Temple turned away smiling, thinking about his dream. He hadn’t dreamt about Roosevelt for years. He yawned. He supposed he should be grateful to the old swine, really. After all, without Roosevelt he would never have come to Africa. In 1909, as the manager of a small iron foundry in Sturgis, New Jersey, Temple had reached a stage in his life where the only prospects were increasing boredom and frustration. Then he had seen the Smithsonian Institute’s advertisement for a manager to run and organize a hunting and specimen collecting trip in Africa. He had applied, got the job and had embarked with the Roosevelts and their tons of luggage two months later. It hadn’t lasted long. The Roosevelts shot anything that moved. Worried about the large numbers of winged and wounded animals they left in their wake, Temple had voiced a mild protest. At which Kermit had promptly ‘sacked’ him, as the English said.
Temple screwed up his face. The old man was all right. It was Kermit whom he’d never gotten on with. Yet when the colonel’s book—African Game Trail— had appeared in 1913 there hadn’t been a single reference to Temple. Punishment, he assumed. He asked himself if any reader had wondered how the hunting party, with its immense paraphernalia, had moved from A to B; how trains had been loaded and unloaded? He told himself not to fret: in the long run the Roosevelts had done him a favour, and it was the long run that was important as far as he was concerned.
Temple allowed himself the luxury of a bath and then dressed in his freshly laundered clothes. The Kaiserhof was the best hotel in East Africa, in his opinion. Better than the Norfolk in Nairobi and the Grand in Mombasa. Hot and cold running water, servants drilled with Teutonic thoroughness and within five minutes’ rickshaw ride of an excellent brewery.
After breakfast, Temple stepped out of the hotel onto Arabstrasse. The Kaiserhof was in reality the railway hotel, built some six years before at the commencement of the Dar-Lake Tanganyika central railway project. It was a stone building of some size topped with fake crenellation and it stood at the corner of Arabstrasse and Bahnhofstrasse. Behind Temple lay the harbour lagoon with its newly erected pier, Port Offices and customs sheds. Before him was the festering Indian town, made up of crumbling mud houses packed together in a maze of narrow fetid lanes. If he had walked to the east, continuing up Arabstrasse, he would have come to Unter den Akazien, the main commercial thoroughfare, where evidence of German neatness and efficiency was more apparent. Unter den Akazien’s narrow, flamboyant-lined avenue led to the residential areas of Dar. Wooded, spacious roads, solid two-and three-storey stone colonial houses with red tiled roofs, and a large and beautifully laid out botanical garden.
It was this last feature of the town that had brought Temple to Dar, to buy coffee seedlings. His dealings with the colony’s director of agriculture, or the Chef der Abteilung für Landeskultur und Landesvermessung to give his official title, had been brisk and satisfactory. For a reasonable price, crates of coffee seedlings were being prepared and would be ready for him to transport back to his own farm the next day.
It was a long journey back to Temple’s farm, which lay near the foot of Kilimanjaro in British East Africa. First there was the coastal steamer from Dar to Tanga, and then a day’s journey from Tanga to Moshi on the Northern Railway, followed by a further day’s waggon ride across the border to BEA and his own farm near the small town and former mission station of Taveta.
His business had been successfully completed the day before, he had some money left, so he decided to savour the carnival atmosphere that currently pervaded the town. The German colony was flourishing, the Central Railway had just been completed. It was to be officially opened in August and a huge Dar-es-Salaam Exhibition had been planned to coincide with it. Hence, Temple assumed, the arrival of the German flotilla — the Königsberg and several destroyers, survey ships and a fleet tender.
Temple turned and walked down Bahnhofstrasse, past the splendid new station and onto the dockside. A large crowd of several hundred people had turned out to welcome and admire the Königsberg. In the morning sun its slim lines and three tall funnels stood out with emphatic sharpness. Strings of flags had been run up its masts and its crew lined the decks at attention.
The crowd was carefully segregated. On either side of the Port Offices were the Indians, Arabs and natives. In front of the offices, beneath the brightly striped awnings, the German colonials gathered. A sizeable guard of immaculate askaris was lined up on the quayside. A young European officer put them through some elementary drill routines. They seemed as capable and organized as any European troops Temple had seen. On a temporary dais the Schütztruppe brass band blared forth martial music.
Temple looked about him. Everyone was got up in their finery. The women all wore white dresses with lacy trims and carried parasols. The men wore formal suits with hats, collars and ties. Temple joined the crowd and watched the captain of the Königsberg arriving ashore. He was greeted by Von Lettow-Vorbeck, a dapper small man with a completely shaven head, and the governor of German East Africa, Herr Schnee. They then proceeded to a bedecked and sheltered row of armchairs and there followed a succession of speeches. Temple’s German was rudimentary and he understood virtually nothing of what was said. He wandered away.
Moored some distance from the Königsberg was the Deutsche-Ost-Afrika liner, the Tabora, which the cruiser had escorted for the last half of its journey from Bremerhaven. Passengers from the Tabora were disembarking at a jetty.
Nearby, gangs of natives unloaded supplies and large numbers of cabin trunks and suitcases from a lighter.
“Hello Smith,” came a voice — strangely high-pitched — in English.
Temple turned, he was surprised to hear impeccable English accents among so much German. He was even more surprised to see that it came from an officer in the Schütztruppe.
“Good God,” Temple said, his American accent contrasting strongly with his interlocutor’s. “Erich von Bishop. What are you doing in that outfit? I thought you’d left the army.”
Von Bishop was Temple’s neighbour. Their farms both lay in the Kilimanjaro region, separated by a few miles and the border between German and British East Africa. Von Bishop was a tall, lean man with a melancholy, clean-shaven face. He had a large sharp nose and an unusually long upper lip which, Temple supposed, was responsible for him looking literally so down in the mouth. He was one of those men who narrowly miss being freakishly ugly: the odd features were just under control. The most surprising thing about him was his voice. It was boyishly high and reedy, full of air and sounding as if it would give out any second. Like von Lettow-Vorbeck, his commander, his head was shaven to a prickly grey stubble. He wore the brilliant starched white uniform of a Schütztruppe captain and carried a sabre by his side.
“I’m in the reserve,” he reminded Temple. “Everyone’s been summoned for the celebration, there’s a big parade later today. And besides, I’m meeting my wife. She’s arriving from Germany,” he gestured at the harbour. “On the Tabora.”
“Well, I won’t detain you any further,” Temple said. He had never met von Bishop’s wife, but knew she had been away for over a year.
“No, please,” von Bishop said. “I insist on you meeting her. After all, we are neighbours of a sort.”