What proposition the mine-owner put to Nokkles and his colleagues can only be guessed at – whether they returned to work in South Africa on Himmelfarber’s behalf, or remained abroad to look after the Swiss end of his operations, or were dispatched on secret missions to buy coffee plantations in Brazil, or weapons systems in Germany, or computers in Silicone Valley, or excavation equipment in Scotland on behalf of shadowy Panamanian companies, I cannot say. But having entered into Himmelfarber’s employ, certainly it was the last that anyone ever saw of them.
CHAPTER 18
She stood upon a platform, dais, podium, rostrum, elevation of some kind, he could not tell precisely what it was, looking back, as if petrified by the bright light which hit her. Raised above her adoring public clamouring to touch her, she was surrounded by dignitaries who sat in gilt chairs in rows behind her on the stage. Of course she was not petrified. She was loving it! Smiling proudly, radiantly.
It took Kipsel a moment before he recognised her photograph in the French newspaper in the Café of The Three Poets, where they paused on the road to Clarens. (He did not know it then but she was in fact standing upon the stage of the newly-completed Opera House on the Campus of the University of National Christian Education which had so recently eaten up the defunct parish of Father Lynch.) That too he did not know. Nor did he know that at that same venue, some nights before, at the official opening of the Opera House with a production of Madame Butterfly in the presence of the new President, young Jan ‘Bomber’ Vollenhoven, terrible scenes had been witnessed when the famous soprano, Maisie van der Westhuizen, ‘our Maisie’, appearing in the title role, arrived on stage to find the front rows packed with orthodox Jews in yarmulkas waving placards reading SAY NO TO MAISIE’S NAZIS!, and she rushed from the stage in tears and disappeared forever. But that was another story.
In a stunningly low-cut evening gown with plaited shoulder straps, aglitter with diamonds, she wore a high choker around her neck, as well as some sort of ribbon and medal, an official military decoration pinned below her right breast. Her head was turned away from the camera, chin slightly raised and the frozen look was no more than a pose she had struck. And for what possible reason? Not vengeance, as with Lot’s wife, who also looked back, but fame! And yet it could be said she stood so still, she seemed so studied in her stillness that she might have been stone, or a pillar of salt. Kipsel had the impression he was witnessing some tableau in which an actress impersonated a woman he knew, or had once known. Among her adoring audience were men in uniform, saluting. Others, in evening dress, were raising glasses to her in excited acclamation. The women present were wearing big picture hats identifying them immediately as wives of Government ministers. They gazed in rapture at their heroine upon her raised platform and she half-turned graciously as if she had been on the point of leaving this gathering or reception or perhaps tumultuous welcome, or whatever it was, and stopped for a final wave, turned once again, perhaps to acknowledge the applause of the crowd and it was in this half-turn that the flash caught her.
Kipsel had found the newspaper rolled around a long stick in the cordial manner of continental cafés, and unfolded it idly as they sat among the remains of their excellent lunch, fillets of fera, a succulent fish found in Lake Geneva. The photograph was on the front page. Kipsel passed Blanchaille the newspaper and asked for a translation of the headline.
Blanchaille, barely able to contain his horrified astonishment, pointed out to his friend that although he descended from a Mauritian sailor and his mother had had high ambitions for him in the France she had never seen, although he carried a French passport, his knowledge of the language was elementary. None the less, after much muttering in a voice from which the tones of horror could not be eradicated, he stared at the headline: LA GRANDE ESPIONNE SUD-AFRICAINE RENTRE.
‘Big, grand or great South African spy returns,’ Blanchaille offered reluctantly.
‘Returns?’ said Kipsel wonderingly. ‘That means she’s been with them all along. It is Magdalena – isn’t it?’
‘I’m sorry, Ronnie.’
