Indecent Exposure

by Tom Sharpe

  Now as they stood in the refreshment tent Luitenant Verkramp mentioned the change that had come over the Kommandant.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said offering the doctor another cream scone. ‘He’s taken to dressing up in fancy clothes.’ Dr von Blimenstein looked at him sharply.

  ‘What sort of fancy clothes?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s got a tweed jacket with pleated pockets and a sort of belt at the back. And he’s taken to wearing strange shoes.’

  ‘Sounds fairly normal,’ Dr von Blimenstein said. ‘No question of perfume or an interest in women’s underwear?’

  Luitenant Verkramp shook his head sadly.

  ‘But his language has changed too. He insists on talking English and he’s got a picture of the Queen of England on his desk.’

  ‘That does sound peculiar,’ said the doctor.

  Verkramp was encouraged.

  ‘It doesn’t seem natural for a good Afrikaner to go around saying “Absolutely spiffing, what?” does it?’

  ‘I’d have grave doubts about the sanity of a good Englishman who went round saying that,’ said the psychiatrist. ‘Does he have sudden changes of mood?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Verkramp with feeling.

  ‘Delusions of grandeur?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Verkramp.

  ‘Well,’ said Dr von Blimenstein, ‘it does look as though your Kommandant is suffering from some sort of psychic disturbance. I should keep a close watch on him.’

  By the time Police Open Day was over and Dr von Blimenstein had left, Luitenant Verkramp was in a state of mild euphoria. The notion that Kommandant van Heerden was on the verge of a breakdown opened promotion prospects. Luitenant Verkramp had begun to think that shortly he would be chief of police in Piemburg.

  2

  Two days later Luitenant Verkramp was sitting in his office dreaming of Dr von Blimenstein when a directive arrived from the Bureau of State Security. It was marked ‘For Your Eyes Only’ and had accordingly been read by several konstabels before it reached him. Verkramp read the directive through avidly. It concerned breaches of the Immorality Act by members of the South African Police and was a routine memorandum sent to all police stations throughout South Africa.

  ‘You are hereby instructed to investigate cases of suspected liaison between police officers and Bantu women.’ Verkramp looked ‘liaison’ up in the dictionary and found that it meant what he had hoped. He read on and as he read vistas of opportunity opened before him. ‘In the light of the propaganda value afforded to enemies of South Africa by press reports of court cases involving S.A.P. officers and Bantu women, it is of national importance that ways and means be found to combat the tendency of white policemen to consort with black women. It is also in the interests of racial harmony that transracial sexual intercourse should be prevented. Where proof of such illegal sexual activity involving members of the S.A.P. is forthcoming, no criminal proceedings should be instituted without prior notification of the Bureau of State Security.’

  By the time he had finished reading the document Luitenant Verkramp was not sure whether he was supposed to prosecute offending policemen or not. What he did know was that he had been instructed to investigate ‘cases of suspected liaison’ and that it was ‘of national importance that ways and means be found’. The notion of doing something of national importance particularly appealed to him. Luitenant Verkramp picked up the telephone and dialled Fort Rapier Mental Hospital. He had something to ask Dr von Blimenstein.

  *

  Later the same morning the two met on what had once been the parade ground for the British garrison and which now served as an exercise area for the inmates of the hospital.

  ‘It’s the ideal spot for what I have to say,’ Verkramp told the doctor as they strolled among the patients. ‘No one can possibly overhear us,’ a remark which gave rise in the psychiatrist’s bosom to the hope that he was about to propose to her. His next remark was even more promising. ‘What I have to ask you concerns … er … sex.’

  Dr von Blimenstein smiled coyly and looked down at her size nine shoes. ‘Go on,’ she murmured as the Luitenant’s Adam’s apple bobbed with embarrassment.

  ‘Of course, it’s not a subject I would normally discuss with a woman,’ he muttered finally. The doctor’s hopes fell. ‘But since you’re a psychiatrist, I thought you might be able to help.’

  Dr von Blimenstein looked at him coldly. This wasn’t what she wanted to hear. ‘Go on,’ she said reverting to her professional tone of voice. ‘Out with it.’

