Читать книгу Parts Unknown - Zirk van den Berg - Страница 4

He was twenty-four years old and had come close to dying every winter of his life. It set him apart from others who did not recognise their own vulnerability. His tunic was a size or two too big around the chest, but the yearning in his heart was bigger still. He was going to Africa.

Beside him, a horse was being hoisted from the ship’s hold, hanging in a sling with its hooves treading the air. In the thick fog, he couldn’t see the top of the crane; it was as if the animal were suspended from heaven. A steam engine throbbed and gears ground as the frantic horse was swung over the edge of the ship, and lowered into a lighter that heaved on the dark swell.

Someone nudged him in the ribs; it was his turn. Holding onto the railing, he put one leg over the edge of the ship and onto the rope ladder. As he climbed down to the longboat, the weight of the backpack pulled him back, setting his arms and legs a-trembling.

He was the last man down and sat in the bow, facing aft towards the rest of the platoon. Some of the soldiers and the oarsmen were arguing about who would have won the cancelled football league final between Berlin and Leipzig. The next season was already well underway, with only two months to the 1905 final in May, but fans were still debating the biggest non-event of the year before. The sailors used the oars to push away from the steel hull of the Jeanette Woermann, and started rowing. The oars hit the water, leaving two evenly spaced lines of foam circles that dissipated slowly. Gulls appeared overhead, flapping their sickle-shaped wings. The rowlocks creaked and clicked, the birds shrieked, and the air throbbed with the distant boom of breakers on an unseen shore. The heavy morning fog, laced with salt, obscured the surroundings. He heard voices from what seemed like open sea, but he knew they had to come from other ships in the bay. There were about ten of them. He had seen them when the Jeanette Woermann dropped anchor the evening before. Now he looked at the men in the boat, the sailors rowing and the soldiers sitting stiffly shoulder to shoulder, their backpacks between their knees. They wore dark khaki uniforms with grey felt hats, the right side of the brims pinned up against the crown with imperial cockades of red, white and black. Already, the steamer that had been their home since they left Hamburg almost a month ago was lost to sight. Nor could he see any sign of the land they were going to. He peered into the fog, and was eventually rewarded with a flash of light that became clearer with each repetition. Was that the vertical line of the lighthouse he saw? Then, looking over his shoulder, he saw dark shapes solidifying in the murk – columns of wood with crisscrossed beams. Details came into view: a crust of barnacles on the wood and heavy rope braided into bulky knots to cushion the impact of ships. From what they had been told, ships used to land here, but the harbour had silted up. Since then, longboats and lighters had become the only means of landing the people, animals and freight that flooded into German South-West Africa.

The sailors stopped rowing, letting the boat glide towards the jetty. A figure loomed above them and called on them to throw him a rope. One of the oarsmen stood up, and with widely planted feet, tossed up the tether. The rope went taut, pulling the boat against a squared wooden pole, where it scraped up and down with the swell. A rope ladder tumbled down from above.

‘C’mon up!’

The men shouldered their packs and rifles, amid appeals to keep the boat steady.

He was up first. He grabbed the ladder, placed his foot on a rung and lifted himself out of the boat. It was the first time since the stopover at Las Palmas that his weight was not borne by water.

As his head appeared above the edge of the jetty, a black man reached out a hand towards him. He hesitated. Of course, he knew there would be black people here, but he hadn’t expected to see one so soon, so close.

A sergeant standing on the jetty with a pencil and notebook shouted at him. ‘Hurry up, you’re not a tourist!’

He took the proffered hand and was pulled up onto the jetty. Not sure how to respond to his helper’s humanity, he didn’t look the man in the face, and turned to the sergeant instead.

The sergeant looked him up and down. ‘Is that all of you?’

He wasn’t more than a few centimetres below average height, but he was slightly built, and wearing a uniform that was too big heightened the effect. When their uniforms were being issued, the quartermaster didn’t have his size and gave some excuse about soldiers filling out later; he had seen it a hundred times, people coming to get new uniforms when their still serviceable ones had burst at the seams.

‘It’s as much of me as the world can handle,’ he said, without mustering enough energy to make the remark witty rather than sullen.

The sergeant pulled a wry face. ‘This army’s going to hell … Name and rank?’

‘Siegfried Bock, Reiter.’

The sergeant put a mark in his book. ‘Land’s that way,’ he indicated.

Siegfried set off, eager to be the first of his group to set his foot on the new continent. Other boats had come up against the jetty, bringing crates of goods. He could see a mechanical crane, and heard the puffing of a steam engine in the fog. As soon as the crane set down goods on the jetty, they were picked up and carried landward by black men in oversized clothes, giving short steps that thudded dully on the wood. Siegfried’s boots made a sharper sound. The pier was long, an impressive piece of engineering, a wooden construction jutting into the cold Atlantic. A cabin to the side bore the sign Zollbüro. The customs officer stood leaning in the doorway, puffing on a pipe. He simply waved Siegfried on, and blew smoke rings that were invisible in the fog.

