The English papers overseas, beyond the reach of the Regime, agreed that Minister Kuiker and his protégée Trudy Yssel had disappeared. They also agreed that large sums of Government money appeared to have gone missing with them. They printed a photograph which showed the missing pair in a Paris street. She carried several shopping bags and smiled vivaciously. He covered his face with one hand, but was instantly recognisable. Behind them walked two men in dark suits. One of these men now sat drinking at the bar.
The only other drinkers were a small group of oriental businessmen who drank from globular tankards foaming pink cocktails garnished with sprigs of mint and cherries, leaning forward above the liquid and tasting it with tongues and fingertips, giving excited little barks of encouragement. A small girl carrying an enormous soft green cat with wild eyes and a forest of woolly whiskers wandered around the footrail with tear-stained face obviously searching for her parents. All around was the teeming flux of anonymous travellers departing for a hundred destinations.
The drinker who aroused this rhapsody of patriotic memories in Blanchaille was painfully thin, his sports jacket hung on him, a loud tweed of blues and greens with an ugly stiffening of the bristles which had the effect of making the colours of the cloth shimmer, a sickly rainbow effect. His complexion too was strange, a light grey translucency tinged with pink. He’d been drinking for some time, Blanchaille judged, and despite the flush that warmed the bony face, it was the air of desiccation that struck him, as if a kind of internal emaciation had taken place, an interior drought, a profound dryness which no amount of watering could end. He had crisp, slightly oiled sandy hair through which the scalp gleamed bleakly. Altogether he had the look of St John of Capistrano, formidable Inquisitor-General of Vienna, a portrait of whom had hung in Blanchaille’s class-room many years before.
His message to Kipsel was succinct: ‘Cop.’
Kipsel did not thank him. ‘I warn you Blanchie, when shown a South African security man competing urges threaten me.’
‘Which?’
‘Do I hit out, or throw up?’
At the bar the oriental businessmen had replenished their tankards and were lapping away happily at the pink stuff. The little girl had been given a bowl of crisps by the barman and sat eating steadily, gazing out into the seething concourse with tearful eyes. Blanchaille introduced his friend and himself to the solitary drinker.
‘Jesus!’ said the drinker, ‘Not Kipsel the traitor?’
‘No,’ Kipsel said firmly. ‘Not Kipsel the traitor.’
‘Ernest Nokkles,’ said the drinker, ‘passing on to Geneva.’
‘So are we.’
‘Let me get you a drink,’ said Blanchaille.
‘Brandy,’ said Nokkles. ‘A large one if you will. The bloody English tot is about as much as a nun pees with her knees crossed. And Coke with it. I always have it with Coke. The bastards here drink it neat, y’know.’
‘How are things at home?’ Kipsel asked.
‘Do you mean militarily or economically?’
‘I didn’t know there was a difference.’
‘They’re linked, but they’re different. Militarily we’re all right. Hell, there’s nobody who’s going to touch us. Frankly I think we’re in more danger from the drought. But if you consider the Total Onslaught, then there’s no doubt about its having an effect. Slow but cumulative. We might crack one day. But despite that, the Big Seven reckon we’re doing O.K., financially.’
The Big Seven were those groups which between them controlled almost every area of life and dominated the Stock Exchange. The gold mining companies of course and various major industries — armaments, insurance, drink and tobacco together with the Government control boards that regulated everything from transport to citrus. Seven was a mystical number. The Big Seven represented the aggregate of national interests.
The profile which emerged of your average South African was a dedicated smoker who took to booze in a big way, kept himself armed to the teeth but was sensible enough to insure against the risk that either cigarettes or drink or terrorists might blow him away, and paid for this lifestyle with gold bullion. For the rest he did as the Regime told him, travelled as the Government directed him and died when and where the State demanded it. This handful of huge conglomerates owned everything and they also owned slices of each other and were all held, in turn, in the capacious lap of the Regime which allowed and even encouraged these cliques, cartels, monopolies to operate and indeed took a very close interest in them to the extent of inviting their directors to sit on various Government boards, boards of arms companies and the rural development agencies. Private business responded by asking Government ministers to take up seats on the boards of the gold mining companies, army officers were invited to join insurance companies, tobacco groups and breweries. Complicated interlocking deals were set up between the State and the great conglomerates, a famous instance of which was the Life Saving Bond which allowed families of soldiers to purchase a special insurance policy on the life of their loved one for a small monthly premium. ‘In the event of deprivation’, as the preamble to the policy put it, the next of kin received a ‘Life Saving Bond’ certificate which showed the value of all their contributions to date. The premiums which had accrued were then ‘sent forward’, which meant the sum was invested in ‘armaments and/or other industries vital to the war effort’, thereby giving all soldiers a second chance to serve by helping to ensure that the country’s weaponry was the best possible. The casualties joined what the field padres called the army invisible, or simply the Big Battalion, known familiarly as the BB. ‘Oh, he’s serving with the BB’ became a common way of skirting around a tragedy and won for those who spoke the words a new respect. The Regime encouraged positive thinking and inspectors ensured that the attractive blue and white Bond Certificates were prominently displayed in the home. Every month a draw took place and the family with the lucky bond number won for themselves a tour of the forward operational areas, plus a visit to the site of some celebrated victory (combat conditions permitting) and invariably returned strengthened and resolute. The newspapers and television followed these visits with great interest and press stories appeared and television reports showing pictures of Dick and Eugenia and their children, Marta and Kobus, proudly wearing combat helmets they’d been given, trundling through the veld in an armoured troop carrier. ‘My Day in the Operational Areas’ was an increasingly popular title in school examination papers.
‘The English,’ said Nokkles, ‘are bloody awful snobs. And racialists. They also have their kaffirs, you know. It’s just that you can’t tell them apart. Being English they all look alike. But they have them. Oh yes, they have them.’
He swallowed his brandy with relish, clicking his tongue. But no amount of drinking would irrigate that consuming desert within Ernie Nokkles.
A man in a dark green anorak and a big woman in a pixie cap, its straps pulled down hard over her ears and knotted cruelly beneath her chin, both of them buttoned everywhere, plumply encased, walked up to the little girl and removed her from the counter. ‘We’ve been calling you on the loudspeaker,’ the woman said between clenched teeth. And then bending over the little girl she administered several stinging slaps, saying at the same time and in rhythm to her blows: ‘Why didn’t you listen?’