The Dust Diaries

by Owen Sheers

  In an attempt to avoid any more run-ins with the overly sociable Enkeldoorn crowd, Cullen made his way around the back of the drinks tent to its far end, where, resting his shoulder against the tent’s corner pole, he could get a clear view of the sports field. From this position he watched the riders preparing for the puissance while also hoping to catch a glimpse of Cripps, with whom he still wanted to talk.

  A small group of men sat talking behind the food tent next door, and as he watched the games Cullen also listened in on their conversations and stories. They were sitting in a semi-circle, perched on upturned crates, stools and old kegs. At the moment only one of them was talking, an older man with a clear bald head beaded with droplets of sweat. Although the others listened intently Cullen had no idea what the man was saying. His voice was no more than grunts and moans, but this was of little surprise, given the state of his face.

  The speaker’s name was Bill Usher, an Enkeldoorn old-timer who’d been prospecting in the area when the 1896 uprising blew out of the bush like a sudden summer storm. In those days Bill was known for two things and neither of them was his skill as a miner. The first was his storytelling, which was the most engaging anyone knew in Southern Rhodesia, and the second was his wig, a thick head of real hair he’d had made for himself in Dar es Salaam. No one had ever seen him without the hairpiece and as far as they knew it was a permanent feature.

  On a hot afternoon back in 1894 Bill was setting charges at the bottom of a thirty-foot shaft when he broke with the habit of a lifetime and removed his wig. The heat had made his head sweat, sending rivulets of perspiration down his forehead into his eyes, blurring his vision. He placed it in his shirt pocket, then got back to lighting the fuses before shouting to the native boys at the top of the shaft to wind him up on the windlass. Like everyone else, the boys had never seen Bill without his wig, and didn’t even know what a wig was. No Mashona had ever felt the need to cover their baldness with another man’s hair. The boys were winding furiously, kicking up clouds of dust with their feet as they gripped for purchase in the soil when they saw Bill’s bald head emerging from the mine. All Bill heard was a cry of’Umtagati!’ (The Devil!) before the tension of the rope went slack, then gave altogether with a wild lurch that sent him rushing to the bottom of the shaft. The boys had fled, letting the windlass go, its twin handles flaying like a maniac’s arms as they spun backwards, sending Bill down the shaft with a rush of air punctuated by a deadening thud as the basket hit the mine’s floor.

  When Bill came to the first thing he saw was the charges, sparking and spitting like wet candle-wicks in front of his face. Realising he only had seconds before they exploded, he frantically began pulling them from their plugs and biting at the fuses. He had the last charge almost to his teeth when it went off, blasting away the fingers of his right hand and part of his lower jaw, leaving a mess of flesh, tongue and shattered mandible hanging from his face.

  Ten years later Cullen watched Bill sitting on the crate, talking with the other men. His right hand was hidden inside his jacket and a decade of healing had moulded the disaster area of his chin and mouth into a marble cast of scar tissue and bone. Most of the front of his chin had gone and skin had grown into the gap left by the explosion like ivy occupying the derelict remains of a house. His tongue had not survived, but his upper lip and jaw had, giving him a bizarre overbite above the diminished lower part of his face. He was lucky to be alive, though, and had the charges he’d bought off a scamming trader in Enkeldoorn been authentic and not mostly packed with sand he would almost certainly have been killed and wouldn’t be sitting here now, telling tales and mopping his bald head with his handkerchief.

  Bill never wore his wig again, but the accident didn’t stop him telling stories. And people still sat and listened to them. Only his oldest friends had any idea of what he might have been saying, but that didn’t seem to matter. The words went on in his head and his listeners heard the shape of them: the pace, the hand movements, the rise and fall in pitch, the tone of his eyes, the frowns, the nuances and the grim, deformed smile. It was a strange predicament, Cullen thought, watching Bill talk: a storyteller with no speech to tell his stories. If he was literate he would write, he supposed. But he couldn’t, so he was left with this language of sound and movement instead. This resonance of Ianguage. But watching him now he understood why you might want to sit and listen to Bill for a while. Maybe the old man had struck something after all: if not gold, then at least the idea that maybe this is enough, this storytelling without words. As if the words had just been obstacles after all.

