It was a very curious combination; Kuiker the granite man at home, but curiously, even distinctively, colourful abroad, with his taste for bright Hawaiian shirts aglow with orange sunsets and rampant palms, and the new Secretary to the Department of Communications, Trudy Yssel, young, pretty, tough as hell, shrewd and decidedly modern. There was always something stubbornly old-fashioned about Gus Kuiker. He was large, lumpish even. Trudy was svelte and auburn. He looked like a prize fighter, with a big bone-plated forehead, cauliflower ears, a doughy nose, fleshy and rather sensuous lips. But they were a formidable team, it was widely agreed, and of their determination to change the face of internal and foreign propaganda there could be no doubt. As far as Gus Kuiker was concerned, Trudy Yssel could simply do no wrong. What’s more she was funded to the hilt. She seemed unstoppable.
As Blanchaille and Kipsel arrived at Heathrow Airport the newspapers they bought told a very strange story. DEPCOM MYSTERY DEEPENS. WHERE IS TRUDY?
Kipsel studied the paper. The Kuiker/Yssel affair was now making international news. The English papers printed an account of an interview given by a spokesman in Kuiker’s Department.
Reporter:
Can you give us any idea about the location of Trudy Yssel?
Spokesman:
It is not in the public interest to disclose any further information.
Reporter:
Would you comment on rumours that she has left the country?
Spokesman:
The rumour is without foundation.
A few days later, after Trudy Yssel had been sighted in Philadelphia, another news conference was given.
Reporter:
Will you confirm that Miss Yssel is now in Philadelphia?
Spokesman:
I cannot confirm or deny that report.
Reporter:
Do you admit that she is abroad?
Spokesman:
I have not said that she is abroad.
Reporter:
But she’s in Philadelphia. Therefore she must be abroad.
Spokesman:
You should learn a little more about your own country before leaping to conclusions. There are other Philadelphias nearer home.
Reporter:
Whichever Philadelphia she may be in, what is she doing there?
Spokesman:
I will not be cross-examined like this.
Well, of course, the invitation was impossible to resist and a search was immediately launched and indeed another Philadelphia was found, closer to hand, in the Cape province, a small town consisting of no more than the usual bank and church and a few hundred puzzled inhabitants who lined and cheered when the reporters from the nation’s press arrived in their Japanese estate cars and their big Mercedes to interview everyone from the mayor to the town’s oldest inhabitant, Granny Ryneveldt, aged 103, who declared that she hadn’t seen such excitement since Dominee Vasbythoven ran off with his gardener and joined the gay community in the Maluti mountains. However, there was no trace of Trudy. Everybody had heard of her, of course. But nobody had seen her.
It didn’t matter. The Regime made capital out of the reporters’ double discomfiture. Journalists, they said, should get to know their own country better and not always look overseas for glamorous stories. Various sanctions were hinted at if the newspapers did not take up this suggestion. Then ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church expressed their outrage that the affair of the renegade minister, Vasbythoven, had been dragged up once more. For their part, several liberal English clerics preached sermons against the hounding of the unfortunate minister, reminding their congregations that homosexual practice between consenting adults was widely regarded as acceptable in the outside world and they lauded Dominee Vasbythoven who had shown his bravery not only by taking as a lover one of his own sex but someone of another race which showed him to be not only sexually liberated but racially balanced and they pointed out that this was no small feat for a man whose great-great uncle had been Judge-President of the Orange Free State, when it had still been a Boer Republic. Here again the Regime waded in with warnings to the opposition press against attempts to slander the memory of the Boer Republics when, led by Uncle Paul Kruger, the Boer Nation with God’s help had fought for its freedom against the wicked imperialist colonialist oppression of the British. Anti-Government papers were warned for the last time to put their house in order.
The English papers overseas, beyond the reach of the Regime, agreed that Minister Kuiker and his protégée Trudy Yssel had disappeared. They also agreed that large sums of Government money appeared to have gone missing with them. They printed a photograph which showed the missing pair in a Paris street. She carried several shopping bags and smiled vivaciously. He covered his face with one hand, but was instantly recognisable. Behind them walked two men in dark suits. One of these men now sat drinking at the bar.
The only other drinkers were a small group of oriental businessmen who drank from globular tankards foaming pink cocktails garnished with sprigs of mint and cherries, leaning forward above the liquid and tasting it with tongues and fingertips, giving excited little barks of encouragement. A small girl carrying an enormous soft green cat with wild eyes and a forest of woolly whiskers wandered around the footrail with tear-stained face obviously searching for her parents. All around was the teeming flux of anonymous travellers departing for a hundred destinations.
