Ghosts of the Past

by Tony Park

  Claire pointed out the docks and warehouses and he followed the sweep of her hand to a promontory from which columns of smoke scribbled grubby lines on the clear blue palate of the sky. ‘Shark Island.’

  They rode slowly into town. The Feldwebel in command of the marching troops saluted Peter as they passed and Peter returned the sergeant’s courtesy.

  Lüderitz was the main disembarkation and embarkation port for troops and supplies destined for the war in the south of the colony, and for troops returning home. Blake felt nervous with so many Schutztruppen around, but his anxiety eased a little when he noticed a few of the marching soldiers appraising Claire with sideways glances. All attention would be on the pretty red-headed woman rather than him in his dusty and stained uniform. Blake could see as they moved past lounging soldiers that they seemed to be a mix of newcomers in fresh, clean uniforms, and old hands, perhaps on leave or on their way home to Germany, whose clothes were as dusty, stained and patched as his.

  Peter stopped his horse next to a corporal in an unbuttoned sand-coloured corduroy tunic. The man gave a sloppy salute. Peter spoke to him in German, apparently giving him something of a dressing-down, as the man did up his buttons and stood straighter, then answered some questions.

  When they rode off again Blake gave his horse a nudge and drew alongside Peter and Claire.

  ‘Peter asked that man if he’d seen a fresh crop of prisoners,’ Claire said quietly. ‘He said he had, this morning, so we were close to them. He says they’ve gone to Shark Island.’

  Blake cursed. If they had been able to catch the wagons carrying the prisoners in the desert they might have been able to sneak up to them at night and free Liesl and whomever else was with her, but now that they were in Lüderitz, and inside the camp by now, he wondered if there was anything they could do for her.

  Peter looked to him. ‘We are going to the island.’

  Blake was a little surprised. He had forced Peter to be involved in this search for Liesl and now the German would have been justified in turning back. ‘Why?’

  ‘I am a doctor. I’d heard rumours, but after seeing what happened at the railway line I want to see for myself what is happening in this camp. I need to look for a Dr Bofinger.’

  Blake looked to Claire.

  She nodded. ‘I want to see Shark Island as well.’

  ‘It’s risky,’ Blake said.

  ‘I didn’t come all this way for nothing,’ Claire said firmly.

  They heard a high-pitched scream come from a narrow alleyway and Peter spurred his horse on. When Blake caught up with him he saw Peter still in the saddle, kicking a soldier. The man had his pants around his ankles and Blake could see, lying slumped on the ground, a skinny boy no more than ten or eleven years old. The boy had his hands over his face.

  The soldier tripped and fell. Peter dismounted and grabbed the man by his collar, lifted him and punched him in the face. The soldier reeled again and fell, and Blake wondered if he was drunk. Peter kicked him again, viciously. The soldier crawled away, desperately trying to escape and pull up his trousers at the same time. As Peter knelt to check on the boy the soldier made good his escape, up the alleyway.

  Blake got down out of his saddle. ‘Bloody hell.’

  Peter looked up at him, his face red with fury, his eyes welling with tears. The boy, also pulling up his pants, got up and darted away, in the opposite direction to his attacker. Peter stood.

  ‘My God. This is my country, Blake. What is happening to it?’

  Blake clasped him on the arm. Peter gently freed himself, sniffing. He reached into his medical satchel and pulled out a bandage.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Blake asked.

  ‘We don’t want anyone talking to you. Hold still.’ Peter took the bandage and wrapped it snuggly around Blake’s neck, though not tight enough to restrict his breathing. He wiped his knuckles, which were cut and bloodied from the blow he had landed on the soldier, on the white of the bandage, colouring it a little in front of Blake’s Adam’s apple for effect. ‘If anyone talks to you in German just point to your mouth and show them you can’t speak.’

  ‘All right.’ The doctor was committed to this folly now, Blake thought, and felt a rush of gratitude. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ Peter said, ‘I am not doing this for you.’