The sound of waves on the beach signalled that land was close, though Siegfried still couldn’t see it. There was more foam on the murky green water now, then waves breaking in a burst of white bubbles, pushing up a steeply sloping beach. The sound of his footsteps grew more muffled; the planks were flush with sand now. And then he stepped onto dry land.

He was in Africa.

He was in Africa, and Traudl was in his mind, she and all the others who had looked at him with condescension, pity or other forms of disrespect. He would show them all: his father and Traudl’s, for whom he felt no love even though the man had orchestrated his coming here, and the doctor who cursed because he had been forced to let this excuse of a man join the army, and the officers who grumbled when they were instructed, contrary to the rules, to send this feeble recruit to South-West Africa. Coming here had not been his idea, but he had managed to convince himself that this was one instance where doing what others wanted could actually be good for him. This was the land where he would become the man he had always imagined himself to be, and they would have to recognise him as such.

A feeling rose in his chest, a prickling that became rougher. Ignoring the experience of a lifetime, he tried to swallow it down, but to no avail. His lungs went into a spasm. His eyes shot full of tears and his ears rang. He bent over, coughing and retching, unable to breathe. His rifle slipped from his shoulder, the barrel hit him on the forearm and the stock clubbed him on the foot. His chest contracted even when there was no more air to expel. Blackness blotted out his vision and he felt like he was tumbling … and then he caught a breath, and another, gasping with the taste of blood in his throat. He got his breath back, spat on the ground, picked up his rifle, straightened up and kicked sand over the blotch of blood and phlegm.

‘Jesus, Bock, don’t die before we’ve even seen the enemy.’

Siegfried watched the soldier who had made the remark disappear into the greyness. This bastard too, he decided, he would show all of them – all these ordinary, confident men who thought they knew other people, without even knowing their own minds, men who did not have doubt and fear as their constant companions, who did not have to battle cynical inner adversaries at every turn.

The white swirling mist diffused all light, but it was pierced through by sounds. There was a new rumbling from his left, not the waves, but something crisper, hard surfaces crunching together. The creak of straining ropes. The heaving of beasts. He expected oxen, but his eyes revealed something else. From the haze, a black woman appeared, wearing an unbleached canvas cloak, leaning forward, holding a thick rope over her shoulder. Behind her was another woman, hauling the same rope, then another, a whole row of them, pulling something. They did not look his way. Something moved beside them, a second row of women echoing the first. And then the heavily laden cart they were hauling came into view. Siegfried stood still as it rolled by, crushing gravel under its ironclad wheels. A uniformed man sat on the driver’s seat, idly playing with a whip in the wind.

The unexpectedness of what he had seen, the absurdity, the cruelty of it had Siegfried transfixed. He stared until the cart disappeared and then its sounds too, leaving only the hiss of the sea, and doubt in his mind. Did this really happen or was it an illusion, brought on by an overactive mind and a body not used to exertion, by the disorientating fog and a flood of overwhelming emotions?

Eventually another sound reached him, one that had gone on for a while before he realised that a chorus of voices was calling, ‘Bock! Bock! Bock!’ Like a pack of barking dogs.

When he got there, the rest of the platoon had already lined up in threes, from the tallest to the shortest. Amid sneers, Siegfried took his place at the end of the group.

‘On my command,’ shouted the sergeant who had awaited them on the jetty. ‘Attention!’ He walked down the row of men, intently peering at each, while they looked past him at an imagined object straight ahead, an invisible target in the swirling mist. All the while, he talked at them. ‘The people in the protectorate are nervous. Settlers have been killed, one hundred and twenty-six of our countrymen in the first days of the Herero uprising alone, innocent people slain in their beds and homes and places of work, women and children among them, good people like your mothers and sisters and fathers and brothers. The settlers have seen reports of battles lost and soldiers killed. As you know, we broke the main Herero force at Waterberg last year, but some are still fighting. In the south, Witbooi’s and Marengo’s Nama bands are out murdering and stealing. Our people want to see the Fatherland deal with these rebels.’ He spoke in bursts of a few words, stressing the last one each time, taking deep breaths in between. ‘We need to make sure the people of Swakopmund see that new schutztruppe have arrived here to ensure their safety. You’re going from here straight to the train station, and from there to Windhoek, and then on to parts unknown. On the way from here to the station, people will be looking at you, taking your measure. They want reassurance that they can sleep more comfortably at night, that their future in German South-West Africa is secure. You will look smart. You will look confident and strong. You are soldiers of the Kaiserreich. For God’s sake, act that way.’

