That Blanchaille should have been welcomed by an elderly military man who promised him a selection of tales not without historical interest to be told by a collection of ‘rather special’ ladies, might have surprised Blanchaille had his experience in the holding cells not destroyed his remaining reserves of surprise.
Visser talked to Blanchaille of the old connection between the Regime and the Nazi movement as he conducted him to his room and from there to the bar. ‘Why did they support Hitler? On the basis that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Tradition played a part as well. The Kaiser had supported Paul Kruger against the British in the old days and that was a pretty good precedent for his descendants to do the same. There had been German support for the Boer fighters for freedom. Ergo – the later liaison between the Austrian housepainter and the hairy little rockspiders who run our country. A marriage of true minds.’
The hotel was huge and empty, built of steel and glass and filled with the hiss of the air-conditioning. The tinted windows did not open. Brown chocolate carpet climbed the walls. Visser stood behind the bar, a great polished bank of teak surrounded by a brass rail, and I saw in my dream how he summoned the first of the four girls whom he described as hostesses dedicated to the refreshment of guests at the Palace ‘with a selection of stories and even an exhibition or two’, he said. The first of the storytellers was Freia.
Freia was blonde, she wore denim shorts, Visser described her as ‘our conductor’. She did not look like it. Her hair was scraped back and held in place by a blue Alice-band, she was crumpled and yawning and had obviously been sleeping. Across the front of her tee-shirt was the map of Switzerland cunningly placed so that there rose up from it the twin alps of her breasts. She ordered ‘the usual’ from Visser, a green cocktail in a frosty glass and licking the sugar from the rim with a sharp pink tongue, she began in a voice dreamy and lilting as if she recalled something recent and strange, but which Blanchaille soon understood from the expert timing and sardonic emphases of her delivery to be a story often told.
‘I used to be a tour conductor. I worked in the townships in the days when we still ran tours. I was in Gus Kuiker’s department – you know Gus Kuiker? Augustus Kuiker, the Minister? My job was to show tourists around, the official tourists who get invited out here, ageing film stars, American senators, elderly prima donnas, industrialists, pop-singers, tennis players, members of Anglican investigative commissions.’ Freia laughed, drained her glass and held it out for a refill. ‘I remember my last tour. Eighteen English footballers and one of their big men from British television, Cliff Irving, a pointy fellow with a sparse beard, balding, small bright black eyes, hands like soup-plates. They’d been bribed, of course. They’re all bribed. When they come out here the townships are on every itinerary. Obligatory. There were, besides, a few Japanese businessmen, good loyal friends. It’s the pig-iron they come for, or did, years ago. We’d stopped looking on them as little yellow devils with funny eyes and saw them as honorary white men. Loaded with cameras, of course. And a batch of Israelis in funny hats. We weren’t supposed to know they were Israelis. They were described as a Chilean judo team. A smattering of Germans, industrialists or bankers, came too. The soccer tourists from Britain were ageing hacks for the most part, best years behind them, anxious to make more money in three weeks than they’d ever made before in their lives. Nice enough fellows, but forever making speeches. At the drop of a hat they’d tell you that they were really interested in pushing back the barriers of racial segregation, playing township teams, coaching barefoot piccaninnies, and so on. They climbed aboard loaded with coolbags full of beer because they’d just been to the brewery which sponsored their visit and put them on show. They were ticking nicely by the time they got to us and the famous TV sports journalist had trouble calming them down. First stop was the 200-megawatt generator which could supply millions of kilowatt hours, all the Japanese taking notes, very impressed to learn we were supplying electricity not only to our own industries but to big power stations hundreds and hundreds of miles away in independent countries to the north. Everybody needs our power. We told these countries. “Look, you deal with us. Or nothing. You either pay or you shut up.” My tourists always glazed over when I hit them with pig-iron and electric power figures. But they had to get the sell. Not easy for me, with everyone gazing dutifully out of the windows at the cooling towers, except the Japanese. Pretty boring stuff I have to admit. Someone always asked why the power station was surrounded by barbed wire, fields of lean, cruel, spindly stuff like some dangerous crop. Well, you explained that it had to be there otherwise these guys came in and blew it up. You had to have the wire and the dogs and the night patrols, and so on. Then we drove through the town proper, I mean what can you say? Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tiny brick and tin houses. There it is, staring you in the face, it lies there in the veld and the tourists stare at it for a while like they can’t believe what they’re seeing, and I remember one of the footballers said it was worse than bloody Manchester. So at this point we were trained to talk about murder. You sat back in your uniform and your perky cap in your seat next to the driver and turned the mike up and hit them with the murder rate. More people killed hourly in our townships than in New York on a good hot summer’s night, more than in Guatemala! That was always good for a bit of a sharp intake of breath. They always believe that Guatemala is really the killing ground of the world. Down the dusty streets we trundled with the barefoot kids charging after us. The soccer players would get into the spirit of things and we’d open a window or two and encourage