The Rift

by H Schmidt

  “We have so much to learn, Gustav. We need to understand the soils in Africa, to make them better. There are diseases and pests here that we have never seen in Europe or the Americas. There are plants that we need to test in the soils here, and hybrids to be developed. Africa is now a drain on Germany. We have invested a great deal of money and the best way to make this investment pay off is to produce more from the land.”

  Gustav looked at the bureaucrat scientist beside him, nettled by the pompous way he spoke. “The settlers have only one thing on their minds now, Herr Doktor. Rain. Seed is in the ground. The coffee trees are beginning to shrivel. God has his ways of keeping us humble, doesn’t He?”

  “But we need not just accept...” The Professor was about to offer an animated rebuttal as a man of science when Mbota appeared in the archway.

  “What is it, Mbota?” Gustav noticed the anxiety in the face of his houseboy. “It is Herr Scheuer, Bwana. He says it is very important.”

  “Please excuse me, Herr Doktor. This should take only a moment.”

  Gustav followed Mbota into the study. He found his secretary, Wolfgang Scheuer, standing, his eyes shining, hands opening and closing. To Gustav, he looked like a man about to blow if he could not get the news out quickly. Usually taciturn, almost phlegmatic, the mood of the man who had been in Moshi for almost ten years surprised Gustav.

  As he looked into Scheuer’s face, he realized he had come to rely on his secretary, who knew the natives better than most Germans. Scheuer had a Chagga mistress, the arrangement common knowledge among the Europeans, and seemingly known about and accepted by his wife. Like the Hohenzollerns who ruled Germany, the Mecklenburgs were strict Calvinists. Such behavior was abhorrent to Gustav but pragmatism dictated his reliance on Scheuer. Through his mistress, who was the daughter of a Chagga chief, he had become a source of useful information of what the natives were thinking and doing. It was the reason he was here this morning.

  “I have important news, Herr Direktor. The poachers have been spotted on the west bank of Lake Mayanara. They have killed over twenty-five bull elephants. I have been told that yesterday morning, they were removing the tusks. There were a hundred Shambaa and Zigua there with their Somali lords.”

  “How do you know all this?” Gustav asked. He felt his heart racing, and he fought to control his emotions.

  “The message was delivered to me by a Masai messenger this morning. He witnessed the slaughter. The Masai hate the Shambaa and Zigua and fear the Somalis.”

  “Is there any reason he would lie, Scheuer?”

  Scheuer ignored the question. “I have more news, Herr Direktor. We know the poachers will stop at Macha’me. The porters from Pagani will take the ivory down the Pagani River to Pagani. There will be one hundred porters coming from Pagani. Many are in Arusha now. They come in separate caravans then wait in Arusha to be told where the ivory will be delivered.”

  “When will they be in Macha’me?”

  “Thursday night. They will leave on Saturday.” Scheuer said, expecting the question of why they would wait so long in Macha’me. Many were Muslims, and Friday was a day of prayer. Scheuer was disappointed that his Direktor did not ask. He wondered, was it because he knows or because, like so many settlers, was ignorant of African customs? He knows, he decided.

  Gustav looked carefully at the fat, sagging young man standing in front of him. He thought him odd. He seemed to be that peculiar European who resents what the Europeans are doing in Africa, as if they are unwanted intruders who want to destroy Africa, not make it a better place for all people, including the natives. Never openly insubordinate, the expressionless eyes behind the rimless spectacles communicated his disdain and contempt.

  Sergeant Hoffman, who had become a close friend of the family, despite his status as an ordinary soldier, once told Gustav of his first contact with Scheuer. “It was in the beer hall in Moshi which ordinary soldiers, peasants, craftsmen, and drifters frequented. A corporal then, I had run into Scheuer sitting by himself, very drunk. I am a bit of a loner myself, and seeing the man sitting there by himself, I thought I saw a kindred spirit. I said to him, ‘Can I buy you a drink, mein herr?’ Well, he nodded, and I sat down with him and he seemed to be in a talkative mood. He started to ramble on about his life in Bavaria. His father was a physician at a university hospital in Munich. His mother’s relatives were a von something or other. Without any prompting on my part, he began to rant and rave about the German nobles, their arrogance, and their narrow-mindedness. And then, suddenly, he looked at me and his eyes became like slits. You couldn’t read it any other way but that he knew he was talking too much. He didn’t change the subject. Without a word, a thanks for the beers he had swallowed, he simply pulled himself to his feet, and staggered out into the night.

