God of Hunger Page 4
He did not stay there long because there was news of new land being released to settlers in the north. He took another dhow to Tanga, terminus to the railway line which ran to Arusha at the foot of Mount Meru, whose summit is some four thousand feet lower than that of its close neighbour, Kilimanjaro; the gleaming mountain, Africa’s highest peak.
*
When Kokopoulos arrived in Tanganyika in the late summer of 1920 he owned nothing more than what he wore plus a change of clothes, boots and a number of books all wrapped in a Bedouin prayer mat held tightly folded and wound around by a chord fashioned from the tendons of a camel’s forelegs. His savings had been transferred from Cairo to Dar-es-Salaam and with these he fitted out a mule train with the necessities of life and tools for work on the land leased to him a hundred and fifty miles or so out of town, south along the main track from Arusha to Babati and then right, into the bush. He hired as headman a German speaking Chagga who had served in von Lettow’s militia. He, the manyapara, took on five more men and a boy from his village. The boy, Martin, was an orphan from a mission settlement run by German Lutherans on the mountain behind the town. He had worked as a houseboy for the Fathers and also filled in for the cook who, with a key to the drinks cupboard in the pantry, often slept through his shift.
*
Men, boy and mules set out from the castellated compound of the Meru Hotel one Sunday morning, crossed the ford of the stream marking the boundary between uptown and downtown and stopped again at Aziz’s garage. Here worked two brothers apprenticed to Mr. Aziz who also ran the local cinema at which the brothers earned extra wages by supplying live sound effects to silent movies from behind the screen. On one famous occasion they shouted ‘here comes the lion’ and, as they roared, a spear hurled from the front seats reserved for natives found its target on the screen.
Aziz made the bulk of his money by exchange. Whenever a vehicle came in for repair he would encourage the driver to wait at the nearby hotel whilst the vehicle was being serviced. Most drivers took the welcome break and while they were away, Aziz and his apprentices went to work swapping good parts with castaways kept in the garage. Magnetos were common currency in this trade; newish for old. Linkages, pipes and shafts likewise. And when time permitted, valves, bearings and pistons. This exchange depended on reports from one of the boys sent at regular intervals to the hotel. Were he to witness a poker game fully absorbing the attention of the vehicle’s driver the car would get the full works over the pit. Aziz’s standard of work was such that vehicles would only falter many days or miles out of town leaving their stranded occupants to seek further assistance at other garages in the territory many of which were also owned by Aziz of Arusha.
Kokopoulos who had developed a habit for poker had made the acquaintance of the two brothers across the card table at the Hellenic Club. He stopped at the garage for one last hand.
The game was played in the service bay after the garage had shut and continued until it opened the next day. Only then did the mule train leave the town behind and headed for the undulating hills around Oljoro and Monduli and the plains of Masailand.
The track was flanked by myriads of grazing antelope, mainly Thomsons and Grants gazelles.
Ahead was the escarpment Greeks called Ee meghalee aneefora, the great climb. Here the mule train stopped for the night.
While his crew prepared camp, Kokopoulos took Martini on their first shoot. Kokopoulos had equipped himself with a 9.3 Mauser rifle and a twelve bore shotgun, neither of which he had used before. Nor indeed had he shot game before. Not that he let on. So off they went in the hour before nightfall.
Clear of the camp in the making, Kokopoulos was first struck by the sound of the bush. A constant wind flowed hissing through the grass, guinea fowl busied around making metallic sounds punctuated by the arrested braying and coughing of zebra. He stood on a bluff with Martini at his side and looked. Green clumps of thorn in a sea of fresh grass. This was the sea. The trees the rocks and the gazelle, shoals of fish. That is how he saw it. As he had seen beneath the surface of the still waters around Aquaba where the right prong of the Red Sea curved back on itself. He floated quite still in the platinized light on his first foray into the porini, the African bush. The boy stood beside him and took in the glory. A shot thundered across the plain. An impala buck fell and quivered. A minute’s silence sliced the air and separated beast from man as the plain then erupted in the chaotic movement of animals in fearful flight.
Martin whooped with delight as he ran to the nyama (meat). He placed the shotgun he was carrying carefully on the slope of a nearby anthill and inspected the evening’s feast with delight. “Shall I get the others to carry it back?’ he asked his approaching bwana. Kokopoulos, delighted at the boy’s German on which he had not reckoned, believing the manyapara to be the only other honorary Teuton on his payroll, erupted into speech. He too was excited. The two walked back together and parted company at camp as Martin peeled off with one of the men to bring back the meat.
Preparations in anticipation of a good night were well advanced at camp. Two fires flamed. One for Kokopoulos, the other for the watu (men); both for grilling meat and against predation from leonine royalty and their hyeanous court jesters.
Martin did the honours for Kokopoulos and excelled in producing grilled fillet and liver of impala served to the quadraphonic sound of frogs under a huge chandelier of crystalline stars.
The boy stood by and was rewarded with grunts of satisfaction from his master who spoke when he had finished eating and said the unexpected: “Where is the shotgun? Martin threw his right hand to his brow and his left to his mouth and sank slowly to a squat. He could hardly breath and struggled to say he was sorry. “Sorry!” barked his master. “You will be sorry. Go and find it! And do not return until you do.”
