Читать книгу Parts Unknown - Zirk van den Berg - Страница 5

That night, the stars lured Lisbeth outside. The officers took the hotel rooms and she and Doktor Pitzer were put up in the local missionary’s house for their overnight stay at Karibib. After supper, there was too much pipe smoking and Bible reading for her liking, so she retired to her room. She blew out the candle and peeped out between the curtains, saw the night sky and thought maybe she’d see something familiar in the heavens that had eluded her on earth all day. Throughout the train journey, she had seen nothing welcoming, nothing that reminded her of home. She threw a shawl over her nightdress, laced up her shoes and went outside.

The night was full of strange noises – crickets and birds, unseen creatures scurrying and flying. The rank-and-file soldiers stayed in tents just a short way down the road. She stood in front of the house, listened to their voices on the wind, relishing the sound of the familiar language in this alien environment. It was six weeks since she had taken leave of her parents and brother, and she did not expect ever to see them again. She had embarked on a journey of people and places nobody in her family had ever encountered – travelling by train and ship, seeing Berlin and Hamburg, the endless ocean, and now this faraway world where nothing but the sound of soldiers’ voices reminded her of home.

Karibib lay at the foot of a mountain, a smattering of stone houses among scrawny trees, at best a dried-up version of a German village. Perhaps you just need to add water, she thought, add water and this town might blossom into Grünewald, complete with oompah band, beer-pouring mädchens in dirndls. This was silly, of course, wishing for a version of German life she had only ever heard of. Her childhood memories were nothing like that jolly image – they weren’t even happy, really. It was not a past she could long for wholeheartedly. Besides, she had known for many months now that the world of her youth would not be the world of her future; she had had time to get used to the idea that hers was a different life now. She had to brace herself, face what lay ahead. At barely twenty, she already knew that life was nothing to look forward to, that as bad as things were, she had little right to hope for something better. She only hoped that the fear and sadness would abate over time, because this raw ache, this suffocating dread, was too much to bear.

She walked into the African night, away from the houses, into the darkness. What was the worst that could happen? Men could be protectors, but also tormentors, she knew. She had to go where there was nobody or nothing. Apparently, there were snakes out here – that soldier on the train said he had seen one, and the experience had clearly left him shaken. She would have expected a soldier to be braver than that, but maybe the snake had surprised him. She’d keep her eyes open. If she stayed on the road and within sight of the town, she should be fine, she hoped. Once the glow of lamps and fires were left behind and her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, the road seemed ghostly white in the starlight. The night air had become cool and she drew her shawl tightly around her shoulders. It used to be her mother’s, and now Lisbeth wore it like the embrace of an absent loved one. She looked up and saw an unbroken expanse of stars, bright as stage lights, not a cloud to obscure them. She looked around, hoping to recognise a constellation, but even the stars were strange, not the night sky she had known all her life. A whiff of wind stirred against her bare legs.

Up ahead, she noticed something in the road, a dark shape. A sleeping dog? she wondered. Perhaps something that had fallen off a wagon, or something dead? She stepped closer, now on tiptoes, ready to turn and run. It was a man, definitely a man, lying flat on his back with arms and legs spread wide, wearing a soldier’s uniform. A casualty of war? Had he been shot?

A stone scraped under her sole, shocking the prone figure to life. He sat up, palms on the ground, looking around.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Lisbeth, to herself as much as to him.

Before he could respond, the man was gripped by a fit of coughing. She recognised the soldier who had sat across from her on the train, the one who had seen the snake – his birdlike head, those dark, disconcerting eyes. He had coughed like this on the train too, rasping and gasping for breath. When the attack finally subsided, he got to his feet, wiping his mouth with a blotchy handkerchief. She was taller than him, she realised. Then again, experience had taught her that even small men could overpower her; it wasn’t size, men had a capacity for brutality that surprised her every time.

‘We’ve come out for a stroll, my companions and me. The others are on their way,’ she said, hoping that would discourage untoward behaviour.

‘Doktor Pitzer?’

‘Yes, and the missionary.’

‘Then I must go.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t get much chance to be alone.’

‘To do what?’

His shoulders flexed. ‘Think about things, the events of the day.’

Lisbeth relaxed a bit. She understood the need to be alone after being cooped up with others for weeks at sea, and today on the train. Besides, he seemed harmless enough.

‘What were you doing, lying in the road like that?’

He dusted his trousers. ‘It was just a nose bleed. I had to hold my head back, and then I thought I may as well lie down, take a good look at the stars.’

‘Has the bleeding stopped?’

‘It’s fine now. I’m used to it.’

Despite the Berlin accent, there was something in his tone – confessional and resigned – that felt familiar to her. He reminded her of boys she had known, but whose names she couldn’t remember. She looked over his head, her eyes drawn by that backdrop of sparkling dots.

He must have realised that she gazed at the sky, because he said, ‘I’ve never seen the stars like this, so clear. It must be the dry air. It’s as if you’re among them.’

‘It makes me feel so small,’ she admitted.

‘Some of us have less need of that reminder than others.’

