Chapter 3

Luitenant Verkramp was wondering much the same thing. News of the fiasco at the Kommandant’s house reached him via Sergeant Breitenbach, who had spent the evening tapping the Kommandant’s telephone and who had the presence of mind to order the watching agents to leave the area before the patrol cars arrived. Unfortunately the microphones scattered about the Kommandant’s house remained and Luitenant Verkramp could imagine that their presence there would hardly improve his relations with his commanding officer if they were discovered.

“I told you this whole thing was a mistake,” Sergeant Breitenbach said while Luitenant Verkramp dressed.

Verkramp didn’t agree. “What’s he making such a fuss about if he hasn’t got something to hide?” he asked.

“That hole in the ceiling, for one thing,” said the Sergeant. Luitenant Verkramp couldn’t see it.

“Could have happened to anyone,” he said. “Anyway he’ll blame the Water Board for it.”

“I can’t see them admitting responsibility for making it, all the same,” said the Sergeant.

“The more they deny it, the more he’ll believe they did,” said Verkramp, who knew something about psychology. “Anyway I’ll cook up something to explain the bugs, don’t worry.”

Dismissing the Sergeant, he drove to the police station and sat up half the night concocting a memorandum to put on the Kommandant’s desk in the morning.

In fact there was no need to use it. Kommandant van Heerden arrived at the police station determined to make someone pay for the damage to his property. He wasn’t quite sure which of the public utilities to blame and Mrs Roussouw’s explanation hadn’t made the matter any clearer.

“Oh, you do look a sight,” she said when the Kommandant came down to breakfast after shaving in cold water.

“So does my bloody house,” said the Kommandant, dabbing his cheek with a styptic pencil.

“Language,” retorted Mrs Roussouw. Kommandant van Heerden regarded her bleakly.

“Perhaps you’d be good enough to explain what’s been happening here,” he said. “I came home last night to find the water cut off, a large hole in my bedroom ceiling and no electricity.”

“The Water Board man did that,” Mrs Roussouw explained. “I had to give him the kiss of life to bring him round.”

The Kommandant shuddered at the thought.

“And what does that explain?” he asked.

“The hole in the ceiling, of course,” said Mrs Roussouw.

The Kommandant tried to visualize the sequence of events that had resulted from Mrs Roussouw’s giving the Water Board man the kiss of life and his falling through the ceiling.

“In the attic?” he asked sceptically.

“Of course not, silly,” Mrs Roussouw said. “He was looking for a hole in the cistern when I turned the electricity on …”

The Kommandant was too bewildered to let her continue.

“Mrs Roussouw,” he said wearily, “am I to understand … oh never mind. I’ll phone the Water Board when I get to the station.”

He had breakfast while Mrs Roussouw added to the confusion in his mind by explaining that the Electricity man had been responsible for the accident in the first place by leaving the current on.

“I suppose that explains the mess in here,” said the Kommandant, looking at the rubble under the sink.

“Oh, no that was the Gas man,” Mrs Roussouw said.

“But we don’t use gas,” said the Kommandant.

“I know, I told him that but he said it was a leak in the mains.”

The Kommandant finished his breakfast and walked to the police station utterly perplexed. In spite of the fact that the patrol cars had been unable to find any evidence that his house had been watched, the Kommandant was certain he had been under surveillance. He even had an uneasy feeling that he was being followed to the police station but when he glanced over his shoulder at the corner there was no one in sight.

Once in his office he spent an hour on the phone haranguing the managers of the Gas, Electricity and Water Boards in an attempt to get to the bottom of the affair. It took the efforts of all three managers to convince him that their men had never been authorized to enter his house, that there was absolutely nothing the matter with his electricity or his water supply, and that there hadn’t been a suspected gas leak within a mile of his house and finally that they couldn’t be held responsible for the damage done to his property. The Kommandant reserved his opinion on this last point and said he would consult his lawyer. The Manager of the Water Board told him that it wasn’t the business of the board to mend leaks in cisterns in any case and the Kommandant said it wasn’t anybody’s business to make large holes in the ceiling of his bedroom, and he certainly wasn’t going to pay for the privilege of having them made.

