Shout at the Devil

by Wilbur Smith

  They began in the office of the Commissioner. Built into the thick adobe wall of the room was an enormous iron safe.

  ‘We. will open that first,’ decreed Flynn as he eyed it greedily. ‘See if you can find some tools.’

  Sebastian remembered the blacksmith shop at the end of the parade ground. He returned from there laden with sledge-hammers and crow-bars.

  Two hours later they were sweating and swearing in an atmosphere heavy with plaster dust. They had torn the safe from the wall, and it lay in the centre of the floor. Three of Flynn’s gun-boys were beating on it with sledge-hammers in a steadily diminishing display of enthusiasm, while Sebastian worked with a crow-bar at the hinge joints. He had succeeded in inflicting a few bright scratches upon the metal. Flynn was seated on the Commissioner’s desk, steadily working himself into a fury of frustration; for the last hour his contribution to the assault on the safe had been limited to consuming half a bottle of schnapps that he had found in a drawer of the desk.

  ‘It’s no use, Flynn.’ Sebastian’s curls were slick with perspiration, and he licked at the blisters on the palms of his hands. ‘We will just have to forget about it.’

  ‘Stand back!’ roared Flynn. ‘I’ll shoot the goddamned thing open.’ He rose from the desk wild-eyed, his double-barrelled Gibbs clutched in his hands.

  ‘Wait!’ shouted Sebastian and he and the gun-bearers scattered for cover.

  The detonations of the heavy rifle were thunderous in the confined space of the office; gun-smoke mingled with the plaster dust, and the bullets ricocheted off the metal of the safe, leaving long smears of lead upon it, before whining away to embed themselves in the floor, wall and furniture.

  This act of violence seemed to placate Flynn. He lost interest in the safe. ‘Let’s go and find something to eat,’ he said mildly, and they trooped through to the kitchens.

  Once Flynn had shot away the lock, Herman Fleischer’s larder proved to be an Aladdin’s cave of delight. The roof was hung with hams and polonies and sausages, there were barrels of pickled meats, stacks of fat round cheeses, cases of Hansa beer, cases of cognac, pyramids of canned truffles, asparagus tips, pâté, shrimps, mushrooms, olives in oil, and other rarities.

  They stared at this profusion in awe, and then moved forward together. Each man to his own particular tastes, they fell upon Herman Fleischer’s treasure house. The gun-boys rolled out a cask of pickled pork, Sebastian started with his hunting knife on the cans, while Flynn devoted himself to the case of Steinhager in the corner.

  It took two hours of dedicated eating and drinking for them to reach saturation point.

  ‘We’d better get ready to move on now,’ Sebastian belched softly, and Flynn nodded owlish agreement, the movement spilling a little Steinhager down his bush jacket. He wiped at it with his hand and then licked his fingers.

  ‘Yep! Best we are gone before Fleischer gets home.’ He looked at Mohammed. ‘Make up full loads of food for each of the bearers. What you can’t carry away we’ll dump in the latrine buckets.’ He stood up carefully. ‘I’ll just have a look round, and make sure we haven’t missed anything important,’ and he went out through the door with unsteady dignity.

  In Fleischer’s office he stood for a minute regarding the invulnerable safe balefully. It was certainly much too heavy to carry away, and abandoning the notion with regret, he looked around for some outlet for his frustration.

  There was a portrait of the Kaiser on the entrance wall, a colour print showing the Emperor in full dress, mounted on a magnificent cavalry charger. Flynn picked up an indelible pencil from the desk and walked across to the picture. With a dozen strokes of the pencil he drastically altered the relationship between horse and rider. Then, beginning to chuckle, he printed on the whitewashed wall below the picture, ‘The Kaiser loves horses.’

  This struck him as being such a pearl of wit, that he had to summon Sebastian and show it to him. ‘That’s what you call being subtle, Bassie, boy. All good jokes are subtle.’

