Hottentot Venus (32 page)

—For us today, the most important question concerning what is variously known as the female
tablier,
the
tablier égyptien,
Hottentot apron,
joyau,
longinympha, macronympha or, as Linnaeus called it, the
sinus pudoris,
or curtain of shame, is: Is it a product of nature or human manipulation? Or is it like mermaids, sirens and centaurs, an illusion that is entirely imaginary and chimerical? All this speculation must give way to scientific facts.

—The Hottentot apron exists. We have before us a living specimen, a genuine Hottentot of the race described by Jensen, Barrow and Levaillant; one everyone here has been able to view during her eighteen-month stay in our capital . . . Sarah Baartman’s genitalia and buttocks summarize her essence. The remarkable development of her labia minora or nymphae which is so general a characteristic of the Hottentot and Bushman race, is sufficiently well marked as to distinguish these parts at once from any of the ordinary varieties occurring in the human species. I contend that the apron is a morbid development of the inner vaginal lips divided like two wrinkled, fleshy petals which, if raised, form the figure of a heart. These two rounded appendages are different lengths in different subjects, some not more than a half inch, in others three or four inches. Although I am a dedicated monogenist, this may be one of the anatomical marks of the nonunity of the races . . . which . . .

The baron turned to watch de Blainville silently struggle with Sarah Baartman.

—Nothing proves the primitive character of our Hottentot like her exaggerated sexual organs. Advanced humans are sexually restrained. Animals are overtly and actively sexual. Sarah’s exaggerated sexual organs are proof of her inferiority and animality. Which we will explore in tomorrow’s session since Miss Baartman seems unwilling to cooperate with Monsieur de Blainville today. I conclude on this note.

—May I contest that? I interloped, suddenly exacerbated, almost crying with rage. Humans are the
most
sexually active primates and humans have the largest sexual organs. Thus a human with larger than average endowments is in proportion, if anything,
more
human—not to mention the connection between human sexuality, the brain and conscious imagination . . .

—Mr. . . . Tiedeman, the animalist, I believe. We will have to take this up tomorrow. We have run out of time and any willingness on the part of Madame Baartman to accommodate us, said the baron. I therefore bring this session to a close and reconvene the conference, here, tomorrow at eleven o’clock.

The regiment of scientists filed out of the auditorium as if they were an expedition of explorers trekking through the wilds of Africa. They traversed the elegant gardens Indian file, staying close together for safety, each following behind the other across the immaculate paths to the reception tent.

The quartet’s music wafted across the neatly tended diamonds, squares, circles and crescents of the pink-pebbled walks, the blossoming sumac, fleabane, goldenrod, geraniums and multiflora roses. It flooded the low hedges trimmed to perfection, the decorative sculptures, the medicinal plants, flowering bushes. I adjusted my sunglasses as I emerged from the auditorium and surveyed the expanse of garden. I spied Sarah in the distance, a wide hat hiding her face, her white skirts wrapped closely around her in the slight breeze. She was more than alone. She seemed the most solitary figure I had ever seen: a mysterious doomed character out of a romantic novel, the eternal Other . . . She stood close to the aviary, outlined by its wire mesh and ironwork. I wondered if she was contemplating freeing all those birds. That, I thought, would enrage the baron all right, perfect French bureaucrat that he was, for the birds belonged to the state, which owned the museum. I wondered if I should walk over to her instead of joining the others. I had known many artists’ models, had seen many women’s bodies, had drawn, engraved and sculpted them. I was not shy or embarrassed that I had created her form in clay from life. I was anxious only because from afar, Sarah Baartman seemed so uniquely remote, and unapproachable; it was as if she were indeed a whole race unto herself . . . But I didn’t dare approach her.

But then, she spied me in my artist’s smock, felt hat, long wavy hair and wide black bow and beckoned to me. Later that afternoon she told me that I was the only man in the entire room of physicians whose eyes hadn’t made her feel naked.

19

Thus, if the viscera of an animal are so organized as only to be fitted for the digestion of recent flesh, it is also required that the jaws should be constructed as to fit them for devouring their prey; the claws must be constructed for seizing and tearing it to pieces; the teeth for cutting and dividing the flesh; the entire system of limbs or organs of motion for pursuing and overtaking it; the organs of sense for discovering it at a distance.

—BARON GEORGES LÉOPOLD CUVIER,
Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheavals
on the Surface of the Globe

