by William Boyd
“It’s not true.” Then he added, the honesty making his voice hoarse, “It was just something I did.”
“Why?”
“To console myself.”
“I told them you weren’t a spy.” She paused. “I should go now.”
Gabriel had a final thought. “Liesl. Tomorrow night. Can you bring me some paper and a pencil?”
“Paper and pencil? Are you sure? All right. I will.”
The next day passed as slowly as the one before. On his trips to the latrine Gabriel became aware of more bustle in the town: columns of marching men, officers speeding up and down the street on bicycles, a general air of preparing to move. He prayed they wouldn’t pull out before dark. In the afternoon he thought he heard a distant sound of gunfire but he couldn’t be sure.
That night Liesl came as she had promised. She slipped a flattened iron bar through a crack between the planks. It felt like part of a heavy hinge. In ten minutes he had dug a hollow beneath the wooden walls big enough for his thin body to squirm under. Liesl helped him to his feet. She handed him an old sack.
“There’s some food and a bottle of water,” she whispered. “Some matches, a bit of cheese and two candles for the dark. Don’t go far Gabriel, please. Just go away and hide. They won’t wait to catch you. A lot are staying behind to wait for the English. Go and hide for two days, then you can come back.”
“Right,” Gabriel said. He had hardly taken her words in. They were standing up against the back wall of the shed. A quarter moon only provided enough light for Gabriel to see the bold features of her face. Her shadowed eyes, her nostrils, the gash of her mouth. Their whispering meant that they stood only a foot apart. Gabriel could smell her: a faint scent of cigarette smoke, fresh smell of perspiration. He could sense the bulk of her soft body in the dark so close to his. He felt an overpowering urge to take her in his arms. Just once to feel her breasts crush against him. Just once to kiss her neck, somehow to be swallowed up and immersed in one quintessential embrace…
“Gabriel.”
“Yes.”
“I forgot the paper. I put in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers. Is that all right? There is room on the pages to write.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s fine.” He felt flooded with an inarticulate-late gratitude for this strong, stubborn woman. He rubbed his forehead. He felt the sense of helplessness descend on him again as he thought of what he had to do. If only they hadn’t caught him outside Liesl’s house, if only…He could have patiently waited for the arrival of the British.
“The town is very quiet,” Liesl said. “They have made a line, north, about ten kilometres. Be careful. Here.” She handed him a stub of pencil.
“Thanks.” Gabriel put the stub in his pocket.
“Por jungen Werther,” she said. “A souvenir.”
Gabriel felt an intense sadness descend on him. He felt as if he were about to embark on some long, arduous voyage. His eyes were full of inappropriate tears.
He stepped back. “I’ll go now,” he said, trying to stop the quaver in his voice. “Down this way, then worKARound the town through the plantations.”
“Be careful. Just for two days. Find somewhere safe. Then come back here.” There was no note of pleading in her voice, just natural concern. She expects to see me again, Gabriel thought. He felt suddenly that it was only right that he should tell her something of his feelings for her. It would in some way justify what she was doing, the risks she had taken. He tried to think of safe words he could use.
She touched his elbow.
“You should go.”
“Thank you, Liesl,” he began. “I don’t know…I feel. What I—”
“Don’t worry. It’s not important. Come back when they have gone.”
“Right,” he said. “Two days.” He picked up the sack, gave a brief wave in the dark with his trembling left hand and set off carefully down the rutted track that led to the trees.
Chapter 6
22 November 1917,
Nanda, German East Africa
Von Bishop and Rutke looked at the hole Gabriel had made under the wooden wall of the shed. A sweating, nervous Deeg came round the side, holding the metal hinge.
“This is it,” Deeg said in an outraged voice. “This is how he did it.”
“But how did he get it?” von Bishop asked. “What about the guard?”
“Ah, well. There was no guard last night. We had many duties and Cobb was a sick man. Weak. There were secure bolts on the door. I thought—”
“Someone helped him,” Rutke said. “It’s obvious. But who?”
