Hottentot Venus (8 page)

Sometimes on my way home, I would meet the purple heron, standing in the middle of my path, blocking my passage, demanding her right-of-way. It always frightened me no matter how many times it happened. And I would always dream of the meeting that night in bed. I would lie rigid on my narrow cot, thinking that it was almost four years since I had been expelled from the orphanage and condemned to the Caesar farm. It wouldn’t kill me, I said to myself. But I knew in my heart I had exchanged one coffin for another and that I would never leave the prison of Cape Town. I would never leave the prison of the Caesar farm. I would never escape the slavery which was worse than prison and never ending against which I had no defense. Solitude stole over me like the deep blue of twilight, spreading its sadness.

5

Every organized individual forms an entire system of its own, all the parts of which mutually correspond and concur to produce a certain definite purpose by reciprocal reaction, or by combining towards the same end. Hence none of these separate parts can change their forms without a corresponding change in the other parts of the same animal, and consequently, each of those parts taken separately indicates all the other parts to which it has belonged.

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

April 1809. I first heard of the Hottentot from her master, whom I met in a tavern in Cape Town the night I disembarked from the HMS
Mercury
. His name was Hendrick Caesar, a fact I didn’t learn until the next morning.

I had ended up as his drinking partner at the Elephant Horn Tavern and I had told him that while I was ship’s surgeon on the SS
Mayfair,
Lord Farington, painter to the Court of St. James, had painted three Hottentots that had been imported from the Cape. This enterprise, I explained, had been fascinating to the general public as well as the aristocracy. During the sittings, the cream of high society filed by—Lord Darmouth, Lord Blagam, Lady Banks—not to mention the townfolk; they all came to see a Hottentot!

—Think what a sensation your servant would make in London, I exclaimed, she would be the first Hottentot to set foot there, I told him.

—And as, if you say, her shape is so extraordinary as to be absolutely
freakish,
well my friend, you would make a fortune . . .

Hendrick Caesar had only smiled into his glass of beer. I knew what he was thinking: that I was one of those new breeds of British gentlemen, white men, who roamed the British Empire searching for fortune and adventure. That I recognized neither moral nor physical limits. Blasé and cruel men like myself were basically bored and found England as small as a prison. We were aristocrats, second or third sons with no inheritance, with funny names, funny uniforms, bred to resist pain, hardship and alcohol. And he was right. Moreover he had no illusions about his own limitations. He was a provincial who had never traveled outside of the Transvaal. He had not been sent back home to school in Holland, but like his brother had been educated by clerics in South Africa. The idea of taking his Hottentot to London and exhibiting her was so outrageous he had burst out laughing.

—No, I repeated, you can make a fortune with this girl—Saartjie, your little Sarah, as you call her, enough to recoup your cattle and investment losses and send your two sons to Oxford . . .

—Well, I must say, this is the most amazing conversation . . .

—Look, I am a ship’s surgeon; I’ve traveled all over Africa and India. I supplement my income by exporting museum specimens from South Africa. I’ve just prepared a shipment which includes a giant elephant tusk, a white rhinoceros, several great ape skulls, a dozen severed trophy heads and a giraffe hide that’s sixteen feet long. Scientific exploration has exploded in the wake of colonial expansion. Scientists must conduct rigorous studies of everything that is new, rare, unusual, exotic, even monstrous in nature. Monsters, according to the great scientist Bacon, are more than a portent or a curiosity. Rather, they are one of the major divisions of nature: one, nature in course, two, nature wrought, and three, nature erring. That is, what is normal, what is artificial and what is monstrous. This last category, monsters, is the bridge between what is natural and what is artificial . . .

The Boer shook his head. He was having trouble following my discourse, but he was having a good time anyway.

—Have you ever heard of the Hottentot apron?

—Why yes, I replied, Levaillant described it in his
Travels,
but General Jensen claims it isn’t true. Isn’t it a legend?

—No, he said. It’s no legend. I’ve seen one. Saartjie has one. But how could you exhibit that . . . he asked, shaking his head.

