In the picture Kuiker gazed belligerently ahead. It might have been a police mug shot.
‘Where was this taken?’
‘Here.’
His eyes must have held the question which of course there was no need to ask, and his hosts were too tactful to answer. There was only one reason why anyone stopped at the Airport Palace Hotel. Blanchaille felt conscious once again of his naïvety. Well, he could not help that. He had been raised to believe such things were impossible. Only Lynch had disagreed. But then Lynch had been mad. Now it seemed increasingly that Lynch’s madness was being borne out. It also, and this was ironic, seemed to bear out the charge of the Old Guard within the Regime, that the New Men, of whom Kuiker was a leading representative, would cut and run when things got tough.
The Old Guard believed in shooting. The New Men believed in certain adjustments. ‘I was one of these adjustments he had in mind,’ said Happy, ‘when he talked about necessary adjustments to racial policies. He talked of ethnic autonomy, of equalised freedoms, of positive tribalism, of the thousand subtle easements of policy which, my Minister Gus Kuiker would say, were necessary to relax the corset of rigid white centralism and to allow us to reach and embrace the future, as we must if we were to survive. Did the white man think — our Minister would ask — that he had a right in Africa because he had been there for three hundred years? Nonsense! The Portuguese had been in Africa for five hundred years, and where were they now? They were back in Lisbon on the dole. Therefore, in answer to the question — what shall we do to be saved? — the Old Guard would have replied, shoot to kill. But ask the New Men and they would tell you, do anything necessary. What kills them is to be condemned for acting for reasons of expediency when they believe as much as their predecessors, the Old Guard, that they act out of divine necessity. Watch out for Minister Kuiker, in whatever guise you find him. He has been abused by his own people and that has made him crazy.’
Now I saw in my dream that a pretty Indian arrived and took her place at the bar. She wore an apricot silk sari. Petite and teetotal, she drank only orange juice and announced herself to be a Moslem and a Marxist. Her name was Fatima. She spoke so softly Blanchaille had to strain to hear the words. Soon he wished he hadn’t.
‘I hope to replace the present Regime with a people’s democracy,’ Fatima said mildly. ‘And as a result of my beliefs I was placed in preventive detention. My interrogators, who were all men, at first found themselves unwilling to inflict pain. That is to say, they didn’t like to beat me since it flew in the face of beliefs deeply instilled into them that large men do not go around hitting women, and perhaps because of the fact that I am particularly small boned, they were actually unable to raise their fists to me. However, after a certain time they stripped me, secured my hands and legs, and attempted to torture me by introducing various objects — pen tops, broom handles and finally fingers — into my vagina and anus. The reasons why they did this were complicated. I presume that since they weren’t attempting to extract any information from me, they must be trying to humiliate me, I being a slender girl and they being large and muscular white men and I suspect that they had read that Asian girls were naturally reticent and modest. But I wasn’t prepared to allow myself to be humiliated and this put them in a difficult position. I also pointed out to the men assaulting me that without exception they had large erections which were quite discernible beneath their blue serge trousers. Perhaps for this reason I was returned to my cell and later discharged. It seemed to me that sexual excitement had begun to replace serious political discussion. This was some time ago. By now these interrogators have probably done away with prisoners and replaced them with perverse solitary sexual acts. Not only did the revolution I envisaged seem impossible, but it had become impossible to even pose the question or the threat. I came here where at least I can help people to leave this world behind them.’
Blanchaille did not enjoy hearing his course of action so described but did not feel it was time to say so. Instead he babbled inanely to his hostesses of their extraordinary lives.
Freia shrugged. ‘Characteristic.’
Blanchaille persisted. ‘No, no. Wild — and awful.’
‘That’s their characteristic,’ said Happy.
‘If you wish to hear an extraordinary story we’ll call Babybel,’ said Fatima.
Babybel was by far the most beautiful of the four girls. Hair rich and auburn, the tiny lobes of her ears so delicate they were almost translucent; she wore a pale blue towelling robe which set off quite beautifully the soft, smooth milkiness of her skin. She’d been swimming, or at least relaxing by the pool, she said, until the sun became too much for her. With her fair skin she couldn’t take too much sun and, besides, the noise of the President’s demented guard firing away had driven her inside. She ordered champagne. ‘She always drinks champagne,’ said Freia.
‘Nothing but the best for Babybel,’ said Fatima.
‘Tell Blanchaille your story,’ said Happy.
‘Despite appearances to the contrary, I am coloured. You may not believe this but you would see it immediately if you were to meet my brother, Calvin. When we were small we were at school together until one day they came and looked at Calvin. Inspected his brown skin and curly hair and said — Calvin must go! Go to the school up the road, a school for coloured children, for Capey children. I cried, I clung to him. Calvin did nothing. He went. But he whispered to me before he went, “My time will come.” As I grew older and people noticed my looks Calvin evolved his plan, built it out of his very pure and uncompromising hatred for what had been done to him. “You will be my white poodle, Babybel,” he said to me, “I will manicure, powder, preen you and I shall take you for walks through the suburbs where rich men will stop to stroke you and then, on an order from me, you will sink your teeth into their hands.” It began when I left school and under Calvin’s direction I made myself available to certain men, powerful in the Government. “You are jailbait, pure jailbait, my little Babybel,” Calvin said to me. As I lay with these big meneers in bed, Calvin would reveal the truth. At first, in his boyish enthusiasm, he might hide in the cupboard and jump out shouting — “I am the fruit of your union. I am the child you are making!” But as time went on he grew more subtle, he worked with letters, photographs, video tapes and he drove these powerful men, my lovers, to distraction, to suicide, to ruin. I was quite happy with my role as the flesh with which he baited his hook for I believed in the incorruptible anger, let me say the immaculate hatred, buried in Calvin’s heart, I considered it as something commendable, noble even. Alas, Calvin became too subtle. “Equipment costs,” he told me. He went to the banks. Worse, he went to the Bureau. He was funded by those who ruined his life. What begins as pure revenge ends as investment, in our country. Calvin began to rule. He had become one of the big meneers.’
The ladies around the bar were in complete agreement and called on Visser for fresh drinks and even Fatima gave a bleak little smile as if only Babybel’s story approached her own in revealing the cruel and rich lunacy of everyday life among ordinary people in the days of the Total Onslaught.