‘Any more questions?’ Trudy asked jumping up and smoothing the white coverlet on the death bed. ‘Oh yes, I know – you’re dying to ask me if I’m Gus Kuiker’s mistress. So, then – do I sleep with Gus Kuiker?’
‘No,’ Kipsel protested weakly, ‘we were not going to ask you that.’
‘But I insist. Sleeping with Gus Kuiker means that once or twice a week he gets into bed beside me. I lie on my back and spread my legs. He puts a cushion under my backside because, he says, he doesn’t get proper penetration otherwise, and then he pushes himself into me with some difficulty and moves up and down very fast because he gets penis wilt, you see. He can get it up but he can’t keep it up. You can rub him, suck him, oil him. It doesn’t help. While he’s going he’s O.K. The moment he stops, it drops. So about two minutes later, that’s it. Overs cadovers. So much for sleeping with Gus Kuiker. He’s also heavier now, sadder, he drinks almost all the time and he seldom shaves. But, as you say, we do indeed sleep together. Though I hope next time you use the phrase you will think hard about its implications.’
Back in the cellar Blanchaille was gloomier than ever. ‘What if I’m wrong and the Kruger story ends with this house?’
‘It doesn’t.’
‘But say it did.’
‘No, dammit. I won’t say it did! You know the story as well as I. This is just another stage on the journey which began in Pretoria, went on to Delagoa Bay, touched Europe and Marseilles, and then moved on to Tarascon, Avignon, Valence, Lyons, Mâcon and Dijon to Paris, as Uncle Paul travelled Europe to win support for the Boer cause. He pressed on to Charleroi, Namur and Liège, he called at Aachen and Cologne and Düsseldorf, Duisburg and Emmerich, and then he went on to Holland, stopping at over half a dozen cities before pitching up at the Hague. December 1901 saw him in Utrecht, nearly blind, 1902 he was in Menton for the warmth. He was in Hilversum in the following year and then back to Menton for the sun. Only in 1904 did he come here to Clarens, to this house which he did not buy, but rented from a M. Pierre Pirrot – some doubt has been cast on the existence of this man – notice the similarity between his name and the French pantomime character with the white face, Pierrot. The picture we have of the solidity of this house, of his living here in exile, of the near-blind old man in his last days looking out across Lake Geneva to the mountains, it all sounds like a drama, doesn’t it? Or a tragedy? And it suits the people to give the legend weight and durability, to make it solid and believable. The bourgeois respectability of this house aids that delusion. But it’s not a drama, or a tragedy. It’s a pantomime! Everybody’s dressed up, everyone’s pretending. For instance, he wasn’t here alone, Uncle Paul. His family was with him, his valet, his doctor, countless visitors called. And he was by no means finished either. He had his plans. The last act of the pantomime was not yet played out. And he had to hurry. He came here in mid-May of 1904 and by the end of July he was dead. But in those short months he was busy, sick as he was, planning a place for those whom he knew would come after. He knew that many of his people would collaborate with the enemy. But he also knew that some would hold out, escape, and would have to be accommodated. He wanted a place, an ark that should be made ready to receive the pure remnants of the volk.’
But a black passion had seized the ex-priest and he said stubbornly. ‘Yes, but what if there is no such place?’
‘Then,’ said Kipsel, ‘all I can do is to quote to you again the mad old Irish priest who knew a thing or two – if a last colony, home, hospice, refuge for white South Africans does not exist, then it will be necessary to start one.’
That night Trudy lay beneath Kuiker who was hissing and bubbling like a percolator and had his tongue clenched beneath his teeth in a frenzy of concentration as he entered her, trying to ensure that his erection lasted through the entry phase.
‘I think,’ said Trudy, ‘that you are going to have to get rid of our guests.’
Kuiker did not reply. He had begun moving well and did not want to break his intense effort to remain upright and operational. Instead he shook his head, not to indicate his refusal, but to show her it was not the time to talk of these things.
‘Now,’ said Trudy, cruelly tightening her exceptional vaginal muscles.
Kuiker shrank, he fell out of her, he sat back on his haunches and said, ‘Damn! That’s lost it.’
