Changed was the City of the Snake, the place of kings. Upon the site where
had been the hive of huts wrapped in the green arms of the banana
plantation, laboured under the incandescent sun gangs of prisoners under
armed guards upon the building of larger huts laid out in streets, broad
and geometrical, lined with correct ditches for drainage. Around the
outskirts here and there remained charred posts.
Upon the hill of MKoffo was a palisade enclosing the barracks of two
companies of the askaris and two guns. No brown cones peeped like
candle-snuffers above the sea of green fronds upon the hills of the tombs
of kings, but from the sacred hill of Kawa Kendi commanding the approach
to the valley rose, black against the sky, the triangle of the roof frame
of a large bungalow; around the crown of the hill was a stout palisade
through which grinned in the sun the muzzles of a Nordenfeldt and a
pom-pom; and outside upon a levee strutted rigidly four sentries night and
day, a perpetual reminder to the passer-by below of efficient vigilance.
Within was a methodical formation of round huts dominated by a square one;
at the far end, and in solitary grandeur beneath the Imperial flag upon a
roughly-hewn flag-pole, was a green marquee tent, the temporary quarters
of the Kommandant.
Under the tent verandah at the rear where were his private quarters sat zu
Pfeiffer with a towel tucked around his neck upon which was scattered
inch-lengths of hair. Sergeant Schultz sheared deftly with clippers like a
reaper in a field of corn. When he had completed the final trimming behind
the ears, he stood aside with the air of an artist viewing his work.
“Is that pleasing to your Excellence?”
Zu Pfeiffer ran a hand around his skull.
“Ya, that is better and cooler, sergeant.”
With a professional air Schultz whisked around the Kommandant’s neck with
a light brush, untucked the towel and brushed him down. As zu Pfeiffer
rose Bakunjala appeared with a broom of small branches and a pan and
proceeded to sweep the earthen floor. Schultz neatly folded up the towel,
placed it on the chair, and stood at attention.
“Is that all, Excellence?”
“Ya, sergeant. Take a cigar.”
“Thank you, Excellence!”
The sergeant selected one, saluted and departed. Zu Pfeiffer lounged in a
basket chair. The usual water bag and syphon were suspended at his elbow
above sparklet and brandy bottles, and a box of cigars. Around him on the
floor was a litter of papers, envelopes and documents. On his wrist
sparkled the jewelled bracelet and between fingers, one of which bore the
large diamond which had earned him his native name, was an official
document bearing the Imperial Eagles.
As he read he smiled and patted his left moustache approvingly. Officially
the authorities would not comply with his request made before leaving
Ingonya for two more companies of askaris with white non-commissioned
officers and two more guns; but unofficially he was informed that they
would be supplied later and that the authorities were pleased. He picked
up a private letter and re-read it. Then he smiled again, a sneering twist
remaining at the corner of the mouth. Always he was informed by
sympathetic friends and an agency of the whereabouts and doings of
Lucille. On the 1st of August she had been due at Wiesbaden.
He threw the letter on the table with an irritable gesture and scowled as
he drank. The arrival of the mail always brought vivid regrets for the
glories and comforts he was missing by being condemned to war with “dirty
swines of niggers.” That was part of the penalty he had had to pay for
being a gentleman in a land of dollar grubbers, yet a matter to be written
up against the account of Lucille, the entzückend Lucille. He must have
been verrückt, he reflected savagely. The delicate lips softened in
ludicrous contrast to the brutal outline of a cropped skull. The blare of
a trumpet disturbed his reveries, reveries which were apt to rankle until
among his satellites went the word that the Eater-of-men was possessed by
the demon once more.
After he had elegantly finished a small cup of café cognac and a
cigarette, Sergeant Schultz strutted up, saluted, and at a nod from zu
Pfeiffer handed a document to the Kommandant, a roster of the chiefs who
had submitted with the approximate number of their followers. Officially
there were five chiefs with some six thousand men who had nominally
accepted the new ruler, each one of whom had to leave as hostage for his
fidelity a son, who lived under guard in the village beneath the guns.
