She sighed. She had been away once before to Europe on her own, in 1907 during the Maji-Maji rebellion. Since then it had been six years without a break. During that period the Northern Railway had been completed, Erich had resigned his commission and bought the farm on the northern slopes of the Pare hills facing Kilimanjaro. The farm prospered, the ground was rich and fertile. They built a large stone bungalow. They lived well, and money steadily accumulated in the bank as the crops were transported down the Northern Railway to the port at Tanga.
Oh, but the life! The beauty of their surroundings, the success of their enterprise couldn’t make up for the tedium of the diurnal round. Erich was away all day in the plantations, returning exhausted at night. She had many servants to do her work for her, but she was always uncomfortable in the heat, her fair skin wasn’t suited to the sun. Every biting insect saw her as a delectable target. She seemed to sweat unceasingly, her clothes rough and chafing against her moist skin. She got fevers regularly. Her neighbours were remote and uncongenial, there were few diversions in Moshi, and Erich was not a man for dances or social gatherings.
Then, last year, she spent an entire month locked in a severe fever, her body trembling with rigors, her teeth chattering for hours. She announced she was going home to convalesce as soon as she began to recover. Erich couldn’t refuse. They had a bank account full of money. She could return to her family with pride, armed with purchasing power. She smiled at her spend thriftiness. She’d spent everything she had, bought presents and luxuries, spoilt her little nephews and nieces. How they had loved Aunt Liesl from Africa! It had been a marvellous year.
She smiled again, perhaps that was why Erich was so nervous. When she left a year ago she had been thin and miserable, still wasted from the fever. Perhaps Erich didn’t recognize her now. She touched her neck reflectively, feeling its creamy softness. Maybe Erich thought he was seeing a ghost.
♦
The next morning Liesl, von Bishop and Temple Smith stood on Buiko station watching two companies of Schütztruppe askaris climb onto half a dozen flat cars attached to the rear of the Moshi train.
Liesl fanned her face with her straw hat. Again Erich had sat up drinking with the American. He had eased himself silently into bed, careful not to touch her, thinking she was asleep. Liesl felt irritation mount in her again. Flies buzzed furiously around her face, settling for split seconds on her eyelids and lips. Waking this morning she had counted two jigger fleas beneath the big toe nail on her left foot. Small red spots, slightly painful to the touch. How could she have jiggers already? Thank God she would be home soon. Her houseboy Mohammed was expert at removing the sac of maggoty eggs the fleas laid beneath the skin. He used a pin: like extracting a tiny winkle from its tight little shell. She never felt any pain when Mohammed did it.
Eventually they boarded the train and it pulled out of Buiko on the final leg to Moshi. The Usambara hills gave way to the gentler Pare range as they rattled steadily northwards through lush green parklands, the hills on their right, the Pangani river on their left.
“There is talk,” she heard her husband say, “of banning native shambas and villages from a five-mile-wide strip the entire length of the line. It’s such good farmland and so close to the railway.”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Temple observed, looking out of the window. “They do it in British East. I only wish my farm was as good as this.” He looked to his left at the line of trees that marked the Pangani.
“Ha!” he exclaimed, making Liesl jump. “There she is!”
The train was rounding a gentle curve to the right. They all crowded to the window. There, dominating the view ahead, was Kilimanjaro, bluey-purple in the distance, its snowy peaks unobscured by clouds.
“Magnificent,” Erich said. “Now I know I’m home.”
The sun flashed on the window of the compartment, blinding Liesl momentarily. She reached into her bag and rummaged around inside it for a pair of coloured spectacles. Kilimanjaro dimmed slightly, subdued by the thick dark green lenses, but lost none of its grim majesty. Contrary to the elation the others felt, Liesl’s heart felt weighted with the recognition. She had lived so long with the splendid mountain facing her house that she did not see it as a glorious monument, but rather as a hostile and permanent jailer, or some strict guardian.
She leant back in her seat, glad she had put her glasses on because she felt her eyes full of tears. How long would it be before she left again? she wondered despairingly.
“Liesl!” came a high pitched cry.
In considerable surprise and alarm she was jerked out of her morose reverie and saw her husband’s quivering forefinger pointing at her, his mouth hanging open in a crude imitation of disbelief.
“What on earth have you got on your face?” he cried. “Those…things!”
“What things,” she demanded furiously.
“Those glasses, spectacles.”
“They are coloured glasses,” she said speaking very slowly, trying to conceal her annoyance. “I bought them in Marseilles on the voyage out. To help my eyes against the sun.”
“But I don’t know if they’re…correct to be worn.” Erich rebuked her, giving her a shrill nervous laugh for the American’s benefit. “I mean, you look like you’re blind. Don’t you think so, Smith? Like a blind woman who should be selling matches.”
Liesl felt angry at this display of pettiness, especially when she heard a loud laugh from the American at Erich’s observation. She dropped into German.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Erich,” she said through gritted teeth. “Everyone wears them in Europe.”
Although Smith couldn’t have understood, it was clear he hadn’t mistaken her tone, as he spoke up in her defence.
“I do believe coloured glasses are almost dee-rigger these days,” he said. “I see many people in Nairobi wearing them. Why, the Uganda Railway has coloured glass in the windows of their passenger carriages.”.
“There you are, Erich,” she said, her eyes narrowed. “You have been on your farm too long.”
Von Bishop grunted sceptically. The atmosphere in the compartment was heavy with tension. The American was smiling broadly at them both, as if his smiles could magically disperse the mood.
He took out his fob watch and opened it. “Ah,” he said. “Well, only two more hours to go.”
♦
Liesl and von Bishop were met at Moshi station by two of their farm boys. Liesl’s luggage was loaded onto an American buggy drawn by two mules. The von Bishop farm was not more than an hour’s ride from Moshi, due south into the lush foothills of the Pare mountains.
Temple’s farm foreman, Saleh, was a Swahili from the coast, a small wizened alert man upon whom Temple relied more than he liked, but there was no sign of him, any farm boys, or the ox-cart with its team of six oxen that was intended to haul the crates of coffee seedlings the ten miles from Moshi to Taveta, the first settlement across the border in British East Africa.
Liesl watched Temple supervise the unloading of the crates onto the low platform. When their own luggage was secured on the buggy she called out to him.
“Mr Smith. We are ready to go.”
He came over and shook her hand.
“A real pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mrs von Bishop.” She found his accent easier to understand. “I must say,” he went on, “this, ah, agricultural endeavour of mine has been greatly, um…Your company has…and I only hope our conversation wasn’t too boring.”