Having raised his blood pressure to a dangerously high level in this exchange of courtesies, the Kommandant sent for the Duty Sergeant, who was dragged from his bed to explain his behaviour over the phone.

“I thought it was a hoax,” he told the Kommandant. “It was the way you were whispering.”

The Kommandant wasn’t whispering now. His voice could be heard in the cells two floors below. “A hoax?” he yelled at the Sergeant. “You thought it was a hoax?”

“Yes, sir, we get half a dozen every night.”

“What sort of hoaxes?” the Kommandant asked.

“People ringing up to say they’re being burgled or raped or something. Mostly women.”

Kommandant van Heerden remembered when he had been a Duty Sergeant and had to agree that a lot of night calls were false alarms. He dismissed the Sergeant with a reprimand. “Next time I call you,” he said, “I don’t want any argument. Understand?” The Sergeant understood and was about to leave the office when the Kommandant had second thoughts. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” the Kommandant snarled. The Sergeant said that since he’d been up all night he was thinking of going back to bed. The Kommandant had other plans for him. “I’m putting you in charge of the investigation into the burglary at my house.” he said. “I want a full report on who was responsible by this afternoon.”

“Yes sir,” said the Sergeant wearily and left the office. On the stairs he met Luitenant Verkramp, who was looking pretty jaded himself.

“He wants a full report by this afternoon on the break-in.” the Sergeant told Verkramp. The Luitenant sighed, went back upstairs and knocked on the Kommandant’s door.

“Come in,” yelled the Kommandant. Luitenant Verkramp came in. “What’s the matter with you, Verkramp? You look as though you’d spent the night on the tiles.”

“Just an attic of colack,” spluttered Verkramp, unnerved by the Kommandant’s percipience.

“A what?”

“An attack of colic,” said Verkramp trying to control his speech. “Just a slip of the foot… er… tongue.”

“For God’s sake pull yourself together Luitenant,” the Kommandant told him.

“Yes sir,” said Verkramp.

“What do you want to see me about?”

“It’s about this business at your home, sir,” said Verkramp, “I have some information which may be of interest to you.”

Kommandant van Heerden sighed. He might have guessed that Verkramp might have his grubby fingers in this particular pie. “Well?”

Luitenant Verkramp swallowed nervously. “We in the Security Branch,” he began, spreading the burden of responsibility as far as possible, “have recently received information that an attempt was going to be made to bug your house.” He paused to see how the Kommandant would take the news. Kommandant van Heerden responded predictably. He sat up in his chair and stared at Verkramp in horror.

“Good God,” he said, “you mean…”

“Precisely, sir,” said Verkramp. “Acting on this information, I put your house under twenty-four hour surveillance…”

“You mean-”

“Exactly, sir,” Verkramp continued. “You have probably noticed that your house has been watched.”

“That’s right,” said the Kommandant, “I saw them there last night…”

Verkramp nodded. “My men, sir.”

“Across the road and in my back garden,” said the Kommandant.

“Exactly, sir,” Verkramp agreed, “We thought they might return.”

The Kommandant was losing track of the conversation. “Who might return?”

“The Communist saboteurs, sir.”

“Communist saboteurs? What the hell would Communist saboteurs want to do in my house?”

“Bug it, sir,” said Verkramp. “After the failure of their attempt yesterday I thought they might return,”

Kommandant van Heerden took a firm grip on himself.

“Are you trying to tell me that all those Gas men and Water Board officials were really Communist saboteurs…”

“In disguise, sir. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of my counter-agents, the attempt was foiled. One of the Communists fell through the ceiling…”

Kommandant van Heerden leant back in his chair satisfied. He had found the person responsible for the hole in his bedroom ceiling. “So that was your fault?” he said.

“Entirely,” Verkramp agreed, “and we’ll see that repairs are carried out immediately.”

The news had taken a great burden off the Kommandant’s mind. On the other hand he was still puzzled.

“What I don’t understand is why these Communists should want to bug my house in the first place. Who are they anyway?” he asked.

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose any identities yet,” Verkramp said, and fell back on the Bureau of State Security. “Orders from BOSS.”

“Well what the hell is the point of bugging my house?” asked the Kommandant, who knew better than to question orders from BOSS. “I never say anything important there.”