A little man on a bicycle came free-wheeling down the slope from the main street and stopped beside them. He had a cigarette in his mouth. Von Bishop and Rutke saluted. Deeg went into a quivering attention, chin up, thumbs at trouser seams. He was General von Lettow-Vorbeck.
“He’s gone?” von Lettow confirmed. “The man who knows about the China Show?”
“Last night.” von Bishop said. “But he’s weak, he can’t be far.”
“I see,” Von Lettow paused. “You’d better catch him, Erich.”
“Me, sir?”
“Yes, take some of the irregulars.”
It was the last thing von Bishop wanted to do. “Are you sure, sir?”
Von Lettow frowned. He took off his sun helmet and wiped his stubby head with a handkerchief.
“Yes,” said firmly. “We are crossing the Rovuma up by the Ludjenda confluence. In two or three days. Meet us there. But don’t waste time, Erich. A Zeppelin is not going to make much difference once we’re over the river.”
Von Lettow and Rutke left to rejoin the main Schutztruppe column some five miles away at Newala. It was from there that von Bishop had been summoned at first light by a message from Deeg. Nanda was now, to all intents and purposes, clear of troops. There remained only the large numbers of sick and wounded in the hospital, two dozen women and children from the surrounding plantations, Deeg and his squad of ruga-ruga and the sixteen NCO prisoners.
Von Bishop told Deeg to select three of his best men to form the tracking party. Deeg and the other ruga-ruga were to stay behind in Nanda and surrender to the British when they arrived.
Von Bishop walked wearily up the deserted main street towards the hospital. All the sick and wounded had been assembled here. The hospital was so crowded that many were laid out in the shade beneath trees. Others were lying in hastily erected grass shelters. Across the road from the hospital the NCO prisoners formed a curious group by the main gate of the stockade.
Von Bishop saw Liesl standing on the narrow stoop that ran along the front of the hospital. She stood like a man, her hands behind her, feet apart, gazing out over the drab view, rocking gently backwards and forwards. She was smoking a cigarette and, von Bishop noticed with a squirm of irritation, wearing her coloured glasses.
She saw him approach. “Erich!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? I thought the Schutztruppe were at Newala.” Some wounded men lying on stretchers at one end of the stoop looked up in mild curiosity.
“They are,” he said. “I came down this morning.” He paused, scrutinizing her face. “He’s escaped, you know.”
“Who? Gabriel? No, I didn’t know. When?” She seemed quite unconcerned. She puffed at her cigarette, then glanced at its glowing end. Von Bishop stared in frustration at the dark opaque lenses of her glasses. She had called him Gabriel.
“Yes, Cobb,” he said pointedly. “Somebody in the town must have helped him.”
She shrugged. “He’s been here a long time. All the boys know him.”
“I’m going after him,” he said. “Von Lettow’s orders.”
“As you wish, Erich,” she said and blew a stream of smoke into the sunlight.
Von Bishop tightened the girths on his saddle. His mule munched contentedly on some dry grass. A few yards away stood three of Deeg’s ruga-ruga. He felt unsettled and irritated. He had said goodbye to Liesl, and it had turned out to be both infu
riatingly formal and non-committal. He had told her that he would be rejoining von Lettow’s final column when he had recaptured Cobb and that she, no doubt, would be interned in Dar for as long as the war went on.
“We must continue to fight,” he said without much fervour. “At all costs.”
“Of course, Erich,” she had replied.
He said goodbye and stepped forward to kiss her. She removed her coloured glasses and, briefly, their lips touched. Von Bishop stepped back and held her at arm’s length, his hands on her shoulders. He looked uncomprehendingly into her eyes. His wife seemed a total stranger to him. He suddenly noticed the fleshiness of her shoulders and upper aims, how the material of her dress was creased and tight across her bosom. She used to be a handsome woman, he thought sadly to himself. How this war has changed her!
With a sigh he heaved himself up onto his mule. He saw Deeg walking over from the POW cage.
