by Tom Sharpe
*
If Luitenant Verkramp was having difficulties in the communications field much the same could be said of both Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon and Kommandant van Heerden.
‘Are you sure he’s not there?’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon asked the Major, whom she had sent on his daily outing into Weezen to tell the Kommandant that they were expecting him to lunch.
‘Absolutely certain,’ said Major Bloxham. ‘I sat in the bar for nearly an hour and there was no sign of the fellow. Asked the barman if he’d seen him. Hadn’t.’
‘I think it’s most peculiar,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon. ‘His card definitely said he would stay at the hotel.’
‘Damned peculiar card, if you ask me,’ said the Colonel. ‘Dearest Daphne, Kommandant van Heerden has pleasure—’
‘I thought it was a very amusing card,’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon interrupted him. ‘It shows what a sense of humour the Kommandant has.’
‘Didn’t strike me as having a sense of humour,’ said the Major who had not got over his encounter with the Kommandant.
‘Personally I think we should be thankful for small mercies,’ said the Colonel. ‘It doesn’t look as if the swine is coming after all.’ He went out to the yard at the back of the house where Harbinger was grooming a large black horse. ‘Everything ready for tomorrow. Harbinger? Fox fit?’
‘Took him for a run this morning,’ said Harbinger, a thin man with eyes close together and short hair. ‘He went quite quick.’
‘Fine, fine,’ said the Colonel. ‘Well we’ll get off early.’ In the house Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon was still puzzled.
‘Are you sure you went to the right hotel?’ she asked the Major.
‘I went to the store and asked for the hotel,’ the Major insisted. ‘The fellow tried to sell me a bed. Seemed to think that’s what I wanted.’
‘It sounds most peculiar,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon.
‘I said I didn’t want a bed,’ said the Major. ‘He sent me across the road to the hotel in the end.’
‘And they hadn’t heard of him?’
‘Didn’t know anything about any Kommandant van Heerden.’
‘Perhaps he’ll turn up tomorrow,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon wistfully.
8
Unaware of the portentous events that were taking place in Piemburg, Kommandant van Heerden nevertheless spent a restless first night in his room at Weezen Spa. For one thing the strong smell of sulphur irritated his olfactory nerve and for another one of the many taps in his room insisted on dripping irregularly. The Kommandant tried to get rid of the sulphurous smell by spraying the room with the deodorant he’d bought to avoid giving bodily offence to Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon. The resulting pot-pourri was rather nastier than the sulphur alone and in any case it made his eyes water. He got up and opened the window to let the smell out only to find that he had let a mosquito in. He shut the window again and switching on the light killed the mosquito with a slipper. He got back into bed and the tap dripped. He got out again and tightened all six taps and got back into bed. This time he was about to get to sleep when a dull rumble in the pipes suggested an air lock. There wasn’t anything he could do in the way of major plumbing so he lay and listened to it while watching the moon rise mistily through the frosted glass window. In the early hours he finally slept to be awakened by a coloured maid at half past seven bringing him a cup of tea. The Kommandant sat up and drank some tea. He had already swallowed some before he realized how horrible it tasted. For a moment the thought that he had been the victim of a poison attempt crossed his mind before he realized that the taste was due to the ubiquitous sulphur. He got out of bed and began brushing his teeth with water that tasted vile. Thoroughly fed up, he washed and dressed and went to the pump room for breakfast.
‘Fruit juice,’ he ordered when the waitress asked him what he wanted. He ordered a second glass when she brought the first and swilling the grapefruit juice round his mouth managed to eradicate some of the taste of sulphur.
‘Boiled eggs or fried,’ the waitress asked. The Kommandant said fried on the grounds that they were less likely to be tainted. When the old man came in and asked if everything was all right, the Kommandant took the opportunity of asking him if it was possible to have some fresh water.
‘Fresh?’ said the old man. ‘The water here is as fresh as mother nature can make it. Hot springs under here. Comes straight from the bowels of the earth.’
‘I can well believe it,’ said the Kommandant.
Presently he was joined by Mr Mulpurgo who sat at his usual table by the fountain.
‘Good morning,’ said the Kommandant cheerily and was a little hurt by the rather chilly ‘Morning’ he got back. The Kommandant tried again.
‘How’s the flatulence this morning?’ he asked sympathetically.
Mr Mulpurgo ordered corn flakes, bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade before replying.
‘Flatulence?’
‘You said yesterday you came here for flatulence,’ said the Kommandant.
‘Oh,’ said Mr Mulpurgo in the tone of one who didn’t want to be reminded what he had said yesterday. ‘Much better, thank you.’
The Kommandant refused the waitress’ offer of coffee and ordered a third fruit juice.
‘I’ve been thinking about that worm you spoke of yesterday, the one that never dies,’ he said as Mr Mulpurgo attempted to get the rind off a soggy piece of bacon. ‘Is it true that worms don’t die?’
Mr Mulpurgo looked at him distrustfully. ‘My own impression is that worms are not immune from the consequences of mortality,’ he said finally, ‘and that they shuffle off this mortal coil at their own equivalent of three-score years and ten.’ He concentrated on his bacon and eggs and left the Kommandant to consider whether worms could shuffle off anything. He wondered what a mortal coil was. It sounded like a piece of radio equipment.
‘But you mentioned one that didn’t,’ he said after giving the matter some thought.
‘Didn’t what?’
‘Die.’
‘I was speaking metaphorically,’ Mr Mulpurgo said. ‘I was talking about rebirth.’ Like a reluctant Ancient Mariner prodded into action by the Kommandant’s insistent curiosity Mr Mulpurgo found himself embarking on a lengthy disquisition that had been no part of his plans for the morning. He had intended working quietly in his room on his thesis. Instead an hour later he found himself strolling beside the river expounding his belief that the study of literature added a new dimension to the life of the reader. Beside him Kommandant van Heerden lumbered along occasionally recognizing a phrase which was not wholly unfamiliar but for the most part merely lost in admiration for the intellectual excellence of his companion. He had no idea what ‘aesthetic awareness’ or ‘extended sensibilities’ were though ‘emotional anaemia’ did suggest a lack of iron, but these were all minor problems beside the major one which was that Mr Mulpurgo for all his divagations seemed to be saying that a man could be born again through the study of literature. That at least the Kommandant discerned and the message coming from such an obviously well-informed source brought him fresh hope that he would one day achieve the transformation he so desired.
‘You don’t think heart transplants are any good then?’ he asked when Mr Mulpurgo paused for breath. The devotee of Rupert Brooke looked at him suspiciously. Not for the first time Mr Mulpurgo had the feeling that he was having his leg pulled, but Kommandant van Heerden’s face was alight with a grotesque innocence which was quite disarming.
Mr Mulpurgo chose to assume that in his own quaint way the Kommandant was reviving the arguments in favour of science put forward by C. P. Snow in his famous debate with F. R. Leavis. If he wasn’t, Mr Mulpurgo couldn’t imagine what he was talking about.
‘Science deals only with the externals,’ he said. ‘What we need is to change man’s nature from within.’
‘I should have thought heart transplants did that very well,’ said the Kommandant.
‘Heart transplants don’t alter man’s na
ture in the least,’ said Mr Mulpurgo who was finding the Kommandant’s train of thought no less incomprehensible than the Kommandant had found his. What organ transplants had to do with extended sensibilities he couldn’t begin to think. He decided to change the topic of conversation before it became too inconsequential.
‘Do you know these mountains well?’ he asked.
The Kommandant said he didn’t personally but that his great-great-grandfather had crossed them in the Great Trek.
‘Did he settle in Zululand?’ Mr Mulpurgo asked.
‘He was murdered there,’ said the Kommandant. Mr Mulpurgo was sorry to hear it.
‘By Dingaan,’ continued the Kommandant. ‘My great-great-grandmother was one of the few women to survive the massacre at Blaauwkrans River. The Zulu impis swept down without warning and hacked them all to death.’
‘A dreadful business,’ Mr Mulpurgo murmured. His own family history was less chequered. He couldn’t remember his great-great-grandmother but he felt fairly certain she hadn’t been massacred by anyone.
‘That’s one reason we don’t trust the kaffirs,’ the Kommandant continued.
‘There’s no chance of that happening again,’ Mr Mulpurgo said.
‘You never can tell with kaffirs,’ said the Kommandant. ‘The leopard doesn’t change its spots.’
Mr Mulpurgo’s liberal leanings forced him to protest.
‘Come now, you don’t mean to say that you think today’s Africans are savages,’ he said mildly. ‘I know some highly educated ones.’
‘Blacks are savages,’ insisted the Kommandant vehemently, ‘and the more educated they are the more dangerous they get.’
Mr Mulpurgo sighed.
‘Such a beautiful country,’ he said. ‘It seems such a shame that people of different races can’t live amicably together in it.’
Kommandant van Heerden looked at him curiously.
‘It’s part of my job to see that people of different races don’t live together,’ he said by way of a warning. ‘You take my advice and put the idea out of your mind. I wouldn’t like to see a nice young fellow like you going to prison.’
Mr Mulpurgo stopped and began to hiccup. ‘I wasn’t suggesting,’ he began but the Kommandant stopped him.
‘I wasn’t suggesting you were,’ he said kindly. ‘All of us have these ideas once in a while but it’s best to forget them. If you want some black tail go up to Lourenço Marques. The Portuguese let you have it quite legally, you know. Some nice girls too, I can tell you.’ Mr Mulpurgo stopped hiccuping but he still stared at the Kommandant very nervously. Life at the University of Zululand had never prepared him for an encounter such as this.
‘You see,’ continued the Kommandant as they resumed their walk, ‘we know all about you intellectuals and your talk about education for the kaffirs and equality. Oh we keep an eye on you, you needn’t worry.’
Mr Mulpurgo was not reassured. He knew perfectly well that the police kept an eye on the university. There had been too many raids to think otherwise. He began to wonder if the Kommandant had deliberately sought him out to question him. The notion brought on another attack of hiccups.
‘There’s only one real question in this country,’ continued the Kommandant, quite unaware of the effect he was having on his companion, ‘and that is who works for who. Do I work for a kaffir or does he work for me? What do you say to that?’
Mr Mulpurgo tried to say that it was a pity people couldn’t work together co-operatively but he was hiccuping too much to be wholly coherent.
‘Well I’m not working down some gold mine to make some black bastard rich,’ said the Kommandant, ignoring what he supposed was an acute attack of flatulence, ‘and I’m not having a kaffir tell me to wash his car. It’s dog eat dog and I’m the bigger dog. That’s what you intellectuals forget.’
With this simple statement of his philosophy the Kommandant decided it was time to turn back.
‘I’ve got to go and find where my friends live,’ he said.
They walked back in silence for some time, Mr Mulpurgo mulling over the Kommandant’s Spencerian view of society while the Kommandant, ignoring what he had just said about leopards and their spots, wondered if he could become an Englishman by reading books.
‘How do you go about studying your poem?’ he asked presently.
Mr Mulpurgo returned to the topic of his thesis with some relief.
‘The main thing is to keep notes,’ he explained. ‘I make references and cross-references and keep them on file. For instance Brooke uses the image of smell frequently. It’s there in “Lust”, in “Second Best”, and of course in “Dawn”.’
‘It’s there all the time,’ said the Kommandant. ‘It’s the water, there’s sulphur in it.’
‘Sulphur?’ said Mr Mulpurgo absentmindedly. ‘Yes, you get that in “The Last Beatitude”. “And fling new sulphur on the sin incarnadined.”’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said the Kommandant uneasily, ‘but they certainly put some in my tea this morning.’
By the time they reached the hotel Mr Mulpurgo had come to the conclusion that the Kommandant had no professional interest in him after all. He had recited ‘Heaven’ to him twice and explained what ‘fish fly replete’ meant and was beginning to feel that the Kommandant was quite a kind man in spite of his earlier utterances.
‘I must say you have unusual interests for a policeman,’ he said condescendingly as they climbed the steps to the terrace, ‘I had gained quite a different impression from the newspapers.’
Kommandant van Heerden smiled darkly.
‘They say a lot of lies about me in the papers,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t believe all you hear.’
‘Not as black as you’re painted, eh?’ said Mr Mulpurgo.
The Kommandant stopped in his tracks.
