Текст книги "Kruger's Alp"

Автор книги: Christopher Hope

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

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:

My mat-tress and your blan-ket

And there lies the thing!

If the music seemed appropriate to the establishment they’d expected, the house did not. It was a solid, assertive building: a strange mixture of grand hotel, railway station and museum, built on two storeys, squat, bulky and prodigiously solid, perhaps eighty feet high and crowned by a great dome of coloured tiles, pierced by oval windows. A flight of stairs in two graceful stages climbed majestically to the bronze doors. The windows on the ground floor were arched and comparatively simple while those on the second storey were flanked by columns and surmounted with medallions and above it all, and for the whole of its length, the pediment was crowded with statuary: Greek gods, perhaps; venerable old men with philosophers’ beards; horsemen; griffins; wrestling cherubs and other fancies intended to give an aura of substance and dignity, but this was undermined by the big loudspeakers mounted on poles which framed the statuary.

They drew even deeper into the wood, aware of how strange they must look, two ragged fugitives, eyes pink from lack of sleep, bodies smelling of sweat, chocolate, cheese and brandy.

‘We should go forward. Introduce ourselves. We should see if this is the right place after all,’ Blanchaille spoke without conviction.

‘Or we could wait until we felt a bit stronger,’ Kipsel suggested.

Blanchaille appreciated his trepidation but knew it wouldn’t do. ‘We’ll never feel as strong again.’

‘Excuse me, but I need a swaz,’ said Kipsel and disappeared hurriedly.

A swaz! How many years was it since he heard that expression? One had to admit it was precisely onomatopoeic, echoing perfectly the zip and gush against the rock in the dusty veld, or the business of drilling muddily into a garden bed, but it pained and discomfited here in its buzzing directness. Accuracy of observation, whether of the names of flowers or of the sonic effect of urination did nothing to help; what was needed was not description but meaning!

When Kipsel returned he challenged him accordingly.

Kipsel shrugged. ‘Fall into a small pool of words early on and you’ll spend the rest of your life splashing around in it. For example, I had a girlfriend once, by name Karina. She had five brothers, all cricketers. I think her father played, too. Her life was taken up with starching shirts, whitening boots and keeping score. As a result she was a child of the pavilion. There was no other world. Her bag of words came straight out of the changing room. She had no other terms of reference. Everything was described in cricketing language. Even sex. She was forever making jokes about maidens. When we were in bed she would cheer me on if I looked like flagging with cries of “only another sixty to go or you have to follow on”! And when she was coming she’d cry “how’s that?” and stick a finger in the wind like an umpire giving his man out.’ Kipsel banged his fist against his forehead to still the extravagant memories of these exhausting matches. ‘Going to bed with her was like going into bat without a box. She took that as a compliment when I told her. See what I mean? It wasn’t so much that she was really interested in cricket itself but it provided her with a life she could get hold of. And beat. Cricket was her way of living, her get up and go, her entry into the life of action settlers must have, because doing gives an illusion of winning. Her way of grappling with life.’

‘And going forward,’ said Blanchaille. ‘No illusion is more precious.’

It is interesting to note that they themselves did not go forward at this point but walked away from the house until the music from the loudspeaker faded. They found themselves in an apple orchard. The fruit beckoned them, the crispness of the huge pale green apples tempted them. They must have eaten half a dozen each, tearing at the tight sweet flesh as if their systems needed it, as if it was some sort of antidote to the poison of too much travel, a diet of brandy, chocolate, cheese and a constant series of shocks to the system.

I saw also that there was a vineyard nearby and this, too, they invaded, gorging on the plump white grapes until they could eat no more. I watched Kipsel who lay on the ground with his fingers over his eyes to keep out the sun and let the juice run down his throat, spitting the pips into the air, even though Blanchaille had asked him politely to stop. And then with full bellies and pleasantly overcome by the walk they slept, restlessly muttering of home, heaven and angels and policemen, no doubt believing themselves safe in the privacy of their dreams.

