Flight of the Diamond Smugglers Read online

  80 Down the shore, plants: “Steamer Wrecked.” Clipped article, Kleinzee Museum.

  80 the vigilant diamond police . . . The tinned sardines: Tara Turkington, “Diamond of the Desert,” Cape Times, November 5, 2013.

  81 Wrecks beget wrecks: Shipwreck log (filled out in beautiful handwritten script), Kleinzee Museum. Tacked to the wall, over the log, was a clipped article, “Wreck of Gertrude Woerman,” reporting the 1903 wreck of the 1,743-ton steamer Gertrud Woermann (named for a Hamburg art patron and first owner of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s chimerically elongated cityscape Houses at Night, which now hangs in a shadowy couloir of New York’s MoMA), which once transported a sickly group of German merchants to Liberia—a voyage which saw the burial at sea of a man, a chimpanzee, and a gray parrot (the latter killed by rats). One of the passengers, E. F. Cronin, photographed the wreck as it occurred, producing, according to the illustrated supplement of the Cape Argus weekly edition, “the first recollection of seeing the actual incidents of a shipwreck reproduced.” He and the rest of the crew were transferred to a boat named the Nautilus, which turned into the same fog that destroyed Gertrud, and disappeared.

  81 vessels chartered by the East India Company: Information in this paragraph was gleaned from William Dalrymple, “The East India Company: The Original Corporate Raiders,” Guardian, March 4, 2015.

  82 they adapted to the habitat: Hillary Mayell, “Extinct Dodo Related to Pigeons, DNA Shows,” National Geographic, March 14, 2002.

  82 Also off the Diamond Coast: H. V. Bowen, Margarette Lincoln, and Nigel Rigby, eds., The Worlds of the East India Company (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2003).

  82 There, in 1900, one such gun: Mark Avery, A Message from Martha: The Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and Its Relevance Today (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

  BARTHOLOMEW VARIATION #3

  83 noses of curious basking sharks: George Moyses, Diamond Diving (Cape Town: Port Nolloth Museum, 2011).

  83 The experiences of their forebears—Darwin’s pigeons: This references the ocean voyages of HMS Beagle (the ten-gun brig sloop of the Royal Navy on which Darwin was reputed to have brought at least one pigeon companion); the First World War (during which the heroic pigeon Cher Ami, trained by the U.S. Army pigeoneers, saved the lives of the U.S. Army’s “Lost Battalion” in the Argonne forest of France (Cher Ami flew 25 miles, successfully carrying what would be a lifesaving secret message from one division to another, even though a significant portion of her body had been mutilated by German bullets); and the final days of Martha, the world’s last passenger pigeon (who perished in a cage at the Cincinnati Zoo).

  84 “Vrouw, ek het hom!”: Kokkie Duminy and Dr. R. J. L. Sabatini, Fifty Years on the Diamond Fields: 1870–1920 (Kimberley: Africana Library Trust, 2013).

  84 a tame zebra foal: Duminy and Sabatini, Fifty Years on the Diamond Fields.

  85 He hums his favorite tunes: Information on the Jazz Epistles comes from John Edwin Mason, “Mannenberg: Notes on the Making of an Icon and Anthem,” African Studies Quarterly 9, no. 4 (Fall 2007); and Carol A. Muller, South African Music: A Century of Traditions in Transformation (Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2004).

  86 This local superstition has many variations: Iona Opie and Moira Tatum, eds., A Dictionary of Superstitions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Another variation, from Old Provence: The pigeon’s carcass was medically prescribed for bringing the dead back to life. If a poor French villager succumbed to typhoid fever, after the corpse was sprinkled with holy water, family members would trap frogs in a burlap sack, which was then laid over the torso of the corpse. It was believed that the desperate hopping of the frogs, their wild attempts at escape, would recharge the heart. If this method failed (as it often did), one last-ditch effort was made. A family member was to take a pillowcase (silk, preferably) from the sickbed and with it trap a live pigeon feeding in the lavender fields, wild thyme, canola. In one instance, recounted in M. F. K. Fisher, A Cordiall Water: A Garland of Odd and Old Receipts to Assuage the Ills of Man and Beast (New York: Little, Brown, 1961), the sickbed belonged to a little girl who was two days dead. It took that long to trap the pigeon. The girl’s grandmother reached into the pillowcase, took the bird by the throat and, with a laguiole knife, cut it open lengthwise, unfolded the pigeon’s breast from its heart, and scrolled the bird’s body back doubly toward its wings. She slapped the pigeon’s body onto the dead girl’s forehead, and, though it could no longer bob its head forward, it reportedly saw its own blood gush down the girl’s chilled face. It seemed to steam there. Slowly, painting the girl with the red stripe, the grandmother—her own hand gnarled and in a different kind of pain, which she differently expressed—ran the pigeon’s body downward, and pressed its heart—still pumping—to the flesh over the girl’s heart. The pigeon’s heart had six beats left in it, and at the sixth beat, as the bird faded into the ether, waiting to be reborn, perhaps, as Darwin’s muse, the girl came back to life, sucked air, and sat up in the sour bed. The grandmother, and the rest of the family, celebrated by weeping and pouring cups of mead, and the old corporeal pigeon was a shell of feathers on the hardwood.