She realised he was referring to his physical stature, saying something at his own expense, helping to bridge the clear gap in status between them. She may have changed her clothes, but her speech betrayed her background. ‘I meant in the greater scheme of things,’ she explained.

‘I know.’ He brushed back his hair and put his cap on. ‘We were never properly introduced. I’m Siegfried Bock.’

‘Lisbeth Löwenstein.’ She could have left it at that, but, not having talked to anyone about the thing that had gnawed at her mind for so long, she had to say it. ‘For the time being.’

He glanced at her askance. ‘How do you mean?’

‘In two days, I’ll have a different name. I’m getting married.’

‘Congratulations.’

It felt surprisingly comfortable talking to this stranger in the dark, something separate from everyday life. It helped that they could not see each other’s faces clearly. ‘I’m afraid I may have sold my soul.’

‘For some people, that’s the only thing they have to trade.’

‘What I’m getting for it is not something I want.’

The soldier took out his pocket watch, angling it to whatever light he could find. ‘My guard duty only starts at midnight … Your companions?’

She turned around. The road behind her was silent and empty. ‘Perhaps they’ve turned around.’

‘Well, then it seems we have time for you to tell me how come you’ve sold your soul for something you don’t want.’

‘I thought you wanted to be alone.’

‘Something more appealing came up. Why don’t we find a place to sit?’ He pointed to two large stones by the roadside, about two steps apart.

‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’

‘Think of it as the first of Thousand and One African Nights.’

She smoothed her nightdress at the back, sat down on the stone and shifted until she felt comfortable. She had both feet on the ground, ankle to ankle, her hands on her knees. ‘The story goes like this: In a village in Saxony – Grossenhain, near Dresden – there lived a poor shoemaker and his wife and two children. Lisbeth was the oldest. One day, a letter came from a faraway country … I don’t think I can keep this up, pretending that my life is a fairy tale.’

‘Carry on. Who was the letter from?’

‘The letter was from Fritz Kamke, a man who had been the farrier in their village. He had left years before, going to German South-West Africa as a soldier. After he had completed his service in the schutztruppe, he bought a farm and wanted to settle down. He remembered me … He remembered Lisbeth, and asked her father for her hand in marriage. After an exchange of three more letters, he cabled the money for her passage, plus extra to compensate the family for their loss … And here we are.’

She had read and reread Herr Kamke’s letters, trying to build a picture of the man who would be hers to have and hold until death did them part. She remembered little of him, just that he smelled of horse and wore a leather apron. She must have been fifteen years old when he left the village. She hadn’t thought of him at all in the intervening years. Evidently, he had remembered her.

‘Why did you agree to it?’

‘It helps my parents.’

‘Doing that, at least, is something you want. So, when you’re with this man, remember your parents, remember that you’re helping them,’ the soldier said. ‘You’re being very noble.’

She had never thought of herself as noble, or having any such high-minded quality. There was something else that figured in her decision to accept Herr Kamke’s proposal, but this she would not share with anyone. Since her early teens, rich and powerful men had sometimes taken a liking to her, but it was not the kind of interest that survived beyond sunrise. Herr Kamke, by contrast, offered respectability – she would be a married woman. That, at least, was better than what she had before.

‘It’s nothing like I had imagined my wedding to be. My mother and father won’t be there,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know who’s going to walk me down the aisle. One of his friends, I suppose. We’re not even married yet, and I’m already at his mercy.’ She repositioned the shawl over her shoulders, and strained to lighten her tone. ‘That’s the way it is.’

Her voice floated on the wind, and was lost in the darkness.

There was a scraping of gravel as the soldier moved his feet. ‘I would do it if I could … escort you … Then at least it would be someone you knew from before, if only for a little while.’

She looked at this little man sitting there in his oversize uniform, holding a blood-stained handkerchief as if it were a posy, offering her his support. ‘I’d like that,’ she said.

It was too dark for them to see each other smile.

* * *

They steamed into Windhoek from the north, coming from Okahandja, the sun already lowering on their right. The train rounded a hill and there it was – not a town like the ones Lisbeth had known, just a smattering of spaced-out buildings in a wide, uneven bowl between higher hills. The nearest hillside was dotted with brown, domed huts. Further away, the colonial buildings were whitewashed and angular. The train engineer let off a few blasts of the whistle. Technology had made crossing the Namib easier, but it was still cause for celebration.

A throng of people awaited their arrival, standing with their hands shading their eyes, as if in salute. There were uniformed railwaymen in front of the long, low station building, poorly dressed porters with two-wheeled trolleys, a handful of soldiers and a few civilians. A man in a black waistcoat held out a flag that was apparently powerful enough to stop a train.

Once they had come to a standstill, Lisbeth smelled burning coal. One of the soldiers who had been sitting close to her opened the door and jumped out, then held out his hands for her to follow, taking her by the hips and setting her down. She thanked him, and he thanked her right back, having just become a hero in his comrades’ eyes. She had tried to share with Reiter Bock again, but he was right at the back, surrounded by baggage, sleeping after the night’s guard duty.

