Owen Sheers - The Dust Diaries

The Reverend Smith of Nyasaland, arriving as an interim appointment at Wreningham in early 1933, did not share the Bishop’s liberal views. He had been forewarned about the presence of Cripps in his parish and he established himself in his new post with a series of announcements designed to bring some order to the chaos that he found around him. Within his first week Smith insisted that individual church payments for each African mission station be paid in full. Those behind in their dues, he refused Communion, and those stations which remained delinquent in their payments would be disestablished as places of worship altogether. Which is why, on this May morning at the end of the rainy season the Reverend is travelling across the rough dirt roads of the district, a match box rattling in the glove compartment of his car and a steel can of petrol swilling and sloshing in its boot.

Since his arrival in Mashonaland Cripps had built over thirty native mission stations. They were primitive structures, no more than pole and dagga shepherd shelters, built in the style of his church, with crude wooden crosses and altars of piled stones. Cripps stayed in them himself on his long treks through the area, and performed marriages, christenings and funerals in them for the Africans who lived too far from the mission centres of the district. Reverend Smith had counted thirty-seven such stations on his books when he arrived at Wreningham. This morning though, as he drives on through the veld sitting beside Peter, his African driver, peering through the wiper arc in the dust on the windscreen, there are just thirty-three. The remaining four no longer exist other than as patches of darkened earth and blackened stone, carpeted with a soft floor of ash blown in the morning breeze.

Although failure of church dues was his public reason for the burning of these shelters, the Reverend Smith also had personal motives founded more on ideas of aesthetics and theology than administration. The buildings were clearly unsafe, and they were dirty and untidy and their architecture, though no doubt authentically African, was in no way a suitable reflection of the glory of God. There was, he felt, a purifying quality in the flames that gathered at the fringes of the thatch before rushing hungrily up to the apex of the stations’ roofs. A holy judgement and an eradication of chaos where he would build order.

Encouraged by his morning’s efforts Reverend Smith was now making his way over to Cripps’ own church. The man had no licence from the Anglican Church, refused to pay his dues and taught his African parishioners an obstinacy and wilfulness that could only encourage instability. He had clearly lost his way and the local clergy, cowed by long acquaintance with his bullying tactics, had lost their nerve. He, however, had not, and he drove towards Maronda Mash-anu filled with the satisfying inner warmth known only to those of holy righteousness and decisive intent.

♦

Patrick is tending his father’s herd of goats, following their gradual flow all morning as they move across the river bank, their heads down, tearing and chewing at the grass. He is only ten years old but he knows how important his job is. As he told his friend Denys yesterday, his grandfather is Chief Wadsango, one of the two headmen who first came to live on Baba Cripps’ farms. As such, his grandfather is one of the most important men in the area and as his youngest grandson, Patrick is one of the most important sons. When Denys asked him why he is so important Patrick simply answered, with the certainty of one possessed of great knowledge, because his lather had told him so. No other proof was required.

At first Patrick does not see Reverend Smith’s car, just the dust it disturbs behind it, a pale plume dispersing as it rises, hazing the clear morning air. Still, he knows it is the sign of a car, so he stands from where he has been crouching against a tree and moves the goats further from the side of the road. Holding out his stick he shoos them on with short barks from the back of his throat, the bells at their necks sounding a tremulous percussion to their movement. The goats settle at their new patch and it is when they are grazing again, the sound of their bells trickling out to the odd hesitant ring, that Patrick hears the other noise. At first he thinks it is the car, then maybe one of the new planes the farmers use to spray their crops, their fabric double wings fragile against the sun. But it is too low, too near to be a plane. A droning hum gathering in volume, a ball of sound rolling down a hill.

Suddenly the sound hits the trees and becomes physical, a thousand tiny thwacks and clips as it streams through the leaves and branches of the bush. Patrick looks about him, trying to see what he can hear. At first there is nothing, just the same still morning, gathering heat, the tall trees at his back, a clear sky. But as he looks up at it the clear sky develops dots of darkness which grow like cells dividing. And then Patrick sees the swarm. A tower of bees, rising out of the foliage from the direction of Baba Cripps’ church. A dark plume mirroring the plume of dust behind the Reverend’s car, that also disperses as it builds, but then tightens again, a black lung of air, swelling and contracting above the treetops — waiting.

Patrick doesn’t move. His father has told him stories about Baba Cripps and the bees. How, like the most powerful n’angas , Baba Cripps can control their flight, move them about the air as easily as he moves his goats across the river bank. When he wants to be alone, or if there is a storm at night and the rain is slanting into his hut, then the bees come and gather at his doorframe, covering it right across, a moving, buzzing curtain to keep Baba Cripps warm and undisturbed. Patrick is sure these are the same bees and as he stares at their gathering mass he tries to think what he might have done wrong. But then he sees the Reverend’s car coming around the corner of the road, hears the rattle of its engine under the bonnet, and he realises that the bees may not have come for him after all.

♦

Reverend Smith cannot hear the sound of the bees above the car’s engine and the clatter and bumping of its chassis as they drive over the pock-marked road. He is staring so intently through the clouds of dust rising past his window that he does not see them either, and the first time he is aware of their presence is when he feels the sun pass away from his lap, as if a large cloud had blocked out its light. He glances up at the sky through his side window, confused. It is clear, as it has been all morning, with not a cloud to be seen.

Suddenly the car stops, jerking the Reverend forward so he hits his head against the edge of the window frame. Rubbing his temple he turns to reprimand Peter, but stops, his mouth open, half-way through the first word. Peter is staring, white-eyed, through the windscreen with both his hands on the steering wheel and his chauffeur’s cap tipped to the back of his head. And it is then, as the Reverend follows Peter’s locked gaze, that he sees the bees: a broad swarm of them, hanging in the air above and just in front of the car, blocking out the sun, rising and falling as if on the currents of the sea.

‘Please, sah, your window!’ Peter is looking at the Reverend now, winding his hand in rapid motion in an impression of the window’s mechanism. But the Reverend cannot take his eyes off the bees. A thick dark stream of them is still rising out of the trees, flowing into the swarm, bulking it out by the second. Peter reaches across him and winds the window himself, then, shifting the car into gear with a grating noise that is hidden under the white noise of the swarm, he accelerates forwards, the car’s tyres skidding and sliding on the dusty, pebble-strewn road.