  CHAPTER 7: NEW RUSH AND KIMBERLEY

  88 in spite of the initiative: Blake’s initiative is cited in Martinique Stilwell, “Diamond Mines Are Not Forever,” Mail & Guardian, November 18, 2011.

  89 Rhodes, seventeen years old, anemic: “Cecil John Rhodes, 1853–1902,” South African History Online, sahistory.org.za.

  89 the De Beer brothers had been raising karakul sheep: Dawid W. De Beer and Jaleen De Beer, The De Beer Family: Three Centuries in South Africa, CD-ROM (South Africa: De Beer Family Register, 2000).

  89 Rhodes soon exchanged: Information on Rhodes comes from Ian Duncan Colvin, Cecil John Rhodes, 1853–1902 (Los Angeles: Hardpress, 2012).

  90 their code of signals: Displayed, in an abridged form as approved by the government mining engineer, at the Kimberley Mine Museum.

  90 the spell of a South African legend: Pricillia Meintjies, “Kimberley: The City of Diamonds,” Discover South Africa, February 9, 2012.

  90 the place now called Kimberley: “Diamond Fields of Kimberley,” exhibit: plaque and article, Kimberley Mine Museum.

  91 Digging rules . . . “and pointed out by a Committee”: Committee of the Dorstfontein Executive Council, “Rules and Regulations for the Diggings,” 1871. Article 10, Ordinance 3.

  91 He came of age motherless: Information on Barnato’s childhood comes from Stephen Inwood, City of Cities: The Birth of Modern London (London: Pan Books, 2005).

  91 “ . . . and Barnet too”: M. B. Leavitt, Fifty Years in Theatrical Management (New York: Broadway, 1912).

  92 Barnato’s portion of the Kimberley Mine equaled Rhodes’s portion of the De Beers mine: Information on Barnato and Rhodes comes from Brian Roberts, The Diamond Magnates (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972).

  92 The miners slated for the underground work: Information in these three paragraphs comes from “A Day in the Life of a Miner,” Kimberley Times (clipped article, Kimberley Mine Museum); “Chambering: An Early Underground Mining Technique,” Kimberley Times (clipped article, Kimberley Mine Museum); and “From Open Cast to Underground Mining,” Kimberley Times (clipped article, Kimberley Mine Museum).

  93 the new “stripping clause”: “De Beers Mine Company, Searching for Diamonds,” exhibit: plaque and article, Kimberley Mine Museum.

  93 “Unless this evil is crushed”: Martin Meredith, Diamonds, Gold, and War (London: Simon and Schuster, 2007).

  93 “the madness and mayhem of Kimberley”: “The Diamond Route Pledge,” February 2, 2010, document from De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., reproduced on a plaque at the Big Hole (part of the Kimberley Mine Museum).

  94 “should the fields be thrown open to everyone”: “De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., First Annual Report,” July 1889. Kleinzee Museum.

  94 “There cannot be any doubt”: Phillipe Mellier, “Dear Colleagues,” August 18, 2012. De Beers correspondence displaye
d in the Kleinzee Museum.

  94 energetic renditions: These numbers were among the most popular songs of the day, and would have likely featured in the brothers’ stage performances. See Benjamin Robert Tubb, “Music from 1800–1860,” Public Domain Music, dirkncl.github.io/pdmusic_org/1800s.html, updated October 24, 2016.

  95 The derelict mining village: Paul Burkhardt, “Blyvooruitzicht: The Fallout from a Gold Mine’s Closure,” Moneyweb Investor, December 18, 2013.

  95 “Water is the most precious thing . . . deliver services there”: Sheree Bega, “The Town Where No Water Runs,” Saturday Star, June 6, 2015.

  97 “Gentlemen! This is the rock”: Quoted in Greg Campbell, Blood Diamonds (New York: Perseus, 2004).

  98 Historians have described: Chris Marais, “Recapturing the Heady Days of the Diamond Rush,” Kimberley Mine Museum page, southafrica.net.

  98 “allowing labourers [to be] free”: “The only way to stamp out IDB.” Clipped article, Kimberley Mine Museum.

