Tandia (60 page)

'For what, sir?' Geldenhuis asked, looking somewhat bemused.

Cogsweel got up from his lounge chair. Standing, he was larger than he'd seemed, the top half of him not in proportion to his long legs. He wore a crew cut just beginning to turn grey. It was cut flat and gave his square-jawed face an almost rectangular look, the shape of a shoebox turned on its end. When he stood he was at least six foot tall. Cogsweel walked over to the window and, with his hands pushed into his jacket pockets, stood with his back to Geldenhuis, looking out over the yacht basin.

He spoke Afrikaans well, but with the slight accent of an English-speaking South African. 'We are looking for patriots, true patriots, people who put their country first, selfless people who are not afraid to take risks. We have won the first battle and the Afrikaner is back in charge of his own country again. We are making the necessary changes, consolidating, repairing the damage done by the British.' He turned and faced Jannie Geldenhuis. 'Have you heard the expression, "damage control"?' Geldenhuis nodded. 'It's a military term.'

'Ja, that is correct. And what we are talking about is war. War against all those people and factions who would undermine the Afrikaner nation. Damage control is the business of minimizing the effect our enemies have on the state.'

Steyn now spoke, though he didn't rise from his chair. 'A people are only safe when they have eyes and ears everywhere: the eyes and ears of the true patriot, the man or woman dedicated to the purity of the nation's blood. The survival of our nation is dependent on keeping both the body and the spirit of the Afrikaner from being contaminated. For three hundred years we have kept our blood pure! We have kept our belief in God. We have not broken the covenant!' He smiled suddenly, aware that he might be coming on too strong. 'Look at your eyes! They're blue, you have white hair, blond. You are the direct result of our forefathers who kept the faith. Now it is our turn to hold the torch, to serve our country, the white Afrikaner nation.'

Cogsweel seated himself again. 'You have shown yourself a man who is not afraid to take action, to become involved.'

'I am a policeman, Mr Cogsweel. That's my job.'

'Ja, but there are policemen and there are policemen. A patriot is someone who doesn't do it because it is a job, but because it is his duty to serve…'

Die Vaderland!'
Steyn said, interjecting. 'The Minister thinks you may be this sort of man, Detective Sergeant Geldenhuis.'

Jannie Geldenhuis felt his heart racing. They were telling him everything he wanted to hear. He wasn't political. Not in the sense of being a Nationalist, though he supposed he was that when it was all boiled down. But he was obsessed with the purity of his Afrikaner blood. It was what drove him in the SAT Squad; and here it was again. He could sense the power in the room and the effect that that power might have on his career. Klaasens was Special Branch; he knew because he'd picked through the filing cabinet he kept in his mind; he was also the boxing coach for the Pretoria Police Boxing Club.

'I am flattered, sir. I only hope I can justify the Minister's opinion.' Geldenhuis looked directly at Steyn, holding his eyes.

'Will you join us?' Cogsweel asked, smiling.

Geldenhuis was suddenly certain that the way he replied was critical to the outcome; if he asked whom he was joining he was in effect rejecting the ethos of the conversation which had just taken place. On the other hand, by not asking he might seem stupid, easily led.

'Thank you, I am flattered by your invitation, but there is only one organization that truly inspires me, only one which I wish to be invited to join.'

'And that is?' Cogsweel asked quietly, a small smile creasing the corners of his mouth. 'Why, the
Broederbond,
sir.'

Cogsweel laughed, having anticipated the answer but gratified by the way Geldenhuis had neatly side-stepped the trap they'd set for him. 'Welcome to the
Broederbond,
Jannie Geldenhuis,' he said, standing, and offering the young policeman his hand.

Within a week of his transfer to the Special Branch coming through, Geldenhuis found himself reporting to Pretoria for duty.

It was curious how Geldenhuis, with his dreamy blue eyes and his hard, blank face, had an uncomfortable effect on people. It was as though they sensed he was trouble and elected to be on his side, rather than to oppose him. Geldenhuis seemed to elicit co-operation from witnesses and prisoners alike in less time even than many of the most experienced officers.

