The Other Side of Silence (19 page)

Hanna nods, feeling her throat constrict.

“The only more or less civilised place is the capital town of
Windhoek on the central plateau, and even that has fewer than one
thousand inhabitants.”

Hanna, who has been trying to listen demurely, can no longer
contain her enthusiasm. “I have read,” she says, “that there are
three roads running from Windhoek. There is a rough road past
places called Okahandja and Otjimbingwa to the coast, another south
to Rehoboth and Mariental to Karasburg, and a third north to
Omaruru, Otjiwarongo, Outjo and Tsumeb in Hereroland.” She stops to
catch her breath. “Have you ever heard such beautiful names, Frau
Sprandel?”

A small titter of giggles and coughs from behind the table.

“I’m afraid it’s only the names that, to some people, may sound
beautiful,” the regal lady says in a reprimanding tone of voice,
but it does not sound altogether humourless. “My understanding is
that it is mostly inhospitable desert.”

“I love the sun, Frau Sprandel.”

“I must warn you that it is a climate of extremes, Fraulein. It
will not be an easy life.” Another calculating pause. “Furthermore,
it is dangerous. Six years ago there was a war between our people
and the war-mongering Hereros in the north of the territory. Many
of our colonists were murdered.” A brief clearing of her throat.
“Fortunately quite a few thousand of the Hereros were also
exterminated, and soon after that a widespread cattle disease
dislodged most of them from the land and forced them into
constructive employment on the farms.” Her eyes appear to look
right through Hanna. “But from dispatches out there we learn that
hostilities are once again building up. In due course there may
well be another war. For the moment Germany entertains good
relations with some of the wiser leaders, who realise that without
us they are doomed. But there are some savages among them” – she
briefly consults her notes and shakes her head – “with names
no Christian person can hope to pronounce, and who will not learn.
Should they ever succeed in fomenting a general uprising among all
the tribes of the land, our garrison will be stretched to the
limit. So it is only fair I should give you due warning.” This time
the pause seems almost interminable. “Are you still serious about
going to such a place?”

“Oh yes, I am, Frau Sprandel. I’ve read everything about it I
could lay my hands on.”

“The work will be extremely exacting.”

“I shall do any honest work expected of me.”

“Are you by any chance engaged to be married?”

Hanna shakes her head.

“You realise some of the men offering work to immigrant women
may also have an interest in…finding a companion, a spouse.”

Hanna swallows but keeps her face straight. “If it is a good man
I will not have any objection, Frau Sprandel.”

“And what, in your eyes, is a good man?”

“Someone, I hope, who will have some respect for me.”

Another ripple along the table, but there is little mirth in
it.

“That is a good Christian sentiment,” comments Frau Sprandel,
fingering the collar of her fur coat. “But one cannot expect too
much refinement or delicacy in a colony of that nature, you
appreciate that?”

Hanna breathes in deeply. “Some of my employers over the years
have not been very dehcate either, Frau Sprandel. I think I can
handle that.”

There follows a long whispered consultation along the table.
Then Frau Sprandel turns back to Hanna. “Now that you have heard
our questions, is there anything you would like to ask of us?”

Hanna pauses. Then she asks very calmly and seriously, “Please,
Frau Sprandel, will there be palm trees in South-West Africa?”

This time the laughter is more generous.

“I have told you that it is a desert land, Fraulein,” replies
the regal lady in the middle of the table. “I think we can safely
assume that there will be the odd oasis with palm trees.”

“In that case I shall go,” says Hanna.

“We haven’t offered you a place yet,” Frau Sprandel pointedly
reminds her.

Hanna blushes scarlet. Now she has ruined everything. “I’m
sorry, Frau Sprandel, I didn’t mean…It’s just…When I listened to
the sea in my shell – I got it from a little girl on the
Weserstrand – and it wasn’t just the sea, but palm trees too – and
from that day I
knew
that if there was such a place I must
go to it. So please take me, I’ll do anything you want.”

“Can you make any contribution to your passage?” the woman
asks.

“A contribution…?”

“In cash.”

