‘Oh Ernie Nokkles where are you now?’ Kipsel whispered.
‘Spies are what I’ve got here,’ said the big wild man.
‘Tourists,’ Blanchaille countered.
‘Normal times for that. Normal opening times. It’s rare that pilgrims, whatever their fervour, camp in the grounds. Isn’t that so, Trudy — isn’t that so?’ he appealed to the haughty figure in blue above them.
‘I’d say, from the look of them, you’ve picked up a couple of bums, that’s what I’d say. Who are you boys?’
They told her.
‘Not the Kipsel?’
Kipsel sighed and admitted it.
‘And I know you,’ said Kuiker to Blanchaille. ‘You used to be Father Theo of the Camps.’
‘And you used to be Gus Kuiker, Minister of Parallel Equilibriums and Ethnic Autonomy.’
Above their heads Trudy Yssel laughed harshly. ‘You really picked a couple of wise-guys this time. As if we don’t have problems! When will you learn to leave well alone?’ She spun on her heel.
‘Come on, Trudy,’ the Minister implored. ‘Give a man a break. I caught ’em.’
But she was gone.
Another woman bustled along the corridor. Frizzy grey hair and a cross red face. She carried a broom and a pan. She looked at Kipsel and Blanchaille with horror. ‘Now whom have you invited? I told the Minister that he can’t have any more people here. This house isn’t designed for guests, it’s a museum. I’m sorry but they must go away, they can find a hotel, or a guest-house. The Minister must understand, we can’t have no more people here.’ She began sweeping the floor vigorously.
‘I’m sorry, Mevrou Fritz, but you see, these aren’t guests,’ said Kuiker, ‘These are prisoners.’
‘Prisoners, guests, it’s all the same to me. Where will the Minister put them? I keep trying to explain to the Minister. This house is not made for staying in. It’s made for looking at. Every day at ten I open the doors and let the people in to look. They look, sign the visitors’ book and leave.’
‘I’ll lock them in the cellar,’ said Kuiker.
Kuiker took his prisoners down into the cellar, which turned out to be a warm and well-lit place built along the best Swiss lines to accommodate a family at the time of a nuclear blast and was equipped with all conveniences, central heating, wash-lines, food and toilets. Kuiker producing a length of rope, ordered Blanchaille to tie Kipsel to the hot-water pipes and then did the same for Blanchaille, despite the complaints of Mevrou Fritz who pointed out, not unreasonably, that she would be extremely put off when she did her ironing by the sight of these two men trussed up like chickens, staring at her. Kuiker’s response was to turn on her and bellow. His face turned purple, the veins stood out in his neck. Mevrou Fritz flung aside her broom and fled with a shriek.
Kuiker whispered rustily in Blanchaille’s ear. ‘Soon the house will be open to tourists. You will hear them passing overhead. Examining the relics, paying their respects to the memory of Uncle Paul. Make any attempt to get attention and you’ll be dealt with. That’s a promise.’ And to prove it he struck Blanchaille across the face with his pistol.
They sat trussed like chickens all day. At one stage Mevrou Fritz came in and used the ironing table, complaining increasingly about their presence and of the trouble which the arrival of Gus Kuiker and Trudy Yssel had caused her. ‘This is Government property. I’m here as a housekeeper, I see to it that the tourists don’t break things or take things. I sell them postcards. I polish the floors. I dust the Kruger deathbed and I straighten the pictures. It is dull and lonely work, far from home and the last thing I expect is to have to share my extremely cramped quarters with a jumped-up little hussy who’s too big for her boots and a Government minister on the run who spends most of the day drinking. And now I have prisoners in the cellar.’
Blanchaille and Kipsel were not fed. They were released from their chairs only to go to the lavatory and then only under Gus Kuiker’s gun.
Later that night Trudy Yssel lay in bed. Down the corridor from the small spare bedroom they could hear the continual low grumblings of Mevrou Fritz now relegated to this little corner of the house, as if, she said, she were a bloody servant, or a skivvy.
Minister Gus Kuiker poured whisky into a tooth glass. Trudy Yssel looked at him. It was hard to believe that this unshaven drunk was the Minister confidently tipped to succeed President Bubé. But then she considered her own position. Despite the attempt to maintain appearances, the carefully groomed nails, the chiffon négligé, the impeccable hair, it was hard to believe that she was the Secretary of the Department of Communications.
‘What do you recommend, Trudy?’
Trudy looked at him pityingly. ‘Why ask me? You brought them in here. Now you deal with them. Why couldn’t you have left them in the garden? Then they would have come in at the official time, with all the other tourists, looked around and left. None the wiser.’
‘Maybe they’re spies,’ said Kuiker. ‘Maybe the Regime sent them to find us.’
‘Well, that doesn’t matter now — does it? You’ve found them. They know who we are. Worse still, they know where we are. What’s to be done?’
‘Get rid of them, I suppose,’ said Kuiker.
The blood had dried on Blanchaille’s face and on the ropes that strapped him in. He blamed himself for not anticipating something like this. Kipsel was hard put to find anything to say that would cheer him up. When Kuiker arrived the general mood of gloom darkened still further. He pulled up a chair and sat opposite them, he swung his pistol around the finger guard in a manner so casual Kipsel would not have expected it in a police trainee. He was very drunk. His midnight blue dressing gown was monogrammed with a great G gulping down a smaller K. The stubble on his chin was longer and tinged with grey. His feet were bare and the pyjama trousers which protruded beyond his dressing-gown creased and rather grubby around the unhealthy whiteness of his ankles.
‘Why are you here? Who sent you?’ Kuiker demanded.
Blanchaille ignored him.
‘If we’d known you were holed up here we’d never have come,’ said Kipsel. ‘Come to that — what are you doing here? The papers said you were in Philadelphia.’
‘We were betrayed in Philadelphia. That black shit Looksmart dropped us in it. He and that oily priest bastard brother of his got together and destroyed us in America. Years of work wiped out in a few minutes. Our plans broadcast all over the bloody country. Now, at home, they’ve turned on us. We heard today that there are warrants out for our arrest, it seems that the Regime, desperate to find somebody to blame has settled on us. It is we, it seems, who have been rifling the treasury, absconding with public funds, hiring executive jets and wining and dining our way around the world, all for our own selfish ends. They are saying that we went abroad once too often and were seduced by foreign ways and luxuries. But they, they stayed at home, they are the only ones who remained pure. They will preserve racial amity, only they can withstand the Total Onslaught, they have never been corrupted. They are no longer pretending that we are in Philadelphia, they have officially announced that we are on the run and what’s more the bastards have taken credit for making the announcement, for setting up an enquiry into the misuse of public funds, for the dismantling of the Department of Communications, they have resurrected the dead official, Ferreira, they have announced that this good and faithful official discovered the beginnings of this rotten business, as if small peculiarities in the movements of Government funds which we handled are worth twopence compared to the much larger, one could say total, distortion and perversion of reality the Regime has organised against us.’