Then I saw that they weren’t alone.

He stood up among the vines. A big broad man in a floppy straw hat, waring faded and patched brown dungarees, with his thumbs hooked into his belt. He stood watching the sleepers from a little distance away, listening to them; a big man with freckled arms and a considerable tan, attending closely, taking notes in a small book with great rapidity. And when he saw me watching him, he looked up and smiled and said: ‘What’s so puzzling? They come here, they’re tired and hungry, they eat, they relax, they sleep. In their sleep they talk. It’s a habit of people like this, terrified of speaking aloud what they think, they confine their comments to this sort of dream talk. Dreams are the only underground left.’

‘And you? Is your note-taking also a habit?’

He didn’t answer me, but I had my suspicions.

So I saw when the sleepers woke they found the man watching them, though he no longer carried his pencil and notebook.

‘Who are you?’ Blanchaille asked.

The big man smiled, he rubbed his neck, he cracked his knuckles, he flexed the muscles in his freckled arms and he said: ‘I’m a gardener. At least I help to keep the place up. Of course I’ve got under-gardeners with me. This place is too big for one man.’

‘I hope you didn’t mind us helping ourselves to your fruit,’ said Kipsel.

The gardener smiled. ‘That’s why it’s there. Only I wouldn’t stay here very much longer, it’s getting on towards evening. You’ll be wanting dinner soon. The others have already gone in, the music has stopped.’

‘Are they expecting us – up there?’ Blanchaille nodded his head towards the big house beyond the wood.

The gardener nodded. ‘Anybody who gets this far is expected. They’ll be looking out for you all right. The worry always is that people who make it this far might get lost again.’

‘We weren’t lost,’ said Kipsel. ‘A few detours, perhaps. A few hedges and ditches to jump. But not lost.’

The gardener smiled. ‘If you hadn’t been lost, buster, you wouldn’t be here.’

‘What’s your name?’ said Kipsel.

‘Happy.’

‘Happy!’ Kipsel laughed, genuinely rolled about. Blanchaille was embarrassed.

In fact it wasn’t too difficult to understand Kipsel’s amusement or his friend’s sheepishness, since, after all, the term ‘Happy’ was used in their own country as one of the many derogatory terms in the rich vocabulary of racial invective the ethnic groups enjoyed directing against each other. Mutual abuse was a mainstay of political life. The pleasure of calling supporters of the Regime, Happies, with all the ironical strength the insult carried was matched only by the enjoyment with which the Regime declared its opponents to be Kaffir-loving Jewish Commies who should go and live in Ghana… Hence Kipsel’s laughter and the embarrassed silence which followed.

The big man stood by impassively watching. ‘There’ve always been Happies here,’ he said. ‘Ever since the old man started up the place.’

‘I think I see what he means.’ Blanchaille cleared his throat with the air of a man anxious to prevent misunderstanding. ‘This word “Happy” I think is a corruption, or at least a mutation, of the name of Kruger’s valet, a certain Happé. You remember? He was the one who was with Uncle Paul when they found whatever it was they found.’

‘Came at last to the place in question,’ said Kipsel.

‘Quite.’

‘Which was this place.’

‘Very likely. Happé is supposed to have taken down the notes dictated to him by Uncle Paul, which became the Further Memoirs. Our friend says he’s a Happy. I think what he means is that he descends from an unbroken line of the Happé family. Is that right?’

The big man did not offer to enlighten them. Instead he indicated where their direction lay with a jerk of his chin towards the big house. ‘They’ll be expecting you.’

He walked them through the wood; perhaps marched would be a closer description of their brisk determined progress.

As they came to the edge of the wood the windows of the big house scintillated in the afternoon sunshine which gave an equally rich lustre to its gutters and drain-pipes which Blanchaille realised with a start were made of copper and polished to this ruddy sheen.

