The Other Side of Silence (32 page)

After this inquisition, when they make their final halt among
the koppies, Hanna beckons to Katja and Kahapa to follow her away
from the others who are relieved to rest awhile in the shade of the
thorn trees. She goes down on her haunches and starts drawing on a
patch of sand with a long white thorn. Here is the fort with its
garrison of twenty-four soldiers and three grooms for the horses.
Here is their little company of ten, plus the two batmen whom she
brackets separately, with a question mark beside them.

Right. Now look carefully. This is what we shall do
…she
indicates to Katja.

“You can’t be serious,” objects the girl. “Hanna, this is not a
stray patrol in the desert. It is an army garrison in a fortified
place. They outnumber us almost three to one. They have months of
warfare behind them. Some of them years.”

So much the better. I promise you I won’t take unnecessary
chances. But victory now will give our people all the confidence
they need to face the tests that still lie ahead
.

“We cannot just charge in!” Katja persists.

Absolutely not. That is why we’re planning it all in advance.
We have most of the information we need. Of course there are
decisions we can only take once we’re there. We have to leave room
for improvisation, but we are not unprepared. And we have all the
advantage of surprise on our side
.

Kahapa observes in silence. Against her own better judgement,
Katja is drawn into the passion of Hanna’s convictions. With
nothing less than awe she watches the woman elaborating her
sketches and her scribblings on the sand. Hanna herself is
conscious of an inexplicable deep contentment which has been
dormant in her for years: that quiet, assured joy she used to feel
on those distant evenings when she was huddled over the chessboard
with Herr Ludwig in the dark amber light of the lamp in his study.
This feels like an extension of the same game, although she is very
deeply aware that it is infinitely more dangerous, and the stakes
are higher. It is, in a very real way, a matter of life and
death.

“How you are sure it will happen like this?” is all Kahapa asks
when she has outlined her whole campaign to them. It requires old
Tookwi and the six women to move ahead to the fort – Hanna and
Katja and Gisela, the strong woman Nerina, the brooding Koo, the
medicine crone Kamma – while Kahapa, Himba and T’Kamkhab will
remain behind here among the koppies with the two batmen to prepare
an ambush.

“But if they catch you in the fort?” he asks angrily. “How can
we help you then? You are six women, they are twenty-four men.”

The numbers are not everything
, she insists.
We’ll
arrange for a dozen or more of them to go out on an expedition,
perhaps two expeditions. With the others we can deal in ones and
twos and threes. It is more important for you to he here, to set up
your ambush, to wipe out the soldiers we send here
.

“And if you need me there? How I know you call me?”

There will be signals they can use, she assures him, and
launches into a meticulous cataloguing of what she has in mind.

“You think of everything!” he exclaims, and this time there is a
hint of real admiration in his voice.

First tell me where you think I’m wrong
, she cautions.
Tell me how we can improve on it. We cannot go ahead before
we’ve discussed all the possibilities
.

A new round of discussions begins. Kahapa and Katja go through
every detail with her, come up with a few refinements, but finally
approve of the whole campaign.

Katja is the one who, even after all the discussion, remains the
most apprehensive. “It looks fine here in your pictures on the
sand,” she says. “But what happens when there are real people
involved? We simply cannot afford to risk too much too soon,
Hanna!” she pleads.

We’ll never know what we can do unless we try
.

“But people may die.
We
can die.”

Trust me
.

After a last brief hesitation, with the flicker of a wan smile,
Katja concedes, “All right. I trust you.”

Hanna leans over cautiously to obliterate her scrawls from the
sand with the flat of her hand before they get up to return to the
others. Once again the whole plan is presented, once again there is
lengthy discussion. But at last they can move into action.

In final preparation for the approach to the fort they fire a
large number of shots into the air, in irregular volleys, to create
the impression of a skirmish. Now they are ready.

Lukas and David are left behind, still unarmed, among the
koppies with Kahapa and his two men; they keep the horses with
them.

