Chapter 14
As the Kommandant drove down to the Drill Hall where Sergeant Breitenbach had assembled two hundred and ten protesting konstabels, he felt pleased with the way things were turning out. Certainly there were still difficulties ahead but at least a start had been made in getting things back to normal. It would take a day or two to get the suicides ready for their arrest and the Kommandant still hadn’t made up his mind exactly how to go about it. Studying the back of Konstabel Els’ head once again he found consolation in its shape and colour. What human ingenuity and design could not accomplish in the way of destroying inconvenient evidence, Konstabel Els through chance and unthinking malice could, and the Kommandant had frequently cherished the hope that Els would include himself in the process. It seemed unlikely somehow. Chance, it appeared, favoured the Konstabel. It certainly didn’t favour those with whom he came into contact and the Kommandant had little doubt that Els would bungle the arrest of the eleven patients to an extent that would eliminate any subsequent attempts to prove them innocent.
By the time they reached the Drill Hall Kommandant van Heerden was in a more cheerful frame of mind. The same could not be said for the two hundred and ten konstabels who were objecting to the idea of undergoing aversion therapy for the second time.
“You’ve no idea what we might come out as this time, sweetie,” one of them told Sergeant Breitenbach, “I mean you simply don’t know, do you?”
Sergeant Breitenbach had to admit that in the light of what had happened previously he didn’t.
“You couldn’t be worse than you are,” he said with feeling.
“I don’t know,” simpered the konstabel, “we might be absolute animals.”
“It’s a chance I’m prepared to take,” said the Sergeant.
“And what about us, dear? What about us? I mean it’s not much fun not knowing what you’re going to be from one moment to the next, is it? It’s upsetting, that’s what it is.”
“What about all the gear we’ve bought, too?” said another, konstabel. “Cost a small fortune. Bras and panties and all. They won’t take it back you know.”
Sergeant Breitenbach shuddered and was just wondering how he was ever going to get them into the hall when the Kommandant arrived and relieved him of the responsibility.
“I’ll appeal to their patriotism,” he said looking with evident distaste at Konstabel Botha’s wig. He collected a loudhailer and addressed the queers.
“Men,” he shouted. His voice, resonant with doubt, boomed out over the parade ground and into the city. “Men of the South African Police, I realize that the experience you have lately undergone is not one that you wish to repeat. I can only say that it is in the interest of the country as a whole that I have ordered this new treatment which will turn you back into the fine upstanding body of men you once were. This time a trained psychiatrist will supervise the treatment and there will be no balls-up.” Loud laughter interrupted the Kommandant at this point and a particularly oafish konstabel who appeared to be wearing false eyelashes winked suggestively at him. Kommandant van Heerden, already exhausted by the swift turn of events, lost his cool.
“Listen, you shower of filth,” he screamed voicing his true opinions with an amplification that could be heard two miles away, “I’ve seen some arse-bandits in my time but nothing to equal you. A more disgusting lot of gobblers and moffies it’s never been my misfortune to meet. By the time I’ve finished with you I’ll have you back to fucking normal.” He singled out the konstabel with the false eyelashes for personal abuse and was just telling him that he’d never look another sphincter in the face without coming over all queer when Dr von Blimenstein arrived and restored order. As the doctor walked slowly but significantly towards them, the konstabels fell silent and eyed her large frame with respect.
“If you don’t mind, Kommandant,” she said as the Kommandant’s blood pressure fluttered down to something approaching normal, “I think I’ll try a different approach.” Kommandant van Heerden handed her the loudhailer and a moment later her dulcet tones were echoing across the parade ground.
“Boys,” said the doctor using a more appropriate epithet, “I want you all to think of me,” she paused seductively, “as a friend, not as someone to be afraid of.” A tremor of nervous excitation ran down the ranks. The prospect of being a friend of someone so redolent of frustrated sex, whatever its gender, obviously appealed to the konstabels. As Doctor von Blimenstein continued her talk the Kommandant turned away satisfied that everything was under control now that the doctor’s magnetic hermaphroditism was exerting its influence over the queers. He found Sergeant Breitenbach in the drill hall checking the transformer.
“What a horrible woman,” said the Sergeant. Dr von Blimenstein was telling the konstabels about the pleasures they could expect from heterosexual intercourse.
“The future Mrs Verkramp,” said the Kommandant lugubriously. “He’s proposed to her.” He left the Sergeant mulling over this fresh proof of Verkramp’s insanity to deal with another problem. A deputation of ministers from the Dutch Reformed Church had arrived to add their objections to those of the konstabels.
The Kommandant shepherded them into an office at the back of the hall and waited until Dr von Blimenstein had got her patients seated before discussing the problem with the black-coated ministers.