  “You meet a lot of strange people in beer halls in Africa, so I forgot about it. Imagine my surprise when I was transferred to Moshi and you invited me to come to the Trading Center. There at a desk was my drinking partner of three years before. I didn’t remember him immediately, although something about him rang a bell. But what I remember was the look on his face, when he saw me. He was startled; I saw fear in his eyes, those same eyes that I suddenly remembered from the beer hall.”

  Gustav had not dismissed what Sergeant Hoffman had told him. But he had decided in most of his dealings with Europeans like Scheuer that there was no better place to bury one’s past than in Africa. Could such a cavalier approach be dangerous? Perhaps. There were times, such as the one now, when trust is extraordinarily important. Could he trust Scheuer?

  Scheuer was looking at the Direktor, knowing what Gustav von Mecklenburg was thinking. Scheuer found it easy to dissect the thoughts of others. He was good at mind games. At the university, his professors and fellow students saw him as a brilliant student. They were drawn to his irony and wit, to his eloquent, indulgent bitterness. What they could not see was a weak soul who tried to bring men down because he knew he had neither the will or drive to rise to join them. Nor could they see that the contempt for others fed upon the contempt for himself. Egalitarianism, Scheuer knew, was just another word for lazy. But Wolfgang Scheuer had grandiose visions where he was the object of adulation, earned by some heroic act that transformed the world. Although the outcomes of his visions were grand, the effort was both minimal and capricious. It came during the Oktoberfest after a tour of the great student beer halls in Munich. The discussion, as it often did, centered on the evils of private property. The method of dealing with this evil was simple and to the addled minds of the students, brilliant. They would destroy the property records. Armed with matches and a can of petrol, Wolfgang and two drunken student compatriots were found in the Stadthaus wandering its great halls. When the police confronted them, one had asked where the property records were kept. When the judges found what the students were after, they no longer treated the matter as a prank.

  To keep his son out of prison, Dr. Otto von Scheuer reached an understanding with the police. Young Wolfgang was no longer welcome in Munich, or in Germany. The price of freedom was residence in East Africa where arrangements were made for him to work for the German East Africa Company. Part of the agreement that the doctor had been able to extract from the German government was that no record would go with him to East Africa. The record would, however, be reactivated if young Wolfgang were to return to Germany.

  “How sure are you, Herr Scheuer?” Gustav looked sharply at Scheuer, as if to validate the truth of what was his secretary said.

  “The information I give you now comes from the son of a Chagga chief. The same son who informed us of the village stealing cattle near Mt. Meru, the same son who pointed to the man who murdered the Chagga akida. He has proved most reliable in the past.”

  Gustav and Scheuer had an understanding that the names of those who provided information would be kept from the Direktor. If the powerful chiefs in German East Africa ever found out that such methods were being used, the East Africa Company wou
ld be in a position to deny responsibility. This shabby ruse, Scheuer thought, was as old as government itself.

  “Is it Farah?” Farah Al-Harthi was a Somali who had come to Pagani with his brother, Ibrahim, before the German East Africa Company. The two brothers had come to trade in cattle, hides, and slaves. Young girls purchased by the two brothers staffed the brothels in the port towns of Tanga, Pagani and Bagamayo. The brothers had built a palace in Pagani, and lived in splendor under the protection of the sultan of Zanzibar. Ten years ago, at the insistence of the French priests and German missionaries, troops from the SS Moewe came ashore and closed the brothels, took over the palace and put a reward on the heads of Farah and Ibrahim. Bitter at the loss of their wealth, they hired toughs, mostly men from the Shambaa and Zigua who were outcasts from their own tribes, and took to robbing caravans and settlers, trafficking in slaves, and poaching.