Verkramp agreed. “But they weren’t to know that sir,” he said. “In any case our information suggests that they were hoping to acquire material which would allow them to blackmail you.” He watched Kommandant van Heerden very closely to see how he would react. The Kommandant was appalled.

“God Almighty!” he gasped, and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. Verkramp followed up his advantage swiftly.

“If they could get something on you, something sexual, anything a bit kinky.” He hesitated. The Kommandant was sweating profusely. “They’d have you by the short hairs, wouldn’t they?” Privately Kommandant van Heerden had to agree that they would but he wasn’t admitting as much to Luitenant Verkramp. He raced through the catalogue of his nightly habits and came to the conclusion that there were several he would rather the world knew nothing about.

“The diabolical swine,” he muttered and looked at Verkramp with something approaching respect. The Luitenant wasn’t such a fool after all. “What are you going to do about it?” he asked.

“Two things,” said Verkramp. “The first is to allay the suspicions of the Communists as far as possible by ignoring this affair at your house. Let them think we don’t know what they are up to. Lay the blame on the Gas… er… Water Board.”

“I’ve done that already,” said the Kommandant.

“Good. What we have to realize is that this incident is part of a nation-wide conspiracy to undermine the morale of the South African Police. It is vital that we should do nothing premature.”

“Extraordinary,” said the Kommandant. “Nation-wide, I had no idea there were so many Communists still at large. I thought we’d nabbed the swine years ago.”

“They spring up like dragon’s teeth,” Verkramp assured him.

“I suppose they must,” said the Kommandant, who had never thought of it quite like that before. Luitenant Verkramp continued.

“After the failure of the sabotage campaign they went underground.”

“Must have done,” said the Kommandant, still obsessed with the thought of dragon’s teeth.

“They’ve reorganized and have begun a new campaign. First to undermine our morale and secondly, when that’s done, they’ll start a new wave of sabotage,” Verkramp explained.

“Do you mean to tell me,” the Kommandant, “that they are deliberately trying to obtain facts that can be used to blackmail police officers all over the country?”

“Precisely, sir,” said Verkramp. “I have reason to believe that they are particularly interested in sexual indiscretions committed by police officers.”

The Kommandant tried to think of any sexual indiscretions he might have committed lately and rather regretfully couldn’t. On the other hand he could think of thousands committed by the men under his command.

“Well,” he said finally, “it’s a good thing Konstabel Els isn’t with us any more. The bugger died just in time by the sound of it.”

Verkramp smiled. “That thought had crossed my mind,” he said. Konstabel Els’ exploits in the field of transracial sexual intercourse were already a legend in the Piemburg Police Station.

“In any case I still don’t see what you’re going to do to stop this infernal campaign,” the Kommandant went on. “If it isn’t Els, there are still plenty of konstabels whose sex life could do with improvement.”

Luitenant Verkramp was delighted. “My own view of the matter,” he said and took Dr von Blimestein’s questionnaire out of his pocket. “I’ve been working on the problem with a leading member of the psychiatric profession,” he said, “and I think we’ve come up with something that may serve to indicate those officers and men most vulnerable to this form of Communist infiltration.”

“Really?” said the Kommandant, who had an idea who the leading member of the psychiatric profession might be. Luitenant Verkramp handed him the questionnaire.

“With your approval, sir,” he said, “I’d like to have these questionnaires distributed to all the men on the station. From the answers we get it should be possible to spot any likely victims of blackmail.”

Kommandant van Heerden looked at the questionnaire, which was headed innocuously enough “Personality Research” and marked “Strictly Confidential”. He glanced at the first few questions and found nothing to alarm him. They seemed to be concerned with profession of father, age, and the number of brothers and sisters. Before he could get any further Verkramp was explaining that he had orders from Pretoria to carry out the investigation.

“BOSS?” asked the Kommandant.

“BOSS,” said Verkramp.

“In that case, go ahead,” said the Kommandant.