‘This is the place?’ he asked, ‘Bad Kruger?’

‘Is Bad Kruger the place?’ Kipsel demanded more subtly.

He was more than a match for both of them. ‘This is it. Bad Kruger. Of course it’s the place. Where else would it be if it wasn’t Bad Kruger? It’s Bad Kruger or nothing.’

I saw how the gardener knocked on the door which was opened immediately and he handed over his companions to a pair of bare-legged attendants most curiously dressed in what looked like checked pyjamas; short pants, loose fitting shirts without arms and big white buttons. I watched as these two attendants took Blanchaille and Kipsel firmly by the hands and drew them inside, the enormous bronze doors closed behind them and the great house presented once again its look of massive solidity as it presided over the perfect lawn flowing past the front steps like a tranquil green river which the gardener now crossed, giving the occasional chuckle to himself as he went, amused no doubt at the foolishness of those who did not know the place when they found it.

Blanchaille and Kipsel were escorted through the great entrance hall with a vaulted roof. Old-fashioned iron lamps hung overhead from long chain pulleys; the walls were decorated with frescoes showing knights on horseback, boys on dolphins, dying dragons, naked maidens, castles, rivers, holy grails and mermaids wearing large golden ear-rings. The place was vast and silent; the only sound their own footsteps, for their barefoot companions made no noise at all. There was a very strong smell, too, a strange mixture of sulphur, mud, salt and above all of soap, and a certain peculiar dampness pervading everything. They made their way down an extraordinary corridor off which led handsome arcades flanked by tall Corinthian columns. The frescoes became more extravagant as they proceeded; angels struck rocky outcrops with golden wands and jets of crystal water burst into the light of day. The mermaids combed their long blonde hair on high rocky promontories, turning their angelic faces to the high-flung spray from the pounding seas below. Plump olive-skinned bathers with a faintly Roman or Grecian look to them, were shown taking to the waters, moving in stately fashion – noses rippling the surface like sea-lions, and their eyes shining like dates.

Blanchaille and Kipsel asked their companions where they were taking them.

For a bath,’ came the wholly unexpected answer. ‘We are the bathing attendants here to introduce our facilities to all the newly arrived guests.’

Here they began to descend a steep flight of stairs where the smell of soap and sulphur was even more pungent and the damp, mouldering air of the place clogged the nostrils.

Kipsel began to show signs of panic, ‘I don’t need a bath,’ he whispered furiously to Blanchaille, despite the fact that his need, and that of Blanchaille, had long been apparent and increasingly unpleasant, even to themselves. The stairs grew even danker and saltier until they issued at last in an enormous underground cave or bathing chamber in the centre of which was a huge bath, a large sunken swimming pool lapping at its tiled lips.

‘Step into the water,’ the bathing attendants invited, ‘as if you were Roman emperors.’

Then I saw Blanchaille and Kipsel remove their heavy walking boots and Blanchaille took off his clothes, though it is true that Kipsel at first attempted to walk into the water fully dressed and had to be restrained and it was only with considerable difficulty, after assuring the attendants that he would undress only if they went away, that he could be persuaded to take off his clothes and, with Blanchaille, stepped into the water which proved far hotter than they had expected and took some time to get used to.

The attendants meanwhile had withdrawn to a small glass booth and were watching them steadily. These attendants in their barefooted, flapping obsequiousness reminded Kipsel of warders, he said, or actor convicts who’d escaped from an old Charlie Chaplin movie. Blanchaille said this was probably because they were dressed in some costume of an earlier period. Kipsel said that one of Blanchaille’s less likeable traits was his pedantic streak. He christened the attendants Mengele and Bormann, a joke which Blanchaille found to be in very bad taste.

Kipsel gained sufficient confidence to float on his back. ‘Have you noticed how the water gets suddenly deeper? In some places I can’t stand.’ He drifted idly in the water with just his nose and his toes visible. Blanchaille stared at Kipsel’s toes which were very white and seemed to fold in on themselves, reminding him of white roots, or of strange mushrooms. The two attendants in their glass booth continued to watch them closely.