Zu Pfeiffer needed the extra companies and white men to establish stations
at various points with the object of gradually extending the sphere of
military occupation. Zu Pfeiffer left nothing, as far as he could foresee,
to chance; his maxim was to conserve his force to the utmost, to attain
his objective at the least possible cost in men and material. The policy
of terrorisation was based on the reasoning that eventually
schrecklichkeit saved both the conqueror and the conquered bloodshed and
trouble; for if the enemy were not so impressed with the fact that all
resistance was utterly useless, he would resort to the sporadic risings
which would entail more slaughter on both sides. Zu Pfeiffer, acting on
the teachings of the German masters, sought to make war psychologically as
well as militarily, economically as well as geographically. Hence his
dramatic step in the overthrow of the idol in person, and the care with
which he planned to impress each chief and native with his omnipotence and
magic. This system of the application of political science as well as of
military science, of course, was sound, save for a temperamental error:
the lack of sufficient imagination to realize the unknown quantity of
chance, the inevitable mistake of military scientists who are loath to
admit the artist to their counsels, exemplified by men of genius, such as
Napoleon and Leonardo da Vinci, who were both mathematicians and artists.
In zu Pfeiffer’s case, as in others of his type, the motivating principle
was not bourgeois greed of material gain for himself; gain he could afford
to despise in his wealth; such would have been contrary to the code of a
gentleman. While he had not hesitated for a moment to destroy his rival,
Birnier, he would not touch with one finger any of his goods; for that
reason had he given permission to the corporal to take Birnier’s
equipment, so that he would not even be contaminated by the possession of
them, a temperamental error again which had led to Birnier’s escape.
The driving power in his caste and tribe was love of power to an excess
masked with portentous solemnity under the cloak of benefiting this people
and the peoples of the world; forcing them to have broad streets and
sanitary arrangements, compelling them to laugh, to sing, and to be happy
whether they would or no: an urge which is the curse of the world, the
impulse to interfere in other folk’s affairs, to teach them, to make them
to know the true God, the right way of living, the right way of doing
everything from the rising of the first sun of consciousness to that happy
crack of doom when our planet tries to enforce its orbit upon some other
planet.
Zu Pfeiffer pinched a cigar tip, lighted it meticulously and considered
the roster.
“Sergeant, this man—what’s the animal’s name? Kalomato—has his son
surrendered himself?”
“No, Excellence. The man says that he has fled the country.”
“Where does he come from?”
“The neighbourhood, Excellence.”
“That means that his son is with the rebels?”
“Probably not, Excellence. He is very young, they say.”
“That does not matter. Sequester all the chief’s property. If he won’t
give it up let the askaris deal with him. If that doesn’t work, have him
shot.”
“Excellence!”
For such obstinate cases zu Pfeiffer had fallen upon the custom of serving
two purposes by handing over the victim to the mercies of his askaris
which whetted their sadistic appetites and usually secured the desired
revelation of the whereabouts of the hidden ivory or other goods under the
torture of the burning feet, and divers other ingenious methods. Of late
this practice had proved so satisfactory that the mere threat was usually
sufficient.
“This man,” continued zu Pfeiffer tapping the roster with his long nail,
“his son is here?”
“Ja, Excellence.”
“Has he paid the tithe due?”
“No, Excellence. He refuses.”
“Have the son shot.”
“Excellence!”
“Any report this morning?”
“Ja, Excellence. A Wamungo spy brings news that a white man entered the
country from the south.”
“Description?”
“They say he is a trader, Excellence, coming from the Kivu direction, but
the savage cannot give any satisfactory description. It is the first white
he has seen, he says.”
“He won’t be the last!” snapped zu Pfeiffer with a twitch of the left
sentry moustache. “Saunders, possibly. If so he should be here shortly to
report. Well?”
“The King and the few men left with him are in hiding, Excellence, in
dense forest. They are demoralized and quarrel among themselves. Many are
coming to surrender, for they say that you, Excellence, have eaten their
god.”
“Ach!” said zu Pfeiffer with satisfaction. “What did I tell you,
sergeant?”
“Your Excellence was correct in every respect.”
“Um! Pity I can’t spare a company. That would settle them before they have
a chance to reorganize. Ach, but they haven’t the sense, the animals, to
do that.… Parade, sergeant.”
Schultz saluted.
“Ready, Excellence.”
Zu Pfeiffer rose, took up his gold-mounted sjambok, and the two walked
around the big marquee to the front where between the orderly lines of
huts those askaris not on duty were drawn up for inspection. The sergeant
barked. Bayonets flashed as they presented arms. Another bark and they
ported arms. Zu Pfeiffer walked down the line inspecting buttons, bolts,
and rifles as meticulously as he had lighted his cigar. The fifteenth
barrel he thrust away petulantly and flicked the askari’s face with his
sjambok. The muscles of the man’s face twitched as the blow came and the
eyes bulged, but he did not flinch.
