The Sun Is God (3 page)

Will met with the Reich agent who told him that fortunes were still being made among the rubber plantations of the German colonies in the Pacific.

Will said that he didn't care where he went, he just wanted to go.

And so it was that on a bitingly cold Southern Hemisphere winter day Will boarded the third-class gangway of the massive
SS Kronprinz Wilhelm
bound for the port of Herbertshöhe in far off Deutsch Neu Guinea.

3

CAPTAIN KESSLER'S REQUEST

W
ill had built his house far enough out of Herbertshöhe so that he or his servant girl could see trouble coming from a very long way off. Hauptman Kessler's appearance on the road shortly after three o'clock was not, then, a surprise. Kessler was riding Brunhilde, his great grey mare that somehow had weathered every attack by mosquito, black fly, and dengue fever.

“Get the kettle on, love,” Will told Siwa and watched her as she scuttled wordlessly inside to light the range. “And put some clothes on too, you know how easily scandalized these Germans are,” he added through the window—or rather through the space where a window might someday be.

The horse came slowly along what the authorities had optimistically called Wilhelm II Strasse and when it reached the foot of the hill Kessler nudged it into a canter. It was a sin to even make a horse trot in this heat but Brunhilde was as strong as any Yorkshire Dray and she had outlasted equine arrivals from Arabia, Europe, and Australia who had died by the score along this coast, some only a few hours after disembarkation.

Will tied the cotton sarong about his waist and went inside, admiring the feel of the newly laid floor on his bare feet. It was so much better than the shabeen-like pounded earth he'd put up with here for the first year; if he had known that Lee and Sons took credit he would have had it in ages ago, certainly before the rainy season.

Will hastily tidied the room, sat in the window seat, and stared thoughtfully at the one piece of art in his house, a reproduction of Alphonse de Neuville's
Defence of Rorke's Drift
that he'd won from Tommy Hanson at piquet the previous Saturday. He hated the picture, not least because it reminded him of South Africa, and only took it because Hanson had nothing else in his house worth a damn.

He got up, walked into the kitchen, removed the cork from one of the storage jars, and carefully inspected the good black tea. No mold or weevils and it smelled like tea.

“Could you make enough for both of us, Siwa? Although I suspect Klaus will prefer something a bit stronger,” Will said.

“Whisky?” Siwa asked, reaching for the bottle of Johnnie Walker.

“Christ no, he'll drink the whole thing. Get the arak.”

“I will hide the whisky bottle,” she said. It had been the missionaries on Ulu who had taught her to speak English and (rather less usefully) to sing hymns in Welsh. Apparently she'd even showed promise in the reading and writing department, or so Pastor Jones claimed in his reference note.

“Yes,” Will said, admiring her long black hair and those slim athletic legs that she had soon freed from the thick cotton baptismal dresses the Methodists had kept her in. “And put something on or Klaus will think you are a fallen woman,” he added.

“If I am it is you that has made me so,” she said.

Will smiled. He had never been one for servants, and relations between himself and Siwa had quickly devolved—or evolved if you preferred—into a scandalous equality.

“If you came off with that kind of talk in a German household they would have you whipped,” Will said.

“And that would be the last thing that they would do in this life,” Siwa replied, her dark brown eyes flashing.

“I believe you,” he said, crossed the floor, and took another peep through the window. Brunhilde was giddily trotting up the muddy track, swishing her tail to and fro. She obviously remembered this house. He opened a jar of New Zealand porridge oats, grabbed a handful, softened them in his left palm with a pour from the water jug, and walked out onto the veranda. He opened a copy of Tennyson and pretended to read it until the horse drew up.

“Guten Tag, Herr Prior,” Kessler said, halting the mare in front of the bungalow and tipping his hat.

“Oh, good morning captain,” Will replied, appearing to be startled from his deep contemplation of a poem with the unlikely name of “Tit Honies.”

“I see that you are reading,” Kessler said, his odd pale eyes already bleary and red, and his mustache twitching uncomfortably.

“Nothing escapes you, Klaus,” Will replied with a grin.