The shotgun was in its case, in the tent. Kokopoulos had retrieved it while the men were butchering the impala. But he was going to teach the bastarthaki, little bastard, to be more careful in the future and it would be a lesson he would not forget. It was a lesson in sadism unknown to neither the boy nor the men who fell silent around their fire as the lesson proceeded.
Martin stood on legs weakened by fear and said through a choked throat. “It is dark, bwana. I cannot look for it in the dark. It is dangerous. But I know where it is and will bring it to you at daybreak.”
“You will fetch it now. It cannot be left. A beast may trample on it. The dew may harm it. I must have it now.”
Martin turned his back to the fire and looked out over the darkness beneath the celestial horizon. His eyes strained to see beyond the dance of light from the fire. Nothing. “Bwana, it is dangerous. I cannot go into the bush feeling a way like a blind person. Please bwana. Forgive me for what I have done. Please. Tafazali sana, bwana.” The Swahili was lost on Kokopoulos. But the boy’s pleas pleased him into further sadism. “You will not be allowed back into the camp until you have brought the gun back to me. Go and find it, there’s a good boy, Martini.”
Just then a lion bellowed an unmistakable deep bass call of regal wrath and authority which overwhelmed all other sounds of the night and silenced the men around their fire. Martin yelled out to them for help and the manyapara rushed across the camp, past the tethered mules, to where Kokopoulos sat facing the bewildered boy.
“What is it bwana? Why is the boy Martin shouting. What is it young man…?”
“Mind your own business. I am teaching him a good lesson. Never to leave my gun unattended. It could save his life one day. And mine. And yours. And the others.”
‘He left your gun? Where?’
“At the kill.”
“But that is half an hours walk away. In the night! Did you not hear the lion, bwana? It is dangerous for the boy to leave us for the danger of the dark ….”
“Give him one of the lamps.”
“But bwana, that is not right. How can he manage? A boy, with a lamp …? Please bwana, I
shall fetch you the gun at daybreak. It will still be there.”
“Will it? I can tell you it will not. He must go and find it now! The longer he waits the close the lions will approach our camp. They can smell the mules. I need the shotgun in case they come. And come they will.”
The boy, his spindly arms straight by his side, palms turned outward, looked at the manyapara through eyes running with tears, his heart about to tear.
“Come to me, Martin,” said the headman.
“Don’t you dare”, growled Kokopoulos at both as he reached under his wicker safari chair and drew up his rifle.
“Go and find the shotgun. And you get back to the men. Now.”
Martin fell to his knees and the headman rushed to lift him as he heard the rifle bolt slide back and forward. The former soldier knew there was now a bullet in the breach and then he heard only what he could have known from experience; the click of the safety catch being released. He stood attention. And saluted Kokopoulos. “Permission to stay with the boy, bwana.”
“Yes, if you wish. Go with the boy. Without a lamp.”
“I will stay with him here, bwana.”
“Oh, will you? Then I too will stay where I am.”
Neither the manyapara, nor Kokopoulos spoke again that night. Nor did they sleep. The boy had remained on his knees until he collapsed around the headman’s feet.
And that is how the dawn found all three, one prone on the ground, one standing and one seated.
*
The scene was witnessed in the light by the other men who had kept watch on the stand off from the moment their headman had run to Martin’s rescue. They had not dared to intervene but neither had they returned to their fire, except to replenish it and their employer’s as a deterrent to marauders.
The men had sat between the tethered mules and the sadistic scene absorbing its message; the bwana was not quite right in the head nor in the heart.
When the sun had cleared the horizon a listless gaggle broke camp and loaded the mules for the next stage of the safari south. Not a word was spoken until Kokopoulos declared, ‘Right, let us go.’ To which the manyapara replied, ‘What of the shotgun.’
“Ha! I went to collect it myself while you were all asleep. Useless bunch of ink faces.”
‘What did he say?’ called out one of the men. “Alisema nini?”
“Alisema seesee ni watu bure; tunayo sura la weeno.”
(He said we were a useless ink-faced lot.)
“What was all that about?” asked Kokopoulos, yet unable to understand Swahili and dependant in speech and hearing on his two German speakers, Martin and the manyapara.
“I told them that you want to make good headway today.”
“That’s the spirit. Lets move.”
*
The line of men and mules started to scale the incline of the escarpment. Kokopoulos led from the front and had to keep urging the line behind to keep up with him. The men’s minds seared with the silver heat of the risen sun. Their eyes were unwilling to look beyond the haze of dust. All heads were down. All spirits low. All except the spirit of Kokopoulos. He felt on top of the world as he observed the Great Plains stretch below the escarpment to the hills around Monduli and up to the peak of Meru. He was hoping to see Kilimanjaro beyond that extraordinary mountain whose height at about 15,000 feet was made up only of a fragment of its former cone. In his mind’s eye he projected geometrically a point in the heavens and reckoned on at least double its present height. The invisible mound of Kibo, at just under 20,000 feet would have been in Meru’s shadow in the days when the rift valley was being formed. They were in the rift valley now and would keep to their right its west wall. What a country! What magnificence. What power of creation, what munificence of nature. He knew, from his reading, of the other volcanoes around; the great caldera of Ngorongoro, The spewing cone of Oldonyo Lengai; the mountain of God. He prayed aloud: “Great God, Father of us all, I give thanks for all this beauty. Give me strength to make a success of my life in this, your most beautiful land. Give me patience to civilize the natives, your children too, whom you have put in my care. Amin.”
