‘And what do you do here?’ Kipsel was bold enough to ask.
‘What do we do? We tell stories, of course.’
‘More stories!’ Kipsel protested. ‘I’m tired of stories. Will we never get to the end of stories?’
Matron turned on him sternly. ‘Never. And what would you do if that happened? Stories have brought you this far. From the most powerful member of the Regime to the lowest gardener, cook or nanny, we all need stories. We owe our lives to stories. Would I be here now? Or you? Or any of these people if it weren’t for the stories of another place, of Uncle Paul’s arrangements for the likes of us? Do not spit on stories, Mr Kipsel, or stories might spit on you.’
Kipsel hung his head. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that we never seem to get to the end.’
‘The end? Mr Kipsel — we are the end of these stories. I see you’re puzzled. You fail to understand — even now.’
Sweets were brought, great big dishes of koeksusters, golden plaited sweetmeats oozing oil, and milk tarts as big as wagon wheels, fig jam, watermelon conserve, raw sugar cane, fly cemetery, coconut ice and, of course, peach brandy with the coffee.
‘Fail to understand what, precisely?’ Blanchaille asked.
‘Everything,’ came the laconic reply. Matron nodded her head towards the first speaker who had got up and was preparing to address them. ‘Listen and you’ll learn.’
A thin man with a nervous manner. His cream towelling robe made him look rather like a chemist, a little drunk, and he tugged nervously at his ear-lobes while he spoke.
‘My friends, my name you know.’
‘I don’t,’ whispered Kipsel.
‘It’s Peterkin, Claude Peterkin, the radio producer,’ said Blanchaille, ‘from home, I knew him immediately.’
‘From home!’ Kipsel echoed in hot sarcastic tones. ‘Where’s that?’
Matron banged on the table with her spoon. ‘Let him tell his story,’ she ordered.
Peterkin bobbed his chin gratefully towards her. ‘I was by trade a radio producer and rose in time to become Head of Broadcasting. My motto had always been — “choose the middle way”. Useful advice to myself, working on the State radio you might say, since it meant I could steer between what was on the one hand a public broadcasting facility and on the other a Government propaganda service. You could say I’d been happy and moderately successful. Then one day I made a mistake. I allowed myself to be persuaded by Trudy Yssel that times were changing. “Produce plays,” she said, “which display our adaptiveness to new political perceptions, which are modern, which are of today!” I went out and commissioned a play by none other than Labush Labuschagne. The Labuschagne you all know with his Eskimo wife and his interest in Zen and his quivering attacks upon the Regime’s race policies and his impeccable Boer credentials, being a descendant of one of those heroes in Piet Retiefs party who were murdered by Dingaan. And what did Labuschagne give me? He gave me an attack on the Catholic Church in Africa. Fair enough, you might say. The play was entitled Roman Wars — and not, let me stress, not Roman Whores. That was an incredibly stupid printing error. The same combination of bad luck and mechanical error which has pursued me all my life. Be that as it may, my intentions were good. Could I have made a better choice of playwright than Labush Labuschagne? His radicalism was unchallenged and yet his Government connections were superb. He wrote a play about a Church which is far from popular and he portrayed its missionary activity on our continent as hypocritical, self-serving and deceitful. What better way of encouraging a debate? Why then did the Regime put out a statement saying that while it was true they had differences with the Roman Church in the past, there was now no room in the new South Africa for religious or racial bigotry and they deplored the irresponsibility of those, they did not say whom, who attacked other religious groups? Now if this wasn’t enough, at the same time stories of my homosexuality began appearing in the newspapers. It was suggested that I had a particular taste for young police reservists. Readers’ letters choked the columns of the newspapers demanding that this faggot be neutered on the spot. Then the Board of Governors of the Broadcasting Service put out a statement that I was considering, quite voluntarily, whether I shouldn’t perhaps take early retirement. The first I knew of this was when I heard it on the “Six O’Clock News”. Then the Chairman of the Governors organised a farewell party. And who do you think he invited? He got in Bishop Blashford, the Papal Nuncio, Agnelli, and half a dozen pretty young police reservists. And this was to be my retirement party — a surprise retirement party! I walked in and found myself on the way out. Of course the cameras were there and the whole thing was shown live on television. I was presented with a farewell memento. I have it here.’ Peterkin reached inside his robe and withdrew a large knife. ‘It’s a hunting knife, for those of you not near enough to see it. It has a sheath of genuine kudu-hide, its blade is fashioned from a piece of steel taken from one of the original rails from the Delagoa Bay line which carried President Kruger to exile. Its handle is made of rhino horn. This is inset with four golden studs, representing the four major racial groups in South Africa. I accepted the gift. After that I was escorted to the door and shown into the night. And so I came here, like so many of you. One morning the gardener found me wandering in the vineyard, and here I am. I thank you for listening to me and most of all I thank our President who made this place ready for us.’ And with that he lifted his glass towards the portrait of President Kruger on the wall. The old man with the tufty beard, the sashes, the rows of medals, stared broodingly down upon his displaced children.
Another then rose, a bulky man with a bristling moustache, a big belly beneath the robe. Of course they all knew him, Arnoldus Buys, the nitrate millionaire. Even Kipsel knew him.
‘I was a Government man, through and through. I was amongst the chief sponsors and backers of the New Men in the Regime. I was something of a rough diamond, but I was modern, tough, pragmatic. I backed the new dispensation. I believed in the new vision. I supported the principle of Ethnic Parallels, Plural Equilibriums, Creative Differentiation, all the terms, all the ideas, all the words. I also believed that we could fight our way back into history. I was one of the original backers of Minister Kuiker and his Creative Sterilisation Campaign. I backed the propaganda war. But my friends I was asleep. We have all been asleep so you know what I mean. I was asleep and when I woke up I found I’d been taken to the cleaners. My story is brief and tragic and may be encapsulated in a few words; I fell victim to our own propaganda, I believed in it because I was paying for it.’ And here Buys, the businessman, sank back into his chair and buried his face in his arms and a sympathetic hush descended on the room.
Then there rose a man who Blanchaille and Kipsel knew immediately — and who would not? For here was Ezra Savage, the novelist, the most notable writer the country had produced, described by some as a sad, thin old lay-preacher. Savage was the dogged champion of a Christian, liberal multi-racial vision of the future, author of a shelf of books amongst which the most famous were of course, My Country ’Tis Of Thee; Come Home Dingaan!; Our Land Lies Bleeding; and White Man Weep No More. It was extraordinary to see him here. He who had proclaimed that Emigration is Death! A man who had stood up for years against the harassment of the Regime, had survived countless arrests, imprisonment and privation, had seen his house set on fire by gangs of white youths wearing ruling Party sashes, an attack which his asthmatic wife barely survived and which undoubtedly contributed to her death soon afterwards. A man who had withstood this and yet now stood here in this room full of fugitives.