A Matter of Time

by Alex Capus

  ‘Herr Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer sends you his best regards,’ he said without taking his eyes off the hills, ‘and asks if you would be good enough to call on him at the barracks’

  ‘Both of us?’ asked Wendt.

  ‘What for?’ asked Ruter.

  ‘You’re to be there at twelve hundred hours on the dot. Herr Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer will personally see to it, in your presence, that the missing generator turns up again.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It won’t take more than half an hour. Your time’s your own after that.’

  Corporal Schaffler turned on his heel without saluting and clattered back down the iron stairway.

  Kigoma Barracks are situated just inland from the beach in Nyassa Bay, less than a kilometre south of the harbour. Now in use as a police station and district jail, they have undergone few outward changes since the German defence force erected them a century ago. The square buildings four crenellated corner towers are connected by walls some twentyfive metres long and four-and-a-half metres high. The gateway on the road side is protected by stout double gates composed of oak planks topped with sharp iron spikes, and suspended behind them is a wrought-iron portcullis. Its walls agleam with whitewash, the whole building resembles a sandcastle of the kind little boys build on beaches the world over.

  Riiter and Wendt spoke little as they set off along the path across the headland just before noon on 10 December 1914, heading for the beach and the barracks. Both were weak after their recent bout of fever. Riiter’s digestion had been playing up for months, Wendt had a painful abscess beside his right eye and chiggers under his toenails. The two men exchanged muttered remarks about the weather and the lake and their work but avoided any reference to their forthcoming encounter. They went to meet the inevitable with dragging footsteps and bowed heads.

  They had got to within ten paces of the barracks when the gates swung back to reveal the inner courtyard. A company of askaris had been drawn up in two ranks under the scorching midday sun. Stationed between them and facing the gates were thirteen Masai chained together by their iron collars. At the right-hand end of the row stood Riiter’s friend Mkenge. He cocked an eyebrow in token of recognition and smiled. Riiter and Wendt came to a halt and looked round for Rudolf Tellmann, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  Beyond the Masai, Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer was seated in the shade of an overhanging roof with eight more officers in attendance. His left hand was stroking the little white goat tethered to a stake beside him. ‘Come in and sit down, gentlemen,’ he called with false bonhomie. He indicated the two canvas chairs on either side of him. ‘You’re gratifyingly punctual, so let’s get down to business right away.’

  ‘You shouldn’t being doing this, Herr Kapitanleutnant,’ Riiter said in a low voice. ‘Let those men go.’

  ‘You forget yourself, Corporal Riiter. Button your lip and sit down. You too, Private Wendt.’

  Von Zimmer nodded to two askaris, who yanked at either end of the chain. The thirteen Masai were dragged to the ground in two converging waves, the men at the extremities of the chain first, the ones in the middle last. They fell face down in the dust, proudly resigned to their fate, and didn’t move. From the look of it, they realized what was to come.

  ‘I sent for you today,’ von Zimmer began, his harsh voice ringing out across the courtyard, ‘because we have to settle a matter whose importance cannot, in my opinion, be overestimated. The procedure to be adopted will be painful and unpleasant for all of us. That is why I consider it essential to explain my motives’ He rose, came out from under the overhang and walked in silence along the row of prone Masai. Then, as if he had come to a decision, he halted abruptly and returned to his place.

  ‘Shall I tell you something, Riiter? You’re the only person I really want a word with. It’s high time we had a serious talk.’ Von Zimmer tilted his head towards Riiter as if they were old friends. He spoke in a quiet, confidential tone, but loudly enough to be heard all over the courtyard. ‘It would be to our mutual advantage if you ceased to regard me as your enemy. We’re in a very similar situation, aren’t we? We’re both stuck out here in the bush at the end of the world, surrounded by crocodiles and monkeys and nigger boys and wrestling with stupid problems when the two of us would sooner have gone home long ago.’

  ‘I’m here to build a ship, Herr Kapitanleutnant,’ Riiter said cautiously, never taking his eyes off the askaris and the Masai lying in the dust. ‘When that’s done I’ll be only too glad to go home to Papenburg.’