  *

  They remounted and left the alley and its stink of urine and vomit and spilled beer. Claire had been shocked by the attack on the street urchin. Lüderitz had boomed, thanks to the war, but the influx of soldiers had brought trouble.

  Peter led them down the main road through town. The streetscape was more of the same: soldiers, poor Africans either making a living as labourers or in some form of service, whores and the occasional civilian. Peter stopped again by a pair of officers of the same rank as he, walking side by side.

  ‘Good morning,’ Peter called.

  ‘And to you, Mr Policeman,’ the nearest said, then nudged his comrade. ‘Seems we have done something wrong, Heinz, the law has stopped us.’

  Peter laughed. ‘Not at all, although I have some serious business. We’ve just ridden in from the desert and my escort here took a bullet fragment to the neck.’

  ‘Nasty business,’ said the officer who had spoken. He saw Claire and touched a hand to his Südwester. ‘Ma’am.’

  Claire smiled at the men. ‘Please, can you help us, our brave soldier here protected us from a rebel ambush.’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter continued. ‘I am looking for a Dr Bofinger, who I am told practises here.’

  It was the turn of the second officer, the one called Heinz, to laugh. ‘Yes, but you mustn’t value your good man too much – none of Bofinger’s patients leave his surgery alive.’

  ‘He can’t be that bad,’ Peter said.

  The first officer shrugged. ‘Well, he is one of only two doctors in the garrison and they’re both based at the island.’

  ‘Can you give us directions, please?’

  ‘Of course,’ Heinz said, ‘and you can do me a favour.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ Peter said. ‘What is it?’

  Heinz reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘I’ve come from the railway line. Bofinger is always after statistics and information. These are figures for prisoner deaths through illness and injury. Bofinger’s got it in his head that the hard work in the open air is a cure or preventative for scurvy.’

  ‘Really,’ Peter said, ‘sounds interesting.’

  The two officers looked at each other and laughed. ‘Scurvy’s the least of their problems out in the desert! The hyenas will get them whatever happens. Hey, we should shoot a hyena and get Bofinger to perform one of his scientific autopsies on it and see if it caught scurvy off a native!’

  Peter took the list, forcing a smile, and the three of them took grateful leave from the officers.

  ‘Autopsies?’ Claire asked when they were out of earshot.

  Peter shrugged.

  Claire felt a sense of foreboding as their horses’ hooves echoed off the walls of the warehouses along the waterfront and a foul smell wafted towards them on the breeze.

  They crested a rise on which there was a port building and a sentry post. Below them, jutting into the bay, was a picture of misery.

  The island, now more of a peninsula thanks to a work gang below that was busy with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows filling and widening a causeway that linked the rocky outcrop to the mainland, was teeming with people. From what Claire could see the inhabitants, who might number as many as a thousand, had no fixed structures or housing, but had cobbled together rudimentary shelters made of mats, old blankets and other pieces of rubbish. The workers were barely clad, their skeletal bodies exposed to the sun and the wind whose keen cold presence now cut through her riding clothes.

  There was not a tree or bush on
the island and no sign of a convenience. Claire supposed people made their ablutions in the icy water of the Atlantic, but she could smell the mess of the teeming mass of prisoners acutely now. A guard yelled at a worker on the causeway and, as on the railway line, reinforced his order with the lash of a sjambok whip. Claire flinched.

  Peter took her gently by the arm. ‘Schatzi, I can go ahead, find this Dr Bofinger, and find out where Liesl is. I can’t see what hope Blake has of rescuing her. Look at this place – there’s only one way in across this causeway and there are guards everywhere.’

  ‘I’m going onto the island, Peter. I want to have a look at this new causeway. It wasn’t here when my ex-husband ran the shipping line.’ By force of habit and perceived necessity Claire had always kept some things secret from Peter. She didn’t tell him why, but she needed to see for herself the extent of the causeway, because she was searching for something very valuable.

  A sentry with a Mauser rifle slung over his shoulder came out of a hut to meet them and saluted Peter.

  ‘I am looking for Herr Doktor Bofinger,’ Peter said.