them to throw coins out to the kids, and perhaps a few sweets. Or they’d throw signed photographs of themselves. We passed the Umdombala Cash Store and the Dutch Reformed Church. Usual thing, polished blond wood, glass, with that thin skinny little black metal chicken on the steeple that’s supposed to serve as a weather vane. One of those horrible little buildings that they put up, all sharp angles and shiny edges and you’re supposed to get the feeling of upward thrust of flight, but the base is so broad and heavy it’s like a fat space rocket that can’t take off. And then we’d stop at the local cash store and we’d let them buy brightly coloured kaffir blankets. They had an absolute fascination for these sorts of native goods. They liked blankets and beads and wire work. We didn’t hide things. We took them past the police station, they were always interested in that, and you know the police stations in the townships are always barred, with enormous gates and acres of barbed wire, with the armoured cars drawn up in front of the charge office and the parade ground with the flagpole and ornamental cannons. They all noticed the sportsfields and we’d make the point that the police would often invite neighbouring children to come and play with them, kids from the township, and if they were tough, well they had to be, that they were really not as bad as they had been painted, after all they were policing one of the murder capitals of the world. You’d get people who simply wouldn’t let the murder rate drop, who’d say, “I still believe it’s Guatemala that’s the murder capital”, and you’d say, “Look, maybe thirty or fifty people a night die in Guatemala, whereas here we’re way ahead of anything like that, we’re in a different league here”. Then, to redress the balance as it were, we’d stop at the kindergarten run by a buxom little nun, Sister Edith. Sister Edith’s crèche was a very popular tourist stop. She’d call the kids out and they’d sit on their little wooden benches in their blue smocks and their large yellow sashes and they’d sing for the tourists, beautiful singing, wonderful intonation, and you could tell that Sister Edith spent a lot of time polishing up these tiny choirs of hers. They used to sing laments usually. They seemed to be awfully good at laments those little kids. I remember one – it went “My mother has gone to Egoli . . . my father comes no more . . .”’ Freia sang softly to herself, a mournful, achingly despairing little air echoing around the bar. ‘We’d have to tear ourselves away from Sister Edith’s singing kindergarten and I would generally drive them past the big hospital where the stab cases were re
cuperating, lying out on the big old stoep, paralysed from the waist down after being attacked by local hoodlums with sharpened bicycle spokes lunging at the spinal cord. And these young cripples would wave and smile as we drove by and show that they still had a lot of spirit. Next stop, millionaire’s row, places like Mr Masinga’s mansion and we’d make the point: look, no matter what you’ve read about starvation and so on in the townships, you will see that these people are actually thriving, that they are actually getting on bloody well. That men like Mr Masinga could have bought anybody on that bus, German, Japanese or Israeli, five times over. But remember, this isn’t Clacton or Bremerhaven, this is Africa! With that, off to the beer hall where the municipal authorities brewed their own beer, tremendously popular and fantastically healthy for the workers who absolutely lapped it up at a few cents for a great big plastic bucket of the stuff. Occasionally we saw a fight and I’d let them sit through it. Why hide the unpleasant side of life? After all they’re adults. People fight all over the world when they’ve had too much to drink, not just our blacks. Then on to the pride of the township, the sports centre with its football pitch and its cycling track and the footballers would get excited because they would be playing there, or at least they expected to, but these bandit tours were often cancelled in mid-course when the centre-forward was arrested in a black brothel, or the sponsor got cold feet, so there was always an air of unease in the first glimpse of the soccer stadium. We’d watch a black cyclist in full gear making a circuit of the track in his Coca-Cola cap and his Barclays Bank shorts and his Raleigh bike. Finally we drove past the funeral parlour with all the coffin prices clearly displayed and the Christmas Club where you pay off so much a month to make sure that you get buried. So much for a funeral with car, without a car, and priced according to mourners, just like a roadhouse. The tourists were always fascinated and would ask questions like, why are these people sitting with bundles of blankets on their laps? And then of course it gradually dawned on the innocents that what looked like bundles of blankets were in fact dead babies. You should have seen their faces! I couldn’t help smiling. Suddenly they realised that they were in Africa! I mean I don’t have to tell you this, Father Theo of the Camps – but this was the place where you got babies dying like flies because of these epidemics sweeping through the new-born of the townships like Herod’s soldiers. And then you’d get one of these Japanese – you know how it is, they’d photograph anything! – and one of them would pull out a camera and ask if he could take a shot and we’d say, look, you know, look, if you don’t intrude on a mother’s grief then it’s okay. If you’ve got a telephoto lens then go ahead, but no going up close and snapping right in their faces, have some respect for the dead, this is Africa and Africa is cruel but we want to maintain civilised standards if at all possible . . . But why am I telling you this? You’re Father Theo of the Camps –’ Freia widened her big green eyes in mock astonishment.
‘Was,’ Blanchaille contradicted her. ‘Was once.’
‘Well, anyway, why tell you? You’ve seen more of infant mortality than I ever will. But that’s my piece and you’re welcome to it. Now it’s Happy’s turn. She’ll give you a different view of things.’