“I’ll leave you to fill that one in,” said Verkramp, and left the office delighted at the turn of events. He gave orders to Sergeant Breitenbach to distribute the questionnaires and telephoned Dr von Blimenstein to let her know that everything was proceeding, if not according to plan, since he hadn’t had one, at least according to opportunity. Dr von Blimenstein was delighted to hear it and before Verkramp fully realized what he was doing he found that he had invited her to have dinner with him that evening. He put the phone down astonished at his good fortune. It never crossed his mind that the pack of lies about Communist blackmailers he had told the Kommandant had no reality outside his own warped imagination. His professional task was to root out enemies of the state and it followed that enemies of the state were there to be rooted out. The exact details of their activities, if any, were of little importance to him. As he had once explained in court, it was the principle of subversion that mattered, not the particulars.

If Verkramp was satisfied with the way things were going, Kommandant van Heerden, seated at his desk with the questionnaire in front of him, wasn’t. The Luitenant’s story was convincing enough. The Kommandant had no doubt that Communist agitators were at work in Zululand - nothing less could explain the truculence of the Zulus in the township at the recent increase in bus fares. But that saboteurs disguised as Gas men had infiltrated his own home indicated a new phase in the campaign of subversion, and a particularly alarming one at that. The Duty Sergeant’s report that the investigating team had discovered a microphone under the sink only went to prove how accurate Luitenant Verkramp’s forecast had been. Ordering the Sergeant to leave the investigation to the Security Branch, the Kommandant sent a note to Verkramp which read, “Re our discussion this morning. The presence of microphone in kitchen confirms your report. Suggest you take counteraction immediately. Van Heerden.”

With renewed confidence in the ability of his second-in-command the Kommandant decided to tackle the questionnaire Verkramp had given him. He filled in the first few questions happily enough and it was only when he had turned the page that there dawned on him the feeling that he was being led gently into a quagmire of sexual confession where every answer only dragged him deeper down.

“Did you have a black nanny?” seemed innocuous enough, and the Kommandant put “Yes” only to find that the next question was “Size of breasts. Large. Medium. Small.” After a moment’s hesitation not unmixed with alarm he ticked “Large,” and went on to consider “Nipple Length. Long. Medium. Short.” “This is a bloody funny way to fight Communism,” he thought, trying to remember the length of his nanny’s teats. In the end he put “Long” and found himself faced with “Did black nanny tickle private parts? Often. Sometimes. Infrequently?” The Kommandant looked desperately for “Never” and couldn’t find it. In the end he ticked Infrequently and turned to the next question. “Age at First Ejaculation, Three years, four years…?”

“Don’t leave much to chance,” thought the Kommandant, indignantly trying to make his mind up between six years, which was quite untrue but which seemed less likely to undermine his authority than sixteen years, which was more accurate. He’d just put eight years as a compromise based on a nocturnal emission he’d had when he was ten when he saw that he’d walked into a trap. The next question was “Age at First Wet Dream?” This time the list started at ten years. By the time he had rubbed out his answer to the previous question to make it consistent with a Wet Dream at eleven years, the Kommandant was in a thoroughly bad temper. He picked up the phone and called Verkramp’s office. Sergeant Breitenbach answered the phone.

“Where’s Verkramp?” the Kommandant demanded. The Sergeant said he was out, and could he help? The Kommandant said he doubted it. “It’s this damned questionnaire,” he told the Sergeant. “Who’s going to read it?”

“I think Dr von Blimenstein intends to,” the Sergeant said. “She drew it up.”

“Did she?” snarled the Kommandant. “Well you can tell Luitenant Verkramp that I have no intention of answering question twenty-five.”

“Which one is that?”

“It’s the one that goes ‘How many times do you masturbate every day?’” said the Kommandant. “You can tell Verkramp that I think it’s an invasion of privacy to ask questions like that.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Breitenbach, studying the possible answers on the questionnaire, which ranged from five times to twenty-five times.

The Kommandant slammed down the phone and locking the questionnaire in his desk went out to lunch in a filthy temper. “Dirty bitch, wanting to know things like that,” he thought as he stomped downstairs, and he was still grumbling to himself when he finished lunch in the police canteen. “I’ll be up at the Golf Club if anyone wants me,” he told the Duty Sergeant and left the police station. He spent a fruitless couple of hours trying to hit a ball down the fairway before returning to the Clubhouse with the feeling that this was not one of his days.