‘We can’t hold them much longer, Augustus. Something is going to have to be done. They claim they don’t care about us. They say they’re above all this. But they might just give us away.’
But he was not interested. He considered his failed member. The brandy he had drunk had befuddled him and was making him very sleepy. He reckoned he had at least one chance to make it inside Trudy that night and he was going for it. Such determination, such single-mindedness had been the mark of his political success in the days when he was tipped as the next prime minister. Desperately he seized his penis and began rubbing it firmly. It stiffened perceptibly. There was no time to lose. With a grunt he pushed her back on the pillows, thrust his hands under her buttocks and rammed himself home.
‘First thing in the morning,’ he promised. ‘Crack of dawn, I’ll finish them.’
Downstairs in the cellar Kipsel was in a bad way. Trudy’s knots cut so deeply into his wrists that the circulation had gone and try as he might to loosen the cord he only succeeded in cutting more deeply into the flesh and making his wrists bleed. He’d not been able to contain his bladder either and a pool of urine spread beneath the chair.
It was then that Blanchaille had a brainwave.
‘Ronnie,’ he said suddenly, jerking upright in his chair, ‘Jesus what an idiot I am! I’ve been sitting here for days putting up with this crap and all the time I had a way out of here.’
Kipsel licked his lips weakly. ‘Good. Only hurry, Blanchie.’
Sometime later Mevrou Fritz arrived with a pile of ironing. She grimaced at the sight of the urine and wrinkled her nose.
‘Mevrou Fritz,’ said Blanchille, ‘do you get well paid?’
‘Are you joking?’ the concierge demanded. ‘I work for the Department of Works, that’s who this house comes under, through the Embassy in Berne, that’s who I work for. I thought I told you. Do I get well paid? Bus drivers get better paid! Then there’s my accommodation here, for free, so they dock the salary accordingly. Why?’
‘What would you say if we disappeared?’
Her grey eyes stared into his unblinkingly. ‘Hooray. That’s two less to worry about, I’d say. This house isn’t meant for people, you see. Not living people. At the moment I’ve got the attic full of guests, and you men in my cellar.’
‘I think we can help you on both counts,’ said Blanchaille.
A few minutes later they were on their feet and Mevrou Fritz was stroking the necklace threaded with Krugerrands with which Blanchaille had been presented in the Airport Palace Hotel by the beautiful Babybel – a key she had said which he would know how to use when the time came.
Mevrou Fritz took them to the front door but to the old woman’s horror they would not go until they signed the visitors’ book. Trembling she took them to the book and begged them to hurry before the big boss upstairs, as she called him, woke up and shot them all.
Very carefully, Kipsel wrote this message in the book: TO THOSE WHO COME AFTER US – BEWARE! THIS IS NOT THE HOLY PLACE YOU THINK. THIS IS THE HIDE-OUT OF ESCAPED MINISTER GUS KUIKER AND TRUDY YSSEL. THEY ARE LIVING RIGHT ABOVE YOUR HEADS. TELL OUR EMBASSY IN BERNE. YOU WILL BE REWARDED.
Blanchaille wrote simply: WHERE ARE THE KRUGER MILLIONS?
And then to Mevrou Fritz’s intense relief the two fugitives slipped into the night.
CHAPTER 20
Now I saw in my dream how the travellers wandered the lakeside in the manner of those wild tribes who are said once to have populated the shores of Lake Geneva in Neolithic times. They looked, it must be said, no less savage being red-eyed from lack of sleep, tousled, dirty and smelling to high heaven.
It
was fine weather all that day with the sky high and blue, full of rapidly scudding thick woollen clouds, and the shining freshness of the prospect increased the feelings of relief and freedom which Blanchaille and Kipsel enjoyed as they made their way along the lakeside towards the town of Montreux. Kipsel wanted to stop at an hotel to wash and eat a meal but Blanchaille allowed only a brief pause by the water’s edge where they splashed themselves, dunked their faces, ran their fingers through their hair and Kipsel at last got rid of the strong ammoniac smell of the dried urine that clung to him. Blanchaille removed his underpants and threw them into the rubbish bin. This was after all Switzerland and the trim sparkle of the countryside insisted on respect. Nothing could persuade Kipsel to do likewise. ‘I simply cannot walk about without underpants, it gives me the oddest, most uncomfortable sensation. Sorry, Blanchie, I know I pong a bit. Where to now?’
