Текст книги "Kruger's Alp"

Автор книги: Christopher Hope

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

CHAPTER 12

Now I saw in my dream the truth of the supposition widespread in émigré circles amongst the refugees who have fled from the Regime, though this continues to be officially denied, that there are paid agents abroad who shadow, observe, report on, harass, hinder and even silence those individuals they fear.

Across the road from Magdalena’s flat, outside the now empty, Arctic spaces of the fishmonger’s window, the two men, one tall, one tiny, stood in the shadows. As he crossed the road towards them Blanchaille knew as soon as he set eyes on their raincoats, on their stiff and unyielding moustaches and heard their flat accents, that here were countrymen.

They stepped close to him and pressing him on either side said: ‘Theodore Blanchaille, if you know what’s good for you, go back.’

‘Who are you?’ Blanchaille asked.

‘We are unwilling agents of the Regime,’ came the prompt reply. ‘Poor men who a long time ago booked on what was then known as a Pink Pussycat Tour of the Fun Capitals of Europe, and we looked forward to enjoying ourselves in Montparnasse and on the fabulous Reeperbahn. We were promised the time of our lives in the strip joints of Soho and the canalside brothels of Amsterdam. Here, look —’ and he took from his pocket an old, creased, much thumbed and garish brochure showing a naked girl straddling a large pink cat which had orange whiskers and wore a monocle: ‘Hiya fellas! Get out on the tiles! Just wear your smile…!’ The naked girl pictured wore a tight, strained smile. Blanchaille looked at the ridiculous cat, blushed at the noisy old-fashioned dated enthusiasm of the invitation. It was all tremendously sad.

The large one folded the tissue-thin brochure with reverence and returned it gently to his pocket.

‘We were ordinary blokes,’ said the little one. ‘Out for a good time. I was a butcher.’

‘And I was a school inspector,’ said the large one. ‘And we saved long and hard, I can tell you. I mean, hell, it’s no small thing, getting at our stage of life the promise of a really good time. We were in a button-popping hurry to inseminate the entire continent of Europe. Well, would you do otherwise? We planned for months, we scrimped, we bought Hawaiian shirts with orange suns and canary yellow sweaters to wear, just like Minister Kuiker who set the tone around that time, being the only person of note to venture outside the country publicly.’

‘We dreamt of Dutch vrouws and silk beds. We saved every cent and when the big day came we kissed our wives goodbye and stepped onto the Boeing with hope in our hearts.’

‘And stiffening pricks.’

The little one looked up at Blanchaille, unabashed, shrugged his shoulders and gave a bitter smile. ‘Off to sleep with coloured girls.’

‘Off to smoke dagga.’

‘To go fishing on Sundays.’

‘Get drunk on religious holidays.’

‘Watch dirty movies and gamble into the small hours.’

The big one sighed wearily. ‘But what we got was duty. We’re stuck here, in the shadows.’

‘This is hell,’ said the little one. ‘I thought a Free State Sunday was hell, but this is hell.’

‘Who are you?’ Blanchaille demanded.

‘We’re called Apple Two,’ the big one explained, looking embarrassed, ‘so-called because it stands for both of us.’ He raised two fingers.

‘But who is Apple One?’

The watchers shrugged. ‘Don’t ask us.’

‘What sort of a name is that?’

‘It’s a code name. We can’t give you our real names. Our orders were to stand out here and watch the flat until further notice.’ The little one looked apologetic.

‘Who gave the order?’

‘Apple One. We were to watch the flat until you left,’ said the big man.

‘And then we were to tell you to go to the Embassy. Don’t be hard on us, we don’t like this job. We didn’t ask for it,’ said the little one, clutching Blanchaille’s sleeve. ‘We stepped off the plane in London and the Embassy car was waiting. We thought, Christ but this is odd! Why should our Government come and meet us? Anyway we took it as a gesture. We told ourselves they were just being hospitable. Little did we know. We were driven into town, chatting happily like any group of tourists in London the first time, lightheaded with that sense of freedom that comes to all South Africans who discover that the outside world really does exist, and we pulled up in Trafalgar Square at the sign of the golden springbuck and I remember turning before we were hustled through the swing doors, I remember seeing the fountains, the pigeons, the tourists mooning about, Nelson up on his column… my last glimpse of freedom.’

‘What happened?’ Blanchaille asked.