They made a right turn and started to march, tall men leading. Siegfried stretched his stride, tried to keep an arm’s length from the backpack in front of him. Don’t stumble, he told himself, don’t fall. Under his feet, he still felt the movement of the sea.

* * *

Mordegai Guruseb was determined to die on the run this very day, or to die much, much later. Not a few weeks or months from now, not of starvation. He was certain that if he stayed in the concentration camp, he wouldn’t live through the winter. He had only been in the camp six weeks, but had already seen too much death to expect anything else. The Germans gave them too little food and shelter, and too much work. They could not survive.

He had last felt like this as he had wandered about in the Omaheke Desert with the Herero after their defeat at Waterberg, looking for food and water. The Germans had poisoned small water holes and guarded the big ones. He had decided that anything had to be better than dying of thirst in the desert, so he surrendered to save his life. But what sort of life was this?

He shouldn’t even be here at all. The camp was supposed to hold Hereros, but the soldiers had trouble telling the tribes apart. As a Damara, he had long been subject to the Hereros, tending their goats. There was scant joy in the fact that his masters now also felt what it was like to be oppressed. The reality was that they were all being exterminated; he had to get away. If he died in the process, at least he would only lose a few weeks of life, all of them filled with suffering. And if he did get away, he had no idea what would await him, but he would be alive and free, and that was enough.

The camp itself was guarded, and surrounded by two lines of barbed wire. The best chance of escape was now, while they were out working. He had just carried a crate from the jetty to the train, and was being harried back to pick up another load. With the fog this thick, it might be possible to slip away unseen. The greater problem was where to go. On one side was icy sea, and on the other, barren desert where not even the hardiest plant could survive. The only way to cross the Namib on foot would be to follow the dry bed of the Swakop River, but then he would run into Germans. He had decided on a faster and more daring method – he would take the train. More soldiers had come on ships, and with the train being prepared, it was clear that they were going to leave soon. Mordegai decided to be on that train too.

After setting down his crate, he hung back and made sure he was the last man, with only a guard or two behind him. He had taken off the metal identification disk he had to wear on a thong around his neck. When he walked past the train, he threw the disc against a nearby ox wagon, as hard as he could. Without checking that the noise had distracted the guards, he dove between the wheels of the train and lay wide-eyed on the sleepers, peering at the guards through the fog, and hoping that they wouldn’t see him lying on the track. If they spotted him, he would break and run, and keep running until a shot brought him down, and then he would crawl if he could, keep going until all life left him.

He crept along under the carriage. At the first coupling, he lifted his head and looked around. When it seemed safe, he clambered onto the balcony between the carriages and from there onto the railing, and then hoisted himself onto the roof. He had nothing with him but the rough canvas shirt and pants he had been issued, a stomach half empty after the camp breakfast of a few spoonfuls of rice, and a scrap of hope. He found a place on the roof that afforded some grip and lay still, praying that the train would leave before the fog cleared, before he would be in plain view of anyone on the upper storey of the station building.

* * *

By nine o’clock, the full company was waiting to board the train, sitting on or propped against their backpacks. Some men had arranged themselves back to back, leaning against each other. They showed excitement and impatience, hid their fear and uncertainty. Siegfried sat bolt upright on his pack and surveyed the scene. He never found and seldom sought comfort in the company of others. Like many things in his life, his desire to be accepted as a man among men was largely abstract. In reality it was continually bedevilled by a rebelliousness of spirit, an inherent distrust of popular causes. To make matters worse, his scepticism wasn’t only directed outward; he was in the habit of tormenting himself. Had he really seen those women pulling a cart, for instance, or was it a vision dished up by his subconscious, some badly remembered Dante perhaps, or an expression of a deep-rooted fear that this country might not live up to his lofty expectations?

The mist started to burn off and the world took shape around them. The station was a large building that could have been in Germany, with a central spire, and turrets at either end flying the imperial flag. The town, however, consisted of about thirty buildings perched on bare sand. Some of the other men expressed disappointment at not seeing jungle and monkeys, with vines and underbrush, but Siegfried had done his research. A wide seam of sand dunes ran along the coast, from Portuguese West Africa down to the Cape Colony. The Namib Desert had discouraged Europeans to the extent that they just kept going on by for two, three hundred years after they had settled the lands to the north and south. The only reason this settlement even existed was the shape of the coastline, the mouth of the mostly dry Swakop River offering a reasonable harbour. Walvis Bay, only thirty-five kilometres to the south, offered better shelter, but the British had already claimed that, so by default Swakopmund had become the lifeline of the fledgling colony.

