‘Do you know who killed Ferreira?’
‘Who? You mean what! What killed Ferreira? I’ll tell you what killed Ferreira. Curiosity killed Ferreira, and ignorance and the refusal to operate within the parameters of the practical. The mind of an accountant. The insistence on perfection, his own perfection. The stubborn desire to go by the book. His book. His books! The refusal to recognise that we were just proper people doing what we could to change things for the better, to win our country a place again in the world. To fight. And we had to fight because we were at war, see. And you can’t behave like you’re in a monastery garden when you’re at war with the rest of the world. But ignorance and pig-headed fucking stubborness chiefly — that’s what killed Ferreira. He wouldn’t listen, he wouldn’t learn, he wouldn’t adapt. So he died.’
The Minister lurched forward waving his revolver and perhaps in his rage might have killed the prisoners had not Mevrou Fritz bustled in at that moment with a fresh pile of ironing and complained that the prisoners were beginning to smell.
‘They’ll stink a lot more when they’re dead,’ said Kuiker.
Kipsel kept perfectly calm. ‘This place as such is of no importance to us, it’s a shell, a ghost house. We only came here because it’s the start of our mission. We’re not fighting the war against you. We’re looking for the other Kruger House, we’re retiring.’
Kuiker made a sound, somewhere between a belch and a laugh. ‘There is no safe house, no garden of refuge, no asylum, no home for the likes of you — or me. And shall I tell you how I know? For one very good reason. If there were such a place you can be damn sure I would have found it by now.’ He swayed and almost fell, ran a hand through his hair, pounded himself several times on the chest and hawking phlegm turned abruptly on his heel they heard him clumping upstairs.
That night when Kuiker got into bed he said, ‘There’s no persuading them. They’re mad. I tried to explain this is the end of the road. This is where we turn and fight. But they seriously believe in some promised land. We’ll have to finish with them.’
‘Let me try,’ said Trudy Yssel.
Early next morning she fetched the prisoners from the cellar. Blanchaille and Kipsel were unshaven and smelt badly and after days without food they were weak on their feet. But Trudy smiled at them as if she were taking them on a picnic. Before the first visitors arrived at Uncle Paul’s House she wanted to take them on a little tour, she said. She wore a spotted blue dress with pearl ear-rings and was unnaturally cheerful, relaxed and chatted to them as if she might have been any houseproud wife showing off her establishment and not the mistress of a hunted Government minister with a price on his head and she the disgraced and vilified civil servant accused of spiriting away thousands upon thousands of public money.
‘Don’t you think, Father Blanchaille, that the tour is nowadays the chief way we now have of communicating information to busy people? We have a tour of the game reserve to learn about animals. We tour the townships to show our black people living in peace. We tour the operational areas of our border wars to discover how well we are doing. Talking of war, do you know I have toured forward areas where it felt as if the war had been turned off for the day, like a tap, or a radio broadcast, or a light. You expected when you got back to your tent at night to find a small note on your pillow saying —“The conflict has been suspended during your visit by the kind agreement of the forces concerned”, but of course you knew that wasn’t so when you heard of American senators caught in the bombing raid, or a group of nuns from one of the aid organisations like “Catholics Against Cuba”, had been ripped to pieces by shrapnel. Follow me, gentlemen. Don’t hang back.’
The place was kept spotless, a gleaming polished purity, it seemed to them that Mevrou Fritz must have caught the Swiss passion for cleanliness. It smelt of elbow grease, it smelt of floor wax. It was heavy, dark, depressing and virtually empty. Their footsteps echoed on the smooth boards. ‘Of course none of the furniture remained when the old man died. It was sold off. The house now comes under the Department of Works and they’ve replaced what they can with copies, or pieces of the period. But it’s still pretty bad. A bit of a tomb really. When the old man died his body was taken back to South Africa, again on a Dutch warship, and given a hero’s burial. That was the end of his association with Switzerland. There was no money left here, the furniture was sold off, the house given up and any talk of the missing millions was simply a myth. And it remained, as General Smuts said, merely something “to spook the minds of great British statesmen”. The time has come to stop talking of these dreams. We must wake up. We’ve been woken up, the Minister and I. We’re considering our position. When we’re ready we will move.’
‘I think you’re on the run,’ said Blanchaille.
‘You’re in hiding,’ said Kipsel. ‘We read the papers.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Trudy pleasantly. ‘This house is Government property. As Government people we’re entitled to stay here.’
‘You said you were getting ready. For what?’ Blanchaille asked.
‘Our President is expected shortly. Once he arrives we’ll be in a position to put certain thoughts to our Government at home. We plan to hold talks with our Government.’
‘What makes you think they’ll talk to you?’
She smiled again. ‘We would rather talk to them than to the world press.’
‘Blackmail,’ said Blanchaille.
‘We won’t be blamed for having done our duty. When we’ve cleared our name we shall return in triumph.’
‘And until then?’ Kipsel asked.
‘We will wait here. In the Kruger House. You believe in the sad story of a rest home for the refugees the Old President set up. You should be the first to understand the use we put this place to. Uncle Paul would have understood.’
‘You don’t understand what has happened back home,’ Kipsel said. ‘They’ve dispensed with you. When Ferreira found the figures, publicised them and died, he blew the matter wide open. The Regime stepped away from its anointed Minister and his favourite. First they covered for you. But now they’re joining the crowds calling for your blood. You should be going where we’re going.’
‘There is no place where you’re going,’ said Trudy. She led them into a small bedroom. ‘This is Uncle Paul’s death room. Here is the actual death bed. Well no, not the actual death bed, but a replica.’
They saw the dark wood of the bedstead. The sturdy head board, the starkly simple bulk of the bed with its white linen counterpane. On a small bedside table stood a vase of pink carnations. Thick green drapes in the window and fuzzy white net curtains strained the sunlight to a weak, pallid wash. A huge old-fashioned radiator stood in the corner and a large carved chair stood very prominently by the bedside. The seat and back of the chair were decorated in bold floral patterns and surmounted by crossed muzzle-loaders. This was a recurring emblem throughout the house, the Boerish equivalent of the fleur-de-lis. Other popular symbols about the house were powder horns, ox wagons and lions. Lions had always been associated with Uncle Paul. Hadn’t he wrestled one to death before his thirteenth birthday? Or outrun one? And had he not been known as the Lion of the North? Or was it of the South? Blanchaille couldn’t remember. All presidents had been identified with larger powerful beasts, or weapons. President Bubé had been known as Buffalo, or more colloquially as ‘Buffels Bubé’, while the young and thrusting Wim Vollenhoven, ‘Bomber’ Jan Vollenhoven as they called him, the Vice-President, continued the old tradition.