The two watchers in the shadows sighed and drew their coats around them. ‘We were commissioned, into the security forces. It was explained to us that we should put duty above pleasure. Our air tickets would be refunded, they said. Our families had been notified that we were heroically responding to the call of our country abroad. With manpower shortages in security, as in all other industries, we were to be given the chance of serving our motherland by helping in the surveillance of suspected persons abroad.’

‘Do you know what’s happened to Magdalena?’ Blanchaille asked.

‘She left some time ago,’ the large one said.

‘Better not ask where she was going,’ said the little one.

‘Where was she going?’ Blanchaille persisted doggedly.

‘To the Embassy.’

‘Where is the Embassy? How do I get there?’

‘Go to Trafalgar Square. Look for the sign of the golden springbuck,’ said the little one.

‘Blanchaille,’ said the large one, ‘don’t be a fool. Get out. Go back to our country. There’s nothing for you here. Believe us, we know. This is hell. It’s a small, rather dingy, gloomy northern country. Everything is dead, the only signs of life are to be detected in the police, the army and the monarchy. Go back to where there are real issues to fight for.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of staying here. I’m in transit.’ Blanchaille replied. ‘I’m only here for forty-eight hours, and believe me, that’s not my idea. I’m heading for Europe. There are certain mysteries I wish to solve.’

‘That’s worse,’ said the little one. ‘That is the dark continent, Europe. It’s littered with the bones of Africans searching for the answers to certain mysteries.’

‘Then I’ll follow the bones,’ said Blanchaille. ‘See what they tell me.’

The watchers shrugged. ‘Rather you than us,’ they said. ‘Don’t say we didn’t warn you.’

And I saw in my dream how Blanchaille, having exchanged some of his money into British currency with the watchers, who gave him a good rate ‘just for a feel of home’, and having been pointed to the nearest tube, made his way down into the earth.

He was not prepared for life below ground. The elevator taking him down was very old and shook and its revolving belts squealed and cried like a man in agony. A hot wind carried on it the smell of metallic dust that blew from the yawning black holes at each end of the platform. A few desultory late-night passengers moped disconsolately in the shadows. Advertisements lined the sides of the tunnel. Most seemed to be taken up with lingerie and the delights of early retirement.

Blanchaille heard a terrible noise, a shouting, a screaming and howling as if troops of banshees were approaching, their cries emphasised by the hollowness of the deep underground. The waiting passengers seemed to know what was happening because he saw them scurrying for the far dark corners of the platform. With a great burst of shouting, singing, clapping, a strange army of young men arrived. They wore scarves and big boots, waved rattles and flags. The posse of policemen guarding them had trouble keeping them under control. Red seemed to be their colour, red bobble caps and scarves and shirts and socks, streamers and pennants.

They were marched to the far end of the platform, laughing and threatening to push each other onto the rails and terrorising the passengers. No sooner were they in place when the second army was ushered on to the platform and marched down towards the opposite end of the station, also with whistles and klaxons, hooters, cheering and whistles. Their colour seemed to be yellow: yellow hats and yellow flags. When the Reds caught sight of the Yellows pandemonium broke loose. Individuals broke free from both sides and hurled themselves at each other, kicking and clawing at one another and police and dogs struggled to keep them apart. Clearly the Reds and the Yellows were sworn enemies. The Reds shouting out, ‘Niggers, niggers, niggers!’ and the Yellows replied, ‘Yids, yids, yids!’ Blanchaille was reminded of the tremendous battles which took place between Fascists and Jews on the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday on the pavement outside the beer cellars in the capital. The hatred they clearly felt for one another was so reminiscent of the life he had left, that for a moment he was overwhelmed with feelings of homesickness, even a kind of strange nostalgia. A train arrived and the Reds were allowed aboard. The Yellows were held back on the platform. No doubt they had their separate train.

As Blanchaille arrived at Trafalgar Square station I saw how a succession of young girls came up to him. ‘Business, business,’ they said repeatedly. This puzzled Blanchaille who could not imagine what girls so young could be doing in such a place, so late at night.