When Germany claimed this territory fifteen years before, there were fewer than one hundred and fifty white people in an area more than twice the size of Germany. Even back then, before there had been any thought of Siegfried coming here, he had found the idea of all this wild country appealing. So had many others – nearly five thousand settlers had landed here since then.

Still the land hadn’t produced anything of note. The constant demand for people and resources caused concern in Berlin. Siegfried had heard it discussed often enough. The realists wanted to shut the protectorate down; the romantics wanted it retained at any cost. Traudl’s father was in favour of building up German South-West Africa, while Siegfried’s father was against the vainglorious waste of the enterprise. On one thing they agreed: It would be best for everyone if Siegfried were far away from Traudl Dehlinger and the prospect of scandal.

He had been in love with her forever, it seemed. This had first become clear to him at seventeen, and, as it turned out, to everyone else. Anyone who had seen the youngster with the bony face and feverish eyes in those days noticed that he was smitten. Anyone who saw him in the same area as Traudl had no trouble identifying the object of his desire. When he was far enough from her, across a room or on a different park bench, he would allow himself to stare openly. Truth be told, despite the coppery hair and translucent skin, her individual features were perhaps too pronounced to form a pretty whole, but he loved those high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, the full mouth and those somewhat long front teeth she was in the habit of licking. When he was in her company, always half a step back, he didn’t dare look directly, but she was always there at the edge of his vision, those thin, blue-veined wrists slipping from her sleeves. He listened intently when she spoke, allowing the words to echo in his head until she spoke again. Of course, she knew of his affections, along with their entire circle and some strangers besides. But she loved Manfred Eberhardt, not Siegfried. When Manfred Eberhardt, the love of her life, set off to Africa, it was to Siegfried that she turned, a patient ear for her laments. He had to endure endless paeans of his rival that, after the news of Manfred’s death had reached them, turned into eulogies that were, if anything, even harder to bear.

He avoided her eyes for fear they might look right into his soul, but over time he let his gaze travel from her wrists to her slender neck and drop-shaped nostrils. He breathed her perfume. He listened to her small sighs, sad little Cupids that mocked him. Emboldened by her distraction, he would let his fingertips touch the sleeve of her dress, while uttering encouragements that somehow managed to be inappropriate to both the situation and his feelings. Frustrated by his inability to express his love properly and her inability to recognise how he was superior to Manfred Eberhardt in the ways that really counted – notably in how he loved her – he started visiting even when she hadn’t invited him. It eventually dawned on him that Traudl found his attentions irritating and his intentions laughable, but hope never left him and he never stopped visiting. The most hurtful thing was that she found him silly. Then came the day of the accident, when his imagination got the better of him while he had her hand in his, and her father came in and both he and his daughter saw the bulge in the young man’s trousers, the shameful wet patch of his desire. Herr Dehlinger chased him out the door, threatening to cut off his balls if he ever dared show his face again.

Siegfried was probably the only one looking forward to his return from Africa. Herr Dehlinger, he supposed, would be praying for him to die, preferably ignominiously of thirst after getting himself lost in the desert. He had to give his own father the benefit of the doubt though. Herr Bock probably wanted his troubled second son to forge a middling career in a far-off place, anything modest would do, as long as he didn’t make an even greater fool of himself. Siegfried wasn’t planning on giving either of them the satisfaction. He would prove himself a man of worth and then he would go back, demanding respect, and hoping for love.

He shifted his feet and dislodged something shiny in the sand. It was a small brass plate, oval shaped, larger and thinner than a coin, with a number and an eagle stamped on one side. He picked it up, blew the sand off, and rubbed it clean. It wasn’t tooled enough for jewellery, yet it was attached to a thong, long enough to go around someone’s neck. He prodded the man next to him.

‘Is this yours?’ The man shrugged and turned away. Siegfried turned the thin medallion this way and that. Perhaps it was a medal of sorts, minted here. He slipped it into his pocket, the first keepsake of his African adventure.

The sergeant from earlier appeared beside the train and shouted: ‘Holiday is over, men. Get on board. Hurry up!’

Siegfried got to his feet first. Around him, men groaned and stood up, stretched and yawned. The train was smaller than the ones at home, and was pulled by two odd little locomotives hitched back to back, so that one engineer and stoker could operate both. Siegfried opened one of the narrow doors of the carriage and got in.

The carriage had wooden benches for people to sit back to back and knee to knee, with poles here and there to prop up the roof. He picked a spot next to the window, facing forward. He wanted to see this new country they were heading into. He shoved his pack under the bench, sat down and kicked his heels against his baggage. His rifle butt was between his feet, the forestock leaning against his thigh.