The soldiers were called to the front of the train and thronged past her where she stood, her valise at her feet. She didn’t know where to go. She had hoped there would be someone waiting to meet her. As the only woman on the train, she wouldn’t be hard to spot. Should she wait there or should she go inside to find a restroom? She didn’t want to miss Herr Kamke or his envoy if there was one. She was on a strange continent, with no friends and only a tiny amount of money. If nobody came for her, what would she do? A night in a hotel and then what? The night she had spent in Karibib revealed that all the scullery maids were black. Perhaps she could be a governess to a rich family, but she didn’t have education, just some reading and writing. Then charge the men who would love her till sunrise? That possibility had always been there, throughout her life. One could make men pay for what they sometimes took anyway, but she wasn’t ready for that step, not one so irrevocable. Herr Kamke had better come.

‘Fraulein Löwenstein?’ He stood by her shoulder, hat in hand, his gaunt face lined and sunburnt, his yellow and brown hair plastered to his head, smiling with one half of his mouth.

‘Herr Kamke?’

He nodded, looked at her valise. ‘Is this all?’

‘There is a trunk.’ She pointed to the back of the train.

He picked up her bag. ‘Let’s go get it.’

‘Herr Kamke … do you mind, I need to find a rest room. The trip …’

He became flustered. ‘Of course. Just through that door. Women on the left, I think.’

‘My valise,’ she asked. She took it from him and walked away, conscious of being watched. He wasn’t as tall as she remembered, trimmer though. He looked nervous and had tried to dress for the occasion, in a shirt collar that was clearly too tight. She hoped that he was a good man who would treat her kindly. It occurred to her that it would be wonderful if she were to fall in love with her husband. But that would be too much to hope for.

The rest room was clean and cool, and smelled of disinfectant. After using the bucket, she closed the lid, unbuttoned her blouse at the basin, wet a kerchief and wiped down her face, neck and chest. She kept the kerchief pressed to her eyes for a while. Then she faced herself in the mirror. Her eyes looked tired, and dust dulled her hair. She loosened her hair and brushed it, then pinned it back up. She dabbed on a bit of body powder, did up the last buttons, and was ready for the second meeting.

He smiled briefly, avoiding her eyes. ‘Your trunk is on the cart already.’ He gestured for her to walk through the station building and exit the other side. There were two wagons and a cart waiting outside. He addressed the man holding the cart horses in a language that sounded a bit like German, but wasn’t quite, some garbled tongue. He put her valise on the back and let her steady herself on his arm to get up onto the seat.

From this side of the building, she had a better view of the town: dusty streets between buildings that were more than shouting distance apart, stunted thorn trees and clumps of dry grass in the spaces between. The hot, dry air hardly moved; everyone and everything seemed slightly out of breath. A rocky ridge to the east, mountains low on the southern horizon, hills everywhere else. A couple of forts on higher ground reminded her that this was still the wild frontier.

‘When I first came here,’ said Herr Kamke, ‘all of this was empty. Amazing that we managed to build it all in such a short time. In this country, everything is new, that’s what’s so splendid about it.’

It wasn’t the new developments that struck Lisbeth; it was how ancient the rest of it looked, old and unfinished at the same time. It seemed to be from a different epoch. She knew that she was tired and overwrought, susceptible to strange thoughts. Despite her worrying prospects – marrying a man she didn’t know, to live a life she struggled to imagine – there was a flutter of excitement in her stomach. It was as if the land whispered something to her, something she could not understand or ignore.

‘There’s the hotel.’

He had booked her into a room for the night – her own, she was relieved to see. The room was cool and dark, with a neatly made bed, and an upright wardrobe and washstand against the walls. Outside the window were trees with long white thorns, with little yellow birds like roses dotting the branches. They kept fluttering from perch to perch, twittering joyously. So, happiness was possible in this country, Lisbeth thought; perhaps it would be granted her too.

Someone knocked at the door and when she opened it, two porters brought in her trunk and placed it at the foot of the bed. She thanked them, but they seemed reluctant to leave. She recognised the waiting for a tip, having been in their position before. She had no idea what would be considered a reasonable amount in this country. She found coins in her purse and dropped some into the cupped hands. It amazed her that their palms were so pale when the rest of their skin was so black. They seemed genuinely pleased, and bowed and smiled as they left. She could not deny that she found the experience exhilarating. So, this was what it was like being the lady.

She opened the trunk and took out the wedding dress her mother had made especially, as even her usual Sunday best would not be suitable for such a great occasion. She laid the cream-coloured garment on the bed and smoothed it out with her hands as best she could. Then she put it on a hanger behind the door. She rested her palm against the wall, cool and solid and silent. On a whim, she took off her dress and pressed her naked skin against the wall, enjoying its coolness.

* * *

The Südwester Hotel turned out to be an unassuming two-storey building like one might find in any provincial German town. It was clean too. Albert Pitzer supervised the hotel porters carrying his luggage upstairs to his room. They were notably clean and smelled of soap, and their woolly hair had been clipped short.

