Imperium (4 page)

The two pilgrims dabbed their moist foreheads with handkerchiefs, and, farther up, turned around to gaze down onto the artificial lake created by King Sri Vikrama Rajasinha at the beginning of the previous century. Govindarajan informed Engelhardt with a peculiar expression of satisfaction that fishing had been strictly forbidden from the start. The legend also went that the little temple island there in the middle of the lake had served the king of the Sinhalese as a clandestine site for bathing and sexual intercourse, and that a hidden tunnel under the lake led from the palace to this very island. Again Govindarajan raised his cane, and pointed in that direction with its end, which, Engelhardt suddenly discerned, consisted of beaten brass. Engelhardt noticed that the Tamil was smiling even more broadly than before, practically baring his teeth like a dog. His air and countenance, which had appeared to Engelhardt gentle and familiar while on the train journey, all of a sudden seemed overlaid with a stagy, shrill dissonance.

In the sultry interior of the shrine, a deep darkness of the most profound kind reigned supreme. A gong resounded with a muffled rattle, its echo rebounding unexpectedly from invisible walls that seemed to Engelhardt as if coated with slime. A single candle burned somewhere. He felt a mesmerizing sense of menace speed through his nerves; the blond hairs on his arms stood vertically on end, a rivulet of warm sweat pearling down behind his ear into his robe. Govindarajan had gone off elsewhere. The rapping of the metallic tip of his staff grew quieter and was eventually no longer perceptible, however much Engelhardt strained to hear it. The ghastly gong rang once more. And then the candle went out. Shuddering, he took a tentative step to the right and pivoted so as to face the point where he suspected the entrance to be—but upon entering the temple they had rounded several corners, barring which the light of day would likely have been visible from here. He whispered the name of his companion. Then he uttered it louder, finally shouting,
Go-vin-dara-jan!
into the inky dark.

No answer came. His friend had vanished. He had lured him here into the blackness and then absconded. But why? What if…? And what-all in God’s name had Engelhardt told him? He could no longer recall exactly, but he was sure he had told him about his luggage at the harbor in Colombo, had certainly confided in him as well that he was carrying a fairly large sum of money in bonds, which—he struck himself on the forehead with his palm in the darkness at the thought—he had of course left in his valise in their shared room at the Queen’s Hotel. Engelhardt furiously loosened his hair tie and threw it on the floor. He had revealed everything to a complete stranger, to a passing acquaintance, in the belief that frugivorism created an invisible bond of solidarity between men. But perhaps the Tamil had simply fabricated everything? Maybe he hadn’t been a vegetarian at all, but had merely said what he, Engelhardt, had wanted to hear.

Later, at the hotel—Engelhardt had been able to free himself, groping his way slowly out of the absurd captivity of the oppressively dank temple, which looked amicably innocuous and inviting as soon as he saw it again from without—he examined his travel bag, and in fact the sum of money he had sewn into one of its side pockets was missing. Otherwise, as far as he could tell, everything else was still there. Clutching his bag under his arm, he strode haltingly and almost on tiptoes down the stairs to the reception hall, informing the hotel employee in a whisper to please send the bill for his room to the consul of the German Reich in Colombo since he was unable to settle accounts. The hotelier cracked a crooked smile and replied that such an action was really unnecessary. No bill had accrued since there had been no overnight stay, the fruit breakfast was on the house, and furthermore he would advise a visit to the local police to report the Tamil, whom he had, incidentally, questioned ten or twenty minutes ago as to the whereabouts of his German travel companion while he beat a hasty retreat from the hotel, to which he had received no reply, though he couldn’t shake the feeling that the Tamil had perpetrated some act of malice, so guilty did he look.

