Read The Other Side of Silence Online
Authors: André Brink
“Good.” He lovingly rubs the rook between thumb and forefinger.
“Not exactly a masterpiece, but it does the job.”
“Did you carve it?”
“No, it was my wife. She was an Ovambo woman. She died three
years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He shrugs. “One gets used to loneliness. One gets used to
everything. Only in the beginning it was hard. But it’s good to
have visitors. Even though I have always been something of a
loner.”
He came from Bavaria over twenty years ago, they learn. A small
village in the mountains, Bayerisch Zell. He was eager to see the
world and there was much talk at the time, the
mid-1880
s
, of the exotic wilderness of German South-West
Africa and its untold treasures. The reality turned out to be
rather different. Still he fell under the spell of the place, its
spaces, its spareness, its unexpected explosions of extravagant
beauty in sunsets, desert flowers, shifting red dunes, migrating
herds of antelope. After prospecting for a few years he acquired a
farm near Tsumeb in the north. The final decision was really taken
out of his hands when the fiancée he’d left behind in Bavaria and
who was to have followed him to Africa as soon as he’d settled,
wrote a letter (which only caught up with him four months later) to
tell him that she’d married someone else. It is her photograph,
there on the bedside table.
While he is talking, with all the eagerness of a man who hasn’t
had a chance to unburden for months, they move to the cluttered
living room, and later to the kitchen, where they help him to
prepare Knödel for supper.
“And when did you meet your wife?” asks Katja.
“Kaguti?” he asks, beginning to stir his pot on the open hearth
very vigorously. “She was a headman’s daughter. I bought the farm
from him. From the first moment I set eyes on her I was in love.
But she was not so easily persuaded. Nor was her father. I had to
work for him for many years. At last she came to live with me, it
was a big feast. The problem was that my white neighbours shunned
us. And some of her people didn’t accept it either. It got worse
after her father died. Our farm was raided and on several occasions
we lost all our cattle, sometimes to the Ovambos, sometimes to the
Germans. This land is so big but it had no place for us. In the end
we decided to come down here to Windhoek. We were still outcasts,
but we made a few friends. And people bought my shoes and saddles
and bridles. Kaguti took in washing and carved figurines from wood,
like the chess set. We used to play in the evenings, she was very
good. But then she died.”
“What happened to your children?” asks Katja.
“We had no children.”
“And the cradle in the bedroom?”
“It was always empty.” For a moment it seems as if he wishes to
say more, but then changes his mind.
The food is ready, but Hanna wants to feed the horses first.
Siggi has some oats which he assures them he keeps specially for
such occasions. Afterwards they go in for their supper; a section
of the work bench has been cleared for it.
Katja wants to serve Siggi first, but he refuses, highly
indignant: “I always serve myself last, even when I’m alone.”
The Knödel are sticky and not very good, but they have not eaten
all day; and the food is served with such enthusiasm that it feels
like a celebration. They only stop when there is nothing left.
After they have done the dishes Siggi brings the chess table
into the living room. He sets up the pieces and looks at Hanna.
“Shall we play?”
Katja can feel the gathering anxiety in her. Something in Hanna
wants to hold back, to refuse outright; at the same time she feels
a desire she has not been aware of for years. In the end, without a
sound, she sits down. She knows her hands are shaking.
I have forgotten most of it
, she tries to say, through
Katja.
Siggi looks down at her, then brings a chair up for himself. “It
will soon come back,” he says encouragingly.
She realises that she still hasn’t put her kappie on. Now it is
too late. But she does feel very exposed as she makes the first
move. Plan it, Herr Ludwig used to say, like a military campaign.
But she cannot concentrate properly. And something inside her
revolts against the idea of a campaign, any campaign, right now;
she has had too much of it and is no longer sure of where it has
brought her. Yet the urge to play must be as passionate as, in
others, perhaps, at times, the urge to make love. Her face is
burning. But she cannot focus properly. Nor can she withdraw, now
that she has begun.
