by William Boyd
“I’ll be honest with you,” von Bishop said. “I don’t know what’s going on. They say it’s for the exhibition in August, but since von Lettow came, everything has changed. They even called me up.” He spread his arms and shrugged his shoulders.
Temple turned politely to Liesl. “Do you think there will be war in Europe, Mrs von Bishop? Was this the talk when you were there?”
Liesl wrenched her attention away from a lizard which was stalking an ant.
“There was some talk. But with Russia, I think. Not England. I don’t know.” She smiled apologetically. “I didn’t listen very hard. I’m not very interested.” Her English sounded thick and clumsy on her longue. She hadn’t had to speak it for so long. She resented having to speak it now, for this American’s sake.
Temple frowned and turned back to von Bishop. “I can’t see there being any fighting out here, can you?”
“I doubt it,” von Bishop said. “It seems most unlikely. Von Lettow is just a very cautious man.”
Liesl let them talk on. It was marginally cooler now the sun was setting, turning the Usambara hills behind them a golden bracken colour. Crickets began to cheep and chirrup and she smelt the odour of charcoal fires. The boy brought her coffee, and she sipped it slowly. An oil lamp was lit on the verandah and some moths immediately began to circle round it casting their flickering shadows over the few Europeans who sat on chatting. For the first time since setting foot on shore at Dar Liesl felt she was truly back in Africa, the memories of Europe which she had protectively gathered around her slipped away, or retired to a safer distance.
She looked at her husband. He caught her eye for a moment and then his glance jumped guiltily away. She wondered if he would try tonight. They hadn’t been together for over a year, the time she’d spent away. On the voyage back her mind had turned regularly to their reunion, and she had been vaguely surprised at the vigour of her desire. But that had been on the ship. Now she was quite indifferent.
She looked covertly at his thin bony body, his taut, lined face, his big nose, his soft, thick old-man’s ears. She wished he hadn’t shaved his head like a soldier. It accentuated the angularity of his jawbone, seemed to deepen the hollow of his temples, made his nose look longer…He was nervous tonight, she could see.
She sighed. She had been away once before to Europe on her own, in 1907 during the Maji-Maji rebellion. Since then it had been six years without a break. During that period the Northern Railway had been completed, Erich had resigned his commission and bought the farm on the northern slopes of the Pare hills facing Kilimanjaro. The farm prospered, the ground was rich and fertile. They built a large stone bungalow. They lived well, and money steadily accumulated in the bank as the crops were transported down the Northern Railway to the port at Tanga.
Oh, but the life! The beauty of their surroundings, the success of their enterprise couldn’t make up for the tedium of the diurnal round. Erich was away all day in the plantations, returning exhausted at night. She had many servants to do her work for her, but she was always uncomfortable in the heat, her fair skin wasn’t suited to the sun. Every biting insect saw her as a delectable target. She seemed to sweat unceasingly, her clothes rough and chafing against her moist skin. She got fevers regularly. Her neighbours were remote and uncongenial, there were few diversions in Moshi, and Erich was not a man for dances or social gatherings.
Then, last year, she spent an entire month locked in a severe fever, her body trembling with rigors, her teeth chattering for hours. She announced she was going home to convalesce as soon as she began to recover. Erich couldn’t refuse. They had a bank account full of money. She could return to her family with pride, armed with purchasing power. She smiled at her spend thriftiness. She’d spent everything she had, bought presents and luxuries, spoilt her little nephews and nieces. How they had loved Aunt Liesl from Africa! It had been a marvellous year.
She smiled again, perhaps that was why Erich was so nervous. When she left a year ago she had been thin and miserable, still wasted from the fever. Perhaps Erich didn’t recognize her now. She touched her neck reflectively, feeling its creamy softness. Maybe Erich thought he was seeing a ghost.
The next morning Liesl, von Bishop and Temple Smith stood on Buiko station watching two companies of Schutztruppe askaris climb onto half a dozen flat cars attached to the rear of the Moshi train.