Kessler returned the smile and both men looked at one another for a moment before their gaze sought sanctuary elsewhere. The dense tropical jungle began ten feet behind Will's little bungalow, so naturally they discovered the sea, a brilliant cold-looking blue with a thin distant line of cloud above what the English called New Ireland and the Germans had renamed Neu Mecklenberg.

“It is a fine day,” Kessler said, attempting to cover the silence.

It had rained for eight hours solid during the night, mosquitoes were in swarm, the heat and humidity were almost unbearable—if this was a fine day Will thought that he would like to see a bad one.

“It certainly beats the alternative,” Will said cheerfully.

Kessler's left eyebrow arched, compressing the German's livid, archetypal dueling scar.

“That lime pit in Simpsonhafen where you chuck your dead priests,” Will explained.

“We do seem to have a lot of those,” Kessler agreed.

Kessler's boots eased themselves in and out of the stirrups and Will knew that it was up to him to ask Kessler inside. A line of damp had made a sickle across the young German's blue uniform and his rear collar button had popped off. But Will, for some perverse reason, did not tell Kessler to get off the horse. Siwa was standing in the living room, glaring at him with her arms folded. Up-country, she seemed to be hinting, wars had been started for less than this. Will wondered, not for the first time, if he had perhaps gone a little mad out here.

“A good book?” Kessler asked again, attempting to resurrect their small talk, and this time it hit the mark, for Will could not risk a conversation about Tennyson. “Listen, Kessler, old chap, I'm just having a pot of tea, why don't you come inside and join me,” he said in a free and easy manner that didn't, in fact, come that easily. Will was dour Yorkshire on both sides of the family. Dour Yorkshire all the way back to the Garden of Eden—which, his learned old Aunt Bet claimed, was located just south of Harrogate.

Kessler's back stiffened. “Yes. Tea. And if it is possible, I would like to talk with you for some of your time?” Kessler asked.

Hauptman Kessler dismounted and Will shook his right hand. Kessler's chubby cheeks were glistening with sweat and it was with obvious relief that he took off his hat.

Will gave Brunhilde the oats concealed in his left fist. Brunhilde whinnied affectionately and ate.

“She remembers you,” Kessler said and Will did not hide his pleasure. He liked to think of himself as someone who cared much more about the approbation of horses than of people, although this was far from the truth. Will admired the animals, yes, but he seldom rode and he was certainly not of the horse-and-hounds set. Brunhilde was a gentle old mare though, who would surely carry him home drunk from Herbertshöhe or safely at a gallop through the cannibal-infested mountains. He gave her a pat on her bristly forehead and as she munched the last of the oats Siwa led her into the shade.

“After you, Klaus,” Will said to Kessler and pointed inside.

“Thank you, Herr Prior,” Kessler replied and his boots squeaked on the deck as they entered the house. They'd been shined to a dazzling mirror finish by one of his groom's native boot boys—in the Bismarck Archipelago even the servants had servants.

“Have a seat,” Will said and Kessler sat in the wicker chair with its back to the window.

“No, no, no, over here,” Will said, showing him to the comfortable wooden lounger he had bought from a catalogue in Singapore. It swung on springs and apparently was very good for the circulation. It also afforded a vista of the bold Lieutenant Chard battling the Zulus.

“How do you take your tea?” Will asked.

“Whichever way you are taking it,” Kessler replied cautiously.

“You wouldn't want something a little stronger, would you now?” Will wondered.

“You have schnapps?”

“Siwa, lass, some of our finest arak for the gentleman,” Will said.

“Wait a moment!” she yelled from somewhere outside.

Kessler's eyebrows raised and Will gave him what he thought of as a Music Hall comedian's stage wink. Kessler who had never been to a Music Hall in his life wondered if Will was in the first stages of the river blindness, which was all too common among plantation men.

Siwa came inside and they heard her fussing in the kitchen. She poured a liberal mug of arak for both of them and brought it in on a rattan tray that she carried on her head.

“Thank you, Siwa,” Will said as she knelt before them.

Of course, she hadn't bothered to put the sarong on at all and Kessler discreetly looked away. “To your health,” Kessler said and knocked back the 120-proof arak with the ease of a practiced colonial dipsomaniac.