“Twenty-five, sergeant!”
“Excellence!”
Zu Pfeiffer passed on. When the inspection was finished he stood rigidly
smoking, coldly watching Schultz dismiss the men. Then he stalked down the
hill with Schultz slightly in the rear, followed by a big black Munyamwezi
sergeant-major, towards the opposite hill, of MKoffo. But at the bottom of
where there were some half-constructed huts he paused.
“The women, sergeant?”
“The large hut, Excellence. Two hundred as ordered.”
“No women of chiefs?”
“No, Excellence. Those attending on the hostages are housed apart.”
Zu Pfeiffer strode towards the hut indicated which stood near to the edge
of a rased banana plantation. Two sentries without the fence presented
arms stiffly and remained immobile. Within the compound were some sixty or
more young girls, mostly having the black complexion of the slave type.
The chattering and giggling ceased as the tall form of the dreaded
Eyes-in-the-hands stood in the gate. A slight smile flirted his lips.
From the deep violet of the hut interior darted a young girl into the
sunlight. At the sight of the white men she poised on her toes, one foot
forward and hands extended as if about to whirl into a dance, staring with
the curiosity of a fawn.
Tall for a native maid, the light bronze of her immature breasts revealed
that she was of the Wongolo ruling caste. Around her slender neck was a
circlet of bright blue beads. As zu Pfeiffer stiffened and stared she
wheeled and fled into the hut.
“Gott im Himmel!” he muttered. “The body of Lucille in Carmen!”
“Who is that woman?” he demanded of Schultz.
“I don’t know, Excellence,” replied the sergeant and spoke to the black
sergeant-major. “She is the daughter of the chief Bamana, Excellence,
visiting these other women. I will have her removed.”
“I will not have the sense of caste abused,” said zu Pfeiffer, gazing into
the hut. “That is not policy. Have her sent to the fort, sergeant, and
placed under guard.”
“Excellence!”
Zu Pfeiffer swung on his heels and strode out and up the hill of MKoffo.
The inspection was more hurried than usual that day. Then he returned to
the hill of Kawa Kendi to hold court in the big marquee tent. After a
lunch and a long siesta in the heat of the noonday he strolled around the
village superintending the rasing of huts and the staking out of the new
village which was to rise upon the ashes of the old one, a concrete
example of the wisdom and power of the new lord, Eyes-in-the-hands.
Under squads of askaris gangs of prisoners, criminal and political, bound
by a light chain about each neck, laboured at clearing away charred stumps
and debris, while other natives portered in saplings and loads of grass,
each village which had submitted sending its allotted quota.
Trumpets blared. The keepers of the coughing monsters made magical dances
with their fire sticks up on the hill of Kawa Kendi. The black, white and
red totem of the conqueror fluttered to earth like a wounded bird. Night
closed like a black lid placed upon the steaming cauldron of the sun.
After dinner zu Pfeiffer sat in his private tent at the rear of the
marquee drinking brandy. Upon a camp table covered by a violet cloth was
the portrait in the ivory frame at which he gazed as he smoked. The blue
eyes and the feminine lips softened as sentimentally as any sex-starved
Puritan virgin; perhaps not in spite of, but because of, a mediæval code
as senseless as the native system of tabu, for natural emotions suppressed
find an outlet in some form.
From outside came the twitter and hum of the forest, the rhythm of frogs,
the dim bleating of a goat and the distant wailing of the women’s death
lament. Zu Pfeiffer drank and smoked and stared at the portrait in the
ivory frame. Once he slapped irritably at a mosquito which had escaped the
double net over the tent door. A wave of emotion seemed to well within
him. He looked as if he were about to blubber as leaning over the table he
peered intently at the pictured face and whispered:
“Nur einmal noch möcht ich dich sehen,
Und sinken vor dir aufs Knie
Und sterbend zu dir sprechen:
‘Madam, ich liebe Sie!’ …
“Lucille! … Ach, Lucille!”
He drew himself back with a jerk, drank his brandy at a gulp and called
angrily:
“Bakunjala!”
The flutter of sand preceded a gasped:
“Bwana!”
Zu Pfeiffer gave him an irritable command. Four minutes elapsed during
which he gazed steadily at the portrait. He turned at the slither of feet.
Bright blue beads glittered in the lamplight as the daughter of Bamana
sank upon her heels.