Liesl fanned her face with her straw hat. Again Erich had sat up drinking with the American. He had eased himself silently into bed, careful not to touch her, thinking she was asleep. Liesl felt irritation mount in her again. Flies buzzed furiously around her face, settling for split seconds on her eyelids and lips. Waking this morning she had counted two jigger fleas beneath the big toe nail on her left foot. Small red spots, slightly painful to the touch. How could she have jiggers already? Thank God she would be home soon. Her houseboy Mohammed was expert at removing the sac of maggoty eggs the fleas laid beneath the skin. He used a pin: like extracting a tiny winkle from its tight little shell. She never felt any pain when Mohammed did it.
Eventually they boarded the train and it pulled out of Buiko on the final leg to Moshi. The Usambara hills gave way to the gentler Pare range as they rattled steadily northwards through lush green parklands, the hills on their right, the Pangani river on their left.
“There is talk,” she heard her husband say, “of banning native shambas and villages from a five-mile-wide strip the entire length of the line. It’s such good farmland and so close to the railway.”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Temple observed, looking out of the window. “They do it in British East. I only wish my farm was as good as this.” He looked to his left at the line of trees that marked the Pangani.
“Ha!” he exclaimed, making Liesl jump. “There she is!”
The train was rounding a gentle curve to the right. They all crowded to the window. There, dominating the view ahead, was Kilimanjaro, bluey-purple in the distance, its snowy peaks unobscured by clouds.
“Magnificent,” Erich said. “Now I know I’m home.”
The sun flashed on the window of the compartment, blinding Liesl momentarily. She reached into her bag and rummaged around inside it for a pair of coloured spectacles. Kilimanjaro dimmed slightly, subdued by the thick dark green lenses, but lost none of its grim majesty. Contrary to the elation the others felt, Liesl’s heart felt weighted with the recognition. She had lived so long with the splendid mountain facing her house that she did not see it as a glorious monument, but rather as a hostile and permanent jailer, or some strict guardian.
She leant back in her seat, glad she had put her glasses on because she felt her eyes full of tears. How long would it be before she left again? she wondered despairingly.
“Liesl!” came a high pitched cry.
In considerable surprise and alarm she was jerked out of her morose reverie and saw her husband’s quivering forefinger pointing at her, his mouth hanging open in a crude imitation of disbelief.
“What on earth have you got on your face?” he cried. “Those…things!”
“What things,” she demanded furiously.
“Those glasses, spectacles.”
“They are coloured glasses,” she said speaking very slowly, trying to conceal her annoyance. “I bought them in Marseilles on the voyage out. To help my eyes against the sun.”
“But I don’t know if they’re…correct to be worn.” Erich rebuked her, giving her a shrill nervous laugh for the American’s benefit. “I mean, you look like you’re blind. Don’t you think so, Smith? Like a blind woman who should be selling matches.”
Liesl felt angry at this display of pettiness, especially when she heard a loud laugh from the American at Erich’s observation. She dropped into German.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Erich,” she said through gritted teeth. “Everyone wears them in Europe.”
Although Smith couldn’t have understood, it was clear he hadn’t mistaken her tone, as he spoke up in her defence.
“I do believe coloured glasses are almost dee-rigger these days,” he said. “I see many people in Nairobi wearing them. Why, the Uganda Railway has coloured glass in the windows of their passenger carriages.”.
“There you are, Erich,” she said, her eyes narrowed. “You have been on your farm too long.”
Von Bishop grunted sceptically. The atmosphere in the compartment was heavy with tension. The American was smiling broadly at them both, as if his smiles could magically disperse the mood.
He took out his fob watch and opened it. “Ah,” he said. “Well, only two more hours to go.”
Liesl and von Bishop were met at Moshi station by two of their farm boys. Liesl’s luggage was loaded onto an American buggy drawn by two mules. The von Bishop farm was not more than an hour’s ride from Moshi, due south into the lush foothills of the Pare mountains.
Temple’s farm foreman, Saleh, was a Swahili from the coast, a small wizened alert man upon whom Temple relied more than he liked, but there was no sign of him, any farm boys, or the ox-cart with its team of six oxen that was intended to haul the crates of coffee seedlings the ten miles from Moshi to Taveta, the first settlement across the border in British East Africa.
Liesl watched Temple supervise the unloading of the crates onto the low platform. When their own luggage was secured on the buggy she called out to him.
“Mr Smith. We are ready to go.”
He came over and shook her hand.
