The Headhunter's Daughter

by Tamar Myers

  Then, of course, there was the matter of the falls. As dramatic as the west view was, it came with a price. One simply could not have a decent first conversation with all that distraction, not to mention the noise.

  But when she stepped out onto the east terrace that Wednesday morning, in October of 1958, the table was utterly bare and there was no sign of the staff.

  “Protruding Navel,” she called heading toward the kitchen. Immediately she regretted doing so, for her tone had been a little too sharp. Think twice before you say anything, her mother always said, and Mama was a well-bred Southern belle who never misspoke. Mama certainly would never have raised her voice to the help.

  Amanda started to the kitchen at a fast clip, but stopped short when, looking through the large window that faced the mighty Kasai River, she saw a scene that nearly made her blood boil. There, on the western terrace, sitting as comfortably as three big cheeses, were the missionaries she’d checked in the night before. Why, the nerve of those people! And what was Protruding Navel about to do? Not serve them coffee!

  The young woman, a new missionary of only a few months’ standing, ran for the kitchen and the large bell affixed to the back-door frame. She may as well have taken baby steps and stopped to nap along the way; that’s how long it took Protruding Navel to respond to the bell’s deep metallic clang—a sound that, by the way, could be heard all the way across the river.

  “Eh, what is it, Mamu?” he asked with studied casualness, as if she’d caught him reading, and he was looking up from a book. Reading! Ha, now that would be the day.

  “Protruding Navel, what are the bakalenge doing on the west terrace? Is that where we breakfast?”

  “Forgive me, Mamu, but I do not recall where it is that we breakfast.”

  Amanda managed a weak smile. “You are skillful at playing word games, Protruding Navel, but that is not what I am paying you for, is it?”

  “No, Mamu.”

  “Please set new breakfast things on the east terrace while I speak to the bakalenge.”

  “Eyo,” Protruding Navel said.

  Amanda watched him saunter off as if he had all the time in the world. Well, that was Protruding Navel for you. He didn’t like women; he especially didn’t care for women issuing him orders, even if they were his employer. But the two of them had an understanding; at least that was a start.

  “That houseboy is too cheeky,” Mr. Gorman said. When he spoke, his ears moved and his jowls quivered. “If it were up to me, I’d fire him. Allowing that sort of attitude—especially now—is just asking for trouble. And it reflects badly on the rest of us missionaries as well. It makes us come across as weak. Just because we’re missionaries, that doesn’t mean we have to put up with abuse.”

  “Harry,” Mrs. Gorman said, “take it easy on this poor thing; she’s only just arrived.”

  “I’ve been here two months,” Amanda said. She’d foolishly made it sound like she was trying to come across as an “old-timer.” What a joke. It only felt like she’d lived in the Belgian Congo for most of her life. It was the Gormans who were the real “old-timers.” Twenty-one years in May, they’d said. Tomorrow they were going to catch the plane to Leopoldville, the capital city, and from there another plane back to the United States, where they were due a year’s furlough. Every five years one was supposed to get a furlough . . .

  “Hey, is there any other kind of jam except marmalade?”

  “Hay is for horses,” Mrs. Gorman said, with a twinkle in her eye, to their fifteen-year-old daughter. “Now ask Aunt Amanda nicely if she has another kind of jam.”

  That was another thing! Aunt Amanda! In the Belgian Congo the children of missionaries had to call every female missionary “Aunt,” and every male missionary “Uncle.” It didn’t matter if the two parties weren’t related, or if they were almost the same age.

  Amanda turned to the girl. “I’m awfully sorry; I haven’t any other kind of jam. It has to come all the way up from South Africa by ship, then up the Congo River by boat, and I was late getting in my order—”

  “I told the home office to send someone more experienced,” Mr. Gorman said.

  “Leave her alone,” the woman named Dorcas said gently. Dorcas was an unmarried woman, a self-proclaimed “old maid” who had already served in the Belgian Congo almost fifty years. In a year she would retire. Now she had come to use the rest house for its primary purpose: as a place of rest. Tomorrow she would drive across the river and visit the Belgian town of Belle Vue, where she had many friends, and where there was limited shopping.

