by Tom Sharpe
He left Sjambok in high spirits and an hour later was threading the pass over Rooi Nek. At the top he stopped and got out of the car to look at the countryside which had figured recently so much in his imagination. The reality exceeded his expectations. Weezen lay on a rolling upland of gentle hills and meadows through which streams meandered to a lazy river glinting in the distance. Here and there a wood darkened a hillside or bordered the river to add a darker green to the landscape, or a grove of trees sheltered a farmhouse. In the distance the mountains rose in a great crescent above the rolling plateau and above them again a sky of impeccable blue darkened towards the meridian. To Kommandant van Heerden, emerging from the dusty dryness of the Rooi Nek pass, the countryside before him spoke of the shires of England. ‘It’s just like a picture on a biscuit-tin,’ he murmured ecstatically, ‘only more real,’ before climbing back into the hot seat of his car and driving on down the curving dirt road into Weezen.
Here again his hopes were more than realized. The little town, hardly more than a village, was unspoilt. A stone-built church with a lych-gate, a colonial baronial town hall with rusting metal gargoyles, and a row of shops with an arcade looked onto a square in the centre of which Queen Victoria sat plumply staring with evident distaste over a kaffir who was lying asleep on a bench in the garden at her feet. Whatever else had changed in South Africa since her Diamond Jubilee it was clear that Weezen hadn’t and the Kommandant, for whom the British Empire still retained its magic, rejoiced in the fact. ‘No pot-smoking long-hairs lounging about juke boxes here,’ he thought happily, stopping the car and entering a trading store which smelt of sacks and polish. He asked a tall gaunt man the way to the hotel.
‘Bar or bed?’ the man asked with a taciturnity the Kommandant felt was wholly authentic.
‘Bed,’ said the Kommandant.
‘That’ll be Willow Water,’ the man told him. ‘Half a mile on. There’s a sign.’
The Kommandant went out and drove on. ‘Willow Water Guest Farm,’ said a sign and the Kommandant turned in down a narrow drive lined with blue gums to a low stucco building which looked less like an hotel than an abandoned pumping station of a defunct waterworks. The Kommandant stopped his car uncertainly on the mossy forecourt and looked at the building without enthusiasm. Whatever it was it wasn’t what he had expected. Above the doorway he could just make out the faded inscription Weezen Spa and Philosophical Society, made pointillist by the suckers of some long-since-decayed creeper. He got out and climbed the steps to the little terrace and peered through the revolving door into the interior vaguely aware that several large flies, trapped in the door, were buzzing insistently. Neither their presence nor what he could see of the foyer suggested that the place was much frequented. The Kommandant pushed through the revolving door and, leaving the flies trapped on the other side, stood looking round him at the white-tiled hall. Light from a glass dome in the roof illuminated what appeared to be the enquiry desk set in a niche at the far end and the Kommandant crossed to it and banged the brass bell that stood there on the marble top. ‘I’ve come to the wrong place,’ he thought looking uneasily at a plaque above a doorway which said Thermal Douche No 1, and he was about to make his way back to town when a door slammed somewhere in the distance to be followed by the sound of slippers shuffling along the corridor and an elderly man appeared.
‘Is this the Weezen Hotel?’ the Kommandant asked.
‘Don’t serve drinks,’ said the old man.
‘I don’t want a drink,’ said the Kommandant, ‘I’m supposed to be staying at the Weezen Hotel. A room has been booked for me by Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, if this is the right place.’
The old man shuffled round the marble-topped desk and rooted under it for a book.
‘Sign here,’ he said putting the book in front of the Kommandant. ‘Name, address, age, occupation and disease.’ Kommandant van Heerden looked at the register with growing alarm.
‘I’m sure I’ve come to the wrong place,’ he said.
‘Only hotel in Weezen you can stay in,’ the old man told him. ‘If you want a drink you’ll have to go into town. We haven’t a licence.’
The Kommandant sighed and signed the register.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he said when he got to Disease.
‘Put Obesity,’ said the old man. ‘Got to have something. Any next of kin?’
