Imperium by Christian Kracht

decamped for Cairns; nor was he able to anticipate anything of the great calamity later to be dubbed the First World War. So it was only a premonition that afflicted him as he sauntered through the alleys of that Queensland gold mining town.
    The following had happened to him: the wooden door of a public house had been pushed open, and a bearded colored man, a Pacific islander obviously, had fallen backward onto the dirt road, uttering a dull, grunting cry. The black man rolled over on his stomach in anguish and crawled toward Engelhardt; a throng of white Australians followed him out of the pub, whereupon he was cruelly beset with kicks until he could hardly ward off their brutal blows any further. He came to rest before Engelhardt with arm outstretched, bleeding and coughing and motionless. Recalling that he himself had once been so beaten, on that beach in East Prussia, Engelhardt knelt down and tried to lift the victim by the shoulders, but the white men, intoxicated nearly to the point of dehumanization, shoved him back brusquely, screaming, Nigger lover! and other despicable words.
    One ought not treat a human being like that, Engelhardt said, growing furious, and all at once he sprouted wings of courage, and he stood up straight, a slight, rickety figure against six or seven rough gold panners. One now noticed his German accent, called him dirty Hun , and raised his fists to pummel him as well. Another held him back, saying that there would be war between Edward and the Kaiser soon enough anyway, and we’ll teach ’em manners then, those bastard Germans. Finally, bawling out patriotic songs, they withdrew to the counter of the canteen bar whose publican, as was customary in those days in Australia, had diluted the brandy with gunpowder and cayenne pepper, to enhance the effect of the alcohol on the one hand and, on the other, to mask the repulsive taste of his hooch with a false, fiery note.
    Aha, Engelhardt thought to himself. And, after putting a few shillings into the wounded colored man’s still-outstretched hand, he made his way back to the boardinghouse room on the second floor of a clothier’s, lay down on his bed with a sigh, and ruminated on the encounter. Could it not be that the subjects of His Britannic Majesty would one day annex the German protectorate just like that, were the war they had just prophesied to him, Engelhardt, actually to occur? Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, New Pomerania, and the smaller islands were defended by a mere handful of German soldiers, and it was precisely the extraordinary remoteness and irrelevance of the colony that had to seem tempting to a bellicose people, as the British doubtless were—much like raspberry cake would be to a hungry child. Engelhardt was, please note, unable to sense anything of the gigantic conflagration that would cover the globe a few years later, but from then on his senses were sharpened, his image of the British and young Australia altered forever by the encounter in Cairns: Would the sea become an Anglo-Saxon Pacific , would he be left to do as he pleased, on his Kabakon? Hardly. Wouldn’t the little isle instead be annexed as well and his workers henceforth required to slave at his coconut palms for the English king? Then that free, that German, paradise would be finished.
    While he was thinking this, next door, virtually t ê te- à -t ê te with him and separated only by a thin sheet of plywood that served as a divider for the boardinghouse rooms, lay a young man who was not dissimilar to Engelhardt in habitus and countenance, likewise keenly contemplating, though his thoughts at the moment did not revolve around a potential war between the German Reich and Great Britain, but around yeast paste. Halsey was a Seventh-day Adventist and baker, hailed from the United States, also had a rather slight build, and was developing ways to popularize natural foods. He had ended up in Australia because the Christian-Adventist company for which he worked had