‘Up into the mountains, above the town. Remember the readings from Kruger’s book old Lynch gave us so often? Remember the story?’
And Blanchaille quoted exactly as he could remember, the passage from Further Memoirs of a Boer President:
‘Travellers approaching their journey’s end will find themselves as it were between heaven and heaven, one as deep as the other is high. They will think themselves close to Paradise, and they will be as close to it as faithful servants are permitted on this earth, for the country answers to the heavenly ideal in these several instances; to wit, it possesses elevation; it is a republic; it respects and honours the memory of John Calvin; and, not least, honesty prevailing over modesty requires the recognition that it has taken to its bosom this servant of his broken, scattered people, Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger. That it is not the divine country itself but its reflection will be apparent to those who walk in its mountains and still lose their way. But help is at hand for those who seek their true homeland. Scouts will be posted by the camp kommandant as I did always when establishing a concealed laager, or Boer strong-point. . .’
‘Between heaven and heaven, the book said,’ Blanchaille pointed to the deep blue lake on their right and the bright sky above. ‘I’m sure that’s what he meant.’
‘Scouts will be posted, I remember that.’
‘Well, then, shall we start climbing? They’ll be expecting us.’
‘Bloody well hope so. You could wander in these mountains forever without a guide.’
Blanchaille surveyed the great blue lake, smooth as a dance floor. He saw the flat brown pebbles neatly packed beneath the clear surface, the brown ducks daintily dunking their heads, the roving sea-gulls, the sailing swans. At his feet miniature waves slapped tidily against the rocks. A few palms stood by the lake. Palms in this place! It cheered him faintly. Some sleek crows scavenged an old sweet packet and a sparrow carefully shadowed a gull and ate what it dropped. A duck dived and showed its purplish under-feathers, two swans pecked at each other viciously. The water of the lake began with pebbles and clarity at his feet and turned grey-blue under a gentle rippling surface and then still further out showed itself in pure grey slicks bounded by great shadows, flat and full it stretched into the mist of the further shore line where blue mountains reared; if he half closed his eyes they reminded him eerily of Africa. But this wasn’t Africa: Africa was dead and gone for him. He was here now, and here he must keep his feet firmly planted. At his feet there floated a split cork from a wine bottle, several shredded tissues, a fragment of the Herald Tribune, a Pepsi-Cola can, several orange peels swimming in a bright school, wisps of swansdown, an old pencil, the filters of many cigarettes, and all the few small signs of life washed in by the tiny waves which arrived with gentle decorum. The lakeside was broken up by stone jetties and small coves and he noticed how cunningly the trees and shrubs had been introduced among the rocks: saw the ivy which crawled down to the waterside, the huge willow flanked by palms, those shrubs planted in pots and cunningly blended among the rocks, saw everything was arranged, everything cemented into place. The apparently haphazard grouping of rocks into natural stone piers and causeways was an illusion, he saw that they were actually propped with wooden stakes and iron bars beneath the surface. He could see the steel cables that held these structures in place. Everything was at once so natural and so skilfully arranged. Here was a country which lent itself to such paradoxes. Here, you felt, everything was allowed providing it could be properly arranged. A family, mother, father and two sons in a red paddle boat, with knees going like pistons, floated by. They waved. It was time to be getting on.
In Montreux they paused at a camping shop to buy two knapsacks which they filled with chocolate, bread and milk and a couple of bottles of cherry brandy – they also bought two stout walking-sticks, walking-boots and then struck into the mountains.
Here in this corner of French Switzerland they admired the clipped serenity of the countryside, its villages, vineyards, hotels and castles. They noted how well all things were accommodated, the way in which the country entered towns and villages in the form of carefully mown lawns and artful gardens, while the towns tiptoed into the countryside never disturbing the settled neatness. Here everything was made to fit but given the semblance of casualness. They passed orchards of heavily laden apple trees and burgeoning vineyards and had no qualms about raiding the fields of fruit, snatching apples and bunches of grapes as they went.