The drinker who aroused this rhapsody of patriotic memories in Blanchaille was painfully thin, his sports jacket hung on him, a loud tweed of blues and greens with an ugly stiffening of the bristles which had the effect of making the colours of the cloth shimmer, a sickly rainbow effect. His complexion too was strange, a light grey translucency tinged with pink. He’d been drinking for some time, Blanchaille judged, and despite the flush that warmed the bony face, it was the air of desiccation that struck him, as if a kind of internal emaciation had taken place, an interior drought, a profound dryness which no amount of watering could end. He had crisp, slightly oiled sandy hair through which the scalp gleamed bleakly. Altogether he had the look of St John of Capistrano, formidable Inquisitor-General of Vienna, a portrait of whom had hung in Blanchaille’s class-room many years before.
His message to Kipsel was succinct: ‘Cop.’
Kipsel did not thank him. ‘I warn you Blanchie, when shown a South African security man competing urges threaten me.’
‘Which?’
‘Do I hit out, or throw up?’
At the bar the oriental businessmen had replenished their tankards and were lapping away happily at the pink stuff. The little girl had been given a bowl of crisps by the barman and sat eating steadily, gazing out into the seething concourse with tearful eyes. Blanchaille introduced his friend and himself to the solitary drinker.
‘Jesus!’ said the drinker, ‘Not Kipsel the traitor?’
‘No,’ Kipsel said firmly. ‘Not Kipsel the traitor.’
‘Ernest Nokkles,’ said the drinker, ‘passing on to Geneva.’
‘So are we.’
‘Let me get you a drink,’ said Blanchaille.
‘Brandy,’ said Nokkles. ‘A large one if you will. The bloody English tot is about as much as a nun pees with her knees crossed. And Coke with it. I always have it with Coke. The bastards here drink it neat, y’know.’
‘How are things at home?’ Kipsel asked.
‘Do you mean militarily or economically?’
‘I didn’t know there was a difference.’
‘They’re linked, but they’re different. Militarily we’re all right. Hell, there’s nobody who’s going to touch us. Frankly I think we’re in more danger from the drought. But if you consider the Total Onslaught, then there’s no doubt about its having an effect. Slow but cumulative. We might crack one day. But despite that, the Big Seven reckon we’re doing O.K., financially.’
The Big Seven were those groups which between them controlled almost every area of life and dominated the Stock Exchange. The gold mining companies of co
urse and various major industries – armaments, insurance, drink and tobacco together with the Government control boards that regulated everything from transport to citrus. Seven was a mystical number. The Big Seven represented the aggregate of national interests.
The profile which emerged of your average South African was a dedicated smoker who took to booze in a big way, kept himself armed to the teeth but was sensible enough to insure against the risk that either cigarettes or drink or terrorists might blow him away, and paid for this lifestyle with gold bullion. For the rest he did as the Regime told him, travelled as the Government directed him and died when and where the State demanded it. This handful of huge conglomerates owned everything and they also owned slices of each other and were all held, in turn, in the capacious lap of the Regime which allowed and even encouraged these cliques, cartels, monopolies to operate and indeed took a very close interest in them to the extent of inviting their directors to sit on various Government boards, boards of arms companies and the rural development agencies. Private business responded by asking Government ministers to take up seats on the boards of the gold mining companies, army officers were invited to join insurance companies, tobacco groups and breweries. Complicated interlocking deals were set up between the State and the great conglomerates, a famous instance of which was the Life Saving Bond which allowed families of soldiers to purchase a special insurance policy on the life of their loved one for a small monthly premium. ‘In the event of deprivation’, as the preamble to the policy put it, the next of kin received a ‘Life Saving Bond’ certificate which showed the value of all their contributions to date. The premiums which had accrued were then ‘sent forward’, which meant the sum was invested in ‘armaments and/or other industries vital to the war effort’, thereby giving all soldiers a second chance to serve by helping to ensure that the country’s weaponry was the best possible. The casualties joined what the field padres called the army invisible, or simply the Big Battalion, known familiarly as the BB. ‘Oh, he’s serving with the BB’ became a common way of skirting around a tragedy and won for those who spoke the words a new respect. The Regime encouraged positive thinking and inspectors ensured that the attractive blue and white Bond Certificates were prominently displayed in the home. Every month a draw took place and the family with the lucky bond number won for themselves a tour of the forward operational areas, plus a visit to the site of some celebrated victory (combat conditions permitting) and invariably returned strengthened and resolute. The newspapers and television followed these visits with great interest and press stories appeared and television reports showing pictures of Dick and Eugenia and their children, Marta and Kobus, proudly wearing combat helmets they’d been given, trundling through the veld in an armoured troop carrier. ‘My Day in the Operational Areas’ was an increasingly popular title in school examination papers.
‘The English,’ said Nokkles, ‘are bloody awful snobs. And racialists. They also have their kaffirs, you know. It’s just that you can’t tell them apart. Being English they all look alike. But they have them. Oh yes, they have them.’
He swallowed his brandy with relish, clicking his tongue. But no amount of drinking would irrigate that consuming desert within Ernie Nokkles.