  It seemed to Sebastian that Flynn’s graffiti were as subtle as the charge of an enraged rhinoceros but he laughed dutifully. This encouraged Flynn to a further essay in humour. He had two of the gun bearers carry in a bucket from the latrines, and under his supervision, they propped it above the half-open door of Herman Fleischer’s bedroom.

  An hour later, heavily laden with booty, the raiding party left Mahenge and began the first of a series of forced marches aimed at the Rovuma river.

  – 37 –

  In a state of mental confusion induced by a superfluity of adrenalin in the bloodstream, Herman Fleischer wandered through his ransacked boma. As he discovered each new outrage he regarded it with slitted eyes and laboured breathing. But first it was necessary to effect a jailbreak in reverse in order to free his own captive Askari. When they emerged through the hole in the prison wall, Herman curly ordered his sergeant to administer twenty strokes of the kiboko to each of them, as a token rebuke for their inefficiency. He stood by and drew a little comfort from the solid slap of the kiboko on bare flesh and the shrieks of the recipient.

  However, the calming effect of the floggings evaporated when Herman entered the kitchen area of his establishment, and found that his larder of painstakingly accumulated foodstuffs was now empty. This nearly broke his spirit. His jowls quivered with self-pity, and from under his tongue saliva oozed in melancholic nostalgia. It would take a month to replace the sausages alone, heaven knew how long to replace the cheeses imported from the fatherland.

  From the larder he went through to his office and found Flynn’s subtleties. Herman’s sense of humour was not equal to the occasion.

  ‘Pig-swine, English bastard,’ he muttered dejectedly, and a dark wave of despair and fatigue washed over him as he realized the futility of setting out in pursuit of the raiders. With two days start he could never hope to catch them before they reached the Rovuma. If only Governor Schee, who was so forthcoming with criticism, would allow him to cross the river one night with his Askari and visit the community at Lalapanzi. There would be no one left the following morning to make complaint to the Portuguese Government about breach of sovereignty.

  Herman sighed. He was tired and depressed. He would go to his bed now and rest a while before supervising the tidying up of his headquarters. He left the office and plodded heavily along the stoep to his private quarters, and pushed open the door of his bedroom.

  His bedroom temporarily uninhabitable, Herman reposed that night on the open stoep. But his sleep was disturbed by a dream in which he pursued Flynn O’Flynn across an endless plain without ever narrowing the gap between them, while above him circled two huge birds – one with the austere face of Governor Schee, and the other with the face of the young English bandit – at regular intervals these two voided their bowels on him. After the previous afternoon’s experience the olfactory hallucinations which formed part of the dream were horribly realistic.

  He was tactfully awakened by one of his household servants, and struggled up in bed with an ache behind his eyes and a foul taste in his mouth.

  ‘What is it?’ he growled.

  ‘There is a bearer from Dodoma who brings a book with the red mark of the Bwana Mkuba upon it.’

  Herman groaned. An envelope with Governor Schee’s seal affixed to it usually meant trouble. Surely he could not so speedily have learned about Flynn O’Flynn’s latest escapade.

  ‘Bring coffee!’

  ‘Lord, there is no coffee. It was all stolen,’ and Herman groaned again.

  ‘Very well. Bring the messenger.’ He would have to endure the ordeal of Governor Schee’s rebukes without the fortifying therapy of a cup of coffee. He broke the seal and began to read:

  4th August, 1914.

  The Residency,

  Dar es Salaam.

  To The Commissioner (Southern Province)

  At: Mahenge.

  Sir,

  It is my duty to inform you that a state of war now exists between the Empire and the
Governments of England, France, Russia, and Portugal.

  You are hereby appointed temporary Military Commander of the Southern Province of German East Africa, with orders to take whatever steps you deem necessary for the protection of our borders, and the confusion of the enemy.

  In due course a military force, now being assembled at Dar es Salaam, will be despatched to your area. But I fear that there will be a delay before this can be achieved.

  In the meantime, you must operate with the force presently at your disposal.

  There was more, much more, but Herman Fleischer read the detailed instructions with perfunctory attention. His headache was forgotten, the taste in his mouth unnoticed in the fierce surge of warrior passions that arose within him.