Katja watches from the work bench, sensing the terrible tension
mounting in Hanna, but unable to understand exactly what is
happening.
Before they have gone very far – it is not even an hour since
they started – it is obvious to Hanna that her situation is
hopeless. She is going to lose, and she no longer has the skill to
extricate herself.
Katja can see her getting more and more agitated,
claustrophobic. And suddenly, with a vehement shake of her head,
Hanna jumps up.
I’m not going on
, she signals to Katja, who conveys it to
Siggi.
“Then we stop,” he says affably, dropping his long hands to his
sides. “I’m sure you must be very tired. It was inconsiderate of
me.” The monkey, back on his shoulder, is chattering eagerly in his
ear. He puts a hand on Hanna’s shoulder, pretending not to notice
how she shrinks back. “There is no need for anyone to win or lose,”
he says.
Hanna clenches her teeth so tightly that it hurts. She makes a
brief gesture with her head towards the bedroom and hurries
out.
Katja glances at Siggi. “Let me help you make your bed,” she
offers.
But he shakes his head. “I still have work to do,” he reminds
her, stooping to pick up the two pairs of worn shoes he has left
just inside the doorway to the kitchen.
“You cannot do that now!” she protests.
“I work best at night,” he assures her. “Now off you go.” He
turns up the lamp. The monkey finds a perch on a pile of lasts. The
two of them are clearly used to their routine.
Katja closes the bedroom door behind her. For a moment she leans
her forehead against the cool hardness of the wall, feeling the
full weight of her tiredness pressing down on her. “I feel safe
here,” she whispers.
Hanna makes no reply. She is already in the big bed, in her
petticoat, deeply snuggled into the feather mattress under the
eiderdown.
Katja takes off her dress and creeps in beside her. She leans
over to kiss the woman, overcome by thoughts she has not even been
conscious of. Hanna responds briefly. Her closed eyes are
trembling. But she makes no attempt to communicate. Katja blows out
the candle. The long day, the many months, fall from them. The dark
space is invaded by everything that cannot, dare not, be spoken.
Not yet, or not any more.
There are small sounds coming from the living room. Shuffling,
tapping, scraping, rustling sounds. Occasionally something mumbled
in Siggi’s voice, a small chattering from the monkey in response.
Katja’s breathing deepens into sleep. Hanna lies awake.
Beyond the silence of the house she remains conscious of the
living, moving sounds of the town. After the months in the desert
there is a constant awareness of many things happening below the
threshold of hearing. From time to time this uneven, indistinct hum
is broken by sharper sounds. The squalling of two mating cats in
the backyard. A dog barking. In the distance, so help me God, even
the braying of a donkey. Only the rooster is missing, thinks Hanna,
feeling a wry smile form around her wounded mouth, before the band
of musicians will be complete.
The last time they slept in a house was in the parsonage at the
Rhenish mission. But this is so different. There is reason to
believe, as Katja said, that they are safe here.
Later the dull sounds in the living room drain away too. The
thin line of light under the door goes dark. The house itself is
sinking into sleep, muttering occasionally, a creaking of iron
sheets and heavy beams, a scuttling perhaps of mice. If not of
secret elves who come in the dark to complete the shoemaker’s work
for him.
A whole life drawing itself in around her, as close now as the
body of the sleeping Katja. How lovely she was, standing up in the
small bath.
I am not beautiful. I’m just a woman
. She too,
once, who knows. She did not always look like this.
But everything is now drawing to a close. Only this night, and
then tomorrow. Hauptmann Heinrich Bohlke. He promised he’d be
there. At ten. To meet the woman who has travelled a very long way
to see him.
What did the spindly little shoemaker say?
There is no need
for anyone to win
. She pushes it away, almost angrily. What
does he know about her life?
And yet he has been suffering too, even if only glimpses of it
showed around the edges of his words. The fiancée whose faded
little portrait still stands here beside the bed. The raids on his
farm, all the cattle stolen, sometimes by Ovambos, sometimes by
Germans. He and his wife, ostracised by all, and then she died.