‘I’ve got a second cousin in Wakkerstrom,’ the Kommandant said unhappily.
‘That’ll do,’ said the old man. ‘You can have Colonic Irrigation No 6.’
‘For God’s sake,’ said the Kommandant, ‘I don’t need Colonic Irrigation. There’s absolutely nothing the matter with me.’
‘Throat and Nose 4 is vacant too but you don’t have the same view,’ said the old man shuffling off down the corridor. Reluctantly the Kommandant followed him past rooms whose enamel plaques ranged from Galvanic Therapy No 8 to Inhalation No 12. At the far end of the corridor the old man stopped outside Colonic Irrigation No 6 and unlocked the door.
‘Mind the cold tap,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit hot.’
The Kommandant followed him into the room and looked round. A white-painted bed of the sort he had last seen in hospital stood in one corner with a wardrobe whose mirror was mottled and stained. More to the point and entirely confirming the plaque on the door was a series of glazed troughs, tubs and pans which stood at the far end of the room together with a maze of brass taps and tubes whose purpose the Kommandant had no wish to explore. To add to the clinical inhospitality of the room the walls were covered in white tiles.
‘Gets the sun in the morning,’ said the old man. ‘And the view is lovely.’
‘I daresay,’ said the Kommandant looking at the frosted glass windows. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘Sulphur in the water,’ the old man said. ‘Want to have a look at Nose and Throat?’
‘I think I’d better,’ said the Kommandant. They went out into the corridor and down a side passage.
‘Much better take Colonic Irrigation,’ the old man told him, ushering the Kommandant into a small dark room which, while it contained less sinister equipment, emanated an even stronger smell of sulphur. Kommandant van Heerden shook his head.
‘I’ll have the first room,’ he said, unable to bring himself to use words which might lead to misunderstanding. ‘I’m only staying,’ he explained as they went back. ‘Visiting the district.’
‘Well if there’s anything I can do, let me know,’ said the old man. ‘Lunch will be in the Pump Room in half an hour,’ and shuffled off leaving the Kommandant sitting on the edge of his bed surveying his room with a deep sense of disappointment. Presently he got up and went to look for someone to carry his things in. In the end he had to do it himself and arranged his bags and fishing rods as best he could to obscure the taps and tubes that so disturbed him. Then he opened the window and standing on one of the pans looked out. As the old man had said the view was lovely. Below him weedy paths led down beside what had once been a lawn to the river which was bordered, not, as the signpost had suggested, by willows, but by some trees with which the Kommandant was unfamiliar. But it was not the immediate vicinity that held his attention, not even the enormous drainpipe partially disguised as a rockery that ran, doubtless carrying tons of hideous effluent, down to the river, but the mountains. Seen from the head of Rooi Nek they had looked impressive. From Colonic Irrigation No 6 they were majestic. Their lower slopes clothed in the raiment of wattle and thorn and gum, they rose imperiously through meadows where goats munched precariously among the boulders to scree and krantz and the vacant sky.
‘Must be baboons up there,’ thought the Kommandant poetically and clambering down from his own eminence which was, he noted, manufactured by Fisons & Sons of Hartlepool, makers of Glazed Sanitary Ware, went in search of the dining-room and lunch.
He found it in the Pump Room, a large room with a miniature marble fountain in the centre which gurgled incessantly and from which emanated the sme
ll the Kommandant found so unusual in his room. Here, blending with the odour of boiled cabbage from the kitchen, it was less mineral than vegetable and the Kommandant seated himself near a window overlooking the terrace. There were three other tables occupied in the room which had clearly been designed to hold a hundred. Two elderly ladies with suspiciously short hair conversed in whispers in one corner while a man whom the Kommandant took to be a salesman sat at a table near the fountain.
Nobody said anything to him and the Kommandant, having ordered his lunch from the coloured waitress, tried to enter into a conversation with the salesman.
‘You come here often,’ he asked above the gurgle of the fountain.
‘Flatulence. They’re stones,’ said the young man, indicating the two ladies in the corner.
‘Really,’ said the Kommandant.
‘Your first time here?’ asked the man.
The Kommandant nodded.