  Von Zimmer nodded thoughtfully. ‘Ah yes, Papenburg,’ he said with a grin, as if Papenburg was a place replete with the most precious childhood memories. ‘I’m from Regensburg, you’re from Papenburg. You build ships, I sink them. That gives us something in common.’

  ‘If you say so, Herr Kapitanleutnant.’

  ‘Each of us does his job, enjoys his afternoon siesta and takes care not to be bitten by hyenas. We’re in the same boat.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Ruter, ‘but you’re at the helm.’

  ‘You think so?’ Von Zimmer laughed. ‘You really believe I set the course here?’

  ‘Who else, Herr Kapitanleutnant?’

  ‘Don’t whinge, Ruter. You aren’t the only person here who gets sick from time to time. Only two of my officers are free from fever at present. We suffer from dysentery, malaria, worms, typhus, blackwater fever, sleeping sickness. Our uniforms and beds are swarming with lice, we haven’t seen our wives for years, and we’ve forgotten what black bread tastes like. We’ve been cut off from supplies and have had no news of the outside world for months, like you. We lack the bare necessities every army needs, and I’m not referring to arms and ammunition, which will very soon run out once the fighting starts. I’m talking about things like socks, Ruter. Good God, we tear the coloured dresses off nigger women’s bodies and knit socks out of them. We’re an army in multicoloured nigger socks, and we’re waiting for an enemy whose location - whose existence, even - is unknown to us. Do you seriously believe that anyone sets the course here?’

  ‘You’re in command, Herr Kapitanleutnant. You just ordered those men to be pitched into the dust.’

  ‘Yes, I did. And I’m about to order a flogging.’

  At another signal from von Zimmer three askaris stepped forward, the one in the middle gripping a sjambok in his right hand. Ruter sprang to his feet and started to protest, but von Zimmer grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him down on his chair.

  ‘Pull yourself together and listen to me. I don’t delude myself that this Punch and Judy show of mine will decide the outcome of the war. While hundreds of thousands of young men are dying in the trenches and shell holes of the Marne, we chug across the lake like holidaymakers and play hide and seek with the Belgians’ toy boats. I’ve been a naval officer for twenty years, and believe me, I envisaged a rather different culmination to my career.’

  ‘In that case, Herr Kapitanleutnant, please order - ’

  ‘Shore leave for all hands - that’s what I’d like to order most of all. If I

  don’t, it’s for one reason only: because there’s just the faintest possibility that our Punch and Judy show isn’t childish, and because it may affect the course of world history.’

  ‘World history, Herr Kapitanleutnant?’

  ‘Don’t scoff’

  ‘I’m not scoffing.’

  ‘Yes, you are, Riiter. You’re a scoffer. You scoff at the Wissmann, you scoff at the Kingani and the worthy Corporal Schaffler. You also scoff at me, your commanding officer, and stubbornly refuse to address me correctly. You scoff at Governor Schnee and German East Africa, and you probably scoff at the Indian Ocean and our Kaiser’s withered arm. I know you. There are types like you in every outfit. People of your kind resent the fact that the world doesn’t meet their requirements, so they scoff at it and wash their hands of it.’

  ‘On the contrary, Herr Kapitanleutnant. I love a lot of things in this world. I love my wife and my children, an
d I love my profession and I’m proud to - ’

  ‘I know,’ von Zimmer said dismissively. ‘You love your family because they’re your own flesh and blood, and you love the Gotzen because she’s your handiwork. But that’s not enough for you. The poor tub also has to be the biggest, finest and best ship the world has ever seen, doesn’t she? You’re vain, that’s why. I wish you didn’t matter to me, but I’m dependent on you. I can’t afford to let you sabotage me.’

  ‘I’d never dream of doing so.’

  ‘Stop pretending. Let’s be honest: you’d sabotage me any time if it suited your book. Work on the Gotzen has been going damned slowly in recent weeks’

  ‘Important parts are missing, Herr Kapitanleutnant.’

  ‘You’d do anything to save your own skin. You think the whole thing’s pointless because we’re cut off from the outside world and fighting a losing battle. You don’t want anything to do with the war - you just want to survive it unscathed. Nothing else matters to you.’

  ‘That I grant you.’

