God of Hunger

by John Coutouvidis

  He knew very little of what she told him and what he knew was a mere echo of what his mother told him which had evaporated from his mind in the bush on which his mind was focused. But in her constant company another country, other lives, came to inhabit his still impressionable mind.

  *

  She was born in Lwow. (Lvoof) The place held a certain fascination for him as his mother and aunts talked very often of its glories in contrasting these to the bleakness of the African environment, which he loved so much.

  With the outbreak of war the city fell hostage to armed gangs of Ukrainians and a few weeks later to the Red Army. In the melee of the time Marisha’s parents disappeared and she was taken by nuns into an orphanage which itself was ravaged. Only the very young were spared and she was reclaimed from the wreckage by a spinster aunt who cared for her throughout the hostilities.

  At the age of eleven when memories took firm hold in her mind, Marisha could recount aspects her journey west. Looking up at the sky on their Madagascarian beach she told Jozef of the predominance of a uniform grey in everything she saw and touched. Of being constantly cold and hungry.

  ‘There was no glass in the windows to the room we were given, by the University, in the centre of Wroclaw. To get to it we had to climb a pile of rubble and timbers which my aunt called a barricade. There was nothing to put into the fireplace but the scraps of wood I was asked to get from the street. There was no water in the whole building and I can recall joining the other residents in a queue to go to the toilet which was a plank, curtained off by a German flag. The plank sat over a large hole which was still smouldering and smoking in the street; our street. Strange how soon it became our street and our building and our room.’

  ‘Full of strangers from Lwow and Wilno (Veelno). Milling about in long drab coats. There were shouts and shots. Especially at night when grey turned pitch black. I once saw a woman being dragged along our street. She was holding on to a man’s leg. He hobbled on, impeded by the screaming, pleading woman. Many people watched. No one did a thing. A man followed me on my hunt for kindling. He came from behind and grabbed me around my waist by one hand and thrust the other between my legs. I fell forward screaming. People looked and passed by. He paused to vomit and his grip loosened. I crawled forward and onto my feet and ran from him. He could not catch me. Eventually I arrived at our building. I tried to climb the stairs but found myself unable to do so. My legs gave way. I used my hands and arms crawling over each step until I reached our door. There was no one in the room. In time my strength returned. I straightened my clothes and when the others returned I said I had fallen into a trench and was sorry to have torn my skirt. I was admonished by my aunt for coming back empty handed. But I kept silent. I said no more about it. The people on the street had not said a word. Like them, I became silent.

  *

  Silence. Cold. Hunger. Greyness. Numbness. That is it. A numbness came over me and has stayed with me, alleviated only by the arrival of the women from Tanganyika. And of course your visit to Wroclaw. Your stories raised my spirits. Oh, Jozef, I can see colours now. And feel warmth. I can see you. Do you understand? I can see you. I do hear you. Maybe, one day, I may feel you. I hope to find feelings inside myself too. Do you understand?

  Of course not. But he said yes. And suggested they went to eat at the place by the lagoon. Over the meal he asked her to explain how it was that she was orphaned and found herself transported to Wroclaw.

  *

  Of her parents and their end she would not speak. But said much about the move.

  “After the war the recovery of the lands on the Odra and Nysa …’

  ‘Nyasa?’ (The lake in Nyasaland.)

  ‘No, not Nyasa, Jozef, the river Nysa which was part of the territory, the political programme drawn up by the Polish revolutionary forces during the occupation …’ ‘Which occupation?…’

  ‘Oh Jozef, don’t you know anything? Just shush and listen. I will try to be more clear. The Polish government with the help of the Soviet Union successfully established Poland’s permanent right to this new frontier with Germany and from the start directed the resettlement of these lands. In place of eight million Germans who once inhabited the region there are now eight million Poles. In fact, almost as many again passed through these regained territories, looking for a better life. The new arrivals included former inhabitants of devastated Warsaw and peasants from the overpopulated countryside in other parts of Poland and townspeople from Lwow and Wilno and soldiers from Narvik, Tobruk and Monte Casino who had trickled back to Poland as the time came for them to lay down their arms and settlers re-emigrating from the Soviet Union….’

