A Matter of Time

by Alex Capus

  Riiter took out his pocket watch. It was half past six and time for supper, which the three Papenburgers, by tacit agreement, invariably

  ate together outside Hermann Wendts hut. Riiter was waiting for old Tellmann, who could always be relied on to emerge from the gloom at nightfall wearing a clean shirt and clasping his hands behind his back. Then they would stroll over to ‘Wendt’s beer garden’, as young Hermann had christened it one cheerfully alcoholic night.

  Needless to say, it had taken Wendt less than twenty-four hours to default on his high-principled resolution to remain true to his ideals and perform all his daily chores in person on this continent of slaves and slave-owners. On the very first night he moved into his shack, when he had lashed some twigs together to form a besom and was starting to rid the front yard of dry leaves and gnawed mutton bones, a naked, wizened old woman had suddenly appeared, taken the broom from his hand without a word, and proceeded to sweep the yard herself. When he tried to recapture the implement she cackled loudly and dodged aside with remarkable agility. In the course of the ensuing argument, which the two of them conducted by means of gestures and mutually unintelligible scraps of conversation, Wendt was subjected, willy-nilly, to the following inquisition. First, was he a man or a woman, to make himself the laughing stock of the whole village by wielding a broom? Secondly, was he an impecunious wretch who had come to Africa to eat decent folk out of house and home? If not, and if he had some money, was he such a skinflint that he preferred - thirdly - to keep it all to himself and spend nothing? If he wasn’t a skinflint, why would he - fourthly - give nothing to an old woman who - fifthly - wasn’t intent on robbing him (which - sixthly - would be only too easy) and wanted - seventhly to do an honest job of work for him? The argument lasted less than two minutes and ended in Wendt’s total capitulation. The old woman retained the besom and swept the entire yard. Then she went inside and swept every corner of the hut, mended a hole in the mosquito netting, opened Wendt’s suitcase and thoroughly inspected its contents, discovered a bundle of dirty laundry and took it down to the lake for a wash.

  But that wasn’t all. On the night of that first day, when Hermann Wendt was seated in the freshly swept yard, watching insects swarm around the paraffin lamp and chewing some ship’s biscuit, which he

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  had pocketed aboard the Feldmarschall as iron rations, a second figure appeared. Not the wizened old crone but another member of her sex, she was a spherical, middle-aged woman whose bright orange frock seemed to be filled with balls of every size. Held together by some mysterious means, these rolled back and forth and to and fro at every step she took in her orange-coloured dress, which was taut to bursting. Her pretty face was surmounted by a round, clean-shaven skull. Balanced on the latter was an earthenware pot containing something edible - something that smelt extremely tasty. She smiled at Wendt as she walked past, said ‘Habari mzungu!’, and disappeared into the darkness, leaving behind a trace of the appetizing scent. Wendt sniffed, trying to identify it. Onions, leeks, beans. Possibly mutton. Scarcely had the last of the aroma been borne away by the cool evening breeze when the spherical woman reappeared. Having skirted the lamplight with the pot of food still on her head, she made another fragrant disappearance. Wendt chewed his ship’s biscuit, thought of the immediate future, and reflected that he had never cooked a decent meal in his life, nor did he have the least idea where to procure any onions, leeks or mutton. Then the spherical woman made a third appearance. This time she lingered on the edge of the lamplight, then smiled and turned and sank to the ground in a single, fluid movement. Removing the lid from the pot, she put it down in front of him and balanced a long-handled spoon on the rim. Finally, with a maternal nod of invitation, she said: ‘ Kula , mzungu! Kula!’ What was Wendt to do? He was powerless. He straightened up, took the spoon and proceeded to eat. The spherical woman, whose name was Samblakira, watched him finish off the entire pot. From then on she was his personal cook. In return for a modest wage she brought him three meals a day: breakfast outside the hut, lunch at the construction site, supper outside the hut. He still couldn’t identify the contents of the pot every time or right away, but everything tasted excellent once he’d got used to it.

