The Afrika Reich

by Guy Saville

  The drum fell silent. Hochburg nodded.

  The executioner lowered the flame into the wood. It caught instantly.

  Dolan stared into his masked face. Then at the crowd. The two Pimpf boys were watching him intently, timid smiles playing on their lips.

  He turned to the sky again, ignored the smoke flooding his nose and mouth. The reek of fuel. He could already feel his plaster-cast melting, fusing into his flesh. Through his tears he searched for the rescue helicopter.

  Any second now. Any second.

  The horizon remained empty.

  The Welshman screamed. And screamed.

  Hochburg watched the flames spiral up his body; felt nothing – the way he used to when he was a boy and would burn scorpions under a lens. He knew there were some who disapproved of his methods, men like Arnim, but only retribution of such severity would deter their enemies in the future.

  Dolan writhed, the tendons in his neck standing out like metal wires beneath his skin. His flesh blistered and popped. Not once did he close his eyes; they were riveted on the heavens.

  The crowd around Hochburg murmured, stepped back from the spectacle. Some of the women wept and began to leave. Hochburg saw two boys refusing to be dragged away by their father. The air smelt of crackling – sweet, rich, purified. The same as that first time …

  And still Dolan screamed.

  Next to him were two other pyres: one for the American when he was captured, one for Burton Cole. If he was still alive. Hochburg prayed he hadn’t been cheated that satisfaction. This whole ritual was for his sake.

  Was long overdue.

  He had used fire as his instrument of justice before. It was reserved for the lowest traitors, for those who would destroy the glories he had brought to Africa. Once, after an uprising in Muspel, he had burned enough niggers to make the midday sky black. Black – the Reichsführer had approved of the irony. The first time, however, had been twenty years earlier, before he wore the swastika, on a desolate beach in Togoland, on the night he had finally forsaken God.

  Two days after he buried his Eleanor.

  She was curled up when he found her, facing away from the ocean; the waves were flat, the sun white and low. Her face was split, clothes torn to rags. The sand around her body stained a dark brown.

  The rage burned from Hochburg’s chest into his throat. His exhaustion evaporated. It was like that moment he found his parents, brother and sister. When he had crawled from his hiding place and found them spread across the ground. Eviscerated.

  ‘My God. Eleanor!’ He dropped to his knees and gently scooped her up. Smelt copper and saliva. ‘Who did this to you?’ he said in English. ‘Who did this?’

  Her eyelids flickered. ‘Walter? Is that you?’ She sounded as if she’d bitten her tongue.

  He took in her injuries: the cuts, claw marks, bruises. Her thighs were soaked with blood. ‘Who did this?’

  ‘I knew you’d come after me.’

  ‘I haven’t stopped since you left.’ He wiped the sweat from his hair. ‘Haven’t slept or eaten …’ His eyes dissolved in tears. ‘What have they done to you?’

  She didn’t reply – simply offered her hand. He gripped it so hard she gasped. It felt tiny in his, fragile enough to crush, like the very first time they met and she held it out so formally. They had both been shy then. He had never forgotten that first touch: the warmth of it, that instant sense of belonging. Now her skin was icy, the cold seeping into his own flesh.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. There was a savagery to his voice. She had run away three days earlier. ‘Why did you leave?’

  She tried to pull her hand away but he refused to release it. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Burton.’

  Hochburg made no reply.

  ‘I keep seeing him … all alone. Confused. Crying.’ Her breath came in shallow, broken gulps. ‘I can’t get that picture out of my head. Can’t live with it any more … can’t live with myself. I promised I’d never leave him. I promised …’

  ‘And what of your promise to me?’

  ‘Oh, Walter … I had to go. We both knew it was time.’

  Hochburg felt a bitter pang, looked away, out across the ocean. It was one of those sunsets where the sky turned to steel rather than blood. ‘What were you going to do?’ he said. ‘Wait for a ship? Sail to Lomé. They’d never have seen you.’

  Eleanor managed a smile, nodded at a stack of wood further down the beach. ‘I was going to light a fire.’

  ‘A fire,’ said Hochburg. ‘And as the fire burneth a wood, so persecute them with thy tempest …’

  ‘And make them afraid with thy storm.’

