to spicer-simson’s surprise, his triumph did not taste half as sweet as hed always imagined it would. True, he had experienced a moment of boundless satisfaction when, after so many months of toil and hardship, the enemy vessel had at last come in sight and been promptly disposed of, and of course he was relieved that the enemy captain had bitten the dust, not himself. But the first flush of victory was very soon followed by disenchantment. The battle had run its course in his mind’s eye again and again. Mimi and Toutou sped across the lake and shells screamed through the air a hundred times a day and a thousand times a night, and on each occasion he paid particular attention to himself, submitting every one of his orders, gestures and actions to close examination from the start of the engagement to his triumphal return to harbour. He always came to the same conclusion: his conduct as an officer and commander had been utterly impeccable, irreproachable and exemplary.
Yet he was disappointed all the same.
Why? Because he had to concede that defeating the Kingani was far from being the heroic deed he’d aspired to perform since his earliest days. What had he done that was so great? He’d sped across the lake at thirteen knots and disabled an almost defenceless little steamer by dint of superior firepower. That wasn’t an achievement to be particularly proud of. He had displayed neither superhuman courage nor superior intellect nor military genius, simply asserted the right of the stronger. There was little difference between him and some young thug who, just for the hell of it, knocks an old man’s walking stick out of his trembling hand on a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park.
Spicer-Simson felt particularly embarrassed by the bloodlust to which his men had succumbed after victory: their triumphant yells, their bottles of blood, the way theyd reviled and kicked the bodies of the Germans who had lain there in their own blood with their guts spilling out. It also distressed him to remember the Belgian askaris who had wanted to cut off the dead youths’ cheeks and the balls of their thumbs prior to grilling them over an open fire and eating them. As for the German captains signet ring, Spicer-Simson was at pains to emphasize that he hadn’t stolen it, only taken it in order to send it to the dead man’s family. He could also claim credit for having put an end to these disgraceful goings-on and ordered the bodies to be buried with military honours. Furthermore, he had posted sentries over the graves for three days to prevent the askaris from digging up their occupants.
Spicer-Simson felt far from confident where the immediate future was concerned. The Kingani had been the smallest, slowest and most poorly-armed of the Germans’ three vessels. Even the Wissmann would be quite another matter, and he hardly dared think of the Gotzen, which was reputed to have a huge gun mounted on her fo’c’sle. During this first emergency Mimi and Toutou had proved to be what they really were: not warships but pleasure craft suitable for Sunday picnics. The slightest sea had sent them hopping and skipping across the surface, cut their speed by half and rendered them almost unmanoeuvrable. They suffered so badly from the recoil of their own guns that the nails in their wooden decking had started and the transverse beams had become detached from the ribs. Had the engagement lasted any longer the guns and mountings would have gone overboard together with the planks to which they were bolted. Toutou had had a minor collision with the Kingani when coming alongside to take off the surviving Germans, splintering her bow, and could count herself lucky to have made it back to harbour at all. SpicerSimson had cabled London next day that it was out of the question to consider attacking the Gotzen with the boats at his disposal. No reply had yet been received.
What was more, everyone was falling sick. It had proved impossible to comply with Dr Hanschell’s insistence on virgin campsites after
the expedition reached Lake Tanganyika. This was because of the harbours proximity to the Belgian settlement and the native village, where malaria, amoebic dysentery and syphilis were rife, so the health of every member of the expeditionary force had gradually deteriorated. SpicerSimson himself suffered from bouts of fever, splitting headaches, tinnitus, and nervous tremors probably occasioned by the quinine of which he took large doses every day. He lay sweating beneath the mosquito net in his dark hut while those of his men who were fit enough endeavoured to repair Mimi and Toutou.
So the days after his victory were days of sickness, disillusionment and shame, not of triumph. Spicer-Simson felt ashamed of his physical infirmity and the banality of his earthly existence, whose magnificent climax appeared to be the capture of a small enemy steamer and the killing of three fair-haired young Germans. He felt ashamed of himself - ashamed to face his wife Amy, to whom he would have to account for his actions on his return, and ashamed to face his men, who had witnessed his trivial exploit. He shut himself up in his hut for weeks on end, never venturing outside or admitting anyone except his African boy, who brought him food and drink and emptied his chamber pot.
