Indecent Exposure (15 page)

“Science deals only with the externals,” he said. “What we need is to change man’s nature from within.”

“I should have thought heart transplants did that very well,” said the Kommandant.

“Heart transplants don’t alter man’s nature in the least,” said Mr Mulpurgo who was finding the Kommandant’s train of thought no less incomprehensible than the Kommandant had found his. What organ transplants had to do with extended sensibilities he couldn’t begin to think. He decided to change the topic of conversation before it became too inconsequential.

“Do you know these mountains well?” he asked.

The Kommandant said he didn’t personally but that his great-great-grandfather had crossed them in the Great Trek.

“Did he settle in Zululand?” Mr Mulpurgo asked.

“He was murdered there,” said the Kommandant. Mr Mulpurgo was sorry to hear it.

“By Dingaan,” continued the Kommandant. “My great-great-grandmother was one of the few women to survive the massacre at Blaauwkrans River. The Zulu impis swept down without warning and hacked them all to death.”

“A dreadful business,” Mr Mulpurgo murmured. His own family history was less chequered. He couldn’t remember his great-great-grandmother but he felt fairly certain she hadn’t been massacred by anyone.

“That’s one reason we don’t trust the kaffirs,” the Kommandant continued.

“There’s no chance of that happening again,” Mr Mulpurgo said.

“You never can tell with kaffirs,” said the Kommandant. “The leopard doesn’t change its spots.”

Mr Mulpurgo’s liberal leanings forced him to protest.

“Come now, you don’t mean to say that you think today’s Africans are savages,” he said mildly. “I know some highly educated ones.”

“Blacks are savages,” insisted the Kommandant vehemently, “and the more educated they are the more dangerous they get.”

Mr Mulpurgo sighed.

“Such a beautiful country,” he said. “It seems such a shame that people of different races can’t live amicably together in it.”

Kommandant van Heerden looked at him curiously.

“It’s part of my job to see that people of different races don’t live together,” he said by way of a warning. “You take my advice and put the idea out of your mind. I wouldn’t like to see a nice young fellow like you going to prison.”

Mr Mulpurgo stopped and began to hiccup. “I wasn’t suggesting,” he began but the Kommandant stopped him.

“I wasn’t suggesting you were,” he said kindly. “All of us have these ideas once in a while but it’s best to forget them. If you want some black tail go up to Lourenço Marques. The Portuguese let you have it quite legally, you know. Some nice girls too, I can tell you.” Mr Mulpurgo stopped hiccuping but he still stared at the Kommandant very nervously. Life at the University of Zululand had never prepared him for an encounter such as this.

“You see,” continued the Kommandant as they resumed their walk, “we know all about you intellectuals and your talk about education for the kaffirs and equality. Oh we keep an eye on you, you needn’t worry.”

Mr Mulpurgo was not reassured. He knew perfectly well that the police kept an eye on the university. There had been too many raids to think otherwise. He began to wonder if the Kommandant had deliberately sought him out to question him. The notion brought on another attack of hiccups.

“There’s only one real question in this country,” continued the Kommandant, quite unaware of the effect he was having on his companion, “and that is who works for who. Do I work for a kaffir or does he work for me? What do you say to that?”

Mr Mulpurgo tried to say that it was a pity people couldn’t work together cooperatively but he was hiccuping too much to be wholly coherent.

“Well I’m not working down some gold mine to make some black bastard rich,” said the Kommandant ignoring what he supposed was an acute attack of flatulence, “and I’m not having a kaffir tell me to wash his car. It’s dog eat dog and I’m the bigger dog. That’s what you intellectuals forget.”

With this simple statement of his philosophy the Kommandant decided it was time to turn back.

“I’ve got to go and find where my friends live,” he said.

They walked back in silence for some time, Mr Mulpurgo mulling over the Kommandant’s Spencerian view of society while the Kommandant, ignoring what he had just said about leopards and their spots, wondered if he could become an Englishman by reading books.

“How do you go about studying your poem?” he asked presently.

Mr Mulpurgo returned to the topic of his thesis with some relief.

“The main thing is to keep notes,” he explained. “I make references and cross-references and keep them on file. For instance Brooke uses the image of smell frequently. It’s there in ‘Lust’, in ‘Second Best’, and of course in ‘Dawn’.”