  ‘You’d sabotage me at the first opportunity - perhaps you already

  have. I don’t blame you, but I can’t let you do it, that’s why we’re having this talk. I want to prove to you that what we do here still matters, even when the telegraph is dead and the railway line is cut. I want to show you that each of our actions, however small and seemingly insignificant, has its cause and effect. You realize why we must get the Gotzen finished as quickly as possible?’

  ‘To retain control of the lake.’

  ‘Right. If the lake is ours so is the coastline. And so, possibly, is all the territory beyond it. That’s a lot of territory, Riiter. Rhodesia, the Congo, Ruanda, Urundi, even Uganda and Kenya. With the aid of the Gotzen we can gain control of a good slice of Africa. And the stronger we are in Africa, the weaker the enemy will become on the battlefields of Europe. The more soldiers the British have to send against us here in Africa, the fewer they’ll have at their disposal in Flanders, understand? Understand, Wendt?’

  Anton Riiter said nothing. Hermann Wendt, for whom the workings of the Marxist theory of history had long ago ground to a halt, remained silent likewise.

  ‘So we can’t exclude the possibility that our Punch and Judy show may have a substantial effect on the bloodbath in Europe, you follow? That’s why that generator must be returned - right away, within twentyfour hours. I’ll ask you both again: Have you any idea where it is?’

  ‘No,’ said Riiter. Wendt shook his head.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely positive.’

  ‘I see. As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve reason to suppose that these thirteen Masai had something to do with its disappearance. You know them?’

  Riiter nodded.

  ‘That beanpole of a fellow is their chieftain?’

  ‘He’s a nephew of the king of the Wa-Taveta. And a personal friend of mine. Please release him at once, Herr Kapitanleutnant.’

  ‘I’m going to have your friend flogged, Corporal Riiter. Twice twentyfive lashes with the sjambok. Then we’ll let him walk out of here, if he’s

  still in a fit state to do so. The other twelve will remain here overnight, and let’s all hope the generator returns from the bush under cover of darkness. If not, we’ll reconvene tomorrow and adopt the same procedure with the next delinquent - and, if necessary, repeat it the day after tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on. Same time, same place, same set-up, same purpose.’

  Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer slept badly that moonless night. He was plagued by mosquitoes, malaria, diarrhoea, and the question of whether the generator was already on its way. Had it been a mistake to have that chieftain flogged? If his pride was more important to him than his men’s physical wellbeing, he would take his revenge for those fifty lashes. And after that long speech of von Zimmer’s all Kigoma knew how to hit him hardest. He sat up in bed with a start, appalled by the thought that a gang of Masai might even now be paddling out into the lake to dump the generator in its depths. For a moment he considered sending the Wissmann out on night patrol with orders to search every fishing boat in sight, but then he grasped the futility of such an undertaking. The generator might just as easily be six feet underground. Equally, some Bantu smith might long ago have turned it into spearpoints or ploughshares.

  There was nothing he could do while it was still dark. If the generator was really lost, he would be faced with some serious problems. In the first place, the launching of the Gotzen would be delayed for months; secondly, he would be compelled to give a Masai fifty lashes on each of the following twelve days. That would be pointless - it wouldn’t help to retrieve the generator from the bottom of the lake - but if he didn’t want to lose face and damage his authority he would have to carry out his threat. This meant that on twelve successive days, with clockwork inevitability, twelve unfortunate men would have the skin on their backs flayed and their muscles beaten to a pulp, and that blood would spurt in all directions and trickle into the red dust, and that every midday the victims’ screams of agony would be audible for miles around. For twelve days he would have to carry out this public ritual. For twelve days Kigoma would talk of nothing else, and for twelve days the natives would whisper and murmur, and their latent dislike of him would give

  way to undisguised anger and defiance, and it would not be a long step from there to a violent insurrection that could easily cost him his life. The natives were accustomed to the sjambok, but not to its use for the purpose of methodical, days-long torture. Von Zimmer suspected that neither the whites nor the blacks would stomach this, but the last thing he needed now was a mutiny, a dockers’ strike or a native uprising. Perhaps he really had made a mistake.