  Gustav first heard of Farah when a settler family near Amani was hacked to death. Pare tribesmen who worked for the settlers at first refused to speak of the attack. Sergeant Hoffman, who was assigned the task of finding the murderers, forced the workers to tell him what happened. The attack had taken place at night and the attackers had not left the farmhouse for three days. Gustav could never tell Maria what had happened and was able to get the army to concoct the story that the parents and children had died quickly. The final act of the bandits was to behead each of the family members, and place their heads on poles, away from the scavengers and the ground. Their leader was Farah. That was two years ago.

  “Yes. He was there and did much of the killing. His gun bearers accompany him. He has three British elephant guns with telescopes on them. He has a tripod which he uses to kill the great animals at three hundred meters.”

  Gustav had heard enough. “That will be all, Scheuer.”

  “Is there anything else, Mein Herr?” Scheuer looked at the Direktor’s impassive face, wishing for some clue to what the man would do next. He saw the quick flash of anger in the tall, wiry man’s face and knew he had gone too far. Bowing slightly, he turned and left the room. There were beads of cold sweat on his face. Maria was in the garden trimming her roses when the fat clerk came out of the house. She noticed his agitation and wondered what had happened. He did not look at her. Maria didn’t like the man and told Gustav so the first time she had come to the center.

  Gustav picked up the telephone receiver. He listened for a moment. “May I speak to Sergeant Hoffman, please?”

  A few moments later, Gustav returned to Professor Stuhlmann, who sat at the table enjoying the apple strudel that Herr Singh had created from the canned apples shipped from Germany, and the thick, black coffee ground from the Arabica beans of Mt. Kilimanjaro. He smiled when he saw Gustav standing in the doorway, also smiling at the sublime look of his guest. The Professor pointed at the strudel.

  “Soon, we will have our own orchards in the Usambara.”

  “East Africa may have their orchards, but only the von Mecklenburgs can have Herr Singh.” The conversation with Sergeant Hoffman had lifted his spirits. The decision was made. The agriculture director observed the new mood of his host and pressed on.

  “There is a spot in a small village called Amani where we could build a center to do research. What we could do there would be the envy of all Europe...” While he pressed on with his dream, Gustav began to think about the men, mules, and supplies they would need. They would take the Maxim. The commander of the garrison in Moshi had invited him to a demonstration of the new machine gun. He watched as six hundred rounds spewed from its barrel in one minute!! He thought of the maneuvers in Germany, where infantry charged across open ground. War would never be the same.

  Chapter Four

  The men were huddled in tight circles around the slabs of beef taken from the small bull from a Masai herd. The fierce Masai morani knew such gifts to Farah kept them and their women and children alive. The story had been told of the village that had defied Farah and his men. Surrounding the village so that no one could escape, the Somali leader had his warriors torch the huts. As the men, women, and children ran out of their huts, they were hacked to death by the knives the Swahili called scimitars, or if the swift made it to open ground, shot by Farah himself with the Mauser rifle he had taken in the raid on the settler farm. A bull was little price to pay to be left alone by Farah.

  Farah stood away from the men. He watched as they took their razor-sharp knives to cut pieces from the raw meat, sprinkling it with the hot red sauce each carried with him. Farah was tall, almost two meters high. Unlike his men, he wore the loose-fitting cottons of the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula. Around his waist, a heavy, black leather belt covered with leather ammunition pouches, a holster for the British revolver he carried, and a scabbard for the long dagger with a jeweled handle. Bandoliers filled with the shells for his many rifles crossed both shoulders. With his silk red-and-white kaffiyeh covering his head and the back of his neck, he assumed the posture of a prince, one he had seen in Medina when only a boy. A handsome young boy with a Colubus monkey flywhisk stood beside him waving it about his master’s head, to protect him from the swarming black flies which tortured his band and his mules.

