16mm of Innocence

by Quentin Smith

  “Does Ingrid know?”

  Dieter shrugged and pulled a face. “No idea. Women have a tendency to detect these things, though.”

  Otto wiped his hand across his face. “I need that scotch now.” He gulped at his drink and closed his eyes momentarily. What should he say to his brother? Was it a reason for celebration, for commiseration, for empathy? He eventually settled on, “Jesus, Dieter, are you happy?”

  Dieter stared back at Otto and drank from his tumbler. “Sometimes.”

  Otto finished his drink, welcoming the warm rush. “So who was the baby in the film?” He turned to glance at the kitchen window. It was dark outside and he thought about the yawning, broken hole beneath the fallen camelthorn. “It was early 1940s. Definitely not me. Was it you?”

  Dieter poured more scotch. “I honestly don’t know.” He met Otto’s eyes. “Honestly, I don’t. But then again… I don’t remember anything from that film we just watched.” He jerked his thumb towards the screen behind him.

  “Why do you think Ingrid left so suddenly? She’s been acting strangely ever since she arrived,” Otto said.

  “She’s always been like that.”

  “No.” Otto shook his head. “This is different. She didn’t even want to watch the films.”

  Otto held Dieter’s thoughtful gaze, pondering the enigmatic images revealed moments earlier on the screen. The scotch, so avidly swallowed to assuage the shock and disarray, was beginning to slow Otto’s brain.

  “I don’t mean to ignore what you told me just now,” Otto said. “I simply don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything. I’m OK with it, and I’m just glad you know now.”

  Dieter watched his brother in silence. He could see Otto shifting uncomfortably under his gaze and he felt for him. It must have been a shock, yet he thought Otto took it remarkably well. He was, after all, a GP and no doubt used to dealing with all manner of awkward situations.

  “Let’s watch One Million BC!” Dieter suggested with sudden enthusiasm, forcing a smile. He saw Otto’s face light up. “I always loved that, campy dinosaurs and cavemen. God, what a laugh!”

  Otto chuckled. “You know, as a teenager I had a thing for Carol Landis in her animal skins.”

  “Come on,” Dieter said, “it’ll be a great distraction.”

  “OK.” Otto smiled broadly.

  Retrieving the enormous 2,000-foot steel reel of film Otto began to mount it onto the spindle.

  “Do you remember how we used to watch this on Saturday nights?” Dieter said. He recalled eating sandwiches with cold roast pork and pickles, salami and white asparagus. Father would drink pilsner, the rest of them water. It had been one of the few Hollywood movies they ever saw as youngsters, and they loved it.

  “It’s coming easier this time,” Otto said as he slid the film over the rollers, sprockets and guides. ”I think my fingers are remembering.”

  Dieter poured more scotch for Otto and himself and paused beside his brother, hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I never told you, Otto.”

  Otto looked up from the projector and met Dieter’s eyes.

  “As your big brother I was afraid I’d disappoint you,” Dieter added softly.

  “It’ll be our secret until you choose to tell Ingrid,” Otto said.

  Otto’s little conspiratorial smile and the honour intimated by the clink of their tumblers evoked a deep blush from Dieter. He felt guilty withholding from his brother what he had learned about Inez. Worst of all, he did not even know why he was keeping the secret, and he was doing it for Ingrid who was like a stranger to him these days.

  “What’s wrong?” Otto said.

  Dieter responded with forced nonchalance. “Nothing. Why?”

  “You’re blushing,” Otto said playfully, swaying slightly from the Strathisla.

  Dieter felt the heat intensify in his face again.

  “Just kidding,” Otto said and, to Dieter’s relief, turned the projector on.

  One Million BC bursts onto the screen in streaky black and white: prehistoric studio swamps, cardboard boulders, scantily clad, clean–shaven cavemen, jerky stop–motion dinosaurs and superimposed close–ups of common lizards. Tumak grunts and grapples his way past sabre–tooth tigers and dinosaurs, to his first kill. Forced to flee from the primitive and aggressive rock people tribe for standing up to the leader, he is chased by a mammoth to a cliff edge where he tumbles into a meandering studio stream.

