Parts Unknown

By Zirk van den Berg

German South West Africa, 1905. The sickly Siegfried Bock comes to the colony to prove his mettle. But soon he becomes disillusioned when he witnesses the effect of the German command to kill Hereros and suppress any Nama uprising. Lisbeth Löwenstein, a poor Jewess, has to marry a German settler she’s hardly met. When he falls from his horse and dies, she chooses to flee from his farm with his Nama labourers. Mordegai Guruseb, a Damara man, escapes from a concentration camp where Hereros are dying from the harsh conditions. Before long his freedom is threatened once again. And then there is the failed doctor Albert Pitzer whose pseudoscience is debunked by Alvaus Luipert, a schoolmaster and Nama leader who revolts against the colonial dispensation. Against the unspoilt landscape of German South West Africa, the gripping entanglement of these characters’ fates builds to a denouement that will severely test their humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kwela
• Release date: Sep 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9780795708800

Zirk van den Berg

Zirk van den Berg is in Namibië gebore, het grootgeword in Suid-Afrika, en woon deesdae in Nieu-Seeland. Hy debuteer met ’n kortverhaalbundel, Ekstra dun vir meer gevoel, en daarna verskyn ’n roman, Wydsbeen. Nobody Dies is sy eerse Engelse roman, vertaal as 'n Ander mens. Halfpad een ding en Half of One Thing verskyn saam in 2014.

Book preview

I

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