I am fairly certain my father knew there was more to my being apprenticed to the Dutch munitions broker Fons Hertzog when I arrived in Cape Town from London then learning a merchant's trade. He was being protective of me, I'm sure, the Great War having broken out the previous summer in Europe with the assassination of the archduke.
With the war only enlarging by the day as 1914 turned into 1915, both of my parents, I'm sure, worried about a son just becoming of age to enter service in the military. It seemed natural enough for George Merriman, the deputy governor-general of the British dominion in the Union of South Africa, to bring a young son following his studies under his wing to learn the functions of statecraft. And there was little more important in statecraft in this season of war than learning how to acquire and sell military arms.
It was yet a different matter of life that my father had in mind, though, I believe—knowing, from observing me, of the interests that were dawning in me and, as I observed when I came out to Cape Town myself, being thus inclined himself. This observation had gone a long way to explain how my parents could be so content with my mother in London and my father forever moving around in British administrations across the globe.
No, though I do think my father truly believed I had a lot of useful tradecraft to learn from the Dutch munitions broker Fons Hertzog, I also believe that my father reasoned that I could be enlightened and unburdened of worry and guilt in other ways while under Hertzog's wing. I'm sure that we wanted to guide my initiation so that I would give myself only to men who could advantage me in life.
Hertzog made his interests quite plain from the time I entered his realm—his business and his household. His was a household completely of men. He was neither married nor did he court women. He was a large, florid man of reddish-blond coloring. I was a reddish blond myself, but, of alabaster skin that rarely tanned even in the southern exposure of the tip of Africa. My coloring was not as ruddy as his. He was tall, but heavy set, given to stifling dress in layers of black suiting. To offset the inevitable odor of this, he doused himself heavily in perfumes and often bathed, perhaps several times a day. But I found that he didn't bathe alone, which is likely what made the habit so appealing to him. He was an active man, as muscular as he was rotund. He had a temper and was pugilistic.
He also stood close to a man he favored and touched him while speaking to him, more often than not burdening the man with his spittle. That's how I knew he favored me. He was always smiling indulgently at me while giving instruction in his trade—the trade I was meant to take up, although I was much more interested in this new science of wireless telegraphy and was learning as much about that as about munitions—and he would stand very close to me with his hand on my arm. He spoke affectionately of my father and of how I should honor my father's intentions in apprenticing me to Hertzog.
I understood my father's intentions all too well, I believe, and, in many respects, I was relieved that he had correctly gauged my interests, but I was naïve and frightened and had no idea how to enter such a world, if indeed I wanted to risk the dangers of doing so at all. I also, if I ever was to go with and be covered by a man, would hope to do so with a more arousing man than Hertzog was.
Hertzog must have seen in me my inclinations, however, as he did little to hide his from me. I was assigned a bed chamber between his and the washroom, and he made no attempt to hide himself from me as he went to his bath—always with one of the young house serving men in attendance—and in nearly the same state of undress. Hertzog was a big man in all ways and he seemed to flaunt his gifts. He did not swing low in repose, but he was extremely thick, and, in erection, was sufficiently long to do an uninitiated young man damage, if he hadn't been somewhat tentative at the cocking.
In turning me over to Hertzog, I believe my father wanted me to be fully initiated but by someone who would consider my standing in life and be careful in developing a young man's desires.
I was still an uninitiated young man, even though that accorded me a good bit of frustration. I was a willing young man, just not initiated.
He as good as spoke his intent to me—one day even coming close to me in the corridor of the bed chamber level of his townhouse and running his fingers into my hair, telling me that there was hair out of place, but then telling me how much he liked the burnish blond curls and my other features as well—how well formed I was and how I would be a prize for any woman—or any man so inclined. I managed to move out of his embrace without too much embarrassment, but his fat lips brushed my cheek as I turned away and he laughed.
He called out as I moved down the corridor, "I am a man so inclined."
As if I didn't know already.
Later he expressed interest in my prowess with women—or men—saying I was of the age to have experience, but I confessed that I had no such experience. I also admitted that I was confused about my interests. He offered me money to let him end that confusion and I feigned being confused about that as well. That, of course, didn't work with him.
"How will you know, if you don't try it out?" he asked. "I can help you with that."
"I don't know," I answered. "I'm afraid and confused." I hadn't said no, though, and it was that omission that he had focused on.
"You know your father has apprenticed you to me for a reason," he said. This I could not argue with.
One night at the end of an arduous work week, he told me that he had earned a trip to a tavern and that so had I. He took me on foot deep into the dock area of Cape Town. He was a merchant dealing in other goods than military arms and had a small fleet of freighter schooners—most three- or four-masters—at his command. So, the docks of the city were no stranger to him.
Immediately upon entering, I discerned that the tavern he took me to was one frequently almost entirely of Indians, that South Asian caste providing the backbone of seaman and dock laborers in the colony at the moment, black natives not being trusted to learn skilled labor. The tavern was reached down a cobble stoned alley leading off the docks. The atmosphere was smoky and noisy with the drunken boisterousness of hard-working men at the end of a hard week of work. The smoke in the air was of a sweet, cloying aroma.
Besides Hertzog and me, who were dressed in European style, in tweed suits with waistcoats, me in a billowy white cotton shirt and Hertzog in stiff linen, those in the tavern were in Indian dress of the colony—collarless shirts of many hues over white, black, or gray dhoti's, the Indian dress of loose cotton trousers created out of one long length of material, intricately woven through a man's legs, and finished with a material tail covering the scrotum. That tail, of course, could be quickly undone to allow for convenient urination.