“A real pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mrs von Bishop.” She found his accent easier to understand. “I must say,” he went on, “this, ah, agricultural endeavour of mine has been greatly, um…Your company has…and I only hope our conversation wasn’t too boring.”
Von Bishop joined them. “Well, Smith, we must be going. No sign of your boys?”
“No, damn them—excuse me, Mrs Bishop. I think I’ve hired the laziest bunch of niggers in British East Africa.”
“Niggers?”
“Natives, my dear,” von Bishop explained.
“Don’t let me keep you,” Temple said. “I know you must be keen to get home.” He shook von Bishop’s hand. “Good to see you again, Erich. Why don’t you ride over and visit my sisal factory one day.”
“I might just do that, Smith. I might just do that.”
They left Temple pacing up and down outside Moshi station. Von Bishop helped Liesl into the buggy and climbed up to join her. He shook the reins, the mules reluctantly started, and the buggy trundled off down the dusty street. Liesl looked back and saw Temple take off his terai hat and mop his brow with a handkerchief. He saw her turn and he waved his hat at her before his squat figure disappeared from view as they rounded a bend to pass beneath the huge embankments of the new fort the Schutztruppe had built at Moshi. Liesl looked up at the stone walls and crude square buildings of the boma and saw the black, white and red flag of the Imperial Army hanging limply against its flagpole.
“He’s a curious man, the American,” she remarked to her husband, to break through the silence that sat between them.
“And a foolish man as well,” von Bishop said with a laugh. “If he thinks he can grow coffee at Taveta he must have more money than sense.”
Chapter 3
10 June 1914,
Taveta, British East Africa
“Bwana Smith is a great merchant,” Saleh extemporized, singing in Swahili and cracking his whip idly in time at the lead bull ox in the lumbering team. They had just crossed the Anglo-German boundary and were making their way along a rough track that wandered between the many small hillocks that were a feature of the landscape at this spot.
Temple saw Saleh glance back over his shoulder to make sure he was listening to the song.
“Bwana Smith has bought coffee of exquisite beauty,” he droned. “He will grow many coffee plants, he will become a rich man, his farm boys will praise the day he gave them work.”
“Oh-ya-yi!” chorused the two farm boys who plodded behind Saleh. Saleh looked back at Temple again, and rubbed his buttocks through his grimy white tunic. Temple laughed to himself. He had landed three powerful kicks on Saleh’s behind when the men had turned up two hours after the train’s arrival. He was also forcing them all to walk beside the ox-team as further punishment—normally they would have sat on the back of the waggon, each one taking turns to lead the team. Saleh had sworn that a miserable, monkey-brained swine of a station sweeper had assured him the train was due later in the day, but the reek of corn beer on his breath tended to devalue his protestations of innocence.
Temple’s body jolted and swayed as the heavy waggon negotiated the ruts and stones of the track. The country around them was of thick scrubby thorn with the occasional small volcanic-shaped hill. Behind them lay the fertile Pare hills and the purple slopes of the great mountain, its flattish white top obscured by a cloudy afternoon haze. Temple’s mind turned to the von Bishops. What a train journey! Von Bishop seemed nice enough, but was he boring…And his voice: three days of that reedy falsetto had almost proved too much.
She was a fine woman, though. Big-breasted and broad-shouldered, with that creamy freckly skin of one just fresh from Europe. It was hard to keep that look. It wasn’t so much the sun and the heat but the constant nagging ailments: the fevers, the attacks of diarrhoea, insect bites and sores that never seemed to heal…They made a very strange couple, he thought. He wondered what it would be like living with von Bishop: that voice, day in, day out.