  During those first few days Wendt often wondered what his comrades at the Workers’ Cultural Association would say to this arrangement. The division of labour was fair enough. He was building the woman a ship and she was cooking for him. She was producing added value and being

  paid for it, and she herself controlled the means of production, in other words, the cooking pot and the spoon and her fireplace. She also determined the monetary value of the added value arising from her labour. As far as Wendt could see, there was no misappropriation or exploitation involved. All was well to that extent. Besides, the woman probably had a large family for whom she voluntarily cooked several times a day in any case, and if she diverted a little of their food to him, that constituted a rationally earned bonus, not unpaid overtime.

  His workmates Riiter and Tellmann doubtless took a rather different view of the matter. For the first couple of days they had stared wideeyed when Samblakira appeared on the slipway at noon with her fragrant pitchers and cooking pots. They turned away, filled with envy, and pretended not to see her serving young Wendt and wiping his mouth and telling him the names of the dishes and wobbling with laughter when he repeated the unfamiliar African words. On the third day, however, Tellmann’s evening stroll happened to take him past Wendts hut just as Samblakira turned up. He had said a friendly good evening and was preparing to walk on when young Wendt beckoned him over and more or less bullied him into sharing his meal, so he stayed for courtesy’s sake. And Wendt had run over to Riiter s hut and invited him too. From then on, Tellmann and Riiter were regular patrons of ‘Wendt’s beer garden’, which was so called because Wendt got an Arab trader named Mamadou to supply him with a big pitcher of freshly-brewed millet beer every day.

  In one respect, however, young Wendt kept his resolution. None of their huts had contained a stick of furniture, so he made beds for Riiter, Tellmann and himself with his own hands. He told old Tellmann to take his Papenburg shotgun off into the bush - no one knew if it really worked - and shoot two of the oldest, toughest zebra stallions he could find. Contrary to expectations, Tellmann actually did so. Wendt stripped off their hides, soaked them in water for two days and cut them into strips the width of a finger. Meanwhile, he knocked up three bedsteads out of some young tree trunks. Having nailed the zebra-hide strips to them, lengthwise and close together, he threaded shorter strips between them and nailed these, too, to the frames on either side. He employed the same technique to

  produce two bench seats and half a dozen extremely comfortable chairs, which usually stood in Wendts beer garden. He built a fireplace out of big black stones, riveted iron slats together at the shipyard to form a barbecue, and improvised some efficient oil lamps out of empty bottles and tin cans with thick hempen wicks. Last of all, he nailed a board above his front door. Painted white, it bore the words ‘Wendt’s Beer Garden’ in red. The first few nights after the opening were not improved by the fact that the lights and smell of food attracted quite a number of jackals and hyenas, which prowled around on the outskirts of the lamplight with glowing eyes, grunting voraciously. On Samblakira’s advice Wendt erected a dense thorn-bush zariba. The height of a man, this could be relied on to keep any thieves or scavengers out.

  Anton Riiter didn’t have to wait long for Tellmann to appear that evening, the evening of n May 1914, when he laid his half-written letter aside and took the pen and paper into the house. On emerging he was greeted with a low growl by a young feline predator that wound around his legs and dug its claws into his trousers. This was Veronika, Tellmann’s six-months-old cheetah. A passing Masai had artfully dandled the cub under his nose, and Tellmann hadn’t been able to resist. He swapped his pocket knife and a can of beans for the fluffy little bundle and took her home, plaited her a collar out of some shoela
ces, and christened her Veronika because she toddled around in a touchingly clumsy way that reminded him of his first-born daughter. Veronika had grown apace since then, and she followed him everywhere on her long legs. At night she slept at the foot of his bed, in the mornings she followed him down to the yard and clambered around on the Gotzens framework. During breaks she rested her head on Tellmann’s lap, her beautiful, tawny eyes gazing up at him intently, and emitted hoarse little whimpers of affection. Tellmann stroked her flanks and fed her on morsels of dried meat, a handful of which he always kept in his trouser pocket.