“No. No, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise…”

“Third class,” says Frau Sprandel and turns first left, then
right, to her colleagues. “Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“You may go,” announces Frau Sprandel. And as Hanna stumbles out
in a daze, forgetting even to thank them, the furred lady adds a
flippant rider: “As long as you don’t expect too much of your palm
trees.”

∨
The Other Side of Silence
∧

T
here are very few
palm trees, all of them tattered and frayed by the wind, when the
women disembark at Swakopmund from the sloop which has brought them
from the
Hans Woermann
, at anchor in the deep sea. Hanna is
hardly capable of observation, drenched to the bone by the angry
waves through which the small sloop has had to plough. Several of
the passengers’ boxes and bundles have disappeared into the inky
sea. Hanna is too numb to care. It is a cold grey day, as if they
have never left Germany. There must be some mistake. But she
refuses to give up hope; this is only the point of arrival, it
doesn’t count, the oasis will be inland, she must be patient.

After the long weeks at sea the land under her feet appears to
heave and sway. She has to catch hold of a railing to steady
herself. Closing her eyes against the fog she can see the palm
trees of her Children’s Bible again, and the real ones of her
dreams. From her pocket she extracts the shell that has come all
the way with her, from midwinter to this angry midsummer. She
presses it against her ear and smiles, because the sea is still
there, the sibilant sea.

She wanders away from the others, but is called back. They are
shuttled into groups of ten and taken to a large building in ornate
colonial style, where they are ushered, one by one, into a series
of offices. This is where they will meet their future employers,
their prospective husbands. For this, she knows, they all know, is
what they have come for. And she is resigned to it.

At first sight, as she comes into the small office that smells
of dust and tobacco and stale sweat, the prospect is not inspiring.
The man sits with his back to her. A middle-aged peasant, is her
first impression. His whole body, his ill-fitting jacket, the back
of his narrow head, everything defines him as a loser – a
mean-spirited, vicious, hard-drinking, abusive loser.

He gets up to face her. She goes past him to the empty chair
next to him, and sits down. He clears his throat and turns his
dirty hat in his hands, then he sits down again. The official
behind the large desk reads out the man’s name, but she isn’t
paying attention and only absently picks up something sounding like
Grossvogel.

And then he reads, “Lotte Mehring.”

“I am not Lotte Mehring,” she says, flaring up.

“That is what it says here.”

“Then it is a mistake.”

“What is your name?”

“Hanna.” She will add the surname now lost to us.

The official looks flustered. “But here it says Lotte
Mehring.”

“Then you must please change it.”

“I’m not allowed to. I can only go by the register.”

Unexpectedly, the matter is taken out of his hands. The man
sitting next to her grins in her direction. “Hanna,” he says,
leaning forward in a show of familiarity. “Now that’s a good name
for a woman. Hanna.” He grins again. Several of his teeth are
missing, the rest are tobacco-stained. He has a bristly moustache.
His face is a dark reddish brown; but there is a white rim around
his narrow forehead where the hat has kept out the sun. He puts one
large blunt paw on her thigh. He smells of beer and chicken shit.
“Well, Hanna. You are to be my wife then,” he announces.

The official tries to say something, but he has become quite
irrelevant to them.

At first she feels like bolting, blindly, no matter where, the
way she felt that day during her illness when Pastor Ulrich put his
hand under the bedcovers. She cannot explain it to herself: only
minutes ago she was prepared to resign herself to almost anything.
Then why this onrush of panic? Perhaps it is brought on by Lotte’s
name, by remembering everything that might have happened, should
have happened, and now is slipping for ever put of reach. She can
barely contain the rage and resentment that seethe in her against
this moment which will decide the rest of her life. In the
debilitating knowledge that he is the very last she wants, yet the
only one she may ever be allowed to lay claim to.

But she knows she cannot resist them openly; she must stay calm
whatever the cost. She dare not antagonise them too much. Not right
now. She takes a deep breath and says, “I am sorry. But I cannot be
your wife.”

He stares in disbelief, his eyes bulging slightly. The yellow
whites are streaked with red. “What do you mean?” he asks. “Why
not?”

