five thousand five hundred and thirty-three kilometres to the east, in Kigoma on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, Anton Ruter was also busy with pen and paper. He was writing a letter to his boss, Joseph Lambert Meyer, in Papenburg.
‘...inform you that our work is progressing well. All the ribs are up and the deck stringers and sheer strakes are also in place. We started to lay the A plates on 19 April, or the Sunday after Easter. Meantime, all the B and C plates have been laid and the D plates are all installed bar two on each side. You’ll be glad to hear that everything has gone well so far, which makes us very happy. Were getting on fast with the riveting. The bulkheads will soon be finished, and we’ve also done a lot of riveting on the bottom. I can’t yet tell you if we’ll be finished by August, it depends on the riveting.’
Anton Ritter was sitting at a home-made table outside his house. Built for him by the German East African Railway Company, it was little more than a wooden shack with a corrugated-iron roof, mosquito screens over the windows and a door that could be locked. Darkness was falling. He thought of lighting the paraffin lamp but laid his pen aside and resolved to finish the letter tomorrow because the next train to Dar-es-Salaam would not be leaving until Tuesday. He sat back on the folding chair young Wendt had made for him and gazed out across Lake Tanganyika, which lay before him like a sea, unfathomably peaceful. His house
occupied a slightly elevated position on a promontory that jutted into the lake for half a kilometre. To the north, west and south the lake’s greenish, shimmering waters stretched away to the horizon. The opposite shore, which belonged to the Belgian Congo, was over fifty kilometres away and shrouded in mist, and the two extremities of the lake were 700 kilometres apart. An Arab dhow could be seen far out across the water, black and silent, while a pirogue propelled by eight native paddlers was darting along close inshore. Soon, when the fishing boats set off in search of their nightly catch, the lake would be brilliantly illuminated by the countless grass torches the fishermen lit to lure the fish from its dark depths. A flock of flamingos was flying east towards the mountains, which glowed red in the light of the setting sun. Riiter shivered and went inside to fetch his jacket. He was still surprised how cold it could get in the heart of Africa. He knew, of course, that the lake lay 800 metres above sea level, and that the eternal snows of Mount Kilimanjaro were not far away, but he would never have thought it possible that an African evening in May could be quite as cool as a spring evening in Papenburg.
A stone’s-throw further inland stood Tellmann’s house, an exact replica of Riiter’s wooden shack, and on the other side, towards the end of the promontory, was young Wendts hut, a scene of constant activity. But the most important thing lay at Riiter s feet: the dock and shipyard which the railway company had constructed to accommodate the Gotzen. A couple of sailing boats were moored to the quay, together with a worn-out old steamer named the Hedwig von Wissmann. Anton Riiter had looked down at the latter with a tenderly compassionate eye ever since going for a trial run aboard her. Only twenty metres long and four metres wide, she bobbed like a cork and started to pitch and toss appallingly in the slightest sea. Her hull leaked in every seam and was in urgent need of a thorough overhaul, but she tirelessly performed her duties as a freighter for sisal growers, a ferry for German colonial servants, and - more and more often in recent times - a troop transport for the imperial forces. Despite her inadequacies, therefore, the Wissmann controlled Lake Tanganyika’s full length of 700 kilometres, the Belgian and British shorelines as well as well as the German, because the British had
no self-propelled vessel at all on the lake and the Belgians only an even sorrier little steamer named the Alexandre Delcommune. Anton Riiter had grasped one thing: finish building the Gotzen, which was ten times as big and twice as fast as the Wissmann, and Kaiser Wilhelm would command not only Lake Tanganyika but the whole of Central Africa.