When at length they stepped out of the bath it was to find their clothes had disappeared. The attendant stepped forward and Mengele explained that the clothes had gone, as he put it, for the burning. The attendants offered towels. They were shown the row of saunas, the Turkish baths and the Turkish showers which were followed by the freezing plunge bath one reached by climbing a steep steel ladder and then dropping into, breaking a film of ice. They were shown a choice of soaps, the hairdriers, the pomades, creams, colognes, razors, sponges, scrubbing brushes, loofahs, and invited to make use of some or all of these. The waters in which they had been bathing were highly effective for oto-laryngological ailments, said Bormann, radioactive of course and slightly odorous, and so showering was advisable after taking the waters. They might feel rather tired a little later, said Mengele, but this was quite usual. They should go and lie down if they felt tired. There would be a place for them to lie down.

After their showers they were directed to the relaxation room, a chamber of the utmost modernity carved into the rock, glass-walled, softly and luxuriously furnished with leather loungers and a variety of ultraviolet sunbeds. There was also on offer, it seemed, among the many therapies: massage, electric roller-beds, acupunture, aromatherapy, colonic irrigation, physiotherapy, meditation and drinks, both hard and soft, as well as mud baths, a gymnasium, and, for those who felt they needed them, a valuable course of rejuvenating, fresh-cell injections. At short notice, the attendants also offered to arrange for inhalations and osteopathy.

These offers were declined. And as he stepped into the shower I heard Blanchaille put it with simple dignity, ‘to be clean is enough.’

Afterwards, with their hair clean, freshly shaved, deodorised and shining, they were dressed in soft and fluffy cream towelling robes with the golden letters B.K. prominently blocked above the breast pockets. I saw them led back up the stairs and through the corridors and arcades and then up a further flight of stairs into the dining room.

Kipsel could not help trembling in his towelling robe as he stood in the doorway of the crowded dining-room feeling, as he confessed to Blanchaille with a half-apologetic, rueful smile, that he really hadn’t believed that he’d ever see the light of day again when the attendants marched them into the sunken bathing hall. This notion of washing before entry is a bit bloody quaint, not so? I mean, you know Blanchie, it reminds me of going swimming, when they used to have one of those freezing foot baths with disinfectant you had to slop through. I hated that. I always hopped it.’

‘There is no hopping here,’ said Blanchaille briskly. ‘Here I get the feeling that they do everything by the book. Unless you go into the baths you can’t join the others.’

‘It reminds me of Lynch’s thoughts on salvation. Do you remember his Clean Living Fallacy?’ Kipsel said.

Who could forget it? This was Lynch’s answer to the morbid teachings of the Margaret Brethren on sudden death and inevitable damnation. The Margaret Brethren taught them that by going about in a state of sin knowing not what the day brought forth they risked the wrath of God: a motor car accident, a sudden electrocution, asphyxiation, choking, or one of the hundred hidden ways in which God might strike and send the sinner to judgement unshriven, unprepared and irredeemable. Death in the state of mortal sin would deprive the sinner of any chance ever again of heavenly bliss, and even a venial sin would plummet the sinner to purgatory where sufferings were just as bad and the period of confinement so vast that by comparison all the time which had passed since the creation of the cosmos to the present day seemed no longer than a millionth of a second. Lynch savaged this doctrine by pointing out that precisely the same fear possessed people who hoped, if knocked down by a motor car, to be wearing clean underpants. In the eschatology of the Margaret Brethren, Lynch explained to them, God was reduced to a bad driver, the human being to a hit-and-run victim and the soul to the status of an article of underwear.

This mere mention of Lynch made them both wonder and look around them as if hoping that they might spy the little priest lurking about. Perhaps they might ask him whether he thought people here lived by the book and if so whether the book was any good and life lived by it worth the trouble?