“You have no right to tamper with man’s nature,” the Rev Schlachbals said when the doctor arrived. “God has made us what we are and you are interfering with his work.”
“God didn’t make all these men poofters,” said the doctor, her language confirming the minister’s opinion that she was the instrument of the devil. “Man did and man must put the mistake right.”
Kommandant van Heerden nodded in agreement. He thought she had put the case very well. The Rev Schlachbals clearly didn’t.
“If man can turn decent young Christians into homosexuals by scientific means,” he insisted, “the next step will be to turn blacks into whites and then where will we be? The whole of Western Civilization and Christianity in South Africa is at stake.”
Kommandant van Heerden nodded again. It was obvious that the minister had a point. Dr von Blimenstein didn’t think so.
“You clearly misunderstand the nature of behavioural psychology,” she explained. “All we are doing is rectifying mistakes that have been made. We are not altering essential characteristics.”
“You’re not trying to tell me that these young men are essentially, er… homosexual,” said the dominie. “You’re impugning the moral foundations of our entire community.”
Dr von Blimenstein refused to admit it.
“What absolute nonsense,” she said. “All I’m saying is that aversion therapy can exert a degree of moral pressure which nothing else can match.”
Kommandant van Heerden, who had been giving some thought to the matter of turning blacks into whites by electric shocks, butted in to point out that if that were the case thousands of blacks would already be white.
“We’re always giving them electric shocks,” he said. “It’s part of our normal interrogation procedure.”
The Rev Schlachbals wasn’t impressed. “That’s quite different, punishment is good for the soul,” he said. “What the doctor is doing is tampering with God’s work.”
“Are you trying to tell me that God ordained that these konstabels should remain fairies?” the Kommandant asked.
“Certainly not,” said the minister, “all I’m saying is that she has no right to use scientific means to change them. That can only be accomplished by moral effort on our part. What is needed is prayer. I shall go in to the hall and kneel down…”
“You do that,” said the Kommandant, “and I won’t be held responsible for what happens.”
“… and pray for the forgiveness of sins,” continued the minister.
In the end it was agreed that the two approaches to the problem should be tried at the same time. Dr von Blimenstein would proceed with the aversion therapy while the Rev Schlachbals conducted a religious service in the hope of effecting a spiritual conversion. The joint effort was entirely successful, though it took the Rev Schlachbals some time to accommodate himself to the prospect of leading the congregation in “Rock of Ages Cleft for Me” to the accompaniment of slides depicting nude males of both races projected twice lifesize above his head. To begin with the congregation’s singing was pretty ragged too but Dr von Blimenstein soon picked up the beat and pressed the shock button most emphatically whenever a particularly high note was called for. Strapped to their chairs, the two hundred and ten konstabels gave vent to their feelings with a fervour the minister found most rewarding.
“It’s a long time since I’ve known a congregation to be so enthusiastic,” he told the Rev Diederichs, who took over from him after three hours.
“God works in a mysterious way,” said the Rev Diederichs.
In Fort Rapier Aaron Geisenheimer was having much the same thought though in his case it was not so much God as the process of history whose ways were so mysterious. The arrival of eleven patients whose intelligence was proclaimed by the fact that the political situation in South Africa had prompted them all to attempt suicide without being foolish enough to succeed gave the eminent Marxist food for thought. So did the attitude of the hospital authorities, who put no obstacle in the way of his lecturing them on the intricacies of dialectical materialism but seemed anxious that he should. Mulling over this extraordinary change in his fortune he came to the conclusion that the police were anxious to obtain fresh evidence for a new trial though why they should want to increase a life sentence any further he could not imagine. Whatever their motives he decided to afford them no opportunity and resolutely refrained from discussing Communism with his new companions. Instead, to give vent to his need for conversation which had been compulsive enough before his confinement and hadn’t been improved by six years in solitary, he instructed the eleven men in Biblical history to such good effect that within a week he had rid them all of their suicidal tendencies and had turned them into convinced Christians.
“Goddammit,” snarled the Kommandant inconsequentially when Dr von Blimenstein told him that Geisenheimer wasn’t cooperating. “You’d think the bastard would be only too glad to poison their minds with Marxism. We can’t have twelve ardent Christians in the dock.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the doctor, “after all you did have the Dean of Johannesburg.”
“That was different,” the Kommandant told her, “he was a Communist.” He tried to think of some way round the problem. “Can’t you hypnotize the swine or something?”
Dr von Blimenstein could not see what good that would do.
“Tell them to wake up Communists,” said the Kommandant. “You can do anything with hypnotism. I once saw a hypnotist turn a man into a plank and sit on him.”
Dr von Blimenstein said it was different with ideas.
“You can’t make people do things that they wouldn’t want to do in their ordinary life. You can’t make them act against their own moral sense.”