“Because you’re ugly and old,” she says.

“Now,” says the official behind the desk. “Fraulein Lotte, or
Hanna, or whatever your name may be, you should be grateful that
there is someone who wants you.” But her stare appears to unnerve
him. He looks at the middle-aged suitor. “You are of course free to
change your mind, Herr Grossvogel.”

The man rises and possessively places his hand on her hard
shoulder. “I think
she
will change her mind,” he says. “All
it takes is a little firmness. There are ways and means.” Again his
ingratiating grin. “And four days on the train can make quite a
difference. You did say four days, didn’t you, Meinherr?”

“Four days,” the official confirms. He gets up behind the desk,
now visibly in a hurry to put the formalities behind him before
they are bedevilled by further complications. “Well, my best wishes
to you both.”

But a few hours later, as the train pulls out of the station
under a sky bleeding like a slaughtered carcass, there is an early
hitch. The man to whom she has been assigned pulls Hanna into their
compartment and slides the door shut. Unceremoniously he begins to
unbutton his corduroy trousers. On the bunk opposite another couple
is already fucking.

Hanna remains standing with her back pressed against the door.
“Do you have palm trees?” she asks in a strained voice.

He gawks at her. “What the hell’s me matter with you? Where do
the palm trees come in?”

“Do you have palm trees where you live?” she repeats.

“Woman,” he says, “don’t waste my time. Take off your bloody
clothes.”

“I shall let you do this thing to me,” she says, “but only if
you can give me palm trees in the sun. Otherwise no.”

That is when he slaps her in the face.

And Hanna slaps him back.

This he has not expected. With his hand to his stinging cheek he
retreats out of her way.

The naked man on the bunk opposite pushes himself up on his
arms. “Will you two shut up and get on with it?” he asks before he
plunges down on his woman again.

“But did you hear that?” whines Herr Grossvogel. “She doesn’t
want to let me.” In a sudden new surge of fury he lurches towards
Hanna.

It is a very confused scene that follows. Hanna is fighting with
everything she can muster, scratching and biting and kicking,
butting him with her head, all of this in silence, except for the
violent rasping of her breath. When she fiercely raises a knee into
his groin he folds double, begins to retch. She turns round to
escape. But then the man opposite joins the fray. Grabbing Hanna
from behind he hurls her to the floor. And suddenly the other woman
also jumps up and jerks at Hanna’s long hair. Between the three of
them they manage to force Hanna down. It is in fact the woman who
tears off her clothes and grabs hold of her feet while Herr
Grossvogel kicks off his trousers to take the plunge. As soon as he
has her pinned down on the soiled floor the two naked lovers resume
their own coupling.

But Hanna is not giving up. Once the other couple are again
engrossed in their own actions and while the man on top of her is
still fumbling to find his way, she manages to gain a grip on him
where it hurts, and rolls from under him. Clutching her torn
clothes to her breast she pulls the door open.

“Fuck off!” her would-be husband shouts after her. “I don’t want
you anyway.”

She runs down the narrow corridor to the next coach. There she
steps back into what is left of her clothes and remains standing at
a window, her forehead pressed against the cool hard pane, seeing
nothing of the darkening bare landscape streaming past.

How she aches to be back on the sea.

∨
The Other Side of Silence
∧

A
t midnight, as you
cross the equator, the sea sighs and turns in its sleep; and then
there is a stillness unmatched by any other silence you have ever
known. It would not surprise you if, as in ancient legends, you
suddenly found yourself going right over the edge of the world into
a void too vast to understand; and what lies at the other side of
it is entirely unknown, unknowable. The sea is a magical darkness,
shot through with lines and flashes of phosphor. And there are
flying fish. Nothing is improbable any more.

∨
The Other Side of Silence
∧

I
n the narrow train
corridor, as the night wears on, Hanna is joined by two or three
other women, later by more; after some time there are ten or twelve
of them standing close together, not talking, but seeking comfort
in the closeness of other female bodies. At least they are out of
it, she thinks. They have survived.