The road above the town of Montreux climbs steeply and soon leaves vineyards and orchards behind. The day was hot. They were soon pouring with sweat. The lake was now a long way below.
It was here, in the late afternoon, that they were met by four men wearing walking-boots, short leather trousers, thick red woollen socks and walking-sticks decorated with brightly coloured tin badges showing the coats of arms of all the cantons thereabouts.
The men said they were shepherds.
Kipsel rejected this and in fierce whispers told Blanchaille why: ‘One, they don’t have any sheep; two, they’re carrying sticks and not crooks; three, this is cow country, you don’t get sheep here; and four, they’re countrymen of ours, right? Well, you don’t get South African shepherds. I vote we be careful.’
Blanchaille secretly agreed. Something in the manner of these men reminded him of the policemen in their shiny orange mackintoshes who had stopped him on the road to the Airport Palace Hotel. Yes, he was fairly sure of it, their heavy and rather aggressive manner suggested representatives of the Force. Or at least ex-policemen, who were now going straight. But he confided none of this to Kipsel.
‘Scouts have been posted,’ he reminded his friend of the clues in the Kruger book. ‘We can but hope.’
By way of breaking ice Blanchaille told the shepherds that they had helped themselves freely to grapes and apples and water from the streams along the route and he hoped that there was no objection. The shepherds replied that walkers had been coming this way for so many years and that some of them wandered for so long among the mountains that the owner of the big house to which they were bound, this was delicately put, had an understanding with the neighbouring farmers under which any of his people who came that way were free to help themselves from orchards and vineyards, in moderation of course, and providing no damage was done or camp fires lit, since the Swiss were a particular race and, like farmers everywhere, took a dim view of strangers tramping on their land. However, the procedure had worked well enough for many years and just as well for there were travellers who had come from great distances and who were tired and hungry and parched, not to say absolutely bushed and clapped out, by the time they got this far. And besides, the altitude got to one, if one was not used to it.
‘Is this the road then to the big house?’ Kipsel asked.
‘Keep straight on,’ came the answer. ‘You can’t miss it, set high on a hill in the last fold of this range of mountains, you’ll know it when you see it.’
‘How much further?’ Blanchaille asked.
Here the shepherds were less forthcoming. ‘Too far for some,’ they said. ‘Not everyone makes it. There a
re accidents.’
‘What sort of accidents?’
‘Climbing accidents. Heat-exhaustion in the summer. Cases of exposure in the winter,’ said the shepherds. ‘People arriving from Africa often underestimate the ferocity of the winter.’
Now I saw in my dream that the shepherds questioned them closely, asking exactly how they found this route, and how they’d come so far without maps, directions or luggage. But when they heard of Father Lynch, of the death of Ferreira, of the betrayal of Magdalena, they smiled and said, ‘Welcome to Switzerland.’
The shepherds had fierce, flushed jaws, hard, cold eyes like washed river stones, hair blond and thick, necks thick too, and muscles everywhere. Their names were Arlow, Hattingh, Swanepoel and Dekker and they took the travellers to one of the travellers’ huts which the thoughtful Swiss provide in the high mountains for those who need them. This they found well stocked with tinned food, a paraffin stove, blankets, bunks and all necessities, and here after a meal the travellers went to bed because it was very late.
In the morning they rose and breakfasted on beans and bacon and although they had no razors and could not shave, there was running water so they enjoyed the wonderful luxury of a good wash. They breathed the clear mountain air and wondered at the fierce gleam of the rising sun on the snowy peaks of the distant Alps.
A little later the shepherds arrived and, taking Blanchaille and Kipsel back inside the hut, they drew the curtain and showed them slides on a small portable projector. ‘We would just like to clear up a few points which may have been puzzling you boys,’ they said. The first slide showed battle casualties fallen on some African battleground. The troops appeared to have been caught in some terrible bombardment, artillery perhaps or an air strike because they were hideously wounded, limbs had been torn away and there were many soldiers without heads. The soldiers, they noticed, were young, no more than boys.
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