He ordered a double brandy from the barman and took his drink out to a table on the terrace where he could sit and watch more experienced players drive off. He was sitting there absorbing the English atmosphere and trying to rid himself of the nagging conviction that the even tenor of his life was being undermined in some mysterious way when a crunch of gravel in the Clubhouse forecourt made him glance over his shoulder. A vintage Rolls-Royce had just parked and the occupants were climbing out. For a moment the Kommandant had the extraordinary sensation that he had been transported back to the 1920s. The two men who emerged from the front seat were dressed in knickerbockers and wore hats that had been out of fashion for fifty years, while their two women companions were attired in what appeared to the Kommandant to be fancy dress with cloche hats, and carried parasols. But it was less the clothes or the immaculate vintage Rolls than the voices that affected the Kommandant so profoundly. High-pitched and languidly arrogant, they seemed to reach him like some echo from the English past and with them came a rush of certitude that all was well in the world in spite of everything. The kernel of servility which was Kommandant van Heerden’s innermost self and which no amount of his own authority could ever erase quivered ecstatically within him as the group passed him without so much as a glance to indicate that they were aware of his existence. It was precisely this self-absorption to the point where it transcended self and became something immutable and absolute, a Godlike self-sufficiency, that Kommandant van Heerden had always hoped to find in the English. And here it was before him in the Piemburg Golf Club in the shape of four middle-aged men and women whose inane chatter was proof positive that there was, in spite of wars, disasters, and imminent revolution, nothing serious to worry about. The Kommandant particularly admired the elegance with which the leader of the foursome, a florid man in his fifties, clicked his fingers for the black caddie before walking over to the first tee.

“How absolutely priceless,” shrieked one of the ladies about nothing in particular as they followed.

“I’ve always said Boy was a glutton for punishment,” said the florid man as they passed out of earshot. The Kommandant stared after them before hurrying in to the bar to consult the barman.

“Call themselves the Dornford Yates Club,” the barman told him. “Don’t ask me why. Anyway they dress up and talk la-di-da in memory of some firm called Bury & Co which went bust some years back. Red-faced fellow is Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon. He’s the one they call Bury. The plump lady is his missus. The other bloke’s Major Bloxham. Call him Boy, of all things, and he must be forty-eight if he’s a day. I don’t know who the thin woman is.”

“Do they live near here?” the Kommandant asked. He didn’t approve of the barman’s rather off-hand attitude to his betters but he desperately wanted to hear more about the foursome.

“The Colonel’s got a place up near the Piltdown Hotel but they seem to spend most of their time on a farm in the Underville district. It’s got a queer name like White Woman or something. I’ve heard they have some pretty queer goings-on up there, too.”

The Kommandant ordered another brandy and took it out to his table on the terrace to wait for the party to return. Presently he was joined by the barman who stood in the doorway looking bored.

“Has the Colonel been a member here long?” the Kommandant asked.

“A couple of years,” the barman said, “since they all came down from Rhodesia or Kenya or somewhere. Seem to have plenty of spending money too.”

Aware that the man was looking at him rather curiously, the Kommandant finished his drink and strolled over to inspect the vintage Rolls-Royce.

“1925 Silver Ghost,” said the barman who had followed him over. “Nice condition.”

The Kommandant grunted. He was beginning to tire of the barman’s company. He moved round the other side of the car, only to find the barman at his elbow.

“You after them for something?” the man asked conspiratorially.

“What the hell makes you think that?” the Kommandant asked.

“Just wondered,” said the barman, and with some remark about a nod being as good as a wink which the Kommandant didn’t understand, the man went back into the Clubhouse. Left to himself, the Kommandant finished his inspection of the car and was just turning away when he caught sight of something on the back seat that stopped him in his tracks. It was a book and from its back cover there stared impassively the portrait of a man. High cheek bones, slightly hooded eyelids, impeccably straight nose and a trimmed moustache, the face looked past the Kommandant into a bright and assured future. Peering through the window, Kommandant van Heerden gazed at the portrait and as he gazed knew with a certainty that passed all understanding that he was on the brink of a new phase of discovery in his search for the heart of an English gentleman. There before him on the back seat of the Rolls was portrayed with an exactitude he would never have believed possible the face of the man he wanted to be. The book was As Other Men Are by Dornford Yates. The Kommandant took out his notebook and wrote the title down.

