The sun is in his eyes. He is aware somewhere of his heart doing something odd; a feeling of thunderous menace in sync with his accelerated heartbeat. An imminent paralysis. Something inexorably bearing down upon him. No way out any more. Time to face the music. He can tell from the angle at which the Josias-guy is coming down the road. He can tell from the angle at which the man carries his head, from his fluttering Old Testament beard. Something God-only-knows is terribly wrong and he doesn’t want to know what it is.
When the man reaches him, extends his hand in greeting, and Karl sees the look in his eye, then he knows: It’s tickets with Iggy.
‘Afternoon,’ says the man. ‘I am Josias Brandt.’ He tilts his head at the man behind him. ‘Jakobus Coetzee. A friend of mine.’
Jakobus also extends his hand. Grey-blue eyes in a weathered face. Sympathetic eyes, which further confirms Karl’s suspicion.
‘Where is Ignatius?’ Karl asks, his voice slightly hoarse.
‘I had him committed to a psychiatric hospital yesterday,’ says Josias. ‘I warned you, he got totally out of hand. He started threatening to burn the place down.’
Committed to a psychiatric hospital. Iggy.
‘Jakobus will fill you in,’ says Josias, ‘I must attend to a few pressing matters quickly. Unfortunately it can’t wait.’ And he strides off on sturdy legs.
‘Come with me,’ says Jakobus. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
Karl follows Jakobus up the hill. It’s fortunately not too steep, because the wound in his leg is hurting so badly and both his legs feel so lame that he thinks he may not be able to make it all the way to the top. On one side of the road there are pigs. He recoils involuntarily. Contamination. He doesn’t do animals with unhygienic habits — especially not pigs — and here to boot it stinks to high heaven. (Perhaps he should after all have had himself hypnotised.) On the other side of the road there are geese. They gabble. The souls of the dead, Iggy said.
They take the winding road uphill, into the afternoon sun. Karl keeps his gaze fixed on Jakobus ahead of him, looks neither to the left nor to the right. He is vaguely aware of figures standing next to the road watching them. They walk until they reach a series of buildings resembling bunkers.
‘Used as arms depots in the nineteenth century,’ says Jakobus.
He unlocks a heavy gate. It opens into a wide, dark passage. Karl’s eyes are not yet quite accustomed to the sudden gloom in here; he can hardly distinguish all the objects against the wall. There are cupboards containing things, and sculptures, and large, unidentifiable objects, some of them covered with plastic.
They enter one of the huge rooms. Out of the corner of his eye, still in the half-light, Karl registers a plethora of things, without trying to get an overall impression. At the far end of the room — more like a hall — are Jakobus’s living quarters. Mattress on the floor to the left, chairs, crates, a log or two on the right, and behind that, against the wall, sculptures. Jakobus would seem to be a sculptor.
Jakobus points Karl to one of the garden chairs. He makes him some tea. The water for the tea he taps from a big plastic container. Karl briefly considers the hygiene of the setup, but lets it go. The kettle sits on a crate, next to a computer (a very old model). Jakobus potters away wordlessly. This gives Karl an opportunity to try to take in something of the room. His capacity for absorption is limited at the moment, he realises, his level of attention very shallow. As is his breathing.
Jakobus hands him a mug of hot tea: strong, sweet. He himself takes a seat on one of the logs, also with a mug of tea, which he places next to him on a crate. He slowly rolls a cigarette. He hasn’t yet uttered a word.
‘What happened to Ignatius?’ Karl asks.
‘He and Josias no longer saw eye-to-eye. To put it mildly. That’s the short version. The long version is probably much more complex.’
‘Was it so bad that he had to be taken away?’ Karl asks.
‘That I can’t judge,’ says Jakobus. ‘But your brother was very aggressive. He was acting oddly. He wore women’s clothing and threatened Josias with a stick. Josias is not a man to put up with being threatened on his own turf.’
Karl looks up. High, vaulted ceiling. The psychic saw two men. Negative goings-on. He can’t say that he senses anything particularly negative around Jakobus, but perhaps he’s still just too exhausted to distinguish between good and evil. At the moment he’s simply grateful for the man’s sympathetic and supportive presence, because he needs time to gather his wits.
*
They both have another cup of tea. Jakobus slowly rolls himself another cigarette. He doesn’t talk. Karl just sits, grateful for the silence. Then Jakobus offers him a beer, helps himself to one as well. That, too, they drink in silence.
When Karl is feeling calmer, somewhat reinvigorated, he asks if he can see Iggy’s room. And the pig’s head — if such a thing exists.
‘It does,’ says Jakobus. ‘The pope.’
They walk down the dark passage with all its strange objects again. Karl tries to register as little as possible of his surroundings. There are too many things here. He can’t afford to register anything except what’s in his immediate field of vision. They walk past a second room, also choc-a-fucking-block with things, Karl notes from the corner of his eye. Whose insane idea are these chambers — Josias’s? No wonder Iggy went half off his rocker. He would too, if he had to stay here.
They enter the third room — chamber, hall. Same size as the previous two, but with a different feel. Iggy described this room welclass="underline" the wooden crosses against the wall like a cathedral from the land of the dead. And the pig’s head at the far end — the lord of the cloven-hoofed, Iggy called it, of which the Headman is the captain and the chief executive officer.
Karl stands gazing at the head for a long time. Fucking hideous: the dead eyes, the fang and the snout. If anything can spread contagion, it’s this abomination. The pope of the underworld, Iggy called it. He can imagine that this must have seemed like an evil place to Iggy. Poor Iggy. It’s here, he wrote, it’s in this space where his body was repeatedly mortified and subjected to all sorts of bestial practices — like that of a whore. Where irreparable damage was inflicted upon his body and soul under the eye of the pig — the very eye at which Karl is now looking with the greatest revulsion.
Karl realises that so far he’s not allowed himself to linger on the possible nature of these bestial practices. He has hitherto summarily dismissed any thought of it. He wasn’t going there. What Iggy alleged was bad enough, he wasn’t going to try and make a graphic representation of his allegations as well. And he doesn’t know how he can ask Jakobus about it either. But whatever the case, the truth must now be faced squarely.
‘The pope,’ he says, and tilts his head at the pig’s head on stilts, the atrocious thing with the dead eyes, ‘what’s Josias’s idea with it?’
Jakobus rolls another cigarette. He evidently always takes his time before replying.
‘It’s not perhaps used as a part of, well, all sorts of unholy goings-on, sort of perverse practices?’ Karl asks. ‘As in practices perhaps coupled with strange rituals.’
Jakobus sniffs. He half-smiles. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘You must understand. Josias’s interests and obsessions are not those of your average guy. Otherwise he would never in the first place have managed to get this place up and running and keep it going for all these years. But perverse practices — that, I must tell you, I don’t know. Perverse practices,’ and he utters a short chuckle. ‘Josias himself might find that quite an appealing description of his activities.’ And he laughs again, clearly amused at the idea. If Jakobus is so amused at the idea, there might just be a grain of truth to it, Karl thinks.