The crowds pressing around him as the escalator rose slowly towards the light wore ecclesiastical costumes as if got up to resemble old religious pictures. He saw a bishop, a scattering of cardinals, a bevy of virgins in blue veils. It was only when he peered closely that he saw their stubbled chins and realised they were all men. They clustered behind Blanchaille on the escalator whispering, perhaps to each other, perhaps to themselves, perhaps it wasn’t even they who spoke but only voices inside his head, but from wherever the words came they scandalised him. Their talk was of organs and orifices, of anal chic, of comings and goings, of tongues, testicles, of ruptures, lesions and sphincters, of AIDS, herpes and hepatitis, of pancake make-up and the versatility of latex, of leather and the ethics of climactic simulation and of the lover of some unfortunate creature who had lost her life, head smashed with a heavy hammer when it was discovered that she was not he pretending, coiffed and beguiling, but the very her she had been pretending to be. ‘Come over to our side ducks and get the feel of life!’ These ribald remarks caused a great deal of mirth among the knot of purpled cardinals whose faces, he saw, were painted dead white with large black eyes so that they looked like Japanese actors. The long staircase creaked its way upwards to the dirty patch of light above. Of course it was all too likely that these scenes took place only in his imagination and the crowds around him were perfectly ordinary people returning from walks in the country, and scout outings and the girls so desperate for business were collecting for charity. But that his imagination should run in these channels at such a time worried him deeply.

And then he was up in the Square. He saw the column with Nelson on top of it. He saw the fountains, he saw buildings which reminded him very much of the campus of the Christian National University with its predilection for the neo-Grecian temple style and then directly across the road he saw the sign of the golden springbuck. (You must note here, if you will, how typical were Blanchaille’s feelings of excitement and ignorance, the feelings of an innocent abroad. Had he known it, the dangers he imagined in the underground were as nothing compared with the perils which now faced him.) He gazed up at the large corner building, the Embassy squat and solid, that old box of ashes and bones as it was called by that celebrated dissident, the Methodist missionary Ernest Wickham (and he should have known, since he was widely credited with having burgled the Embassy and taken away sensitive papers which were later passed to the Azanian Liberation Front). A daring triumph, but shortlived, for a little while later Wickham received a parcel from a favourite Methodist mission in the Kalahari, where much of his fieldwork had taken place. Wickham made the mistake of opening the parcel and was blown into smaller bits than would fill a small plastic bag, given that hair, teeth, bones and odd gobbits of flesh were dutifully collected notwithstanding. The bomb, it was suggested, might have come from the Pen Pals Division of the Bureau which had long exploited the exiles’ weakness for welcoming parcels from home. (It should be noted here that the Regime had since commemorated the work of Pen Pals Division of the Bureau with the issue of a special stamp showing on an aquamarine background a large plain parcel wrapped in brown paper and neatly tied up with string. In the lefthand corner the keen-eyed observer will spot the tiny letters ‘PP’, which, he will now know, do not stand for postage paid.)

Sitting in a high window of the Embassy was Dirk Heiden, the so-called South African super-spy, a sobriquet well earned. This formidable man worked himself into the top job of the Students Advisory Bureau, a Swiss-based organisation promoting the aims of radical students abroad, particularly exiled students from the South African townships, a post which he held for some eighteen months in which time he took part in freedom marches in Lagos against the racism of the Regime and was photographed taking a sleigh ride in the Moscow snow. From his office in Geneva he monitored the activities of resistance groups, anti-war objectors and other dissidents abroad, tailing them, taping them, photocopying documents and insinuating himself into the clandestine councils of various radicals abroad who seemed as free with their secrets as they were with their brandy. As a result of his reports many at home were beaten, imprisoned, stripped, manacled and tortured. Heiden had returned home to the kind of triumphant reception normally accorded only to rugby teams or visiting pop-singers who had defied the international ban against appearances likely to benefit the Regime. But his hour of glory over, he fell prey to the boredom which so often affects those who have lived too long abroad. He grew fat and listless, developed a drink problem, was arrested for firing his pistol at passers-by, pined for his tie-maker and his old sophisticated life, and so his superiors returned him to an overseas post, a chair in the window of an upstairs room in the Embassy where he peered through the glass searching the Square for familiar faces.

Heiden sat in a chair by the window, so still he might have been dead. His weight had continued to increase, his facial skin was stretched tight and shining over the bones, it had the texture of rubber on a beach ball blown up to bursting point. He stared out of the window because it was his job to look at people who visit the Square below, look for faces he might recognise, for it is a well-known fact that South Africans abroad will come and stand silently outside their Embassy, prompted perhaps by the same impulses that bring early morning observers to wait outside the walls of a prison where a hanging is to take place, or crowds to stand outside the palace walls when the monarch is dying.