  Verkramp took the plunge.

  ‘It’s like this. A lot of policemen have anti-social tendencies. They keep doing what they shouldn’t do.’ He stopped hurriedly. He had begun to regret ever starting the conversation.

  ‘And what shouldn’t policemen do?’ There was no mistaking the note of disapproval in her voice.

  ‘Black women,’ Verkramp blurted out. ‘They shouldn’t do black women, should they?’

  There was really no need to wait for the answer. Dr von Blimenstein’s face had gone a strange mauve colour and the veins were standing out on her neck.

  ‘Shouldn’t?’ she shouted furiously. Several patients scampered away towards the main block. ‘Shouldn’t? Do you mean to say you’ve brought me out here just to tell me you’ve been screwing coon girls?’

  Luitenant Verkramp knew now that he had made a terrible mistake. The doctor’s voice could be heard half a mile away.

  ‘Not me,’ yelled Verkramp desperately. ‘I’m not talking about me.’

  Dr von Blimenstein stared at him doubtfully. ‘Not you?’ she asked after a pause.

  ‘On my honour,’ Verkramp assured her. ‘What I meant was that other police officers do and I thought you might have some ideas about how they can be stopped.’

  ‘Why can’t they be arrested and charged under the Immorality Act like everyone else?’

  Verkramp shook his head. ‘Well for one thing they are police officers which makes them rather difficult to catch and in any case it’s important to avoid the scandal.’ Dr von Blimenstein stared at him in disgust.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me that this sort of thing goes on all the time?’

  Verkramp nodded.

  ‘In that case the punishment should be more severe,’ said the doctor. ‘Seven years and ten strokes isn’t a sufficient deterrent. In my opinion any white man having sexual intercourse with a black woman should be castrated.’

  ‘I quite agree,’ said Verkramp enthusiastically. ‘It would do them a lot of good.’

  Dr von Blimenstein looked at him suspiciously but there was nothing to suggest irony in Verkramp’s expression. He was staring at her with undisguised admiration. Encouraged by his frank agreement the doctor continued.

  ‘I feel so strongly about miscegenation that I would be quite prepared to carry out the operation myself. Is anything wrong?’

  Luitenant Verkramp had suddenly turned very white. The idea of being castrated by the beautiful doctor corresponded so closely with his own masochistic fantasies that he felt quite overcome.

  ‘No. Nothing,’ he gasped, trying to rid himself of the vision of the doctor, masked and robed, approaching him on the operating table. ‘It’s just a bit hot out here.’ Dr von Blimenstein took him by the arm.

  ‘Why don’t we continue our discussion at my cottage? It’s cool down there and we can have some tea.’ Luitenant Verkramp allowed himself to be led off the parade ground and down the hospital drive to the doctor’s cottage. Like the rest of the hospital buildings it dated from the turn of the century when it had been officers’ quarters. Its stoep faced south and looked over the hills towards the coast and inside it was cool and dark. While Dr von Blimenstein made tea, Luitenant Verkramp sat in the sitting-room and wondered if he had been wise to broach the subject of sex with a woman as forceful as Dr von Blimenstein.

  ‘Why don’t you take off your jacket and make yourself comfortable?’ the doctor asked when she returned with the tray.
Verkramp shook his head nervously. He wasn’t used to having tea with ladies who asked him to take his jacket off and besides he rather doubted if his braces would go very well with the tasteful decorations in the room.

  ‘Oh come now,’ said the doctor, ‘there’s no need to be formal with me. I’m not going to eat you.’ Coming so shortly after the news that the doctor was an advocate of castration, the idea of being eaten by her as well was too much for Verkramp. He sat down hurriedly in a chair.

  ‘I’m perfectly all right like this,’ he said, but Dr von Blimenstein wasn’t convinced.

  ‘Do you want me to take it off for you?’ she asked, getting up from her own chair with a movement that disclosed more of her legs than Luitenant Verkramp had ever seen before. ‘I’ve had lots of practice,’ she smiled at him. Verkramp could well believe it. ‘In the hospital.’ Feeling like a weasel fascinated by a giant rabbit, Verkramp sat hypnotized in his chair as she approached.