He had water brought up, and when everything had been done and everyone had gone, he took a leisurely bath, sitting among suds in a zinc tub, in water grey and cool. He tried to rinse his mind as well, to wash away the memory of every irritation he had felt since his arrival in this country. It had started with the realisation that the ship wouldn’t be tied up at the wharf, but that he would have to get into that decidedly dangerous-looking row boat, and ended with the porter’s expectant look only minutes before, waiting for a tip for merely doing his job. Pitzer found it impossible to rid himself of memories; it was as if his mind kept rifling through a filing drawer labelled Disappointment. Even the bath was not as relaxing as he had hoped. He got out of the tub and stood there white and dripping, and dried his thick torso and thin limbs with a threadbare towel.

The coloured glass in the window cast red and blue patches of light on his skin. He was naked as the day he had come into this world, and more alone than in his childhood.

His father had insisted on not having another child, and then left the one he had. Pitzer’s mother died when he was in his teens. Study kept him going, and the mercy of teachers moved by his circumstances. Somewhere along the way, they too lost interest in him. Then, only months before completing his medical studies, a patient who had been run over by a horse cart died in his care, because as overseeing physician he had been blind to the obvious symptoms of internal bleeding. In a single, rasping breath, that man had transformed Pitzer’s dreams into regrets. He found himself robbed of all confidence, and developed a gnawing anxiety that his professors thought he could not be trusted with the lives of others. Within a week, he came to agree with that view himself. He left the university, turned to self-pity and drink, even wrote a few deplorable poems, until a sense of guilt about wasting his life forced him to find a way back to the bright future that had once awaited him. If he could have another chance of saving someone else’s life, perhaps that might get his own back on track, but nobody would take that risk. He hadn’t even been back on the grounds of Charité Hospital. But he had never stopped studying, even managing to pick up a doctorate in idiot physiognomy at Königsberg. He did research, developed his theories, taught at provincial schools and saved money until he could afford to come to this land of primitive people. Tomorrow his equipment would arrive, and then he could set to work.

At least he had his personal trunk; he could look like a gentleman. He put on clean underwear, gave his suit a good brush, and dressed, slipping his feet into his favourite shoes – a fancy pair of Wilhelm Breitsprechers, the one indulgence he had allowed himself. He combed his hair and beard, waxed the tips of his moustache, and then he was ready to face the world.

As he stepped outside, disappointment struck yet again. Somehow, while going through the familiar motions of getting ready for town, he had imagined that the town would be familiar as well, that he would step into a German street. The dusty road and a passing wagon reminded him of his aching bones, the merciless heat, the unbearable lack of civilisation in Africa. He took a deep breath, coughed the tickling dust out of his throat and wondered if there was anywhere he could enjoy apfelstrudel and coffee. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to sit down in a kaffeehaus again, with lace tablecloths, silver teaspoons, the air heavy with the smell of coffee and pipe tobacco? He took out a handkerchief and polished the lenses of his pince-nez. Gloves and newspapers, ladies with parasols, people wearing scarves and reading books – that was his Germany. Not this. The black, white and red flag of the Kaiserreich hung from a pole on the roof of the post office, limp against the searing white sky. It seemed to him thoroughly out of place.

He would do his work here, and leave, as soon as possible.

Many of his countrymen believed that the colonial empire was a paradise of awe-inspiring scenery, exotic people and animals, not to mention great riches. Unable to let go of fairy tales, they projected their desires onto the blank canvas of distant lands. For them, Africa was the romantic dream of a lost childhood, of innocence and adventure. They would tame the land, and in doing so exalt their pitiful lives to something grandiose.

He had no such illusions before coming, and what he had seen so far would cure all but the most stubborn romantics. What he had expected to find in Africa was exactly what he had found here so far – an uninviting place of discomfort and struggle, populated by savages and servants. Having such low expectations, he did not think he could be disappointed, but if the capital city was anything to judge by, German South-West Africa was an even bleaker place than he had feared. The town looked like a cluster of smallholdings after an advancing army had stripped it of greenery and people. If this was the best this place had to offer … the cynics who claimed the protectorate was only good for scientific research and weapon trials were probably right.

* * *

On the train, when he had imagined visiting Lisbeth Löwenstein in a Windhoek hotel, Siegfried had had something very different in mind. This was better though. He closed the front door of the Südwester Hotel behind him to keep the heat at bay, and announced himself at reception. The clerk told him to wait, and sent up a little boy to call the guest. The clock on the wall behind him showed a quarter past ten, time enough for them to get to the church at the agreed time. There was a chair, but Siegfried chose to stand, to keep the newly ironed creases in his uniform crisp.

It had been awkward getting permission to leave the base the day after his arrival. He explained to Oberleutnant von Schlicht that he had agreed to escort a friend to her wedding, a new settler for whom it would mean a great deal. He couldn’t blame the officer for being incredulous; he had trouble understanding it himself. Why on earth had he offered to walk Fraulein Löwenstein down the aisle? In the magic of the moonlight it had seemed appropriate, but was harder to explain in the light of day. After a messenger was sent to the hotel to confirm his request, he was given the day off.

‘I’m one hundred per cent against it,’ the officer had said, ‘but apparently the relationship between the military and the settlers is somewhat fragile, and Oberst Adendorff believes we should do what we can to make them happy. So, for once, Bock, try not to piss anyone off.’