Very slowly the oxcart begins to pick its way across the
difficult terrain, accompanied by the women and the rainmaker. Once
again Gisela has to bed down on the cart, this time under protest:
she has undergone a quite startling transformation, as if in the
violence of the encounter two nights ago she has found a passion
and an energy of which there was little sign in her former
lethargy. All the guns and ammunition won from the German commando
are hidden under her bedclothes, because to avoid suspicion only
four guns, three Mausers and a straight-pull Mannlicher, are openly
in evidence on the cart.

It takes a good two hours to get through the hills. From there,
at a distance of another few hours, they can make out the squat
brown fort perched on a steep hilltop.

“They’ll see us coming all the way,” warns Nerina.

That is the idea
, Hanna makes Katja answer.
We don’t
want them to be surprised; that will make them feel
threatened
.

There are sentries posted on the high front wall, watching them
like falcons through binoculars as they approach. At a slow steady
pace the two oxen trundle along, led by Tookwi. The women walk in
two small groups, on either side.

When they are about a hundred metres from the gate it swings
open and two soldiers on horseback come out, guns at the ready on
the pommels in front of them. Hanna and Katja move to the front of
their small company. The horsemen stop, scrutinising them,
suspicious, apprehensive, challenging.

Katja tells them about Hanna’s predicament and recounts the same
story as before: the wife of the visiting dignitary stricken down
by what seems to be a serious illness, their need to get her to a
doctor. But this time she adds more elaborate explanation: on their
way here, about half an hour beyond the hills over there, she says,
they were overtaken by a band of armed Namas and lost two members
of their escort before the attackers fled into the desert.

“A patrol from our fort was sent out in that direction several
days ago,” says one of the horsemen. “Did you not meet them on the
way?”

Katja shakes her head. “No. But we did hear a lot of shooting
more to the west, two days ago. Perhaps they also ran into
Namas.”

“Those vermin are everywhere,” says the soldier.

“The group that attacked us cannot have gone very far away,”
Katja tells him. “There were quite a few wounded with them and they
moved very slowly.”

“You’d better talk to the captain,” the young man says, new
eagerness lighting up his eyes. “Bring your cart into the
courtyard.”

Several other soldiers await them inside the gate. Despite the
information provided by the batmen, the women find the courtyard
less spacious than they expected; but the large stone well and the
vegetable garden match their description in every detail. Apart
from the barracks there are rows of stables and sheds, all
according to their expectations. While the oxen are outspanned and
the women are still taking stock of their surroundings, the
commanding officer makes his appearance, summoned by two of the
young men in the garrison. Captain Leopold Weiss is lean and
middle-aged, exactly as the two batmen described him, with a bald
head and penetrating eyes the colour of bayonet steel. With a stiff
bow he introduces himself, then stands to attention to hear what
they have to say. Katja repeats her story, trying to sound as
urgent and agitated as she can. “There is another group of women
following us,” she says, inventing as she goes along. “Seven of
them, some already old. Relatives of the pastor at the mission
station. They are worn out, and quite unarmed, because the natives
escorting them ran away one night and took all their food and guns.
We trekked on ahead to look for help. Thank God we found you.”

“How far behind you are they?”

“Probably a full day by now,” says Katja. “They were quite
exhausted and we tried to move on as fast as we could.” Her voice
becomes tearful. “Please, Captain, for God’s sake, they need your
help, you must track down those robbers. It is just by the grace of
the Lord that we escaped death.” A dramatic pause; she drops her
voice. “Or worse.” She clasps her hands in front of her breasts, a
movement that elicits a pale glow from the captain’s eyes. This,
too, is what they have been led to expect, and it suits their
scheme.

Captain Weiss glances up at the sky and makes a quick decision.
“We’ll send out a commando immediately. With some luck they can
find the marauders before dark, and then move on to rescue the
women.” A few quick barks bring soldiers running from all sides.
Hanna calculates that the whole remaining garrison in the small
fort (including three grooms from the stables) must be
assembled.