  “I was only stating a fact,” Mr. Gorman said. He turned his head, an act that set a considerable amount of flesh into motion. “Boy! Boy! I want more coffee!”

  Amanda rang a small brass bell next to her cup. The overall shape was a Southern belle. It had been a gift from the previous manager of the rest house.

  “Mamu?” Protruding Navel seemed to appear out of nowhere.

  “Protruding Navel, please get muambi some more coffee.”

  “Yes, Mamu.”

  “Protruding Navel is it?” Mr. Gorman said. “All these years in the Congo and I still can’t get over some of the crazy names.”

  “It’s only that their names actually mean something,” Dorcas Middleton said, her voice still gentle and calm. “It is a shame that in our culture we seem to have lost that feature—of course there are exceptions. Like in your case.”

  “What do you mean?” Mr. Gorman demanded.

  “Your name means something, doesn’t it? Oh, it’s not spelled the same way, granted, but nonetheless, to the ear it’s the same thing.”

  The teenager giggled. Amanda was tempted to do likewise. Harry Gorman was indeed very hairy—just not on top of his head. There he had almost nothing at all. But the rest of him was covered in a pelt of red fur that curled over the back of his shirt collar and burst from the V at his neck like the tshisuku when the rains finally came.

  Mrs. Gorman put a freckled hand on her husband’s brown hairy arm. “It’s not the same, Dorcas,” she said quickly.

  Harry shook off his wife’s restraining hand. “Does the boy speak English?”

  “No, sir,” Amanda said. “I was told in orientation class that I was not to teach the Africans any English. Any English at all.”

  “You were told right, young lady. We need a way to talk amongst ourselves openly. Because it’s fellows like this who are going to give us a hard time come independence. I almost envy Dorcas here. She’s not going to have to see all her hard work go down the drain.”

  “Oh come now, Mr. Gorman,” his wife said, “don’t be such a pessimist.”

  “What’s a pessimus?” the girl asked.

  “It’s pronounced pessimist,” Dorcas said.

  Across the river the Operations Manager of the Belle Vue Mine Consortium—or, OP for short—was taking his breakfast alone. It was a damn shame too, given that his was the best view in town, maybe even in all of the Belgian Congo. The house clung to the side of the cliff like a swallow’s nest, with one end of the horseshoe-shaped waterfall directly below him. Across the mist and rainbow-filled chasm was another residence with a spectacular view: the Missionary Rest House.

  The OP was eating his freshly baked croissants with mango jam—from the company store—and drinking his coffee out on one of his many garden terraces. Of course had it been raining, he would have been eating inside. Rain was always a possibility now that it was October, the suicide month, so named by denizens of the southern tropics because the intense humidity had been known to drive Europeans from temperate climes to take their own lives. Yet the OP was loathe to spend time inside his new home, for it was still decorated in the taste of its former occupant, his blue-blooded Portuguese mistress.

  Ah, what a fine woman Senhora Nunez was! She was far too good for the man she’d called husband—that scum-sucking manager he’d hired to run the company store, and who’d mysteriously disappeared along with all the cash at hand. Unfortunately, this
had happened at about the time the OP’s wife took a nosedive over the falls in a stolen truck, so he hadn’t had time to bring closure to the matter.

  Wasn’t one supposed to wax sentimental about such things? Maybe shed a few tears into the Johnnie Walker Red that flavored his coffee? Well, remind him to do that tomorrow. The two months he’d just spent in Belgium on leave had taken enough of the edge off the pain so that he could still do his job. That’s all that really mattered, wasn’t it? Because the measure of a man was what he did, and the purpose of living was to do it right.

  In this case doing it right meant starting over with new houseboys that were loyal only to him. Too bad there wasn’t a school for such a thing nearby. A cold hire from the village was always such a crapshoot, and as for following someone else’s recommendation, those were just as reliable as blind dates.

  “Monsieur,” said his new houseboy, a tall broad-shouldered fellow with the Christian name of Jacques, “there is someone here to see you.”