Beside the harbour was the shipyard, the recently completed dock, the brand-new forty-ton electric luffing-and-slewing crane, the railway tracks leading to the dock, the stocks and steel slipway, and the cradle that supported the Gotzen s proud black skeleton. Riiter, Wendt and Tellmann worked from sun-up to sunset six days a week. There being a time and place for everything, Sunday was a rest day. The keel had been laid, the stem and sternpost attached, all the ribs and stringers installed, and the bulk of the steel outer skin riveted on. Anton Riiter never tired of the sight. This was his shipyard, and his ship was taking shape once more beneath the African sky. That shed over there was his machine shop. Beside it was his joiners workshop and his storage depot. Over there was his wood store for his generator, and his native labourers lived in the village beyond the hill. There were no black Benz limousines or white lace parasols or pink muslin gowns within a 1000-kilometre radius, nor was there anyone to give him a condescending pat on the arm and leave him standing at the gangway. There were only the lake and the ship and two hundred workers of whom Riiter himself was one. Together they would build the finest, handsomest ship in all of Africa, and Riiter would take care never to pat a worker on the arm or leave anyone standing at the gangway. On arrival he had been highly relieved to be spared the job of recruiting a workforce, having found a hundred eager black men awaiting him at the yard. They worked well and fast and reliably, and many of them had even learnt German at mission school. Riiter was extremely satisfied. All that had surprised him was that every evening a squad of askaris turned out to escort the workers from the shipyard to the native village, and that every morning a Corporal Schaffler came to attention in front of him and demanded a written receipt for them.
Riiter took out his pocket watch. It was half past six and time for supper, which the three Papenburgers, by tacit agreement, invariably
ate together outside Hermann Wendts hut. Riiter was waiting for old Tellmann, who could always be relied on to emerge from the gloom at nightfall wearing a clean shirt and clasping his hands behind his back. Then they would stroll over to ‘Wendt’s beer garden’, as young Hermann had christened it one cheerfully alcoholic night.
Needless to say, it had taken Wendt less than twenty-four hours to default on his high-principled resolution to remain true to his ideals and perform all his daily chores in person on this continent of slaves and slave-owners. On the very first night he moved into his shack, when he had lashed some twigs together to form a besom and was starting to rid the front yard of dry leaves and gnawed mutton bones, a naked, wizened old woman had suddenly appeared, taken the broom from his hand without a word, and proceeded to sweep the yard herself. When he tried to recapture the implement she cackled loudly and dodged aside with remarkable agility. In the course of the ensuing argument, which the two of them conducted by means of gestures and mutually unintelligible scraps of conversation, Wendt was subjected, willy-nilly, to the following inquisition. First, was he a man or a woman, to make himself the laughing stock of the whole village by wielding a broom? Secondly, was he an impecunious wretch who had come to Africa to eat decent folk out of house and home? If not, and if he had some money, was he such a skinflint that he preferred - thirdly - to keep it all to himself and spend nothing? If he wasn’t a skinflint, why would he - fourthly - give nothing to an old woman who - fifthly - wasn’t intent on robbing him (which - sixthly - would be only too easy) and wanted - seventhly to do an honest job of work for him? The argument lasted less than two minutes and ended in Wendt’s total capitulation. The old woman retained the besom and swept the entire yard. Then she went inside and swept every corner of the hut, mended a hole in the mosquito netting, opened Wendt’s suitcase and thoroughly inspected its contents, discovered a bundle of dirty laundry and took it down to the lake for a wash.