  Marisha continued to explain.

  Jozef had learnt just to listen.

  And that is how it was over those two months on the East African coast. Rather like a film for which he provided the scenery and she the script. Hair bleached, skins tanned, eyes paled into the silver blue of midday, they looked ecstatically happy as in the flicks. But the reality was different; though she did get a book out of the trip and he a thorough knowledge of spear fishing.

  The book was something she had in mind when applying for the travel grant. It was to research the local archives about the ‘Polish king of Madagascar’

  *

  At the turn of the eighteenth century a certain Count Maurycy August Beniowski published his memoirs. They became a best seller. Translated into a number of languages and published in several countries in what were, for the time, huge editions, they made Bienkowski famous as perhaps the greatest explorer and traveller of his age. Paeons of praise were written about the man and his achievements.

  Marisha demolished the legend.

  She discovered that he was more Hungarian than Polish and that even the spelling of his name changed per adventure: Baron Maurice Aladar became Bienow, an escapee from Russian imprisonment in Kamchatka.

  He was a ‘Hungarian descended from the illustrious line of the Barons Bienowski’, in his biography penned on Mauritius, hence the later Maurycy. He was Baron Benyowszky in a letter to Benjamin Franklin and Count Beniowski in another to George Washington. The men of reason smelt a rat. But Louis XV, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Emperor Jozef II, gave him recognition, proffering titles, missions and offices. To them he was a true mittleuropean hero.

  He died, Marisha would say, from an overheated imagination on his second visit to Madagascar.

  *

  Marisha and Jozef left the island separately. Their last evening together was dissimilar in only one regard to the sixty or so they had spent together on the island; they both drank enough to fumble in the dark. The next day Maria left the island for Paris and London. Jozef stayed on to fish some more and eventually joined a group of Portuguese soldiers on their return to duty at their base in Beira in Mozambique. The place was alien to him. Few of the white men spoke English and fewer black men understood Swahili. Jozef joined a convoy heading for Vila Manica, close to the Rhodesian border and the next day crossed over into Ian Smith territory.

  *

  ‘Smithy’ was quite a hero to the young men in Sinclair Road. He became Prime Minister in 1964 a few months before Labour came to power under Harold Wilson. Spats between the two were hardly ever out of the papers. The two leaders met in London for the first time, in January 1965, at Churchill’s funeral. Only dedicated followers of Rhodesian fashion would have known of it. The small print reported that the Queen insisted that Smithy come to the lunch at Buckingham Palace to which he had not been invited by Wilson who was shamed into asking Smith over to tea at No 10 that afternoon.

  Smith talked tough between cucumber sandwiches which the crew at Sinclair Road imagined were served as they acted out the tea party over subsequent days.

  “Ah shit Harold. You must be joking man. Black rule! Never in a thousand years. Shit man, I am there to maintain civilised standards. Do you really want chaos instead? Ah, no man. You can’t be that thick. Ay? Can I have some more tea? Have you got Ro
ibosch? Ah, shit. No matter … Shame man. I’ll send you some. It’s better than this oriental rubbish. Okay?”

  Smith’s Rhodesian Front took all the seats in the Rhodesian elections in May and now, with the full support of the real arbiters of white politics, the engine men of Rhodesian Railways, he went full steam ahead for a unilateral declaration of independence. Salisbury was fully organised for the likelihood of sanctions. Fuel stocks were built up and other essential commodities distributed. Smith had secured the support of the Portuguese president, Antonio Salazar and Hendrik Verwoerd, the South African Prime Minister, for the continuity of Rhodesia’s trade routes through Mozambique and South Africa.