In another window on the same floor sat the Reverend Pabst, ‘the holy hit man’ they called him once, but a shambling wreck now, surrounded by empty cane spirit bottles and scraps of food. His career had been simple and brutal. God had instructed the Regime that His enemies should be identified and exterminated. Pabst went to work. A fine shot and a quick and efficient killer using his bare hands and no more than a length of fishing line, he had a considerable tally of victims to his credit. Sadly, unknown to himself, he had also killed, besides enemies of the Regime, certain members of the Regime, quite possibly tricked into doing so by other members of the Regime. He could no longer be allowed to roam loose. He sat in a chair with a small sub-machine gun in his lap. He would cradle it beneath his chin and sometimes even suck the snout-like barrel, pressing gently on the palm-release trigger. The gun was not loaded of course, and the door behind him was locked and bolted. Sometimes he would hurl himself at the window, mowing down imaginary hordes with his wicked little gun only to fall back in his chair with a streaming nose or broken tooth. The windows were thickly armour-plated. The old man would dribble and grin, dreaming of past assassinations.

Blanchaille passed by these dangers quite unknowing. It is not surprising. He was not known and would not have known the watchers in the windows. And besides, I saw in my dream that he had eyes for only one thing, a man on the other side of the busy street. He knew him instantly, despite the grey clerical suit, the dog-collar. His old clothes!

Blanchaille called his name, hopping from foot to foot on the edge of the Square while a steady stream of traffic surged between them. At first the man appeared not to hear. Blanchaille called again, and then, because the man appeared to be about to escape, without thinking he charged into the traffic. A large tourist bus narrowly missed him. He stumbled and almost fell beneath the wheels of a taxi, the driver squealing to a halt and cursing him. But he reached the other side and seized the coat of the man now hurrying down the Strand, seized him almost at the same instant as the watchers in the windows above saw him and positively identified his quarry (with what consequences I dread to think!) as Trevor Van Vuuren.

CHAPTER 13

Now that the absconding priest, Theodore Blanchaille, met and talked with the policeman, Trevor Van Vuuren, is not in doubt. Where opinions differ concerns the motives which brought Van Vuuren to London and the fate he suffered there. The official version put out by the Regime is well-known and straightforward. Van Vuuren visited London in pursuit of the renegade cleric, Blanchaille, because he believed the man had information which might throw light on the murder of Anthony Ferreira. His quarry, realising that the law was closing in, lured the policeman into a trap.

That is why there are still those who talk of Van Vuuren ‘The Martyr’.

I saw things differently in my dream. I saw Blanchaille and Van Vuuren, arm in arm, making their way down the Strand. An odd picture they were, closer than ever to Lynch’s predictions, for Blanchaille resembled a ruined Southern gambler in crumpled white suit and heavy stubble with his strange seal-like shuffle, the feet thrown out in a wide flipper shove, and Van Vuuren was the muscular priest beside him. They proceeded slowly down the street, the weightlifter and the punchbag. And so the short night passed.

They passed a bank which looked like a church and opposite it a station which looked to him like a palace and beside it a cinema showing a pornographic movie. Blanchaille had never seen a pornographic movie, he’d never seen a cinema advertise pornographic films. This one was called Convent Girls, and showed three naked blondes in nun’s wimples running across a green field. ‘Hellfire passions behind the convent walls!’ How he envied the potential of European Catholicism! No wonder Lynch had felt cheated in Africa. Blanchaille remembered the convent girls of his youth, shy creatures in sky-blue dresses, white panamas and short white ankle socks, shepherded by swathed and nimble-booted nuns patched in black and white, nipping at their heels like sheep-dogs. Van Vuuren was dressed in his friend’s old cast-off clerical suit, rather dirty charcoal with ash-grey V-necked vest and dog-collar far too large for him so that it hung below his adam’s apple like one of those loops one tosses over a coconut in a fairground. He had not shaved and the black stubble gleamed on his chin in the early light, that pale English dawn light which comes on rather like a wan bureaucrat to give notice that the day ahead will once again be one of low horizons and modest expectations.

I heard their conversation which I record as accurately as possible.

‘Thanks for waiting.’

‘After seeing you plunge into the traffic in that suicidal manner I had to wait. If only to see if you made it.’

‘I had to make a run for it because I saw the look on your face when you spotted me. I thought you were going to bolt.’

