by Tom Sharpe
‘That’s what he said, sir. I don’t think he did though,’ Sergeant Breitenbach told him.
‘I see,’ said the Kommandant trying to think why the Bureau of State Security should be so interested in his private life. The idea was not reassuring. People who interested BOSS frequently fell out of tenth-storey windows in Security Headquarters in Johannesburg.
‘I think it was all part of his insanity, sir,’ the Sergeant continued, ‘part of his purity campaign.’
The Kommandant looked at him weakly.
‘Dear God,’ he said. ‘Are you trying to tell me that all Verkramp’s talk about Communist agents was simply an excuse to find out if I was having an affair?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant Breitenbach desperately determined not to say whom the Kommandant was thought to be having an affair with.
‘Well all I can say is that Verkramp’s lucky to be in an insane asylum. If he weren’t I’d have the bastard reduced to the ranks.’
‘Yes sir,’ said the Sergeant. ‘No explosions tonight.’ He was anxious to change the topic of conversation away from the Kommandant’s private life. Kommandant van Heerden looked out through his glassless windows and sighed.
‘None last night. None the night before. None since Verkramp went into the loony bin. Odd that, isn’t it?’ he said finally.
‘Very odd sir.’
‘All the attacks coincided with Verkramp’s being in charge,’ continued the Kommandant. ‘All the high-explosive came from the police armoury. Very odd indeed.’
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked the Sergeant.
Kommandant van Heerden looked at him intently.
‘I’m not thinking about what I’m thinking and I’d advise you to do the same,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’ He relapsed into silence and considered the appalling prospect revealed by Sergeant Breitenbach’s information. If there had been no Communist agents involved in the bugging of his house … He stopped himself following that train of thought. And what was BOSS’s interest in the business? Again it seemed a dangerous line to follow.
‘Well, all I know is that we’ve got to produce those saboteurs in court and have them convicted or my job isn’t going to be safe. There’s going to be a public outcry about this and someone’s got to stand on the scaffold.’ He got up wearily. ‘I’m going to bed,’ he said, ‘I’ve had enough for one day.’
‘Just one more thing, sir, that I think you ought to consider,’ said the Sergeant. ‘I’ve been doing some calculations about the bombings.’ He put a piece of paper in front of the Kommandant. ‘If you look here you’ll see that there were twelve explosions on each of the nights in question. Right?’ Kommandant van Heerden nodded. ‘The day before you left on holiday, Luitenant Verkramp ordered twelve new keys cut for the police armoury.’ He paused and the Kommandant sat down again and held his head.
‘Go on,’ he said finally. ‘Let’s get it over.’
‘Well, sir,’ continued the Sergeant, ‘I’ve been checking the men who picked up the messages from the secret agents and it begins to look as if there were twelve agents too.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that Verkramp organized these attacks himself?’ the Kommandant asked and knew that it was an unnecessary question. It was obvious what Sergeant Breitenbach thought.
‘It begins to look like it, sir,’ he said.
‘But what the hell for? It doesn’t make fucking sense,’ shouted the Kommandant frantically.
‘I think he was mad all the time, sir,’ said the Sergeant.
‘Mad?’ shouted the Kommandant. ‘Mad? He wasn’t just mad. He was fucking insane.’
By the time Kommandant van Heerden got to bed that night he was almost insane himself. The extraordinary events of the day had taken their toll. As he passed a fitful night tossing and turning in his bed, images of exploding ostriches and homosexual policemen mingled disturbingly with Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon clad in nothing but a top hat and boots riding an enormous black horse over a landscape pitted with bomb craters while Els smiled demonically in the background.
In Fort Rapier Mental Hospital the author of most of the Kommandant’s misfortunes spent a pretty unpleasant night himself. True it wasn’t as bad as the trip he’d been on during the day but it was bad enough to convince Dr von Blimenstein that she might have misjudged the strength of the dose she had given him.
Only Konstabel Els slept well. Ensconced in Verkramp’s flat which he was ostensibly guarding, he had found the Luitenant’s stock of girlie magazines and having leafed through them had gone to sleep dreaming about Konstabel Botha whose yellow wig Els thought most fetching. Once or twice he twitched in his sleep like a dog dreaming of a hunt. In the morning he got up and drove round to the Kommandant’s house where muttered curses from the kitchen suggested that the Kommandant was not finding the editorial in the Zululand Chronicle much to his taste.