But that wasn’t all. On the night of that first day, when Hermann Wendt was seated in the freshly swept yard, watching insects swarm around the paraffin lamp and chewing some ship’s biscuit, which he
5i
had pocketed aboard the Feldmarschall as iron rations, a second figure appeared. Not the wizened old crone but another member of her sex, she was a spherical, middle-aged woman whose bright orange frock seemed to be filled with balls of every size. Held together by some mysterious means, these rolled back and forth and to and fro at every step she took in her orange-coloured dress, which was taut to bursting. Her pretty face was surmounted by a round, clean-shaven skull. Balanced on the latter was an earthenware pot containing something edible - something that smelt extremely tasty. She smiled at Wendt as she walked past, said ‘Habari mzungu!’, and disappeared into the darkness, leaving behind a trace of the appetizing scent. Wendt sniffed, trying to identify it. Onions, leeks, beans. Possibly mutton. Scarcely had the last of the aroma been borne away by the cool evening breeze when the spherical woman reappeared. Having skirted the lamplight with the pot of food still on her head, she made another fragrant disappearance. Wendt chewed his ship’s biscuit, thought of the immediate future, and reflected that he had never cooked a decent meal in his life, nor did he have the least idea where to procure any onions, leeks or mutton. Then the spherical woman made a third appearance. This time she lingered on the edge of the lamplight, then smiled and turned and sank to the ground in a single, fluid movement. Removing the lid from the pot, she put it down in front of him and balanced a long-handled spoon on the rim. Finally, with a maternal nod of invitation, she said: ‘ Kula , mzungu! Kula!’ What was Wendt to do? He was powerless. He straightened up, took the spoon and proceeded to eat. The spherical woman, whose name was Samblakira, watched him finish off the entire pot. From then on she was his personal cook. In return for a modest wage she brought him three meals a day: breakfast outside the hut, lunch at the construction site, supper outside the hut. He still couldn’t identify the contents of the pot every time or right away, but everything tasted excellent once he’d got used to it.
During those first few days Wendt often wondered what his comrades at the Workers’ Cultural Association would say to this arrangement. The division of labour was fair enough. He was building the woman a ship and she was cooking for him. She was producing added value and being
paid for it, and she herself controlled the means of production, in other words, the cooking pot and the spoon and her fireplace. She also determined the monetary value of the added value arising from her labour. As far as Wendt could see, there was no misappropriation or exploitation involved. All was well to that extent. Besides, the woman probably had a large family for whom she voluntarily cooked several times a day in any case, and if she diverted a little of their food to him, that constituted a rationally earned bonus, not unpaid overtime.
His workmates Riiter and Tellmann doubtless took a rather different view of the matter. For the first couple of days they had stared wideeyed when Samblakira appeared on the slipway at noon with her fragrant pitchers and cooking pots. They turned away, filled with envy, and pretended not to see her serving young Wendt and wiping his mouth and telling him the names of the dishes and wobbling with laughter when he repeated the unfamiliar African words. On the third day, however, Tellmann’s evening stroll happened to take him past Wendts hut just as Samblakira turned up. He had said a friendly good evening and was preparing to walk on when young Wendt beckoned him over and more or less bullied him into sharing his meal, so he stayed for courtesy’s sake. And Wendt had run over to Riiter s hut and invited him too. From then on, Tellmann and Riiter were regular patrons of ‘Wendt’s beer garden’, which was so called because Wendt got an Arab trader named Mamadou to supply him with a big pitcher of freshly-brewed millet beer every day.
In one respect, however, young Wendt kept his resolution. None of their huts had contained a stick of furniture, so he made beds for Riiter, Tellmann and himself with his own hands. He told old Tellmann to take his Papenburg shotgun off into the bush - no one knew if it really worked - and shoot two of the oldest, toughest zebra stallions he could find. Contrary to expectations, Tellmann actually did so. Wendt stripped off their hides, soaked them in water for two days and cut them into strips the width of a finger. Meanwhile, he knocked up three bedsteads out of some young tree trunks. Having nailed the zebra-hide strips to them, lengthwise and close together, he threaded shorter strips between them and nailed these, too, to the frames on either side. He employed the same technique to
produce two bench seats and half a dozen extremely comfortable chairs, which usually stood in Wendts beer garden. He built a fireplace out of big black stones, riveted iron slats together at the shipyard to form a barbecue, and improvised some efficient oil lamps out of empty bottles and tin cans with thick hempen wicks. Last of all, he nailed a board above his front door. Painted white, it bore the words ‘Wendt’s Beer Garden’ in red. The first few nights after the opening were not improved by the fact that the lights and smell of food attracted quite a number of jackals and hyenas, which prowled around on the outskirts of the lamplight with glowing eyes, grunting voraciously. On Samblakira’s advice Wendt erected a dense thorn-bush zariba. The height of a man, this could be relied on to keep any thieves or scavengers out.
