Of Which I Cannot Speak

It is dark, I am asleep, Purr, my Caracal cat is, as cats can do, draped over my torso completely relaxed, only the tufts in her ears are slightly agitated listened for vipers that may have climbed a vine and, sensing the heat of my body come in across the balcony then into our bedroom. There is a tentative tap at the door. 

"Sah, it be Jakob Sah."

I roll over and look for a clock which, I remember, Kurt threw out saying we slept when we wanted. "Ja, Jakob, Kommt."

As he is Senior Head Man he can see me naked. The door opens but he knows not to press the light button. "Sah, news kom jy. It be on Papah from Maland."

From the airport? On paper? For me? I extend my hand, palm up so he will not touch me. "Hier."

And envelope is placed on my hand. On the back, sealing the flap is an official seal with the Springbok and the Orange and Blue stripes of our flag. I inhale as this isn't just a reminder to Kurt or me, it's official information that I must, now, read and immediately respond to. Why, I do not know, but before I read it, I wash myself in a cold shower, carefully shave then find my uniform to put on. It's summer, January, so I wear the light beige one, orange and blue striped down the puttees and into the tightly fitted calf which will go under my perfectly shined cavalry boots. Beneath, as all officers are required, my penis and testicles are encased in a rough cotton jock, hard fitted, and meant to be slung to my left side opposite the place where my gun will hang on the right. As we are wearing puttees, no sign of our sexual parts can be seen. The light weight shirt has starched cuffs with the blue and orange stripes as does the stand up mandarin collar, hard starched and rimmed with a gold wire to remind us we cannot lower our heads. On the front, at my throat, is the gold and diamond medallion of my Officer Class. The tunic over it, tight fitted but carefully gusseted to give me full range of motion, Cargo Pockets the flaps trimmed with orange and blue stripes. My gun belt, the holster my gun around my waist, another small gun in my right boot on the inside, a quirt on the outside, the other boot has a long knife, slightly curved fitted and fitted to me. The last are the two rows of decorations above my left breast, their closure fitted through the stitched open holes made for the closure of my racks as we call them. As I am a surgeon, I also have a particular rack showing my profession. My hat is under my arm, the paper in my hand, I take my swagger stick, tap the stone floor once, the door is opened and I go out, descend the staircase to our library where, in advance, a light has been turned on by my reading desk. I centre the envelope reach out my hand and am handed my dress sword which I use to slash the crease at the top, then pull the paper from it. All the servants then withdraw.

And I read:

Dokter Kolonel von Weillig

Vandag in Windhoek by 01:32 Kaptein von Weillig het gesterf toe sy vliegtuig gevlieg in die grond. 

Rapporteer aan die barrack en bring sy swaard. 

Ek bied aan jou die kennis dat sy dood revenged sal wees. 

Haupt Kolonel Greis

I look up and see an enlarged picture, portrait really, of the two of us at some reception. We both liked this so it was hung on the wall over the safe between the twelve foot high book cases in this massive room made for two men. Made when? More than a century ago easily, parts of it two centuries ago. The magnificent gardens, the water features, the reception hall where generation of Kurt's family have been pleased to welcome to their home and hospitality guests from all over the world. As a deep water port well equipped to victual ships from everywhere, Cape Town, Kapstaad to me, is a popular place and why not? What other city can offer two oceans, more beaches than could be used in a year, the embracing curve of Blauberg from which one can see Lion and Table Mountain with, usually, the table cloth falling in shreds from it. I stare at the picture of us. Properly, I should stand and salute a fallen fellow officer but I cannot for to do that is to make him dead and that will not come yet. Instead I heave an ink pot at it hoping to obliterate the whole nasty thing, our faces, living in it, now one gone. 

With shaky hands I reach into our thermidor and remove a long tobacco, what we call, "Beampte se haan", "Officer's cock", bite off the end of the finest Rhodesian tobacco, lick it as I would my own Captains cock, humbly on the floor, kneeling, waiting for him to place a finger under my chin to have me rise to look in his eyes. His hand encompasses my testicles, he smiles as he squeezes forcing me to remain at full attention, I want his cruelty which he will follow with an excesss of pleasure....but never again.