The hotelier, who, by the way, was a splendid fellow, escorted poor Engelhardt to the train station, sprang for his third-class ticket down into the capital, and then, under minimal protests, steered the spindly young man, to whom a visit to the local constabulary seemed the most disagreeable thing imaginable, into the last car of the slowly departing train. And there, as he sits in the compartment (the afternoon, Prussian blue and cloyingly fragrant, was now slipping into early evening), his shoulder leaned against a fellow traveler, his back pressed against the wooden seat, his eyes shut tight, his shaggy long hair worn loose, his travel bag squeezed to his belly, the cinematograph suddenly begins to rattle: a cog loses its grip, the moving pictures projected up front on the white canvas accelerate chaotically. Indeed, for a brief moment, they no longer run forward as prescribed
ad aeternitatem
by the Creator, but jolt, jerk, speed backward; Govindarajan and Engelhardt are stepping into the air, feet poised—gay to watch—and hastening backward down temple steps, crossing the street backward, too, the projector beam flickering more and more severely, snapping and crackling, and now, at an instant, everything loses shape (since for a short while we are granted insight into the
bhavantarabhava
, the moment of reincarnation), and then there appears, the right way up, of course, and in exact coloration and frame rate, August Engelhardt, sitting in Herbertsh
ö
he (New Pomerania), in the reception room of the Hotel F
ü
rst Bismarck, there on a rattan sofa (of Australian manufacture) that might indeed be called snug, in conversation with Hotel Director Hellwig (Franz Emil), while balancing a cup of herbal tea on his knees, leaving the Ceylonese analepsis behind him. Hellwig is smoking.

III

This Hotel Director Hellwig, whose left ear, incidentally, was missing entirely, was known in Herbertsh
ö
he not only as a broker for various and sundry, but also as the direct gateway to Mrs. Emma Forsayth, who had been recommended to Engelhardt by the incumbent Governor Hahl after he had made known by letter from Nuremberg his interest in the speedy acquisition of a coconut plantation. Do come, come to our merry colony, Hahl had written, but Engelhardt ought not expect
too
much civilization, though in its stead he would find quite a bit of adventure, largely diligent natives, and yes, absolutely, they had coconut palms in droves. Hahl’s brisk epistolary style, a bit crude in spite of its eloquence, intimated that though he was from the Berlin area, within him dwelled a Bavarian intellectual, a hardheaded loner, which suited Engelhardt just fine. Hahl wrote further that he ought to join the German Club immediately after his arrival, if he pleased, and meet with said Mrs. Emma Forsayth, who owned various landholdings in the protectorate and was able to grant not only favorable credit for the purchase of a plantation to assiduous planters from home (as long as she found them likable), but could also procure good and reliable workers. She was quite the celebrity, by the way. From New Pomerania to the Hawaiian islands, they called her simply Queen Emma. Engelhardt did not give a second thought to conditions in the colony, where a woman seemed to enjoy the same high status as the governor himself, for he was, after having torn open the envelope with the governor’s seal, much too thrilled about the possibility of having his reverie of cocovorism financed in advance. True, he had some money set aside. Aunt Marthe had passed away two years ago on the other side of the Swiss border and had remembered him in her will; still, he couldn’t scrape together more than twenty thousand marks, minus those bonds lost to the Tamil crook Govindarajan, of course.

Our friend had missed Governor Hahl by only a few days; the hapless man had taken ill with blackwater fever and had left the protectorate on the Italian passenger ship R.N.
Pasticcio
, bound for Singapore, where he hoped to cure himself completely with quinine tonic while wrapped from head to toe in cold wet sheets soaked in vinegar. Blackwater fever, as Hahl was informed by his Indian physician during the passage, was a complication of malaria, the carrier of which had recently been ascertained as the common mosquito after centuries in which people died without the slightest clue as to why. Hahl was a strong man and quite accustomed to pain, and yet the constantly recurring bouts of fever had depleted him and left him hollow-cheeked and quietly despondent.

When he reached Singapore, however, he recalled suddenly, in a brief moment of inspired lucidity, not only those letters from Nuremberg, but also the impressive young man who had written them (Engelhardt had included a photograph that depicted him standing on a hill near Nuremberg, arms stretched aloft to the heavens, to the sun), and the arranged meeting in his Herbertsh
ö
he residence, but just as swiftly, the next paroxysm overpowered him, his mind grew dark again, and Engelhardt’s imago, which had seemed to him that of a radical new man by virtue of his letters (and this one photograph, which today, of course, has long since vanished), yielded once more to his illness’s shiftless, dark brown realm of torment.