Inside the paper there were more pictures. They showed Magdalena’s secret life in colour photographs. Here was a picture of her spymaster, Brigadier Jim Langman, taken in Magdalena’s garden, Blanchaille announced after some deciphering. It showed the Brigadier in what appeared to be a uniform of his own making, a rather strange tan tunic with great big buttoned breast pockets and a collar of exceptional size. Brigadier Langman sat on the swing in the garden. The swing was painted lemon yellow. Langman wore black shoes and white socks which clashed noticeably with the tan uniform. He gazed soulfully out of the photograph, a round, fleshy face with soft, rather pouchy dark eyes with a glint to them that reminded Blanchaille of an ageing watchdog. Brigadier Langman’s nose was large, veined, his moustache curved out and downwards from each nostril to bracket the corners of his mouth. What was the Brigadier doing, perched on the swing in this odd uniform? No matter. It made a startling photograph in what was an amazing series. Here was Magdalena taking the sun by her poolside. Here she was at pistol practice wearing ear-protectors, the tip of her tongue clenched between her teeth in an effort of concentration, her tailored jumpsuit covered in zips, her hair caught behind her head in a bow. Here was Magdalena in Red Square, white fur collar around her ears, the same photograph which hung on the wall in her flat. Here was Magdalena in a recently bombed refugee camp somewhere north of the border wearing military uniform, identification disc pinned to her chest, inspecting the damage following a South African air raid. Here was Magdalena with a group of black students in Mombasa, a row of grins and clenched fist salutes. Here was Magdalena arm-in-arm with Kaiser at an Azanian Liberation rally in Hyde Park and here she was again at a barbecue in a suburban garden in the company of a number of men whose very long shorts, bullet heads, stony eyes, the curious way the hair was shaved well above the ears and vigorously oiled, revealed them to be policemen. Here was a photograph of Magdalena’s favourite weapon, a Beretta Parabellum which it seemed she now carried everywhere in a hand-tooled leather case. The reasons were clear, even with their limited French. The Front for the Liberation of Azania, enraged at its humiliating penetration, had sworn revenge. Its eradication squad, the mysterious Strike Kommando No. 3, had vowed to kill her. Here was a photograph of Magdalena attending the christening of the youngest child of Kaiser’s cousin, in St Martin-in-the-Fields, where she had become the child’s godmother. Was there no end to her capacity for deception? It seemed not.
Now I saw Kipsel struggle to an elbow and with glazed eyes begin to speak: ‘Look, let’s get this straight – I never set out to be what I am. Hell, no! I mean a guy starts off at home as a rugby player, most guys do, but if he’s got more than a smidgen of brain someone comes along who tells him there’s more to life than playing ball, there’s politics which is just as dangerous, intellectually satisfying and pulls girls who start thinking about these things from an early age being more mature than boys. So before I knew it I was investigating the living conditions of our cook and pressing my old folks to increase her wages – and this while still at school, such is the pace of political development. At university, well, you find yourself leading a protest march on the police station, or picketing the profs for free medicals for black lab assistants, you go on marches, join demonstrations, engage in sit-ins and get arrested when failing to disperse after being ordered to do so by a police officer, but after a while it palls, or at least disenchantment sets in, you don’t feel that you’re really doing anything, you’re simply not scoring, so you get active, you start a trade union for gardeners and you dream of becoming a para-medic in the starving homelands. Jesus! you even send for the home-tuition course and you run a literacy night-class for black taxi-drivers and still you don’t feel you’re connecting. I mean there’s no one cheering in the stands and so you become desperate for action, and of course you’re reading like mad, Marx and Dostoevsky and Gide and Fanon, and you suddenly realise that what is neede