He promised to be on his best behaviour, and here he was, with his arms behind his back, pacing the floor in polished boots. The walls of the reception area were lined with somewhat amateurish lithographs of Alpine landscapes. He looked at them, but in each rocky outcropping he saw a figure that wasn’t there – the empty-handed fugitive in the desert, staring back at him. Every time he replayed the event in his mind, he tried to find new detail that would help him understand exactly what had happened, the how and the why of it, but whenever he thought about a specific aspect, he found he could not be sure if it were imagined or real.

Footsteps sounded; he turned around to see Lisbeth coming down the stairs in a tight-fitting dress that made her look slender and elegant. She smiled at him and looked genuinely beautiful. The apprehension that hovered around her eyes only added to her allure. Siegfried did not expect to be so affected by her. ‘Fraulein Löwenstein,’ he said, ‘you look wonderful.’

‘It is my wedding day.’

‘How do you feel, now that you’ve met Herr Kamke?’ he asked softly when she had come close.

‘I trust he’s a good man.’

‘Shall we go?’

‘Just one thing, there’s a bow at the back. Can you just make sure it looks right? I couldn’t see properly.’

She stood still while he walked around her. The bow sat in the small of her back and looked good to him. Still, he gave it a few tugs. He was aware that his knuckles brushed against her back. ‘Perfect.’

They walked out into the still, bright morning air and down the dirt street, the tall woman and the small man, arm in arm. Siegfried felt proud to be with her, a woman of low birth, but one who struck an attractive figure and whose life and emotions, he had come to realise, were more complex than they had seemed to him at first glance. How many people walked so steadfastly towards an unwanted fate? Her heels clacked on the flagstone pavement, one of the few in town.

The Lutheran church hall was only a few doors down, but the buildings were widely spaced and they didn’t have time to waste.

A rangy black boy drove a flock of brown-headed goats past them, the animals bleating at the sight of roadside grasses they couldn’t stop to eat. Across the street, bricklayers were building a house. In the wispy shade of a small thorn tree, a man was planing a plank he had clamped across two saw-horses. The swish of his strokes carried in the still morning air. An open landauer pulled by two black horses came past, carrying a man in a top hat. He nodded and lifted the hat in passing, clearly looking at the woman in the wedding dress rather than the soldier in uniform, which was a far more common sight.

Siegfried looked at the bride too. ‘Are you nervous?’

She sighed quietly, and looked ahead. ‘If you grew up like me, approaching the unknown and feeling powerless isn’t so unusual. We live with hope and dread.’

He thought about this. ‘I know you’re talking about your social status, but there are other things that can make you feel just like that. Like being smaller and weaker than everyone in the world of boys and men, or not grasping the values of the people around you. You’re not alone.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I have you. And together we will do this thing.’

Outside the hall, a beaming settler woman, white and floury like a bap, and a man of nearly sixty, with a big forehead, cow-like eyes and a crusty sore on his lip, awaited them. They introduced themselves as the Jürgenses, the bridegroom’s neighbours.

‘Will you be bringing her in?’ Frau Jürgens asked Siegfried, not quite hiding her apprehension.

Siegfried was still struggling to form the words when Lisbeth confirmed it. ‘He’s my friend.’

Herr Jürgens looked at his pocket watch. ‘It’s about time.’

‘Come as soon as you hear the music,’ said Frau Jürgens. ‘We’ll talk later.’ She took her husband’s arm and they slipped into the hall.

Moments later, they heard the strands of Wagner’s ‘Bridal Chorus’ being pounded out on a piano. Siegfried looked at Lisbeth; she seemed ready for a funeral rather than a wedding.

‘Lisbeth,’ he said, using her first name for the first time, recognising the intimacy it suggested.

She looked above the door, at the painted cross there. ‘I’ve never been in a Christian church.’

‘They should be honoured to have you,’ he said. ‘It’s time for your brave face now.’

She turned her head and smiled at him, and it was not only brave, it was beautiful.

He held out his elbow, she put her hand on his forearm, and together they entered the church. Their progress down the aisle was followed by thirty pairs of eyes, but Siegfried was only aware of one person, the tall woman, so stately by his side. The sound of the ferociously bashed piano reverberated through the room.

Herr Kamke awaited them at the front – lean and sunburned, in a shapeless black suit. He must have been twenty years older than his bride. With him was the minister, under a beautifully groomed head of grey hair, like a wave frozen at the moment of breaking. The music stopped, the minister raised his arms and his voice, and Siegfried stood aside.

He had his back to the congregation and his eyes on the ground, staring at the grey floorboards and the wide grooves between them. He was aware of the people around him, members of a fledgling community. They were intent on the new union being formed between a man and a woman, but that was the last thing Siegfried wanted to think about. Instead, he reminded himself that these were the people the soldiers were here to protect, settlers and officials who were turning this country into something governable and economically viable, an outpost of Germany, a place where the landless class could put down their roots, that offered a future to people like Herr Kamke and Lisbeth. Maybe he, too, would lay the foundation of a better future here.

The ceremony kept interrupting his wandering thoughts. At long last, the bride and groom gave each other a clumsy kiss, there were oohs and ahs from the congregation, and then the minister beckoned Siegfried into a side room, where the registry would be signed. He was needed as a witness, along with the Jürgenses.