‘Grows on you,’ said the man. Not wishing to hear, the Kommandant finished his meal in silence and went out into the foyer to look for the telephone.
‘You’ll have to go into the village for that,’ the old man told him.
‘Where do the Heathcote-Kilkoons live?’
‘Oh them,’ said the old man with a sniff. ‘Can’t phone them. They’re too snooty for that. Offered a party line, they were and turned it down. Not sharing a line with anyone they aren’t. Want their privacy, they do. And if what they say is true, they need it.’ He disappeared into a room marked Manipulation leaving the Kommandant with no alternative but to drive to town and ask the way to the Heathcote-Kilkoons there.
*
In Piemburg Kommandant van Heerden’s absence had already brought changes. Luitenant Verkramp arrived early and ensconced himself in the Kommandant’s office.
‘The following men to report to me at once,’ he told Sergeant Breitenbach and handed him a list he had drawn up of ten konstabels whose moral delinquency in the matter of miscegenation was notorious. ‘And have the cells cleared on the top floor. A bed in each one and the wall whitewashed.’
When the men presented themselves, Verkramp interviewed them one by one.
‘Konstabel van Heynigen,’ he told the first man, ‘you have been sleeping with black women. Don’t deny it. You have.’
Konstabel van Heynigen looked dumbfounded.
‘Well, sir—’ he began but Verkramp cut him short.
‘Good,’ he snapped, ‘I’m glad you’ve made a clean breast of it. Now, you are going to have a course of treatment that will cure you of this disease.’
Konstabel van Heynigen had never considered raping black women as a disease. He’d always thought of it as one of the perks in an underpaid job.
‘Do you agree that this treatment will benefit you?’ Verkramp asked with a sternness that excluded any possibility of contradiction. ‘Good. Just sign here,’ and he thrust a typewritten form before the astonished konstabel and pushed a ballpoint pen into his hand. Konstabel van Heynigen signed.
‘Thank you. Next one,’ said Verkramp.
By the end of an hour the Luitenant had treated all ten konstabels to the same swift process and had ten signed statements agreeing to aversion therapy as a cure for the disease of miscegenation.
‘This is going so well,’ Verkramp told Sergeant Breitenbach, ‘we might as well get every man on the station to sign one.’ The Sergeant gave his qualified consent.
‘I think we should exclude the non-commissioned officers, don’t you, sir?’ he said.
Verkramp considered the matter. ‘I suppose so,’ he agreed grudgingly. ‘We’ll need someone to administer the drugs and shocks.’
While the Sergeant gave orders for all konstabels to sign the consent forms when they came on duty, Verkramp went upstairs to inspect the cells which had been cleared for treatment.
In each cell a bed had been placed facing the wall which had been whitewashed and beside the bed on a table stood a slide projector. All that was needed were the slides. Verkramp went back to his office and sent for Sergeant Breitenbach.
‘Take a couple of vans out to the township and bring back a hundred coon girls,’ he ordered. ‘Try and pick attractive ones. Bring them back here and have the photographer photograph them in the raw.’
Sergeant Breitenbach went downstairs and drove out to Adamville, the black township outside Piemburg, to carry out what appeared on the surface to be a fairly straightforward order. In practice it turned out to be rather difficult. By the time his men had dragged a dozen young black women from their homes and locked them in the pick-up van, an angry crowd had gathered and the township was in an uproar.
‘We want our women back,’ yelled the crowd.
‘Let us out,’ screamed the girls in the van. Sergeant Breitenbach tried to explain.
‘We only want to photograph them without their clothes on,’ he said. ‘It’s to stop white policemen sleeping with Bantu women.’
As an explanation it was obviously unconvincing. The crowd evidently thought that photographing black women in the nude would have the opposite effect.
‘Stop raping our women,’ shouted the Africans.
‘That’s what we’re trying to do,’ said the Sergeant through a loudhailer but his words had no effect. The news that the police intended raping the girls spread like wildfire through the township. As the stones began to land round the police vans, Sergeant Breitenbach ordered his men to cock their Sten guns and gave the order to retreat.
