God of Hunger

by John Coutouvidis

  Kombos said “I will erect a platform in my yard and take a salute each morning as I send my people, shouldering their jembes (hoes), off to the fields …” And they all laughed at the thought.

  But at the end of one viewing and with the script in hand Manoli once asked KK “And where did all this choreography lead? To war and destruction and the murder of millions including the obliteration six million Jews.”

  KK replied, “I don’t know about that. The numbers are too large. We as farmers know what six million of anything is. It can be very small; I once calculated, when considering the crop for Kiru estate, that a pound of tobacco seeds contained six million seeds. It can also be very large, I use on average 60 gunias (sacks) of fertilizer in any one year. They weigh as much as I do; 60 of me. Now I am told that the gas chambers and furnaces started working in the spring of 1943 and did so until the end of the war. Two years to process about 5 million of me; the missing million were killed in other ways. Call a working year 300 days which gives them a workload of 8000 a day. That is not far off the entire European population of this country. Impossible.”

  A bound volume of Rosenberg’s speeches, which once belonged to AH, was among the bile that disgraced his upper shelf of books. He would delve into it now and then when his cronies came for poker he would declaim choice passages in a harsh voice which sent them into paroxysms of laughter. Yet his interest in what Rosenberg called ethnic cleansing, was, to him, no laughing matter. He had yet to declare publicly his handle on Party strategy. Let them laugh.

  German ways in Tanganyika made Greeks laugh. Many who had been settled onto land which they developed as coffee farms remembered how German officials paced out the land numbering in a loud voice exact lengths and widths by their exact leather booted strides. Manoli told a variant whereby he was paid by the local land officer to accompany his measuring with music; a wind-up gramophone playing German recordings at 78 rpm. A favourite, which Manoli still had and played was, he surmised, about a German officer at the trenches being homesick.

  There were trenches here too. On the south-eastern flanks of Mawenzi, close to the road to Taveta and Voi from whence, left to Nairobi, or right to Mombassa.

  The Greeks knew of the trenches as the place where Vasili went to blow out his brains during the depression. Suicide was not uncommon then, especially amongst farmers like Vasili who lacked the influence required to live in debt to the Land Bank. He could barely sign his name let alone conduct a conversation with pomposity itself, Colonel Beston, the manager. Here was the epitome of the kokinokolee; ‘the red-arses’ as Greeks called the British. Pinky-white skinned despite years under the tropical sky, British officials were a white race apart. The Boers called them roineks because their necks were invariably red. The Greeks imagined naked lily white bottoms turning red in the mid day sun when, it was said, mad dogs and English men were out and about.

  “Never”, shouted Frixos, looking at his hand of cards while following the discussion about the Englezi, so often the topic of conversation over cards at the Hellenic Club. “O Anglos is no fool. At midday he will return to his ‘hello darling’ and his dog. Then eat his lunch. Then listen to the radio or zleep. At half-pas-four he will drink his tea with his ‘bye-bye darling’ and go to the gymkhana club. Not to play cards all day and night like us. He will go to see Bob and Dave and Mickey and arrange a game of golf. After a round, walking for his health, he will order his veeskey and soda and talk some more. Quietly. Not like us, shouting all-ov the time. Then when the sun goes down his bibi will join him for a sundowner. Then they sometimes play a game called a qviss. After that they eat and zleep. That is how to live. Not like us. Upendown all the time. They are regular people. Just like the Germans. But kinder.”

  All agreed that is how it was. And how good and proper it was. Until someone would begin to take the piss. ‘Yes, they love their dogs more than their bibis or children. And what is golf? A bloody waste of time. No profit in hitting a small ball with a stick. And is it not better to shout and scream than to murmur in some dark corner? They are strange people. As old Mihali, O Makaritis, Theos Seehoreseton (God rest his soul), used to say, ‘They sing about bananas: Vee have no bananas today. For he is a jolly good fello. Ke so se all of us.’

