Parts Unknown. Zirk van den Berg
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Parts Unknown
Zirk van den Berg
Kwela Books
For my grandfathers,
Zirk van den Berg and Andries Bredenkamp,
who settled in Namibia way back.
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