by Nigel Barley
“Our chief concern,” said Herr Feldschwein, mopping his domed brow with a large snowy handkerchief that exuded the scent of frangipani, “is to continue the war by other means and, of course, we look to you not simply to inspire us but to direct us in our struggle to support the fatherland.” Lauterbach had felt safe. He had been wrong. The enemy was already lying in wait for him inside the camp. There were half a dozen of them – Lauterbach knew the type – elderly patriots of the dentured classes, cosily civilian but eager to spill the blood of younger men, German nationals interned by the British for the duration of the war. They were business men, Hamburg merchants, shippers, condemned to live here in hot, stuffy barracks while their cool, white mansions just down the road were requisitioned by tippling British officers who put their dirty boots up on the tables. They still insisted on the propriety of the white linen suits and ties of commerce even in the professional void of this prison camp. Many were part of that shadowy force, the German Etappe, a network set up to secretly buy supplies and illegally communicate with German naval vessels through neutral ports and so overcome the dreadful handicap of not having a world empire in a world war. It operated, inconspicuously as they thought, out of a fake Rhenish castle up the road called the Teutonia Club. The only thing that could have made it more obvious was singing mermaids posted on rocks outside. They loved the whole glamorous business of Berlin intrigues, rustling nocturnal rendezvous in the Esplanade shrubbery and secret despatches written in invisible ink and stamped with imperial eagles, since it transformed their mundane acts of sterile trade into a national crusade. Also they had made a great deal of money out of it. Now they were obliged to limit their activities to directing a stream of strategic supplies into Lauterbach’s own kitchen. Out there he had crates of beer and hams stacked up to the ceiling. The table was littered with the debris of tinkling teacups and rich chocolate cake. Lauterbach’s stomach growled and gurgled like a contented baby.
“As senior officer here, Oberleutnant, we look to you to put a bit of backbone into the men and we look forward to hearing your detailed plans for resistance as soon as possible. There’s been a frightful slackness around the camp with a deal too much fraternising. There has even been an outbreak of cricket.” They nodded solemnly, speaking with the arrogance common to all financial backers. Feldschwein of Meyer and Co. had put a slight edge in his voice, just a tiny hint perhaps, that Lauterbach was part of that slackness.
But Lauterbach was all smiles. These men were a pain in the arse but necessary for his creature comforts, a little like the women in his life and as needful of shameless flattery. He looked down on his Iron Cross, newly forwarded by the British and fingered it casually. He had gone out and bought the formal sword that British deference permitted him and clanked it now as token of his superior status and military expertise. Since fame had come upon him, he had found it easy to assume a pose of approachable greatness but it was just as pleasurable, from time to time, to slam the green baize door on the fingers of mere tradesmen.
“You may be assured, gentlemen, that, as a military man, I have already conceived several ideas as to how we may best proceed … Drawing on my experience in the Emden where we destroyed for all time the myth of British supremacy at sea … Security forbids a fuller account at this stage … You will be aware yourselves, as men of responsibility and discretion of the absolute necessity for silence on all details at this point … I beg you therefore to follow your usual patterns of behaviour … Above all let us not be seen together too often lest it arouse the suspicion of the enemy whose spies are everywhere … I must give out the air of a man who regards himself as retired from combat … We must do nothing precipitate until we are certain of the current situation.” His mouth flapped glibly, the empty words flowing with generous ease. The less he told them, the more exciting they would find it. They nodded earnestly. He yawned, his mind elsewhere. Tomorrow, he would start the men doing some pointless physical drills to impress and confuse them. He could get the gymnastics team training themselves up to form human pyramids sufficiently high to get over the perimeter fence. His mistress was coming at three. It would be nice to get a cat to share his quarters, a big complacent tabby perhaps. He missed the cats of the Emden and wondered briefly whether they had all died in the conflict. Maybe the English, a sentimental race, would have been less free with their lobbing of shells if they had known there were innocent pets on board. He shook his head. He was nodding off. His visitors rose to go, searched fussily for hats and sticks and he waved them wearily away. They crept through the door in one’s and two’s, making off hurriedly in opposite directions with the brims of their hats ostentatiously pulled down. That would be Etappe training.
