Parts Unknown. Zirk van den Berg
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need to leave space,’ said the railwayman, tapping on a paper. ‘There’s another passenger. You can’t take both trunks.’
One trunk had his personal effects, the other his equipment. He couldn’t damn well go naked, so he picked the clothes. ‘I’ll take this one then. You’ll send the other one tomorrow?’
‘No problem,’ said the railwayman, making a note on his papers. He gestured to the porters to take the second trunk into the station building.
‘These small boxes can go under the seats,’ Pitzer said, and got the porters to put them down on the floor.
Then he tried to make himself comfortable on the hard bench, without success. He wondered if it was going to get much hotter than this, later in the day.
* * *
Siegfried slid the boxes under the seat, next to his rucksack. They sounded hollow, but were surprisingly heavy.
When the man in the Homburg hat had finally settled across from Siegfried, he mumbled something about not trusting these colonials as far as he could throw them. He didn’t look like the kind of man who could throw anyone anywhere. He was big, but clumsy and bookish, about forty years old. He reminded Siegfried of the friends who would visit his father, learned men. After months of just being around soldiers, he was tempted to have a different conversation.
‘Is this your first time in South-West?’
The man had a book open on his lap already, his fingers caressing a page that seemed to be blank. Who reads a blank book? Then Siegfried noticed that the pages were covered in handwriting in pencil, much of it faded to almost nothing.
‘Yes, and hopefully the last.’ The man closed the book, keeping his finger in it. Then he changed hands, so he could wag his favourite finger. ‘This town,’ he said, vaguely pointing out the window, ‘is a Petri dish.’
Siegfried wondered if he had heard correctly.
The man must have misunderstood his hesitation, and started explaining. ‘A Petri dish, a shallow glass dish scientists use to grow bacteria, for instance. This town is like that. A harbour, hotel, bank, doctor, church, school—’
‘Don’t forget the train station.’
‘Yes. Everything you need to make a culture grow … but no culture.’
A porter reappeared at the door with a beaming smile and a small wooden crate. He set the crate down to serve as a step and offered his hand to a young white woman behind him.
She looked a bit embarrassed, but used the step anyway. ‘Ah, Herr Doktor Pitzer! Mind if I join you?’
So, he had been correct that this was, indeed, an educated man, Siegfried noted with some satisfaction.
‘Fraulein Löwenstein!’ Doktor Pitzer forced a smile and shifted up to make space for the woman.
She smiled briefly at Siegfried and took her seat next to the man, who started polishing his pince-nez. With the woman taking the initiative, the two of them swapped pleasantries, talking rather stiffly about the weather, travel plans and things that awaited them in the immediate future.
With her attention elsewhere, Siegfried took the opportunity to look at the woman. She had a striking face, somewhat narrow. Her eyes were limpid, grey, and thick black hair spilled from under her hat. The porter handed her a small valise that she slipped under the seat. She dusted the lapels of her jacket – grey with a purple tinge – straightened her skirt and sat with her hands folded on her lap, managing to look flustered without moving a muscle.
Siegfried had seen that expression before, one time aboard ship when he had held a door open for her. He realised then she was working class, and unused to courteous treatment. With a surname like Löwenstein, she could be Jewish too. She was from the eastern part of the empire, Silesia or thereabouts, Siegfried guessed, probably here to become a prostitute. He would bet that this outfit was the finest she had ever worn. In a couple of months, he would meet her in Windhoek and she might be happy to oblige him for the cost of a meal. The thought made him uncomfortable, even though he recognised that the cause may have been his weakness, not hers.
When his fellow passengers finally looked his way, Siegfried asked, ‘Are you here to doctor our troops, or …’
‘I’m not that kind of doctor,’ said the well-dressed man, somewhat irritated. ‘I’m a scientist.’
The railwayman from before trotted next to the train, slamming shut the doors as he went, his mouth hanging open. There was some shouting, a whistle, a flag being waved, and then the train shuddered. Would those two little engines get this load moving? Siegfried experienced a moment of anxiety. Perhaps his adventure would flounder before it had even started. The train jerked forward, stopped for a moment, and then got going, rolling slowly.
He noticed Doktor Pitzer glaring at his pocket watch. The train had left almost twenty minutes late.
* * *
Lying on the roof, Mordegai watched with alarm as more and more of the world became visible. He did not want to see, because he did not want to be seen. At times he found himself closing his eyes, vainly trying to blind others in the process. He prayed to a god he didn’t believe in: Please, let them not find me, let us leave.
Then there was shouting and action among the soldiers. The train under his belly shook with the stamping of many feet. Smoke spewed up above the thinning mist and the smell of burning coal wafted over him. The train shook. His fingers gripped handholds that might prove to be insufficient once they were moving. Another shudder, and then came the sound of steel wheels rolling on steel rails, and a faint wind in his face. They were moving.
He kept his head down until they had left the town behind. He was relieved to be getting away from the concentration camp, but worried about his immediate survival. He could fall off the roof and crash into the ground any minute. They weren’t going fast, about the speed of a horse at a fast trot, he guessed, but it was a fair distance to the ground and everything around here was covered in rocks. Besides, even if he did survive the fall, there were about a hundred armed German soldiers on the train who would love to take pot shots at him. His plan was to get off the train once they were in the mountains. Doing it unseen was the biggest problem. If he could do that, he would be able to hide out and find water. He had grown up only a few days’ walk to the south. It wasn’t bad country if you knew how to live in the veld.
Once he looked up and saw four gemsbok galloping along, almost keeping pace with the train. Their meat was dark and strong. He would taste it again, he decided, the day would come.
* * *
They went eastward, through the Namib, into this vast, dry land. It was a place for pioneers and warriors, Siegfried thought – inhospitable, the stuff of legend, a proving ground for men.
There was no sign of fog now. Looking at the barren landscape, large and empty and dry under the searing sun, Siegfried appreciated how hard it would be to cross the desert by ox wagon. Attempts to do it by steam tractor had failed. The new rail connection between Swakopmund and Windhoek had changed all that – a strip of broken rock, wooden sleepers and two lines of steel crossing nearly 400 kilometres through some of the harshest country in the world. They would be in Windhoek the next evening, from where they would be sent to battle the rebels, probably to the south. In the normal run of things, he thought of himself mostly in individual terms rather than as part of any group, but the way his nation was taming this land made him proud to be German.
The places they passed bore a mixture of German and local names: Nonidas, Richthofen, Rössing, Khan, Welwitsch … Sometimes it was hardly more than a hut and a water tower, a man or two waving at them. Siegfried read the names as they passed the stations, repeated them softly to himself. He wanted to include them in the letters he would write to Traudl, even if sending them would be a complete waste. Her father was bound to intercept all mail from him, and if any did slip through, would she even read it?
Once he saw four loping antelopes, beautiful sandy brown creatures with patterned black-and-white