we, were to blame—For ’od rot ’em,
There was nothing but innocent fun
at the bottom!

Finally Master Taylor opened the door and staggered in. His unshaven beard and red eyes meant he had come straight from the whorehouse of the night before without washing. But he was curiously sober all of a sudden. My master was nowhere in sight, but as it was his custom to go to the public baths after a night on the town, I thought nothing of it.

—Sarah, I’ve got a letter for you from Alex. Before I give it to you, let me say that he shouldn’t be judged too harshly. It was my fault as well as his . . . We . . . We’ve lost you . . . at cards last night. I’m sorry. I took the envelope from his dirty hand. It was not sealed.

July 30, the SS
Hudson

Sarah,

Read this letter carefully because you can read now. The news I have for
you will not make you happy. Your new owner is Réaux, the Frenchman.
I wagered your contract as part of a sum I bet playing
trente-et-quarante
and lost. Then, Taylor tried to win you back by wagering his own part and
he lost as well. I have decided to disappear from your life at the same time.

I have signed on as ship’s surgeon on the SS
Hudson
, leaving Halifax or
rather Hull this night for South Carolina. I know I swore I would never
go to sea again and especially on a slaver, but I have no choice. You are no
longer mine. I cannot clothe or feed you. I cannot pay Henry what we owe
him or any of my other creditors from Bath or Halifax. As some of them are
local criminals, the most prudent thing to do is to disappear.

In losing all our profits and capital, my shame is such I cannot face you.
Sieur Réaux owns you for the remaining two years of your contract. He has
agreed to pay you the twelve guineas a year we agreed upon in your con
tract plus he will pay your servant Alice another five guineas. There are no
profits to share with you. Your jewelry, food, clothes, lodgings, transport,
doctor’s bills, tobacco and gin have consumed your share.

Think of me as dead. For I will surely be very soon. And do not forgive
me, rather forget me.

Adieu.
Alexander W. Dunlop, Esq.

P.S.: As for our marriage, we are not married, Sarah. I was never
divorced. Or rather we are married and I am a bigamist. If you don’t
know what that means, ask Henry.

It was hard for me to read the letter because it was written in a trembling hand and my hands shook, but the message was clear. My husband was gone forever. Alice took the letter from me.

—Give me that, she said.

She had guessed from my face what I had read. Indeed, I stood there, cursing in Khoekhoe, in English and in Dutch, barefoot in the middle of the stifling room, almost naked in my thin sheath, yet shivering as if I was freezing to death. A great snarl escaped me, half scream, half war cry. Not my master! Not him! But it was him. He had sold me! He had lost me at cards. And he had thrown me to the dogs. My whole life passed before my eyes. Sobbing and screeching, I threw myself at Master Taylor, who stepped sideways, and I found myself in the arms of Master Réaux, his big chained brown bear just inches away. I smelled the beast.

—Unless you accept the rest of your contract, he announced, it’s either the workhouse, the poorhouse, the jailhouse or the whorehouse, Venus . . .

The following week, I received another blow. Alice decided to stay in Halifax with Victor.

—I ’ave found work in the mills, Alice confessed. I can earn enough to rent a small cottage and take care of Victor. He’s too frail for this life.

—You too? I cried. But I knew Alice was right. Why should she roam this island with a bunch of things-that-should-never-have-been-born for my sake?

But my heart broke.

—I will never forget what you did for me and Victor. You saved m’ life. But I’ll only cost you money you don’t ’ave anymore. ’Ere I can earn my own keep and not be a burden to you. I will never forget you. I am your servant and your friend, your witness and your godmother. We are one. And if Dunlop comes back to Halifax, I want to be here to castrate him . . .

The next day, Alice and her brother left the circus for good. Shortly after that the burgesses of Halifax shut down the theater and the freak show on grounds of indecency and endangering public safety. A constable came and nailed a notice on the tent pillars. But what the town fathers were really afraid of were large gatherings of mill workers in one place. The ghost of the Luddite riots still roamed the cobblestone streets of Halifax. Without Master Dunlop’s protection as a doctor and army officer, true or not, we were no more than a collection of paupers, vagabonds and strays to the police. We were forced on the road again, but this time it was different.

—We’re planning to take you to the Continent, said Master Réaux. Your real worth is in the big cities like Paris and Amsterdam, where the gentry and the literati can get a look at you, not these backwater country squires and workers bent on insurrection. Napoleon’s wars are over. He has abdicated and is exiled to Elba. King Louis is restored to the throne, I can go home.