How? Why? Leaving him so lonely that he takes in any stranger that
comes around. With a small black-faced monkey named Bismarck as his
only company.
She is still awake when the cocks begin to crow (there they are
now!) and daylight comes, but she does not want to wake Katja. She
may well need all her energy for what lies ahead and what she
doesn’t even know yet. This silence is so deeply peaceful. But it
will not last.
When they get up, breakfast is already waiting. Dark bread and
goat’s milk cheese. Mugs of coffee. Bismarck is chattering
excitedly.
On the edge of the work bench sit their shoes, with smooth new
soles, the edges finely stitched, the torn flaps mended. Bright
with polish.
“If you have important business today as you told me,” says
Siggi, beaming with pride, “at least you will be well appointed.
With a pair of good shoes you need not be afraid of anything.”
A
ll those documents,
the old copies of
Afrika Post
, the correspondence, the
registers from Frauenstein, the police records; and yet armed with
no more than a name only half released by history – Hanna X – what
is there to conclude? Had there been a court case to round it off,
everything would have spilled into recorded history. But as I
explained at the beginning of this account, the unfortunate option
chosen by the German officer pre-empted a trial, and after that the
machinations of power kept it from public notice in the interests
of protecting the honour of the Empire. As a consequence all my
enquiries – begun in Windhoek, pursued in Bremen and Hamburg,
afterwards resumed in Namibia – could only end in conjecture. But
having come so far, I cannot now turn back or abandon the quest.
Having followed Hanna and Katja to Windhoek I have little choice
but to imagine the rest. A narrative accumulates its own weight and
demands its own conclusion. And so they will leave the humble home
of the shoemaker Siggi Fischer early that Friday morning in
November 1906 to keep what has become an appointment with destiny.
Before Hanna X is restored to the silence from which she emerged,
there has to be a final chapter, which will of necessity take place
in the sprawling sandstone building of the army headquarters where
Katja met Hauptmann Heinrich Bohlke the day before.
H
e is a small dry man
with a monocle, seated in a large leather-upholstered chair behind
an enormous desk at the far end of the long, low-ceilinged room. He
is nearly bald, he has a thin moustache, his face is tanned
although a sickly pallor shows through it. When the women are
escorted in he rises and comes stiffly towards them, waves the
orderly away, gives instructions to be left alone with his
visitors.
In front of Katja he makes a formal bow, takes her hand, offers
a kiss without touching her with his lips. Perhaps he doesn’t like
touching people.
“Fraulein.”
Then he turns to Hanna. Hidden by the long beak of her kappie
her face is invisible, so he gives only a perfunctory nod.
“I believe we met before?”
“She cannot speak,” says Katja. “Perhaps I forgot to mention
that?”
“Indeed?” He seems disappointed. “I cannot recall that you
did.”
“I’m sure you must remember her,” Katja goes on.
He motions them towards two large easy chairs, also upholstered
in dark red leadier. They do not move.
“May I ask, Fraulein…?” He sounds perplexed. For the first time
a hint of suspicion enters his voice which is slightly hoarse,
perhaps from too many years of barking orders.
That is when Hanna unties her kappie, and removes it, and drops
it on the floor as if discarding it.
He stares at her, takes a step back. There is, however, no sign
of recognition yet; how can he be expected to remember?
“Hauptmann Bohlke,” says Katja, bending over and pulling up her
long skirt. He stares in disbelief. Even more so when she whips a
Luger from under her clothes and points it at him. When he turns
towards Hanna she has done the same.
“Now listen…”
“Shut up,” says Katja quietly. “If you make a sound we shall
kill you.”
“I don’t understand.”
Hanna makes a brief gesture towards Katja.
“Turn round,” Katja orders him. “Put your hands behind your
back. We have to tie you up.”
“But…”
Hanna moves very quickly, like a snake striking. The butt of the
Luger crashes against the side of his face. In a reflex action he
pulls back his arm, his fist clenched.