At the Edge of the Desert

by Basil Lawrence

  ‘The white people watched us. They killed our men, and took us women and children as a prize. But we were not gifts like cattle or land! The skin of those white men smelt like sour milk. Our mothers told us to be quiet when the white men put us in a kraal. We prayed to the ancestors to save us. We prayed for food and water. We prayed until we were as thin as cattle in a drought.

  ‘When we were small, our fathers would point to a dying animal and say, “Him. Look at those eyes.” Now we could see those same eyes in the kraal. But none of us said, “You. And you. And you. Look at those eyes.”

  ‘One day a white man took us girls to a small building in the town. We pushed wet rags on the concrete floor until the water dried. We made the floor shine with polish. We sat under a tree and the white man gave us bread and sweet tea. Did our ancestors hear our prayers? That night the soldiers marched us to the kraal where the dead waited. The sjambok hit women with babies tied to their backs. That angry sjambok told us that sweet tea did not answer our prayers.

  ‘New prisoners arrived at the kraal and they stared at us the same way our fathers stared at dying cattle. They would not speak to us because we were worse than animals. But the next time more people arrived at the kraal, those people stared at everyone with the same eyes. This happened to us.’

  Ouma Gendredi had barely moved. I’d almost forgotten I was out in the open with her and Zacharias because the dry air carried no other sound. I offered her water but she shook her head.

  ‘Is there anything else your grandmother said?’ I asked.

  ‘Not in her words.’

  ‘But something else? Something she told your mother … even if they’re not her exact words?’

  ‘Yes, but not the same,’ she confirmed.

  ‘Tell me, please.’

  ‘First drink some water,’ Zacharias insisted. ‘You have been very sick.’

  I zoomed in to get a tighter shot of the old woman accepting the drink.

  ‘You want me to tell?’ she said wiping her lips. ‘I will tell you how the white men took some people to the dock near the sea.’

  ‘Was your grandmother in this group?’

  ‘Yes, she was in that group. They had to wait for a ship. While they waited, one of the men fell dead.’

  ‘A white man?’

  ‘No, an old prisoner. He pushed his fingernails into his neck until he died. After three days on that ship they came to a cold place. They could taste the sea there. They worked in the waves until their bodies were numb. Some prisoners drowned. The others dragged them out the water, out the way, so they could carry on working. Every day they prayed that no one would take their place. But soon another ship came with more people to work in the cold water.’

  ‘Did your grandmother say where it was? The cold place?’

  Ouma Gendredi shook her head.

  ‘What did they build in that water? Did she tell you?’

  No again.

  ‘They didn’t build anything?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What else did your grandmother say about the cold place?’

  ‘In that cold place, the Germans told everyone they were lucky. “You have food and work. You are here because you are strong and better than the others.”’

  ‘Who were the others?’

  She couldn’t say. ‘The Germans said they must pray to thank the German God. They are better than the other people. But that cold water was not a church. I pray the same now. Every day I wait for the answer.’

  Zacharias had a brief discussion with her while I contemplated all I’d heard. I knew what I needed her to clarify.

  ‘What did you say to Ouma?’ I asked Zacharias when they’d finished.

  ‘I asked her, “What is that water?”’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘The sea.’

  They spoke again.

  ‘She says there were ships where they worked.’ Zacharias clarified, ‘Ouma thinks her grandmother said there were ships. She thinks those prisoners built something.’

  ‘In the sea?’

  ‘Yes, in that seawater.’

  ‘Was it a pool, do you think?’ I said. ‘Did they build something like a swimming pool?’

  This required more effort for Zacharias to translate. He eventually began asking about a concrete cattle dip. But the old woman shook her head without waiting for her grandson to finish. This didn’t match what her grandmother had spoken about, but the memories were confusing. She became concerned that she hadn’t understood what I wanted to know about the cattle dip, but I told her not to worry.