By the time Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon and his party returned to the Clubhouse, the Kommandant had left and was making his way to the Public Library in the certain knowledge that he was about to learn, from the works of Dornford Yates, the secret of that enigma which had puzzled him for so long, how to be an English gentleman.

 By the time Luitenant Verkramp left the police station that evening and returned to his flat to change he was a supremely happy man. The ease with which he had allayed the Kommandant’s suspicions, the results he was getting from the questionnaires, the prospects of spending the evening in the company of Dr von Blimenstein all contributed to the Luitenant’s sense of well-being. Above all, the fact that the Kommandant’s house was still bugged and that he would be able to lie in bed and listen to every movement the Kommandant was indiscreet enough to make in his home lent a piquancy to Verkramp’s sense of achievement. Like the Kommandant, Luitenant Verkramp felt himself on the brink of a discovery that would change his whole life and transform him from merely second-in-command into a position of authority more suited to his ability. As he waited for his bath water to run, Luitenant Verkramp adjusted the receiver in his bedroom and checked the tape recorder connected to it. Before long he could make out the Kommandant shuffling about his house and opening and shutting cupboards. Satisfied that his listening device was functioning properly, Verkramp switched it off and went and had his bath. He had just finished and was climbing out when the front-door bell rang.

“Damn,” said Verkramp grabbing a towel and wondering who the hell was visiting him at this inconvenient moment. He went out into the hall trailing drops of bath water as he went, opened the door irritably and was amazed to see Dr von Blimenstein standing on the landing. “I don’t want …” said Verkramp, reacting automatically to the sound of his doorbell at inconvenient moments before he realized who his visitor was.

“Don’t you, darling?” said Dr von Blimenstein loudly and opened her musquash coat to disclose a tight-fitting dress of some extremely shiny material. “Are you sure you don’t…”

“For hell’s sake,” Verkramp said, looking wildly round. He was conscious that his neighbours were extremely respectable people and that Dr von Blimenstein, for all her education and professional standing as a psychiatrist, was not at the best of times overly worried about observing the social niceties. And now, with a bath towel round his middle and the doctor with whatever it was she had round her middle and top and bottom, was not the best of times. “Come in quick,” he squawked. Somewhat disappointed by the reception he had given her, Dr von Blimenstein drew her coat around her and entered the flat. Verkramp hurriedly shut the door and scurried past her into the safety of his bathroom. “I wasn’t expecting you,” he shouted softly. “I was coming up to the hospital to collect you.”

“I couldn’t wait to see you,” the doctor shouted back, “and I thought I’d give you a little surprise.”

“You did that all right,” Verkramp muttered, desperately searching for a sock that had hidden itself somewhere in the bathroom.

“I didn’t quite catch that. You’ll have to speak up.”

Verkramp found the sock under the washbasin. “I said you did give me a surprise.” He hit his head on the washbasin straightening up and ended with a curse.

“You’re not angry with me coming like this?” the doctor inquired. In the bathroom Verkramp sat on the edge of the bath and pulled his sock on. It was wet.

“No, of course not. Come whenever you like,” he said sourly.

“You do mean that, don’t you? I mean I wouldn’t like you to think I was being … well… intruding,” the doctor continued while Verkramp, still protesting his delight that she should visit him as often as possible, discovered that all the clothes he had carefully laid out on the lavatory seat had got wet, thanks to her precipitate arrival. By the time he emerged Luitenant Verkramp was feeling distinctly clammy, and quite unprepared for the sight that met his eyes. Doctor von Blimenstein had taken off her musquash coat and was lying provocatively on his sofa in a bright red dress which clung to her body with an intimacy of contour which astonished Verkramp and made him wonder how she had ever got into it.

