‘And child beaters, too,’ Nokkles said. ‘What do you think?’
‘We think that you must be Trudy’s detective,’ Blanchaille said.
‘That,’ said Nokkles with a contemptuous downward twitch of the lips and a sideways flick of the head. so sudden Blanchaille thought for the moment he might have spat on the floor, ‘is a newspaper lie. I am not a policeman. In fact my function is quite vague. I fall within the remit of a number of officials — there’s Pieter Weerhaan, Dominee Lippetaal, as well as Mr Glip, and then of course there is Ernest Tweegat and Dr Enigiets. Actually I work for all these people, and of course for Miss Yssel. This for me was a fairly recent move. By training I’m a population movement man. I came from the PRP, the Population Resettlement Programme. I only got this Yssel job because someone went sick and I was shoved in. Believe it or not, I began working as a rookie years ago in Old Ma Dubbeltong’s Department, as it then was, of Entry and Egress; that was the original outfit, that was the egg which this new-fangled Department for Population Settlements came from. The PRP is really just old wine in new bottles. Anyway when I was there it was a damn sight tougher than anything today. God! My boss was old Harry Waterman, my hell what a tartar! Screaming Harry we called him. Well, say what you like, credit where credit’s due, he was largely instrumental, along with Ma, in formulating policy for what we now call population settlement. Screaming Harry was a blunt official, no fanciness about him. Nothing elegant. A straight guy, a removalist of the old school. Look, he’d say, you’ve got all these blackies wandering around the country or slipping into the towns or setting up camps wherever they feel like it and squatting here and there, and they’ve got to be moved. Right? They’ve got to be put down in some place of their own and made to stay there. Now you never beg or threaten when you’re running a removal. It doesn’t matter if you’re endorsing out — because that’s what we called it then, endorsing out — some old bastard who doesn’t have a pass, or an entire fucking tribe. First, you notify deadline for removal, then you get your paper-work right, you double check that the trucks are ordered up — and then you move them. As I say, old Harry Waterman was a plain removalist. None of these fancy titles for him, like Resettlement Officer or Relocation Adviser, as they like to call themselves now, these clever dicks from Varsity. No, everything was straight talking for Harry. As the trucks come out of the camp which you’re removing, Harry said, you put the bulldozers in and flatten the place. End of story. It’s quick, clean, efficient. You know something?’ Nokkles gazed earnestly at Blanchaille and Kipsel. ‘I don’t know if it’s not a lot kinder than the boards of enquiry and appeal and so on which dominate the resettlement field today. After all we all know in the end, after all the talking’s done, they’re going to have to get out. So why lead them on? The only talent you need to be a removalist, old Harry was fond of saying, is eyes in the back of your head. Front eyes watch the trucks moving out, those in the back watch the bulldozers moving in. A great guy, old Harry. Dead now. But he never understood the new scheme of things. I believe you have to move with the times. So when the call came, I was ready. Fate spoke. “Ernie Nokkles,” it said, “will you or will you not accept secondment to this new Department of Communications run by this hot lady said to be going places under the aegis of Minister Gus Kuiker?” And like a shot I answered back, “Damn sure!” But I am not, and never was, Trudy’s detective.’
‘What were you then?’ asked Kipsel.
‘Her aide, confidante and loyal member of her Department,’ said Nokkles proudly. ‘What I wanted was to help her and the Minister in their great task.’
‘Great task,’ Kipsel repeated scathingly. ‘Trudy Yssel tried to carry the propaganda war to the enemy abroad, she wanted to coax, buy, bend overseas opinion about the true nature of the Regime. It was her task to show them as being not simply a gang of wooden headed, rock-brained farmers terrified that their grandfathers might have slept with their cooks — no — they were to become human ethnologists determined to allow all ethnic groups to blossom according to their cultural traditions within the natural parameters recognised by God, biology and history.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Nokkles. ‘But if you’re saying she wanted to save us, I say yes. She and the Minister wanted to lead us out of the past, back into the world, into the future. And that’s what I wanted too.’
‘And what do you want now?’ Blanchaille asked gently.
Nokkles looked around quickly. He dropped his voice. ‘I wish I was back in old Ma Dubbeltong’s department again. But that can’t be. Look, you guys are going to Switzerland and I am going to Switzerland. We’re countrymen abroad. So why don’t we travel together? I mean we don’t have to agree politically, just to keep company a bit — not so?’
‘Sure, we’ll go along with you, but you might not like where we’re going,’ said Blanchaille.
‘We’re heading for Uncle Paul’s place,’ said Kipsel.
The change in Nokkles was dramatic. He stood up and drained his glass. He picked up his bag. ‘God help you then. That old dream’s not for me.’
They watched him walk away, blindly shouldering his way through the crowds. They’re ruined, these people, Blanchaille thought. They don’t know who they are or where they’re going. Once nothing would stop them doing their duty as they saw it and that was to defend their people and their way of life. And they were hated for it. Good, they accepted that hate. But then the new ideas took over, they got wise, got modern, took on the world. Once upon a time nothing would make them give up the principle that the tribe would survive because God wished it so — now there’s nothing they won’t do just to hang on a little longer. Uncle Paul’s other place is a bad dream, it takes them back to the velskoen years, the days of biltong and boere biscuits, of muzzle loaders, Bibles, of creeping backward slowly like an armour-plated ox, out of range of the future. Some no doubt wished to go back, as Nokkles did, wanted to go back to Old Ma Dubbeltong’s department, back to the old dream of a country fit for farmers, where a man was free to ride his acres, shoot his game, father his children, lash his slaves, free from drought, English, Jews, missionaries, rinderpest, blacks, coolies and tax-collectors. But back there waited the hateful legend, the impossible story, the triumphant British, the defeated people, the exiled president, the store of gold, the secret heaven somewhere in Switzerland, the last refuge of a broken tribe.
‘What do you think?’ Kipsel asked.
‘I think he’s Trudy’s detective and he’s lost Trudy. All he’s left with is what she taught him. He’s dead. He’s spinning out of control. He’s like a space probe gone loco. Nothing can save him unless he finds another mother-ship to lock onto, or another planet to land on. He’s spinning into space. And space is cold and big and blacker than Africa.’
On the plane service was polite but cool and they didn’t get a drink until they asked the stewardess. ‘It’s a short flight, we prefer passengers to ask,’ she told them. ‘Except in first class.’
At one point the curtains closing off the first class cabin opened to reveal Nokkles sprawled across two seats. He was drinking champagne and his hand rested on the neck of the bottle in a protective yet rather showy manner. In the way that a man might rest his hand on the neck of an expensive girl whom he wishes to show off to the world. It was a gesture of desperate pride. It turned its back on Boers and shooting kaffirs and beer. It looked outward. It was confident, modern, worldly. Much had been invested in it.
CHAPTER 17
Of their arrival at Geneva Airport there is to be noted only that Ernest Nokkles was swept into the arms of that growing number of castaway agents abroad, all now increasingly anxious about the disappearances of their various chiefs and determined to reattach themselves to centres of influence or persons of importance whenever they appeared.