  Without meaning to press her, I was nevertheless convinced that there had to be more she could tell me. I needed everything today because experience had taught me that interviews spanning more than one day often spelt trouble. Sleep gave my subjects a chance to ruminate on what they’d said, and when next they faced my camera they were often unwilling to say more, or liable to contradict their previous answers.

  ‘Was there anything else that your grandmother remembers about the place with the cold water?’

  ‘In that first kraal the Germans gave the prisoners old clothes,’ Zacharias translated. ‘But after the ship the Germans only gave sacks with holes for the head and arms.’ He asked Ouma Gendredi if she’d meant to say sack, or if he’d misunderstood her. She repeated herself, and the best he could come up with was thick sack.

  ‘They cut them here and here,’ she said as she touched her shoulders and her neck. ‘Those hard sacks were cold in the wind and wet in the rain. That rough material was so hungry that it ate the skin. It always wanted blood.’

  ‘Do you know if they wore those sacks in the kraal or in the other place?’

  The sacks belonged to the cold place. My question reminded Ouma Gendredi of something her grandmother had said about the northern camp, a part of the story she’d forgotten until now.

  ‘That first day we returned from the hospital, we saw many dead people in the kraal. The soldiers left the dead on the ground. That night the soldiers wrote those dead on their totenregister. The soldiers asked “Name?” and we gave names. They said “Man or woman?” They didn’t ask “Age?” The soldiers said “Exhaustion” or “Lungs” or “Heart” or “Scurvy”. Always the same. There were only those four deaths allowed in the kraal. There was no place to write “Starvation” or “Fever” or “Beating” or the other disease.’

  She closed her eyes as if praying. ‘The dead made everyone weak. The dead made life bad. My grandmother told my mother, “New people arrived at that kraal. We wanted to look at their faces but they did not look at our eyes. They can’t believe.”’

  I encouraged Ouma Gendredi to return to her grandmother’s story, especially the steamer that transported her ancestor to the cold place with the hessian sacks. I asked if she had any ideas whereabouts in present-day Namibia the prisoners might have worked in the water, but she couldn’t say.

  Even though it would soon be twilight on the farm, and I didn’t relish the prospect of navigating the local roads at night, I felt certain there was another part of the story she was reluctant to tell me. So I continued filming. Not only was I trying to pre-empt everything Chesley might need me to ask, but I also wanted to capture footage for my own documentary about the atrocities.

  ‘Were there any men in the group – any prisoners – who worked at the hospital?’ I said.

  I assumed that Ouma Gendredi had misunderstood because she responded, ‘Not in the kraal.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Her voice softened as she spoke. I couldn’t make out her reply.

  ‘What did she say?’ I asked Zacharias.

  ‘My ouma is very sick,’ he said. ‘She must sleep.’

  ‘I need a few more minutes.’ I couldn’t decide if he’d misunderstood her, or if he was refusing to tell me.

  She addressed him sternly, and he translated with great reluctance: ‘Some were given to soldiers at night.’

  I dared not look at O
uma Gendredi for fear of intruding: ‘What happened to your ancestor? Was this in the kraal or the cold place?’

  ‘The cold place,’ she said firmly. ‘The German soldiers took us when they wanted. They pushed us down in front of the others. Forced us. We knew those men were monsters. The way they threw food at us so that we must fight or even kill to eat. They didn’t care about our bony faces and our dead eyes and our disease. Like animals. They still took us. Those soldiers were a terrible enemy.’

  I cancelled my meetings the next day, and spent it in Windhoek, unable to consign Ouma Gendredi’s interview to my laptop or take my mind off her words. I wandered the city until I found myself in a bookshop with Shane’s Everymans on its shelves.

  I must have picked one up because as I was leaving the store the assistant asked if I wanted to buy the book in my hand. It took me a few seconds to comprehend her meaning, to give the novel to her and apologise. She must have been following me around the shop because she asked if something was wrong. And that was how I came to be staring at the Namibian history section while she recommended titles that dealt with my country’s holocaust. I bought one – glancing at its cover – before escaping to a nearby restaurant. I sat at the table, the unopened book on my lap, worrying about Ouma Gendredi and the town with the cold water that could only have been Lüderitz.