  His chubby features puckered with smiles, he looked up from the letter and spoke aloud. ‘Ja, O’Flynn, now I will pay you for the bucket.’

  He turned back to the first page of the letter, and his mouth formed the words as he read ‘ … whatever steps you deem necessary for the protection of our borders, and the confusion of the enemy.’

  At last. At last he had the order for which he had pleaded so many times. He shouted for his sergeant.

  – 38 –

  ‘Perhaps they will come home tonight.’ Rosa Oldsmith looked up from the child’s smock she was embroidering.

  Tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day,’ Nanny replied philosophically. ‘There is no profit in guessing at the coming or going of men. They all have worms in their heads,’ and she began again to rock the cradle, squatting beside it on the leopard-skin rugs like an animated mummy. The child snuffled a little in its sleep.

  ‘I’m sure it will be tonight. I can feet it – something good is going to happen.’ Rosa laid aside her sewing and crossed to the door that led out on to the stoep. In the last few minutes the sun had gone down below the trees, and the land was ghostly quiet in the brief African dusk.

  Rosa went out on to the stoep, and hugging her arms across her chest at the chill of evening, she stared out down the darkening length of the valley. She stood there, waiting restlessly, and as the day passed swiftly into darkness, so her mood changed from anticipation to a formless foreboding.

  Quietly, but with an edge to her voice, she called back into the room, ‘Light the lamps please, Nanny.’

  Behind her she heard the sounds of metal on glass, then the flare of a sulphur match, and a feeble yellow square of light was thrown out on to the veranda to fall around her feet.

  The first puff of the night wind was cold on her bare arms. She felt the prickle of goose-flesh and she shivered unexpectedly.

  ‘Come inside, Little Long Hair,’ Nanny ordered. ‘The night is for mosquitoes and leopards – and other things.’

  But Rosa lingered, straining her eyes into the darkness until she could no longer see the shape of the fig-trees at the bottom of the lawn. Then abruptly she turned away and went into the bungalow. She closed the door and slid the bolt across.

  Later she woke. There was no moon outside and the room was dark. Beside her bed she could hear the soft, piglet sounds that little Maria made in her sleep.

  Again the disquieting mood of the early evening returned to her and she lay still in her bed, waiting and listening in the utter blackness, and the darkness bore down upon her so that she felt herself shrinking, receding, becoming remote from reality, small and lonely in the night.

  In fear then she lifted the mosquito netting and groped for the cradle. The baby whimpered as she lifted her and brought her into the bed beside her, but Rosa’s arms quietened her and soon she slept against the breast, and the warmth of the tiny body stilled Rosa’s own agitation.

  The shouting woke her, and she opened her eyes with a surge of joy, for the shouts would be Sebastian’s bearers. Before she was fully awake she had thrown aside the bedclothes, struggled out from under the mosquito netting, and was standing in her night-dress with the baby clasped to her chest.

  It was then that she realized that the room was no longer in darkness. From the window into the yard it was lit by a red-gold glow that flared, and flickered, and faded.

  The last tarnish of sleep was cleaned from her brain, so she could hear that the shouts from outside were not those of welcome, and on a lower key, there were other sounds – a whispering, rustling, and popping, that she could not identify.

  She crossed to the window, moving slowly, with dread for what she might find, but before she reached it a scream froze her. It came from the kitchen yard, a scream that quivered on the air long after it had ended, a scream of terror and of pain.

  ‘Merciful God!’ she whispered, and forced herself to peer out.

  The servants’ quarters and the outhouses were on fire. From the thatch of each the flames stood up in writhing yellow columns, lighting the darkness.

  There were men in the yard, many men, and all of them wore the khaki uniform of German Askari. Each of them carried a rifle, and the bayonet blades glittered in the glare of the flames.

  ‘They have crossed the river – No, oh please God, no!’ and Rosa hugged the baby to her, crouching down below the window sill.

  The scream rang out again, but weaker now, and she saw a knot of four Askari crowded around something that squirmed in the dust of the yard. She heard their laughter, the excited laughter of men who kill for fun, as they stabbed down on the squirming thing with their bayonets.