  The OP swallowed a particularly full swig of comfort. “A black somebody, or a white somebody?”

  “A person, monsieur; a white somebody.”

  Chapter Three

  Cripple was late to work as usual. But now she had a proper excuse, did she not? After all, she was a heroine, a symbol of freedom for her people. At least she had been for one glorious hour.

  Independence! They had cried as one voice, though two thousand souls strong. And they had hoisted Cripple’s twisted little body to their strong shoulders and carried her aloft as they chanted and danced their way defiantly back across the river to the workers’ village. But then once back on their own turf, on the land reserved for them by their Belgian masters, they set Cripple down—not roughly, but not as befits a heroine either—and resumed their old ways.

  “Ah, there she is,” Amanda said, upon spying Cripple trying to slip into the house unnoticed. “Cripple,” she called in the Tshiluba language, “please come here.”

  Cripple eyed the scene around the breakfast table warily. This morning her young American mistress had company. Cripple was already well acquainted with the equally young Belgian police chief, but she’d only seen the OP from a distance—when viewed from the top of a gallows he’d seemed ever so much smaller.

  The other people were American missionaries. You could tell by the way they were dressed. Americans were always dressed as if it were the coldest July morning: they kept their arms and legs covered at all times. Cripple had asked the young mamu the reason for this, and was astounded to hear that it had nothing to do with the temperature, but rather with shame. Their God was ashamed of his creation and wished for them to hide it until their death, at which time he would give them a new body.

  “And will you have to cover that new body too?” Cripple had asked.

  “Of course,” Mamu had said. “There will most certainly not be naked people running about heaven.”

  “But will not these new bodies be perfect?”

  “Yes, of course they will.”

  “Will the men have baby-making sticks and the women breasts?”

  “No! There will be no need for that in heaven!”

  “Then Mamu, I think your god must be very new at his craft, for then clearly he wishes to hide his mistakes.”

  “God does not make mistakes, Cripple!”

  Cripple had been unable to suppress her laughter. “Mamu, you have but to look at me, and say my name, to know that this is not the case.”

  “Cripple,” Mamu had said, her unhealthy white skin turning the color of a ripe boil in need of lancing, “this conversation is over.”

  “Indeed it is, Mamu,” Cripple had said, “because I have no intention of discussing this matter further. Let it be known, not one word.”

  At that the young white woman had fumed and stomped away like a petulant child. But now all was forgiven, for as the saying goes: “Everyone makes mistakes, but it is the old women who are able to forgive.”

  “Cripple! Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, Mamu,” Cripple said. She hurried to stand just to the right, and slightly behind, her mistress. “Forgive me, Mamu, but I am old, and sometimes lost in my thoughts.”

  “Lazy is more like it,” the American man muttered to his wife in English. Although Cripple did not understand his words, she felt them.

  “This is my housekeeper, Cripple,” Mamu said to the others around the patio table. “She speaks Bushilele. Don’t you, Cripple?”

  Cripple thought fast and hard. What had she told Mamu? It had always seemed strange to Cripple that the white man regarded words as if they were stones, and their stories like walls that were built with these stones. Did they really believe that this man Jonah was swallowed by a fish? Cripple had never seen a fish as large as this; but the giant forest rat—no, she had never seen one quite so large either, but what did that matter? Was not the point of the story that here was a man who was unhappy because his God had agreed not to punish the man’s enemies if they repented?

  “Cripple,” Mamu said gently, “either you speak this language, or you do not.”

  “No one speaks that language,” the American said, this time in Tshiluba, so that Cripple could understand. “It is just a bunch of gibberish if you ask me.”

  “I speak it,” Cripple said. But in truth, Cripple knew only a few phrases of greeting and departure. There had once lived, next door, a beautiful Mushilele girl the same age as Cripple—nine years or so—with long legs and a slender neck, and skin so black that Cripple longed to touch it for the feel of it. When they weren’t helping their mothers in the manioc fields, or tending the babies, or sweeping their family compounds, or weaving thatch, they sat in the shade of an old mango tree, side by side, and swatted at flies in companionable silence. Kahinga—for this was the girl’s name—was Cripple’s only friend.