  I ate without tasting, my thoughts on the previous day’s testimony. Until then, distancing myself from my subjects had been as simple as switching off my camera, but on my trip to Grootfontein I’d unlearnt that skill. Lost it. Something as much a part of me as swimming every morning, and the ease with which it vanished unmoored me.

  Back at the guesthouse, which hadn’t yet been cleaned, I lay on the unmade bed, book open, staring at a black-and-white photograph of a Herero child dressed in a hessian sack. He was one of Shark Island’s concentration-camp inmates. Grown men and women cowered on the rocks behind him. Try as I might, I couldn’t turn the page. I couldn’t avoid the boy’s eyes. No artwork would explain him to me. Nothing by Francis Bacon nor Leonardo da Vinci, none of it could help me comprehend all that came before this image, and everything afterwards. It belonged to an entirely different category.

  —————

  ‘The rank below yours is Captain Number One? “The Wireless”?’

  Dollar nodded: ‘Tsingalamoya.’ Switching to English he said, ‘“The Spider”. He has three stars.’

  ‘And who do you report to?’

  ‘General and Judge.’

  ‘How many stars do they have?’

  ‘Six and eight. The general six. The judge has eight.’

  ‘Is the judge your leader?

  ‘No, the president of the 28 is the leader. But he’ – Dollar shook his head – ‘is not the important man.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The leader, the president, is not the man to worry about. It is the man below that leader who you must fear.’

  ‘Do you mean the general?’

  ‘Yes. The leader worries about his top position. That man below him always wants to be leader. He needs to be that leader. It grows like a sickness in him.’

  ‘Were you that man? The second in command?’

  ‘No, I am only Colonel. A worker. I am safe.’

  ‘As the colonel, what do you do for your gang?’

  He described the weapons, presumably made from discarded metal and smuggled blades, he was responsible for in his role as the 28s’ blacksmith. ‘And promotion.’

  ‘Are you part of the twaalf-punt kring?’

  He nodded. If true, this was new material. Something I’d not heard before.

  I paused the playback to add a marker – flagging the timestamp for future reference – before minimising the editing software’s window to update my notes.

  I suspected that none of the other ex-cons I’d spoken to were members of their gang’s leadership council, the ‘twelve-point circle’, even though a few pretended otherwise. An academic had told me enough about each gang to give me an inkling of exaggerated or made-up answers.

  ‘The accused, he is brought in front of the kring,’ Dollar said. ‘The prokureur who will defend that accused in front of the judge is also there. The accused, he is questioned.’ He modulated his voice to make it pompous: ‘“You must swear the truth.” “Why did you do this?” “Why did you say that?” “What is your alibi?” The crime, if it is a serious one, then the 28 kring it can only sentence the accused to death if that full kring and the judge they all sign a death warrant. Then we wait until night.’

  The other ex-cons tended to overdramatise their explanations, to overemphasise their power. Dollar, by contrast, reported as though he’d been a disinterested observer.

  ‘Why at night?’ I said. ‘Why carry out your sentences after dark?’

  ‘We are the men of night. We take blood after sunset. The 26—’

  ‘Your rival gang?’

  ‘Ja, those rivals, theirs is the sunrise. Us, sunset. The guilty man, he won’t be told what will happen to him.’

  ‘He won’t know he’s been sentenced to die?’

  ‘You tell me, how does it work if the guilty he knows he will be killed tonight?’

  I allowed Dollar to calm down before asking if death might be the kring’s sole punishment.

  ‘Death,’ he repeated with a smile. But darkness surrounded that word. Had he recognised something deep within me, an understanding of terror? Knowledge of its meaning, a more than passing familiarity with the subject. ‘Or punishment is klappe with the enamel beker tied in the sock, or they must kill another man outside the 28.’