“I’m sure he’ll head north towards the British,” Deeg said. “I’ve told my boys to ask local villagers. They see everything. With a bit of persuasion…”
“Good, good,” von Bishop said testily. Really, people like Deeg were a disgrace. “Do your men speak Swahili?”
“Ah,” Deeg said apologetically. “I regret, very little. But they are obliging fellows, quick to learn. You can easily make them understand any order.”
Von Bishop looked round at the ruga-ruga. Two wore brimless felt caps. The third was bare-headed, his skull shaven apart from a round tuft of hair above his brow. They were draped in coils of tattered evil-smelling blankets and armed with old .70 rifles. Large machetes hung at their waists. They smiled winningly at him, revealing their filed, pointed teeth. Absolutely the worst sort of irregular, thought von Bishop. Still, they would know the country. Cobb wouldn’t get far.
“Let’s go,” von Bishop said. He kicked his mule into action and trotted off down the main street, the ruga-ruga loping behind.
Chapter 7
22 November 1917,
The Makonde plateau, German East Africa
After he left Liesl, Gabriel crept into the rubber plantations and waited for dawn. As soon as there was a faint light he set off through the comparatively open bush, keeping the rising sun on his right hand side. It was fairly easy going. The countryside was sparsely wooded, the ground covered in thick, waist-high grass with the odd tangle of thorn thicket. He kept to paths only if they headed due north. He wanted to make as much distance as possible while he was still fresh. He bypassed native villages but made no real effort to hide himself. The main German force was south of Nanda now, he knew, based at Newala. There was a rearguard to the northwest of the town on the road that led to Nambindinga. His plan was to strike north for a day or two—depending on progress—then strike east, forming the two sides of a right-angled triangle to the Nanda-Nambindinga hypotenuse. He calculated that he should meet up with the advancing British columns in three days or thereabouts.
After an hour or so the ground began to rise as he entered the gentle foothills of the wide Makonde plateau, a sizeable spur of which separated Nanda and Nambindinga. In the dips and valleys the vegetation grew thicker and for a lot of the time he passed through thin woods composed of spindly trees. At mid-morning he found a safe place to stop, a dry gully with a thick screen of bushes and scrub. He found a patch of shade and ate some of the hard unleavened bread that Liesl had supplied and drank a few mouthfuls of water.
He felt curiously exhilarated and quite pleased with himself. His limping gait had carried him along tolerably well. His leg was barely aching. He took from the sack the book Liesl had given him, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers: ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, he translated. He had never read it, just used its fine pages to make cigarettes. The first eighty-seven pages were missing. He started to write on the upper and lower margins of the first available page. A little self-consciously he wrote, “Report of Capt. G. H. Cobb att to 69th Palamcottah Light Infantry. Taken prisoner at Tanga. 4/11/1914. Account of imprisonment and escape.” He paused. He knew that he might fail in his endeavour and the request to Liesl for writing materials had been made with this in mind. If his body should be found, he wanted his identity to be ascertainable, and some record of the facts to be established. That was most important.
“Next of kin,” he wrote. “Major—”: he paused and scratched out ‘Major’ and replaced it with ‘Charis Lavery Cobb, The Cottage, Stackpole Manor, Stackpole, Kent’. As he added the full stop the point of his pencil stub broke. He swore. Writing Charis’s name and the familiar address brought back long dormant memories. He found himself thinking of their days in Trouville, their walks along the promenade. He brought to mind an image of Stackpole in high summer, the field in front of the house, the river, the willow pool. He remembered the boiling afternoon he had gone swimming with Felix, the dinner when the electric light had failed, the major furiously ringing a silent bell. He felt a debilitating sense of homesickness sweep through his body.
He looked down at his legs stretched before him as he sat. His decrepit boots, his tattered socks, his thin knees freshly scratched from the thorn. He touched his right knee, pushing at the knee bone with a forefinger. It slid, oiled and easily, at his touch. As it moved the sun caught the springy golden hairs that covered it. His fingers travelled higher, pulling back the frayed hem of his shorts to exposé the wasted thigh, the contorted pink and white scar that stitched together the severed halves of his muscle. He pulled the trouser leg down. His wound was aching a little more; his leg seemed to be stiffening up. He rubbed his jaw, hearing the rasp of bristles of his three-day beard. Above him the sun beat down as midday approached. Locusts and grasshoppers kept up their monotonous shrilling whine in the surrounding bushes.