Anton Riiter didn’t have to wait long for Tellmann to appear that evening, the evening of n May 1914, when he laid his half-written letter aside and took the pen and paper into the house. On emerging he was greeted with a low growl by a young feline predator that wound around his legs and dug its claws into his trousers. This was Veronika, Tellmann’s six-months-old cheetah. A passing Masai had artfully dandled the cub under his nose, and Tellmann hadn’t been able to resist. He swapped his pocket knife and a can of beans for the fluffy little bundle and took her home, plaited her a collar out of some shoelaces, and christened her Veronika because she toddled around in a touchingly clumsy way that reminded him of his first-born daughter. Veronika had grown apace since then, and she followed him everywhere on her long legs. At night she slept at the foot of his bed, in the mornings she followed him down to the yard and clambered around on the Gotzens framework. During breaks she rested her head on Tellmann’s lap, her beautiful, tawny eyes gazing up at him intently, and emitted hoarse little whimpers of affection. Tellmann stroked her flanks and fed her on morsels of dried meat, a handful of which he always kept in his trouser pocket.
Veronika headed off into the darkness and Riiter and Tellmann followed her leisurely along the beaten track their feet had created in the past few weeks. Riiter said he had the impression that there weren’t quite as many mosquitoes as there had been a week or two ago, and Tellmann
replied that the rainy season must be coming to an end. Wendts beer garden was already quite crowded when they entered it through the gap in the thorn-bush hedge. Ruter knew everyone there with one exception. The roly-poly, cheerful-looking woman was Samblakira, Wendt’s personal cook, who was squatting behind three earthenware pots of varying size and stirring each of them in turn. The white-bearded Arab in white turban and white galabieh who was standing at the barbecue, grilling some mutton chops, was Mamadou the purveyor of millet beer. The two Bantu already seated at table and talking together in low voices were Mkwawa and Kahigi. One belonged to the Matumbi tribe, the other was a Sagara, and both were employed at the yard as labourers. Wendt had made friends with them, learnt his first smattering of Swahili from them, and persuaded the askaris to allow them to visit him in the evenings whenever they wanted. Now he was sitting across the table from them, peeling mangoes and pawpaws and slicing the flesh into a wooden bowl. At the end of the table sat a dignified stranger: a youthfully handsome, extraordinarily slender-limbed Masai. His iron-tipped spear was propped against the table top, his hands were folded as if in prayer, and he was gazing into the darkness lost in thought. So tall that he topped Anton Ruter by a head even when seated, he was wearing an antelopeskin kilt embroidered along the hem with beads, and inserted in his earlobes were two flat stones the size of a man’s palm. Looking at his lofty forehead and thick eyebrows, aquiline nose and jutting lower lip, Ruter guessed him to be a strong-willed, inflexible character. Despite the ghost of a smile on his lips, his dark eyes, firm chin and high cheekbones suggested that his serene features could, at the slightest provocation, become contorted into a fearsome mask of hatred.
‘Sit down,’ Wendt told Ruter, ‘supper’s almost ready. The man with the spear is Mkenge, a Masai aristocrat who has learnt excellent German at the mission school. He’d like a word with you, but not until we’ve eaten.’
‘What about?’ asked Ruter.