While still in Herbertsh
ö
he, a few minutes before the mosquito—from whose erect proboscis the pathogens flowed into Hahl’s bloodstream—had breathed its pitiful last under the slap of his hand (while the governor’s crimson blood simultaneously pulsed through the insect’s nervous system like sugary soma), he had had a dinner brought to him so he could work late while eating at the large mahogany table. Listlessly shoving the sweet potatoes and the chicken breast back and forth on the porcelain plate with his fork, he had skimmed correspondence and court decisions, had once more read the delightful letter from his friend Wilhelm Solf, the governor of Samoa, and in the process had drunk one and a half glasses of tropically tepid Riesling. It had been a calm, velvety night. He had placed a wax record on the gramophone turntable, setting the needle at his favorite spot, and while the first brassy bars of Wagner’s
Ritt der Walk
ü
ren
had tumbled through the salon, he had sneezed a few times, blown his nose into the napkin, then stretched out his limbs and loosened his tie, and at that precise moment, the insect had come buzzing up through the doorframe. Driven quite mad by the intense scent of lactic acid leaking from the Hahlian pores (the transpiration of which was eased and enhanced by the warm Riesling), the mosquito had extended its proboscis while still on the approach, landing, blind with greed, on the nape of the governor’s cleanly shaven neck, and penetrating it with a cathartic, crescendo-like bite before suffering the redemptive G
ö
tterd
ä
mmerung of the palm of Hahl’s hand. And this was how the blackwater fever had made its way into the governor.

And Engelhardt? Either he forgot to join the German Club or it no longer crossed his mind, since he felt absolutely no desire at all to socialize privately with those dim-witted, alcoholic planters who comprised the majority of the club members. While he was still at the Hotel F
ü
rst Bismarck, where Director Hellwig had allowed him to lodge for the first week free of charge, gratis—in the expectation of certain perks in Herbertsh
ö
he’s hierarchy of prestige for his actions as an intermediary agent for Queen Emma vis-
à
-vis August Engelhardt (negotiations for purchasing a plantation were by no means an everyday occurrence in the protectorate)—Engelhardt had written around a dozen letters home and to his relatives in which he extolled the ravishing beauty of the colony in flowery, effusive words and urged his comrades-in-spirit to visit him here as quickly as possible.

He was, he wrote while letting his gaze wander from the hotel veranda over Herbertsh
ö
he, in the middle of negotiations to purchase a plantation; just imagine the progressiveness: a woman conducted most business dealings here, and no one was irked even in the slightest by his long hair and his beard, so he had again proceeded to wear his hair down, though after heavy downpours it became comically wavy and tended to frizz outward in all directions due to the stifling humidity.

And, oh, that’s right, he had had the pleasure of meeting a thoroughly likable young seaman at the hotel, a certain Christian Sl
ü
tter, with whom he had engaged in a couple extended rounds of chess (in one,
solus rex
had been the result, in his favor), and had even undertaken several joint, exploratory constitutionals beyond the outskirts of the city. This man Sl
ü
tter was on his way to acquiring his captain’s license and was considering joining the Imperial Navy. He may not have been a vegetarian, but the discussions about the benefits and drawbacks of meat consumption, wherefore the flow of play had often been interrupted for hours on end, had taken place at such a high level and with such geniality that Engelhardt might not have had to leave Germany so quickly had similar conversations been possible with the uninitiated. But presumably one encountered these sorts of unprejudiced, open-minded characters like Sl
ü
tter only overseas.

To the naturopath Adolf Just, to his friends at Jungborn and in the various nudist colonies of his homeland, he disclosed that the local weather conditions (the torrential downpours every afternoon he left unmentioned in these lines) were almost predestined to redound to the satisfaction and completeness of the sun worshipper. Indeed, the tropical solar radiation had had such a positive effect on the disposition and physical constitution that, from the second day of his stay, he had undertaken his walks through the capital of the protectorate barefoot, dressed only in a waistcloth around his loins. This was not entirely in accordance with the truth.

All the same, August Engelhardt must be defended against allegations that he was a liar, enticing future visitors to the South Seas (for there were more than a few who would heed his call) with statements of distorted and outright false fact. Engelhardt himself absolutely felt the compulsion to undress and present his skin to the soul-warming light; it was just that he found himself in the aforesaid negotiations to acquire a plantation, with monies he did not even possess, and so he was still sufficiently a pragmatist not to reveal immediately to all in Herbertsh
ö
he his convictions regarding clothing and sustenance—after all, one didn’t do business with naked, long-haired men.