‘Who said anything about me being black?’ he demanded lividly.
‘No one. No one,’ said Mr Mulpurgo appalled at his faux pas. ‘It was purely a figure of speech.’
But Kommandant van Heerden wasn’t listening. ‘I’m as white as the next man,’ he yelled, ‘and if I hear anyone say any different I’ll rip the balls off the swine. Do you hear me? I’ll castrate the bugger. Don’t let me hear you saying such a thing again,’ and he hurled himself through the revolving doors with a violence that propelled the two flies quite involuntarily into the open air. Behind him Mr Mulpurgo leant against the balustrade and tried to stop hiccuping. When the door finally stopped revolving he pulled himself together and went shakily down the corridor to his room.
Having collected his keys from his room Kommandant van Heerden went out to his car. He was still inwardly raging at the insult to his ancestry.
‘I’m as white as the next man,’ he muttered pushing blindly past a Zulu gardener who was weeding a flowerbed. He got into his car and drove furiously into Weezen. He was still in a foul temper when he parked in the dusty square and went up the steps into the trading store. There were several farmers waiting to be served. The Kommandant ignored them and spoke to the gaunt man behind the counter.
‘Know where the Heathcote-Kilkoons live?’ he asked.
The gaunt man ignored his question and went on attending to his customer.
‘I said do you know where the Heathcote-Kilkoons live?’ the Kommandant said again.
‘Heard you the first time,’ the man told him, and was silent.
‘Well?’
‘I’m serving,’ said the gaunt man. There were murmurs from the farmers but the Kommandant was in too irritable a mood to worry.
‘I asked a civil question,’ he insisted.
‘In an uncivil fashion,’ the man told him. ‘If you want answers you wait your turn and ask decently.’
‘Do you know who I am?’ the Kommandant asked angrily.
‘No,’ said the man, ‘and I don’t care. I know where you are though. On my premises and you can get the hell off them.’
The Kommandant looked wildly round. All the men in the
store were staring at him unpleasantly. He turned and lumbered out onto the verandah. Behind him someone laughed and he thought he caught the words ‘Bloody hairy-back.’ No one had called him a hairy-back for a very long time. First a black and now a baboon. He stood for a moment controlling himself with an effort before turning back into the shop.
He stood in the doorway with the sunlit square behind him, a squat silhouette. The men inside stared at him.
‘My name is van Heerden,’ said the Kommandant in a low and terrible voice, ‘I am Kommandant of Police in Piemburg. You will remember me.’ It was an announcement that would have caused alarm anywhere else in Zululand. Here it failed hopelessly.
‘This is Little England,’ said the gaunt man. ‘Voetsak.’
The Kommandant turned and went. He had been told to voetsak like a dog. It was an insult he would never forget. He went blindly down the steps into the street and stood with clenched teeth squinting malevolently at the great Queen whose homely arrogance had no appeal for him now. He, Kommandant van Heerden, whose ancestors had manhandled their wagons over the Aardvark Mountains, who had fought the Zulus at Blood River, and the British at Spion Kop, had been told to voetsak like a kaffir dog by men whose kinfolk had scuttled from India and Egypt and Kenya at the first hint of trouble.
‘Stupid old bitch,’ said the Kommandant to the statue and turned away to look for the post office. As he walked his rage slowly subsided to be replaced by a puzzled wonder at the arrogance of the English. ‘Little England,’ the gaunt man had said as if he had been proud of its being so little. To Kommandant van Heerden there was no sense in it. He stomped along the sidewalk brooding on the malfeasance of chance that had given him the power to rule without the assurance that was power’s natural concomitant. In some strange way he recognized the right of the storekeeper to treat him like a dog no matter what awesome credentials he presented. ‘I’m just Boeremense,’ he thought with sudden self-pity and saw himself alone in an alien world unattached to any true community but outspanned temporarily among strange hostile tribes. The English had Home, that cold yet hospitable island in the North to which they could always turn. The Blacks had Africa, the vast continent from which no law or rule could ever utterly remove them. But he, an Afrikaner, had only will and power and cunning between him and oblivion. No home but here. No time but now. With a fresh fear at his own inconsequence the Kommandant turned down a side street to the Post Office.