“Do you like it?” the doctor inquired stretching voluptuously. Verkramp swallowed and said that he did, very much. “It’s the new wet look in stretch nylon.” Verkramp found himself staring at her breasts hypnotically and with the terrible realization that he was committed to an evening spent in public with a woman who was wearing what amounted to a semi-transparent scarlet bodystocking. Luitenant Verkramp’s reputation for sober and God-fearing living was something he had always been proud of and as a devout member of the Verwoerd Street Dutch Reformed Church he was shocked by the doctor’s outfit. As he drove up to the Piltdown Hotel the only consolation he could find was that the beastly garment was so tight she wouldn’t be able to dance in it. Luitenant Verkramp didn’t dance. He thought it was sinful.

At the Hotel the Commissionaire opened the car door and Verkramp’s sense of social inadequacy, already heightened by the knowledge that his Volkswagen was parked next to a Cadillac, was increased by the man’s manner.

“I want the brassiere,” Verkramp said.

“The what, sir?” said the Commissionaire with his eye on Dr von Blimenstein’s bosom.

“The brassiere,” said Verkramp.

“You won’t find one here, sir,” the Commissionaire said. Dr von Blimenstein came to the rescue.

“The brasserie,” she said.

“Oh you mean the grill room,” the Commissionaire said and, still finding it difficult to believe the evidence of his senses, directed them to the Colour Bar. Verkramp was delighted to find the lights low so that he could sit hidden from public view in a high-backed booth in a corner. Besides, Dr von Blimenstein had come to the rescue and had ordered dry martinis from the wine waiter, who had been looking superciliously at Verkramp’s efforts to find something vaguely familiar in the wine list. After three martinis Verkramp was feeling decidedly better.

Dr von Blimenstein was telling him about aversion therapy.

“It’s quite straightforward,” she said. “The patient is tied to a bed while slides of his particular perversion are projected on a screen. For instance, if you’re dealing with a homosexual, you show him slides of nude men.”

“Really,” said Verkramp. “How very interesting. What do you do then?”

“At the very moment you show him the picture, you also administer an electric shock.”

Verkramp was fascinated. “And that cures him?” he asked.

“In the end the patient shows signs of anxiety every time a slide is shown,” said the doctor.

“I can well believe it,” said Verkramp, whose own experiments with electric shock treatment had resulted in much the same anxiety on the part of his prisoners.

“The process has to be kept up for six days to be really effective,” Dr von Blimenstein continued, “but you’d be surprised at the number of cures we have achieved by this method.”

Verkramp said he wouldn’t be in the least surprised. While they ate, Dr von Blimenstein explained that a modified form of aversion therapy was what she had in mind for treating cases of miscegenation among policemen in Piemburg. Verkramp, whose mind was cloudy with gin and wine, tried to think what she meant. “I don’t quite see…” he began.

“Nude black women,” said the doctor, smiling across her plank steak. “Project slides of nude black women on the screen and administer an electric shock at the same time.” Verkramp looked at her with open admiration.

“Brilliant,” he said. “Marvellous. You’re a genius.” Dr von Blimenstein simpered. “It’s not my original idea,” she said modestly, “but I suppose you could say that I have adapted it to South African needs.”

“It’s a breakthrough,” said Verkramp. “The breakthrough one might say.”

“One likes to think so,” murmured the doctor.

“A toast,” said Verkramp raising his glass, “I drink to your success.”

Dr von Blimenstein raised her glass. “To our success, darling, to our success.” They drank and as they drank it seemed to Verkramp that for the first time in his life he was really happy. He was dining in a smart hotel with a lovely woman with whose help he was about to make history. No longer would the danger of South Africa becoming a country of coloureds haunt the minds of White South Africa’s leaders. With Dr von Blimenstein at his side, Verkramp would set up clinics throughout the republic where white perverts could be cured of their sexual lusts for black women by aversion therapy. He leant across the table towards her entrancing breasts and took her hand.

“I love you,” he said simply.

“I love you too,” murmured the doctor, gazing back at him with an intensity almost predatory. Verkramp looked nervously round the restaurant and was relieved to find that no one was watching them.

“In a nice way, of course,” he said after a pause.

Dr von Blimenstein smiled. “Love isn’t nice, darling,” she said. “It’s dark and violent and passionate and cruel.”

“Yes … well …” said Verkramp who had never looked at love in this light before. “What I meant was that love is pure. My love, that is.”