A man in a dark green anorak and a big woman in a pixie cap, its straps pulled down hard over her ears and knotted cruelly beneath her chin, both of them buttoned everywhere, plumply encased, walked up to the little girl and removed her from the counter. ‘We’ve been calling you on the loudspeaker,’ the woman said between clenched teeth. And then bending over the little girl she administered several stinging slaps, saying at the same time and in rhythm to her blows: ‘Why didn’t you listen?’
‘And child beaters, too,’ Nokkles said. ‘What do you think?’
‘We think that you must be Trudy’s detective,’ Blanchaille said.
‘That,’ said Nokkles with a contemptuous downward twitch of the lips and a sideways flick of the head. so sudden Blanchaille thought for the moment he might have spat on the floor, ‘is a newspaper lie. I am not a policeman. In fact my function is quite vague. I fall within the remit of a number of officials – there’s Pieter Weerhaan, Dominee Lippetaal, as well as Mr Glip, and then of course there is Ernest Tweegat and Dr Enigiets. Actually I work for all these people, and of course for Miss Yssel. This for me was a fairly recent move. By training I’m a population movement man. I came from the PRP, the Population Resettlement Programme. I only got this Yssel job because someone went sick and I was shoved in. Believe it or not, I began working as a rookie years ago in Old Ma Dubbeltong’s Department, as it then was, of Entry and Egress; that was the original outfit, that was the egg which this new-fangled Department for Population Settlements came from. The PRP is really just old wine in new bottles. Anyway when I was there it was a damn sight tougher than anything today. God! My boss was old Harry Waterman, my hell what a tartar! Screaming Harry we called him. Well, say what you like, credit where credit’s due, he was largely instrumental, along with Ma, in formulating policy for what we now call population settlement. Screaming Harry was a blunt official, no fanciness about him. Nothing elegant. A straight guy, a removalist of the old school. Look, he’d say, you’ve got all these blackies wandering around the country or slipping into the towns or setting up camps wherever they feel like it and squatting here and there, and they’ve got to be moved. Right? They’ve got to be put down in some place of their own and made to stay there. Now you never beg or threaten when you’re running a removal. It doesn’t matter if you’re endorsing out – because that’s what we called it then, endorsing out – some old bastard who doesn’t have a pass, or an entire fucking tribe. First, you notify deadline for removal, then you get your paper-work right, you double check that the trucks are ordered up – and then you move them. As I say, old Harry Waterman was a plain removalist. None of these fancy titles for him, like Resettlement Officer or Relocation Adviser, as they like to call themselves now, these clever dicks from Varsity. No, everything was straight talking for Harry. As the trucks come out of the camp which you’re removing, Harry said, you put the bulldozers in and flatten the place. End of story. It’s quick, clean, efficient. You know something?’ Nokkles gazed earnestly at Blanchaille and Kipsel. ‘I don’t know if it’s not a lot kinder than the boards of enquiry and appeal and so on which dominate the resettlement field today. After all we all know in the end, after all the talking’s done, they’re going to have to get out. So why lead them on? The only talent you need to be a removalist, old Harry was fond of saying, is eyes in the back of your head. Front eyes watch the trucks moving out, those in the back watch the bulldozers moving in. A great guy, old Harry. Dead now. But he never understood the new scheme of things. I believe you have to move with the times. So when the call came, I was ready. Fate spoke. “Ernie Nokkles,” it said, “will you or will you not accept secondment to this new Department of Communications run by this hot lady said to be going places under the aegis of Minister Gus Kuiker?” And like a shot I answered back, “Damn sure!” But I am not, and never was, Trudy’s detective.’
‘What were you then?’ asked Kipsel.
‘Her aide, confidante and loyal member of her Department,’ said Nokkles proudly. ‘What I wanted was to help her and the Minister in their great task.’
‘Great task,’ Kipsel repeated scathingly. ‘Trudy Yssel tried to carry the propaganda war to the enemy abroad, she wanted to coax, buy, bend overseas opinion about the true nature of the Regime. It was her task to show them as being not simply a gang of wooden headed, rock-brained farmers terrified that their grandfathers might have slept with their cooks – no – they were to become human ethnologists determined to allow all ethnic groups to blossom according to their cultural traditions within the natural parameters recognised by God, biology and history.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Nokkles. ‘But if you’re saying she wanted to save us, I say yes. She and the Minister wanted to lead us out of the past, back into th
e world, into the future. And that’s what I wanted too.’
‘And what do you want now?’ Blanchaille asked gently.
Nokkles looked around quickly. He dropped his voice. ‘I wish I was back in old Ma Dubbeltong’s department again. But that can’t be. Look, you guys are going to Switzerland and I am going to Switzerland. We’re countrymen abroad. So why don’t we travel together? I mean we don’t have to agree politically, just to keep company a bit – not so?’
‘Sure, we’ll go along with you, but you might not like where we’re going,’ said Blanchaille.
‘We’re heading for Uncle Paul’s place,’ said Kipsel.
The change in Nokkles was dramatic. He stood up and drained his glass. He picked up his bag. ‘God help you then. That old dream’s not for me.’
Kruger's Alp Page 22
