Dear Looksmart,
This is to introduce you to a couple of friends of mine, useful contacts and deep down, I believe, supporters of the cause. They have proposals to put to you which I genuinely believe can promote our struggle for liberation. I urge you to listen carefully to what they have to say and to act quickly.
Remember me in your prayers.
Your brother in Christ, Gabriel Dladla.
‘We represent a force so radical we cannot reveal ourselves,’ said Carstens, ‘so secret it speaks only through its appointed agents. The Regime wouldn’t tolerate our liberal aspirations or pragmatism. The Americans will not believe them. We have a problem. We wish to invest in several of the communications media in this town to promote our message. A couple of radio stations, a closed-circuit TV station and a news magazine.’
‘What can I do for you?’ asked Looksmart.
‘Scepticism, cynicism, downright suspicion of our intentions is what we have to combat. If we are to buy into these businesses, our enemies would cry foul. But if you were to bid, or to allow us to bid for you —’
‘You want me to buy some radio stations?’
‘We will do the actual buying,’ said Carstens.
‘We will do the actual paying,’ said Estelle. ‘But you’ll be the owner.’
Looksmart stared at them, wonderingly. This they misinterpreted.
‘Of course, we would make it worth your while. I understand you are a student of history here. We believe you wander the streets. Sleep rough.’
‘I’m a student of revolution,’ said Looksmart proudly.
‘Aren’t we all?’ said Carstens politely.
‘Don’t want money,’ said Looksmart.
‘That’s up to you. Maybe you want something else. You just tell us and we’ll see if we can help.’ Estelle smiled sweetly.
‘Do you know anyone in the Regime?’ Looksmart demanded. ‘Do you know President Bubé?’
After some hesitation Carstens said he had met the President, briefly, on one of his foreign tours, he thought.
‘O.K.’ said Looksmart. ‘Now this is what I want.’
In the darkness on the mountainside Blanchaille and Kipsel heard him waving what he had got, his slip of paper, his dream. ‘Here it is! Here it is! Pennsylvania here I come!’ The little torch was switched on, the light pale on the paper.
‘You fool,’ said Blanchaille. ‘You idiot!’ Blanchaille yelled. ‘You’ll never do it. Our country is already torn into independent kingdoms, homelands, reserves, group areas, Bantustans, casinostans, tribal trust lands and all you’re proposing to do is to fucking well found another!’
‘Mine will be different!’ Looksmart’s voice cracked and trembled. At Blanchaille’s raised voice he could feel the tears beginning to start. ‘We’ll have no racial separation, no servants, no gold mines, no Calvinists, no faction fights. In my country the Boer will lie down with the Bantu.’
‘Numbskull!’ Blanchaille shrieked. ‘They’re all different. All these places. That’s why there are so many of them. Everybody who is different has got to have one. The one thing we have got in abundance is difference. Difference is hate. Difference is death. I spit on your difference.’ And he did, spitting noisily into the night. ‘You’ve been gypped, by your brother, by the Regime, by yourself.’
They heard the scrabble of paper as Looksmart returned the precious document to his pocket. ‘You can’t scare me,’ he replied through his sobs, ‘I will continue. Oah yes, right on to the end of the road, as the song says. I will enter Uncle Paul’s place and lay my case for a new republic before the lost souls. And they will hear Looksmart, and return with me to our homelands leaving you behind, Blanchie, like the last bit of porridge clinging to the pot.’
Here I truly believe Blanchaille would have leapt at Looksmart and killed him if Kipsel hadn’t pulled him off. The two friends turned to their path again and by starlight continued on up the mountain, soon leaving the sobbing, crippled, cracked visionary far behind.
CHAPTER 25
So I saw in my dream how they arrived by night at the high stone wall and the big iron gates and read by moonlight the name of the place:
BAD KRUGER
On each of the gateposts crouched enormous stone lions, much weathered; rain, snow and wind having smoothed away their eyes and blunted their paws; their crumbling manes were full of shadows. And I saw in my dream how priest and acolyte, or detective and aide, dish and spoon, fisherman and fish, call them what you will, pushed at a big iron gate which opened easily on well-oiled hinges and closed behind them soundlessly. Without any idea of the sort of place they had entered but too tired to stand any longer, they lay down on the grass and slept.
They awoke to a morning full of bird-song to find themselves in an extensive garden thick with flowers, ornamental ponds, gravelled walks, fountains and orchards and beyond, a small, thick wood. Kipsel identified several familiar blooms: blazing Red-hot Pokers, magnificent specimens standing five feet high, their full, tubular heads of red and yellow swinging like flaming bells; the rare Red Disa, Pride of Table Mountain, as it was called, with its little trinity of reddish-purple petals framing a third which turned the opposite way showing a cup veined in purplish ink. Blanchaille knew nothing of flowers but this identification of plants and blooms recognisably African excited him as the first definite sign that they had truly arrived. The water in the ponds was a cold green. The ponds were fringed with reeds and carpeted with blue water-lilies and these in particular made Kipsel exclaim: ‘Amazing! You see them? Blue! Nymphaea those are, blue-ridged leaves! Blanchie, they barely exist any longer. You used to find them in the Cape Peninsula many years ago. But not any longer. To find them here… they’re virtually extinct! And look — masses of Red Afrikanders. It’s far, far too late for them, surely?’
‘Virtually extinct,’ Blanchaille repeated, wondering at Kipsel’s floral knowledge and thinking that sociologists, like cold green pools, sometimes possessed hidden depths.
Small turtles swam across the lily ponds pushing a film of water before them. They watched a brilliantly coloured bird, its plumage a dancing gloss of green and purple, its bill and forehead in matching orange, its throat bright blue, hunting elegantly among the reeds and when it caught something it would pause to feed itself with its foot with the aplomb of a fastidious diner.
Through the small thick wood they pushed and came at its edge to a wide and well-kept lawn and across it saw a great building presenting a broad and sturdy front to the world. Here Kipsel and Blanchaille drew back into the trees, for walking on the lawn were groups of people. Some were in wheelchairs attended by nurses, some walked with sticks, others seemed fit and well and played a game of touch-rugby. The scene reminded Blanchaille of a convalescent home, of pictures seen of veterans home from a war, recuperating. Though the strains of music coming from the big loudspeaker mounted high on the pediment of the house gave to the scene something of the convivial quality of a village fête. Only the bunting was missing. They withdrew more deeply into the wood. At their waists were Kaffir-lilies, three-foot high at least with great trumpeting mouths of deep crimson; hip-high Chincherinchees, big white flowers with chocolate hearts; spotted velvet Monkey-flowers; and golden banks of the misleadingly named Snow-on-the-Mountain; all of which caused Kipsel further perplexity as such flowers were found only in African gardens. The music the loudspeakers relayed was a medley of light classics: Strauss marches mingled with traditional boere-musiek, or farmers’ music, of which the old favourite ‘Take your things and trek Ferreira’ seemed very popular, with its wicked thudding refrain: