‘Is this the road then to the big house?’ Kipsel asked.
‘Keep straight on,’ came the answer. ‘You can’t miss it, set high on a hill in the last fold of this range of mountains, you’ll know it when you see it.’
‘How much further?’ Blanchaille asked.
Here the shepherds were less forthcoming. ‘Too far for some,’ they said. ‘Not everyone makes it. There are accidents.’
‘What sort of accidents?’
‘Climbing accidents. Heat-exhaustion in the summer. Cases of exposure in the winter,’ said the shepherds. ‘People arriving from Africa often underestimate the ferocity of the winter.’
Now I saw in my dream that the shepherds questioned them closely, asking exactly how they found this route, and how they’d come so far without maps, directions or luggage. But when they heard of Father Lynch, of the death of Ferreira, of the betrayal of Magdalena, they smiled and said, ‘Welcome to Switzerland.’
The shepherds had fierce, flushed jaws, hard, cold eyes like washed river stones, hair blond and thick, necks thick too, and muscles everywhere. Their names were Arlow, Hattingh, Swanepoel and Dekker and they took the travellers to one of the travellers’ huts which the thoughtful Swiss provide in the high mountains for those who need them. This they found well stocked with tinned food, a paraffin stove, blankets, bunks and all necessities, and here after a meal the travellers went to bed because it was very late.
In the morning they rose and breakfasted on beans and bacon and although they had no razors and could not shave, there was running water so they enjoyed the wonderful luxury of a good wash. They breathed the clear mountain air and wondered at the fierce gleam of the rising sun on the snowy peaks of the distant Alps.
A little later the shepherds arrived and, taking Blanchaille and Kipsel back inside the hut, they drew the curtain and showed them slides on a small portable projector. ‘We would just like to clear up a few points which may have been puzzling you boys,’ they said. The first slide showed battle casualties fallen on some African battleground. The troops appeared to have been caught in some terrible bombardment, artillery perhaps or an air strike because they were hideously wounded, limbs had been torn away and there were many soldiers without heads. The soldiers, they noticed, were young, no more than boys.
Then Blanchaille said: ‘What does this mean?’
And the so-called shepherds, who by this time had produced flasks of coffee and kirsch and were drinking heavily, replied: ‘These are innocent boys who were called up to fight for their country and for Christian National civilisation and for the Regime and for God and for the right of all people of different races to be entitled to separate toilet facilities, which is the custom of that country, as well as for every family’s rights to a second garden boy and for the freedom to swim from segregated beaches, and who now lie where they have fallen in the veld because on the day on which these pictures were taken the troops suffered a reverse and were forced to retire owing to the perfidy of the Americans who having persuaded the Regime to launch an invasion of an adjacent country then left them in the lurch and so these children lie here in the sun. What you see here is the death of a nation. Civilisations have died of old age, of decadence, of boredom, of neglect, but what you are seeing, for the first time, is a nation going to the wall for its belief in the sanctity of separate lavatories.’
‘It is a tragedy,’ Blanchaille said.
The shepherds nodded. ‘And a farce,’ they said.
Further slides showed the Kruger lakeside villa at Clarens they had so recently vacated. And the shepherds said, ‘We wanted you to see crowds of deluded pilgrims visiting what they’re told is Uncle Paul’s last refuge abroad, though it was nothing more really than a stage prop. At the heart of their delusion is the belief that the Regime is the true heir of Uncle Paul and will preserve the white man’s place in Southern Africa forever. Whereas the poor sods are no more than tourists and the site they visit may be compared to an abandoned stage, or the deserted set of some old movie and the Regime of course is busy selling out everything and everyone in the service of the only reality it recognises, survival.’
In the pictures parties of the faithful arrived in coaches, flocking into the house with looks of awe and reverence. They wept when they saw the ugly bust of old Uncle Paul, they wept when they saw the death bed, they wept at the President’s last message to his people, set in stained glass, encouraging them to look to the past, they admired the view from the balcony where the old man had sat, and they wrote of their feelings in the visitors’ book. Examples of their messages were also shown in a variety of different colours of inks and hands: Uncle Paul your dream is alive and well in South Africa; We will never surrender!; The Boer War goes on! There were angry threats: Kill the Rooineks and God Give Us More Machine Guns and We Will Die on the Beaches; as well as more frivolous slogans such as Vrystaat! and Koos Loves Sannie…
At this point in the proceedings the shepherds, having become rather drunk on the large quantities of kirsch consumed during the slide show, withdrew to relieve themselves at a discreet distance from the hut and Blanchaille and Kipsel met each other’s eyes and blushed to think that even they, who should have known better, had been unable to resist a visit to this empty shell of a house and had paid dearly for their foolishness by spending days under the whip of Gus Kuiker and his paramour.
Kipsel, perhaps to deflect attention from that humiliating episode, again expressed his suspicion of the so-called shepherds. And despite Blanchaille’s attempts to dissuade him he met the four men on their return with these words:
‘I don’t believe you’re shepherds at all. I’ve got a feeling for these things and I think you’re policemen.’
And Swanepoel replied: ‘If you’re talking about what we were, you may have a point. But if we were all judged by what used to be then who would not be damned? Weren’t you Kipsel the Traitor, once? The only thing that matters is what we are now.’
‘And we’re shepherds now,’ said Dekker.
‘Oh yes?’ exlaimed Kipsel. ‘In that case where are your sheep?’
‘You are our sheep,’ came the reply.
Blanchaille stepped in to prevent further embarrassment and told the shepherds that they were eager to continue their journey. Then the shepherd Arlow said to the shepherd Hattingh, ‘Look, since these guys are on the right road wouldn’t it be an idea to give them an indication of their destination?’ And Hattingh agreed, so they stopped at a typical mountain hostelry, perched on a promontory and called the Berghaus Grappe d’Or with a wonderful view of the mountains, where there was a telescope, as is the custom in such places. And here, after the insertion of one franc, they were invited to ‘lay an eye against the glass’.
What they saw differed considerably. Blanchaille said he could see what he thought was a big house surrounded by a wall and it reminded him of a hospital, or perhaps a school. Kipsel said he could see no wall at all, but he made out a gate, a garden and many tall trees and a tall building ‘like a skinny palace’. Then their time ran out.
Would the shepherds give them more precise directions?
‘Keep on the way you’re going and you can’t miss it,’ said Arlow.
‘Look out for Gabriel,’ Swanepoel advised.
‘Our Gabriel?’ Blanchaille was astonished.
‘Ain’t no bloody angel, that’s for sure,’ said Hattingh.
And the shepherd Dekker said nothing at all, just laid a finger alongside his nose, and winked.
CHAPTER 21
On that hot, never-ending Sunday beneath the Tree of Heaven, among the wreckage of Father Lynch’s church, while the baleful yellow earth-moving machines baked in the heat, I slept again and dreamed of the two travellers, gipsy spirits one would have liked to have said, carefree, happy voyagers — except that they looked in fact like two increasingly tired, dirty, bearded and hungry men (a two-legged pear and his lightly furred friend), trudging through the Swiss mountains towards they knew not what — some great house or palace, or castle, château, hotel, hospital which they had glimpsed, or thought they had glimpsed through the telescope of Berghaus Grappe d’Or; some retirement home, or refuge, or whatever it is where white South Africans must one day fetch up, if they are to fetch up anywhere. What is the old joke? When good South Africans die they go to the big location in the sky. When bad South Africans die they go into government.