  Then one morning, when Cripple awoke, she discovered that her friend was gone. During the night Kahinga had started to bleed from the secret place, and thus had been taken to the home of her husband. Her husband? Yes, Cripple was finally told through an interpreter. Kahinga had been promised in marriage before birth, as was the custom of the Bashilele tribe.

  “Good,” Captain Jardin, the police chief said. “Then it is settled, oui?”

  “Excuse me, Captain,” Cripple said boldly, for she was not afraid of any white man, most especially the captain, whom she knew to possess a good heart. “What is settled?”

  The captain pursed his lips before speaking. He’d been born in the Congo of Belgian parents and spoke Tshiluba fluently, yet he seemed to take extra care in choosing his words.

  “Uh—thirteen years ago a white baby—just three weeks of age—uh, disappeared—”

  “I remember, Captain. I was living here at the time.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. You are a local woman. Very good then. At any rate, as you know, the baby was never found and neither has the baba been seen since then. However, there was a Mushilele arrow embedded in the—uh—I am sorry; I do not know the word for this.”

  “It does not matter,” the OP said, waving his hands impatiently. His Tshiluba was heavily accented, like that of a newcomer, although it was known by all that he had lived off the Congo for many years. “Proceed with the situation, Captain.”

  “Oui, Monsieur OP. Madame Cripple, it has come to our attention that a white girl is living with the Bashilele of the Tshitumpampa village.”

  “Aiyee!” Cripple pressed her hand to her cheek.

  “What is it?” Mamu asked.

  “Tshitumpampa is actually a Tshiluba word,” the captain explained matter-of-factly in English. “It translates as ‘corpse with the head cut off.’ ”

  “Mon Dieu!” said the OP. “Quell savage!”

  The captain stiffened. “At any rate, Mademoiselle Amanda and I have decided to investigate the situation. If this girl is indeed white—and not an indigenous albino—there needs to be a resolution. Do you not agree?”

  Cripple took an unco
nscious step backward. “Monsieur OP is right,” she said. “The Bashilele are savages, headhunters. If this girl was a white—like you—her head would now be a drinking cup. A very small one, of course.”

  A sputtered laugh caused Cripple to turn. In the doorway of the kitchen stood Protruding Navel, the head housekeeper. The only tribe he despised more than Cripple’s—she was a Muluba, and he a Lulua—was the Belgian tribe.

  “Cripple!” Mamu said. “That was very insensitive of you.”

  “Well, I guess that answers our question,” Captain Jardin said.

  “What question is that?” Cripple said.

  “We need an interpreter.”

  “But I need my head, monsieur.”

  There it was again; that wicked laugh. This time the arrogant man dared to speak unbidden in the presence of so many white strangers. “Not only is the little one afraid to go, but she does not speak the babble that some have called a language.”

  “Enough!” Mamu snapped angrily, for indeed at times she did lose her temper. “You will go back to your work in the kitchen.”

  Protruding Navel smirked. “As you say, Mamu.”

  “Wait,” Cripple said loudly. Although her voice was authoritative, her knees were shaking. “I will go with you. I will leave with you now, if that is what you wish.”

  Amanda felt dazed by the morning’s events. It had begun with a normal breakfast, albeit one made slightly unpleasant by the presence of Mr. Gorman, missionary in passing. As a Christian, one is supposed to love one’s neighbors, but people like Mr. Gorman made it a challenge. At least his wife and daughter weren’t so hard to like, and the other woman, the elderly Dorcas—well, she wasn’t exactly cuddly like a grandma, but at least she didn’t act like a know-it-all.

  The Gormans were scheduled to depart the next morning for Leopoldville, but then the police captain dropped by with a bombshell that changed everything. It was one thing for Dorcas to volunteer to stay on at the rest house by herself—after all, she had planned to stay that entire week—but it didn’t make a lick of sense for the Gorman family to postpone their furlough. Surely that would cost them rebooking fees, and then they would have to cable their loved ones and tell them—tell them what exactly? That they had decided to stay on in Africa indefinitely to see if some rumors panned out to be true?