Alice had already told me the rumors about the mysterious Sieur Réaux, who had so changed our lives. He was an aristocrat, a younger son of a family destroyed by the French Revolution who had barely escaped the guillotine. He had fled to England, where he had some family, but they had cast him out as a traitor to his class and a renegade. He had quit his social class and begun the life of a reprobate, a gambler and a duelist. He had killed several men. His career as an animal trainer had started when he jumped into a bear cage and wrestled the animal down on a dare. He had traveled to Russia, to Crimea, to India, to Africa. He had joined Napoleon and had served at Borodino. But he had deserted the army and was a wanted man with a price on his head, which was why he had been hiding in England. No one knew his Christian name. He never spoke of his family or his origins. His accent was that of a gentleman and he spoke the King’s English and the provincial’s French. There were also rumors that he had been dismissed from the army because of homosexual behavior, that he liked boys, hated women, was a morphine addict. Had he been a spy for Napoleon? For Louis XVI? For Louis XVIII? Did he work for the British secret service? Was he really French? Sieur Réaux raised all kinds of questions and provided not one answer. Alice had heard him say he would kiss the ground of France if ever he had the luck to return. Perhaps, I thought, he’s only homesick, like me.

On September 9, Shit moon, 1814, we set sail for Le Havre from Southampton on the mailship the HMS
Beagle.
Sieur Réaux did not say a word during the crossing. His silver-blue eyes under his sealskin top hat, his black mustache under his pug nose, his wide shoulders draped in his short black cape, his immense height, and long legs encased in brown and black riding boots, all seemed like separate visions to me, never coming together as one. The person of Sieur Réaux loomed huge against the sails and ropes of the mailboat. I was terrified of him. Alice and I had even sent a letter to Robert Wedderburn in London, explaining our plight and begging him to rescue us, but our plea went unanswered. Perhaps he felt I had spurned his help once, why should he offer it again? Nevertheless, under my skirts, my feet were hobbled by a thick chain. I was Sieur Réaux’s prisoner, yet to a passerby, with his arm around my shoulders enfolding me tenderly, he seemed like an attractive husband or guardian steadying me against the movement of the ship and the slippery wetness of the deck.

The hard years in the provinces of England had sapped any will I had to escape. I was empty inside, or rather too empty inside to resist. At twenty-five, I was an old woman who wanted only her
dagga,
her gin, her tobacco, whose body had been used up by the thousands of eyes that had devoured it. It had been battered by so much curiosity and ridicule, it disgusted even me. I refused even to look into a full-length mirror anymore. I had only one wish, to survive, to hide enough money to buy my passage home, to escape Sieur Réaux and stay out of the workhouse, the jailhouse, the crazy house or the whorehouse. I had once been rich, now I was penniless. Once again, ten pounds was a fortune. Under my red riding hood, I was in rags. Would the French police help me? How could I prove who and what I was? I glanced sideways at my master, who was absently lighting a small cheroot and gazing out upon the gray, troubled waters with satisfaction. Adolph was chained in the hold of the ship, along with several other animals. Adolph came from the Caucasus Mountains of Russia and was very old for a bear. He weighed six hundred pounds, his pelt was as stiff and prickly as a hedgehog and he smelled really awful. We were both Master Réaux’s creatures. The only difference was that I couldn’t dance and Adolph was not baptized.

—I have a surprise for you.

—Yeah . . .

—No, really. I’m not such a bad man, Sarah. I’m going to go see if Adolph is all right. I’ll be back, he said as he left me standing on deck.

Alone and heartbroken, I recalled the beginning of my voyage now four years past. I tasted the salt of tears, nausea and the sea wind. Memories of the crimes committed against me welled up inside me like a nest of vipers: the search for the Reverend Freehouseland, Master Hendrick’s return to South Africa, my husband Dunlop’s betrayal, the lonely years of wandering with Master Taylor, and finally the loss of Alice and Victor.

It was a warm day and the sea was so calm a light breeze was strong enough to move the boat forward. It skimmed the surface, its sails humming, seagulls shrieking overhead. Small white-capped waves skipped across the dark blue depths to the horizon. The sun shimmering on these waters is the African sun, I thought suddenly. This sky could at any moment turn pink with the flight of a flock of flamingos. I could be dead from all the alcohol I drink. I vowed to make the world pay the price of my humiliations. I had a name, in the eyes of Christ: Sarah, Sarah Baartman. I had a country, which was his Kingdom, and I had a final destination, Africa. I was the ward of no one, the property of no one, the whore of no one, the freak of no one, the slave of no one, the beloved of no one. I leaned too far out over the shimmering waves, my hands slid off the railings, I closed my eyes thinking that this sea was the only freedom I was destined for.