  ‘You order the guilty man to kill someone else as his punishment?’

  ‘The guilty man,’ he confirmed.

  ‘You sentence the guilty man to stab a rival gang member?’ I clarified. I was hoping to encourage Dollar to expand on his answer to get a useful segment for my film, but he merely nodded. Rewording my question, I said, ‘Who determines the sentence when the guilty person is not put to death?’

  ‘The doctor. He inspects the guilty one and gives a cure for this sickness.’

  ‘What do you mean by sickness?’

  ‘That crime. The doctor must take that crime away.’

  ‘I see. And to clarify, “doctor” is a rank, a member of your 28s’ kring? You’re not referring to the prison doctor here, are you?’

  Contempt returned to Dollar’s face. But I needed him to explain this to my audience, so I repeated my question, as stupid as it might sound to him, and he eventually said: ‘The doctor of the 28, ja. Now we are talking about the 28 and not the prison hospital. You tell me what prison doctor will come and do this for the 28?’

  ‘What sort of cures does your doctor prescribe?’

  ‘How long is the punishment knife. How many fingers cut off. Who the guilty man must kill. How he must watch that person die. But I think you know that feeling.’

  —————

  Jago flew in from Germany on the Friday, and called to invite me for Sunday lunch.

  His townhouse was in Klein Windhoek, a short drive from my guesthouse, but the posh suburb may well have been located on a different planet. A far richer planet. A world where roads have neat flowerbeds, stark blocks of colour, planted on their central islands. Vibrant chrysanthemums, marigolds and zinnias; swaying prairie grass interspersed with strelitzia.

  The guard stationed outside Jago’s gated community shone his torch in my face, even though it was midday, before scrutinising my ID card. Satisfied that my name was on his list, he waved me through the electric gate so that he could attend to the black Mercedes impatiently waiting behind me.

  Jago had grown leaner since our evening at the pool, and this made him appear slightly more austere than I remembered. He nevertheless allowed me to hug him and he kept saying how good it was to see me. He wanted to know what I was doing in Windhoek so I lied and told him I’d been filming rock art. It transpired that he’d recently visited Twyfelfontein wit
h an American colleague to see the Bushman paintings and engravings, and his prolix, over-precise account of that trip reminded me why I hadn’t been in contact with him before now. But I was happy to let him control our conversation if it meant not having to think about work.

  He lent me a pair of swimming trunks and we spent the afternoon in his plunge pool. Later, without drying ourselves, we sat on his lounge’s tiled floor – so as not to stain his white three-piece settee – in front of an imported air conditioner, eating fish and salad. I asked if he had any marijuana while he sliced more of the ripe pawpaw we ate with grapefruit spoons.

  He considered my request: ‘You want some medical-grade dope? My friend bought it in California.’

  ‘He carried it on a plane with him?’

  ‘He had a prescription.’

  ‘And that makes a difference? Wow.’

  The Californian zol came pre-rolled – six fat joints knocking about in the pack – with paper filters, and I said, ‘He bought it this way? Good service! I should move to America.’

  I offered Jago a hit, which he declined, so I set about enjoying it all by myself. To begin with, the dagga gave sanctuary to my most difficult thoughts. But it was far more powerful than the mellow stuff I’d enjoyed back in Lüderitz, and I became increasingly fixated on nine black-and-white photos, close-ups of South American tribespeople, on the far wall. Jago had captured their faces while trekking through the Amazon. The grimacing man in the centre picture bared his teeth at me, and the longer I stared at him the more the world around me was blotted out. Images of Herero prisoners made to boil their dead comrades’ bodies filled my mind. Women scraping flesh and sinew off bones with pieces of glass so that clean white skeletons could be shipped to German universities for their race scientists to map anatomical points of resemblance between the dead Herero and primates. Strong as the dope was, it brought no solace.