  While Cullen watched the group watching Bill he also kept an eye on events on the games field, still hoping to catch a chance to talk to Father Cripps. Scanning the crowds he finally saw him, on the slope over on the far side. He was sitting with the Africans there and Cullen could see even from this distance how his body language changed when he spoke with them in Shona. His movements were more fluid and he tilted his head to one side when he listened, just as Cullen had seen the headmen do when they came and crouched outside his office. Some of the Africans wore scraps of material tied about their arms, blood red against the brown and greys of their torn and dirty shirts. These armbands were Cripps’ doing, a mark of temperance he encouraged the men to wear as a sign of their sobriety. It was, Cullen thought, a gesture typical of Cripps: forthright, simple, direct and just a little ridiculous in its naivety.

  A peal of deep laughter punctuated the end of a story behind him, perhaps one of Bill’s, with all its words unsaid. The men got up from their makeshift seats and dispersed past Cullen, making their way into the food tent. As Bill passed he acknowledged him with a curt nod of his head and what Cullen thought was probably meant to be a smile. Cullen watched him walk away, massaging the white bud of his crippled right hand with the fingers of his left.

  The beat of hooves made Cullen turn back to the field in time to see a rider canter his horse past the drinks tent, warming up for the puissance, the first equestrian event of the day. He felt a rush of tepid air as the animal passed, scents of hot horseflesh, disturbed dust and oiled saddlery blowing over him. Cullen was a keen rider himself and would usually have been entering this competition, but his own mare had thrown a shoe out in the veld last week and the ride back home had left her lame on the near fore. He didn’t want to damage her any further so he would have to settle for being an observer this year. It was a shame, he thought, she was certainly as good as any of the horses cantering about the field now, and he suspected they’d have stood a good chance of being placed, if not winning the event.

  His mare was called Daisy and over the last nine months Cullen had grown very fond of her; the idea of leaving her here when he returned to England saddened him every time he thought of it. The first time he’d ridden her in April last year was also the first time he had met Father Cripps. He was buying the horse from a local farmer and he wanted to test her on a long veld ride before parting with the eight pounds the farmer was asking for her. The communication he’d received from Salisbury requesting him to go and visit Cripps seemed like a good opportunity to try her out, especially as the round trip of twenty miles went across some good flat country over which he hoped he could test her speed. The mare, however, had only ever had the farmer as her rider and Cullen found the journey out to Wreningham somewhat unsettling, bouncing around in the unfamiliar saddle as the horse jittered and pranced beneath him, resisting the strange weight and balance on her back. On his arrival at Wreningham he soon found his visit to C. Cripps was to be no smoother a ride.

  The request from Salisbury had come down from the Chief Native Commissioner’s office in response to a letter from Cripps protesting about the recent increases in the hut tax. Apparently the priest had published a poem on the matter too, and for some reason it was this that had particularly annoyed the Governor. Cullen was to pay Cripps a visit and smooth things over with the missionary, set the record straight and explain to him why his protest was misguided. The ta
x, he would inform Cripps, was a crucial part of European governance in Southern Rhodesia.

  Cullen was not a religious man. Although raised as a Catholic, in his early twenties he’d made a conscious decision to steer clear of the church. Reason, he had argued, was what separated men from beasts, and it was to the doctrine of reason, if any religion, that he considered himself a disciple. His experiences with the missionary system in Africa had further strengthened this view. He disliked the pious attitude with which so many missionaries he’d met treated the natives. The arrogance of their evangelism annoyed him. The church, he had discovered, obtained the best land, the best farms, supported itself with church fees of one pound per head per annum, and yet its involvement in the country was frequently more disruptive than helpful. He was in Rhodesia himself to develop the country economically and socially and he couldn’t see the point in adding to this considerable burden by meddling with the natives’ souls as well.