“It’s there all the time,” said the Kommandant. “It’s the water, there’s sulphur in it.”

“Sulphur?” said Mr Mulpurgo absentmindedly. “Yes, you get that in ‘The Last Beatitude’. ‘And fling new sulphur on the sin incarnadined.’”

“I don’t know about that,” said the Kommandant uneasily, “but they certainly put some in my tea this morning.”

By the time they reached the hotel Mr Mulpurgo had come to the conclusion that the Kommandant had no professional interest in him after all. He had recited “Heaven” to him twice and explained what “fish fly replete” meant and was beginning to feel that the Kommandant was quite a kind man in spite of his earlier utterances.

“I must say you have unusual interests for a policeman,” he said condescendingly as they climbed the steps to the terrace, “I had gained quite a different impression from the newspapers.”

Kommandant van Heerden smiled darkly.

“They say a lot of lies about me in the papers,” he said. “You mustn’t believe all you hear.”

“Not as black as you’re painted, eh?” said Mr Mulpurgo.

The Kommandant stopped in his tracks.

“Who said anything about me being black?” he demanded lividly.

“No one. No one,” said Mr Mulpurgo appalled at his faux pas. “It was purely a figure of speech.”

But Kommandant van Heerden wasn’t listening. “I’m as white as the next man,” he yelled, “and if I hear anyone say any different I’ll rip the balls off the swine. Do you hear me? I’ll castrate the bugger. Don’t let me hear you saying such a thing again,” and he hurled himself through the revolving doors with a violence that propelled the two flies quite involuntarily into the open air. Behind him Mr Mulpurgo leant against the balustrade and tried to stop hiccuping. When the door finally stopped revolving he pulled himself together and went shakily down the corridor to his room.

Having collected his keys from his room Kommandant van Heerden went out to his car. He was still inwardly raging at the insult to his ancestry.

“I’m as white as the next man,” he muttered pushing blindly past a Zulu gardener who was weeding a flower-bed. He got into his car and drove furiously into Weezen. He was still in a foul temper when he parked in the dusty square and went up the steps into the trading store. There were several farmers waiting to be served. The Kommandant ignored them and spoke to the gaunt man behind the counter.

“Know where the Heathcote-Kilkoons live?” he asked.

The gaunt man ignored his question and went on attending to his customer.

“I said do you know where the Heathcote-Kilkoons live?” the Kommandant said again.

“Heard you the first time,” the man told him, and was silent.

“Well?”

“I’m serving,” said the gaunt man. There were murmurs from the farmers but the Kommandant was in too irritable a mood to worry.

“I asked a civil question,” he insisted.

“In an uncivil fashion,” the man told him. “If you want answers, you wait your turn and ask decently.”

“Do you know who I am?” the Kommandant asked angrily.

“No,” said the man, “and I don’t care. I know where you are though. On my premises and you can get the hell off them.”

The Kommandant looked wildly round. All the men in the store were staring at him unpleasantly. He turned and lumbered out onto the verandah. Behind him someone laughed and he thought he caught the words “Bloody hairy-back.” No one had called him a hairy-back for a very long time. First a black and now a baboon. He stood for a moment controlling himself with an effort before turning back into the shop.

He stood in the doorway with the sunlit square behind him, a squat silhouette. The men inside stared at him.

“My name is van Heerden,” said the Kommandant in a low and terrible voice, “I am Kommandant of Police in Piemburg. You will remember me.” It was an announcement that would have caused alarm anywhere else in Zululand. Here it failed hopelessly.

“This is Little England,” said the gaunt man. “Voetsak.”

The Kommandant turned and went. He had been told to voetsak like a dog. It was an insult he would never forget. He went blindly down the steps into the street and stood with clenched teeth squinting malevolently at the great Queen whose homely arrogance had no appeal for him now. He, Kommandant van Heerden, whose ancestors had manhandled their wagons over the Aardvark Mountains, who had fought the Zulus at Blood River, and the British at Spion Kop, had been told to voetsak like a kaffir dog by men whose kinfolk had scuttled from India and Egypt and Kenya at the first hint of trouble.