  ‘Stand up,’ said the doctor.

  Verkramp stood up. Doctor von Blimenstein’s fingers unbuttoned his jacket as he stood facing her and a moment later she was pushing his jacket back over his shoulders so that he could hardly move his arms. ‘There we are,’ she said softly, her face smiling gently close to his, ‘that feels a lot more comfortable, doesn’t it?’

  Comfortable was hardly the word Luitenant Verkramp would have chosen to describe the sensation he was now experiencing. As her cool fingers began to undo his tie, Verkramp found himself swept from the safe remote world of sexual fantasy into an immediacy of satisfaction he had no means of controlling. With a volley of diminishing whimpers and an ecstatic release Luitenant Verkramp slumped against the doctor and was only prevented from falling by her strong arms. In the twilight of her hair he heard her murmur, ‘There, there, my darling.’ Luitenant Verkramp passed out.

  *

  Twenty minutes later he was sitting rigid with remorse and embarrassment wondering what to do if she asked if he wanted another cup of tea. To say ‘No’ would be to invite her to take the cup away for good while to say ‘Yes’ would still deprive him of the only means he had of hiding his lack of self-control. Dr von Blimenstein was telling him that a sense of guilt was always the cause of sexual problems. In Verkramp’s opinion the argument didn’t hold water but he was too preoccupied with the question of more tea or not to enter into the conversation with anything approaching fervour. Finally he decided that the best thing to do was to say ‘Yes, please’ and cross his legs at the same time and he had just come to this conclusion when Dr von Blimenstein noticed his empty cup. ‘Would you care for some more tea?’ she asked and reached out for his cup. Luitenant Verkramp’s careful plan was wrecked before he realized it. He had expected her to come over and fetch his cup not wait for it to be brought to her. Responding to the contradictory impulses towards modesty and good manners at the same time, he crossed his legs and stood up, in the process spilling the little bit of tea he had kept in his cup in case he should decide to say ‘No’ into his lap where it mingled with the previous evidence of his lack of savoir-faire. Luitenant Verkramp untangled his legs and looked down at himself with shame and embarrassment. The doctor was more practical. Picking the cup off the floor and prising the saucer from Verkramp’s fingers, she hurried from the room and returned a moment later with a damp cloth. ‘We mustn’t let your uniform get stained, must we?’ she cooed with a motherliness which reduced most of Verkramp to a delicious limpness and quite prevented him from realizing the admission of complicity in his mishap implied by the ‘We’ and before he knew what was happening the beautiful doctor was rubbing his fly with the damp cloth.

  Luitenant Verkramp’s reaction was instantaneous. Once was wicked enough but twice was more than he could bear. With a contraction that bent him almost double, he jerked himself away from the doctor’s tempting hands. ‘No,’ he squeaked, ‘not again,’ and leapt for cover behind the armchair.

  His reaction took Dr von Blimenstein quite by surprise.

  ‘Not what again?’ she asked, still kneeling on the floor where his flight had left her.

  ‘Not … What? Nothing,’ said Verkramp desperately struggling to distinguish some moral landmark in the confusion of his mind.

  ‘Not? What? Nothing?’ said the doctor clambering to her feet. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  Verkramp turned melodramatically away and stared out of the window.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.

  ‘Done what?’

  ‘You know,’ said Verkramp.

  ‘What did I do?’ the doctor insisted. Luitenant Verkramp shook his head miserably at the hills and said nothing. ‘How silly you are,’ the doctor went on. ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We get quite a few involuntary emissions every day in the hospital.’

  Verkramp turned on her furiously.

  ‘That’s with lunatics,’ he said, disgusted by her clinical detachment. ‘Sane people don’t have them.’ He stopped abruptly vaguely aware of the self-accusation.

  ‘Of course they do,’ said the doctor soothingly. ‘It’s only natural … between … passionate men and women.’

  Luitenant Verkramp resisted the siren tone.

