Parts Unknown. Zirk van den Berg
Читать онлайн книгу.
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