Parts Unknown. Zirk van den Berg
Читать онлайн книгу.
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