  ‘It’s not natural. It’s wicked.’

  Dr von Blimenstein laughed softly.

  ‘You mustn’t laugh at me,’ shouted Verkramp.

  ‘And you mustn’t shout at me,’ said the doctor. Verkramp wilted before the tone of authority in her voice. ‘Come here,’ she continued. Verkramp crossed the room nervously. Doctor von Blimenstein put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Look at me,’ she told him. Verkramp did as he was told. ‘Do you find me attractive?’ Verkramp nodded dumbly. ‘I’m glad,’ said the doctor and taking the astonished Luitenant’s head in her hands she kissed him passionately on the mouth. ‘And now I’ll go and rustle up something for lunch,’ she said breaking away from him and before Verkramp could say anything more she was in the kitchen clattering away quite surprisingly for a woman of her size. Behind her in the kitchen doorway Luitenant Verkramp struggled with his emotions. Furious at himself, at her, and at the situation in which he found himself, he looked round for someone to blame. Sensing his dilemma Dr von Blimenstein came to his assistance.

  ‘About the problem you mentioned,’ she said, bending over seductively to get a saucepan from the cupboard under the sink, ‘I think I might be able to help you after all.’

  ‘What problem?’ Verkramp asked brusquely. He’d had enough help with his problems already.

  ‘About your men and the kaffir girls,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Oh them.’ Verkramp had forgotten his original reason for coming.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it. I can see one way it might be tackled.’

  ‘Oh really,’ said Verkramp, who could think about a great many more but didn’t feel up to it.

  ‘It’s really a question of psychic engineering,’ the doctor continued. ‘That’s my term for the experiments I have been conducting here with a number of patients.’

  Luitenant Verkramp perked up. He was always interested in experiments.

  ‘I’ve had a number of successful cures already,’ she explained chopping a carrot up with a number of swift strokes. ‘It’s worked with alcoholics, transvestites and homosexuals. I can’t really see any reason why it shouldn’t work just as well in the case of a perversion like miscegenation.’ There was no doubting Verkramp’s interest now. He moved away from the kitchen doorway all attention.

  ‘How would you go about it?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘Well the first thing to do would be to isolate the personality factors in men with a tendency towards this sort of sexual deviation. That shouldn’t be too difficult. I could work out a number of likely attributes. In fact it might be a good thing if your men were to fill in a questionnaire.’

  ‘What? About their sex life?’ Verkramp asked. He could see the sort of reception a questionnaire like that would get in the Piemburg Police Station.

&nbs
p; ‘About sex and other things.’

  ‘What other things?’ Verkramp asked suspiciously.

  ‘Oh the usual. Relations with mother. Whether the mother was the dominant figure in the home. If they were fond of their black nanny. Earliest sexual experience. Normal things like that.’

  Verkramp gulped. What he had just heard sounded positively abnormal to him.

  ‘A careful analysis of the answers should give us some lead to the sort of men who would benefit from the treatment.’ Dr von Blimenstein explained.

  ‘Do you mean to say you can tell just by answers to a questionnaire if a man wants to sleep with a kaffir?’ Verkramp asked.

  Dr von Blimenstein shook her head. ‘Not exactly but we’d have something to go on. After we had weeded out the likely suspects, I would interview them, in the strictest confidence of course, and see if any were suitable for treatment.’

  Verkramp was doubtful. ‘I can’t see anyone admitting he wanted a kaffir,’ he said.

  The doctor smiled. ‘You would be amazed at some of the things people confess to me,’ she said.

  ‘What would you do when you’d found out?’ Verkramp asked.

  ‘First things first,’ said Dr von Blimenstein who knew the value of keeping a man in suspense. ‘Let’s have lunch on the stoep.’ She picked up the tray and Verkramp followed her out.

  By the time Luitenant Verkramp left the cottage that afternoon he had in his pocket the draft questionnaire he was to put to the men in the Piemburg Police Station but he still had no idea what form the doctor’s treatment would take. All she would tell him was that she would guarantee that after a week with her no man would ever look at a black woman again. Luitenant Verkramp could well believe it.