“We must do nothing precipitate,” said Colonel Martin, “until we are certain of the current situation. It could unsteady the men.”
Captain Hall looked out through the open door where chubby Jemedar Khan of the Fifth Light Infantry stared in total absorption at a buff form, picked up a pencil and began to write industriously. Hall opened his eyes wide and nodded back over his shoulder, warning Martin that they were not alone.
“What? Oh don’t be silly, Hall, Khan’s all right.” He sat down in his creaking chair, creaked his Sam Browne belt and cracked his knuckles. “This isn’t the first time there have been rumours of disaffection in the ranks.” He pouted petulantly. “Not enough goat’s meat and milk? Men don’t mutiny over that. I don’t believe a word of it. It’s traditional to belly-ache about rations. It’s like boys complaining about school dinners. You should know that.”
“There is also,” Captain Hall dropped his voice, “the more serious matter of the Muslim connection.”
“What? Speak up man. Don’t mumble. The Muslim ‘connection’, as you term it has been grossly exaggerated. So Christi Khan holds a few meetings telling the men not fight fellow Muslims in Turkey. They’re not going to Turkey. We’ve been slated for Hong Kong, as you very well know. He’ll be a laughing stock when we’re in Kowloon.” He was getting irritable again. It was all becoming Hall’s fault. From the outer office, Jemedar Khan made a foul gurgling noise with the thick snot far up his nose and scraped his chair on the floor as he lent back, aimed, swirled and spat. Hall paused, waiting for the Ping as it hit the cuspidor. Prudence dictated he should call it a day. Never mind. He had come this far. He would see it through.
“I think I mentioned, sir, that my friend in Intelligence warned us to expect some sort of demonstration on the 19th, co-ordinated by those Indian Nationalists funded out of Berlin. They picked up a couple more of their agents in Johore Bahru last week and down at the mosque in Kampong Java the imam’s been stirring them up again. With the Chinese New Year coming up and crowds in the streets, we can expect trouble.”
Something in Martin snapped. Hall could almost hear the sound of it, like the wishbone of a chicken. Beneath the tight collar his neck coursed with a sudden gush of throbbing blood. His nostrils dilated. Spittle flecked the corner of his mouth.
“You’re just like all the rest aren’t you, Hall. You want me out of here so you can petition the War Office for service in the West again and get yourself some quick medals. Fancy yourself as CO here don’t you? You’ve never forgiven me for telling them the men just aren’t ready, that we need a tour of duty back in India. Don’t think I don’t know what you all say about me in the Mess, how you try to poison their minds against me. The men tell me all about it. They know whose side I’m on. You’ll never understand the Muslim mind, Hall. You’re too pig-headed.” He stopped, sniggered at his own joke, then snarled, “Oh get out.”
Hall stiffened, choked back the rage and bit down hard on it. He saluted icily and strode through the door, pulling it hard so that it slammed behind him. As the reverberations died away by Khan’s desk, he stopped and stared down at the top of his glossy, bobbing head.
“You may fool him, Khan, but you don’t fool me.”
The Indian did not look up but pencilled quietly away with gentle ha
nds. “Sahib?”
“I’ve got my eye on you Khan, don’t you forget that.”
Khan turned towards him a face of ineffable sweetness and innocence. The lips parted over white, smiling teeth almost in the gesture of a kiss. “Yes sahib. Thank you sahib. Oh, and happy Chinese New Year, sahib.”
Chapter Seven
Lauterbach groaned and belched. He turned on his stomach so that a hand dangled heavily over the edge of the bed, encountered empty bottles and sent them rolling and crashing like skittles. Light penetrated the grubby curtains and seared his pupils. His eyes, when he rubbed them, ground in crystals like powdered glass. A small furry animal had crawled into his mouth, vomited, voided its bowels and then died. He cursed, reached under the bed with shaking deliberation and found a gin bottle full of tepid water whose contents he sucked down gratefully, then fought stomach convulsions and a terrible sense of suffocation that ended in a coughing fit. On that table there, somewhere, was a fag. He groped, found, struck a lucifer and swallowed smoke blindly. “Himmel, Arsch und Wolkenbruch.” This could not go on much longer. The mix of outrage and boredom in this camp and limitless beer were a combination that would be the death of him. Too much free time led to brooding over the meaning of life and for Lauterbach the meaning of life had always been to be too busy to have time to think about it.