  98 stories of malarial camp fever: Much of the information in this paragraph was gleaned from the brochures and informational video (2015) at the Kimberley Mine Museum.

  99 “soul searching in South Africa”: David Smith, “Students’ Attack on Cecil Rhodes Statue Leads to Soul Searching in South Africa,” Guardian, March 20, 2015.

  99 variously interpreted as freak accident or suicide: Scott Balson, “The Story Behind ‘Barney’ Barnato,” tokencoins.com, 1997.

  CHAPTER 8: BEYOND THE BOOM GATE, TOURING THE ERASURE

  101 hotshot twenty-two-year-old diamond buyer: Anthony Hocking, Oppenheimer and Son (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973).

  101 He used his position to further foster: David Pallister, Sarah Stewart, and Ian Lepper, South Africa Inc. The Oppenheimer Empire (Sandton, South Africa: Media House Publications, 1987).

  102 “They are unsophisticated”: DAP Pifer (Manager Kleinzee) to Consulting Engineers, Kimberley (quoting the 1938 Kleinzee Mine Manager, Drury Pifer), “General Manager, NMK Collection, File 6,” September 27, 1938. De Beers Archives (Kimberley), temporarily displayed in the Kimberley Mine Museum.

  102 Soon, the workers’ . . . jukskei: Manager, Kleinzee, to Manager, South Finance Corporation, Cape Town, “Golden Jubilee, 1926–1976.” December 10, 1930, p. 31. De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., Kleinzee Mine, GM, NMK 2, temporarily displayed in the Kleinzee Museum.

  104 the compacted carbon: Information in this paragraph and the next was gleaned from World Diamond Council, “Diamond Producing Countries in Africa Fact Sheet,” 2011; “Diamonds,” U.S. Library of Congress, countrystudies.us/south-africa (accessed October 16, 2015); William F. Gardner, “Discovery of Diamonds in Africa (1867),” History World International, history-world.org; and Diamond Fields International, “History of Marine Diamonds,” diamondfields.com.

  104 Having formed as the Earth itself formed: W. Barnett et al., “How Structure and Stress Influence Kimberlite Emplacement,” in Proceedings of the 10th International Kimberlite Conference, edited by D. G. Pearson et al. (New York: Springer, 2013).

  105 Ostriches occasionally swallowed diamonds: “Deformed Ostrich Eggs.” Exhibit (donated by the Farms Department), Kleinzee Museum. The eggs are displayed beneath the deformed shells of tortoises.

  117 “We understand that diamonds are different”: Cynthia Carroll (Chief Executive, Anglo American Corporate Office), “Dear All,” November 4, 2011. Written correspondence displayed in the Kleinzee Museum.

  118 “We have spent decades exalting anniversaries”: Nicky Oppenheimer and Jonathan Oppenheimer, “Dear Colleagues,” August 16, 2012. Written De Beers correspondence displayed in the Kleinzee Museum.

  119 when taken together . . . luxury retailers: Janine F. Roberts, “Masters of Illusion,” Ecologist, September 1, 2003.

  119 treated as an organized crime group: Janine F. Roberts, Glitter and Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel (New York: Disinformation, 2007).

  119 “You reinforce our brand”: Oppenheimer and Oppenheimer, “Dear Colleagues.”

  119 “the magic people . . . the best kind of people on earth”: “The Magic People,” July 2, 1997. De Beers correspondence to employees at the Namaqualand Mines. Kleinzee Museum archives.

  120 In the old days, the Lashing Gang: S. H. Badenhorst, “The Unique Namdeb Trilogy—Our Past, Present, and Future Mining Applications in This Unique Deposit,” Journal of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (November 2003): 539–50.

  121 mine security carried sharp assegai spears: “Assegais Were Carried by Security Guards.” Exhibit (donated by the Security Department, Koingnaas), Kleinzee Museum.

  122 “The first find” . . . five hundred years old: Much of this information was gleaned from “Bushman Burial (Excavation Report, Research Findings, Other Skeletal Finds, Historical Material and the Law),” document in the Kleinzee Museum archives.