  Psalms 83:14.

  She had whispered it in his ear after that first, frantic time they made love, as they mopped the sweat off their bodies and dressed to go to evening prayer. Would often repeat it after their couplings in the orphanage. He never knew why. The words haunted him. Mocked him.

  For a long moment Hochburg was silent, he breathed in time with her. Eleanor let her eyes close, rolled her head against him; she was fading away. He spoke in a rush. ‘Eleanor! Wake up. I have an idea.’

  She was blinking at him again. Porcelain-blue eyes, flecked with grey.

  ‘Burton can be with us,’ continued Hochburg. ‘We’ll live together as a family.’ He fought away his jealousy. ‘I was a fool never to think of it before.’

  ‘It’s too late now, Walter.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Too late for me.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone alone. I told you this was wild country.’

  ‘I had to get back.’

  ‘I could have protected you.’

  She tried to loosen herself from his grip again. ‘If I’d told you what I was going to do … that I was going back home, you’d never have let me leave.’

  ‘But look what they’ve done …’ His voice broke.

  ‘It’s God’s judgement.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘His tempest … Punishment for my weakness.’

  Hochburg bowed his head, his hair falling lankly around his face. ‘No God – no true, loving God – could allow this to happen.’

  ‘We’ve sinned … I’ve broken my little boy’s heart. My husband—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You have to find them, Walter.’ She swallowed, a dry, bloodless click. ‘Beg them my … forgiveness.’

  He pulled her face to his, felt the swollen grey skin of her cheek. ‘You can’t die, Eleanor. I won’t allow it.’

  She finally freed her hand. It seemed to take the last of her life-force. ‘Promise me.’

  ‘I forbid it.’ He rocked her back and forth.

  ‘I’m scared … Walter …’

  Hochburg hugged her tighter. Felt her pulse slow and fade, like a scream echoing in the darkness to nothing. He held her till she was cold. Behind him the waves silently lapped the shore. Night fell.

  Hochburg dug her grave with his bare hands, in a sheltered spot by some palms with an unbroken view of the ocean. He dug in pitch blackness. Three cubits deep, the sides made smooth; ignoring his nails as they split. Laid her body gently in the sand at the bottom. Tasted her lips one final time. Slowly packed the soil back on top of her, sobbing with every handful. Marked the spot with a crude wind-chime made from raffia-string, wood and seashells. Then he slumped by her grave, watched the sun rise and fall.

  Rise and fall.

  They called this stretch of shoreline the Slave Coast. Along the beach there was no sign of human existence, nothing to mark the twentieth century. It might have been the beginning of time. Or the end.

  Images laid siege to his mind. He saw the savages that had done this to her; this could only be the wickedness of the negroid. Heard their animal grunts and laughter, the slap of their hands against her face. Black against white. Heard Eleanor call out for her son.

  Her son, not him.

  And all the while his body was racked with weeping. He held his palms in front of his face wanting to hi
de. When they butchered his family, his innards had shrivelled and died. But this – this was far worse. There had to be something to blot out this pain.

  Something.

  Hochburg knew what.

  He had resisted it – the Sixth Commandment – for so long. But the time for talking, for endless deliberation in his journal, was over. He must act now, as he should have done after they slaughtered his parents. If he had shown more resolve then, Eleanor might have lived.

  It only took him a few hours to find the niggers responsible. There were three of them. He split the first one’s skull before his companions were even aware of him. Overpowered the other two – they were brothers – and dragged them back to the scene of their crime.

  Night had fallen again.

  At first they refused to admit it, claimed to be fishermen. Knew nothing about a white woman. He had beaten and slashed them, screamed brimstone threats in every native tongue he knew. And still they denied it, wept and begged for mercy. Then he dragged them to the driftwood Eleanor had gathered, built it into a larger pile and staked the younger brother to it.

  Hochburg clutched a flaming torch. ‘You murdered her,’ he roared at the elder.

  ‘Sarki, please, I beg you—’

  ‘Murdered her. Tell me!’

  ‘No!’

  Hochburg plunged his flame into the tinder.