Naked, he struggled to his feet, the bed groaning with relief, and headed, panting, for the bathroom. Bare feet padded over damp concrete. Thank God this was the cool, wet season. Thank God he was excused the morning roll call. Lauterbach grasped the great wooden ladle, dipped it in the standing jar of cold water and basted his head with scoop after healing scoop, shaking like a dog. “Oooaarghscheisse!” Then he gave up and just leant forward to plunge his whole face directly in the jar. “Whoarbloobloob.” As he raised his eyes from a swimming world of blur and water, he encountered the trim, prim, disapproving rectangle of Elysium toilet soap. The sight depressed him for some reason. And when he turned round, there stood Taj Mohammed, grinning from ear to ear, holding out his cup of tea and openly ogling the Lauterbach torpedo. Lauterbach growled, seized towel and cup in either hand and slapped him away fiercely.
Taj Mohammed was theoretically the refuse-cart handler of the camp but had determined, for his own unclear reasons, to attach himself to Lauterbach as a sort of freelance helper. His official batman, Private Schmerz, had not taken to this arrangement and now sulked, making only intermittant appearances where he complained with incessant bitterness, like a wronged wife, of his rival. Mohammed was not, Lauterbach suspected, very bright, but he was cheery and willing, unlike joyless and literalist Schmerz, and it pleased him to spin endless fantasies to the boy, rather as he had to Privett and Rose on Diego Garcia. To one who had spent his life in creative mendacity, such flights of fantasy, free as a bird, were liberating. He could shift the pinch and press of reality like gas with a belch. When once he had embarked on such a trail of the imagination, there was no wire, no ditch. He could wander where he would. Anyway, he loved the sound of the boy’s Indian-accented English that rumbled and throbbed like a fart in his rainbarrel. Lauterbach had resumed his former extravagant ‘full set’ of facial hair but was badly in need of a trim so he slipped on his faded Troilus bathrobe, sat on a hard chair and prepared to be soaped and shaved.
“You will know,” Lauterbach assured Mohammed through thick lather, “that all Germans have secretly converted to Islam.”
The boy stopped in mid strop, stared, his jaw dropped. “Is true?”
“Indeed. The latest secret orders have just been delivered from Berlin. You will have heard that Germany has formed an alliance with Muslim Turkey against the British infidels. A holy war has been declared. Even the British papers could not conceal it. I always receive the latest papers since friends send me parcels from the outside. The British foolishly inspect the contents but never think to read the wrapping. The Turks, as you know, are staunch Muslims like the Germans and yourself. You can always tell a good Muslim by his beard.”
The boy broke into a delighted grin and breathed benevolent curry fumes over him.
“Then we go to mosque together. We friend.”
“Ah no” Lauterbach headshaking. “This is a very great secret, Mohammed. If the British knew they would become very angry and do terrible things to all the innocent Muslims under their rule in India. For their sake – for your sake – we must say nothing.”
Mohammed executed a firm calligraphic razorstroke the length of Lauterbach’s cheek, above the line of his beard. “I no afraid,” he sneered and flicked whiskery foam boldly to the floor in proof of it. “You see. We go mosque together, you me.”
“The mosque? No. We can do better than that. One day we shall go to Mecca, together. We shall go on my ship the Emden which the English claim falsely to have sunk. She still sails the Indian Ocean exacting a terrible revenge on their shipping. One day, you will see, she will come to the harbour in Singapore and then we shall go aboard her and sail to Mecca.”
Mohammed clutched the shaving cup to his chest in delight, threw back his head and laughed at the ceiling, scaring the gecko lizards that lived there.
“Mecca!” he cried, slopping ecstatic suds. “We go Mecca together. I become Haji Mohammed.”