Twisted Ears, the English month of March, 1815. At first, I didn’t mind. The slow, beelike droning of Master Cuvier’s soft voice in my ear lulled me into a trance. I stood; I walked, I jumped, I bent over, I turned around; I raised my arm, I lifted my foot, I held out my hand; I turned my head from side to side as in a dream. And as in a dream, the world was turned upside down. I kept my eye on the artist who was producing the effigy of me out of red clay. Not as red as his flaming red hair which fell in long waves to his shoulders, which were broad and sloping. His eyes were the color of the ocean under thick straight red eyebrows, and his face was painted with tiny red dots. After studying so many white faces, I judged his not only handsome but good. He wore a loose dress gathered at the neck in a bow. He had beautiful large hands which squeezed and molded the clay. I kept my eye on him because his eye on me was attentive, respectful, almost tender. The scientists were brusque, frightening and contemptuous. They interrupted each other, raising their voices or talked over each other, each tripping over the other’s words and finally ending in shouts. Their voices ranged from low and dignified to rowdy, from cool politeness to utter rage; their mouths worked, spittle flew, hands waved, elbows gesticulated, arms swayed, feet tapped. It was like a slow-motion dance, with each man calling on his rainmaker for rain, in supplication or as a command. Words in a language I didn’t understand flew about; sometimes like a gnat I would catch one or two:
Hottentote,
tablier, Africaine, Cap de Bonne Espérance, belle, bête, sauvage . . .
I was indifferent to all that. I had been commanded to appear and I had done so against my will. For three days now, Master de Blainville had been trying to get me to drop the white handkerchief I held in front of my sex so that the baron could examine my apron. I refused. He pleaded. I resisted. My eyes appealed directly to the baron, whose long sharp stick tapped me gently from time to time as his discourse got more and more animated. Master de Blainville tugged at my handkerchief and I tugged back. I was determined that my apron would remain what it had always been to these men: a mystery.

By the third day, I was exhausted and numb with shame. I began to understand the contempt these men had for my body, for my color, for my humanity. I could have been a dog, a Siamese twin, a two-headed turtle. It was all the same to them. They were only interested in my monstrosity,
Homo monstrosis,
they called me, a new species of mankind. Like Hottentots baying for war, they farted and belched, coughed, stamped their feet, rolled their eyes, bared their teeth, spat, hawked, scratched their balls, slapped themselves, played with their ears, pulled at their hair, arranged their clothing as if I could not observe them—as if I could not return their rude gazes and bold scrutiny. As if they were in their water closets; as if they, not I, were naked. Their voices, their argumentative tones, their questions and answers flew past me like a hail of poisoned arrows, each one finding its mark, wounding my flesh so viciously I sometimes wondered whether they were only words. I experienced waves of nausea. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t understand what they were saying since I
felt
it in my flesh, as I had with the vaudeville play. They were out to prove that I, Sarah Baartman, was not human.

On the last day, Master de Blainville offered me a gold napoleon to lower my handkerchief and show them my apron. He held it in his outstretched hand exactly as Master Dunlop had done years ago. He stood there, in his peacock clothes, his plastered-down hair, his chirping, smirking arrogance, and disrespected me for the last time.

—I know you love money, he said. This is no different from your circus performances. I’ve paid my money, now I want my show!

It was as if I had seen a ghost or worse, as if !Naeheta Magahâs herself, the horrible dwarf, the fantastical witch, the thing-that-should-never-have-been-born, had risen up before me, shaking her braids and, in the supreme insult of a Khoekhoe, showing her ass. I screamed back at her in Khoe, pleading and bowing, cajoling and begging forgiveness. Then, as the rainmaker lunged towards me, I jumped back and struck out, hitting, of course, not Magahâs but Master de Blainville, almost knocking him off his feet. He in turn began to curse at me, consigning me to hell and purgatory as a heathen. Our shouting match went on for minutes, as I leapt around from one foot to the other like a monkey, my movements jerky, frenetic and hardly human, before the baron intervened, seizing me and holding me against his chest.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the sculptor leave the room in disgust, throwing down his tools and covering my image with a cloth. He didn’t return for the final session. The other artists remained until the final moment, desperately working to finish their paintings. At last, I stepped down from my pedestal. I had won the war with Master de Blainville and he slumped, dejected, on the steps of the podium.

That night, my last appearance as Venus over, I was half asleep in my tent. Alice, who had come to fetch me, snored on the camp bed beside mine. Suddenly, the flap of the tent lifted and two dark figures loomed in the moonlight. Alarmed, I let out a little screech, which woke Alice. I knew it couldn’t be Sieur Réaux. Alice leapt to her feet, grabbing a heavy stool as a weapon, croaking,

—Who’s there?”

By that time, I was on my feet as well, a sheet pulled across my body, leaving, I remember, one breast exposed. My eyes were red and my lips trembled. I had been dreaming of the massacre.

—Don’t be alarmed, came the silky voice of Master Cuvier out of the darkness. It is only I . . . with your Emperor. His Majesty wants to inspect you.

Master Cuvier’s face appeared first, lit by a twelve-armed candelabra which shook a little, making the light flicker and giving his familiar face a sinister glow. Just behind him appeared the face of the Emperor. I knew him by sight even though he was wearing neither his three-cornered hat nor his crown. He was bareheaded, his thin brown hair combed forward and pasted to his forehead in fringes. His bright round eyes shone in the candlelight. The shadows of the tent hardened the contours of his face, yet it was a young face, I thought in surprise. My mouth had fallen open, my left hand clutched the sheet in front of me. I remained upright, frozen, while Alice dropped to her knees in a curtsy.

—Sire . . .

