Here was the Air Force base which they had visited as boys with Father Lynch, when the priest had worn his beret as a mark of cordiality to celebrate the French connection, ‘an entirely appropriate symbol, I think, and a gesture of esteem for one of our most faithful arms suppliers, the old Sabre Jets are gone and the new French fighters are in.’
‘Not swords into ploughshares. Sabres into Mirages…’ Blanchaille muttered.
Along these perimeter fences he saw the early morning Alsatian patrols, the dogs held in a U-shaped metal lead with their trainers running behind them. It was rather reminiscent of guide dogs leading the blind. Here were endless miles of military suburbs named Shangri-La, Valhalla, El Dorado, Happy Valley.
The first of the great national monuments was the burly granite sarcophagus raised to the memory of the early Trekkers, grey and powerful on a low green hill and looking like nothing so much as an old-fashioned wireless, a giant Art-Deco piece, a great circular window intersected by deep parallel grooves where the loudspeaker would have been, hidden behind its wire and wicker screen. The monument sat in its massive bulk on the hill, forever.
Next, the monument to the dead of the concentration camps which the British ran in the Boer War, a huge, weeping, gilded Boer mother dipping her poke bonnet over her starving children who buried their faces in her ample lap.
Next, the monument to the first invasion of Angola, the bronze soldier posed behind a captured Russian artillery-piece mounted on a lorry, everything precise in all its details, the 122-millimetre rocket launcher, the famous ‘Stalin organ’, capable of firing salvos of forty rockets at a burst. The soldier and artillery-piece and lorry were on a raised grassy bank surrounded by a mass of flowers, a kind of floral gunpit, banks of white madonna lilies bloodily speckled here and there with clumps of red hot pokers.
Here was the monument to the dead of the abortive Mauritian landings, perhaps the first military invasion organised by private enterprise, the money having been put up by the large mining companies which had found themselves under fire for lack of patriotism and wished to provide assurances of good faith to the Regime. It had been a monumental error, the soldiers had come ashore from their landing craft under the most terrible misapprehension that the way was clear and that a coup would simultaneously topple the Government. Came ashore at the wrong time on the wrong day, and under the very guns of a section of the army out on manoeuvres who had observed the seaborne invasion with incredulity from their fortified emplacements and then opened fire with gusto laying the invaders face down on the beach in a grotesque and bloody mimicry of holiday sunbathers. The dead were remembered by a towering block of marble. The early morning sun hit the golden orange lettering in which their names were incised, row upon row.
And here were the military camps which stretched as far as the eye could see. Huge townships in the veld. Once the country had had a civilian army, when people left their jobs and served time in the forces. Now at the time of the Total Onslaught the length of military service was indefinite and people took off their uniforms for brief periods and served time in their old offices, in their firms and factories.
All this great military complex spread before Blanchaille was an expression of unshakable faith, an affirmation of survival, a substantiation of the vow that white men would survive in Southern Africa whatever the odds. It affirmed the covenant between God and his people that they would serve him and he would preserve the nation. The country was run by the national party in the national interest, the national borders were safeguarded against the national enemy, the arms the people carried were the arms of God. This was the war-music of the Republic. This was the song of the mourning Boer mother, it was the message broadcast from the granite wireless, it was the symphony played on the Stalin organ.
Blanchaille was within sight of the airport. He could see the hangars, he could see the planes on the tarmac, he passed the Holiday Inn, he slowed down and looked about him for the Airport Palace. Two black men appeared running towards him holding up their hands and shouting. He slowed and rolled down the window. The men seized the window-frame panting, their eyes rolling, ‘Sir, you must go back. Everybody must go back. There are soldiers in the airport. Crazy men. They have guns, they’re shooting. Turn back, turn back!’
But Blanchaille knew he’d come too far to turn back, whatever the danger. ‘Do you know the Airport Palace Hotel?’
‘Yes, yes, we know it.’
‘Can I walk there from here?’
‘You can walk, but you must pass through the soldiers. And they’re shooting. They are crazy and roaring like lions.’
Blanchaille got out of the car. He gave the keys to the men. ‘You go back, but I have to tell you it’s no safer behind me. Go. Take the car. I won’t need it any more.’
They told him to keep walking down the road and he would find the hotel, he would hear the shooting and he would know he was there. And the roaring, he would hear that too.
Blanchaille set off. As the men had predicted he heard the firing first but quickened his pace. It meant the hotel was close.
The Airport Palace was built of steel and green glass. It was surrounded by a brick wall and outside this wall were the soldiers. He knew at once who they were. They weren’t regular troops, they wore an unusual uniform, black three-cornered hats, bottle-green tunics with gold buttons, grey riding breeches and knee-high boots and they ran here and there, firing their rifles, shouting, weeping and groaning. It was these groans the fleeing men had taken for roars. They carried the traditional Boer muzzle loader and their firing, though noisy, was wild and inaccurate. They fired into the air and they fired into walls and they had to stop to reload each time, to prime the guns and to fire again. This was the ceremonial President’s guard who accompanied Adolph Bubé on all official occasions. Their uniform was modelled on the guard of honour which had greeted the President on his celebrated visit to General Stroessner in Paraguay. He had gone home and designed the uniforms himself. Blanchaille remembered the headlines at the time: BUBÉ VISITS STROESSNER! A few years later the visit was returned: STROESSNER VISITS BUBÉ! Stroessner and Bubé presented each other with medals: PRESIDENT BUBÉ HONOURED BY REPUBLIC OF PARAGUAY — FREEDOM MEDAL FOR BUBÉ. AFRICA STAR FOR STROESSNER!
The soldiers ran here and there, wild-eyed and sweating in their heavy uniforms. They reminded Blanchaille of marionettes. They seemed out of control, demented with fear. There was a cast-iron gate in the wall. Blanchaille banged on the gate and called for someone to let him in. The soldiers ignored him, charging about in their stiff-legged tin-man way.
An elderly man limped to the gate, drying his hands on a tea towel.
‘Name?’
‘Blanchaille. I think I’m expected.’
‘You used to be called Father Theo of the Settlements?’
‘Of the Camps, but now it’s plain Blanchaille.’
‘What kept you?’
‘It’s a long story. I’d like to come inside. Are those real bullets those guys are firing?’
‘Oh no. The President’s guard were never provided with live ammo. In case they got tempted, see? No, they’re just shouting and shooting and running around like chickens who’ve had their heads cut off. They’ve lost their President, you see. They’re supposed to guard Bubé and Bubé’s gone, and it has sent them round the bend. They’re like deserted robots. The man who used to wind them up has gone away. Come inside. Come inside and meet the girls.’
CHAPTER 10
Now I saw in my dream the reception of the plump renegade Blanchaille by the ancient porter of the Airport Palace Hotel, a certain Visser, once a colonel in a tank corps fighting Rommel’s troops in the desert war Up North. Something of a trace of military bearing remained about the doddering fellow who worked now unbeknown to the world as concierge, doorkeeper, porter, cleaner and barman at the Palace. He promised his guest ‘interesting stories’.