  So it was with some degree of confidence that Cullen approached the twin gum trees of Wreningham on his new jumpy chestnut mare. Armed with his reason and unburdened by any sense of reverence, he was sure he’d have little trouble defending the administration’s actions to Father Cripps.

  ♦

  From his position resting against the tent pole Cullen watches the first competitor approach the puissance fence in the centre of the field riding a thoroughbred bay mare, her hooves beating out a rhythm on the hard ground. A few strides out he checks her with a couple of twitches on the reins, bringing her hocks under her, the muscles in her rump bunching up with restraint. Three strides out she lifts her head, the slab of her neck muscle contracting. The rider holds her there for one more stride, then gives with his hands, opening the door to her jump. With a kick of dirt and dust she bascules over the single pole and lands with a snort of her nostrils. A ripple of applause runs through the tents on either side of Cullen like a handful of stones thrown into mud.

  ♦

  Cullen had discovered Cripps outside the long pole-and-dagga shack that served as the mission’s schoolhouse. He was sitting on a wooden Shona stool reading from a Bible to a scattering of young children who sat cross-legged at his feet, fidgeting in the dust. While he waited for Cripps to finish his lesson he tied up his horse and looked around the compound. Unlike other missions he’d visited there was little to mark it out as a European settlement. Women passed between the rondavels and the raised kitchen hut carrying pots and baskets just as they did in the native kraals. Open fires smoked into the still air and a group of older men sat at a dare of stones at the far end. The only concession to the mission status of the place was the European clothing the women wore. Bright skirts replaced the usual skins and limbo wrapped around their waists, and homemade shirts covered their usually naked breasts and the filigree of dark tattoos about their waists.

  Finished with his reading, Cripps welcomed Cullen, if somewhat formally, to the mission, offering him tea outside his quarters, another pole-and-dagga hut with a crude sheet of corrugated iron for a door. As they sat on a couple of upturned crates a young woman knelt before them and held out a bowl of water for them to wash their hands. Another woman brought the tea, together with a plate of dry biscuits. Cripps spoke to both of them politely and softly and always in Shona. A herd of goats were grazing below the mission and the percussion of their bells lent the morning a delicate quality. Cullen suddenly felt incredibly calm after his jittery ride and he noticed that even his mare was now grazing contentedly where he had tethered her at the edge of the compound.

  The two men made polite conversation but Cullen could tell that Cripps was curious as to why he had come to visit him unannounced. So, blowing his fringe out of his eyes he eased himself into the topic of the hut tax, following a line of argument he had rehearsed on the long ride over from Enkeldoorn. Hoping to appeal to Cripps’ academic past he presented his case as a form of thesis, explaining his historical perspective on the current situation. Did he, he asked the priest, know what the name Mashona implied? Cripps said he thought he did but Cullen went on. It meant blanket-draggers, dogs, a nomadic people whose women and stock had been threatened for centuries by the warrior-like Matabele impis. This, he explained to Cripps, was the kind of life the settler administration had saved the Shona from, giving them roads, medical supplies, courts, schools and above all, protection. All this had to be paid for and the hut tax was the most efficient way of doing so.

  Cullen was doing his best to make this point in his most affable manner. He had, in his time, charmed farmers, police chiefs and natives with his ability to be liked and he saw no reason why he shouldn’t prove as successful with Cripps.

  Cripps listened, but he had an answer for every point Cullen made. He understood his position but didn’t he think, he asked, that his argument suffered from an asymmetry of indulgence on behalf of the philanthropic nature of European settlement? Hadn’t there been as much taking as giving? And anyway, he pointed out, the roads only go to where Europeans want to go, and the courts judge crimes and impose sentences that didn’t exist before the settlers arrived. Cullen would have to forgive him if he still considered the hut tax too high a price to pay for the disruption already caused to the Africans by the settler influence.