  Veronika headed off into the darkness and Riiter and Tellmann followed her leisurely along the beaten track their feet had created in the past few weeks. Riiter said he had the impression that there weren’t quite as many mosquitoes as there had been a week or two ago, and Tellmann

  replied that the rainy season must be coming to an end. Wendts beer garden was already quite crowded when they entered it through the gap in the thorn-bush hedge. Ruter knew everyone there with one exception. The roly-poly, cheerful-looking woman was Samblakira, Wendt’s personal cook, who was squatting behind three earthenware pots of varying size and stirring each of them in turn. The white-bearded Arab in white turban and white galabieh who was standing at the barbecue, grilling some mutton chops, was Mamadou the purveyor of millet beer. The two Bantu already seated at table and talking together in low voices were Mkwawa and Kahigi. One belonged to the Matumbi tribe, the other was a Sagara, and both were employed at the yard as labourers. Wendt had made friends with them, learnt his first smattering of Swahili from them, and persuaded the askaris to allow them to visit him in the evenings whenever they wanted. Now he was sitting across the table from them, peeling mangoes and pawpaws and slicing the flesh into a wooden bowl. At the end of the table sat a dignified stranger: a youthfully handsome, extraordinarily slender-limbed Masai. His iron-tipped spear was propped against the table top, his hands were folded as if in prayer, and he was gazing into the darkness lost in thought. So tall that he topped Anton Ruter by a head even when seated, he was wearing an antelopeskin kilt embroidered along the hem with beads, and inserted in his earlobes were two flat stones the size of a man’s palm. Looking at his lofty forehead and thick eyebrows, aquiline nose and jutting lower lip, Ruter guessed him to be a strong-willed, inflexible character. Despite the ghost of a smile on his lips, his dark eyes, firm chin and high cheekbones suggested that his serene features could, at the slightest provocation, become contorted into a fearsome mask of hatred.

  ‘Sit down,’ Wendt told Ruter, ‘supper’s almost ready. The man with the spear is Mkenge, a Masai aristocrat who has learnt excellent German at the mission school. He’d like a word with you, but not until we’ve eaten.’

  ‘What about?’ asked Ruter.

  Wendt shrugged his shoulders and laid the bowl of fruit aside. He wiped the table down, dealt out seven plates, seven pairs of knives and forks, and poured seven mugs of millet beer. There were mutton chops

  with millet gruel and pepper pods, pureed chickpeas and unleavened bread, and, to follow, freshly roasted coffee and the fruit salad Wendt had been cutting up. Afterwards they pushed the table and chairs aside, unrolled some woven mats and stretched out on them. The white-haired Arab smoked a hookah. Samblakira and young Wendt squatted down side by side with their backs against the wall of the hut, talking quietly in Swahili. She told him stories of magicians, witches and sacred mountains; he strove to understand her, cracked an occasional joke with the few words available to him, and was delighted when she laughed. The two Bantu were playing a board game in which lentils stained yellow, red and black had to be deposited in two rows of recesses in accordance with some unfathomable set of rules. Tellmann was playing with his female cheetah. The handsome Masai was squatting on his heels, motionless as a statue, with the spear between his knees. Riiter wondered what the young man wanted to speak to him about. The quiet twilight hour when inexperienced foreigners looked forward to a peaceful night’s sleep had ended long before; the creatures of the night had now awakened. Millions of crickets and cicadas were stridently chirping in the trees and the hard, dry grasses were forever alive with hissing, rustling sounds. Superimposed on this was an incessant medley of roaring and bleating and bellowing, sometimes distant, sometimes close at hand, then a sudden, despairing scream followed by a brief whimper as some creature breathed its last. Childrens cries and the braying of donkeys drifted across from the native village, some men were singing down at the harbour, and the two Bantu laughed over their board game because one had lost and the other won. Silence reigned only in the askaris’ barracks overlooking the bay south of the headland. The handsome young Masai continued to squat there, motionless, gazing into the night with a meditative smile. Anton Riiter couldn’t stand it any longer. He went over to Mkenge and squatted down beside him. Mkenge deposited his spear on the ground and shook hands.

