Read Online The Shouting in the Dark by Elleke Boehmer - Free Book Online
Authors: Elleke Boehmer
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incredible tranquillity that no ratepayersâ association could begin to pin a price on. Ko talks about his travels, the gaudy new shopping centre in downtown Singapore. Before too long the men are drunk. Their heads hang in unison. Three empty bottles of South African sherry stand on the table between them. The father is the only one still vocal.
âI sit here often, you know, my friends, looking out,â he says in English. âI sit here considering the wreck of the world we knew, how hard we fought to prevent it, how little of what we believed in remains.
âI remember the final years of the war,â43 to â44, the North Atlantic, that most vital theatre, as the great Churchill said, the true battle for the west. In â43 my Tjerk Hiddes and the other N-class destroyers were called from the south to help safeguard the supply routes to Britain. I close my eyes even now and itâs like yesterday. The silhouettes of the big German destroyers just visible through the North Atlantic haze, dogging us. Those great merchant ship convoys cutting through the freezing sea, the ships piled high with tanks, trucks, grain. Their speed was incredible, some thirty, thirty-two knots. And then the noise of the Luftwaffe that you heard approaching long before you saw them: the screaming Stukas, the Heinkel bombersâ growl, and then the yelling of our turbines as we switched to full speed ahead, anti-aircraft guns thudding. Tom, you wonât ever have heard this roar in Italy. The Germans were in full retreat by then.
âIt was my vision of the end of the West, Nobby, Ko, Brother European bent to destroy Brother European, fighting to the death. How do we go on from here? I thought to myself watching those Stukas, frost nipping my fingers. This vital theatre is the death-throe of all we have believed in. And I was right. The last of the Westâs here on this rim of the African shield. What you see from this stoep . At the time of course we carried on, our visions of damnation regardless. We sang to ourselves the refrain of the great English navy song.â He begins to whinny in his throat. Tom beats a languid hand on his armrest. â Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do or die. It kept our spirits up when we most needed it.â
The father breaks the seal on a fourth bottle of Old Brown Sherry. The men raise their heads, hold out their glasses. Ellaâs cheek has grown cold against the window. She takes her head away from the glass, uses the hem of the curtain to prop her other cheek, a vertical pillow. The fatherâs chin goes up. She sees heâs gathering himself for a second wind. Even with more than one listener present, she notices, yawning, he talks over their heads, still addresses his invisible audience arrayed on the dark lawn.
âLet me tell you about Trincomalee in Ceylon,â he says, âthe base of that Do-It-Yourself operation I once was part of, the British Eastern Fleet. After Singapore fell, that place became our paradise, our strategic paradise. It has the most beautiful natural harbour you ever saw, all green and blue, shaped like a human hand. The Brits couldâve packed a whole fleet in there and the enemy wouldâve been none the wiser. The first morning we were there, I see it like yesterday, the HMS Adamant slid out from behind a headland like a shark with gloved fins.
âWe called our arrival in Trinco the Return of the Nederlanders. Wherever around the harbour you were, you saw impregnable old Fort Frederick, built by our seventeenth-century forefathers, standing on that great massif that rises up from the sea. No matter what we were doing we took comfort just from knowing it was there. Every one of the tiny nugget bricks that went into its building had been transported from the Netherlands in VOC sailing ships as ballast. Traders to the bone, we Dutch, eh Ko? We men of the sea, westerners to the core, competitors to the last. Marching
âI sit here often, you know, my friends, looking out,â he says in English. âI sit here considering the wreck of the world we knew, how hard we fought to prevent it, how little of what we believed in remains.
âI remember the final years of the war,â43 to â44, the North Atlantic, that most vital theatre, as the great Churchill said, the true battle for the west. In â43 my Tjerk Hiddes and the other N-class destroyers were called from the south to help safeguard the supply routes to Britain. I close my eyes even now and itâs like yesterday. The silhouettes of the big German destroyers just visible through the North Atlantic haze, dogging us. Those great merchant ship convoys cutting through the freezing sea, the ships piled high with tanks, trucks, grain. Their speed was incredible, some thirty, thirty-two knots. And then the noise of the Luftwaffe that you heard approaching long before you saw them: the screaming Stukas, the Heinkel bombersâ growl, and then the yelling of our turbines as we switched to full speed ahead, anti-aircraft guns thudding. Tom, you wonât ever have heard this roar in Italy. The Germans were in full retreat by then.
âIt was my vision of the end of the West, Nobby, Ko, Brother European bent to destroy Brother European, fighting to the death. How do we go on from here? I thought to myself watching those Stukas, frost nipping my fingers. This vital theatre is the death-throe of all we have believed in. And I was right. The last of the Westâs here on this rim of the African shield. What you see from this stoep . At the time of course we carried on, our visions of damnation regardless. We sang to ourselves the refrain of the great English navy song.â He begins to whinny in his throat. Tom beats a languid hand on his armrest. â Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do or die. It kept our spirits up when we most needed it.â
The father breaks the seal on a fourth bottle of Old Brown Sherry. The men raise their heads, hold out their glasses. Ellaâs cheek has grown cold against the window. She takes her head away from the glass, uses the hem of the curtain to prop her other cheek, a vertical pillow. The fatherâs chin goes up. She sees heâs gathering himself for a second wind. Even with more than one listener present, she notices, yawning, he talks over their heads, still addresses his invisible audience arrayed on the dark lawn.
âLet me tell you about Trincomalee in Ceylon,â he says, âthe base of that Do-It-Yourself operation I once was part of, the British Eastern Fleet. After Singapore fell, that place became our paradise, our strategic paradise. It has the most beautiful natural harbour you ever saw, all green and blue, shaped like a human hand. The Brits couldâve packed a whole fleet in there and the enemy wouldâve been none the wiser. The first morning we were there, I see it like yesterday, the HMS Adamant slid out from behind a headland like a shark with gloved fins.
âWe called our arrival in Trinco the Return of the Nederlanders. Wherever around the harbour you were, you saw impregnable old Fort Frederick, built by our seventeenth-century forefathers, standing on that great massif that rises up from the sea. No matter what we were doing we took comfort just from knowing it was there. Every one of the tiny nugget bricks that went into its building had been transported from the Netherlands in VOC sailing ships as ballast. Traders to the bone, we Dutch, eh Ko? We men of the sea, westerners to the core, competitors to the last. Marching
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