Happy, tall, black, appeared with Visser leaning gratefully on her arm. She took a seat between Freia and Blanchaille and ordered a highball. Her hair was drawn up in a great dark crown and seeded with what looked like pearls. Her fingernails were painted pink. Her manner was strident, even aggressive and Blanchaille shifted uneasily. Freia caught his eye and winked. Takes all sorts,’ she whispered sympathetically, ‘that’s the trouble.’ Happy glared. Freia fell silent. Blanchaille sighed and turned to Happy. He was being punished with parables.
‘I worked in the house of my Minister from about the age of fourteen onwards. Because my Minister was powerful I learnt things and because I learnt things I went places. My Minister’s department decided that it was no good dealing with our northern black neighbours as we’d done in the old colonial times with the white men lording it over blacks. In the new age black must speak to black and so I became a negotiator, that’s to say I dealt with heads of state and political officials in the enemy states to the north. Since as you may know, they buy the works from us – power, food, transport, arms, everything from nappies to canned fruit – I used to say to them, look, this is our price, take it or leave it. Sometimes I’d get a lot of opposition. Some big hero of the African revolution, chest clinking with medals, would meet me at the National Redeemer Airport and say: “Jesus Christ! You’re black, Happy, you’re one of us, how can you help them to bleed us to death?” And I’d say, “Man – we take forty thousand mine workers a year from you, and if you don’t like the arrangement and the price per head we’re quoting then fine – don’t send them. Or maybe you’d prefer that instead of remitting their salaries to you in toto, direct, we might consider paying the poor bastards individually and in that case half your national income goes out the window . . .” Allow me to present you with a photograph of my Minister.’
Before he could refuse Happy thrust a photograph in his hands. Involuntarily he glanced at it: ‘Kuiker, of course.’
This delighted his audience who clapped their hands and echoed him: ‘Kuiker, of course.’
The face of a pugilist, of an all-in wrestler. The flesh kneaded into thick ridges around the jaw-line, eyebrows and lips; nose flat and wide, a bony spur run askew and bedded down in thick flat flesh. The full lips in their charateristic sneer, even when compressed. MINISTER KUIKER WEARING HIS SARDONIC SMILE, the papers said. Thick dark hair combed back from the forehead in stiff, oiled ridges running over his ears and down the back of his neck. He had a taste for shiny suits and bright ties and a paradoxical reputation for unyielding conservatism combined with modern pragmatism. He was solid, powerful and dangerous, this man, the marbled eyes, the petrified hair, the enormous capacity for Scotch, the truculent ties and the cheap fashion jewellery, gold tie-pins with their diamond chips, the skull rings with red-glass bloodshot eyes he affected on both hands. Gus Kuiker was widely tipped to succeed President Bubé when the old man went. His only rival, young ‘Bomber Vollenhoven’, was seen as too inexperienced and too liberal. Kuiker was the mastermind behind President Bubé’s lightning foreign tours and the man responsible for plucking a young statistical clerk by name of Trudy Yssel from a lowly job in the President’s Department for Applied Ethnic Embryology and appointing her to the post of Secretary to the Department of Communications: YSSEL NEW SUPREMO AT DEPCOM, the papers said. KUIKER’S PROPAGANDA OFFENSIVE!
In the picture Kuiker gazed belligerently ahead. It might have been a police mug shot.
‘Where was this taken?’
‘Here.’
His eyes must have held the question which of course there was no need to ask, and his hosts were too tactful to answer. There was only one reason why anyone stopped at the Airport Palace Hotel. Blanchaille felt conscious once again of his naïvety. Well, he could not help that. He had been raised to believe such things were impossible. Only Lynch had disagreed. But then Lynch had been mad. Now it seemed increasingly that Lynch’s madness was being borne out. It also, and this was ironic, seemed to bear out the charge of the Old Guard within the Regime, that the New Men, of whom Kuiker was a leading representative, would cut and run when things got tough.
The Old Guard believed in shooting. The New Men believed in certain adjustments. ‘I was one of these adjustments he had in mind,’ said Happy, ‘when he talked about necessary adjustments to racial policies. He talked of ethnic autonomy, of equalised freedoms, of positive tribalism, of the thousand subtle easements of policy which, my Minister Gus Kuiker would say, were necessary to relax the corset of rigid white centralism and to allow us to reach and embrace the future, as we must if we were to survive. Did the white man think – our Minister would ask – that he had a right in Africa because he had been there for three hundred years? Nonsense! The Portuguese had been in Africa for five hundred years, and where were
they now? They were back in Lisbon on the dole. Therefore, in answer to the question – what shall we do to be saved? – the Old Guard would have replied, shoot to kill. But ask the New Men and they would tell you, do anything necessary. What kills them is to be condemned for acting for reasons of expediency when they believe as much as their predecessors, the Old Guard, that they act out of divine necessity. Watch out for Minister Kuiker, in whatever guise you find him. He has been abused by his own people and that has made him crazy.’
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