They were in the dining-room now, a magnificent iron and glass pavilion which looked rather like a huge bird cage. There were many tables and many diners. Obligatory portraits of President Kruger hung on the walls. In the centre a fountain kept its awkward watery balance in a great stone basin shaped like a giant baptismal font. All the diners wore the same creamy towelling robes and all looked freshly scrubbed. A short, square, capable looking woman in a dark blue uniform which gave her the look of a nurse, though there was also something vaguely military about her, stepped forward. There were black epaulettes on her uniform and silver stars that served as buttons and her bearing was upright and disciplined. Clearly someone not to be trifled with. But her smile was open and genuine and her welcome warm. She was smoking a short, thin black cheroot.

Though there were none of the faces they half-hoped, dared perhaps, in their wildest imagination to find, there were all around them familiar countenances. Surely that grey-haired old gentleman was a former prime minister who was said to have retired to his farm in Swellendam to raise bees? And was that a necklace of golden coins he was wearing threaded on a piece of string around his neck? (As they were to discover it was not string, but fishing tackle that served best for this purpose.) Here surely was the origin of the legend of the golden crowns which all who reached the last refuge would receive. Some of the women, with considerable ingenuity, had designed jewellery, elaborate harps or butterflies made entirely of gold coins, and some of the rougher looking men, perhaps farmers or rugby players in former lives and who could hardly be expected to go in for bodily decoration or for fancy jewellery, had fashioned their coins into large gold rings, chains, and chunky medallions which nestled in the thick black hair of their chests. A few held golden flutes and some played on them, rather badly but with great enthusiasm.

The matron followed their glances. ‘Patience. We have such a wide variety of people in Bad Kruger. We are many things to many people – a club for retired gentlefolk, an old folks’ home, an old boys’ reunion, a retirement village, a sheltered accommodation scheme, a hospital, a shelter for the incurably desolate and an asylum for patriots. You are perhaps looking for people you know? It will take a while to recognise all those who are here, and not everyone comes down to dinner. Some stay in their rooms. You’ll have time enough to look for them. Bad Kruger was never built to hold our present numbers. We must arrange two or three sittings for each meal – just as they did on the trains.’

The food was served and the wine went round. The meal was good, if rather heavy. Soup, followed by veal in a thick cream sauce, fried potatoes and solid wine which they took from a carafe at the table. The waiters wore black trousers and rather grubby white bunny jackets fastened with a single brass button, their black bowties were scruffy and they lounged against the walls and muttered things among themselves in the manner of waiters the world over, bored between courses. They looked as if they had once worked on the trains, Blanchaille thought. They had that characteristic air about them, a truculent and a rather rough bonhomie. Also there was a slight roll to the way they walked, as if the room were moving.

In the centre of the room the fountain played. Matron explained: ‘The fountain is known as the Afrika Stimme, or the African Voice. When Uncle Paul arrived here with his valet Happé he found the place in ruins. It had been a spa once, it was to have been a palace of health visited by the crowned heads of Europe and was founded by one Pringsheim with casinos above, baths below. Built in 1875 at a time when the great spas of Europe were beginning to draw the rich and famous to them, Pringsheim knew of the link between wealth and power as well as the incessant interest aroused in rich and successful people by their bowels, their colons and their irrigation systems. He understood their obsession with health. He understood that the rich and beautiful and powerful needed to purge themselves of the grime which inevitably accumulated in mastering the world. This spa was founded upon an incredible hot-water spring. Such was its heat that it was known to the locals as the Afrika Stimme. You’ve seen the bathing halls below, those enormous, moist, echoing places. The curative properties of the steaming, radioactive waters were believed to be miraculous and have been known since Roman times when legionaries were said to have bathed here in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. Pringsheim planned for these healing waters to wash away the sins of the worldly. Pringsheim was ambitious. He built wonderful new bathrooms, steam rooms, mud rooms, inhalatoriums. There were nozzles and sprays and dunk baths, plunge pools, massage rooms, radon chambers. There were waters for drinking, for irrigation, for warming, curing, strengthening, purging, saving. Alas, tragedy struck. The great casino was no sooner built, where we now sit, than the spring died. Stopped dead one day and would not flow again. Pringsheim shot himself. For a time the place was empty and I believe after that an asylum was established for a short while. However it was quite unsuitable for lunatics who drowned in the mineral water swimming pool, choked in the mud baths, strangled one another with inhalant tubes. The building fell into disuse, into ruin – and that is how Uncle Paul and his valet Happé found it.