  ‘Your name, sir?’

  ‘Dr Peter Kohl. I have important papers for Dr Bofinger.’

  The soldier glanced at the others and touched his Südwester’s brim in greeting to Claire.

  ‘This is my wife and the man is an escort. I need to take him to Dr Bofinger’s clinic for treatment.’

  The sentry widened his eyes. ‘Clinic?’

  ‘Yes, Corporal. Hurry, I haven’t got all day,’ Peter added imperiously.

  The corporal saluted and summoned a soldier. ‘Take the doctor and his party to Dr Bofinger’s clinic.’

  The soldier showed them where they could hitch their horses and asked them to follow him. Then he seemed to have second thoughts and went back to the corporal and whispered something to him.

  ‘Sir,’ the corporal said to Peter. ‘The lady . . . it might not be wise if she . . .’

  ‘Claire?’ Peter tried.

  Claire had wandered away from the sentry post to the edge of the causeway. She was peering over the rocky edge, into the water, looking back and forth from the original mainland to where the new spit of land met the rocky island. She looked up at the sound of her name.

  ‘The lady will stay with her husband, Corporal,’ Claire said in fluent German.

  The corporal ignored her, his eyes fixed on Peter. ‘Sir, I am not sure if you are aware of the extent of Dr Bofinger’s research.’

  ‘I’ve worked as a nurse assistant to my husband,’ Claire interjected. ‘I’ve seen amputations, gunshot wounds and the clap in all its many horrible forms, Corporal.’

  The soldier who was to escort them sniggered, but the corporal steadfastly refused to look at or listen to Claire. ‘Sir, there is disease in that building. And worse.’

  ‘My wife has said her piece and your concerns are duly noted, Corporal,’ Peter said. He turned to the escort. ‘Come. My man needs treatment.’

  The corporal shrugged then gave a nod to his underling to proceed.

  As they passed under a raised boom Claire heard the corporal ask Blake in German what had happened to him.

  Blake obviously didn’t know the man was addressing him because he continued walking. Claire stepped in.

  ‘This is our escort, Corporal,’ she said. Blake stopped at the sound of her voice and turned. ‘He fended off a Nama rebel at close range, and was shot in the neck. He is also partially deaf from his proximity to an explosion.’

  Blake seemed to get the gist of what was going on and he pointed to the bloodstained bandage at his neck. The corporal just shrugged again.

  The soldier led them past the work gang. Claire caught the jaundiced eye of a man dressed only in a loincloth. The man quickly went back to digging as an overseer approached. A woman cried out and Claire turned and saw the painfully thin prisoner being whipped, seemingly for dropping her pick.

  They reached a building made of timber and corrugated iron, the only permanent structure on the island. ‘This is Dr Bofinger’s clinic,’ the soldier said.

  Claire felt a shiver. The disdain with which the soldiers referred to Dr Bofinger’s practice filled her with unease. Claire saw that at the far end of the long building two women, one Nama and one Herero by the look of them, were stirring a big pot of boiling water or food. At least there might be something warm for the poor wretches, Claire thought.

  They walked inside and Claire held her hand up to her mouth. There was the smell of faeces and vomit coming from the emaciated patients who lined both walls of the long, narrow room, and barely any space between each simple wood and rope bed.

  A white man in uniform, a surgical mask over his face, looked up from where he stood, bending over a patient. The uniformed man had a syringe in his hand, which he plunged into the prisoner’s arm. He turned, handed the syringe to a cadaverous-looking German orderly and came over to them.

  The man removed his mask, clicked his heels together and nodded to Claire. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Dr Bofinger?’ Peter said. ‘I’m Dr Peter Kohl and this is my wife.’

  ‘Herr Doktor, Frau Kohl.’ He extended his hand. ‘Hugo Bofinger, charmed.’

  Claire took his hand and nodded. His palm was damp and his handshake limp.

  ‘And our escort,’ Peter nodded to Blake, ‘wounded in action, but recovering. It will be a while before he sings opera again.’