  With memories of the muddled banana song, tears would run into the folds of raucous faces and overflow with ke so-se all of us: ‘and God save us all’ to their ears. A pause would again erupt into hilarity at the thought that the lack of bananas would have the British asking for God’s mercy.

  ‘Morre ratsa. What a race! And yet they run a great empire. Bravo.’ All agreed and agreed to roars of more laughter that a Greek empire would be a great shambles. They had no problem in accepting the British as their political masters. People of integrity and good order unlike themselves, though they would threaten to smash the face of any xenos (foreigner) who dared cast a slur upon Greek honour. Amongst them were guerrilla fighters escaping revenge for acts committed in the civil war in which eyes were gouged out for much less. Adartes who also took on the Reichswer in acts of resistance equalled only by Poles, for whom Greeks held no especial respect. Lusting after the girls of the Polish refugee camp at Tengeru was all that Poland meant to them. But Germans they respected.

  What it was about them was their absolute consistency. No other race had it. The British gave you the benefit of the doubt. Not so their cousins. To the Greeks the resolute discipline and, indeed, harshness in pursuit of policy was remarkable. Because of its clear underlying logic none could question nor doubt its outcome. The German method always achieved its ends. Or came damn close to doing so.

  Hero in this regard, and example to all, was a German whom Greeks called Von Lekko; General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.

  When war broke out in 1914, he commanded 3000 men, mainly indigenous native infantry trained to excel in hardship. He knew that no action fought in east Africa could be decisive in the grand sense, but if he could tie down as many troops as possible it would prevent them being used in the main show in Europe.

  With Britain, Portugal and Belgium as allies, German East Africa was surrounded on land. And by sea after the Konigsberg was finally destroyed by British gunboats in the Rufiji delta; not however before her crew had dismounted all her guns and ammunition which made a welcome addition to the fire-power of von Lekko’s land forces.

  These were concentrated around Kilimanjaro where there was ample food, and from this base they made raids across the Kenyan border, cutting the railway many times and capturing the frontier town of Taveta. The British countered by attacking Tanga on the coast hoping to take Von Lekko in the rear. They failed dismally. After a few days march from Kilimanjaro and some very heavy fighting the Germans destroyed both blades of the British pincer at Tanga and Jassini. British loses were substantially greater than von Lekko’s who left to lick his wounds back at base on the hospitable slopes of Kilimanjaro.

  By 1916 the King’s African Rifles were reinforced by troops from India and South Africa. Command was given to the famous Boer leader and former kommando, General Jan Christian Smuts. To Smuts’s shame von Lekko out kommandoed him. Refusing to disperse his troops in engaging Smuts’s dispersed advances, Von Lekko refused even to be drawn into a set-piece battle. Skirmishing all the time he chipped away at Smuts’s forces and his reputation.

  When Nigerian and East African reinforcements arrived Smuts pushed on again. At the Rufiji he was engaged by Von Lekko in some very heavy fighting. Smuts crossed the river licking his wounded pride. He then relinquished his command stating that the campaign in East Africa was finished and left for England.

  For Von Lekko no such option existed. Only overwhelming odds, including being bombed from the air. As the sheer weight of numbers against him piled up he crossed the Ruvuma into Portuguese East Africa. He drew British columns south with him outgeneraling them completely in a year long chase swinging back into German territory and south again into Northern Rhodesia. On 13 November 1918 he was told of t
he Armistice and twelve days later capitulated to General Edwards at Abercorn. 115 Germans and 4227 Africans of whom 819 were women had engaged forces often ten times that number. Living off the land in classic guerrilla fashion for the duration of the war.

  Given full honours of war, Von Lekko and his officers were allowed to keep their small arms. His was an unconquered army which he repatriated with full arrears of pay before returning a lone hero to Weimar Germany, soon to be forgotten there in the trauma of defeat and revolution.