‘Typical,’ said Verkramp when the Sergeant reported the incident. ‘Try to help them and what do they do. Bloody riot. I tell you, kaffirs are thick. Plain stupid.’
‘Do you want me to try and get some more?’ the Sergeant asked.
‘Of course. Ten isn’t enough,’ said Verkramp. ‘Photograph this lot and take them back. When they see these girls haven’t been raped the crowd will quieten down.’
‘Yes sir,’ said the Sergeant doubtfully.
He went down to the basement and supervised the police photographer who was having some difficulty getting the girls to stand still. In the end the Sergeant had to take out his revolver and threaten to shoot the girls unless they co-operated.
His second visit to the township was even less successful than the first. Wisely taking the precaution of convoying the pick-up vans with four Saracen armoured cars and several lorry loads of armed policemen, he still ran into trouble.
Addressing the incensed crowd Sergeant Breitenbach ordered the girls to be released.
‘As you can see they haven’t been hurt,’ he shouted. Naked and bruised, the girls poured out of the vans.
‘He said he’d shoot us,’ one of them screamed.
In the riot that followed this announcement and the attempt to secure another ninety girls for the same treatment, the police shot four Africans dead and wounded a dozen more. Sergeant Breitenbach left the scene of carnage with twenty-five more women and a nasty cut over his left eye where he had been hit by a stone.
‘Fuck the bastards,’ he said as the convoy left, a comment that had unfortunate results for the twenty-five women in the vans who were photographed and duly fucked in the police station before being released to make their own way home. That evening Acting Kommandant Verkramp announced to the press that four Africans had been killed in a tribal fight in the township.
As soon as the colour transparencies were ready, Verkramp and Sergeant Breitenbach went to the top floor where the ten konstabels were waiting in some trepidation for the treatment to begin. The arrival of the hypodermics and the shock machines had done nothing to improve their morale.
‘Men,’ said Verkramp as they stood in the corridor, ‘today you are about to take part in an experiment which may alter the course of history. As you know, we Whites in South Africa are threatened by millions of blacks and if we are to survive and maintain our purity of race as God intended we must learn not only to fight with guns and bullets but we must fight a moral battle too. We must cleanse our hearts and minds of im
pure thoughts. That is what this course of treatment is intended to do. Now, we all have a natural aversion for kaffirs. It’s part of our nature to feel disgust for them. The course of treatment which you have volunteered for will reinforce that feeling of disgust. That is why it is called aversion therapy. By the end of your treatment the sight of a black woman will make you sick and you will be conditioned to avoid all contact with them. You won’t want to sleep with them. You won’t want to touch them. You won’t want to have them in your homes as servants. You won’t want them washing your clothes. You won’t want them in the streets. You won’t want them anywhere in South Africa …’
As Luitenant Verkramp’s voice went higher and higher with the catalogue of things the konstabels wouldn’t want, Sergeant Breitenbach coughed nervously. He had had a tiring day and the cut on his forehead was throbbing painfully and he knew that the one thing he didn’t want was a demented and hysterical Acting Kommandant.
‘Isn’t it about time we started, sir?’ he said nudging Verkramp. The Luitenant stopped.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let the experiment begin.’
The volunteers went into their cells where they were made to take off their clothes and get into the strait-jackets which were laid out like pyjamas on the beds. There was some trouble on this score and it required the assistance of several non-commissioned officers to get one or two of the larger men into them. Finally, however, the ten konstabels were strapped down and Verkramp filled the first hypodermic with apomorphine.
Sergeant Breitenbach watched him with growing alarm.
‘The surgeon said not to overdo it,’ he whispered. ‘He said you could kill someone. Only 3 cc.’
‘You’re not getting cold feet are you, Sergeant?’ Verkramp asked. On the bed the volunteer regarded the needle with bulging eyes.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he shouted desperately.
‘No, you haven’t,’ said Verkramp. ‘We’re going to do that for you.’
‘Shouldn’t we try it on a kaffir first?’ Sergeant Breitenbach asked. ‘I mean it isn’t going to look very good if one of these men dies, is it?’