After a while, however, shame became transmuted into defiance. Was it his fault if war was devoid of metaphysical profundity? Could he help it if inexterminable lice had made their home in the seams of his uniform? Must he really accept sole responsibility for the brutishness of his subordinates? Was he to blame if the contents of the German captains intestines had smelt of putrid mutton, if his blood had mingled with the dung of that frightened little goat, and if it was impossible to discern whether anything that happened on the shores of this lake, which stretched away to the horizon, made any sense at all?
No, Commander Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson refused to be held accountable for circumstances beyond his control. He was really responsible only for the composure with which he confronted those circumstances. Accordingly, he decided to stop brooding and snap out of it. On the second Saturday in January 1916 he summoned his boy and informed him that from now on he intended to take a bath at precisely 1600 hours
every Wednesday and Saturday - outside his hut. The boy nodded and hurried off to prepare a bath. This custom subsequently developed into a ritual which followed the same pattern every Wednesday and Saturday and became very popular with the natives from the villages round about. It invariably began at a quarter to four on the dot, when the door of Spicer-Simsons hut opened and his boy emerged, walking with measured tread and carrying a rolled-up mat on his shoulder, watched by the villagers who had gathered at a respectful distance. Well aware of the importance of his task, the boy unrolled the mat at precisely the spot where the Commanders ritual ablutions were to take place. The spectators pushed and jostled for a better view as he returned to the hut, and by the time he reappeared with a collapsible bathtub of rubberized green canvas they had formed a semicircle with the tallest standing at the back and the shortest kneeling in front. The ensuing minutes were devoted to carrying buckets of water from a nearby stream. When the bathtub was full the boy stuck his finger in the water to test its temperature, then fetched a side table on which he placed a bottle of sherry and a glass. That done, he went back into his masters hut and announced that the bath was ready.
Punctually at four o’clock Spicer-Simson himself appeared in the doorway, naked except for a pair of slippers and the towel around his waist. He paused in the shade of the overhanging roof, smoking a cigarette as he calmly surveyed the throng of Africans clustered around his bathtub. Then he strode majestically over to the mat, shook off his slippers and let the towel fall, baring his liberally tattooed body, which evoked an admiring murmur from the serried ranks of spectators. Having handed his cigarette and holder to the waiting boy, he performed a few kneesbends followed by a few press-ups that made the snakes on his shoulders writhe and the birds on his flanks flutter in a singularly lifelike manner. Finally, he slid into the water, lathered himself with strongly scented soap and vigorously scrubbed himself all over.
On the third Wednesday of January 1916, while Spicer-Simson was soaping himself and scanning the glassy surface of Lake Tanganyika, he spotted a dark plume of smoke beyond the rocks north of the Lukuga
estuary. He replaced the soap in its dish and sent for his binoculars. Just as his boy returned with them, a small steamer appeared from behind the rocks. This time it was the Wissmann. Spicer-Simson now had a good quarter of an hour in which to examine the ship at his leisure. She steamed slowly past the harbour wall that concealed Mimi and Toutou from view, impudently close inshore and obviously quite unaware of the danger she was in. Spicer-Simson endeavoured to identify her gun and its calibre, memorized her overall length, estimated her freeboard and speed, and counted such members of her crew as could be seen on deck. On the bridge he clearly made out a white-uniformed officer holding some black object to his eyes, probably a camera or binoculars.
‘Take a look by all means, Herr Kapitan,’ Spicer-Simson muttered beneath his own binoculars. ‘You’d like to know where your Kingani has got to, wouldn’t you? You don’t have a clue what could have happened to her and you still haven’t the least idea the Royal Navy’s here, do you? Just you wait, Herr Kapitan, you’ll find out soon enough. Today is inconvenient for me - it’s my bath day and my boats have sustained some minor damage, so they can’t come out to play. So steam on in that cocktail shaker of yours - go anywhere you like - and look in on us again in a week or ten days’ time!’
When the Wissmann had disappeared behind a headland to the south, Spicer-Simson stood up and held out his arms, whereupon his boy sluiced the soap suds from his body and handed him a towel. Having dried himself, he lit a cigarette and the boy poured him a glass of sherry. He sipped it and donned his slippers again, then disappeared into his hut and didn’t reappear until nightfall. Meanwhile, his boy dragged the bathtub over to a nearby rock and, under the spectators’ rapt gaze, tipped the scented bathwater into the ravine below.
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