  Awake long before dawn, he struggled with the urge to go outside with a lantern and see if the generator was already in front of the gates. He lay there, forcing himself not to keep looking at his watch, but whenever he eventually, after an eternity, lit the candle and took the pocket watch from his uniform tunic, no more than a few minutes had elapsed. He kept imagining that it was gradually getting light, that the outlines of his canvas chair, his locker and the window frame were definitely sharper than they had been just now, but it was always a quarter past one or five to two or half past three, and the night went on for ever. Then he would take a long pull at his water bottle, cool his face with a damp cloth and, in order to bring his whirling thoughts to a standstill, conduct the contralto solo from Gustav Mahler’s 3rd Symphony in his head.

  When the cock finally crowed he was sleeping like a baby at dead of night. He slept on while the askari sentries on the walls were gazing out into the first light of dawn, and he continued to sleep on even when agitated cries rang back and forth from watchtower to watchtower. He did not awaken from the depths of a dream until Corporal Schaffler appeared at the foot of his camp bed, puffing and blowing. ‘Herr Kapitanleutnant!’ he panted, pointing to the door with his arm outstretched. ‘The generator! Quick!’

  Apparently undamaged, the generator was standing outside in the street, midway between two watchtowers and so close to the gates that it constituted an unspoken insult. It wasn’t standing there, strictly speaking, but leaning against them. When the sentries opened them at von Zimmer’s behest, its one-point-three tons toppled over and landed with a crash at his feet. He retreated a few steps and peered through the cloud of dust, trying to discover if there was anything else to be seen. There

  was: lying upturned in the middle of the roadway was a Prussian spiked helmet. Von Zimmer beckoned to two askaris and cautiously ventured out. He recognized the pickelhaube. It was one hed lost a few months earlier. Its spike was embedded in the ground and it was brimming with human excrement.

  Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer was extremely glad to be spared the need to inflict any further extortionate punishment, at least for the time being. He released his twelve prisoners and, in an attempt to placate the vanquished, sent them on their way with a pineapple and a small bag of rice apiece. Then h
e instructed Corporal Schaffler to transport the generator to the shipyard on a cart and get Anton Ruter to sign a receipt for it personally.

  The soiled pickelhaube he ordered to be thrown into the lake without more ado. He realized that he was meant to regard it as a portent of vengeance to come, and that, far from lurking beyond the mountains or on the other side of the lake, his most dangerous foe in the immediate future would be here in Kigoma, possibly even inside the barracks. He decided to stay out of sight for a while and go for some blockading patrols along the Belgian coast. He sailed the same day, taking twentyfive askaris and seven officers and NCOs with him. The Wissmann was now in fair shape and would probably survive for a few days without breaking down. Besides, he preferred to be rid of the three squeamish Papenburgers for a spell.

  Gustav von Zimmer s extant reports state that the crew of the Wissmann took advantage of these blockading patrols to blow up rowing boats on the enemy shore, steal kilometres of telegraph wire and engage in skirmishes with Belgian gun positions, few of which resulted in casualties. Many of these trips took them due west to the opposite coast, others south for hundreds of kilometres to the far end of the lake.

  The Wissmann cruised along the coast for days and weeks on end without making any contact with the enemy, battling hard against

  the south wind, which was particularly strong in the afternoons. The crew had to go ashore every evening to cut firewood for the following day. Natives would sometimes come paddling out in their pirogues to exchange a few chickens or a side of beef for a handful of cowrie shells or half a dozen nails.

  When the Wissmann returned to Kigoma, an encouraging sight met Kapitanleutnant von Zimmers eyes as he entered harbour. The Gotzen still reposed on the stocks beyond the half-rebuilt Kingani, just as she had done for months, but dense black smoke was pouring from her funnel. She had steam up for the first time since the naming ceremony in Papenburg over a year earlier. Her twin screws were slowly rotating in mid air, glinting like gold against her black hull, her deckhouses had been painted a dazzling white and her submerged parts blood-red, and her name - GOTZEN - was emblazoned in gold on black on either side of her towering bow. Standing on the foe sle with his head erect and his back to the direction of travel was a man: Anton Riiter. He was gripping the rail on either side of him as if the ship were going full ahead and he had to hold on tight, or as if, were he to let go, she would slither sideways into the water.