  Beside the slow-moving stream, almost dry before the rains, the great ivory tusks lay one against the other. The roots of the tusks, where they were hacked from the body of the great dead beasts, still showed chunks of fly-infested meat and blackened, dried blood. Fifty tusks, most over three meters long. Ibrahim would get a handsome price in Pagani.

  He watched the guards he had posted, who scanned the surrounding hills closely for any movement. Farah knew that a man could become wealthy if he could give the Germans information that would cause them to kill or capture him. He had watched his own men carefully, paying them handsomely for any information about the others. This morning a gun bearer had told Farah that one of the men had asked him about the reward. Farah had waited until all the men gathered awaiting the evening meal.

  He had stood before the man, who first looked at his master, then looked down, eyes darting about him. At first, the other men paid little attention to the man, who seemed to shrink before Farah. Then they began to understand something was wrong. They watched the Shambaa begin to sweat. Still, Farah stood over him, looking down, saying nothing. Mustering up all the courage in him, the man looked up at Farah.

  “Why do you stand over me, Bwana? Have I done something to offend you?” As he spoke, he tried to smile, but his dry lips seemed to catch on his great white teeth, turning the smile into the snarl of a trapped animal.

  The man, older than most, had been expelled from his own village for seducing the daughter of a chief. He had served Farah for only a year, keeping to himself. Farah had not been displeased with the man until the news. He had proved tough, able to walk great distances, often carrying great amounts of booty. He had proved dependable as a lookout, and cruel and callous in inflicting punishment on villagers who resisted the band.

  Once, Farah remembered, he had given the man, whose name was Sabayu, his great, olive wood club, and told him to kill an old woman who had scolded the band as it walked into a Sukuma village. The man seemed to relish his task as the others laughed and shouted encouragement. He had first struck the lady across the shoulder, breaking the brittle bones, causing her to scream in pain and terror. He laughed as the old lady abandoned her defiance and begged for mercy. He broke most of the bones in her body, reducing her cries to whimpers. Then, he brought the club down on her head, crushing her skull, spattering her brains about the ground where she lay.

  Farah had watched with unspoken approval. “You hoped to turn me in to the despicable Germans, old man. You thought I would not find out.” Farah turned to the other men who watched, their eyes wide. Farah smiled as the band looked about them. They are thinking, he thought, who had told Farah about the old Shambaa? Farah had told the informant that he would kill him if he told any of the others what he had told their leader. They must never know who the informant
was. They must guess even that I have other ways of finding out. Magic that they could not understand.

  As Farah looked down, the smell of urine spread through the camp. “I have done nothing, Bwana. I swear by my ancestors I have done nothing. I swear by Allah, Bwana.”

  The man was on his knees now, begging for his life. So cheap for others, so precious his own. Farah thought of the old witch who screamed for mercy. He had planned to shoot Sabayu. Now he had other thoughts. He turned to one of the Zigua. He was a young warrior, yet tested. He handed him the olive wood club. Sabayu began to scream. With his young slave waving the fly whisk, the Somali walked to the spreading acacia, and took a seat under it. He signaled to the Zigua.

  ---

  “I will be gone for a short time, Maria. I should be home within the week.”

  Maria stood facing Gustav, looking up at him. There were no tears, only a smile for her husband telling him she knew he would return safe. Gustav had said his goodbyes to the children the night before. He had allowed little Willie to touch the Luger pistol he was cleaning. He thought then how much little Willie looked like his mother, like Maria. Only poor Friederich had the long, great head of the von Mecklenburgs, smiling to himself at the thought.

  The light from the window covered the two lovers as they stood not ten meters from the mounted askari, who held the reins of Gustav’s wiry Ethiopian horse. Gustav was dressed in the khaki uniform of the German Army of East Africa. In Prussia, Gustav had been a soldier. Now, he was one again. He did not know how dangerous his mission would be. There was little risk that the bandits would be as well-armed as the German Army. But he was aware that danger existed, and the possibility that he would not return. As he looked down on Maria, he knew he may never see Maria or the children again.