Other men appeared at the door, peered in and walked away, looking for their friends. Siegfried watched them, wondered who would be the first to come join him. The train grew rowdier, first with the clatter of boots and rifle butts, then voices. By the time they were all on board, there was still nobody on the bench next to or across from him. To hell with them, Siegfried decided, yet again. He would be able to stretch his legs. They’d be sorry a few hours into the journey, when heat and being cramped started taking its toll.

He leaned forward to close the door, only to have it yanked open again. There stood a barrel-bodied, long-limbed man in a black suit with a Homburg hat, pince-nez and square-tipped beard. Siegfried had seen him on the afterdeck of the Jeanette Woermann a few times. The civilians didn’t mix with the soldiers much, and this one never had.

* * *

Coming after his earlier disappointments, the ones that had dogged him all his life, seeing the soldier sitting on his seat was more than Albert Pitzer could bear. ‘Didn’t you see the sign?’

The pale little runt of a soldier stared at him with frank interest, all innocence in those eyes, brown as a dog’s.

‘What sign?’

‘This sign on the door that says Reserviert.’ Pitzer swung the door on its hinges so that the sign showed, just in case the fool wanted to argue.

‘I thought it meant reserved for … for us.’

‘Well, it isn’t. Out you go. Raus.’

‘I don’t see the problem, there’s enough space.’

The bench across from the soldier was indeed empty, and someone could also sit next to him if he shifted up, but Pitzer did not enjoy the proximity of men.

‘I have all my equipment.’

The porters who had been carrying his two trunks and four smaller boxes stood behind him, each with his load at his feet.

‘What’s the problem?’ A white railwayman came along, holding a sheath of papers to his chest. His middle-parted hairstyle mimicked the shape of his waxed-tipped moustache.

‘These benches are supposed to be for civilians,’ Pitzer reminded the railwayman.

‘Train is full,’ said the official.

‘But my equipment …’

‘The goods wagon is full. Anything that doesn’t fit will have to go on tomorrow’s train. We need to get these soldiers in the field. If you’d like, you can wait.’

The harbour was full of ships, full of men and goods pouring into the protectorate, and he would probably encounter the same situation again. Besides, he had not come all this way to be stuck in Swakopmund. He had come to this country for one reason only: to do his research, prove his theories and save his life from obscurity and insignificance. The prisoner-of-war camp did have an abundance of study material, but in Swakopmund he would be in the public eye too much. The last thing he wanted was for word of his activities to leak out before he was ready to announce his results. He had to do his research in some remote place.

‘I’ll take this train,’ he said. ‘Put my trunks on the benches, one next to me, one next to the soldier.’

‘You need to leave space,’ said the railwayman, tapping on a paper. ‘There’s another passenger. You can’t take both trunks.’

One trunk had his personal effects, the other his equipment. He couldn’t damn well go naked, so he picked the clothes. ‘I’ll take this one then. You’ll send the other one tomorrow?’

‘No problem,’ said the railwayman, making a note on his papers. He gestured to the porters to take the second trunk into the station building.

‘These small boxes can go under the seats,’ Pitzer said, and got the porters to put them down on the floor.

Then he tried to make himself comfortable on the hard bench, without success. He wondered if it was going to get much hotter than this, later in the day.

* * *

Siegfried slid the boxes under the seat, next to his rucksack. They sounded hollow, but were surprisingly heavy.

When the man in the Homburg hat had finally settled across from Siegfried, he mumbled something about not trusting these colonials as far as he could throw them. He didn’t look like the kind of man who could throw anyone anywhere. He was big, but clumsy and bookish, about forty years old. He reminded Siegfried of the friends who would visit his father, learned men. After months of just being around soldiers, he was tempted to have a different conversation.

‘Is this your first time in South-West?’

The man had a book open on his lap already, his fingers caressing a page that seemed to be blank. Who reads a blank book? Then Siegfried noticed that the pages were covered in handwriting in pencil, much of it faded to almost nothing.

‘Yes, and hopefully the last.’ The man closed the book, keeping his finger in it. Then he changed hands, so he could wag his favourite finger. ‘This town,’ he said, vaguely pointing out the window, ‘is a Petri dish.’

Siegfried wondered if he had heard correctly.

The man must have misunderstood his hesitation, and started explaining. ‘A Petri dish, a shallow glass dish scientists use to grow bacteria, for instance. This town is like that. A harbour, hotel, bank, doctor, church, school—’

‘Don’t forget the train station.’

‘Yes. Everything you need to make a culture grow … but no culture.’

A porter reappeared at the door with a beaming smile and a small wooden crate. He set the crate down to serve as a step and offered his hand to a young white woman behind him.

