Owen Sheers - The Dust Diaries

The corridors and the wards of Enkeldoorn hospital are quiet. This is the only time of the day and night when they are: in the twilight before dawn, sharp, bright stars in a sky which is draining from black, through purple, to blue. The groaning, the coughing, the sound of the nurses’ shoes on the hard floors have all stopped, and the hospital is quiet. Even the trees outside the windows are still. There is no wind. The flies and the mosquitoes have not yet risen into the warmth of the day and the cicadas and grasshoppers have not yet begun their chorus.

Thomas Shonhe lies on the floor of a private ward in the European wing. He is the only African in this part of the building. The English Sister has made many complaints to the doctors about his presence, but the doctors are respecting Father Cripps’ wishes. The old priest had said clearly when he was admitted almost a month ago that he wanted Thomas to stay with him. Since that day, 8 July, Thomas has not left Arthur’s room. He has watched the nurses wash Baba Cripps, and give him medicine, then, when they are gone, he has cared for him himself, in the way that Fortune told him to and in the way that he knows Baba Cripps expects him to. He lies now, on the floor beside Baba Cripps’ bed, drifting between sleep and wakefulness. When he wakes, he listens for the faint sound of Baba Cripps’ breath, the passing of air in his throat and his lungs. It is a gentle breathing, a sighing, like the wind weaving through the reeds by the river.

Arthur is lying on his back, his forearms hanging off each side of the bed, his palms held upwards. It is nearly a month since he was brought here in a car from Maronda Mashanu. It is over ten years since Noel Brettell last visited him and read him Keats and Tennyson, over a month since Fortune washed him and over three months since he dictated the codicil of his will to Leonard. But tonight, here in the hospital, he has been living all these memories again. Tonight he has seen Bishop Gaul again, Prank Weston, the alleyways of Zanzibar . Tonight he has raced in the New Year games and watched soldiers and porters die on the shores of Lake Victoria. Tonight he has seen the building of his church and the burning of his mission stations. He has written his poems, read the letters of his life and walked across Mashonaland, sleeping under her stars with his red blanket about him. Tonight he has spoken with headmen about land, lain in his rondavel listening to the waking life of Maronda Mashanu, heard the whirr and tick of Leonard’s bike’s wheels. Tonight he has been cold in summer and hot in winter, heard when he is deaf, seen when he is blind. And tonight he has fallen in love with Ada again. He has lain beside her by the river, felt the heat in her hair, the sun on his face and remembered her voice in his ear.

The steel edges of the bed are digging into the backs of his arms, and as he lies there, between sleep and consciousness, between life and death, the blood flow to his hands is restricted. But he does not feel any pain. Instead, he feels, through the layers of his sleep, through the darkness of his blindness, that he is holding two glowing globes of light and warmth in each palm, two handfuis of sunlight, heating in his fingers.

The paper-thin skin of his cheek billows in and out with each shallow breath like a sail, catching the lightest of breezes. The breath tapers in the hollow of his mouth, plays in the canvas of his skin, softens, then dies. And with its dying, Arthur dies too, holding a globe of light in each palm and with a gold and red nidiance firing behind his eyes, like the leaves of the musasa tree in autumn, flicking on and off in the wind.

♦

Lying on the floor, Thomas wakes and listens for Baba Cripps’ breath, and hears nothing. Everything is still. He raises himself under his blanket and kneels by the bed. He looks up a! Arthur’s face in time to see the sinking of his one remaining eye, like a pebble easing itself into mud, until his eyelid is flat across the socket, calm as a windless lake. Thomas looks at Baba Cripps’ face and he knows it has happened. He stands, lifts Arthur’s arms onto the bed and pulls the blanket up to his neck. Then he walks to the door and looks down the dim, bare corridor. There is nothing and no one. He looks back at Baba Cripps, at his face which is draining of life, of light, then softly closes the door as if he might still wake him. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he walks down the empty corridor to find the night nurse, the bare soles of his feet slapping on the hard concrete floor in the quiet twilight of Enkel-doorn hospital on the morning of 1 August 1952.

Stand 92

Commandant Street

Chivhu

3rd September 2000

Dear Owen,

Sorry for delaying in writing to you. I was somehow busy but I did not give up.

My name is Thomas Shonhe, the one who was with your relative ‘Arthur Shell Crips’ for his last three years up to the day when he passed away.

When I was with him we walked together. On Mondays we would leave the mission Maronda Mashanu to Chivhu Town on foot to pray for the sick in Chivhu Hospital. People with their sick relatives would ask him to come and pray for the sack. We spent three days in Chivhu. On Wednesdays evening we left Chivhu back to Maronda Mashanu where he had a church service with sermon. This is how we were operating when I was with Shell Arthur Crips during my stay with him.

Shell Crips was old by the time I stayed with him. He suffered from diarreah for at least three months. I Thomas Shonhe, my duty was to direct him where to go since he was blind. I had to cook for him and wash him. Mr Mamvura was his clerk by that time.

Arthur Shell Crips died in Chivhu hospital when we were just two. We were in a private ward. After his death I went to call the nurses. The burial was arranged and he was buried at Maronda Mashanu.

After the burial they requested his clothes. I gave them.

Yours loving

Thomas Shonhe

§

The Link , September 1952

A GREAT MULTITUDE

The Burial of Father Cripps

Father Cripps had many times expressed Ids wish that a lot of money should not be wasted on his funeral, and this wish was honoured in the very simple but moving burial services on the afternoon of Sunday, 3rd August. All the arrangements were made by Daramombe Mission, which incorporates the earlier Wreningham where he lived and worked for 25 years: the coffin was made in the Mission workshop. There was no hearse; the coffin was carried in a van lent and driven by Mudiwa Bill, the Enkeldoorn bus proprietor.

The body lay in the little church of St Cyril, where he used to minister in times past, from 11 on Sunday morning till half-past two, when the first part of the Burial Service began. It was read in English by the Rev. R.H. Clark, of Daramombe, and the Rev. Richard Nash, of Umvuma, played the organ. Two hymns were sung: ‘Blest are the pure in heart’ and ‘Sun of my Soul’. The congregation of Europeans, Indians, Coloured and Africans was much too big for the church to hold.

From St Cyril’s the procession of cars made its way to Father Cripps’ home at Maronda Mashanu. A quarter of a mile from there the cars stopped and the coffin was taken up by the six bearers — Mr N.H. Brettell and Mr W. Siewart of St Cyril’s; Inspector Dufton, B.S.A.P (representing the Civil Commissioner); Mr J. Mutasa and Mr G. Mandaza, old friends of Father Cripps, and Mr D. Taranyika, Headmaster of Daramombe School. A vast crowd of Africans was waiting there in silence. Suddenly three shots rang out, women began to wail, and a group of men broke into a war dance and a famous heathen song used only to honour a great chief, while old men who had known Father Cripps almost all their lives took the coffin from the pallbearers and bore it to the church of the Five Wounds, while the great company sang hymns, including one in Shona written by Father Cripps himself. The spontaneous tribute by heathen and Christian alike in the vast concourse was inexpressibly moving, showing how greatlj the African people loved and admired him whose love for them was so sincere. As one of the Africans said, ‘Father Cripps must aave smiled in his coffin.’