  123 “If you travel from here to Cape Town”: These burial grounds got me thinking of the strange holes we make into the earth, and the strange hills we leave behind in the doing so, and of larger-than-life dead things; of the giant human skeleton unearthed during a gas exploration in the Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Desert, the phenomenal size of which was the result of either archaeological anomaly or photographic exaggeration; of the giant human skeleton found in the bottom silt of the Black Sea outside Varna, Bulgaria, in the ancient city of Odessos, the posture of the remains indicating that the massive man died while praying; of “Goliath,” the giant skeleton of a warrior found in Santa Mare, Romania, the trachea of which was ample enough to be a vambrace, the huge skull of which seemed to be screaming next to a ceremonial dagger; of the coal miners of Moberly, Missouri, who, in 1885, tunneled 360 feet into the earth, only to break through the ceiling of a bygone underground city that housed a network of roads enclosed in stone arches and a stratum of lava, and the interred remains of yet another human giant—three times the size of a contemporary human, the head bones split, the sagittal and coronal sutures crushed—adjacent to a stone fountain that still gushed pure water impregnated with lime. “The story, if true, is singular,” reported the St. Paul Daily Globe in 1885, “and if not true is a yarn that would have done credit to Missouri in the palmiest days of her romancing.” Kristan T. Harris, “City Found 360 Feet Below Missouri City, Giant Human Skeleton Found,” St. Paul Daily Globe, April 14, 1885; “A Missouri Wonder: A Buried City Discovered,” Semi-Weekly South Kentuckian, April 17, 1885.

  124 “a pure state, pure Namaqualand”: “Environment,” 2008. De Beers Family of Companies, Report to Society, 82–95.

  125 “One of the strongest predictors of conservation behavior”: Richard Osbaldiston, “Synthesizing the Experiments and Theories of Conservation Psychology,” Sustainability 5, no. 6 (June 2013): 2770–95.

  125 “The reasons that the passenger pigeon was unable to recover”: Craig Kasnoff, “The Passenger Pigeon: Extinct,” bagheera.com.

  127 “Moving forward, we will be out of the diamond business”: Oppenheimer and Oppenheimer, “Dear Colleagues.”

  BARTHOLOMEW VARIATION #4

  129 oracular priests known as the Augurs: “Augury (Divination),” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998.

  CHAPTER 9: PILGRIMS AND THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT

  131 the famed Koh-i-Noor, the Mountain of Light: William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017); Anil Dhir, “Why the Kohinoor Should Be Restored to Its Rightful Place at Jagannath Temple Puri,” Odisha News, October 18, 2018; “Koh-i-Noor Curse,” exhibit: plaque and article, Kimberley Mine Museum; and Ayesha L. Sethi, “A Brief History of the Kohinoor Diamond, and What All the Fuss Is About,” Citizen, April 19, 2016.

  133 Babur hypnotized Lodi’s squad of 150 war elephants: Babur, Baburnama: A Memoir, translated by Annette Susannah Beveridge (New Delhi: Rupa Publications India, 2017).

  134 “The gem called the Koh-i-Noor”: George Anderson and Manilal Bhagwandas Subedar
, The Last Days of the Company: A Source Book of Indian History, 1818–1858 (Bombay: A. H. Wheeler, 1918).

  135 “The Court of the East India Company are ruffled”: Edward Hollis, The Memory Palace: A Book of Lost Interiors (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2014).

  135 “The several sad or foul events”: Dalrymple and Anand, Koh-i-Noor.

  135 they did not “seize” the gem, but it was “presented to them”: Dalrymple and Anand, Koh-i-Noor.

  135 “Diamonds are for the Emperors”: Balaji Sadasivan, The Dancing Girl: A History of Early India (Pasir Panjang, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2011).

  136 unexploded ordnance lurk in the gardens’ mud walls: Lalage Snow, “Kabul’s Hidden Gardens Offer Afghans Haven from War,” Financial Times, September 13, 2013.

  136 Pilgrims to Babur’s tomb: Ursula Sims-Williams, “Pigeon-Keeping: A Popular Mughal Pastime,” Asian and African Studies, British Library, February 23, 2013, bl.uk.

  136 “If you want a simple life”: Babur, Baburnama.

  CHAPTER 10: ODYSSEY TO DIE HOUTHOOP

  138 “very special, but isolated . . . treated as mere numbers”: De Beers document “Kleinzee,” chapter 1, “Introduction.” Kleinzee Museum archives. The photocopied and bound document is full of diamond-loving, company-loving propaganda. The quotes used here were apparently taken from an anonymous De Beers operative’s interview with a Kleinzee local named Wessel Olivier on July 5, 1997, but the citation states that Olivier lives in Joubertina, which is a twelve-hour, 1,052-kilometer drive from Kleinzee, so who knows.

  139 Jack Carstens: Jack Carstens, A Fortune Through My Fingers (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1962); Patrick Richard Carstens, Port Nolloth: The Making of a South African Seaport (Cape Town: South African Library, 2011); Peter Carstens, In the Company of Diamonds: De Beers, Kleinzee, and the Control of a Town (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001); and “Die Ontdekkers: The Discoverers,” exhibit: series of clipped articles and captioned photographs, Kleinzee Museum.