Temple winced, and looked at the swarming clouds of flies that buzzed around the rolling backs of the ox-team. Sometimes he wondered if he had been right to bring his wife and young family to Taveta, away from the comparative health and easeful climate of Nairobi. It hadn’t been very fair on Matilda or the children, he admitted. But he could never have afforded so much land in the highlands, could never have set himself up as he had down here. He gave a grim smile. Also, he doubted if he could have stood the society much longer: the mad aristocrats with their obsessive horse racing and hunting; the way the tiny society had evolved—almost overnight it seemed—its own rigid hierarchy, its preposterous code of values and bizarre snobbery. A club for senior officials and a club for junior ones. The endless bickering between the settlers and the government. The awesome privilege of riding after hyenas with the Maseru hunt, all hunting horns, tally-ho and view-halloo. God, Temple swore, the English! He was glad to have escaped. Now he had his own farm, a sisal factory and linseed plant that provided him with a steady turnover. He could stay at the Norfolk Hotel when he went to Nairobi now, take his entire family to the Bioscope—every night of the week if he felt like it. He squared his shoulders self-consciously and smoothed his moustache. It seemed better in German East. Less fun perhaps, but life was organized, and they appeared happy to accept everyone. Look at von Bishop, he thought, half-English, but a local hero.
“Taveta!” Saleh shouted.
Temple looked up. They had come over a small rise and the township of Taveta lay ahead. Among the dark green mango trees the sun flashed off tin roofs. Houses and buildings were scattered around haphazardly. The dirt road from Voi, to the east on the Mombasa–Nairobi railway, arrived and became Taveta’s main street. There was a post office, and a few bungalows belonging to the Assistant District Commissioner, the police inspector and a jailer. Some tin shacks did duty as the ADC‘s offices and courthouse. Forming three sides of a square were the whitewashed stone buildings of the police askari barracks, the jail and a stable block. An untidy heap of wooden huts and stalls at one end of the street marked the festering purlieus of the Indian bazaar. Sited as far away as possible, at the opposite end of town, was a new wooden store, run by a European. There were a few settler-farmers in the district, like Temple, but not many, as the Taveta–Voi district was not generally regarded as fertile farming land. Most of the farmers were Boers who, again like Temple, were not too enamoured of the British.
Temple’s ox-cart creaked slowly into Taveta. It was late afternoon and there was little acti
vity. The place reminded Temple strongly of small western townships he had seen in Wyoming, which he visited once as a young man in the 1890’s. He wondered briefly if he should stop in at the store, run by an Irishman named O’Shaugnessy, and have a drink, but as he still had an hour’s journey to go before he reached his farm he decided to press on.
He wheeled the ox-team off the Taveta-Voi road and followed the meandering track south towards Lake Jipe that led to his farm.
He was only about ten minutes out of Taveta when his attention was caught by the sight of a saddled, riderless mule trotting round a bend in the road, followed, some seconds later, by a tall lanky figure in a white drill suit and solar topee, brandishing a riding crop and screaming foul insults at the animal. As soon as the figure saw Temple and the ox-cart he stopped at once, straightened his suit and dusted it down. Saleh grabbed the halter of the mule as it trotted past.
“I say, thanks a lot,” the white suited figure shouted and strolled over. Temple hauled on the reins and the oxen stopped at once. The man sauntered over, for all the world as if he were enjoying a Sunday afternoon stroll.
“Ah, Smith,” he said, raising the brim of his topee in greeting. “Pleasant day.”
It was the ADC from Taveta, called Wheech-Browning. He was very young, about 25 years old, and very tall, about six foot three or four, Temple calculated.
“Hello,” said Temple; he found it difficult to address Wheech-Browning by his preposterous name. “Having trouble?”
“Yes,” Wheech-Browning confessed. “I bought this bloody mule from a Syrian in Nairobi, for three hundred rupees, and he assured me the beast was broken in. He trotted out well enough, but then suddenly seemed to go raving mad.” He turned to look at the animal, standing motionless now it was attended by Saleh.
“Oh,” Wheech-Browning said. “Seems quiet enough now, but I can assure you the little beast bucked me clear off his back.” He paused. His face above his collar and tie was bright red and sweat trickled from beneath the brim of his topee. Temple found it extraordinary that this awkward, innocent youth sat in judgement over murderers, thieves and drunks every day in his sweltering tin courtroom, but he seemed to accept his duties unreflectingly. Temple had been in court once as prosecution witness against one of his own farm boys who’d stolen cattle from a neighbouring farm. He had seen Wheech-Browning sentence the quaking man to six months hard labour. A murder case had to be referred to the Provincial Commissioner’s court at Voi but it was obvious to Temple that Wheech-Browning could happily have condemned the accused to death and then gone out for a game of lawn tennis with the police inspector without a qualm.