She looked a bit embarrassed, but used the step anyway. ‘Ah, Herr Doktor Pitzer! Mind if I join you?’

So, he had been correct that this was, indeed, an educated man, Siegfried noted with some satisfaction.

‘Fraulein Löwenstein!’ Doktor Pitzer forced a smile and shifted up to make space for the woman.

She smiled briefly at Siegfried and took her seat next to the man, who started polishing his pince-nez. With the woman taking the initiative, the two of them swapped pleasantries, talking rather stiffly about the weather, travel plans and things that awaited them in the immediate future.

With her attention elsewhere, Siegfried took the opportunity to look at the woman. She had a striking face, somewhat narrow. Her eyes were limpid, grey, and thick black hair spilled from under her hat. The porter handed her a small valise that she slipped under the seat. She dusted the lapels of her jacket – grey with a purple tinge – straightened her skirt and sat with her hands folded on her lap, managing to look flustered without moving a muscle.

Siegfried had seen that expression before, one time aboard ship when he had held a door open for her. He realised then she was working class, and unused to courteous treatment. With a surname like Löwenstein, she could be Jewish too. She was from the eastern part of the empire, Silesia or thereabouts, Siegfried guessed, probably here to become a prostitute. He would bet that this outfit was the finest she had ever worn. In a couple of months, he would meet her in Windhoek and she might be happy to oblige him for the cost of a meal. The thought made him uncomfortable, even though he recognised that the cause may have been his weakness, not hers.

When his fellow passengers finally looked his way, Siegfried asked, ‘Are you here to doctor our troops, or …’

‘I’m not that kind of doctor,’ said the well-dressed man, somewhat irritated. ‘I’m a scientist.’

The railwayman from before trotted next to the train, slamming shut the doors as he went, his mouth hanging open. There was some shouting, a whistle, a flag being waved, and then the train shuddered. Would those two little engines get this load moving? Siegfried experienced a moment of anxiety. Perhaps his adventure would flounder before it had even started. The train jerked forward, stopped for a moment, and then got going, rolling slowly.

He noticed Doktor Pitzer glaring at his pocket watch. The train had left almost twenty minutes late.

* * *

Lying on the roof, Mordegai watched with alarm as more and more of the world became visible. He did not want to see, because he did not want to be seen. At times he found himself closing his eyes, vainly trying to blind others in the process. He prayed to a god he didn’t believe in: Please, let them not find me, let us leave.

Then there was shouting and action among the soldiers. The train under his belly shook with the stamping of many feet. Smoke spewed up above the thinning mist and the smell of burning coal wafted over him. The train shook. His fingers gripped handholds that might prove to be insufficient once they were moving. Another shudder, and then came the sound of steel wheels rolling on steel rails, and a faint wind in his face. They were moving.

He kept his head down until they had left the town behind. He was relieved to be getting away from the concentration camp, but worried about his immediate survival. He could fall off the roof and crash into the ground any minute. They weren’t going fast, about the speed of a horse at a fast trot, he guessed, but it was a fair distance to the ground and everything around here was covered in rocks. Besides, even if he did survive the fall, there were about a hundred armed German soldiers on the train who would love to take pot shots at him. His plan was to get off the train once they were in the mountains. Doing it unseen was the biggest problem. If he could do that, he would be able to hide out and find water. He had grown up only a few days’ walk to the south. It wasn’t bad country if you knew how to live in the veld.

Once he looked up and saw four gemsbok galloping along, almost keeping pace with the train. Their meat was dark and strong. He would taste it again, he decided, the day would come.

* * *

They went eastward, through the Namib, into this vast, dry land. It was a place for pioneers and warriors, Siegfried thought – inhospitable, the stuff of legend, a proving ground for men.

There was no sign of fog now. Looking at the barren landscape, large and empty and dry under the searing sun, Siegfried appreciated how hard it would be to cross the desert by ox wagon. Attempts to do it by steam tractor had failed. The new rail connection between Swakopmund and Windhoek had changed all that – a strip of broken rock, wooden sleepers and two lines of steel crossing nearly 400 kilometres through some of the harshest country in the world. They would be in Windhoek the next evening, from where they would be sent to battle the rebels, probably to the south. In the normal run of things, he thought of himself mostly in individual terms rather than as part of any group, but the way his nation was taming this land made him proud to be German.

The places they passed bore a mixture of German and local names: Nonidas, Richthofen, Rössing, Khan, Welwitsch … Sometimes it was hardly more than a hut and a water tower, a man or two waving at them. Siegfried read the names as they passed the stations, repeated them softly to himself. He wanted to include them in the letters he would write to Traudl, even if sending them would be a complete waste. Her father was bound to intercept all mail from him, and if any did slip through, would she even read it?