‘I was. You don’t want to be involved with me. I’m bad news, Blanchie.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘Because my people sent for me.’

‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you. I said to myself, that’s Trevor, but it can’t be. He’s at home.’

‘This is home for me, Blanchie.’

‘Who are your people?’

‘The Azanian Liberation Front.’

‘The ALF – your people? Since when?’

‘From as far back as I can remember. I went with the Communion wafer still sticking to my palate, straight from my last Corpus Christi procession, and told them I wanted to enlist. I had a meeting with old Vilakaze, he was still boss in those days. I must have been the first, perhaps the only, white schoolboy member of the Azanian Liberation Front. When I was ready to leave school the Front said to me, go back and work for the Government. Join the police. Fall asleep in the arms of the Regime. We will wake you when you’re needed.’

‘What? All this time, Trevor, an agent for the Front?’

‘All this time. A special sort of policeman, just as Lynch predicted. I kept the faith, like I told you. In my own way. Then, a couple of days ago, soon after I had seen you in Balthazar Buildings I got a message from London. My job was over. I could come home. I took the plane. When I arrived at the airport there was another message waiting for me. I was to go to the Embassy. It seemed strange. The Embassy is one of those places I would have expected to avoid. But then I’m a soldier. I take orders. The Front says go and I go. Even so, I was surprised no one met me at Heathrow. I didn’t expect a band and streamers, but I thought someone might have shown up. So I came here, expecting someone familiar. But not a sign of anyone, until you came along. Don’t take this amiss, Blanchie, but you were hardly what I expected.’

‘Why do you say you’re bad news?’

‘Well, I should have been met, you see. Something’s very wrong.’

‘I was met.’

And Blanchaille told him about Magdalena, about their meeting at the airport, about her flat, omitting the details of her extraordinary attack on him, about the watchers outside the fishmonger’s.

‘Apple Two,’ said Van Vuuren and laughed. ‘Who do you think Apple One is?’

Van Vuuren was pale in the early morning light. Blanchaille was put in mind neither of the policeman he had been nor the priest he now resembled. Blanchaille could smell the fear on him. He was sweating though it was still cool in the dawn, breathing heavily, lifting his face, the nostrils flaring and sniffing deeply as if by the couple of inches this gave him he might find pure air easier to breathe. Blanchaille was reminded of a buffalo he’d once seen looking for water, plunging into a swamp and drinking and drinking until he moved in too far and could not pull himself out. Half-submerged, with his curved horns pointed above the water line, the beast struggled to free himself only to sink all the more securely into the mud until only the line of his back and the flashing horns were visible and the long wet muzzle with just the nostrils clear, sucking at the air, taking in a little water each time with a rivelled hiss. A little more water each time and the brown eyes blinked and bulged helplessly as the animal slipped deeper. It fought for each breath, a gurgling hiss of air and water passing into the nostrils. Then the buffalo gave a convulsive jerk, let its body sink and angled its head up in the air fighting the nostrils clear; he heard the clogged snuffle, more laboured, more lengthy, the watery intake and then, suddenly, nothing – just an ear and the horns and the silence. Why did Van Vuuren make him think of that?

‘Who sent for you?’

‘Kaiser himself.’

Blanchaille didn’t pursue the subject.