He lay down and pillowed his arms beneath his head. I must rest, he told himself. I’ll set out again in the afternoon, when the heat’s gone from the sun. He’d look for a flint later and try and sharpen some kind of point on the pencil, so he could write down the details of his escape. At least the facts would be there, if his body were found. He tried to replace this grim thought by something more agreeable. He made an effort to conjure up a picture of Charis’s face, something he hadn’t done for many, many months, thinking uneasily of the few days they had spent together as man and wife. He screwed up his eyes in concentration but he found he was thinking only of Liesl. Liesl in the bath, her heavy breasts dripping with water, the maid pouring it over her shoulders, rivulets sluicing over her body, dampening the pale coppery triangle of hairs between her thighs…
He sat up. A problem suddenly became obvious to him. How could he write of Liesl’s part in the escape? How would it look to anyone—Charis—reading about it? He decided to wait to think about it later.
He set off again in the middle of the afternoon. The day was still hot but he found the slope he was moving up well-provided with shady trees. His leg had stiffened up considerably and he didn’t make the good progress he had in the morning. Skirting some fields on the edge of a native village some children shouted at him and some stones were thrown, but he kept on going. It took him two laborious hours to break out of the trees and reach the edge of the plateau.
The sun was lower in the sky, the air was dusty and soft. Ahead stretched a vast grassy plain dotted with small stone hills—kopjes—occasional brakes of trees and bushes and delicately beautiful flat-topped acacias.
He set off across the grass plain. He would walk as far as he could before night fell. Then he would make a fire at the base of one of the kopjes. In the morning he would change course and march into the rising sun. By the end of that day, or perhaps the next, he would meet the advancing columns of the British army.
Chapter 8
22 November 1917,
Near Nambindinga, German East Africa
The 5th Battalion of the Nigerian Brigade plodded along the dirt road to Nambindinga, Twelve company in the vanguard. Felix walked beside Gilzean in the stifling, late afternoon heat. He looked back at his platoon
, green fezzes bobbing in an untidy column, the slap of their bare feet on the hard earth of the road. Frearson was somewhere behind. Gent’s platoon was pushed out on the right wing. Young Waller, Parrott’s replacement, was slogging up and down the crumpled foothills and gullies of the plateau on the left. Loveday’s platoon was fanned out across the road several hundred yards ahead.
“Sacré bleu!” Loveday had exclaimed on being told his position. “Advance guard, my, my.”
They had been making slow progress all day without meeting any opposition. This was their first occasion at the head of the column of troops pushing inland from Lindi, ‘Linforce’ as it was known. To the north was another column, from Kilwa, and imaginatively dubbed, in true army fashion, ‘Kil-force’. It was these two columns that were driving the remains of von Lettow’s army out of German East Africa.
Felix looked at Gilzean. His khaki shirt was soaked with sweat. In the shade cast by his sun helmet he looked pallid and drawn, his chin and jaws blue-black against his white cheeks.
“Are you all right, sergeant?” Felix asked.
“Oh aye. It’s just unco heat.”
Frearson came puffing up from the rear at this point.
“Didn’t you hear the bugle?” he demanded angrily. He seemed furious.
“No. Sorry. What for?”
“We’re pulling back. Lines of communication too extended. Bivouac by the side of the road then march back to camp tomorrow. Pass the word to Loveday and the others, and keep your ears open in future.”
Just then, beyond the curve in the road ahead, there was a loud explosion. A column of smoke and dust shot up high in the air, followed by the rattle of falling stones and gouts of earth. There were shouts and cries of alarm from Loveday’s platoon. Everyone fell to the ground.
“My God! Artillery?” Frearson gasped, alarm tensing his putty features.
“Scairdy gowk,” Felix heard Gilzean mutter behind him.