d is the lonely gesture of self-affirmation, that freedom is to be seized in a single act, authentic existence must be deliberately chosen, so what do you do? You get a few guys together and form a secret revolutionary cell, that’s me and J.J. Bliksem and Len Silberstein and Magdalena, but not Mickey the Poet, he was never in the cell, he was just roped in to drive because Silberstein’s stupid bloody Volvo wouldn’t start on the last morning of our campaign. Off we went, clutching our dynamite snitched from the explosives store of the gold mine where Silberstein’s uncle was compound manager, and found some power pylons in the veld outside town. They had to be outside town because we didn’t want to hurt anyone. We drew the line at casualties, hell we drew the line at everything you can think of! We wanted to make an impact but we didn’t want blood, or maiming. I mean we were naïve middle-class people, we gave up our seats to old ladies on buses, so we weren’t about to scatter arms and legs across the place. Silberstein laid the charges because he’d leant how to do it having been a sapper during his military service. I helped him. Back at the car Magdalena engaged Mickey the Poet in conversation and took him for a walk. Mickey said in court that she seduced him and I believe him. It was her usual response when conversation flagged, and that when the blast went off she told him these were the reverberations of his inner being. Mickey would believe anything. But I noticed that next night when we had to go off and blast the electrical pylons in the black township Mickey was unavailable to drive us and Silberstein had to borrow his father’s car. We went to bomb the other pylons after a pretty heated argument. I said two was enough but Silberstein and Magdalena said it would expose us to a charge of racial division if we hit white stuff only. As the Regime decreed separate lavatories it was only right that we hit separate black pylons; anything else would look like crude anti-white prejudice. The next morning the police picked me up. They knew everything; they knew Silberstein’s uncle, they knew how many sticks of dynamite, dammit they even knew poor Mickey’s poem. They played me tapes of the fool Silberstein’s telephone conversations. After we got back from the township bombing he spent hours phoning people around the country hinting at what we’d done, telling them to read the papers in the morning, like it was a picnic we’d been on, or a party. I didn’t think to ask myself how they knew. I just knew they knew and I tried to save Magdalena. They locked me in a room upstairs at the police station with the curtains drawn with a Special Branch killer called Vuis. He hit me until I fell down. Then he kicked me. In those days they didn’t bother to be subtle, no electrodes on the balls, no strangling with the wet towel. Fists and feet, drowning, doorways, steep stairs, high windows. They didn’t care if the marks showed. Dammit, they wanted marks to show! That was one of the perks of being a security policeman, you got to hit people often. Tried to tell them that Mickey had nothing to do with the explosions, but they laughed. Told them not a syllable about Magdalena and they beat me some more. For interrupting! You see, they knew the lot! They didn’t want my confession, true or not. They wanted to be left alone to go on with the beating. Arnoldus Vuis was also captain of the police hockey team; on his days off, he told me between punches, he played left back. It’s funny what you remember when you’re bleeding heavily and seeing double. We used electric detonators on the pylons. Silberstein read all about them, that’s the useful thing about lawyers, they read. Captain Vuis knew about Silberstein’s reading. He knew about things even I didn’t know about, like the fact that it had been Looksmart Dladla who did the recce and supplied the map of the power pylons in the township. They slipped there, of course, because Looksmart happened to have been hauled in before the attacks on the electric pylons and when the dynamite went off he was being savagely beaten and had his head banged against the wall, so he could not have been present. His alibi was unshakeable. They had to release him temporarily and were about to pick him up when someone tipped him off and he skipped to Philadelphia. Anyway, I shopped myself and Silberstein, reckoning we were for the high jump anyway, but I said nothing about Magdalena and I defended Mickey as best I could.’
Here Kipsel broke down and began to stab Magdalena’s picture with his fork and Blanchaille had to lead his friend from the café before the proprietor became too angry.
‘I wasn’t the traitor. Magdalena was with the Regime all the time. She set me up, and you. And even Kaiser. Christ! But Kaiser must feel sick.’
‘So do I,’ said Blanchaille, ‘Magdalena was Apple One. It’s so obvious it hurts.’
‘Well,’ said Kipsel, ‘maybe at last we know something.’
‘Maybe,’ said Blanchaille.
But it wasn’t much and it came too late.
CHAPTER 19
They wandered about in the general area of Clarens until they struck the little road set back from the lake and lined with large nineteenth-century villas, one of which they knew immediately from a hundred slides and photographs Father Lynch had shown them over the years. Then, too, there was the familiar flag flying from a first-floor balcony. It was growing dark, the sun was setting behind the further mountains lighting the clouds from below so they seemed not so much clouds as daubs of black and gold on the deepening blue of the sky. Even though there were lights in the upper storey of the house, the shutters on the lower floors were closed. The last of the tourists had departed. They would not gain entry until the following morning.
As it happened there were a number of garden chairs and a small, circular steel table at the bottom of a short flight of stairs which led from the front of the house into the garden. Here, though cold, they slept until some time after midnight when they were roughly awoken.
They knew him even though he wasn’t wearing one of his Hawaiian shirts with the golden beaches, the coconut palms and the brilliant sunsets, even though he carried a revolver which he waved at them ordering them into the house.
Once inside, Blanchaille marvelled at his outfit. A raw silk suit extremely crumpled as if it had been slept in, no tie, shirt collar twisted, his laces undone as if he’d just shoved his feet into his shoes before coming outside and wafting off him good and strong were waves of liquor. He’d been drinking, drinking most of the night, Blanchaille guessed. He was aware of a hallway, the smell of polish, photographs on the walls, Kruger everywhere, and to his right a staircase which carried the large warning: No Admittance to the Public. At the top of the stairs stood a woman in a blue dressing-gown.
‘What have you got there, Gus?’ she asked grumpily.
They recognised her immediately, of course, that slightly imperious, dark, faintly hawk-like profile – those handsome rather beaky good looks, the eagle priestess, Secretary of the Department of Communications, Trudy Yssel.
‘Oh Ernie Nokkles where are you now?’ Kipsel whispered.
‘Spies are what I’ve got here,’ said the big wild man.
‘Tourists,’ Blanchaille countered.
‘Normal times for that. Normal opening times. It’s rare that pilgrims, whatever their fervour, camp in the grounds. Isn’t that so, Trudy – isn’t that so?’ he appealed to the haughty figure in blue above them.
‘I’d say, from the look of them, you’ve picked up a couple of bums, that’s what I’d say. Who are you boys?’
They told her.
‘Not the Kipsel?’
Kipsel sighed and admitted it.
‘And I know you,’ said Kuiker to Blanchaille. ‘You used to be Father Theo of the Camps.’
‘And you used to be Gus Kuiker, Minister of Parallel Equilibriums and Ethnic Autonomy.’
Above their heads Trudy Yssel laughed harshly. ‘You really picked a couple of wise-guys this time. As if we don’t have problems! When will you learn to leave well alone?’ She spun on her heel.
‘Come on, Trudy,’ the Minister implored. ‘Give a man a break. I caught ’em.’
But she was gone.
Another woman bustled along the corridor. Frizzy grey hair and a cross red face. She carried a broom and a pan. She looked at Kipsel and Blanchaille with horror. ‘No
w whom have you invited? I told the Minister that he can’t have any more people here. This house isn’t designed for guests, it’s a museum. I’m sorry but they must go away, they can find a hotel, or a guest-house. The Minister must understand, we can’t have no more people here.’ She began sweeping the floor vigorously.
‘I’m sorry, Mevrou Fritz, but you see, these aren’t guests,’ said Kuiker, ‘These are prisoners.’
‘Prisoners, guests, it’s all the same to me. Where will the Minister put them? I keep trying to explain to the Minister. This house is not made for staying in. It’s made for looking at. Every day at ten I open the doors and let the people in to look. They look, sign the visitors’ book and leave.’
‘I’ll lock them in the cellar,’ said Kuiker.
Kuiker took his prisoners down into the cellar, which turned out to be a warm and well-lit place built along the best Swiss lines to accommodate a family at the time of a nuclear blast and was equipped with all conveniences, central heating, wash-lines, food and toilets. Kuiker producing a length of rope, ordered Blanchaille to tie Kipsel to the hot-water pipes and then did the same for Blanchaille, despite the complaints of Mevrou Fritz who pointed out, not unreasonably, that she would be extremely put off when she did her ironing by the sight of these two men trussed up like chickens, staring at her. Kuiker’s response was to turn on her and bellow. His face turned purple, the veins stood out in his neck. Mevrou Fritz flung aside her broom and fled with a shriek.
Kuiker whispered rustily in Blanchaille’s ear. ‘Soon the house will be open to tourists. You will hear them passing overhead. Examining the relics, paying their respects to the memory of Uncle Paul. Make any attempt to get attention and you’ll be dealt with. That’s a promise.’ And to prove it he struck Blanchaille across the face with his pistol.
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