‘I knew it, I knew it,’ he shouted brandishing the offending article which accused the police of incompetence, the torture of innocent people and a general inability to maintain law and order. ‘They’ll be demanding a Court of Enquiry next. What the hell is this country coming to? How the hell do they expect me to maintain law and order when half my men are fucking fairies?’
Mrs Roussouw was shocked. ‘Language,’ she said tartly. ‘Walls have ears.’
‘And that’s another thing,’ snapped the Kommandant, ‘do you realize I’ve been living in what amounts to an auditorium for the past month? This place has more bugs …’
But Mrs Roussouw had heard enough. ‘I won’t have you say that,’ she said. Outside the window Konstabel Els grinned to himself and listened to the ensuing argument with a deepening sense of pleasure. By the time Kommandant van Heerden left the house Mrs Roussouw had been persuaded to stay on as housekeeper but only after the Kommandant had been forced to apologize for his criticism of her work.
At the police station another group of irate women were waiting for the Kommandant when he arrived.
‘Deputation of policemen’s wives, sir,’ said Sergeant Breitenbach when the Kommandant had negotiated the stairs where the women were gathered.
‘What the hell do they want?’ the Kommandant demanded.
‘It’s to do with their husbands being queer,’ the Sergeant explained. ‘They’ve come to demand redress.’
‘Redress?’ squawked the Kommandant. ‘Redress? How the hell can I redress them?’
‘I don’t think you quite understand,’ said the Sergeant, ‘they want you to do something about their husbands.’
‘Oh, all right. Show them in,’ said the Kommandant wearily. Sergeant Breitenbach left the room and presently the Kommandant found himself confronted by twelve large and clearly frustrated women.
‘We’ve come here to register an official complaint,’ said the largest lady who was evidently the spokesman for the group.
‘Quite,’ said the Kommandant, ‘I quite understand.’
‘I don’t think you do,’ said the woman. The Kommandant looked at her and thought that he did.
‘I gather that this matter concerns your husbands,’ he said.
‘Exactly,’ said the large woman. ‘Our husbands have been subject to experiments which have deprived them of their manhood.’
The Kommandant wrote the complaint down on a piece of paper.
‘I see,’ he said, ‘and what do you expect me to do about it?’
The large woman looked at him distastefully.
‘We want this matter straightened out without delay,’ she said. The Kommandant sat back and stared at her.
‘Straightened out?’
‘Yes,’ said the large lady emphatically.
The Kommandant tried to think what to do. He decided to try flattery.
‘I think the remedy is in your own hands,’ he said with a suggestive smile. It was clearly the wrong thing to have said.
‘How disgusting,’ shouted the woman, ‘how utterly revolting.’
Kommandant van Heerden turned bright red.
‘No, please,’ he said, ‘please ladies …’ but there was no holding the women.
‘It’ll be carrots and candles next,’ shouted one woman.
‘Ladies, you misunderstand me,’ said the Kommandant desperately trying to calm them down. ‘All I meant was that if you’ll only get together …’
In the pandemonium that ensued Kommandant van Heerden could be heard saying that he was sure that if they took a firm stand and all pulled together …
‘For God’s sake take a grip on yourselves,’ he yelled as the women stood round his desk shouting. Sergeant Breitenbach entered the room and with the help of two heterosexual konstabels restored order.
In the end a distinctly dishevelled Kommandant told the ladies that he would do what he could.
‘You may rest assured that I shall bend over backwards to see that your husbands return to their conjugal duties,’ he said and the women filed out of the office. On the stairs Konstable Els asked several of them if he could be of any assistance and made three appointments for the evening. When they had all left the Kommandant asked Sergeant Breitenbach to have photographs of nude men taken.
‘We’ll have to do the thing in reverse,’ he said.
‘Black men or white men, sir?’
‘Both,’ said the Kommandant, ‘we don’t want any more cockups.’
‘Don’t you think we ought to get the advice of a proper psychiatrist?’ the Sergeant enquired.
Kommandant van Heerden considered the matter.
‘Where do you think Verkramp got the idea from in the first place?’ he asked.
‘He had been reading a book by a professor called Ice Ink.’
‘Sounds a funny sort of name for a professor,’ said the Kommandant.
‘Sounds a funny sort of professor,’ said the Sergeant, ‘and I still think we ought to get a proper psychiatrist to help.’