  The question remained: how was the constitutional question to be resolved? There followed a number of last-ditch shuttles. Smithy came to London on 5 October, but the talks with the pipe-smoking Wilson ended with the communiqué concluding that their positions were irreconcilable and on television that night he told Smithy to think again. Ten days later the Gannex man was in Salisbury. Again no deal. Smithy told him, ‘I do not think that Rhodesia is in a position to have one-man, one-vote tomorrow.’ Wilson is said to have realized that Smith had betrayed his true sympathies with that remark.

  On bonfire night Smith declared a state of emergency and five days later, UDI, the first since America in 1776. Two in the eye for London. Not too bad a record, though Wilson was livid with such rebellion in his moment of history.

  He foolishly forecast that UDI would not last more than a few weeks. The boys at Tanganyika House knew better and jeered at Wilson’s every turn in his quest to save face.

  Smith had had his mended by plastic surgery during the war after he crashed his Spitfire. One eye, wide open, heavy lidded and impassive. The other, narrow, slanting and slightly hooded. The witch-doctors said there were two men in his head and that people could never be sure whose words his mouth was uttering, man’s or spirit man’s. Smith the man made himself clear enough to Wilson when on HMS Tiger, Wilson tried to humiliate him. He took the admiral’s cabin and put Smith in NCO quarters. In their first meeting, he shouted at Smithy who rose, looked out of a port hole for a long time and told Gannex to behave himself.

  The lads at Sinclair Road acted out the scene in their way. Smith was their hero and when Jozef arrived in Salisbury, after his Madagascarian sojourn, hero worship was in full flow as Rhodesia went from strength to strength during the first phase of UDI.

  In passing the bookshop in Meikles, the main hotel, Jozef noticed a display of material about his hero. And one book in particular caught his eye. He recognised the name of the author. It was his former District Officer, who, the jacket revealed had retired to South Africa from Tanganyika. He bought the book and skim-read it in his room, pausing at the passage all Smith’s supporters would drink to in the bar that evening:

  ‘Rhodesia declared independence and opposed itself to the outer world gone mad. Two sentences from Mr. Ian Smith's Independence Day speech leaped at me when I heard them:

  "To us has been given the privilege of being the first Western nation in the last two decades to have the determination and fortitude to say, 'So far and no further' ... We may be a small country but we are a determined people who have been called upon to play a role of worldwide significance".

  Was it possible, I thought, that at last a country, this little country of Africa, would oppose itself to the Gadarene process of these last three decades (I would say three, not two: because all this began in the Thirties) Might one still hope that the rot would be stemmed, the destructive process held and turned back?

  In my opinion, there are many Negroes of great ability and charm who are perfectly capable of playing a worthy part in civilized society. But they will never do so in an independent African state where the leaders are chosen by their ability to rouse the primitive emotions of a mob of ignorant, deluded, predatory savages. The flower of black manhood can only blossom in civilized conditions and - let us face it - those conditions have at present to be imposed. In Africa, they do not spring spontaneously from the people by means of so-called "democratic" processes, least of all by the subordination of white to black, as bitter experience is teaching us. In short, the African, who desires civilized standards - and a great many do not - can only reach his full potentialities under the protection of the white races. Therefore, anything which harms the whites in Africa, ultimately harms him; and the worst catastrophe from his point of view would be the destruction of the whites and their culture, which present policies are effecting over a huge area of the continent.

  It is a solemn thought that, in framing the constitutions of the new, democratic, independent, African states, we are not drafting a Negro Magna Carta, but are signing a pile of death warrants.

  Fortunately, however, a ray of light, springing from human intelligence, illuminates the sombre scene; and as the result, some millions of black men may prove more fortunate than those Europe and America have thrown away. One day, high on a mountain peak, overlooking their well-ordered, prosperous lands, they may perhaps in gratitude erect a statue to Ian Smith with an inscription of heartfelt gratitude on the plinth.”

