Now he stood on that Swiss mountainside did Looksmart Dladla, in his blue suit and black shoes and his odd mode of sideways locomotion, and his odder cranial rumblings, insanely beaming, turning on them a look Blanchaille later described as one of radiant ignorance. Had Blanchaille not seen examples of such deluded sweetness of temperament many times before during his years in the camps in old men and women who after their sufferings should have been eaten with rage and bitterness, he might have wept. Instead he turned patiently to Looksmart and asked about his time in America.
Looksmart beamed, ‘In America I began as a humble student of history and rose to become president of several radio stations, a news magazine and a cable television station.’
‘America is still the land of opportunity, then?’ said Blanchaille politely, without the least sign of surprise at Looksmart’s meteoric rise.
‘Oah yes,’ said Looksmart with another series of rapid smacks of the head as if to keep his word-hoard flexible. ‘But it was never ambition that took me to these positions.’
‘What then?’ demanded Kipsel sceptically.
Again the seraphic smile. ‘Patriotism. Oah yes! Without a doubt. I am part of the new order. Now I really must go. As you can see, I walk slowly. The result of an old injury. Now forgotten. And forgiven. I must give the good news.’
‘What is the good news?’ Blanchaille asked.
Looksmart produced a piece of paper from his suit pocket and waved it. ‘We are saved. I have here a treaty signed by the President himself granting to me and my dependants a territory on the east coast of Southern Africa, in perpetuity.’ He stressed this word with reverence.
‘You’re going home?’ said Blanchaille. ‘But, Looksmart, you’re a wanted man.’
The other laughed delightedly. ‘We are all wanted men. We are needed to rebuild our country again. What good does it do to hide in some mountain lair, some hospice, some institution set up on Boer charity for lonely exiles, frightened of their shadows? We must reinvent our country. Set out like Van Riebeeck in reverse to rediscover South Africa.’
‘The only territory they’ll give you back home is six feet deep,’ said Kipsel.
Looksmart gave him a look which though no less joyous was tinged with pity and a hint of scorn. ‘As his nephew wrote of the late great Benjamin Franklin, so with Looksmart, believe you me. “My resolution is unshaken, my principles fixed, even in death.”’ — and he banged himself on the right ear for emphasis. ‘We have been given our African Pennsylvania, in which we will found our new Philadelphia, a city of brotherly love, and from that perhaps we shall make a new Africa, a revolution like that of the Americans, a triumph of sensible, pragmatic, independent people. They did it. So will we.’
‘We already have a Philadelphia,’ said Kipsel. ‘And plenty of Pennsylvanias. Only we call them Homelands and Bantustans, Tribal Reserves and Resettlement Camps… We tried it, Looksmart, and it didn’t work. And we don’t have any sensible people. Never mind pragmatic ones. Looksmart, don’t go back!’
‘I have it in writing,’ repeated Looksmart waving the paper again. ‘It has been promised to me in exchange. Now you must not delay me, I am on my way to the place on the hill to convey the good news. Step aside if you will. This is the freedom route. They will cheer when they see me. “Come home with Looksmart,” I will say. Permit me to give you a small memento of our meeting.’ He handed them a coloured postcard showing a big brass bell with a crack in it. ‘The famous Liberty Bell. I have seen it with my own eyes. Soon we will have one of our own hanging in our country.’ And with a cheerful wave, the black man set off on his slow, shambling progress.
They watched him helplessly.
‘Bell’s not the only thing that will hang back home,’ said Kipsel. ‘Tell me, Blanchie, what is this new order he muttered about?’
Blanchaille remembered his meeting with Van Vuuren in Balthazar Buildings and the pathetic outcasts in the holding cells. ‘The New Order is actually the old order, adapted. Under the old order they refused to compromise. Under the New Order there is nothing they won’t compromise.’
And thinking these things over in their minds they walked on, soon overtaking Looksmart who moved at half their pace, boxing his ears, muttering and stopping to polish his shoes, but he showed no sign of recognition and they had soon left him far behind.
CHAPTER 22
Now I saw how our pilgrims, climbing ever higher, came suddenly upon a party of police manhandling a captive by the roadside. The prisoner was a plump, elderly tramp in handcuffs who must have been hiding out in the countryside for some time because he was very dirty and even more thickly bearded than Blanchaille and Kipsel. He was very frightened and kept crying that he was a diplomat of the highest standing and entitled to immunity according to all known protocols. The police, while not dealing with him harshly, bore him relentlessly towards a waiting police car. Despite the dirt, the beard, the matted, filthy hair, the travellers knew him immediately.
Blanchaille asked permission to speak to the prisoner and the Swiss police turned out to be perfectly amiable despite their appearance, for they wore rather a menacing grey uniform and carried large pistols in their belts. Perhaps it wasn’t too surprising that Kipsel shrank back when one considered his dealings with policemen but I saw that it was the prisoner himself who most disturbed him, sending him scuttling for cover. Later, he was to claim that the need to relieve himself had carried him behind some large roadside boulders, but I think we know better. The wretched fugitive in the hands of the Swiss police was none other than Adolph Bubé.
Here perhaps it is fitting for me to pay tribute to the humanity and innate democratic sensibility of these Swiss officers who must have been hard put to distinguish between the large tramp who approached them and the hysterical hobo they had taken into custody. Perhaps they were influenced by their long experience in administering the Red Cross, as well as the admirable ideals enshrined in the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war. In any event, the officer in charge granted Blanchaille’s request for a few words in private with the prisoner and he and his men withdrew to their vehicles and occupied themselves by polishing windscreens and clearing the roadside verges of unsightly weeds and performing various other useful activities.
I saw in my dream an astonishing sight. The ex-priest and the former President cloistered at the side of the road in the attitude of a father-confessor and penitent, while Kipsel hid from sight and the Swiss police tidied up the landscape. In hoarse whispers Bubé made his confession while Blanchaille listened gravely, nodding at times and comforting the old man when grief overcame him. An odd couple, to be sure, but both men were experiencing the painful dislocation of reality which had pitched them onto this Swiss mountain and so felt a curious kinship and Blanchaille listened with every sympathy, stirring only to offer his handkerchief when the tears became a flood and once intervening to restrain the old man when he attempted to dash his head against a rock. And on another occasion, he drew something in the sand with his finger and the old man beat his breast and called on God to forgive him.
When at length they finished I saw Blanchaille lead the prisoner over to the police. And as he turned I saw, as did Kipsel, now bold enough to peer over the boulders, a sign on his back which read A. BUBI.
As the police car disappeared down the mountain road Blanchaille returned to Kipsel and told him the amazing saga of that unlikely renegade, former President Adolph Gerhardus Bubé.