Six soldiers are dispatched. Hanna hoped that the captain could
be persuaded to send as many as eight, but he will not be swayed.
However, she does succeed in convincing him to send Koo with the
detachment, on horseback and armed with one of the guns, to show
them the way to where the skirmish with the fictitious band of
hostile Namas took place. Her presence will make things much easier
for Kahapa among the koppies.

The little commando canters off and in her mind Hanna crosses
them out. That leaves eighteen soldiers and the grooms.

As if the old woman has read her thoughts, Kamma whispers to
Hanna, “There are too many soldiers for my medicine. I do not have
enough for them all.”

“We do not need to poison all of them,” Katja reminds her on
Hanna’s behalf. “We only need to knock out a few to bring down the
numbers.”

Once the heavy gate has been barricaded behind the departing
commando, the rest of the men turn to their evening chores; the
captain insists that his soldiers will entertain the ladies and
make it a memorable night for them. A sumptuous meal is prepared –
a goat is slaughtered, there is a thick broth, and fresh cabbage
from the garden, and beetroot, and a great flow of beer. The
atmosphere is heavy with festivity. Several toasts are drunk. The
evening may yet turn into an uproarious event. But they have hardly
finished the broth when there is a shout from the sentry outside on
the wall, accompanied by a distant crackling of gunfire. In a
turmoil of shouts and moving bodies soldiers from all sides start
kicking out their chairs, grabbing their guns and running outside
to the two heavy stone staircases that give access to the outside
wall. The women follow. But there is nothing to be seen. The
gunfire continues for a while, far away among the hills, falters,
picks up again; then there are two brief final salvoes of four
shots each, followed by a silence as absolute as the night.

Hanna nudges Katja with an elbow to acknowledge Kahapa’s
message: their small group has wiped out the enemy commando. They
will have to wait for a full account later; but Hanna knows that if
the encounter took place according to plan, Koo would have led the
commando at a very slow pace through the narrow fold among the
koppies where Kahapa and the others were lying in wait to pick off
the one or two soldiers bringing up the rear; at the first shots
Koo would have swung round to bring down the soldier closest to
her, and then the rest of their band would close in. Their task
completed, it is understood that they will remain among the koppies
for a further decision to be taken in the morning.

Captain Weiss attaches a different interpretation to the shots.
“Got them,” he says, but his manner is rather less self-assured
than his words. “It was a long way off. They’ll probably camp there
and go in search of the women in the morning.” He turns to a
subaltern. “Hans, just for safety’s sake, double the guard.”

In more orderly fashion everybody returns to the barracks, where
the table has been set up on trestles. The room is long and low and
rather gloomy in the light of torches mounted in brackets along the
walls. No one seems quite as hungry as before.

“Another toast,” proposes the captain, raising his large mug.
“To His Imperial Majesty’s victorious army.”

There is general, if somewhat forced, acclaim. In the hubbub no
one notices that the two women do not drink.

The mugs are thumped down again on the heavy wooden table. The
food is served by officious young men. One of them, a smooth-faced
youth who seems barely seventeen, keeps on bustling about Katja,
plying her with the choicest morsels, smiling and bowing and
spilling until the captain curtly orders him over to the far side
of the table. But not before the young man has slipped a clumsily
scribbled note under the girl’s serviette. She removes it,
surreptitiously shares it with Hanna.

I must see you. You are so pretty. Werner
.

Hanna grimaces.
Don’t pay attention
, she advises. But she
finds it slightly disturbing to see Katja blush. To direct the
girl’s attention to more pressing business she communicates an
instruction which they have discussed earlier.

Katja, seated beside the captain, half rises from her chair with
a becoming show of modesty, and curtsys in his direction. “Is it
possible,” she asks in her most dulcet tone, “that someone can take
Frau Wunderlich something to eat on the cart? A little broth
perhaps?”