Inside the small room, Herr Kamke shook his hand, his palm greasy from something he had applied to soften its roughness. While the couple were going through the legalities, Siegfried stood back and stared at the back of Herr Kamke’s neck, how rough the skin was there compared to the smooth patches right behind his ears. Tonight, this hard body, he could not help but think, would press down on top of Lisbeth Löwenstein, on top of Frau Kamke. The prospect bothered him. It wasn’t jealousy, he decided, but a violation of his sense of justice. This is not what the woman wanted. He saw this happen, and could not stop it.

At this point his lungs rebelled, intent on ejecting real or imagined phlegm. He felt the scratching in his chest, tried to stifle it, made noises in his throat. The others turned towards him, Lisbeth included. They probably think I’m overcome by emotion, he thought, which is even more embarrassing. The struggle was useless anyway. He grabbed his handkerchief and let the coughing break free. When he had his breathing under control again and his sense of the outer world returned, everyone was looking, waiting. ‘My apologies,’ he mumbled. ‘Go ahead.’

When the time came, he signed his name below that of the new Frau Kamke.

With the formalities complete, the Jürgenses congratulated the couple and the minister clucked with jollity. Siegfried forced a smile. Then the bride turned, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

* * *

Exactly twenty-four hours after his arrival, Albert Pitzer was back at the station to collect his second trunk, the one the railwayman in Swakopmund had said he would send along. He did not want to stay in Windhoek one day longer than necessary. Already he had bumped into someone who knew him, a fellow student who had finished his degree, now an army doctor. Heinrich Salzwedel had many questions for him, and did not seem to believe all his answers.

They were taking an awfully long time to unload his equipment from the goods wagon. He watched the door as more baggage appeared, was claimed by officials and carried off by young black men who chattered joyfully, as if they were the ones receiving things. Most wore hats, but a few went bare-headed. Their tufts of hair did little to obscure the shape of their skulls, which he observed with great interest.

Eventually there were only two porters left. They disappeared into the goods wagon and he found himself standing on his toes in anticipation; surely, they would come out with his trunk at any moment. He waited, but nothing happened. He looked around, hoping to catch the station master, but even he had apparently found somewhere else to be. In fact, there was nobody else around at all, he realised with some alarm. There was just himself, an emaciated brown dog sniffing the train wheels and then squirting drops of urine onto them, and a woman sitting against the wall of the station building, her legs stretched out flat and a baby lying on her thighs, kneading her stomach with its feet. Even the engineers had left the locomotive, and were probably off somewhere, guzzling beers. Pitzer stepped towards the goods wagon and hesitantly peered inside. It was gloomy, and it took a while to be sure of what he saw. The two porters were asleep, or trying to sleep. Apart from these two figures, the carriage was completely empty.

It sounded like a hollow drum when he banged on the wood next to the door, and the porters sat up wide-eyed.

‘Where is my trunk?’

They looked at him, then at each other, and back to him. Comprehension, he thought, came slowly to these creatures.

‘What happened to my trunk? It was supposed to come from Swakopmund.’

The porters – one younger and stronger, the other older and thinner – looked at him with such bewilderment that he wondered if he was the one going crazy. He should have known things would go wrong. The other day in the desert when a hundred trained and armed soldiers failed to catch a single unarmed fugitive, he should have known things wouldn’t go as planned. Pitzer didn’t share his nation’s usual reverence for men in uniform, but those soldiers’ failure had suggested that things might be even worse than he had imagined. Now this confirmed it. The younger porter trotting off to call the station master did not fill Pitzer with confidence.

When the station master finally turned up, he looked upset at having been interrupted in whatever he had been doing. He was a big, muscular man with wide-set grey eyes like a shark, and small yellow teeth. The hair on his temples was matted with sweat.

‘What’s the problem with your trunk?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with it, except that it’s not here.’

‘What did you do with it?’ asked the station master, who looked as if he really struggled to come to grips with what was going on.

‘The question is what you did with it. I had it sent from Swakopmund.’

‘Well, then maybe we have to ask the people in Swakop where it is.’

‘It has to be here, I need it.’ Pitzer was doing his best to keep his agitation under control.

‘You need it? I need a willing white woman, but do you see any around?’

Pitzer found men who revert to talk of sex to find commonality with others the lowest of the breed. His contempt must have showed.

‘Look, just try to relax and we’ll see what we can do,’ said the station master. ‘Come to the office, and I’ll take down your details, telegraph the stationmaster at Swakop, find out what’s going on.’

* * *

Lisbeth found the experience interesting, like acting in a play she didn’t know, but she said all the right words and the man she had promised to obey seemed very pleased with her performance. He kept trying to sneak glances at the people in the pews, but did look at her at the end, long enough to press his chapped lips against hers.

After the formalities, they posed for a photograph – one with just the two of them, and one with the witnesses too. Then her bridegroom took her by the arm and led her outside.

The guests surged forward, impatient to slap the groom on the back and shake his hand. Lisbeth wasn’t quite the centre of attention, but she was beside him, and that was special too. After congratulating her husband, people smiled politely and tried to say encouraging or amusing things to her. Most of the women said she looked lovely. She believed them, and wished her mother could see her. She had never had a dress this beautiful.