Lauterbach proffered his other cheek for scraping. “A fine and godly name. His Imperial Majesty, the German Kaiser, too, has already completed his pilgrimage and similarly taken the title of Haji Mohammed Guiliano. The Empress has become Fatima and assumed the veil and my old friend Prince Franz Josef has been formally circumcised with great ceremony and amidst public rejoicing in what was formerly the state opera house in Berlin.”
Mohammed, having begun trimming the broad wings of the moustache, waved the gleaming razor under his nose. “You want circumcise too?”
“Er no. It is not deemed strictly necessary in the case of converts, a certain liberalism in the interpretation of the Koran by the arch-imam of Berlin. Moreover, to confuse the enemy, I shall perform my devotions only in the strictest privacy.”
“Is not good to pray the way you do, like a Hindu, in that polluted place.” He gestured towards the bathroom. “Sometimes I hear you praying in there. You saying, ‘Ten, twenty, thirty …’”
Mohammed stepped back to assess the Islamic symmetry of his work and found it good. “You stop drink beer too?” he reproved. “Is bad. Muslim no drink beer.”
“You will be aware from your studies that it is not the act of drinking but the state of drunkenness that is prohibited by the Prophet. Those unaccustomed to beer become easily drunk. I shall therefore continue to maintain my resistance to wicked drunkenness by constant drinking.”
Mohammed shook his head in awe. “You clever man. Very learned, very holy.”
Jemedar Khan shook his head fiercely. “My friend is a clever man.” His voice reached out to the back of the barracks and caught the attention of the few men still lying on their rope beds. “Very learned, very holy. Is he not a postman? Does he not need his great learning for the reading of addresses? Is his position not one of trust where, like us, he wears the uniform of the King Emperor? Yet because he is a Rajput man like ourselves, he is constantly harrassed and persecuted by the other races. Not just the white men of whom nothing better is to be expected but also the Chinese and the Malays who are their servants – yes – and by other Indians like the Pathans, just as we are persecuted by them here in our own regiment.”
He looked round at the circle of eager, nodding turbans. He knew he held them by the beard. “You will not have forgotten the recent vacancy for jemedar that should rightly have gone to Imtiaz Ali, also a clever and learned man, a Rajput man, but was given instead to an ignorant Pathan.” A low growl rose from the men. “Everywhere we are surrounded by a sea of injustice.” The sea hissed in his mouth.
“My friend the postman was thrown recently in jail unjustly for a matter of missing funds. Many people are sending money by the post office, just as you are sending money hom
e to your mothers and wives and sisters. Allah knows it is little enough. Just enough so they do not starve.” He wiped his forehead at the misery of it. “And the people, being ignorant people, cannot sign their names so they just make a mark with their thumbs in ink when they receive that money. It seems that although the receipts are there in the post office with their thumbprints, these people are now saying that they did not have that money. So who took it? And who do they accuse?” Another low growl from the men. “My friend, the Rajput man, always the Rajput man.
So they threw him in jail, a terrible place, and sent a fat white man to take his thumbprints in the jail. ‘This wicked deed,’ he said, ‘was not done by a little person. No Malay or Chinese could have made a great thumbprint like this. This is an Indian hand for though a white man has thumbs big enough, no white man could bend low enough to do such a deed. And you are the only Indian postman in this area, so it must be you.’ This is what they call cleverness. But when they compared the prints with those on the papers what do you think?” You could hear them holding their breath in the taut silence. “They did not match. Those thumbprints were not my friend’s thumbprints.” They exhaled Aah as one. “He is innocent.”
“The fat white man was very stupid. He did not know what to do. He sighed and rolled his eyes and held his many chins.” Jemedar Khan did all three to roars of laughter. “‘It must be you,’ he kept saying foolishly to my friend. ‘I cannot work out how you did it but it must be you.’ But my friend is a very clever man like all Rajput men. ‘Call together all the postmen,’ he said calmly ‘and I will prove to you who it is.’ So they called them all together in one place and the fat white man came and sat down and they brought my friend from the jail. He walked along the line of postmen and looked them, like a man, in the eye and he knew who his enemy was amongst them. It was a very small, very old Chinese.” Jemedar Khan hunched his back and screwed up his face to catcalls from the men.