  The screams were loud enough to be heard across all of Togo.

  He grasped the other brother’s hair, made him watch every last spasm of the burning. Drink down lungfuls of human smoke.

  Only then did the nigger avow his guilt.

  For this confession Hochburg built a second pyre. Watched the fire rage till it was nothing more than ash and bone. Felt purged of the agony within. Only after the flames died down did his loss begin to creep back; it needed more flesh.

  Burton.

  If it hadn’t been for him, if Eleanor hadn’t wanted to see her son again, she would never have left. Would still be alive. Her choice had condemned her as surely as if Burton had slit her throat. He was to blame! He was the source of all Hochburg’s anguish. The thought raged in him like darkness in his blood.

  He stretched his limbs, breathed deeply. The air smelt crisp. Purified.

  Vengeance is mine and I will repay.

  And then a vision, as clear as the distant horizon and the light breaking over it.

  He fell to his knees and searched the remainders of the pyres, rooting through the ash, indifferent to the smouldering debris that seared his fingers. His nose filled with smoke. Finally he found what he was looking for. It was scorched but still intact. He held it aloft in the direction of the rising, red sun.

  A skull.

  Hochburg examined its structure, pushed his thumbs into the eye sockets, pulled at the remaining teeth. Stroked the cranium. And in that moment he saw his future, his salvation, an end to his pain, not only for himself but all of Africa. No white man must ever again suffer the loss he had endured. His eyes gleamed.

  But first: Burton Kohl.

  He began collecting more wood.

  The crowd had departed. Hochburg stood alone except for two Leibwache and his dog, Fenris. He roused himself from his introspection: it served no purpose. After all those years his grief was still there, clamouring to be numbed.

  Only retribution could satisfy it.

  Dolan was dead. A blackened husk. Occasionally a limb would still twitch.

  He had been brave, thought Hochburg, hadn’t begged for mercy despite his screams. The SS could do with more hearts like his, instead of all the ‘ethnic Germans’ he kept being fobbed off with.

  The flames continued to crackle around him, sending a plume of smoke across the skull-cobbled square. Hochburg followed its trail. Saw Kepplar marching towards him; he looked exhausted, his face pricked with spots. ‘Heil Hitler!’ he said, snapping to attention. There was a stale odour of peppermint.

  Hochburg gave a languid wave of the wrist. ‘I see you are empty-handed. Again.’

  ‘I managed to track Cole and the American to Wutrohr. There … there I lost them. Whaler escaped, Cole was sent on a punishment detail—’

  ‘To the tunnel?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Oberst.’

  ‘The tunnel which is now … how shall we put it … not a tunnel.’

  Kepplar shifted his shoulders as though his shirt were made of hair. ‘No one could have survived the explosion.’

  ‘Did you recover a body?’

  ‘No, Herr Oberst.’

  ‘So there is the possibility he survived.’

  ‘A possibility, yes. I sent Standartenführer Uhrig to search the area, to track down anyone who might have escaped.’

  ‘Uhrig?’

  ‘The camp commander at Wutrohr.’ Kepplar’s lip curled. ‘The miscegenist.’

  ‘You’re not jealous, are you?’ Hochburg roared with laughter, felt the smoke parch his throat. He closed his eyes. ‘Burton was a boy when I knew him. I wonder what the man is like …’

  ‘A criminal, the worst kind of degenerate—’

  Hochburg tutted. ‘Spare me the diatribe, I wasn’t asking the little Doctor.’

  He ran his hand over his head – he was a near-perfect Category One – felt the smoothness of his scalp. His hair had started to drop out in the weeks after Eleanor; had never regrown. ‘I would say obstinate, like his mother. A survivor.’ He breathed in deeply again, sucking in the heat of the embers, the past. ‘He’s still alive. I know it.’

  His eyes snapped open again. He signalled to the Leibwache. ‘I think it is time I took over the pursuit of young Burtchen personally,’ said Hochburg.

  ‘But Northern Rhodesia, Herr Oberstgruppenführer, the invasion.’

  ‘My generals are more than competent, they can deal with it for now.’