I sat up straighter. This was really getting interesting . . . Cannibals, Amazons, mermaids, freaks were my métier. It was what I searched for, wandered the globe for, bought and sold and bartered, dying of thirst for that one moment when I possessed the unique, the precious, the scientific. It was what I lived for.

—Well, why don’t you come back to the farm with me and see for yourself?

And as morning broke, we started off for his brother’s farm. The Boer was a taciturn man without much conversation and no imagination and he had not been able to get in a word edgewise since last night. I had not shut my mouth for the past sixteen hours, and he had hung on to every word. The voyages, the miraculous escapes, the explorations, the surgical operations, the wars, the women, the wonders of Scotland. What, I wondered, hadn’t I talked about? I had certainly told him my life’s story: I had been born Alexander William Dunlop of Saint James, Middlesex, Scotland, into an upper-class family of three sons. I had been educated at home, then sent to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. I had joined the army as a surgeon, then resigned to enter the Royal Navy. I had served as a ship’s surgeon, but as I had found the work both brutal and monotonous, I had set out to make the fortune I would never inherit from my father, since everything went to my elder brother, as an adventurer and explorer. From royal and mercantile vessels, my naval assignments darkened into pirate, slaving and smuggling expeditions. My scientific training had given me a taste for exploration and my travels had expanded to China, India, America and Africa. I spoke Dutch and English, Spanish and French, German, Chinese, Xhoe and several other African dialects. I knew I seemed to the Boer not only reckless but totally lacking in moral and physical restraint. Certainly I was courageous, but to what end? It was not that I was an evil or bad man, but rather that I placed no limits on what was acceptable as a means to an end. And my purpose was fame and fortune despite the fact that I seemed to do everything to prevent this happy state of affairs. Certainly I could have married well, with my genteel upbringing and title of doctor. Or I could have become a priest, rising in social standing through Jesus Christ, or I could have become a true hero: a scientific explorer, a privateer in His Majesty’s navy, a functionary in the Home Office, even a foreign office spy in His Majesty’s service. I seemed capable of just about anything; my charm, my smile, my dark good looks would have gotten me far had it not been for some fatal flaw that even I recognized. I was rotten to the core. I am sure the Boer decided to watch his purse strings around me and not to be influenced by my charm. Then, he forgot. In the end, the conversation returned to his Hottentot. I said nothing about a cage, but it was already in my mind . . . the setting, the cruelty, the drama . . .

—Well, the Boer had reasoned, I certainly don’t think Saartjie would agree to go to London under any circumstances. She’s a shepherdess. A simple, even simple-minded, nursemaid. How could she conceive the advantage of a trip to Europe or London? Or be shown to princes and kings? Besides, I don’t think my sister-in-law would agree to part with her. She sets quite a store by her. She made me leave her at the farm instead of my taking her back with me to the reserve.

—Your sister-in-law? You, a Dutchman, not master of your own sister-in-law?

—No, he said. And we both burst into laughter.

We were still laughing when we arrived at the frontier of the Caesar farm the next day, as if we were the oldest and best of friends, although we had been perfect strangers twenty-four hours before.

—Maybe I ought to introduce myself, said Hendrick Caesar, repeating his name.

—Glad to meet you, Hendrick, my name is Dunlop, Alexander William Dunlop.

It was early evening of the same day before we actually reached the farm. I whistled at the size, breadth and beauty of it with its serene landscape of cattle grazing and wheat fields swaying.

—No reason to leave all this, I said.

—All mortgaged to the hilt, replied Caesar. They’ve already foreclosed on part of the land, beyond the ridge there.

As he spoke, I saw for the first time, his Hottentot servant come over the rise, barefoot, her gourd hanging at her waist, a bunch of wild poppies in her arms.

—Saartjie! Hey, Saartjie, come over here, I want you to meet my friend here, Mr. Dunlop.

The Boer had frowned. The Hottentot just stood there as if she were rooted to the ground, staring at me as if she had seen a ghost.

—Saartjie! I’m calling you!

—Yes, Master.

But she didn’t move. Instead she crossed her feet and offered up her flowers to me.