“I don’t suppose that bloke wanted to be a plank,” said the Kommandant, “not in ordinary life anyway, and as for moral sense I should have thought your suicides have a great deal in common with Communists. All the Communists I’ve met have wanted to give the vote to the blacks and if that isn’t suicidal, tell me what is.”
He left her with the warning that something had to be done quickly. “Pretoria will be sending down a team of investigators shortly and then we’ll all be in the shit,” he said.
Later the same day he had the same trouble with the Rev Schlachbals this time over the introduction of nude women into the treatment for the queers. “That doctor wants to bring girls up here from the strip clubs in Durban and parade them up and down in front of the boys,” the Rev Schlachbals complained. “She says she wants to test their reactions. I won’t stand for it.”
“It seems a good idea to me,” said the Kommandant.
The Rev Schlachbals looked at him disapprovingly.
“That is as maybe,” he said, “but it’s too much for me. I’ve stood for men but naked ladies are another matter.”
“Have it your own way,” said the Kommandant. The Rev Schlachbals blushed.
“I don’t mean what you mean,” he said and walked out.
The Kommandant gave Dr von Blimenstein permission to go ahead with the test and later in the day several blowsy girls from Durban went through their routine in front of the konstabels while Sergeant Breitenbach went along the rows with a swagger stick making sure that everyone responded properly.
“All present and erect, sir,” he said when he had finished.
Kommandant van Heerden thanked the doctor for her assistance and accompanied her to her car.
“It’s been no trouble,” said the doctor, “I found the whole experience most valuable. It’s not every woman can say she’s had such a stimulating effect on two hundred and ten men at the same time.”
“Two hundred and eleven, doctor,” said the Kommandant with unusual gallantry and left the doctor with the impression that she had made a conquest. He had just caught sight of Els who was apparently about to rape one of the chorus girls.
“Amazing woman,” said Sergeant Breitenbach, “I don’t envy Verkramp’s chances with her.”
“That’s one marriage that wasn’t made in heaven,” said the Kommandant.
At White Ladies Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon had come to much the same conclusion about her own marriage to the Colonel. Ever since her brief taste of happiness in the dell, her thoughts had turned again and again to the Kommandant. So had the Colonel’s.
“Damned man comes here, ruins my best roses, flogs an expensive horse to death, pollutes a tank of tropical fish, poisons poor Willy and finally goes off with a damned good whipper-in,” he said irritably.
“I had rather a soft spot for Harbinger,” said La Marquise tenderly.
For the most part though, the Kommandant’s visit was forgotten and the brief glimpse of fearful reality his presence had given to the members of the Dornford Yates Club lent a new and frenetic gaiety to their efforts to evoke the past. They drove over to Swaziland to gamble at the casino at Piggs Peak in memory of Berry’s great coup at San Sebastian in Jonah & Co. where he had won four thousand nine hundred and ninety-five pounds. Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon lost forty before giving up and driving home through a thunderstorm trying to maintain an insouciance he didn’t feel. They went racing but again without luck. The Colonel made a point of backing only black horses in memory of Chaka.
“Blue-based baboon,” he said in a voice that carried his unique blend of Inner Circle County across the heads of the crowd. “That damned jockey was pulling.”
“We should organize our own races, Berry,” said the fat man. “There was a car race in Jonah & Co.”
“By Jove, I do believe he’s right,” said La Marquise who was doubling as Piers, Duke of Padua.
“The cars were called Ping and Pong,” Major Bloxham said. “And the race was from Angoulême to Pau. It was two hundred and twenty miles.”
Next day the dusty roads of Zululand saw the great race from Weezen to Dagga and back and by nightfall the Colonel, as Berry, had made good his losses of the previous days. Admittedly Weezen was hardly Angoulême and Dagga’s resemblance to Pau was limited to a view of distant mountains but the Club made good these deficiencies in their own imaginations and by driving with a wholly authentic disregard for other road users. Even Berry & Co. could hardly have complained and among other trophies the Colonel collected two goats and a guinea fowl. In the back seat of the Rolls Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon did her best to be Daphne but her heart wasn’t in it. Much the same could be said for the Duke of Padua, who insisted that the fat man stop at Sjambok while she bought an inflatable ring. That night Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon told the Colonel she was going down to Piemburg next morning.
“Another perm, eh?” said the Colonel. “Well don’t overdo things. It’s Berry Puts Off His Manhood night tomorrow.”
“Yes dear.” said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon.
The next day she was up early and on her way to Piemburg. As the great car slid down the Rooi Nek, Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon felt free and strangely youthful. Chin in air, eyebrows raised, lids lowered, the faintest of smiles hovering about her small red mouth, she leaned back with an indescribable air of easy efficiency which was most attractive. Only the parted lips at all betrayed her eagerness…
She was still in a playful mood when she was shown into the Kommandant’s office by Sergeant Breitenbach.