“Stupid old bitch,” said the Kommandant to the statue and turned away to look for the post office. As he walked his rage slowly subsided to be replaced by a puzzled wonder at the arrogance of the English. “Little England,” the gaunt man had said as if he had been proud of its being so little. To Kommandant van Heerden there was no sense in it. He stomped along the sidewalk brooding on the malfeasance of chance that had given him the power to rule without the assurance that was power’s natural concomitant. In some strange way he recognized the right of the storekeeper to treat him like a dog no matter what awesome credentials he presented. “I’m just Boeremense.” he thought with sudden self-pity and saw himself alone in an alien world unattached to any true community but outspanned temporarily among strange hostile tribes. The English had Home, that cold yet hospitable island in the North to which they could always turn. The blacks had Africa, the vast continent from which no law or rule could ever utterly remove them. But he, an Afrikaner, had only will and power and cunning between him and oblivion. No home but here. No time but now. With a fresh fear at his own inconsequence the Kommandant turned down a side street to the Post Office.

At White Ladies Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, idly turning the pages of a month-old Illustrated London News in an impractical attempt to relieve her boredom, told Major Bloxham to make her a dry Martini.

“You would think he’d let us know he wasn’t coming,” she said petulantly. “I mean it’s only common courtesy to send a postcard.”

“What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?” said the Major. “Can’t make silk purses out of sows’ ears.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon murmured, “I see Princess Anne’s been chosen Sportswoman of the Year.”

“Wonder she accepted,” said the Major. “Seems a common sort of thing to be.”

“Oh I don’t know,” said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon. “They even knight jockeys these days.”

After lunch Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon insisted on going for a drive and the Colonel who was expecting a telegram from his stockbroker drove them into Weezen and then over to the Sani Pass Hotel for tea.

The Kommandant, who had finally found their address at the Post Office, discovered the house empty when he visited it in the afternoon. He had recovered his temper though not his confidence and he was therefore not altogether surprised at the lack of welcome afforded by the empty house and the ancient Zulu butler who answered the door when he rang.

“Master gone,” the butler said and the Kommandant turned back to his car with the feeling that this was not a lucky day for him. He stood looking round at the house and garden before getting back into his car, and tried to absorb some of the amour-propre which was so evident in the atmosphere.

Well-trimmed lawns and disciplined herbaceous borders, carefully labelled rose bushes and a bush clipped to the replica of a chicken, all was ordered agreeably. Even the fruit trees in the orchard looked as though they’d been given short back and sides by a regimental barber. Against a wall a vine grew symmetrically, while the house with its stone walls and shuttered windows suggested a cosy opulence in its combination of garrison Georgian and art nouveau. On a flagstaff the Union Jack hung limply in the hot summer air and the Kommandant, forgetting his fury of the morning, was glad to see it there. It was, he supposed, because the Heathcote-Kilkoons were real Englishers not the descendants of settlers that the place was so trim and redolent of disciplined assurance. He got into his car and drove to the hotel. He spent the rest of the afternoon fishing the river with no better luck than he had had previously but recovering from the emotional upsets of the morning. Once again the strange sense of self-awareness, of seeing himself from a distance, came over him and with it came a sense of calm acceptance of himself not as he was but as he might remotely be in other, better circumstances. When the sun faded over the Aardvarks he dismantled his rod and walked back to the hotel through the swift dusk. Somewhere near him someone hiccupped but the Kommandant ignored the overture. He’d seen enough of Mr Mulpurgo for one day. He had dinner and went early to bed with a new novel by Dornford Yates. It was called Perishable Goods. 

In Piemburg Operation White Wash was about to move into a new phase. Luitenant Verkramp had tested his ten volunteers once again in a live situation and was satisfied that the experiment had been wholly successful. Confronted with black women the volunteers had all demonstrated an entirely convincing aversion for them and Verkramp was ready to move to phase two. Sergeant Breitenbach’s enthusiasm for the project was as usual less marked.

“Two hundred at a time in the drill hall?” he asked incredulously. “Two hundred konstabels strapped to chairs and wired up in the drill hall?”

“One sergeant to operate the projector and administer the electric shocks,” Verkramp said. “Won’t be any difficulty about that.”