He exemplified the new kind of intelligent, hard-nosed, dedicated police officer who was entirely without compassion. It was almost as though he enjoyed the process of being hated and took pride in the little energy it took to bring most of his prisoner opponents to their knees.

Sarah, the nearest thing Mama Tequila could manage to a blond whore, pinpointed the characteristic in Geldenhuis which, no matter how sophisticated his technique became, he never lost. 'He makes you feel like you a piece of dog shit,' was how Sarah had described his demeanour at one of Mama Tequila's Sunday morning chew-the-fat chats.

At the mention of Geldenhuis's name, Mama Tequila turned from the Aga where she was preparing scrambled eggs for her girls, folding tiny squares of bacon into the fluffy mixture. 'No more, you hear! That name is said no more in this house. Anybody say it, even once, their future is finish and klaar! No more poems about him, Sarah, no nothing. We never seen such a person at Bluey Jay,
never
you hear!'

'Yes, Mama Tequila!' they'd all chorussed. As far as the working girls were concerned, that was it; the policeman's name was expunged from their memories and, they all privately hoped, from any future experience which might involve him.

But for Tandia, a day never passed when she didn't feel the fear, the cold fist squeezing her heart at the spectre of Geldenhuis. His presence in Durban still dominated her mind. When, some months after his accident, news came that he'd been sent back to the Transvaal it was as though a great weight had lifted from her. Not just a mental thing, a physical one as well.

Juicey Fruit Mambo, driving her to university the following day, could sense the change in her. 'For why you happy, Miss Tandy?'

'Ag, man, Juicey Fruit, a badness has lifted from my heart!' Juicey Fruit Mambo seemed to understand that Tandia didn't want to explain any further.

In fact, Tandia wanted to explain further, to tell him the good news, for he shared her hatred for Geldenhuis. But her fear of Mama Tequila prevented her from mentioning Geldenhuis's name even to Juicey Fruit Mambo. She knew that, sooner or later, he would find out in his own way and they would share the joy of knowing that Geldenhuis had gone out of their lives.

Geldenhuis resumed boxing after almost a year of convalescence and in the ensuing months met a number of opponents, both local and overseas, defending his South African welterweight title successfully on two occasions, though not against Gideon Mandoma. He was now being trained by Colonel Klaasens who assumed both the role of trainer and manager in his life.

Klaasens was delighted with Geldenhuis. He was learning to know him on two fronts: as a policeman and as a boxer. He soon learned that both came together on the subject of the rooinek boxer Peekay.

Not long after Geldenhuis had moved to Pretoria and Colonel Klaasens had taken him under his charge, Geldenhuis had made a request. 'Colonel, I must fight Peekay, whatever it takes.'

'Jannie, that may not be so easy, man. They're calling the fight in New York one of the greatest welterweight contests ever fought, perhaps even the greatest. Most foreign reports say Peekay won and every South African report insists he did. In any other place in the world than New York Peekay would have got the verdict. If he wins here in Johannesburg he could make you fight ten, maybe more contenders before he lets you have a go. He may not even be around as champion by then.'

'Colonel, you don't understand. Of course I want it to be for the world title, but even if it isn't for the title, maybe only for the South African title, I want the fight, anywhere, any place, any time!'

Klaasens shook his head. 'You're asking a lot, man. Peekay has beaten you five times as an amateur; the last time he knocked you out. If I persuade the South African Boxing Board to apply for the fight, you know the rules.' Peekay can chose to fight you or Mandoma, who is the black champion. Most likely he'll agree to fight the winner of an elimination fight.'

'Ja, okay, if I have to fight Mandoma again, but it's only for the right to fight Peekay.'

Klaasens looked at his boxer. 'If you get to fight the rooinek it's good you feel like this about him, it's good you hate him, but why, man? Boers hate rooineks, but not like you hate Peekay. Why?'

Geldenhuis coloured, but was forced to laugh. 'Ja, that of course, I got to admit. The first time we fought I was thirteen, he was younger. We were kids, you know our first year in high school? The posh rooinek school he went to never won, man. Rooineks can't box.'