“My darling,” she said as soon as the door was shut, and skipped across the room a vision of elegance in mauve silk.
“For God’s sake,” spluttered the Kommandant, unwinding her arms from his neck.
“I had to come, I couldn’t wait.” said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon.
Kommandant van Heerden looked frantically round his office. Something about shitting on one’s own doorstep was on the tip of his tongue but he managed not to say it. Instead he asked after the Colonel.
Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon reclined in a chair. “He’s absolutely furious with you,” she said. Kommandant van Heerden went pale.
“You can’t blame him, can you?” she continued. “I mean, think how you’d feel in his position.”
The Kommandant didn’t have to think how he’d feel. He knew.
“What’s he going to do?” he asked anxiously, the vision of the cuckold Colonel shooting him looming large in his mind. “Has he got a gun?”
Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon leant back and laughed. “Has he got a gun? My dear, he’s got an arsenal,” she said. “Haven’t you seen his armoury?”
The Kommandant sat down hurriedly and got up almost at once. Coming on top of the terrible position Verkramp had put him in, this new threat not only to his position but to his life was the last straw. Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon sensed his feelings.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she said taking the words out of the Kommandant’s mouth. “But I simply had to tell you…”
“As if I hadn’t got enough fucking trouble on my hands without this,” snarled the Kommandant, his instinct for survival sweeping away what few pretensions he had previously maintained in her company. Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon adjusted her language to his mood.
“Doesn’t Doodoo love his mummy any more?” she cooed.
With rare good taste the Kommandant shuddered.
“Of course he does,” he snapped, taking refuge in the third person from the threat of extinction doodoos brought to mind. He was about to say that he had enough on his fucking plate without jealous husbands when there was a knock on the door and Sergeant Breitenbach entered.
“Urgent telegram for Verkramp, sir,” he said. “From BOSS. I thought you’d want to see it.” The Kommandant snatched the message from him and stared at it.
“INSTANT EXPLANATION SAB STROKE SUBV PIEMBURG STOP URGENT CARR STROKE INTERRO COMBLIBS STOP DETAIL ACTION STOP SAB STOKE SUBV BOSS TEAM FOLLOWING,” he read and stared at the Sergeant uncomprehendingly. “What the hell does it mean?” he asked.
Sergeant Breitenbach glanced meaningfully at Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon.
“Never mind her,” shouted the Kommandant, “tell me what the thing means.”
Sergeant Breitenbach looked at the telegram.
“Instant explication sabotage subversion Piemburg stop Urgent arrest interrogation Communists and Liberals stop Detail action taken stop Sabotage subversion team from Bureau of State Security following.”
“Oh my God,” moaned the Kommandant for whom the news that a team of investigators from BOSS was on its way came as the final death knell. “Now what do we do?”
In her chair Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon sat listening with a sense of being at the heart of the action, where decisions of far-reaching moment were made and real men made up real minds to do real things. It was a strangely exhilarating experience. The gulf between fantasy and fact which years of reading Dornford Yates and playing Daphne to the Colonel’s Berry across the dark continent had created in her mind suddenly closed. This was it, whatever it was, and Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, so long excluded from It, wanted to be part of It.
“If only I could help you,” she said melodramatically as the door closed behind Sergeant Breitenbach, who had just admitted he couldn’t.
“How?” said the Kommandant who wanted to be left alone to think of someone he could arrest before the BOSS team arrived.
“I could be your glamorous spy,” she said.
“We’re not short of glamorous spies,” said the Kommandant shortly, “what we need are suspects.”
“What sort of suspects?”
“Eleven bloody lunatics who know how to use high explosive and hate Afrikanerdom enough to want to put the clock back a thousand years,” said the Kommandant morosely, and was surprised to see Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon tilt back her lovely head and laugh.
“What’s the matter now?” he asked feeling pretty hysterical himself.
“Oh how frightfully funny,” Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon shrieked. “How absolutely priceless. Do you realize what you’ve just said?”
“No,” said the Kommandant as the tinted curls tossed delightfully.
“Don’t you see? The Club. Eleven lunatics. Boy, Berry, Jonah … Oh it’s too gorgeous.”
Kommandant van Heerden sat down at his desk, the light of understanding glazing his bloodshot eyes. As Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon’s laughter amazed Sergeant Breitenbach in the next room and awoke in Konstabel Els memories of other days and other places, Kommandant van Heerden knew that his troubles were over.
“Two birds with one stone,” he muttered and pressed the bell for Sergeant Breitenbach.
Twenty minutes later Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, somewhat astonished by her rapid dismissal from the Kommandant’s office but still chortling over her joke, was at the hairdresser’s.
“I think I’ll have a black rinse for a change.” she told the assistant with an intuitive sense of occasion.