Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur - Страница 6

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From this stronghold the German Commissioner

(Southern Province) wielded the limitless powers of a medieval robber baron. One of the Kaiser's arms, or, more realistically, one of his little fingers, he was answerable only to Governor Schee in Dares Salaam. But Dares Salaam was many torturous miles away, and Governor Schee was a busy man not to be troubled with trivialities. just as long as the Herr Commissioner Herman Fleischer collected the taxes, he was free to collect them in his own sweet way;

though very few of the indigenous inhabitants of the southern province would have described Herman Fleischer's ways as sweet.

At the time that the messenger, carrying the news of the British annexation of New Liverpool, trotted up over the last skyline and saw through the acacia Thorn trees ahead of him the tiny clustered buildings of Mahenge, Herr Fleischer was finishing his midday meal.

A man of large appetite, his luncheon consisted of

20 approximately two pounds of Eisbein, as much pickled cabbage, and a dozen potatoes, all swimming in thick gravy.

Having aroused his taste-buds, he then went on to the sausage. The sausage came by weekly fast-runner from Dodoma in the north, and was manufactured by a man of emus, a Westphalian immigrant who made sausages with the taste of the Black Forest in them. The sausage, and the Hansa beer cooling in its earthenware jug, aroused in Herr Fleischer a delicious nostalgia. He ate not quietly but steadily, and these quantities of food confined within the thick grey corduroy of his tunic and breeches, built up a pressure that squeezed the perspiration from his face and neck, forcing him to pause and mop up at regular intervals.

When he sighed at last and sagged back in his chair, the leather thongs squeaked a little under him. A bubble of trapped gas found its way up through the sausage and passed in genteel emption between his lips. Tasting it, he sighed again in happiness and squinted out from the deep shade of the veranda into the flat shimmering glare of the sunlight.

Then he saw the messenger coming. The man reached the steps of the veranda and squatted down in the sun with his loin-cloth drawn up modestly between his legs. His body was washed shiny black with sweat but his legs were powdered with fine dust to the knees, and his chest swelled and subsided as he drank the thin hot air. His eyes were downcast, he could not look directly at the Bwana Mkuba until his presence was formally acknowledged.

Herman Fleischer-watched him broodingly, his mood evaporating for he had been looking forward to his afternoon siesta and the messenger had spoiled that. He looked away at the low cloud above the hills in the south and sipped his beer. Then he selected a cheroot from the box before him and lit it. The cheroot burned slowly and evenly, restoring a little of his good humour. He smoked it short before flicking the stub over the veranda wall.

"Speak," he grunted, and the messenger lifted his eyes, and gasped with wonder and awe at the beauty and dignity of the Commissioner's person. Although this was ritual admiration, it never failed to stir a faint pleasure in Herr Fleischer.

"I see you, Bwana Mkuba Great Lord," and Fleischer inclined his head slightly. "I bring you greetings from Kalani, headman of Batja, on the Rufiji. You are his father, and he crawls on his belly before you. Your hair of yellow, and the great fatness of your body, blind him with beauty."

Herr Fleischer stirred restlessly in his chair. References to his corpulence, however well-intentioned, always annoyed him. "Speak," he repeated.

"Kalani says thus: "Ten suns ago, a ship came into the delta of the Rufiji, and stopped by the Island of the Dogs, Inja. On the island, the men of this ship have built houses, and above the houses, they have placed on a dead palm tree the cloth of the Insingeese which is of blue and white and red, having many crosses within crosses."

Herr Fleischer struggled upright in his chair and stared at the messenger. The pink of his complexion slowly became cross-veined with red and purple.

"Kalani says also: "Since their coming the voices of their guns have never ceased to speak along the Rufiji river, and there has been a great killing of elephants so that in the noonday the sky is dark with the birds that come for the meat."

Herr Fleischer was thrashing around in his chair, speech was locked in his throat and his face had swollen so it threatened to burst like an over-ripe fruit.

"Kalani says further: "Two white men are on the island.

One is a man who is very thin and young and is therefore of no account. The other white man Kalani has seen only at a great distance but by the redness of this man's face, and by his bulk, he knows in his heart it is Fini.

At the name Herr Fleischer became articulate, if not coherent he bellowed like a bull in rut. The messenger winced, such a bellow from the Bwana Mkuba usually preceded a multiple hanging.

"Sergeant!" The next bellow had form, and Herr Fleischer was on his feet, struggling to clinch the buckle of his belt.

"Rasch!" he roared again. O'Flynn was in German territory again; O'Flynn was stealing German ivory once more and compounding the insult by flying the Union Jack over the Kaiser's domain.

"Sergeant, where the thunder of God are you?" With incredible speed for a fat man Herr Fleischer raced down the long length of the veranda. For three years now, ever since his arrival in Mahenge, the name of Flynn O'Flynn had been enough to ruin his appetite, and produce in him a condition very close to epilepsy.

Around the corner of the veranda appeared the sergeant of the Askari, and Herr Fleischer braked just in time to avert collision.

"A storm patrol," bellowed the Commissioner, blowing a cloud of spittle in his agitation. "Twenty men. Full field packs, and one hundred pounds of ammunition. We leave in an hour."

The sergeant saluted and doubled away across the parade ground. A minute later a bugle began singing with desperate urgency.

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