In Dr von Blimenstein’s eyes a flame seemed to flicker and die down. “Love is desire,” she said. Beneath the nylon sheath her breasts bulged onto the table, imminent with a motherly menace that Verkramp found disturbing. He shifted his narrow legs under the table and tried to think of something to say.

“I want you,” whispered the doctor, emphasizing her need by digging her crimson fingernails into the palm of Verkramp’s hand. “I want you desperately.” Luitenant Verkramp shuddered involuntarily. Beneath the table Dr von Blimenstein’s ample knees closed firmly on his leg. “I want you,” she repeated and Verkramp, who had begun to think that he was having dinner with a volcano on heat, found himself saying, “Isn’t it time we went?” before he realized the interpretation the doctor was likely to put on his sudden desire to leave the relative safety of the restaurant.

As they went out to the car, Dr von Blimenstein put her arm through Verkramp’s and held him close to her. He opened the car door for her and with a wheeze of nylon the doctor slid into her seat. Verkramp, whose previous sense of social inadequacy had been quite replaced by a feeling of sexual inadequacy in the face of the doctor’s open intimation of desire, climbed in hesitantly beside her.

“You don’t understand,” he said, starting the car, “I don’t want to do anything that would spoil the beauty of this evening.” In the darkness Dr von Blimenstein’s hand reached out and squeezed his leg.

“You mustn’t feel guilty,” she murmured. Verkramp put the car into reverse with a jerk.

“I respect you too much,” he said.

Dr von Blimenstein’s musquash coat heaved softly as she leant her head on his shoulder. A heavy perfume wafted across Verkramp’s face. “You’re such a shy boy,” she said.

Verkramp drove out of the hotel grounds onto the Piemburg road. Far below them the lights of the city flickered and went out. It was midnight.

Verkramp drove slowly down the hill, partly because he was afraid of being booked for drunken driving but more importantly because he was terrified by the prospect that awaited him when they got back to his flat. Twice Dr von Blimenstein insisted they stop the car and twice Verkramp found himself wrapped in her arms while her lips searched for and found his own thin mouth. “Relax, darling,” she told him as Verkramp squirmed with a feverish mixture of refusal and consent which satisfied both his own conscience and Dr von Blimenstein’s belief that he was responding. “Sex has to be learnt.” Verkramp had no need to be told.

He started the car again and drove on while Dr von Blimenstein explained that it was quite normal for a man to be afraid of sex. By the time they reached Verkramp’s flat the euphoria that had followed the doctor’s explanation of how she was going to cure the miscegenating policemen had quite left him. The strange mixture of animal passion and clinical objectivity with which the doctor discussed sex had aroused in the Luitenant an aversion for the subject that no electric shocks were needed to reinforce.

“Well, that was a very nice evening,” he said hopefully, parking next to the doctor’s car, but Dr von Blimenstein had no intention of leaving so soon.

“You’re going to ask me up for a nightcap?” she asked and, when Verkramp hesitated, went on, “In any case I seem to have left my handbag in your flat so I’ll have to come up for a bit.”

Verkramp led the way upstairs quietly. “I don’t want to disturb the neighbours,” he explained in a whisper. In a voice that seemed calculated to wake the dead, Dr von Blimenstein said she’d be as quiet as a mouse and followed this up by trying to kiss him while he was fumbling for his key. Once inside she took off her coat and sat on the divan with a display of leg that went some way to reawakening the desire which her conversation had quenched. Her hair spilled over the cushions and she raised her arms to him. Verkramp said he’d make some coffee and went through to the kitchen. When he came back Dr von Blimenstein had turned the main light off and a reading lamp in one corner on and was fiddling with his radio. “Just trying to get some music,” she said. Above the divan the loudspeaker crackled. Verkramp put the coffee cups down and turned to attend to the radio but Dr von Blimenstein was no longer interested in music. She stood before him with the same gentle smile Verkramp had seen on her face the day he had first met her at the hospital and before he could escape the lovely doctor had pinned him to the divan with that expertise Verkramp had once so much admired. As her lips silenced his weak protest Luitenant Verkramp lost all sense of guilt. He was helpless in her arms and there was nothing he could do.