—Welcome, Master Dunlop.

I edged my mount closer to where she was standing, and bending down, I accepted the homage as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

—Extraordinary, I murmured, my eyes sweeping over Saartjie’s shape. Extraordinary . . .

That night after supper, which was elaborate and copious, the family retired to the salon and the Hottentot brought out the basin to wash the feet of the family. Since I was a guest, she uncovered, washed and dried my feet first. As she went on to attend to her mistress, I reached out and placed my hand on her backside.

—You have a gold mine here, Hendrick. You should profit from it. Steatopygia is a fascinating topic to Europeans. It is perfumed by sex, deformity, monstrosity and prostitution. Whatever is forbidden. And like yellow journalism, whatever is forbidden is big news. The exhibition of
lusus naturae
draws a healthy interest in London. Unusual and unnatural beings are in great vogue. The stranger the creature, the stronger the draw. After such a voluptuous end to such a fine supper, I can only compliment the lady of the house . . .

I rose then and in my bare feet padded over to Alya Caesar, kissed her hand and clicked my heels together. Since my feet were bare, this had the most hilarious effect. Everyone laughed. I endeared myself to Alya Caesar and Saartjie forgave me for touching her posterior.

Hendrick and I stayed smoking on the veranda after Alya, the children and her mother, who was visiting, retired for the night. The steward stayed to tend to our needs but I noticed Saartjie lingering in the salon to eavesdrop on our conversation. I obliged her.

—As I was saying, from 1800 to 1804 I took part in my first expedition of discovery, which was sponsored by the Paris Academy of Sciences. That’s what started me collecting specimens during my travels. The new-style anatomists and doctors wanted real cadavers, skulls, body parts. They were tired of stealing them from cemeteries. One of my first assignments on our arrival at the Cape was to look for exact information on the so-called Hottentot apron. The singularity of this organ of generation was too piquant not to have excited the curiosity of most of the individuals attached to the
état-major
of my ship. I was assistant ship’s surgeon and my friend L’Haridon, the ship’s doctor, performed some very particular observations on the kind of orgasm that part could be susceptible to. The head of the expedition was Dr. Péron. In 1805, after making a sensation in London, he lectured on the subject at the Institute of France. Many drawings were made during that expedition, by Lesueur, Petit, Lebrun, Thibault, many of which have since disappeared. Imagine setting up another sitting for other observers to draw the fabulous Hottentot. The Academy would pay a pretty penny for that privilege. As I’ve said again and again, no female of that race has ever set foot on English soil . . .

—There has always been a rumor, I continued, that the Hottentots were hermaphrodites, but it was founded only on conjecture. Several gentlemen I know took it upon themselves to resolve the problem. They discovered that the women have a supergenital membrane that falls down beyond the lips of the vulva, nothing more. I shrugged.

—But one can see how this rumor started if the female Hottentot has an appendix outside the organs of generation and the men have eliminated one testicle . . . Between the two deformities, a mythological creature was bound to be born . . .

—Then they have this strange language that sounds terrible and no nation on earth can imitate. Thank goodness they are capable of learning Dutch and English. They have no laws and no religion—they worship the moon. They don’t build or plant, and have no fixed place to live, transporting their tents and fixing them wherever they find grazing land for their cattle. They eat anything—roots, berries, entrails, raw meat, whether beast or human. If a woman has twins, one is eliminated so that the other profits from the breast, and when male children reach the age of twelve, one testicle is removed so that they can run better.

—Saartjie does have a strange language, which seems impossible to speak, said Hendrick.

—It
is
comprehensible, I said. It is one of the most complex languages in the world. Strange that it should be spoken by simpletons . . .

—Of course, I continued, Voltaire claimed they have no language at all, but this is not true. The language we speak of, Khoe, contains a set of implosive consonants, called clicks or clucks, which do not exist in the English phonological system. To further complicate things, not only do most of the words begin with a click consonant, but also the number and variety of these clicks are modified still further by vowel colorings and variations of tone and pronunciation that make it ten times more complicated than Chinese, which is possibly the world’s most difficult language . . .