  ‘You wanted a word with me,’ said Riiter.

  ‘People are talking about you, so someone ought to talk to you for once,’ said Mkenge. To Riiter’s astonishment, he spoke Rhineland dialect

  as fluently as if he’d spent his childhood and adolescence in Oberbarmen or Diisseldorf.

  ‘What do people say about me?’

  ‘Nothing but good, in fact. They call you “the German without a whip’?

  Riiter, who already knew of the nickname people had given him, felt stung by this. He realized that the subject couldn’t be avoided.

  ‘The men like working for you,’ said Mkenge.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Riiter.

  ‘They like working for you although they’re guarded by soldiers with loaded rifles who would shoot anyone who tried to run away.’

  Riiter remained silent.

  ‘They like working for you although they were brought here by force. They were lied to and bribed.’

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ Riiter muttered.

  ‘They like working for you although criminals in fake uniforms burned their huts by night, fouled their wells and trampled their fields.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’

  ‘They like working for you although some were spirited away in chains while their wives and children slept.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Riiter.

  ‘They like working for you although their wives and children have been scattered to the four winds and whole villages, whole districts denuded of their inhabitants. They like working for you although their grandfathers and grandmothers were left behind to dig their own graves, lie down in them and, with their own hands, cover themselves over with earth to prevent hyenas from devouring their remains.’

  ‘I know,’ said Riiter.

  ‘They like working for you although the soldiers hunt down our wives and children, take them hostage, and starve them to death unless we work like slaves. They send us to gather rubber, and if we don’t collect enough by Saturday they cut off our hands.’

  ‘The Belgians do that over in the Congo,’ Riiter said quickly. ‘We Germans don’t do things like that.’

  ‘True,’ said Mkenge, ‘but only because there aren’t any rubber plantations on German territory.’

  ‘I can’t help that.’

  ‘None of this is your fault,’ said Mkenge.

  ‘I always do my best,’ said Riiter.

  ‘That’s why I’m talking to you,’ said Mkenge. ‘Your workforce includes a dozen of my men. They’re easy enough to recognize. Tall men like me.’

  ‘I know them.’

  ‘See to it that they’re released. They’re Masai, they can’t work.’

  ‘So I’ve noticed,’ said Riiter.

  ‘We’re hunters, cattle breeders and warriors,’ said Mkenge, ‘not labourers. Let them go.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned you can go and get them this minute - now, right away. They’re no use to me. Go and get them - take them home with you.’

  ‘We wouldn’t get far,’ said Mkenge. ‘The askaris would catch us and flog
us to death. The men must fulfil their terms of employment. They can’t read or write, but they’ve signed contracts.’

  ‘Then we’ll find them other work to do.’

  ‘What, for instance?’

  ‘I’ll tell Corporal Schaffler I’ve bought a herd of cattle and your dozen Masai are my personal herdsmen.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Mkenge.

  ‘Could you sell me an ox a day? The shipyard is poorly provided for. My men need more meat.’

  ‘You’ll get your ox.’

  ‘Quote me a price,’ said Riiter.

  The two men sat peaceably side by side for a long time, saying no more. Silence descended on Wendt’s beer garden. When the millet beer was finished old Mamadou rose, clamped the empty pitcher under his left arm, laid his right hand on his heart in farewell, and disappeared into the darkness.

  ‘May I ask you a question?’ Riiter said to Mkenge.

  ‘Ask away,’ said Mkenge.

  ‘Is it true that the Masai intend to take possession of all the cattle and sheep in Great Britain?’

  Mkenge smiled. ‘Having considered the plan with care. I’m afraid we had to abandon it. It would have involved enormous problems.’

  ‘What sort of problems?’

  ‘The transport question would have been insoluble. Conservative estimates put the present number of livestock in Britain at eight point seven million. Existing means of transportation simply couldn’t convey them twelve or fifteen thousand kilometres’