Parts Unknown. Zirk van den Berg
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The trip …’
He became flustered. ‘Of course. Just through that door. Women on the left, I think.’
‘My valise,’ she asked. She took it from him and walked away, conscious of being watched. He wasn’t as tall as she remembered, trimmer though. He looked nervous and had tried to dress for the occasion, in a shirt collar that was clearly too tight. She hoped that he was a good man who would treat her kindly. It occurred to her that it would be wonderful if she were to fall in love with her husband. But that would be too much to hope for.
The rest room was clean and cool, and smelled of disinfectant. After using the bucket, she closed the lid, unbuttoned her blouse at the basin, wet a kerchief and wiped down her face, neck and chest. She kept the kerchief pressed to her eyes for a while. Then she faced herself in the mirror. Her eyes looked tired, and dust dulled her hair. She loosened her hair and brushed it, then pinned it back up. She dabbed on a bit of body powder, did up the last buttons, and was ready for the second meeting.
He smiled briefly, avoiding her eyes. ‘Your trunk is on the cart already.’ He gestured for her to walk through the station building and exit the other side. There were two wagons and a cart waiting outside. He addressed the man holding the cart horses in a language that sounded a bit like German, but wasn’t quite, some garbled tongue. He put her valise on the back and let her steady herself on his arm to get up onto the seat.
From this side of the building, she had a better view of the town: dusty streets between buildings that were more than shouting distance apart, stunted thorn trees and clumps of dry grass in the spaces between. The hot, dry air hardly moved; everyone and everything seemed slightly out of breath. A rocky ridge to the east, mountains low on the southern horizon, hills everywhere else. A couple of forts on higher ground reminded her that this was still the wild frontier.
‘When I first came here,’ said Herr Kamke, ‘all of this was empty. Amazing that we managed to build it all in such a short time. In this country, everything is new, that’s what’s so splendid about it.’
It wasn’t the new developments that struck Lisbeth; it was how ancient the rest of it looked, old and unfinished at the same time. It seemed to be from a different epoch. She knew that she was tired and overwrought, susceptible to strange thoughts. Despite her worrying prospects – marrying a man she didn’t know, to live a life she struggled to imagine – there was a flutter of excitement in her stomach. It was as if the land whispered something to her, something she could not understand or ignore.
‘There’s the hotel.’
He had booked her into a room for the night – her own, she was relieved to see. The room was cool and dark, with a neatly made bed, and an upright wardrobe and washstand against the walls. Outside the window were trees with long white thorns, with little yellow birds like roses dotting the branches. They kept fluttering from perch to perch, twittering joyously. So, happiness was possible in this country, Lisbeth thought; perhaps it would be granted her too.
Someone knocked at the door and when she opened it, two porters brought in her trunk and placed it at the foot of the bed. She thanked them, but they seemed reluctant to leave. She recognised the waiting for a tip, having been in their position before. She had no idea what would be considered a reasonable amount in this country. She found coins in her purse and dropped some into the cupped hands. It amazed her that their palms were so pale when the rest of their skin was so black. They seemed genuinely pleased, and bowed and smiled as they left. She could not deny that she found the experience exhilarating. So, this was what it was like being the lady.
She opened the trunk and took out the wedding dress her mother had made especially, as even her usual Sunday best would not be suitable for such a great occasion. She laid the cream-coloured garment on the bed and smoothed it out with her hands as best she could. Then she put it on a hanger behind the door. She rested her palm against the wall, cool and solid and silent. On a whim, she took off her dress and pressed her naked skin against the wall, enjoying its coolness.
* * *
The Südwester Hotel turned out to be an unassuming two-storey building like one might find in any provincial German town. It was clean too. Albert Pitzer supervised the hotel porters carrying his luggage upstairs to his room. They were notably clean and smelled of soap, and their woolly hair had been clipped short.
He had water brought up, and when everything had been done and everyone had gone, he took a leisurely bath, sitting among suds in a zinc tub, in water grey and cool. He tried to rinse his mind as well, to wash away the memory of every irritation he had felt since his arrival in this country. It had started with the realisation that the ship wouldn’t be tied up at the wharf, but that he would have to get into that decidedly dangerous-looking row boat, and ended with the porter’s expectant look only minutes before, waiting for a tip for merely doing his job. Pitzer found it impossible to rid himself of memories; it was as if his mind kept rifling through a filing drawer labelled Disappointment. Even the bath was not as relaxing as he had hoped. He got out of the tub and stood there white and dripping, and dried his thick torso and thin limbs with a threadbare towel.
The coloured glass in the window cast red and blue patches of light on his skin. He was naked as the day he had come into this world, and more alone than in his childhood.
His father had insisted on not having another child, and then left the one he had. Pitzer’s mother died when he was in his teens. Study kept him going, and the mercy of teachers moved by his circumstances. Somewhere along the way, they too lost interest in him. Then, only months before completing his medical studies, a patient who had been run over by a horse cart died in his care, because as overseeing physician he had been blind to the obvious symptoms of internal bleeding. In a single, rasping breath, that man had transformed Pitzer’s dreams into regrets. He found himself robbed of all confidence, and developed a gnawing anxiety that his professors thought he could not be trusted with the lives of others. Within a week, he came to agree with that view himself. He left the university, turned to self-pity and drink, even wrote a few deplorable poems, until a sense of guilt about wasting his life forced him to find a way back to the bright future that had once awaited him. If he could have another chance of saving someone else’s life, perhaps that might get his own back on track, but nobody would take that risk. He hadn’t even been back on the grounds of Charité Hospital. But he had never stopped studying, even managing to pick up a doctorate in idiot physiognomy at Königsberg. He did research, developed his theories, taught at provincial schools and saved money until he could afford to come to this land of primitive people. Tomorrow his equipment would arrive, and then he could set to work.
At least he had his personal trunk; he could look like a gentleman. He put on clean underwear, gave his suit a good brush, and dressed, slipping his feet into his favourite shoes – a fancy pair of Wilhelm Breitsprechers, the one indulgence he had allowed himself. He combed his hair and beard, waxed the tips of his moustache, and then he was ready to face the world.
As he stepped outside, disappointment struck yet again. Somehow, while going through the familiar motions of getting ready for town, he had imagined that the town would be familiar as well, that he would step into a German street. The dusty road and a passing wagon reminded him of his aching bones, the merciless heat, the unbearable lack of civilisation in Africa. He took a deep breath, coughed the tickling dust out of his throat and wondered if there was anywhere he could enjoy apfelstrudel and coffee. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to sit down in a kaffeehaus again, with lace tablecloths, silver teaspoons, the air heavy with the smell of coffee and pipe tobacco? He took out a handkerchief and polished the lenses of his pince-nez. Gloves and newspapers, ladies with parasols, people wearing scarves and reading books – that was his Germany. Not this. The black, white and red flag of the Kaiserreich hung from a pole on the roof of the post office, limp against the searing white sky. It seemed to him thoroughly out of place.
He would do his work here, and leave, as soon as possible.
Many of his countrymen believed that the colonial empire was a paradise of awe-inspiring scenery, exotic people and animals, not to mention great riches. Unable to let go of fairy tales, they projected their desires onto the blank canvas of distant lands. For them, Africa was the romantic dream of