“Another?” Will asked.

Kessler shook his head. “I am on duty, so to speak.”

“It'll have to be the tea then,” Will said. “I'll be mother.”

He poured two English teas: strong with goats milk and sweetened with cane sugar. The florid German hid his disgust when the first sip of the foul brew touched his now pink lips; but, ever the diplomat, he smiled.

“Your, uh, Siwa makes a very good tea,” he added after another couple of polite sips.

“Aye, she is a find is that lass. She speaks English too, not pidgin mind, real English.”

“A product of the Welsh Mission, no doubt.”

“Yes.”

“And how are your plantations coming along?”

“About as well as everyone else's,” Will replied.

Kessler nodded. He knew what that meant. The imported Indian rubber trees were dying, blight had destroyed the most recent banana crop, and all of the experimental tea plantations in the hills were in the process of failing. If Will had invested his own money in this godforsaken land he would soon be ruined and if it was the bank's money then one day Will Prior would no doubt cease to exist, another faceless European on the overcrowded packet to Hong Kong or Sydney or Singapore.

“It is a poor season,” Kessler said, politely taking another sip of the vile, lukewarm liquid. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and his face seemed to communicate the notion that it was an unlucky collision of misfortunes that had brought him and Will, these cups and this tea, to this place at this time.

Will was reflecting on the fact that Kessler already looked ancient and wasn't near his thirtieth birthday. He was a middle-sized young man who had been shrunk by the tropics. Literally. He had lost maybe an inch in the last year and his skin had assumed the same color as the leather furniture in the yacht club. This brandy casking had not, however, had a corresponding impact on Kessler's personality, and fortunately Will had not heard of any incidents of the kind German officers committed when they began to go really crazy.

“You should give us a subsidy to live out there. That's what the Japanese government do in their colonies. You Germans just let us all wither on the vine . . .”

Kessler put down his china tea cup and took snuff from his tin box. He offered it to Will, who, remembering his manners, offered Kessler a cheroot from a rough cedar cigar box. Both men refused the other's tobacco, sniffing and lighting their own in turn.

When he had sneezed and dabbed his nose with a silk kerchief Kessler observed sadly: “But, my dear Herr Prior, the Imperial government already is giving us a subsidy. A surprisingly large one.”

“Here in Neu Pommern?”

“Of course. Every colony is a tremendous drain on the Fatherland. This is not to mention, also, the money that we spend on the coaling stations for the Kaiserliche . . .”

Kessler's voice trailed off, worried, perhaps, that this was becoming dangerously indiscreet.

“Well, you need to do more. When the papers in Berlin get wind of this disaster that you call a colony they'll kick up a fuss.”

Hauptman Kessler shook his head. “You are mistaken, Herr Prior. This is not England. Public opinion is of no importance. Certainly not over questions of money. For the Reich it is a question of prestige. As long as a little nation like the Dutch are in the Indies, we will be in the Indies, as long as the Belgians are in Africa we will be in Africa,” he said.

“You're probably right, Klaus. I know little of politics.”

“And you, Will? You are not working
too
hard?”

“No. That fella Brown looks after my acres along with those of Mrs. Herring and Lieutenant Ransom.”

“So you have time for the finer things. Botanizing perhaps? It is an undiscovered country in the mountains.”

Indeed it was, up beyond the tea and coffee plantations where even the brave boys of the
Deutsches Heer
feared to tread.

Will stroked his mustache. Reflecting upon it, he had no idea how he spent his days. The time passed certainly, but how and in what manner he was not sure.

Kessler sat a little straighter in the chair. “Shall I tell you why I have come to see you today, Herr Prior?”

“Yes, please,” Will said, attempting to conceal his nerves. For this could be the interview he had been dreading. If Kaufman was calling in the loan and sending Klaus here to do the dirty work . . . New floor or no, he'd have to flee. He looked at Siwa through the window and wondered if she would hop the packet with him, or maybe she'd prefer to go back to singing “Bread of Heaven” in four-part harmony at the mission school. He shuddered at the prospect.