  ‘But you must lead. You must—’

  The Leibwache grabbed Kepplar’s arms, tore at his swastika armband.

  An expression of white panic.

  ‘What did I tell you, Derbus?’ said Hochburg, his voice soothing. ‘Don’t fail me again. And yet once more you have returned without Burton Cole.’

  The guards dragged Kepplar towards one of the pyres. He kicked helplessly at the ground. Fenris barked.

  ‘But Herr Oberst … I’ve been halfway across Kongo for you, haven’t slept—’

  ‘You should have gone back to Germania when I told you.’

  ‘I wanted to continue our work, be at your side.’

  ‘A year is too long for a man to be away from his family. If it were me I would miss my wife terribly.’

  They were binding him to the stake. Sparks flared from Dolan’s pyre.

  ‘Herr Oberst. Walter. Please!’

  Hochburg strode away, across the skulls.

  Behind him Kepplar’s yells continued: ‘Herr Oberst, please. Herr Oberst!’

  Quimbundo, North Angola

  19 September, 10:00

  THEY smelt them long before they saw them.

  The stench came through the miombo trees, burrowed into Neliah’s nose. Made her belly lurch. It reminded her of the barrels of salt-cod Papai used to import from Lisboa. Buzzards circled above.

  They had fled from the camp until the roar of the flames was distant and the ndeera-grass silent. Then the long trek to the railway at Quimbundo, walking through the night till the savannah became woodland. All the time Burton urged them forward, fearful of resting in case the Nazistas caught them. But the trees were noiseless, except for once when Neliah heard an elephant rustling among the leaves.

  They were thirteen now, everyone else lost or dead. Herself and Zuri, Tungu, Ajiah and two other Herero. Five prisoners from the chimney-camp. Burton and his friend, Patrick. Patrick reminded her a little of Papai – his grey hair, gruff voice, the manner in which he walked in the world. When Neliah scolded her sister for finding yet another old white man, she replied there was no eye-lust in him, that he was good of heart.

  As for Burton, she didn’t know. He hated
the Nazistas, but she didn’t know.

  He had spoken few words on their journey from the river to the empty chimney-camp and then Angola, not even why he had changed his mind and was following. He was a soldier, but different to the comandante or Gonsalves or any of the Resistencia. Ina would have called him omu-potu. Skin-blind. He had saved her life in the tunnel, helped save Zuri – but there was also a devil in him. Something that made Neliah wary, even if she recognised the same rungiro in him as in herself. He was only with them now to get to Loanda and a boat home.

  She told him that there would be no train at Quimbundo, that Penhor and his soldiers would have taken it to the capital.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he replied. ‘We can follow the tracks.’

  She liked the softness of his voice. ‘We Herero go also. Get to Loanda to join our army.’

  ‘They allow blacks?’

  ‘They don’t want to. But we must all fight to save Angola. That is what my father believed.’

  Neliah led the group, Burton and Patrick at the rear, their guns watching the trees. Her hand was curled into Zuri’s, the other gripped the panga. She kept looking at her sister’s hair, missed the swish of her plait.

  ‘It will grow back,’ said Neliah.

  Zuri shook her head.

  ‘It will, I promise. But even more long. More beautiful.’

  ‘I don’t want it to grow.’

  ‘You must! Remember how much Papai loved it.’

  ‘From now on I’m going to keep it cut, like yours.’

  Neliah glanced at her sister and wondered if a smile or a girl-look would ever light her face again. She moved as if her hip bones were stuck. Her trousers were stained with blood, there was a bite mark on her cheek. But it was her eyes that chilled Neliah most. They were staring ahead, empty. It made her think of a tale Ina would tell when they were children, of the Kishi – a creature that came from the forest to steal the souls of women. Its face was said to be ugly and white, like all evil spirits.

  Neliah squeezed her hand harder. ‘I was wrong to send you to the chimney-camp. You should have stayed with me. Pamue.’

  ‘You were doing your best, sister.’ Her voice became gentler. ‘Since our parents, you’ve always taken care of me, even though it should be the other way round. Ina named you well, Neliah. Truly you are strong of will, vigorous of spirit, level of mind.’