  In Tanganyika his memory was kept alive by admiring Greeks none more so than Theo, who repeatedly visited the Kilimanjaro trenches as a teenager; just a barrack room historian or a Herodotus in the making? Only time would tell but there was no doubt he had an interest in history which he expressed by courting the company of men with history to tell.

  *

  One such was Misha Feingeld who lived not far from Kokopoulos’s coffee farm. Misha took great exception to K.K.’s anti-Semitism but felt it to be unwise to tell him so directly. Instead he spoke to Theo who had asked him at the Greek Club to tell him about the war. Misha, born and raised in Poland had, like the Poles in Tengeru, just seven miles down the corrugated road from Misha’s house, found his way with them to Tanganyika.

  *

  In all there were 6,000 Poles in the country; mainly women and children. Three times as many as there were Greeks. Together they made up one half of its European population, at its height in 1949.

  *

  Misha explained:

  “When the Red Army invaded Poland on the seventeenth of September, 1939, I was taken into Soviet captivity with around a million and a half others. About 68,000 made it to freedom in Persia in 1942. I was one of the lucky ones. In Karachi I was given a choice. Jerusalem or Tanga.”

  “I decided to stay with the many Polish beauties who had survived rather than peel off with Begin for Jerusalem and join his anti-British Haganah; I am not brave. Not like your father. But what purpose in his courage? Despite his education, I cannot understand why he knows so little of the world. I have heard him speak such cruel nonsense about us. I was a young Jewish man in Poland and what happened to Poland and its people was an ordeal beyond the comprehension of many like your father.’

  ‘Tell me about it Misha. About the ordeal. But before you do, what is anti-Semitism? I asked my father once and he told me it was said of people who dared to speak their minds; people who were critical of the Evrei. But he also said that the term did not really apply if, like him, you admired Arabs because they too were Semites.’

  ‘Look, Theo. I do not get on with your father. He is just playing with words. anti-Semitism means more than being critical of us. It is an ordeal we had to bear in a war which nearly destroyed us as a people; a nightmare which will forever haunt us. And other people too - The hostilities which began in Poland on 1st September 1939 then spread to Northern Europe Norway and Finland, to Western Europe - France and Belgium, spreading thereafter to the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and the Far East lasted over 2,000 days. The estimated number of lives destroyed is in excess of 50,000,000. These are huge numbers.”

  Theo replied, “I realize that. But another question I want answered is “where was Mungu in all this? Do you believe that God would allow it?”

  “Ay, Theo. That is a big question. I’ll tell you what. Come to my place one day and we can talk about these things better than in here; the bar is no place for such discussion.”

  “Okay. Great. Why not now?”

  “Yes. Fine. I was hoping to find Costas Zourkoskas here, but they tell me he is in Nairobi with Michaelides and Co. to see Mama Africa at the Flamingo. So let’s go.”

  The conversation continued in the car.

  “You were asking if I believe in God. Yes I do. But like most people I have occasional doubts. You see, I am also a communist. Do you know what that is?”

  “I think so. I speak to a number of guys in the Greek Club who call themselves communists. They fought in the mountains. In the Greek civil war. And they are here because they cannot go back. In case they are murdered in revenge for murders they committed.”

  “Yes. That would definitely happen. Some things are never forgotten. Especially not in the villages of the Mani where vendetta was invented. The same would hold in the Polish countryside. In Poland too there was a civil war of sorts for many years, even before the war of 1939-1945 broke out. There was great poverty amongst the working classes. That is why I became a communist. And that is why communism came easily to Poland. Because of the gruesome experiences of that war.

  It was not just the killing by bullets that caused death. There was great famine too. From 1941. April, May, June of that year saw dreadful conditions in Poland during the weeks preceding the harvest and the forthcoming Russian campaign of the German army which was squeezing every last morsel of food out from Poland in preparation for that event. While I cannot talk of famine conditions in the months between September 1939 and July 1941, it is perfectly clear that after the summer of 1941 there is a very marked deterioration in living conditions in Poland. Statistics which give an idea of their deterioration show a dramatic rise in prices.