I almost laughed out loud, and to stop myself, I too curtsied low. The Emperor, I thought, in the King’s Botanical Gardens. To visit a freak show in the middle of the night. Would my tormentor take His Majesty to visit the baboons after he left here? I wondered. Or would it be the king-size giraffe? I was trembling with rage and with cold.

The two men stood there like their effigies in Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. Master Cuvier had on evening clothes and the Emperor was in a white uniform covered with medallions and decorations. They stared at us, two naked or practically naked women, one white and one black, as if they were visiting a lunatic asylum.
The whorehouse, the crazy house, the
workhouse, the poorhouse,
ran through my brain. These men had the power of life and death over us. Alice had called Napoleon “the Butcher of Europe” for having killed a million of his own soldiers in the name of his ambitions to conquer Europe.

Without a word, the men circled us. With his sword, the Emperor plucked away the sheet, leaving me naked. He tapped me with his stick and made the clucking sound a coachman makes to urge his horses on. Then, thinking I did not understand French, he said:

—True, the Venus does resemble a baboon. In ancient Egypt, she would be worshiped as a goddess. Certainly her arse is amazing; as for her resemblance to a hermaphrodite, it is an interesting idea and would explain her organs of generation . . . or is it a fusion of several organs?

—I have examined her thoroughly and have deduced that it is not, sire.

—You must make her part of your new report to me on the state of science in France.

—The next report will be the state of science in Europe, sire.

—All barbarians are more or less ugly people. Beauty is the inseparable companion of the most civilized nations. Of course the Negro is ugly. How could it be otherwise? There is nothing more contemptible than a Negro except a Jew. Let us forget Africa, never to return to it, for Africa is not part of the historical globe, it is outside history . . .

The Emperor walked around me one last time. He stooped low because of my smallness to have a better look at my face and to peer into my eyes. His were the eyes of a jackal. He made snorting, clucking noises like a naked ape. After he had finished his inspection and was satisfied with his conclusions, the two men departed as abruptly as they had arrived, leaving us speechless.

—The Negro presence in the world of the present, echoed Bonaparte’s voice as it receded into the distance, is there to prove how far mankind has come in establishing control over himself and his world. Otherwise, they are expendable. They represent only regression into the dark past. Like three quarters of the world’s population, they do not deserve the right to exist.

The Emperor spoke as if it were his last word on the subject. Silence closed in around us as we sat there, dressed now in our underwear, shivering.

—That little imperial penis! cursed Alice. I hop’ someone assassinates him for good! Who wan’s him back? I’ll take poor Louis any day!

I remembered that someone had once said Napoleon had only one testicle . . . like the Hottentots . . . I lay down and drifted off into a terrible dream. I was eating my leather leggings crouched on a vast frozen plain, empty of everything. My feet and hands were frozen and I had a deep wound to my skull that was surely fatal. I bled onto the crystals of snow, which stretched desertlike, treeless, to the horizon. Suddenly, I was blown away by a cannon shot, my body parts scattered in all directions, arms, legs, head, torso flew off, each portion sliced into neat quarters as an entire army marched over me, stomping my body into the ground; horses, cannon and men rolled on, trampling what was left of me under their feet until I was a tiny speck on a wide plain of white crystals, blinded and unable to breathe. I woke up coughing, my teeth chattering and my eyes full of tears. Like melted snow, they ran down my cheeks.

Alice was still asleep. In the gardens beyond, the caged animals began to awaken. Bird noises, then the scream of an orangutan, followed by the yawn of an ape, then the sneeze of an elephant. I felt sick. I felt stiff and sore, as if I really had been run down by an army. At least, I thought, the examination was finished. Never to be repeated. I would never have to see the baron again.

I dressed without waking Alice and slipped outside. In the hazy blue light of almost-morning, I walked to the monkey pavilion. I stared at the sleeping families through the high wire cage. I looked for a trapdoor that I could pry open to free them. But I found nothing. One of the free peacocks hooted behind me, and as I turned, the purple heron appeared, a fringe of foliage surrounding her. She ruffled her feathers, then, dragging her ball and chain, limped away. The air still had a cold edge, but I was covered by my shawl and my shame.

I wandered through the Jardin des Plantes until I came to the aviary with its hundreds of imprisoned birds. Indigo filtered through the mesh screening, which crisscrossed the fading Twisted Ears moon. I found the entrance. I began to pick the lock with my buttonhook as the dwarf William had taught me. I swung open the gates.

I hoped the birds would save themselves but they sat there, sleeping under their wings, until I burst into the cage myself, flapping my arms and screaming in Khoe, emitting a piercing ululation into the still air that startled them all out of their reverie. Awake now, they gathered above my head in a wedge of beating wings. They scraped against the wire mesh, searching for a way out, then understanding, at last, the wedge took flight, fleeing the prison as I never could, striking a wingbeat as they rose as one, circling higher and higher, swooping into a trajectory due east.

When I returned to the tent, Alice was frantic.

—Where were you? A servant came to say the carriage to take us home is waiting at the gate.

—And the baron?

—He sent word by the same servant that he thanked you for your contribution to science . . . And that a purse has been sent to your keeper Sieur Réaux.