Once he saw four loping antelopes, beautiful sandy brown creatures with patterned black-and-white faces, topped with long, sabre-like horns. He was filled with wonderment.

With the passing hours, the conversations that had animated the early part of the journey died down. Some of the passengers had been rocked to sleep and others just stared. Even Doktor Pitzer had closed his book and his eyes. The woman sat there fidgeting with a letter on her lap, rereading it every now and then, her lips silently forming the words. Every time she got to the end, it was punctuated by a sigh, a biting of her lip. Her mouth seemed to have a life of its own, the lips always trying to find better ways of coming together, betraying the trouble her languid eyes tried to hide. Poor creature, Siegfried thought. But no, her figure was suited to her profession and she would do well. She was tall, with good bones, and could possibly demand a premium price for a decade or more to come, if she remained healthy.

There was a bang on the roof that had many of them looking up in surprise.

‘Sounds like there’s someone up there,’ Siegfried remarked.

The girl looked concerned. ‘What would anyone be doing on the roof?’

Siegfried was already on his feet. ‘I could pop out, stand on the window frame and have a look.’

Pitzer spoke up. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s probably just a structural noise, caused by the expansion of the metal in the heat.’

The risk of being ridiculous stopped Siegfried in his tracks. ‘I suppose you could be right.’

‘There’s no could be to it.’ Having dealt with the matter at hand, Doktor Pitzer opened his book again.

Siegfried sat down and stared out the window again, saw Pforte, Jakkalswater, Sphinx, Dorstrivier …

* * *

Uncomfortable as it was, Mordegai fell asleep a few times and awoke each time with a shock, with no idea how long he had drifted off, but glad still to be on the train. The landscape changed slowly. By late afternoon, they had turned north. The mountains up ahead were the Chuos, he guessed. He wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter, he could work out his whereabouts later.

The incline forced the train to slow down. He took off his shirt and wrapped the sleeves around his hands. It was the only way he could move, otherwise the metal roof would be too hot to touch. He couldn’t wait much longer; the camp diet had weakened him. He had to get off the train while he still had the strength to move. He crawled as quietly as he could to the back of the train. He couldn’t jump from up here either; he first had to climb down to the platform at the end of the carriage. The last carriage was reserved for goods – he had helped to load it – and there would be no people to see him, he guessed. But when he peered over the edge, there were two railwaymen on the small balcony at the back of the train. One of them was pissing onto the track, a shimmering stream broken by the wind, the other sitting down on the floor, rolling a cigarette. Mordegai lay flat on the roof above them, moving his arms and legs to get the stiffness out of them. He had to be ready to move fast when the time came. They were skirting the mountain now. Would he get past the men? And what would they do when they saw him? This was a bad plan, he realised. There might be a better opportunity later on. But then again there might not. And he wasn’t getting any stronger. The thirst was muddling his thoughts. Time to go.

He peered over the edge of the roof. He planned his moves, said a quick prayer to his ancestors, and swung his legs down. It all had to happen in one movement. He let go with his hands and crashed down on top of the sitting man, who barked out a grunt. Mordegai gave a step, another, and off he jumped. His feet hit the ground and momentum toppled him backward. The fall knocked the breath out of him, and the impact on his head made him black out. When his thoughts took shape again, he struggled to remember where he was. Only a few seconds must have passed, though, because the train was still nearby. He rolled over, got onto all fours and scrambled away, looking for shelter.

* * *

Siegfried heard a commotion, a wave of comments surging from the back of the train: Something had excited the railwaymen at the back. It took a while to work out the cause: They had seen a man jump from the roof, he could be an escaped prisoner of war. By the time the train had come to a halt, everyone was on their feet, except Doktor Pitzer.

‘Why are we stopping in the middle of nowhere?’ he asked.

‘To catch the prisoner. Apparently, he jumped from the train.’

‘If he jumped off the train, he must be dead.’

The train shuddered into reverse.

‘And now we’re going backwards,’ Pitzer sighed. ‘This is what you get when you let the army run things.’

Soon after they had come to a stop at the place where the men had seen the fugitive, the officers were outside, waving their pistols about. ‘Everyone out! Everyone out!’

Siegfried’s platoon assembled on the right side of the train. His platoon commander, Oberleutnant Freiherr von Schlicht, gave hurried instructions. ‘Listen now! We’re taking the south. Spread out, head uphill. Keep within sight of each other, so that he doesn’t slip between us. And keep your rifles ready. The man is an enemy. Shoot on sight.’

‘He’s mine, fellows!’ someone shouted.

Siegfried couldn’t see who spoke.

‘Perhaps you can put the second bullet in him,’ someone else retorted.