Klaasens grinned. 'One of them can!'

'Ja, he won. It was the first time I was beaten. He beat me four more times in the next five years. Him and the Jew. I've had one hundred and twenty-seven fights altogether, amateur and pro. I've lost five times, all of them to the same guy.'

The police colonel shrugged. 'Sometimes it's like that. You know the fight game. Some guys are just wrong for you; you beat the guys who beat them, but you can't beat them. They got a style, a way of fighting that you can't manage.'

'No that's bullshit, Colonel. It's something different. Even the first time, when we were just kids, it was Boer against rooinek. With most rooinek kids, when an Afrikaner kid comes up to him and wants to fight, the rooinek runs away. You know yourself that's true. But even that first time I knew this was a rooinek who wouldn't run.'

'Ag man, that's just kid's stuff, you've got to allow for the one rooinek who isn't scared.'

'No, you wrong again. Him and the Jew, they had a plan. When you get in a boxing ring there's no more place to hide. It's you and it's your opponent, nothing else matters. But with Peekay and the Jew, it was more. I could feel I was fighting for the Afrikaner people.'

'You must have felt bad lOSing, Jannie. I can understand how you feel.'

'It's not nice, it eats at your guts, you think about nothing else. Now he's lost himself, he'll know how it feels. I'm glad. But it will be worse when I beat him. Because he'll know, he'll know why. He'll know he was beaten by the truth, by a people who fear God and who have kept their blood pure.' Geldenhuis looked at Klaasens, suddenly furious. 'Colonel, they're scum! Him and the fat Jew, they're the scum of the earth. They're Communists and they are determined to destroy the Afrikaner people, the Afrikaner way of life.'

'And you have evidence of this?'

'Enough. I got enough! Peekay and the Jew, Hymie Levy, they're always together. The Jew wants to destroy South Africa. It was the Jews that caused the Boer War, who sucked out our blood and stole our money. They're still doing it, man! De Beers, they own all the diamonds, it all belongs to a Jew. Anglo-American, the biggest gold and copper consortium in the world, it's run by the Jews.'

'Magtig, Jannie, I also hate the Jews but there've been some good ones. A guy like Harry Oppenheimer, he does a lot of good around the place, also Solomon Levy - just the other day he gave a whole hospital!'

'Shit, man, you make me laugh! He gave a
kaffir
hospital. A kaffir hospital that looks after children. Children's diseases and a maternity wing for black women who breed like flies! Can't you fucking see? He wants more and more blacks, so in the end they'll swarm all over us! It's part of the international Communist conspiracy to destroy the Afrikaner people.'

'Ja, I suppose you're right, I never thought of it like that.' Klaasens was still not entirely convinced. 'But Peekay? He's not a Jew and it said in the paper he comes from poor people. Just a little
dorp
in the low veld.'

'Ja, and now he's just finished at Oxford. Do you know about Oxford?' Geldenhuis asked.
'Ja,
it's a university in England.'

'Peekay got a scholarship to Stellenbosch, to Witwatersrand to Natal University. Why did he have to go to Oxford? Not only that, here in South Africa it was for free. At Oxford he had to pay. Tell me that, why, man?'

'I don't know, maybe he just wanted to go overseas?'

'You just said he was a poor boy who comes from a small dorp? Whose mother is a dressmaker. You don't thinK he paid do you? The Jew paid! I mean no disrespect, Colonel, but that's bullshit about the mines in Rhodesia. You know why Peekay went there? To start a Communist party! You know what happened the year after he left? A strike in the Copperbelt, led by the Communist party. I know a guy, a good Boer who worked up there in the mines. He says they didn't know there was a Communist party in the mines before that! It was not even one year after Peekay left. Now the black bastards up there are demanding independence. This guy I know says the kaffirs go underground the first time and you show them a mirror. They see their face in a mirror and they scream. Now they want independence!'

I got to admit, Jannie, you've done your homework, man. That's the sign of a good policeman. We did the right thing bringing you into the Special Branch.'