  “I love that part,” Dieter yelled, laughing. “So camp.”

  Tumak floats downstream on a log and when he reaches the hospitable and civilised shell people tribe, Loana, wearing only scanty animal skins, rescues him from the river.

  Otto whistled approval. “She looks just as good as she did when I was fourteen.”

  Dieter did not comment. His eyes were not drawn to Loana, but to the chiselled dark features of the man whom she rescued.

  Tumak staggers ashore and moves in with Loana’s peaceful tribe, eventually saving them from the volcanic eruption that reshapes the prehistoric landscape, followed by Tumak’s elevation to leader of the united tribes and his inevitable union with Loana.

  Dieter clapped his hands and cheered in mock adulation. Otto switched the projector off, leaving the empty front reel rotating slowly until it finally came to rest. He chuckled in delight.

  “It’s still a great film,” Otto enthused. “That Loana, phwoar! I used to dream about her.”

  “I’ll level with you, Otto,” Dieter said, leaning forward on one unsteady elbow, “Victor Mature was more my type, actually.”

  Dieter sensed a flicker of uncertainty cross Otto’s face, as though he was unsure how to respond, what to say.

  “You know, I read that Carole Landis committed suicide not many years after making this film,” Otto said, looking back at and touching the reel of film.

  “Yeah?” Dieter replied.

  “She was only in her twenties,” Otto said sombrely. “What a waste of a life, an amazing talent… and that pair of legs.”

  Dieter could not help but think about Inez and the inscription on her grave: Gone too soon. Yes, just like Carole Landis, what a waste. Worse still, he did not know why, and his guilt over keeping this from Otto was mounting, fast reaching that critical point at which he doubted he could contain it any longer.

  Just then the phone rang. It was Sabine. She and Otto talked for some time and before long Dieter fell asleep on the sofa in the living room.

  Thirteen

  Frans cut an unattractive figure, especially in profile, Otto observed: a pendulous belly that hung over his belt; bulbous, fleshy arms dangling limply at his side and enormous flat feet to support it all. Despite it being morning, Frans’ squint was noticeable and distracting. Otto decided that he would have to reconsider his diagnosis of latent exotropia.

  A local Herero man wielding a piercingly noisy chainsaw carved through the camelthorn trunk, like a hot wire through Styrofoam, spraying wood chippings in a projectile arc into and around the gaping hole in the ground. It was windy and the wispy chippings were aerosolised by the stiffening south–wester.

  Dieter and Otto watched with apprehensive interest, Dieter with his arms folded and Otto standing with his hands firmly planted on his hips. Neither had shaved and their eyes were cerise, indicative of the blood that surged and throbbed through their hungover heads.

  “What’s that smell?” Dieter asked, pulling a face as he sniffed the breeze.

  The chainsaw had stopped momentarily as the Herero and a supervising tree surgeon planned the next cut.

  “I don’t know. It smells like…” Otto began.

  “Shit?” Frans said, turning to face them.

  “Yes.”

  Frans nodded. “That’s what happens when the south–wester blows.”

  Otto found this counter–intuitively confusing because there was nothing but ocean out there. “But how?” he said.

  “It’s the smell of guano and seal dung from t
he islands offshore,” Frans explained, pointing out over Lüderitz and beyond the harbour. “Halifax Island, just out there beyond Diaz Point, is laden with guano and a little further south are Wolf and Atlas Bays, home to huge Cape fur seal colonies.” His belly wobbled as he chuckled. “Strong today, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t remember ever going to those places,” Dieter remarked.

  “You can’t, they’re in the Sperrgebiet,” Frans said.

  “Is it still so dangerous to enter the Sperrgebiet?” Otto asked.

  “Oh God ja,” Frans said. “The worst crime in this country is to illegally possess a diamond from the Sperrgebiet. After that comes murder, a distant second.”

  “Are they still finding many diamonds?” Dieter asked.

  “Enough. They find a lot on the sea bed these days – diamond diving – and they control that too.”