They thronged to the garden behind the Südwester Hotel, where tables had been set out on the swept earth, with white tablecloths and pitchers of beer and platters with dauerwurst and leberkäse, pumpernickel bread, pickles and cheese. Ribbons of different colours were strung between the trees and the yellow birds were around too. In the coolest spot, a band in Bavarian dress had set up, the men in lederhosen and a woman, who proved to be the singer, wearing a dirndl. Maybe her fantasy in Karibib wasn’t that far-fetched after all, Lisbeth thought, that version of Germany really did exist here. The band started to play. Herr Kamke took Lisbeth’s hand and led her to the dance floor. He counted eins, zwei, drei, and off they went. Every time her dance partner turned her so that she faced away from the building, she saw a group of black children in the distance, sitting under a tree, watching the white people cavort. Around her there was clapping and cheering, and a great deal of happiness. Another couple joined them on the floor, and then more. Soon they were dancing in a cloud of dust. The hotelier sent out porters with buckets of water. They cleared everyone off the dance floor and sprinkled water, dipping their hands in the buckets and sowing water drops like seeds. When the dancing resumed, there was less dust, but mud caked their shoes.

Between two dances, Lisbeth sat down on a folding stool and accepted a mug of beer from her bridegroom. She put dauerwurst and cheese on a bread roll, nibbled at it, meat and milk together. She hadn’t bothered to be kosher since leaving home.

Siegfried Bock sat quietly, off to the side, his chair pushed a step or two back from the table. He looked a bit lost. ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked. ‘Why aren’t you dancing?’

‘I prefer to watch. You look like you’re enjoying it.’

‘I have to.’

She sat down next to him, but that only seemed to make him nervous. He fiddled with the flap of the left chest pocket of his uniform, unbuttoning and rebuttoning it.

‘Isn’t that your learned friend, there by the back door?’

She looked and it was indeed Doktor Pitzer. ‘So, I’ll have two friends here … Excuse me.’ She walked quickly to the door, before the scientist could retreat. ‘Herr Doktor Pitzer! Come join us.’

‘I don’t know anyone here,’ he replied, his hand still on the door knob.

‘Neither do I.’

She took him by the sleeve and led him to the main table. ‘This is my husband, Herr Kamke. And over there is Reiter Bock, you might remember him from our first day on the train.’

The two former travelling companions raised their hands, greeting each other from afar.

Lisbeth waited while Doktor Pitzer drank a few mouthfuls of beer. ‘Come dance with me.’

He shook his head.

‘Come, this is my day and I’m asking you.’

Pitzer wiped his moustache. ‘I’ve always found dancing a waste of time and energy. Look at how ridiculous everyone looks, bouncing around with no direction, nothing more than Brownian motion. I’d like to think of humans as being capable of more than simple particles of dust.’

The learned man’s superior attitude hurt her, but of course Lisbeth said nothing. She took her groom by the arm and said, ‘Shall we?’

They danced and ate and drank, and people started treating her like a friend, sharing stories and making promises. Her two fellow train passengers were the only ones not dancing. They ended up sitting at the same table with an empty chair between them, and didn’t seem to engage in conversation.

At dusk, the hotelier sent staff to put lamps on the tables and hang storm lanterns in the trees.

Emboldened by the dark, the black children had come closer. Lisbeth walked out to them and took one of the girls by the hand. ‘Come. All of you.’ She led them to the dance floor. A hush fell over the guests. ‘We’ll have one dance for the children,’ Lisbeth announced. The band leader looked at her, apprehensive. ‘For me,’ she implored, and at that he gave the signal for the musicians to play. The children joined hands in a big circle, Lisbeth among them. They jumped and skipped around, laughing. Some of the guests started banging the tables in time to the music. Firelight lit the smiles of the children and Lisbeth’s mud-splattered dress. Above the trees, the dark heaven sparkled with stars.

It was nearly midnight when the musicians packed up their instruments, maids cleared the tables and the guests said their goodbyes.

This time, Herr Kamke went with Lisbeth to her room. He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, took off his shoes and fell back against the pillows. He was a bit drunk, in a good mood. ‘You were wonderful tonight,’ he said. ‘I always knew there was something special about you.’

This, she realised, wasn’t half as bad as she had feared. She blew out the candle, stepped out of her dress, removed one item of clothing after another until she stood naked in front of him.

* * *

Siegfried stood to attention in the middle of the examination room, dressed only in his drawers, eyeing his clothes bundled on a chair in the corner. He wished he could put it back on. It was only cotton, but it was armour against those eyes. Doktor Salzwedel and Oberst Adendorff paced around him, appraising the meat. Siegfried cursed his body. It carried his soul, but betrayed him at every turn. The door stood open, lighting him from behind. In front, sunlight streamed through two windows. He tried to puff up his chest, but there was no hiding the fact that his physique was woefully underdeveloped. It came from being laid up in bed while other children were running about and climbing trees.