  Cullen was wrong-footed. He hadn’t expected such an eloquent, heart-felt response. He remembered looking hard at Cripps as he considered how to reply, trying to work out what type of a man he was, trying to find a foothold in his character that would help win him over. He also remembered thinking how old Cripps looked, old beyond his years. The Native Commissioner had said he was thirty-three, not much older than himself, and yet his tanned face already seemed too thin for the bones that supported it. His manner was athletic but reserved and his skin was lined with deep creases around his eyes from squinting over the glare of the midday veld. But the eyes themselves were not of an age with this face. His eyes, which stared unblinking at Cullen as he waited for his response, were young. Bright blue, penetrating and more than a little unsettling.

  Cullen cleared his throat and tried another approach. Weren’t the church fees that the natives paid to the missions just like the hut tax? A necessary income to keep the work of the church going in Africa? Yes, Cripps agreed, and Cullen remembered thinking here was his turning point, here was the matter on which he would win ground. But Cripps went on, quietly assuring him that he had never charged such fees at any of his churches or mission stations, nor at his mission schools. He was in fact at that moment engaged in discussions with the Synod on this very point.

  ♦

  Another horse approaches the puissance fence, which now stands at over five feet. A chestnut Arab, much like Daisy, the martingale and reins working up a lather of sweat flecking across her shoulders and neck. Cullen watches her jump, her darkened muscles straining to clear the pole. It looks as though she’s over when she hits the pole with a trailing hoof, sending it rattling from its cups and falling to the ground with a solid thud and a long cloudburst of dust. The crowd let out a collective gasp, then applaud anyway.

  ♦

  As Cullen and Father Cripps continued their discussion outside Cripps’ ramshackle hut that day back in April, Cullen became increasingly confused and frustrated by the missionary. Cripps possessed a remarkably harsh view of the BSA Company’s administration which seemed unshakable. When the priest quoted Shelley to him (‘What more felicity can fall to creature ⁄ Than to enjoy delight with liberty?’) Cullen had quoted from the ‘Dual Mandate’ in reply, arguing that in following this mandate (to help existing forms of government develop and evolve), he was bringing law to the country. Law, he had said, feeling his composure slip, which is designed to bring liberty to all. Cripps dismissed this assertion, as he did so many of Cullen’s points that day, with a wave of his hand, insisting the Dual Mandate was thwarted by the Company’s self-interest. Cullen shook his head first in disbelief, then in mild amusement. It was clear that whatever he said he would not change Cripps’ view of the
hut tax as anything other than a form of forced labour. By now, however, he didn’t even have to talk to evoke Cripps’ opinion, and Cullen sat by, listening to the goat bells and winking at the pot-bellied young children standing at a distance viewing him cautiously as Cripps expounded his theories on everything from race relations to agricultural techniques.

  As Cullen sat and listened to Cripps speak the contradictions that the priest revealed in himself both fascinated and irritated him. From what he could tell, like most missionaries Cripps was strongly opposed to many of the traditional practices of Shona witchcraft. He had no time for the superstitious fear of curses and he didn’t allow polygamists to live on mission land. And yet in the same breath he appeared greatly in awe of the Shona capability for faith, of their highly developed spiritual intelligence. Cullen found himself being given an impromptu lesson in the Shona system of belief, which, as Cripps said, was much more than mere animism. He was, Cullen remembered, especially taken with the Shona’s relationship with their dead ancestors, the sprits of dead grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles, mothers and brothers that governed over the fates of the living. As he got more excited it seemed to Cullen that Cripps was even making parallels between the Shona belief system and his own. He referred to the practice of chisi, the Shona day of rest, and each tribe’s Mhondoro as an example of worshipping one deity. One comment in particular, though, had stayed with Cullen, and had perhaps given him his first insight into what drove Cripps’ character. Taking a sip of his tea (which Cullen was sure must have gone cold while he was speaking) Cripps had said in his quiet manner, but firmly, as if it was his final statement on the subject: ‘You know, there are many Shona out here who are better Christians without knowing it than some of the settlers who call themselves such. They may not go to church like the Europeans, but believe me, spiritually and in their practices, they are the more mature Christians.’