  Dr Bofinger smiled at the joke, ‘To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’

  Peter reached into his uniform pocket. ‘First, I bring you this list, from two of your officers who have returned from the railway. They said you needed this information.’

  Bofinger adjusted his rimless spectacles, unfolded the paper and studied it. ‘Yes, yes, very good.’

  ‘The officers told me you are conducting research into scurvy?’

  ‘Yes, that is my current project. Forgive me, but what is your interest, Herr Doktor Kohl?’ His eyes flitted to Claire, who made herself smile back at him.

  ‘Me? Oh, I’m just a humble physician from the outer extremes of the colony. My military duty with the Landespolizei brought me here in search of one of your prisoners, but I am actually fascinated by the field of medical research. I have heard of your work and was wondering if you might be able to tell me a little of what goes on here in the camp?’

  Bofinger gave a curt nod, but his attention kept returning to Claire. ‘I would be happy to show you around, Doctor, but I fear that Frau Kohl . . .’

  ‘I will be fine,’ Claire said, beaming pleasantly. ‘And I, too, have an interest in science in all its many forms. I would be very interested to learn more of your work here. A life in the wilds of Africa on a farm has inured me to rigours that might cause other women to faint.’

  Bofinger gave a tight-lipped smile. ‘Then come with me, please.’

  He led them further along the row of beds. Men and women lay there, dying. Claire breathed through her mouth, such was the stench.

  ‘These natives are all suffering from scurvy; it is rife on the island,’ Bofinger said.

  Peter stopped and looked at a patient. ‘Classic symptoms. Hair falling out, gums bleeding. The teeth will go soon. What are they feeding these people? Some lime juice or citrus fruit would help them soon enough.’

  Bofinger shook his head. ‘I don’t subscribe to the old-fashioned idea that scurvy is related to diet, and as you yourself know, Dr Kohl, fresh fruit is a luxury here, even for those of us who deserve it. No, I am convinced scurvy is a bacterial disease, spread by germs. You’re aware of the new science, I presume.’

  ‘Of course,’ Peter said.

  ‘I believe that hard work and exercise assists in the prevention and treatment of the disease,’ Bofinger continued. ‘I’ve been experimenting with a range of treatments here in the camp as well. I just administ
ered opium to this patient.’

  If nothing else, Claire thought, the man would hopefully die in peace.

  They continued through the room, with Bofinger reeling off a list of the illnesses the prisoners on the island suffered.

  ‘Surely survival, and productivity, would be increased if these people were fed a little more?’ Peter said. ‘Everyone I have seen is malnourished.’

  Bofinger clapped him on the arm. ‘Come, come, Doctor, we know there are many Herero, and increasing numbers of Nama, to supply labour for the colony. No, this operation is very economical. Workers are farmed out to the railway and other capital projects around Lüderitz and the work gets done. That’s what’s important.’

  Not human life, clearly, Claire thought. It almost seemed as if the mission of this island was not to supply labour for the colony, but to meet the twin aims of successfully completing the building projects on time and getting rid of unwanted people. The camps in South Africa had been inhumane and people had died of disease, but that been due more to neglect than because of an underlying intent to wipe out the Afrikaner people. It seemed the people in this camp had little chance of survival. Claire was sickened, not just by the sights and smells of this place, but by the underlying evil. This was worse than anything she could have imagined.

  Peter and Dr Bofinger walked on ahead, towards the end of the building. Claire shot a glance at Blake and he mouthed the word ‘Liesl’.

  ‘Herr Doktor Bofinger?’

  He looked over his shoulder. ‘Yes, Frau Kohl?’

  ‘What happens to newly arrived prisoners? Surely they are in good health and in demand for work parties.’

  ‘Yes,’ he coughed into his hand, ‘and other duties as is seen fit by the camp commandant.’

  Claire shuddered inwardly.

  ‘It is my job to give them a medical examination.’

  Bofinger leaned in close to Peter as they neared the far end of the ward. Peter stopped and waited for Claire to catch up. He spoke quietly. ‘Bofinger says you might want to stay inside and wait for us.’