  Otto and Dieter stared at Frans. Otto was trying to imagine this wild west style of wilderness prospecting backed up by the most intense and heavy–handed security imaginable. He remembered that diamond wealth along the Skeleton Coast just south of Lüderitz had been immense at its height

  “Nobody enters the Sperrgebiet without clearance and a security escort, and nobody leaves without being X–rayed,” Frans said.

  “X–rayed?” Dieter said.

  Frans patted his ample belly. “To see if you’ve swallowed diamonds.”

  “Do they still shoot trespassers?” Dieter asked with a joking smile.

  Frans did not smile back. “It has been known.”

  “Jesus!” Dieter said. “It’s not 1885 anymore.”

  “So what? They run the show here,” Frans retorted, raising his eyebrows. “Who’s gonna stop them? The government looks the other way – diamonds are big business.”

  “Awkward for you surely… as a policeman?” Dieter said.

  Frans chuckled. “No comment.”

  The chainsaw started up again and conversation was no longer possible. Wood chippings flew about, hoisted into the air by the breeze, like confetti at a wedding. After a few minutes a two–inch thick disc of camelthorn trunk had been cut. The tree surgeon and Frans placed it on the sandy soil and huddled over it, fingering the wood inquisitively. Dieter and Otto approached, standing over the two men.

  “So you count the rings of the tree to determine its age?” Otto said.

  “Uh–huh,” Frans replied without looking up.

  “One ring for every year?”

  “Yup.”

  “Is it accurate?”

  The tree surgeon, a man with a grizzled, bearded face and skin aged by the relentless Namibian sun, met Otto’s gaze. “It’s not bad – not perfect, but not bad. It’s called dendrochronology and can date trees back even thousands of years, obviously using tests as well.”

  Otto could feel his apprehension rising. Soon they would be told exactly how old the camelthorn was, the tree that until now had represented nothing more to him than an extension of his playground as a child. The tree’s age would give a reasonable idea of when the child’s body was buried in the ground – deduced from the fact that the roots had covered the body. The potential implications of this annular ring count for his family were suddenly intensifying in his mind.

  Frans and the bearded man counted in relative silence, pausing occasionally to confer and mumble to each other.

  “How old is it?” Dieter asked, chewing nervously on his lower lip.

  “It looks like about… forty–two years, thereabouts,” Frans said, straightening up with a heave and a groan.

  “Thereabouts?” Otto queried.

  The bearded man stood up and approached them, holding the eighteen–inch wide disc of wood like a steering wheel in his cracked and grimy hands.

  “You see here, some rings are very narrow, typical of reduced growth in a dry year. Of course this is the driest country in southern Africa remember, but even here there will be some climatic variation reflected in the tree’s growth. You follow?” He looked up at Dieter and Otto, who nodded in unison. “Now, if a particular growth season is very variable, both wet and very dry, it is possible to get more than one narrow ring forming in one season.” He raised his eyebrows. They nodded.

  “So you could count two rings for only one year of growth?” Otto said.

  “It can happen.”

  “So how can you be sure of its age then?” Otto asked.

  “I can’t, not without being able to compare with other samples that grew in the same area and same growth conditions and so on. But there are not exactly many trees in Lüderitz.” He chuckled, looking around him across the barren desert landscape, punctuated mainly by black rocky outcrops and occasional green splashes of succulent growth.

  “So you’ve counted forty–two rings?” Otto asked, running his finger across the surface of the roughly severed disc of camelthorn. In his mind he was counting back, imagining where the tree growth would have been when he was of the age to be climbing and playing in the tree with Dieter. Which ring of the tree had his arms and legs rubbed against in juvenile innocence? Which ring of the tree had skinned his knees?

  “Forty–three, but I think that there are two insignificant rings that may well constitute one season. It would be from the year 1982 to 1983, just recently, when we had a severe drought in Lüderitz. If you look carefully at these outer rings here…” He pointed and dug his dirty fingernail into the wood pulp near the bark of the disc.

  Otto was nodding and calculating in his mind. “So it was probably planted around… 1943?” He looked at Frans and the tree surgeon for confirmation.