And now it seemed he might miss the military action too. When he had returned from the wedding the day before, he found the barracks empty. The rest of his company had left suddenly, following reports of a Herero force under chief Andreas at a place called Heusis, only fifty kilometres west of Windhoek. The fighting in that part of the country was thought to be over, with the Herero vanquished, and the expectation had been that they would be deployed to the south, in the ongoing fight against the Nama commandos. He could see his comrades in his mind’s eye, smartly dressed horsemen galloping under the African sun, taking the battle to the enemy … He had expected to be sent to join them, but that apparently wasn’t to be. Maybe someone had whispered in someone’s ear, and now here he was, in a room that smelled of spirits, where everything was bright and crisp, only offset by rectangular green leather panels in some of the cream-coloured metal furnishings. Even the floor was painted white.

Oberst Adendorff tapped his cane against the toes of his boots, a piece of tapered ebony with an ivory handle and a filigreed silver band at the joint. The officer was pale and trim, with fierce black eyebrows to compensate for the meagre stubble on his head. It was said that if he weren’t desk-bound by an old knee wound, Adendorff might have been in command of all the troops in the protectorate, instead of General von Trotha. ‘I can see why you called me over,’ he said to the doctor.

Doktor Salzwedel, plump and hairless as a weisswurst, took off his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘On the muster sheet they have him down as a soldier – not half, not three quarters, one. There’s not even enough of him to stop a bullet from hitting a real soldier.’ With his glasses back in place, the doctor went to his desk and opened a folder, tracing with his fingers as he scanned a page.

‘Were you on the same ship as Albert Pitzer?’ he asked Siegfried. And to Adendorff, ‘A university classmate, way back. Saw him at Café Elbe the other day.’

‘Yes. I only met Doktor Pitzer afterwards, though, on the train.’

‘Doktor? I never realised he had completed his studies …’ Doktor Salzwedel raised his eyebrows, pushed out his lower lip and nodded slowly, considering the information. Then he cleared his throat, getting back to the business at hand. ‘There is no mention here of you being sick on the voyage. Why is that?’

‘I wasn’t sick, sir.’

‘So how come you lost so much weight?’

‘I didn’t, sir.’

‘Am I to believe that you were in this condition when the doctor who saw you in … what?’ He scanned the form. ‘Charlottenburg. When the doctor who saw you passed you fit for service?’

Siegfried didn’t answer. Traudl’s father was a powerful man in Berlin circles and wanted to rid his daughter of a persistent and unsuitable suitor. His own father genuinely thought the army might make a man of him yet.

The doctor shrugged and turned to the officer. ‘What are we to do with him? I could make him lie against the door to stop the draught, but he might blow away.’

Both men chuckled at that. They were evidently friends. When Oberst Adendorff had entered, there had been a quick conversation about a chess game they had going.

They talk as if this doesn’t concern me, thought Siegfried, as if I’m not here. Was this a case of fate exacting revenge because he had let the fugitive in the desert go? He had done that without thinking, and couldn’t stop thinking about it ever since. Was it an unforgivable thing to let your country’s enemy, an escaped prisoner of war, get away? Or would it have been unforgivable to do otherwise? His inaction could have been motivated by gratitude, because the man had probably saved his life. Or perhaps it was that he had recognised the weakness of the man’s position, and having felt so powerless all his life, was compelled to protect the weak. He wished he could discuss it with someone, but there was nobody who wouldn’t condemn him.

The voices within and the voices without became too much to bear. ‘Why don’t you give me a chance?’ he blurted out.

Adendorff walked right up to him, giving Siegfried a close look at the hairs in those wild-sprouting eyebrows. He braced himself for a bawling, but the officer’s voice was soft. ‘The issue is not if we should give you a chance, but if we should take a chance. We’re engaged in a war here. We cannot fight it with men who would be a burden to others, or at best a passenger. It’s not your fault, I know. Nature has not been kind to you; you’re clearly not suitable for the job you’re supposed to do here. You must understand that this makes an already difficult position even more so. Forgive the doctor and me if we take our refuge in humour.’

Siegfried didn’t know what to say. He had never had much opportunity to develop a defence against kindness.

‘If he could do something that wasn’t too demanding physically …’ said Doktor Salzwedel. ‘He could be a camp guard.’

Siegfried remembered the emaciated, broken women he saw at Swakopmund, creatures from the underworld stumbling through the murk. ‘Please don’t do that, sir. Send me to a combat unit. If I don’t shape up, they can send me back and then you can do with me what you want.’

Oberst Adendorff tapped his fingertips against his lips.

‘I know some men in Leutnant Berghammer’s platoon,’ Siegfried ventured. It wasn’t exactly true, he knew only a name or two from Manfred Eberhardt’s letters to Traudl, but perhaps if he went to the same unit, it would help to prove that he was his rival’s equal. Perhaps he could find out how the man had died, and at least make sure that he had something to tell Traudl. Perhaps Manfred Eberhardt wasn’t the hero everyone at home assumed him to be, maybe it was just typhus that had killed him, a death without any particular honour. Or what if he had done something stupid or cowardly, some shameful deed that brought about his death, to the relief of his comrades?

Oberst Adendorff nodded slowly. ‘That unit is a bit under strength, they’ve had losses.’