I strike a vesta on the place in front of the heel but behind the sole where there is a roughed patch to light them. We use especially strong sulphurs and magnesiums in these so the first lighting is amazing if one is not aware of what will happen. I run the flame up and down the Cock, place it in my mouth, place the sparkling source where I have bit off the end, put my Officer's hat beneath my left arm, approach the door where I collect his sword, stamp once and the door is opened. Across the foyer, the Benz is waiting. Behind me on the bare wood a paper and an envelope are slow burning, a bit of vesta still on top. They will leave a mark.

There is a tragic irony in our vehicle. It is German made, of course, every thing German in the Republic is preferred, and now I will go hear of a death in German Southwest Africa, deeded to us after the Great War and providing us with a fourth deep water port, this one on the South Atlantic. All of this is protected by the Benguela current, a man and ship killer that ends on the Skeleton Coast so called because, as was the earliest custom, sailors would beach their ships thinking the white sand and easily slopping bottom would allow them opportunity to make whatever repairs necessary, perhaps find fresh water just over the dune. But it was a canard. The sand was of a type, almost like quick sand that sucked the ship and then the men to their death. It was a thousand miles across the beautiful dunes to....anything. 

Part of Officer training was to be taken there, buried up to your neck when the tide was out and remain in the sand and the sea until a full cycle of tides had run. It was calculated for certain times of the year so the longest one remained under water was less than two minutes. Our joke was, "Jou gesig in see water gewas kan word goeie... tensy dit neem jou lewe; Daar is geen skeermes skerper as die see." It translates as, "Washing your face in sea water is good...unless it kills you....there is no stronger razor than the sea." I understand certain elements of American forces enjoy similar training in that they are bound up, tossed in the water and timed as to their calmness and period it takes to get undone and out. 

It was an hour until dawn when I arrived at the barracks. Those serving with us had gathered for what we must do. All these things are quiet as time and custom have written precisely what will happen and be done. In our ward room, I hand the sword to the officer designated to receive it who then places it on a stand covered with our country's flag. We kneel, I am in front. You may wonder how can this be? A country as homophobic as the Republic seemingly acknowledging a mated pair of men. The tradition goes back not just centuries but eons to ancient Sparta. In their solid fighting troops were mated pairs of men called "Hoplites" men who were so bonded to their fellow that you could not kill one, you had to kill both or the other would follow you, for years if necessary, and then revenge himself in your blood followed by his own suicide to join his dead lover. In our Officer Kultur we referred to is as The Best Finding The Best. Not every man had this, some had wives but even those had a Best. 

The sword officer reached behind the podium and found a heavy sledge. Standing in front, he saluted the sword I had brought then in one swing smashed it. The sound of the two ends falling on the floor was known to all of us, and dreaded by all of us. We knew the parlous times in which we lived and that our Kultur, our standards of living, our manner of defending our country, all these things were time running backward. However just then, on that dawn, there was one final coda. 

I removed my tunic, an officer stood by me to hold it properly folded while the General approached holding Kurt's Seal of Officership. For dress occasions there were places on it that went through the uniform and clasped behind it. Now I would wear it home. All saluted. He placed the bar with the large Seal over my breast where it would have been on Kurt's uniform and struck it with the palm of his other hand. Behind him, the sword officer tapped it in with the sledge. My tunic was handed back, I was assisted in buttoning it, my gun belt surrounded me, we formed two lines to salute the flag of our country and then we left the room. 

On the way home I could begin to see the blood come through and when I arrived, it had soaked the material and was going down the front. In our room I removed it, pulled the bar from my chest, laid it on a table, stripped, went to my lavatory and stanched the bleeding hoping I'd bled enough to leave a scar then, with open eyes, returned to my bed-I have the scar to this moment. Purr, attracted by the blood which was still in increasingly smaller rivulets coursing down my chest and that side of my rib cage, licked it up, the salt and coarseness of her toungue stopping the blood. The sun was up, in some hours I would put on my usual clothes go to the hospital and begin my clinic. For reasons that will be obvious, I postponed or handed off my surgeries for several days. 

A week later I held a reception for my Brother Officers. They knew there could be no funeral, no proper remembrance as there was no body, it had burned up...but in reports I would be allowed to see only years later, I found that Kurt had been cremated alive trying to push his Second Officer as well as his Radio Officer out the side window, made to pop out, on the Boeing 707-420 International. He knew he was being burned alive but, Hoplite/Officer Kultur, he saved his men. As I read that, I thought...did he know when the flames reached his genitals? His uniform pants, if they were wearing proper uniforms which didn't seem likely as this was a cargo flight, would have incinerated catching the hair that surrounded his genitalia on fire and like a brush fire nearing the centre, the apex of his manhood. 