  Frans made a gesture with his hand. “More or less, give or take a few years either way. As far as I am aware this house was built in—”

  “1946,” Otto said.

  “You say it so confidently, Otto, but you weren’t even born then,” Dieter mocked.

  “But it was built in 1946, that’s a fact.”

  “Ja, it is,” Frans acknowledged.

  Otto stared at the bearded man who seemed to hold in his hands the key to determining his family’s involvement in the buried body. “Could this tree have been planted in or after 1946?”

  The tree surgeon turned the wooden disc in his hands, once, twice, contemplating the patterns of rings surrounding the centre. “It is quite possible that there are other years represented further back that could be double growth rings from a single season, yes. We’re only talking a year or two either way.”

  Otto’s heart skipped a beat as a sensation of dread washed over him. He felt Frans’ eyes studying him as he looked self–consciously at Dieter to judge his reaction.

  “Christ, what does this mean?” Dieter said.

  Frans stepped forward and slapped Dieter on the shoulder. “Ag, don’t worry. This is just one part of the investigation and it doesn’t prove anything. It just gives us an idea,” he said, shrugging just one shoulder.

  Frans thanked the tree surgeon, who left with his African chainsaw operator. The disc of wood now lay beside the fallen tree on a bed of wood chippings, fragments of a happy childhood now shredded and exposed to the world.

  “Cuppa tea, Frans?” Otto asked.

  “Coffee, please Otto. Black, two sugars.”

  *

  Otto retreated into the house, lost in his thoughts. Dieter sat on the trunk of the camelthorn beside the gaping hole.

  “Jesus, Frans, what does this all mean?” Dieter said, swinging his leg absently.

  Frans inhaled. “I’ll be honest, I think it means the tree was planted after the body was buried, or the tree was very small when the body was buried.”

  “Because large tree roots were covering the… er… body?”

  “Ja, it wouldn’t be possible to bury a body beneath the root system without cutting them, you know.”

  Dieter nodded, rubbing his chin pensively.

  “How is Ingrid?” Frans asked.

  Dieter guffawed slightly. “You’re asking the wrong brother, Frans.”

  �
�Oh.”

  “Do we get poisonous scorpions here in Lüderitz?” Dieter asked, suddenly animated as his eyes met Frans’.

  “Oh ja, some of the most poisonous scorpions in southern Africa live here in the desert. They like the dry climate, you know.”

  Dieter nodded. “What do they look like?”

  “Well,” Frans formed an imaginary ball with both hands, “the most dangerous scorpions in this area are from the same family, Parabuthus. There is one that’s black and hairy with orange–brown legs – sometimes yellow – it’s a monster, up to fifteen centimetres long!” Frans’ eyes widened.

  “And poisonous?”

  “Very. Potentially lethal to humans.”

  Dieter thought back to Ingrid’s comments in the cemetery. “Can you tell which ones are poisonous?”

  Frans scratched his stubbly chin. “They say that it depends on the size of the pincers. Big pincers means the scorpion needs them to kill its prey; small pincers suggests very lethal venom so the prey dies quickly.”

  “And this one?”

  “Parabuthus has small pincers. It also hunts in the heat of the day – very unusual, that. He is one dangerous bugger and he likes places where sand and rock are found together.” Frans swept his arm around in an arc. “Lüderitz is perfect.”

  Dieter studied Frans’ blubbery jowls as he spoke and observed the sweat rings already visible beneath his armpits, despite the gusty south–wester.

  “You know a lot about scorpions,” Dieter remarked.

  Frans chuckled. “You have to if you want to live around here. Man, I’ve even found them under my bed. Why do you ask, have you seen one?”

  “No,” Dieter replied evasively. “Just curious.”

  Otto emerged through the kitchen door. “Coffee’s ready.”

  Dieter rose quickly and placed a hand on Frans’ arm as he began to move away. “Can I speak to you more about Inez sometime?”

  “Ja sure, anytime.”

  “Not now, though.”

  “OK.”

  “And not here.”

  Frans frowned. “No problem.”

  Dieter maintained gentle pressure on Frans’ arm for a moment. “Perhaps I can leave with you… after coffee?”