  *

  In the bar all talk was of the book and of their heroes, the Prime Ministers of Rhodesia and South Africa. The loudest voice in the bar stood up and proposed a toast to ‘these saviours of civilisation’ and went on to speak of the need to give them ‘our full support.’ Sounding like the recruiting sergeant for the Rhodesian Light Infantry that he was, the red face demanded that all young men should join the colours for the sake of their country which would surely need them against the ‘forces of darkness.’

  *

  About a week later, at the same bar, Jozef was approached by two men in uniform. ‘Ever thought of joining up?’ …. They talked long into the evening. Jozef made it clear he was just visiting but went on talking and listening. The soldiers became very interested in his Tanganyika years and said that they would be in touch again.

  Two days later there was a knock on his door. He opened it to find an elderly individual. “May I come in?’ ‘Yeah. Sure. Take a seat. What is it you want?’ ‘You’. “What do you mean?’ ‘Just that. I am forming a special unit and I want you in it.’

  The man’s name was Henderson. D.R. Henderson. He had served in a commando unit in Kenya during the Mau Mau War. He and two others disappeared into the Aberdere forest and went completely native. They infiltrated a gang and destroyed it and took its leader, Didan Kimathi, no.2 to Jomo Kenyatta, into captivity. After the ‘emergency’, as it was called, he went south and settled on a farm in Rhodesia, not far from Selukwe where Ian Smith came from.

  Jozef knew of him. All the boys did. This guy was the ultimate bush man.

  ‘Are you interested? I have checked on you. There are no ties. We will pay you well. You are just the ticket. We are forming a unit that will go bush up there. We know of training camps in Tanganyika that will need wiping out before they send recruits down here. Christ, man, you went to school in Kongwa. That’s where the bastards are being trained.’

  And that was that. That night he wrote to Marisha and told her of his decision to stay in Africa. At least for a bit. He would see her again and hoped she wanted them to be together again.

  Next morning he was driven to barracks ten miles out of town. He swore loyalty to Rhodesia and joined the newly formed unit, the Selous Scouts.

  This elite special force performed extraordinary service to Smith. Perhaps the most adventurous was the destruction of the insurgents training camp in Kongwa. In Tanganyika.

  The town, centre for the ill-fated groundnut scheme which then became the school for European children, had again metamorphosed into the main base camp for insurgency operations against the white-ruled regimes in Southern Africa.

  *

  Since he had local knowledge of the country the expedition to Kongwa was led by Jozef. His group of four crossed the Rouvama River at exactly the point von Lettow Vorbeck had crossed it i
n the opposite direction at the end of his campaign. Indeed Jozef followed, in reverse, much of the German guerrilla’s route through Southern Tanganyika in what was now the huge Selous National Park in which Jozef had hunted as a boy. He hunted there again to feed himself and his three companions. Laden with biltong Jozef’s group then broke out of the relative safety of the game park and headed up the Ruhaha valley to the outskirts of Iringa, to a place called Tosomaganga where there was an Italian Mission whose missionaries were well known to Jozef. This was because during his final year at Kongwa the school had moved to brand new premises in Iringa from where the hike to Tosomaganga for the sake of a drink of orange juice from the missionaries was well worth the effort.

  The head of the mission was Father Viyatu. In Swahili the name meant shoes. He did in fact walk a great deal in the service of his God. Entering the quarters of Fazza Viyatu (as Jozef referred to him mimicking the local Hehe pronunciation) the scouts silenced the sleeping saint by careful anaesthesia, using a rag soaked in ether, and then went to sleep around him on the floor, posting one look-out to sit in turn by the door. The saintly priest’s writhing at daybreak awoke Jozef who very gently untied the captive’s limbs. and before un-taping his mouth took him in his arms and said into his ear, “Have no fear whatsoever dear Fazza Viyatu. It is me, Jozef. With some friends. We wish you no harm but request sanctuary for a few days before we go on with our journey.’ The priest relaxed. And tensed again.