‘I suppose so,’ the Kommandant agreed doubtfully. The only psychiatrist he knew was Dr von Blimenstein and he was wary of asking her for assistance.
By the end of the morning he had revised his opinion. A deputation of Piemburg’s businessmen had been to see him with a view to forming a group of vigilantes to assist the police in their so far fruitless efforts to protect life and property from the terrorists and the Kommandant had received several summonses from lawyers alleging that their clients, namely the Mayor and thirty-five other prominent citizens, had been illegally detained and tortured. To cap it all he had received a telephone call from the Commissioner of Police in Zululand demanding the immediate apprehension of the men responsible for the sabotage attacks.
‘I hold you personally responsible, van Heerden,’ shouted the Commissioner who had been looking for an excuse to demote the Kommandant for years. ‘Understand that. Personally responsible for what has occurred. Either we have some action or I’ll be asking for your resignation. Understand?’
The Kommandant understood and put down the receiver with the look of a very large rat in a very tight corner.
In the next half hour the consequences of the Commissioner’s threat began to make themselves felt.
‘I don’t care who they are,’ shouted the Kommandant at Sergeant Breitenbach, ‘I want every group of eleven men arrested on sight.’
‘What, even the Mayor and the Aldermen?’ asked the Sergeant.
‘No,’ screamed the Kommandant. ‘Not the Mayor and the Aldermen but every other suspicious group.’
As usual Sergeant Breitenbach equivocated.
‘I think that would be asking for trouble, sir,’ he pointed out.
‘Trouble?’ yelled the Kommandant. ‘What do you think we’ve got already? It’s my neck that’s on the block and if you think I’m going to give that fucking Commissioner the opportunity to lop it off you’ve got another think coming.’
‘It’s BOSS I’m thinking about, sir,’ said the Sergeant.
‘BOSS?’
‘Luitenant Verkramp’s agents were presumably men from the Bureau of State Security in Pretoria, sir. If we arrested them I don’t think BOSS would appreciate it.’
The Kommandant looked frantically at him.
‘Well what the hell do you want me to do?’ he asked with a growing sense of hysteria. ‘The Commissioner tells me to arrest the men who did the bombings. You tell me that I’ll have BOSS up in arms if I do. What the fuck can I do?’
Sergeant Breitenbach had no idea. In the end the Kommandant countermanded his orders to arrest all groups of eleven men and dismissing the Sergeant sat at his desk confronted with a problem that seemed insoluble.
Ten minutes later he had arrived at a solution and he was about to send Els down to the cells to collect eleven black prisoners who were going to blow themselves up in a stolen car filled with police gelignite as proof that the South African Police in general and Kommandant van Heerden in particular could act with speed and efficiency against Communist saboteurs when it occurred to him that the scheme had a flaw. The men seen feeding the ostriches had all been white. With a curse the Kommandant returned to the problem.
‘Verkramp must be insane,’ he muttered for the umpteenth time and was just considering the nature of the Luitenant’s insanity when he came up with a brilliant solution.
Picking up the phone, the Kommandant rang Dr von Blimenstein and made an appointment to see her after lunch.
‘You want me to do what?’ Dr von Blimenstein asked when the Kommandant made his suggestion to her. She moved to switch the tape recorder on but the Kommandant reached over and unplugged it.
‘You don’t seem to understand,’ said the Kommandant with a grim determination to get the doctor to see reason. ‘You can either co-operate with me or I’ll have Verkramp out of here and charge him with wilful destruction of public property and sabotage and he’ll stand trial.’
‘But you can’t possibly expect me to …’ said the doctor moving towards the door. With a sudden swiftness she jerked it open only to find herself face to face with Konstabel Els. She closed the door hurriedly and came back into the room.
‘This is outrageous,’ she protested. Kommandant van Heerden smiled horridly.
‘You can’t arrest my Balthazar,’ continued the doctor trying to maintain some fortitude in the face of that smile. ‘Why only yesterday you told me that he had handled the whole affair very skilfully and with an exceptional degree of conscientiousness.’
‘Skilfully?’ bawled the Kommandant. ‘Skilfully? I’ll tell you how skilful that bastard has been. Your fucking Balthazar has been responsible for the biggest outbreak of sabotage this country has ever seen. Why, compared with him the guerrillas on the Zambesi are playing soldiers. He’s been personally responsible for the destruction of four road bridges, two railway lines, a transformer, the telephone exchange, four petrol storage tanks, one gasometer, five thousand acres of sugar cane and a radio mast and you have the nerve to tell me he’s been skilful.’
