Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, so the story went, Blanchaille reflected. Only it wasn’t like that, not here. It was blood to dust and dust to mud and mud to water and away down the ditch with it. He watched as Joyce scrubbed at the blood which had caught in the cracks of her nails using the wet hem of her dress.
‘I think they’re going to let us go now.’
‘You? Think! This is the new life you promised me. When I see how it starts, God knows how it will end!’
Blanchaille stepped up to the tap conscious of her rage, of her eyes boring into his back. He cleaned his face and his hands as best he could and rubbed rather hopelessly at the blood stains on his clothes but only succeeded in darkening and spreading them. When he turned again, Joyce was gone. He was not surprised and doubted whether anyone would have tried to stop her. Well, she would have a great deal to tell Makapan when she returned.
He walked to the front of the police station and, as he had expected, no one took any notice. He picked up his suitcases, one in each hand and one, bulky and uncomfortable, underneath his arm and began moving towards the front gate. Away to his right a group of policemen in shirt sleeves were playing a game of touch rugby using a water-bottle as a ball. The kitchen chair stood where he had left it, surveying the killing ground. He barely got out of the front gate before he collapsed, exhausted. He sat down in the dust on his suitcase beside the road.
And then I saw in my dream that a man driving a yellow Datsun estate stopped and offered him a lift. A short and balding man with a pleasant smile whose name was Derek Breslau. A commercial traveller for Lever Brothers dealing in ladies’ shampoos. The inside of his car was so heavily perfumed it made Blanchaille swoon and he could barely find the words to thank him for his kindness.
‘Don’t mention it. Couldn’t leave a guy sitting by the side of the road outside a bloody township. Normally I put my foot down and go like hell when I pass a township. You never know what’s going on inside. Gee, you took a risk!’ He examined Blanchaille’s bloodstained, muddied clothes with interest.
‘My bags are heavy and I can’t go very far at a stretch.’
‘Well, keep away from the townships.’
‘It’s a funny thing,’ said Blanchaille, ‘but I always believed that the townships were peaceful now.’
Breslau nodded. ‘Well it depends on what you mean. If you mean the townships are peaceful except when there are riots, then I suppose that’s correct. So I suppose you could say the townships are peaceful between riots. And I must say they’re pretty peaceful after riots. If we need to go to the townships that’s usually when we go. They have a period of mourning then, you see, and you got time to get in, do the job and get out again.’
‘I suppose then you could also say that townships are peaceful before riots,’ said Blanchaille, trying to be helpful.
Breslau thought this over and nodded approvingly. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s right. I never thought of it that way. But leaving all this aside, the truth is you can never be sure when the townships are going to be peaceful. You can drive into a township, and I have no option since I do business there, and find yourself in the middle of a riot. You can find yourself humping dead bodies or driving wounded to hospital. You can find yourself dispensing aid and comfort.’
‘Aid and comfort?’
‘Sure! That comes after the riots, usually, when they’ve laid out the victims and the relatives come along to claim them. It’s an emotional time, as you can imagine. What they usually do these days is to get the priest up from the church and he gives each relative a blessing. Well one day I arrived just as the blessings had started. They didn’t seem to be comforting people very much so the police officer in charge commandeered me and my vehicle and all my samples and he suggested that each relative should also get a sample of my shampoo, plus a blessing. Of course they weren’t my samples to give, but on occasions like this you don’t argue. Well, I stood next to the priest and he gave the blessing and I handed out the sample. Of course there was no question of matching hair types. I mean you can’t stop the grieving relatives and ask them whether they suffer from dry, greasy or normal hair. I mean that’s not exactly the time and place to start getting finicky. Can I drop you somewhere in town?’
Blanchaille mentioned the suburb where Bishop Blashford lived.
‘Sure. Happy to help.’
‘What disturbs the peace in the townships?’
Breslau shrugged. ‘Everything — and nothing. Of course the trouble is not having what they want, and then getting what they want. Like I mean first of all they don’t have any sewage so the cry goes up for piped sewage and they get it. Then there’s no electricity, so a consortium of businessmen organised by Himmelfarber and his Consolidated Holdings put in a private scheme of electrification. Then a football pitch is asked for. And given. And after each of these improvements there’s a riot. It’s interesting, that.’
‘It’s almost as if the trouble with the townships is the townships,’ Blanchaille suggested.
‘You can’t not have townships or you wouldn’t have any of this,’ the salesman gestured out of the window at the blank and featureless veld on either side of the road. ‘Cities have townships the way people have shadows. It’s in the nature of things.’
‘But we haven’t always had townships.’
‘Of course we have. Look, a township is just a reservoir. A pool. A depot for labour. I mean you look back to how it was when the first white settlers came here. You look at Van Riebeeck who came in — when was it — in 1652? And he arrives at the Cape of Good Hope — what a name when you think how things turned out! A bloody long time ago, right? What does Van Riebeeck find when he arrives in this big open place? He finds he’s got to build himself a fort. He finds the place occupied, there are all these damn Hottentots swanning around. Anyway he sees all these black guys wandering around and he thinks to himself — Jesus! This is Christmas! What I’m going to do is sit in my fort, grow lots of vegetables and sell them to passing ships. And all these black Hottentots I see wandering around here, they’re going to work for me. If they don’t work for me they get zapped. So he sits there at the Cape and the black guys work for him. Afterwards he gets to be so famous they put his face on all the money. It’s been like that ever since.’
‘But he didn’t have a township.’
‘What d’you mean, he didn’t have a township? The whole damn country was his township.’
Ever cautious Blanchaille got Breslau to drop him not outside Blashford’s house, but at the foot of the hill on which the Bishop lived. The salesman drove off with a cheerful wave, ‘Keep your head down.’
Blanchaille picked up his cases and began the slow painful ascent of the hill.
Puzzled by this conversation, in my dream I took up the matter with Breslau.
‘Surely things aren’t that bad? That’s a very simplistic analysis of history that you offered him.’
‘Right, but then it’s a very simplistic situation. There is the view that we’re all stuffed. We can fight all we like but we’re finished. The catch is that if anyone takes that line they get shot or locked up or whipped. Or all of those things. That’s how it was. That’s how it is. Nothing’s changed since the first Dutchman arrived, opened a police station and started handing out passes to the servants.’
‘Can nothing be done to improve conditions in the townships?’ I persisted.
Breslau laughed and slapped the steering wheel. ‘Sure. As I told the traveller. Lots can be done. Lots is done. Ever since the longhaired vegetable grower arrived from Holland, people have been battling to improve the townships. But after the beer halls and the soccer pitches, the electric lights, the social clubs, the sports stadiums, the literacy classes and the best will in the world, the townships are still townships. And townships are trouble.’