And here were the military camps which stretched as far as the eye could see. Huge townships in the veld. Once the country had had a civilian army, when people left their jobs and served time in the forces. Now at the time of the Total Onslaught the length of military service was indefinite and people took off their uniforms for brief periods and served time in their old offices, in their firms and factories.
All this great military complex spread before Blanchaille was an expression of unshakable faith, an affirmation of survival, a substantiation of the vow that white men would survive in Southern Africa whatever the odds. It affirmed the covenant between God and his people that they would serve him and he would preserve the nation. The country was run by the national party in the national interest, the national borders were safeguarded against the national enemy, the arms the people carried were the arms of God. This was the war-music of the Republic. This was the song of the mourning Boer mother, it was the message broadcast from the granite wireless, it was the symphony played on the Stalin organ.
Blanchaille was within sight of the airport. He could see the hangars, he could see the planes on the tarmac, he passed the Holiday Inn, he slowed down and looked about him for the Airport Palace. Two black men appeared running towards him holding up their hands and shouting. He slowed and rolled down the window. The men seized the window-frame panting, their eyes rolling, ‘Sir, you must go back. Everybody must go back. There are soldiers in the airport. Crazy men. They have guns, they’re shooting. Turn back, turn back!’
But Blanchaille knew he’d come too far to turn back, whatever the danger. ‘Do you know the Airport Palace Hotel?’
‘Yes, yes, we know it.’
‘Can I walk there from here?’
‘You can walk, but you must pass through the soldiers. And they’re shooting. They are crazy and roaring like lions.’
Blanchaille got out of the car. He gave the keys to the men. ‘You go back, but I have to tell you it’s no safer behind me. Go. Take the car. I won’t need it any more.’
They told him to keep walking down the road and he would find the hotel, he would hear the shooting and he would know he was there. And the roaring, he would hear that too.
Blanchaille set off. As the men had predicted he heard the firing first but quickened his pace. It meant the hotel was close.
The Airport Palace was built of steel and green glass. It was surrounded by a brick wall and outside this wall were the soldiers. He knew at once who they were. They weren’t regular troops, they wore an unusual uniform, black three-cornered hats, bottle-green tunics with gold buttons, grey riding breeches and knee-high boots and they ran here and there, firing their rifles, shouting, weeping and groaning. It was these groans the fleeing men had taken for roars. They carried the traditional Boer muzzle loader and their firing, though noisy, was wild and inaccurate. They fired into the air and they fired into walls and they had to stop to reload each time, to prime the guns and to fire again. This was the ceremonial President’s guard who accompanied Adolph Bubé on all official occasions. Their uniform was modelled on the guard of honour which had greeted the President on his celebrated visit to General Stroessner in Paraguay. He had gone home and designed the uniforms himself. Blanchaille remembered the headlines at the time: BUBÉ VISITS STROESSNER! A few years later the visit was returned: STROESSNER VISITS BUBÉ! Stroessner and Bubé presented each other with medals: PRESIDENT BUBÉ HONOURED BY REPUBLIC OF PARAGUAY — FREEDOM MEDAL FOR BUBÉ. AFRICA STAR FOR STROESSNER!
The soldiers ran here and there, wild-eyed and sweating in their heavy uniforms. They reminded Blanchaille of marionettes. They seemed out of control, demented with fear. There was a cast-iron gate in the wall. Blanchaille banged on the gate and called for someone to let him in. The soldiers ignored him, charging about in their stiff-legged tin-man way.
An elderly man limped to the gate, drying his hands on a tea towel.
‘Name?’
‘Blanchaille. I think I’m expected.’
‘You used to be called Father Theo of the Settlements?’
‘Of the Camps, but now it’s plain Blanchaille.’
‘What kept you?’
‘It’s a long story. I’d like to come inside. Are those real bullets those guys are firing?’
‘Oh no. The President’s guard were never provided with live ammo. In case they got tempted, see? No, they’re just shouting and shooting and running around like chickens who’ve had their heads cut off. They’ve lost their President, you see. They’re supposed to guard Bubé and Bubé’s gone, and it has sent them round the bend. They’re like deserted robots. The man who used to wind them up has gone away. Come inside. Come inside and meet the girls.’
CHAPTER 10
Now I saw in my dream the reception of the plump renegade Blanchaille by the ancient porter of the Airport Palace Hotel, a certain Visser, once a colonel in a tank corps fighting Rommel’s troops in the desert war Up North. Something of a trace of military bearing remained about the doddering fellow who worked now unbeknown to the world as concierge, doorkeeper, porter, cleaner and barman at the Palace. He promised his guest ‘interesting stories’.
To Visser there attached a tale no less tragic than the hundreds he had heard across the bar of the Airport Palace Hotel from sad pilgrims about to quit the country. Except Visser would never leave, he said. If he did he would shrivel up and die he claimed, not realising he had been as good as dead for years. For it was Visser who had started the once-famous Brigades of Light when he returned from the war and found enemy sympathisers poised to take power. From the stage of the Sir Benjamin D’Urban Memorial Hall on the South Coast with the Indian Ocean seething outside the windows, he told his audience of ex-servicemen that they had been betrayed. While they’d been fighting Up North the new Regime had been blowing up bridges and knitting woolly socks to send to Hitler’s troops. Was it for this that young men had risked their lives in the desert war? He called on them to go home and set a lighted candle in the window to burn for liberty. And thus the Brigades of Light had been born. The name conjured up dedicated fighters for freedom. It turned out to be a group of newly demobbed, enthusiastic young men who went about at night in large cheerful rather drunken groups and stuck pictures of flaming candles on letter boxes and gates. It was good fun while it lasted but the raids, as they were called, soon deteriorated into nightly gallops and drunken binges. At Christmas their flaming taper was confused with that of the Carols by Candlelight organisation which collected for a host of deserving charities. After this discipline deteriorated. The exuberant ex-soldiers threw stones on corrugated iron roofs, rang the bells and ran away, or peered at young women undressing in their bedrooms. It was hardly the liberation force Colonel Visser had hoped for. For a while he managed to rally his troops. Duty platoons went to election meetings and fought with supporters of the Regime, collecting black eyes and bloody noses and feeling that at least they were doing something, though they knew in their hearts that the Regime was unstoppable. The wilder souls dreamt of burying rifles on the lonely beaches, there was even talk of secession but it didn’t last. The young men went to work as accountants, got married, took up Sunday rugby. Colonel Visser issued increasingly desperate orders from Brigade headquarters but it was useless. He disappeared from public view and there were rumours that he had been hideously disfigured in a car crash and was hiding in some obscure Cape resort attended only by a faithful black servant; there was talk that he had emigrated to England where he entered a closed community of Anglican brothers; but instead he had come here, to the Airport Palace Hotel, despite its name an obscure hostelry for souls on their way out — and to be found in no hotel directory.