Dr von Blimenstein slumped into her chair and stared at him.
‘You’ve got no proof,’ she whimpered finally. ‘And besides he’s not well.’
Kommandant van Heerden leant across the desk and leered into her face. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Well? By the time the hangman’s through with him he’ll look a bloody sight worse, believe me.’
Dr von Blimenstein did believe him. She shut her eyes and shook her head to rid herself of the Kommandant’s leer and the dreadful vision of her fiancé on the gallows. Satisfied that he had made his point the Kommandant relaxed.
‘After all it’s only doing what the poor fellows tried to do themselves and failed,’ he explained. ‘It’s not as though we’re asking them to go against their own natural inclinations.’
Dr von Blimenstein opened her eyes and looked at him imploringly.
‘But Balthazar and I are engaged to get married,’ she said.
It was Kommandant van Heerden’s turn to be shocked. The idea of the bosomy doctor married to the apelike creature he had
seen scampering about his cell the day before took his breath away. He began to understand the look of abject terror he had seen in Verkramp’s eyes.
‘Congratulations,’ he muttered. ‘In that case there’s all the more reason for you to do what I’m suggesting.’
Dr von Blimenstein nodded miserably. ‘I suppose so,’ she said.
‘Now then, let’s get down to details,’ said the Kommandant. ‘You will arrange to have eleven patients with a record of suicide attempts placed in an isolation ward. You will then use your perversion therapy to indoctrinate them with Marxist-Leninist ideas …’
‘But that’s impossible,’ said the doctor, ‘you can’t use aversion therapy to give people ideas. You can only cure them of habits.’
‘That’s what you think,’ the Kommandant told her. ‘You want to come and look what ideas your Balthazar has managed to give my konstabels. He hasn’t cured them of any habits, I can tell you.’
Dr von Blimenstein tried another tack. ‘But I don’t know anything about Marxist-Leninism,’ she said.
‘That’s a pity,’ said the Kommandant and tried to think of someone who did. The only person he knew was serving a twenty-five year sentence in Piemburg Prison.
‘Never mind about that,’ he said finally, ‘I’ll arrange for someone to come here who does.’
‘And then what are you going to do?’ the doctor asked.
Kommandant van Heerden smiled. ‘I think you can safely leave the rest to me,’ he said and got up. As he left the office he turned and thanked the doctor for her co-operation.
‘Remember it’s all for the good of Balthazar,’ he said and followed by Konstabel Els went out to his car. In her office Dr von Blimenstein considered the terrible task the Kommandant had given her. ‘I suppose it’s only another form of euthanasia,’ she thought and began to draw up a list of suitably suicidal patients. Dr von Blimenstein had always agreed with the form of mental treatment meted out in the Third Reich.
The same could hardly be said of the man in Piemburg Prison who was the next person the Kommandant visited. Sentenced to twenty-five years for his part in the Rivonia conspiracy, about which he had in fact known nothing. Aaron Geisenheimer had spent six years in solitary confinement consoling himself with the thought that a revolution was about to take place which would bring him if not into his own at least out of someone else’s – that thought and the Bible, which, thanks to the religious policy of the prison authorities, was the only book the lapsed Jew was allowed to read. Since Aaron Geisenheimer had spent his youth in an obsessive study of the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin and since too he came of a long line of rabbinical scholars, it was hardly surprising that after six years of more or less enforced acquaintanceship with the Holy Writ he was now a mine of scriptural information. He was also no fool, as the prison chaplain knew to his cost. The Chaplain would emerge from Isolation Cell Two after an hour of Christian counselling with Geisenheimer in some doubt as to the divinity of Christ and with a tendency to think of Das Kapital as coming somewhere between Chronicles I and the Song of Solomon. To make matters worse, Aaron Geisenheimer supplemented his daily ration of thirty minutes in the exercise yard by attending every possible service in the prison chapel where his critical presence forced the Chaplain to raise the intellectual standards of his sermons to the point where they were totally unintelligible to the rest of the congregation while still open to considerable criticism from the Marxist. In the light of the Chaplain’s complaints the Governor of the Prison was delighted to hear that Kommandant van Heerden was considering having Geisenheimer transferred to Fort Rapier.