The prospect of having a crack at the enemy so soon had everyone raring to go. Unarmed and fleeing, it would be as easy as shooting a rabbit, but with greater bragging prospects.

‘Get moving!’ Von Schlicht’s voice broke. He must have been nineteen.

Even nobility suffer the embarrassments of adolescence, Siegfried thought. Perhaps the officer too might ejaculate in his pants at the touch of a beautiful woman.

‘Where the hell did he go?’ the man next to Siegfried whispered to nobody in particular.

‘There must be tracks.’

‘It’s just rocks everywhere.’

It was well into the afternoon, and the sun reflected off the rails towards the west, the only geometric shape around. Siegfried turned away and saw no sign of human habitation, only jagged rocks, sand, and scraggly grasses that looked dead even while they grew. He was struck by the crisp dryness of the land, the hollow heavens. It wasn’t only a different country, it was a different world, one shaped by a clumsy god and broken in disgust. He was an alien here, not because he was a German, but because he was human. The desolate ugliness of the land did something to him, its essential stillness echoed in his soul. He looked left and right at his fellow soldiers fanning out, rifles at hand, their hearts in their mouths and murder in their eyes. Siegfried wished he could be alone for a moment, just him and this wilderness. They headed up the slope. It was impossible to go straight, everyone had to skirt around bushes, gullies and rocks. Within the first few steps, they discovered that every bush was covered in thorns. The man to Siegfried’s right swore, and stopped to extricate himself from a particularly vicious bush.

Siegfried walked on, around a small outcropping, a knot of grey rocks rising from the ground like a clenched fist. For the moment, nobody but God could see him. He wasn’t a believer, but decided that if anyone were here, it would be God, and if God existed, He would be here. Siegfried stood still, feeling the wind against his skin, listening to it drag like a breath through the grasses. He drew his lungs full of air laced with dust and the smell of dry, sour grass.

He felt someone looking at him and glanced over his shoulder. From where he stood, he could not see any of his comrades. He admonished himself not to let thoughts of God go to his head. Then he saw it: From a crevice between two boulders, a pair of eyes looked at him, not four steps away. Siegfried’s hand clenched on his rifle, but didn’t move the weapon at all, the barrel still pointed at the ground. The sun was bright as a photographer’s flash, and Siegfried felt as if time had frozen. So much started happening in his head that his body remained inert.

This must be the escaped prisoner, his enemy. If he did what he was supposed to do, if he simply lifted the tip of the barrel, pointed it towards the fugitive and squeezed the trigger – at this distance, he could hardly miss. He would be the first man in the unit to make a kill. He could, on his very first day in this country, make an indelible impression on his comrades and officers. It could not be easier.

The gaunt black man was dressed in similar garb to the women Siegfried had seen that morning, but those people seemed to have been stripped of their will to live, reduced to reticent, silently suffering beasts of burden. This man was full of life, free, and frightened. Unlike the women, whose fate he could influence no more than he could a passing cloud, Siegfried could shape this man’s future, or end it. The fugitive raised his hand, his sleeve fell away from the thin brown arm. In his hand he held a rock the size of a cannon ball.

Siegfried started lifting the rifle barrel. Too late.

The man flung the rock at him. Siegfried ducked, but knew as he was doing so that he won’t get out of the way in time. He tucked his face behind his shoulder, braced for the blow … but it didn’t come. The rock crashed into the ground instead, to the left of him, half a step short. Now Siegfried was aiming at his adversary, finger curling around the trigger, wondering if he should close his fist and shoot a man with empty hands and those wide white eyes. A movement caught his attention, something on the ground. He glanced and saw the winding coils of a ringed snake, its body almost severed where the rock had hit it. The tail was whipping around, but the shiny black head lay still, only a hand’s breadth from Siegfried’s foot.

When he looked up again, the man was still standing there, motionless. Not challenging, not pleading. Had the snake been about to strike? A breath stuck in Siegfried’s throat, his tongue felt dry. So far, most of his thoughts of war had been about going back to Berlin with medals and ribbons and pride. He did at times wonder what combat might be like – he and his comrades side by side, firing at a distant enemy, much as they did at the firing range. But this was not something he had ever imagined, standing with stinging eyes and knotted thoughts, only a few steps from an unarmed, vulnerable man who may have just saved his life.

The two of them looked each other in the eye – man and man without plan or expectation.

There was a noise somewhere behind him, rock knocking on rock. Someone called, ‘What’s going on there?’

Siegfried looked at the fugitive, but the man did nothing to help him decide, one way or the other. He needed to think about what had just happened, about what he had to do. The remains of the black-and-white snake writhed in the dust and Siegfried’s thoughts had just as little direction.

‘Nothing,’ he called out. ‘I … I just saw a snake.’