  At that moment another of the servants broke from the burning outbuildings and ran for the darkness beyond the circle of the flames. Shouting again, the Askari left the dying man and chased the other. They turned him like a pack of trained greyhounds coursing a gazelle, laughing and shouting in their excitation, and drove him back into the daylight glare of the flames.

  Bewildered, surrounded, the servant stopped and looked wildly about him, his face convulsed with terror. Then the Askari swarmed over him, clubbing and hacking with their rifles.

  ‘Oh, oh God, no.’ Rosa’s whisper sobbed in her throat, but she could not drag her eyes away.

  Suddenly in the uproar she heard a new voice, a bull-bellow of authority. She could not understand the words for they were shouted in German but from around the angle of the bungalow appeared a white man, a massive figure in the blue corduroy uniform of the German Colonial Service, with a slouch hat pulled low down on his head, and a pistol brandished in one hand. From the description that Sebastian had given her, she recognized the German Commissioner.

  ‘Stop them!’ Rosa did not speak aloud, the appeal was in her mind only. ‘Please, stop them burning and killing.’

  The white man was railing at his Askari, his face turned towards where Rosa crouched and she saw it was round and pink like that of an overweight baby. In the fire-light it glistened with a fine sheen of sweat.

  ‘Stop them. Please stop them,’ Rosa pleaded silently, but under the Commissioner’s direction three of the Askari ran to where, in the excitement of the chase, they had dropped their torches of dry grass. While they lit them from the flaming outbuildings, the other Askari left the corpses of the two servants and spread out in a circle around the bungalow, facing inwards, with their rifles held at high port. Most of the bayonets were dulled with blood.

  ‘I want Fini and the Singese – not bearers and gun-boys – I want the white men! Burn them out!’ shouted Fleischer, but Rosa recognized only her father’s name. She wanted to cry out that he was not here, that it was only her and the child.

  The three Askari were running in towards the bungalow now, sparks and fire smeared back from the torches they carried. In turn each man checked his run, poised himself like a javelin thrower, then hurled his torch in a high, smoking arc towards the bungalow. Rosa heard them thump, thump, on to the thatched roof above her.

  ‘I must get my baby away, before the fire catches,’ and she hurried across the room, out into the passage. It was dark here and she groped along the wall until she found the entrance to the main room. At the front door she fumbled with the bolts, and opened it
a crack. Peering through to the fire-lit lawns beyond the stoep, she saw the dark forms of Askari waiting there also, and she drew back.

  ‘The side windows of the kitchen,’ she told herself. ‘They’re closest to the bush. That’s the best chance,’ and she stumbled back into the passage.

  Above her now there was a sound like high wind and water, a rushing sound blending with the crackle of burning thatch, and the first taint of smoke stung her nostrils.

  ‘If only I can reach the bush,’ she whispered desperately, and the child in her arms began to cry.

  ‘Hush, my darling, hush now,’ but her voice was scratchy with fear. Maria seemed to sense it; her petulant whimperings changed to lusty high-pitched yells and she struggled in Rosa’s grasp.’

  From the side windows of the kitchen Rosa saw the familiar waiting figures of the Askari hovering at the edge of the fire-light. She felt despair catch her stomach in a cold grip and squeeze the resolve from her. Suddenly her legs were weak under her and her whole body was shaking.

  From within the bungalow behind her there came a thunderous roar as part of the burning roof collapsed. A blast of scalding air blew through the kitchen and the tall column of sparks and flames thrown up by the collapse lit the surroundings even more vividly. It showed another figure beyond the line of Askari, scampering in from the edge of the bush like a little black monkey, and Rosa heard Nanny’s voice.

  ‘Little Long Hair! Little Long Hair.’ A plaintive, ancient wail.

  Nanny had escaped into the bush during the first minutes of the attack. She had lain there watching until the roof of the bungalow fell in – then she could no longer contain herself. Insensible of her own danger, caring for nothing except her precious charges, she was coming back.