It was, and it was said so at the time, a senseless accident, one that had no reason to happen. He was a First Line Kaptain and pilot, usually flying the Blue Diamond Service to London, he had taken this as a courtesy to the line. 

So much time passed and then....the reason came out. There were kaffirs, yes, I use that word, kaffirs being trained to work Air Traffic Control and Ground control in Windhoek. Then it was said a tragic mis-calculation had occurred, these things happen and the plane and five good men were killed, not lost, we knew where they were in their ashes. But not everyone can hold silence no matter what the consequences. So many years passed, so much else happened. A leader of the Marxist Splinter Group of the African National Congress let it be known that all those years ago, the men in the tower knew precisely what they were doing. They had selected this flight as it was a cargo flight and would not attract the attention of a commercial flight with hundreds on board. Johannesburg is a "hot and high" field which meant, then, that even fully fueled planes would need to make a technical stop before the long haul to Great Britain. Had this been a passenger flight, they would have gone to Luanda, Angola where Suid Afrikaanse had an arrangement with TAP the Portugese carrier regarding fuel, cargo etc. This night the stop in Windhoek was to drop mail and cargo, some destined to go down the Caprivi Strip and was thought to be guns and ammo for white men to protect their property from Zambian soldiers, also a part of the ANC. 

The men, all five of them, were caught and, you can't claim we didn't offer speedy justice, were tried and sentenced in three days. The only difference was that knowing there would be men who would wish to attend the carrying out of the sentence and might be at some distance, the punishment was delayed by two weeks.

I sat on the front row looking at the gallows specially rigged for five and chatted with our Sword Officer; Of that troop, only six remained, we were the only ones attending. 

The lights in the room were turned off while the area holding the gallows was well illuminated. The five were brought in, marched up, their mouths gagged, the hands manacled (to prevent the crying out of Pan African Slogans and the black fist raised.)

When it was over, we went to the Carleton, had a Lion Lager, saluted all those who had died and, we knew, would die in the almost immediate future. That night I was on a plane for Buenos Aires.

This all true, but please, remember it happened almost fifty years ago. It is how my first love died or was murdered. Below is an article that displays why we did as we did and how far into the future we had looked. Our future, my future, is now behind me. I am an old man with certain memories of tragedy. What I hope is that my writing this is not only about love but death and why I believe that only after death is love eternal.

You may find in here elements that have appeared in other stories, for example Purr, my Caracal Cat. I wish it were possible to have pictures of our estate on Eyton Road, just at Newlands in Claremont to show as it was magnificent. It is said in Cape Town that the problem isn't getting a garden going, it's getting it stopped. We had a staff of six that did nothing but fight to keep masses of Calla Lillies from leaping up from the creek and stifling the roses which, in turn, were threatening the Protea, the State Flower of Cape Province. I am a surgeon and was until Multiple Sclerosis stopped that. Not choosing to do consultation, I wandered into my American Family's oil business but only after drifting around Europe doing various interesting things.

Kurt was the first of my three loves/partners/Men and, perhaps someday, if there's interest I will write of the other two which, also came to death in airplanes. Over the course of my 77 years, these three great men took up 52 years of our lives. If I can figure out how to do it-I am not computer literate-I will put up on my biography page, a picture of myself taken about eight years ago. Or, for something macabre, perhaps you might like the far more recent photos of the scar on my back as well as the interim photos made during the surgery. NO? Oh. 

PJvW

On 1 March the Parliament of South Africa voted to put in place a bill that would allow for all property of white farmers to be taken from them without compensation. The operant theory is that these lands are the heritage of black South Africans although most of these lands have been worked for more than four centuries by white settlers, the Boers, and now the farmers. These farmers provided shelter, wages, work, food, medical care for the blacks who were employed there. I can speak to this as I was once a bush surgeon who went from farm to farm caring for everyone there, regardless of race. There is no substantive evidence that these lands were ever used by indigenous persons for any but the most simplistic of uses until the "White Dawn". The person in the illustration has offered a bill that in two years, if all whites are not in compliance, will give the government the right to employ "whatever ever methods needed, include execution without trial, to remove the whites". 

I have lost my country, I am bereft. 

Petr-Johan von Weillig, MD, PhD