‘I can still remember my last Corpus Christi procession,’ said Van Vuuren. ‘I see us all gathered outside the railway station getting ready for the march to the Cathedral. The Children of Mary in blue cloaks and white veils; a platoon from the Society of St Vincent de Paul, male pillars of the Church in their grey flannel suits and their neat side partings; nuns running excitedly to and fro with their veils fluttering in their faces, all freshly scrubbed and shining with anticipation of the treat to come; young men and women of the various religious sodalities, very pink and pious and most disturbingly calm about it all. Contingents, squads, whole battalions of priests forming up beneath the banners. A small group of White Fathers appeared in that strange outfit they wore that gave them a slightly sporting look, like female bowlers; and of course Franciscans with their bunching brown robes, tightly roped around the waist; and throngs of tiny boys and girls who’d made their first Communion that morning, girls in bridal flounces with flowers in their hair and little boys in bow ties all carrying baskets of flowers with which to strew the streets. We were all formed up in a procession and at the head was the Bishop, the unspeakable Blashford, decked out in gold vestments and flanked by assistant priests and served by an army of altar boys, incense bearers, boat boys, bell ringers and acolytes, all attending His Grace who was bearing aloft the gold and silver monstrance with its small circular glass window behind which you glimpsed the sacred host, the white and sacred heart of the golden sun, the rays of which were suggested in the jagged, spiky ruby-tipped petals of the monstrance, a sight to dazzle and astound the faithful. Behind the ranks of altar boys, the great crowd of assistant priests in white surplices. I remember how the onlookers began to form, how they used to crowd the streets which were usually very empty on Sunday and watched with blank incomprehension as the Corpus Christi procession in all its gaudy Roman glory snaked forward, chanted, sang, knelt, shuffled up from its knees and staggered on again. Fluttering above the Bishop and the monstrance was the silken canopy supported on four poles by members of the Knights of De Gama wearing broad sashes and white gloves. The crowds gawped. The white people looked stern and unimpressed; behind them the blacks giggled and pointed and shook their heads at this fantastic spectacle of mad pilgrims in curious costumes following their gorgeous leader beneath his wind-rippled canopy. The white spectators put their hands in their pockets and struck attitudes of contempt. The Africans gave little outbreaks of spontaneous applause, as if they were watching a varsity rag procession and admiring the different floats. I remember they saved their best applause for the little band of black Christians who traditionally brought up the rear of the procession, usually wearing religious costumes of their own design, long white flowing albs, shimmering chains of holy medals clinking on coloured ribbons worn around the neck, roughly cut wooden staffs in their hands. These wild prophets received a special police escort. Occasionally there were fights as a group of white bystanders isolated and assaulted some chosen black spectator, raining blows and kicks upon the victim for reasons you never understood – I mean you could hardly stop and ask. And the police moved in and rescued the fallen man with the customary arrest. Every so often, you remember, we stopped and knelt. I can still smell the hot tar. The old hands spread a handkerchief. Sometimes horses had passed that way and you could smell the dung. There were oil stains right there in the middle of the road. There we knelt in the middle of the city, on a bright Sunday morning, the whole great procession reciting the rosary, a vast murmur rising and falling. Do you remember how the spectators often shrieked if the holy water sprinkled by the priests accidentally touched them? And they would wave away the fog of incense with their newspapers. You remember how they used to cough and give artificial little explosions of irritation to show how much they disapproved of it all? And you remember how embarrassed we were? I was anyway. I knelt there and prayed that the buildings would topple and cover me. We had to endure hours of it! pretending that nothing strange or bizarre was happening, that this was what you did every Sunday morning, you got dressed up in crazy clothes and went out and knelt in the middle of the road while the traffic policemen kept the cars away. You remember the traffic policemen? They stood at the intersections and wore those black jodhpurs, black tunic, grey shirt, the sunglasses, and the black peak cap. They said the uniform was modelled on that of the SS. I knelt there and prayed for the earth to open or the sky to fall, or for bolts of lightning to obliterate the entire procession in an instant, or for bombs to go off, or for a madman armed with a sten gun to burst upon the scene and mow down every living soul. I prayed for a message: “Lord, tell me what to do.” And the message came back: “Join the ALF, my son. It is the only act of faith left to you. You kneel here on the hot tarmac, foolish, exposed, embarrassed. You are that comical thing – a white man in Africa. Repent whilst there is still time, join the Front…” It was a religious conversion. The Front ordered me into the police force. I knew my friends would see it as an act of treachery, but I could live with that. Let my friends think of me as the traitor-policeman. Let them spit at me. I could take it. For the Cause. For the Front! Actually, at the time I think I was suffering from a kind of religious mania. Luckily it had no outward sign. I mean it didn’t issue in fainting fits or speaking in tongues or stigmata or levitation or uncontrolled miracles. All of that would have been rather inappropriate in a police officer, as you can imagine. And there was a short period when I experimented with flagellation, making a small branched whip with half a dozen tails securely attached to a short wooden stock and I beat myself with this whip but there were immediate difficulties. Probably few people know it, but it’s not possible to direct the whip so as to avoid marking oneself on the neck or wrist, and these are places where the weals might show and so arouse suspicion. And then I had myself a hairshirt made of horsehair and wool and wore it next to the skin for over a week. Not very practical either. It was hot, you see. I’d sweat. And the sweat would saturate the hair on the shirt and the shirt clung to me underneath my tunic and gave me a very odd shape. One or two of my colleagues asked if I was putting on weight. It was a very odd time for me.’