Kruger's Alp

‘Our President is expected shortly. Once he arrives we’ll be in a position to put certain thoughts to our Government at home. We plan to hold talks with our Government.’

‘What makes you think they’ll talk to you?’

She smiled again. ‘We would rather talk to them than to the world press.’

‘Blackmail,’ said Blanchaille.

‘We won’t be blamed for having done our duty. When we’ve cleared our name we shall return in triumph.’

‘And until then?’ Kipsel asked.

‘We will wait here. In the Kruger House. You believe in the sad story of a rest home for the refugees the Old President set up. You should be the first to understand the use we put this place to. Uncle Paul would have understood.’

‘You don’t understand what has happened back home,’ Kipsel said. ‘They’ve dispensed with you. When Ferreira found the figures, publicised them and died, he blew the matter wide open. The Regime stepped away from its anointed Minister and his favourite. First they covered for you. But now they’re joining the crowds calling for your blood. You should be going where we’re going.’

‘There is no place where you’re going,’ said Trudy. She led them into a small bedroom. ‘This is Uncle Paul’s death room. Here is the actual death bed. Well no, not the actual death bed, but a replica.’

They saw the dark wood of the bedstead. The sturdy head board, the starkly simple bulk of the bed with its white linen counterpane. On a small bedside table stood a vase of pink carnations. Thick green drapes in the window and fuzzy white net curtains strained the sunlight to a weak, pallid wash. A huge old-fashioned radiator stood in the corner and a large carved chair stood very prominently by the bedside. The seat and back of the chair were decorated in bold floral patterns and surmounted by crossed muzzle-loaders. This was a recurring emblem throughout the house, the Boerish equivalent of the fleur-de-lis. Other popular symbols about the house were powder horns, ox wagons and lions. Lions had always been associated with Uncle Paul. Hadn’t he wrestled one to death before his thirteenth birthday? Or outrun one? And had he not been known as the Lion of the North? Or was it of the South? Blanchaille couldn’t remember. All presidents had been identified with larger powerful beasts, or weapons. President Bubé had been known as Buffalo, or more colloquially as ‘Buffels Bubé’, while the young and thrusting Wim Vollenhoven, ‘Bomber’ Jan Vollenhoven as they called him, the Vice-President, continued the old tradition.

Trudy sat on the bed. Blanchaille was struck by the ease with which she committed this sacrilege. Here indeed was one of the new people. He pushed open the french windows and stepped on to the veranda where the flag gave its leathery rattle.

‘Our belief, our brief, our mission was straightforward. In this matter of putting across our country’s position we should attack. Fuck sitting on our arses any longer. Get out there and sell the bastards our bag of goodies. Don’t try and win through to the big men overseas, spot the young ones in advance, pick them when they begin to come up the tree, and gamble. Don’t expect the foreign newspapers to print nice stories about you, the only reason they like producing stories about you is because you’re so horrible. So don’t wait for them to tell your story, buy a space and tell it yourself. If possible buy the fucking newspaper, radio station, investors’ bulletin, whatever. If that won’t do then buy the owners lunch, di

‘Why were you denounced then? Why have you made a run for it? Why are you hiding out here?’ Kipsel demanded, scratching blearily at the thick stubble on his jaw, and shivering slightly in the early morning damp rising from the lake.

‘We were fingered by the Regime! They were frightened to own up to a mission they had sanctioned. They wanted scapegoats.’

‘And the story about the missing money, the Swiss accounts, the house in Capri, the apartment on the Italian Riviera?’

‘The houses were part of the job, safe houses for our people, reception centres for new recruits, entertainment bases for important visiting VIPs who didn’t want the world to know that they were spending the weekend with South Africans. The houses were used in the course of operations, they weren’t holiday cottages, you know. As for the money we’re supposed to hold — what money?’

Blanchaille looked out across the big green lawn to the lake. It was on this balcony the old man had sat, the Bible open on his knees, peering blearily across the water at the big blue mountains on the other side. The locals had paused, he knew, as they passed by and pointed up at the famous old exile, Uncle Paul on his balcony. The lake lapped at the bottom of the garden. The gulls made their skidding contact with the water, claws angled for the landing as if not knowing for certain where they were putting down until they had actually landed, distrustful of the medium. The old man had sat on his chair, solid as the mountains, deep as the lake. Perhaps he had seen and admired this tireless energy of the gulls, this compulsion to take off and land, but that energy always tempered by caution, their wildness calmed into life-preserving habit. Away to the right was the town of Montreux, it crowded down to the water’s edge along a gentle crammed curve of densely packed buildings on the shore, pretending to be a small Mediterranean port. But here was no sea, this was still water, a great placid lake lying in the bowl of the mountains. Those mountains in the distance, the big blue ones across the water that he knew were in France, if one screwed up one’s eyes and gazed blindly until they began to water, they were vaguely reminiscent of mountains in the Cape Peninsula. But of course the old refugee and his rented accommodation wouldn’t have known the Cape mountains either, he’d seldom been out of the Transvaal veld until, that is, he began his great last journey into exile.