Wendt shrugged his shoulders and laid the bowl of fruit aside. He wiped the table down, dealt out seven plates, seven pairs of knives and forks, and poured seven mugs of millet beer. There were mutton chops
with millet gruel and pepper pods, pureed chickpeas and unleavened bread, and, to follow, freshly roasted coffee and the fruit salad Wendt had been cutting up. Afterwards they pushed the table and chairs aside, unrolled some woven mats and stretched out on them. The white-haired Arab smoked a hookah. Samblakira and young Wendt squatted down side by side with their backs against the wall of the hut, talking quietly in Swahili. She told him stories of magicians, witches and sacred mountains; he strove to understand her, cracked an occasional joke with the few words available to him, and was delighted when she laughed. The two Bantu were playing a board game in which lentils stained yellow, red and black had to be deposited in two rows of recesses in accordance with some unfathomable set of rules. Tellmann was playing with his female cheetah. The handsome Masai was squatting on his heels, motionless as a statue, with the spear between his knees. Riiter wondered what the young man wanted to speak to him about. The quiet twilight hour when inexperienced foreigners looked forward to a peaceful night’s sleep had ended long before; the creatures of the night had now awakened. Millions of crickets and cicadas were stridently chirping in the trees and the hard, dry grasses were forever alive with hissing, rustling sounds. Superimposed on this was an incessant medley of roaring and bleating and bellowing, sometimes distant, sometimes close at hand, then a sudden, despairing scream followed by a brief whimper as some creature breathed its last. Childrens cries and the braying of donkeys drifted across from the native village, some men were singing down at the harbour, and the two Bantu laughed over their board game because one had lost and the other won. Silence reigned only in the askaris’ barracks overlooking the bay south of the headland. The handsome young Masai continued to squat there, motionless, gazing into the night with a meditative smile. Anton Riiter couldn’t stand it any longer. He went over to Mkenge and squatted down beside him. Mkenge deposited his spear on the ground and shook hands.
‘You wanted a word with me,’ said Riiter.
‘People are talking about you, so someone ought to talk to you for once,’ said Mkenge. To Riiter’s astonishment, he spoke Rhineland dialect
as fluently as if he’d spent his childhood and adolescence in Oberbarmen or Diisseldorf.
‘What do people say about me?’
‘Nothing but good, in fact. They call you “the German without a whip’?
Riiter, who already knew of the nickname people had given him, felt stung by this. He realized that the subject couldn’t be avoided.
‘The men like working for you,’ said Mkenge.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Riiter.
‘They like working for you although they’re guarded by soldiers with loaded rifles who would shoot anyone who tried to run away.’
Riiter remained silent.
‘They like working for you although they were brought here by force. They were lied to and bribed.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ Riiter muttered.
‘They like working for you although criminals in fake uniforms burned their huts by night, fouled their wells and trampled their fields.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘They like working for you although some were spirited away in chains while their wives and children slept.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Riiter.
‘They like working for you although their wives and children have been scattered to the four winds and whole villages, whole districts denuded of their inhabitants. They like working for you although their grandfathers and grandmothers were left behind to dig their own graves, lie down in them and, with their own hands, cover themselves over with earth to prevent hyenas from devouring their remains.’
‘I know,’ said Riiter.
‘They like working for you although the soldiers hunt down our wives and children, take them hostage, and starve them to death unless we work like slaves. They send us to gather rubber, and if we don’t collect enough by Saturday they cut off our hands.’
‘The Belgians do that over in the Congo,’ Riiter said quickly. ‘We Germans don’t do things like that.’
‘True,’ said Mkenge, ‘but only because there aren’t any rubber plantations on German territory.’
‘I can’t help that.’
‘None of this is your fault,’ said Mkenge.
‘I always do my best,’ said Riiter.
‘That’s why I’m talking to you,’ said Mkenge. ‘Your workforce includes a dozen of my men. They’re easy enough to recognize. Tall men like me.’
‘I know them.’
‘See to it that they’re released. They’re Masai, they can’t work.’
‘So I’ve noticed,’ said Riiter.
‘We’re hunters, cattle breeders and warriors,’ said Mkenge, ‘not labourers. Let them go.’
‘As far as I’m concerned you can go and get them this minute - now, right away. They’re no use to me. Go and get them - take them home with you.’
‘We wouldn’t get far,’ said Mkenge. ‘The askaris would catch us and flog us to death. The men must fulfil their terms of employment. They can’t read or write, but they’ve signed contracts.’
‘Then we’ll find them other work to do.’
‘What, for instance?’
‘I’ll tell Corporal Schaffler I’ve bought a herd of cattle and your dozen Masai are my personal herdsmen.’
‘Good idea,’ said Mkenge.
‘Could you sell me an ox a day? The shipyard is poorly provided for. My men need more meat.’
‘You’ll get your ox.’
‘Quote me a price,’ said Riiter.
The two men sat peaceably side by side for a long time, saying no more. Silence descended on Wendt’s beer garden. When the millet beer was finished old Mamadou rose, clamped the empty pitcher under his left arm, laid his right hand on his heart in farewell, and disappeared into the darkness.
‘May I ask you a question?’ Riiter said to Mkenge.
‘Ask away,’ said Mkenge.
‘Is it true that the Masai intend to take possession of all the cattle and sheep in Great Britain?’
Mkenge smiled. ‘Having considered the plan with care. I’m afraid we had to abandon it. It would have involved enormous problems.’
‘What sort of problems?’
‘The transport question would have been insoluble. Conservative estimates put the present number of livestock in Britain at eight point seven million. Existing means of transportation simply couldn’t convey them twelve or fifteen thousand kilometres’
Not long afterwards something scandalous and unprecedented occurred. Roly-poly Samblakira, who seemed to have gone to sleep in a squatting position long ago, rose in a single flowing, undulating movement, padded along the wall to the door and disappeared into Hermann Wendt’s living and sleeping quarters. Young Wendt feigned inattention. The other men frowned and also pretended not to notice but kept a surreptitious watch on the doorway. Ten minutes went by, then fifteen, but the woman didn’t reappear. Everyone got the message. The two Bantu were the first to leave. They packed up their board game, thanked Wendt for his hospitality, and bade him a studiously casual goodnight. The next to get up was old Tellmann. He rose with a groan, ruffled the fur on his cheetah’s neck, and, avoiding Wendt’s eye, wished him a good night’s rest. Wendt nodded, absently stirring the fire’s dying embers. When Tellmann’s footsteps had died away he looked straight at Riiter and Mkenge in turn. ‘Well,’ his expression seemed to convey, ‘got anything to say to me, the two of you?’ Mkenge lowered his eyes politely and proceeded to clean his right thumbnail with the tip of his spear, but Riiter returned Wendt’s gaze. The following unspoken dialogue took place between them:
‘You know perfectly well what I ought to say to you.’
‘You aren’t entitled to say anything at all.’
‘You’re a bastard, that’s what I ought to say.’
‘I’m a man, Anton. At least I’m not a hypocrite.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘I know what you dream of when you’re lying all alone in your hut. I see you leering at those native girls’ haunches every day.’
‘Looking one can’t help. Doing and not doing, one can.’
‘Then take a good look at what I’m doing and not doing, Anton. My door isn’t locked, see?’
‘That doesn’t make it any better.’
‘I’m nice to the woman. She likes being with me.’
‘She’s got a family, Hermann. She may even be married. You’ll get her pregnant and leave her behind with a child when we go back to Papenburg.’
‘Who knows? At least I don’t take a different one every day, the way those soldiers do. It’s good for me and good for the woman, and it’s hygienic.’
‘You talk as if it was a personal necessity.’
‘She comes to me of her own free will. It isn’t as if Corporal Schaffler has to march her here at gunpoint. She isn’t a slave, she can take off whenever she likes’
‘That’s enough!’
‘Any other woman would be flogged on the spot if she ran away.’
Anton Riiter could find no answer to that: young Wendt had defeated him. It was time to go. He got up and buttoned his jacket. Mkenge also rose and accompanied him to the gap in the thorn-bush hedge that led out on to the path. Before they left the circle of light, they both looked back at the campfire.
‘Goodnight, Hermann,’ said Riiter.
‘Goodnight,’ Wendt replied. He jumped up, took the paraffin lamp from its hook and called:
‘Hang on, I’ll walk a bit of the way with you.’
7