Parts Unknown. Zirk van den Berg
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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 need to get these soldiers in the field. If you’d like, you can wait.’
The harbour was full of ships, full of men and goods pouring into the protectorate, and he would probably encounter the same situation again. Besides, he had not come all this way to be stuck in Swakopmund. He had come to this country for one reason only: to do his research, prove his theories and save his life from obscurity and insignificance. The prisoner-of-war camp did have an abundance of study material, but in Swakopmund he would be in the public eye too much. The last thing he wanted was for word of his activities to leak out before he was ready to announce his results. He had to do his research in some remote place.
‘I’ll take this train,’ he said. ‘Put