  By how much?

  Let’s do it this way, Theo. If you take July 1939 to equal 100, then by the next year prices had quadrupled; in July 1940 the price index stood at 400 and more each year. Do you understand?” “Sure. But not really why this caused famine.”

  They drew into Misha’s drive up to his house on the hill.

  “Don’t worry I will explain. Let’s go in.”

  Misha led Theo onto the verandah which looked out over coffee as far as the eye could see. Not Misha’s. Farming did not interest him as it did the Greeks. Down below was Komnenos’s place. A descendant of a once great Byzantine royal family he was now in dire straights with the Merus. For two reasons. First because he had an affair with a Meru woman who continued to live in his house. That was a condition forced on him by her clan who told him that if she were to be ejected in favour of any other woman, he would have his throat cut. And second because of the dispossession, by government order, of Meru land on which the Komnenos estate stood, in favour of European farmers.

  Misha was openly involved with this land question. He and an American missionary friend of his, who was also a communist, were compiling an account of the injury done to the Merus. It was soon to be published. But Meru affairs were for another day.

  “Which chair would you like?”

  Theo settled into a settee made of zebra hide.

  “We were talking of the huge rise in the cost of food. Yes?”

  Theo nodded his assent. But his mind not fully engaged with Misha’s flow off words. Not until he lost sight of the Fish Eagle circling above the distant dam.

  “ … Okay let us say that bread in 1939 cost one shilling. In July 1942 was up to 2000 shillings. Huge. Just imagine if your mother had to pay so much for one loaf of bread.’

  “Shit”

  “Yes. But the price of anything became meaningless because of shortages. And I mean shortages Bwana. Throughout September 1941 sugar and meat were unobtainable and a year later for the month of September 1942 a person could get only ten pounds by weight of anything to eat. Eysh bwana Theo, kikapu moja. Bas. Think of it Theo. A basket of turnips from the market for a whole month. That would be it. We would die. People did. In their tens of thousands. Of hunger. Especially the Jewish population which was given ever less to eat. The Jews were going to die anyway. In Poland their plight from 1942 worsened when the systematic killings began in earnest in the concentration camps. This was the holocaust.”

  Theo looked worried.

  “You have heard of it?”

  “Yes. Of course. Not only that; holocaust is a Greek word and we use it about Smyrna. … Destruction by fire, olokafston. Yes, I have also heard the grown ups speak of the concentration camps and I read a book called ‘Treblinka’ which a Polish woman gave me to read. I had nightmares. I had to run with t
his machine strapped to my chest and if I rested I was told my mother and grandmother would be hanged in front of everybody. They would swing about with their guts hanging out. And then I was taken to a factory where the machine held me really tightly. It got hot and I slowly melted. Misha were such things done? I mean did these things really take place in the camps. Gassing. Making soap out of people?”

  “Yes Theo.”

  “My father says these things are arloumbes. Fibs.”

  “Theo your father does not know. He does not want to know. He has other interests. You have asked me to explain. And I will. Imagine we are sitting in a big posh room in a big posh house. Like the Michaelides place. In that room are important people like Mickey Davis, the Provincial Commissioner, the Commissioner of Police etc.etc. They sit around a beautiful polished table. In their uniforms. In their suits. A proper meeting. Have you seen one?”

  “Yes. I went with my father to the Town Council and I could see such a meeting through the windows as I sat in the car waiting for him.”

  “Good. Such a meeting was held at a place called Wansee. In a posh house by a lake about the size of Duluti. That house was near Berlin. The men talked. On 20 January, 1942. They talked about the final solution of the Jewish question. That is what they called it. The Final Solution. In other words “We have been trying to get rid of the Jews. It is taking too long. We must come up with a plan to get rid of all eleven million of them as quickly and as efficiently as possible.”