Apparently Magdalena had helped Zandrotti when he reached London. Blanchaille had no idea of his situation there except for one report that showed his old perverse sense of humour operated still. He read of the anarchist being hauled before an English court for persistently photographing everyone who entered or left the South African embassy because, as he explained to the magistrate, this was a custom in his own country where everyone expected to be photographed on street corners by agents of the Regime not once but many times during their lives and he wished to continue this ancient custom in exile.
Now he lay in a bunk in the cells of Balthazar Buildings, strangely quiet, supine, and yet with a gleam of defiance which contrasted oddly with his air of defeat.
‘Ask him why he’s here,’ Van Vuuren said.
‘What brought you back, Roberto? And looking so holy, too. The flying nun. Mother Zandrotti of the Townships…’
The prisoner favoured him with a fleeting smile. ‘I met Tony Ferreira in London. He was staying at this hotel and we went down to the bar. He was in London on the last leg of a world tour. He got very drunk in the bar, kept falling to his knees and reciting bits of the Litany. You will remember the sort of thing — “Bower of Roses, Tower of Ivory, Hope of Sinners”, and so on. You know the lyrics, I’m sure you could sing it yourself. But in a bar in London surrounded by English Protestants, it can be rather alarming. Anyway the barman, thank God, ordered him to stop or leave…’
‘But why did Ferreira want you back here?’
‘He didn’t. That was the last thing he wanted. The bastard slandered his country!’
‘Slandered his country! God almighty, Roberto! What sort of rubbish is that? Where did he want you to go?’
‘To the other place. To Geneva. Oh hell, you know, Uncle Paul’s place.’
‘What else did he say?’
‘I don’t remember.’ The anarchist’s eyes swam on their veined pools. ‘Ask him yourself.’
‘Ferreira is dead. Murdered.’
The anarchist shrugged. ‘So they say. Well, not before time. I would have killed him myself.’
Blanchaille tried to control his astonishment. ‘What did he do to you?’
‘He tried to destroy everything I’ve ever believed in, hoped in. He pissed on it! He crapped on it! Rubbed my nose in it, between invocations to the Queen of Heaven…’
‘But what did he say?’
‘Don’t remember.’
Van Vuuren interposed. ‘That’s all you’ll get from him, the forgetfulness is strategic.’
They withdrew. The prisoner showed little sign of recognizing their going until they reached the door when Blanchaille said, ‘Goodbye then, Roberto, and I’m sorry to meet you in this place.’
The anarchist sat upright and waved his fist in fury. ‘I’m sorry for you, yes, because if you’re going where I think you’re going, then you’re going to die of sorrow! Don’t be sorry for me, Blanchie, save it for yourself. I’m still here.’
Outside in the corridor Blanchaille asked Van Vuuren: ‘What does he mean — he’s still here?’
‘Just what he says. Here, in jail, he is Zandrotti, known as such, wanted by the police and dangerous enough to apprehend, torture, perhaps kill. These threats confirm his existence, his importance, not least to himself. Here and perhaps only here he is Zandrotti still. We are the police, this is the infamous prison, Balthazar Buildings. Everything is what it is expected to be. I don’t know what Ferreira told him in London but clearly it made him so desperate that prison seems infinitely preferable to all other alternatives… But let’s get something clear, we don’t want him. We’re not holding the anarchist Zandrotti, despite what the papers say overseas and the silent vigils in front of our embassy demanding the brave soul’s release. No, he is clinging to us. It is he who won’t let us go…’
Blanchaille was becoming more weary and confused by the mysteries which though they had a certain bizarre interest were not getting him very far along the road to the Airport Palace Hotel and his flight to freedom and he respectfully requested to be allowed to continue his journey.
‘One last port of call,’ Van Vuuren promised, ‘and then you can go.’ He paused outside a cell door and lifted the steel cover from the spyhole and invited Blanchaille to look inside. ‘Recognise him?’
‘Naturally.’ How could he not do so? The large fine head, the grizzled steel-grey curls, the powerful dignified bearing of the man who had done more than anyone else to advance the cause of liberation in Southern Africa, Horatio Vilakaze, arrested soon after the fateful picture had appeared showing Mickey the Poet apparently in attendance on the liberation leaders, back in those exciting days before death, dispersal, imprisonment, exile, house arrest and age had split and destroyed the original organising committee of the Black Justice Campaign. How long ago? Years, years and years. It did no good to count them.
‘Vilakaze is perhaps the saddest of all our cases,’ Van Vuuren said. ‘We don’t have to go into the cell, we can listen to his speech from out here,’ he flicked a switch and the old man’s powerful voice reverberated along the chill, empty corridor.
‘Brothers and sisters, comrades, freedom will be ours!’ He held up his arms as if to still the cheering crowds and when the applause which must have rung between his ears like brass bands had died away he rallied the faithful thousands only he could see and hear. ‘Within the country our forces are massing, our fighters are brave, the Regime shrinks from them. On the borders the armies of our allies gather like locusts to sweep on our enemy and defeat him. Together we will overcome, we will drive the oppressor into the sea, God is with us!’
Van Vuuren killed the vibrant, echoing words. ‘Too sad to hear. That was his last great speech before he was arrested. He was speaking to thirty thousand supporters, and he can’t forget it. It preys on his mind, he reruns the speech a dozen times a day. That was before the young men took over. He is a great man.’
‘It didn’t stop you arresting him.’
‘Yes. We did arrest him, but only after we had been approached by a number of his friends anxious to spare him the humiliation of ejection from the movement he had helped to found. So yes, you can say we arrested him, but really we took him in.’
Took him in? Took him in! What a terrible thing to say. As if this place had been a home for strays, a dogs’ home. Or an orphanage. There was in this something he could not accept. Something so awful it didn’t bear thinking about.
‘You’re saying that it was an act of charity?’ He could hear the incredulous ring in his voice.
‘Something like that. And a mistake, too. Once in custody there was no releasing him. We tried once, sent him back to his people who wouldn’t have him. They’re hard-nosed, young, efficient elements who want power, who want to succeed at any cost even if it means some weird, subtle deal with the Regime, and to them old Vilakaze with his talk of armies and locusts is an embarrassment… they’re happy to use his name, to keep the Free Vilakaze committees going all over the world, the silent vigils, the marches, the petitions calling for his release but what they won’t stand for is for us to let him go. We’ve been warned — put him back on the street and he’s a dead man.’
Back in the reception area with its portraits of the presidents, Blanchaille said, ‘I think I begin to understand what you’re up against. Once the police were there to arrest people they considered a danger to the State. This was our world. Ugly, perhaps cruel. But dependable. Things have changed. These people, Strydom, Zandrotti, Vilakaze, they don’t know where they are anymore. Except when they’re in here. What you’ve got here are specimens from another age. This isn’t a prison, it’s a museum.’
Van Vuuren reflected. ‘And a hospital. They pose no threat to the State. The only people they’re a danger to are themselves. These people shouldn’t be here. They’re not criminals. They’re failures. They shouldn’t be in jail. They should be sent somewhere for treatment. Some special hospital for incurable failures.’