*
Kokopoulos took his civilizing mission evangelically; after all he had been educated at the Lutheran Seminary in Damascus.
On graduation, he joined the college faculty. His tutors had instilled in him the way of the Lord whose worker he had become: O thoolos tou Theou. (th as in the, th as in theatre)
And the Word for KK became German. And therein lay the way, the truth, and the life. Who, in the 1920’s, would deny that German culture was the very highest in the world? Literature, music and science was best mastered in German and to be German in thought word and deed was to be Godly; chosen by God as His soldiers. To do battle for Him and for culture. Kulturkampf. And Kokopoulos had kultur by the spade full. Well read in the Arts and Sciences he would bring light to darkness and nowhere on earth deserved the light more than the continent of Afrika; the dark continent.
And so he strode out in the light of an African day happy in the knowledge that he had that dark night taught his natives the very first rule that was to govern their relationship to him: Obedience. Through Fear. And in fearful obedience they would grow by his knowledge. Was he not the very model of modern man? Well versed in the best Germany could offer he would bring progress to his people.
He looked behind to see them left behind. But what could he expect of this sorry band? Look how they dragged their feet! Lazy creatures. I shall make modern men of them and the method is through work.’
He paused as he recalled the everlasting debate at college about the work ethic in particular and the Protestant ethic in general. This appeared to pose insurmountable problems for some priest-lecturers in his faculty: the basic principles of the Christian ethic was founded on the conception of goodwill to others; ‘love thy neighbour as thyself.’ When applied to international politics by those who believed themselves to be in the mainstream of the German intellectual world the problem of reconciling the unending struggle for a Greater Germany with the Christian love of one’s neighbour could only be solved by rejecting some if not all principles of Christianity This solution was being formulated at the turn of the century a train of thought which minimized the principles of Christianity in order to free Germany from the moral inhibitors hindering the application of Deutschland Uber Alles.
When himself a tutor he recoiled before too bold an enunciation of this position but, as a Germanophile, took the road of thinking that everything which was good for Germany was also for the good of Christianity; his was a Germanised Christianity and culture.
Kokopoulos reached the top of the escarpment well ahead of the mule train. Three telegraph poles came into view. He now saw them as his guides in the otherwise bewildering vastness of the plain of knowledge.
The first was his beloved Pastor Lehman whose book, God of the Germans he had translated. He recalled his prayer published during the war: “It might come to pass that we succumb in this fight of righteousness and purity against falsehood and deceit. But should this happen let us assert before the Almighty that we should all die happy in the consciousness of having defended Germany against the world.”
The second was Germany’s celebrated novelist, Thomas Mann of whom Kokopoulos knew as recipient of an honorary doctorate from the University of Bonn and as member of the League of Nations Committee on Art and Literature: Mann stated that “Culture is a spiritual organization of the world which does not exclude blood savagery. It sublimifies the demonic. It is above morality, reason and science.”
The third, Alfred Rosenberg, chief editor of Volkischer Beobachter, avidly read in the seminary’s common room:
“All German education must be based on the recognition of the fact that it is not Christianity that has brought us morality, but Christianity that owes its enduring values to the German character.”
And though a Hian by birth, Kokopoulos was German in character ever since his character
building sojourn in Lutheran Damascus.
*
He expected to see the mule train appear behind him, but there was still no sign of it. ‘Lazy bastards.’ So he moved on a little further to take in the view from a hillock beside the track in whose direction south he faced. To his left a vast mbuga, a chaos of trees, shrubs and grasses. To his right in the extreme distance the emerald cliff line of the Great Rift. He knew it so well north from the Palestinian tip of the Red Sea, to Sodom and Gomorrah and into the crystalline emulsion of the Dead Sea whence the valley met the blessed Jordan running down from the heights above Galilee. The cradle of Christianity. Many were the times he would drop to his knees begging for the Son to appear. Once in a boat on the Sea he thought he saw Him walking on the waters. Then, swimming in the Jordan and calling for John’s blessing, he thought he felt the Prophet’s hand upon his head pressing him gently into the holy stream. And floating in the Dead Sea he re-affirmed his faith in the arms of an angel.
*
Angelos. Angeloothee Mou. That is how he first addressed the woman he was to marry. She was angelic, but in the one regard he had not bargained for; she did not enjoy the physical side of affection. But she accepted his hand in marriage when he came to her house and threatened her parents with a hand-gun which he said he would use if they did not give their blessing to the union he proposed. The family was not willing to call his bluff and so the marriage went ahead as he had planned. But not before he had established a farm in the wilderness (where concessions of land were priced at the level he could afford) thus proving his good intentions as a provider.