‘Uncle Paul did not hesitate. He knew the curative properties of the water, these had been analysed and found to contain various chemicals: lithium, manganese, phosphoric acid, fluorine, caesium, and even a tiny touch of arsenic, besides, of course, being radioactive. Fifteen mach units of radon was the measurement, good for the blood, for breathing problems, for arthritis, rheumatism, for just about anything you care to mention. He knew this, but that wasn’t the main attraction. The main attraction was the hot spring, the African Voice. It seemed fated. Intended by God. It was a sign. Of course they told him that the spring had failed. That it would never flow again. The old man is reported to have said nothing, merely to have asked Happé to help him over to the base of the fountain you see there, and proceeded to strike it with his walking stick. And the spring flowed again. Those around him understood the significance of that gesture, they read their Bibles regularly, they knew the story of Moses striking the rock in the desert and finding water. They knew of the wanderings in the desert of the Israelites in search of the Promised Land. They knew the old man had made his choice. In a sense he had come home, he had realised his dream. The spring flowed again. He had made a home for others to come home to.

‘Two events were crucial in driving the old man to this place. The story of the Thirstland Trekkers of the 1870 haunted Kruger, Happé writes. Perhaps you know it? The Thirstland Trekkers were not content even with a pure Boer Republic. Even there they felt the lack of freedom, even there they felt constrained, even there when they had what they wanted of Africa they dreamed of yet another Promised Land, a heavenly Republic beyond the horizon. They dreamed, in a word, of Beulah, the Promised Land, Eden, Shangri-La. It was a vision which drew this particular party of Boers to trek forever onwards to the sacred laager. It carried this small desperate party of six hundred or so men, women and children through the Kalahari Desert “dying as they went”, according to one historian. The end is sad. The dream drew them not to Beulah but to a steamy, fever-ridden province owned, not by Jehovah, but by Catholic Portugal. They set off, as Uncle Paul told Happé, those poor haunted brave Boers in search of heaven only to end in the hands of Portuguese market-gardeners! The special significance of this trek, said Uncle Paul, exposed the vital character of the Boers. They were destined to trek, but the mistake of the Thirstland Trekkers was that they trekked away outward, whereas the true trek was not one which covered territory but one that moved forever inward. An interior trek, an internal journey to the centre of themselves. This was the paradox at the heart of the true Boer, that he must continue to trek and yet he could never expect to arrive in the Promised Land. Kruger saw the fate which awaited his people if the trek failed. He saw it in the two colleagues closest to him, he saw it in Smuts who turned from general to bank robber overnight, and, worse, went on to show considerable flair for world diplomacy. Kruger did not know which was the greater scandal. And then there was General Piet Cronje, whose defeat in the Battle of Paardeberg and his subsequent surrender to the British enemy had been one of the most cruel calamities of the war and hastened the end of the struggle against the British Empire. He saw his enemies, the foreign outlanders, the gold bugs, throwing parties and buying beers all round, inviting Boer generals to sit on the boards of their companies. And then in the final months of his life he heard of General Cronje’s horrible plans in St Louis, Mississippi. For what was the old general preparing to do? He was preparing to stage, for gawping tourists, his Last Stand at Paardeberg. According to Happé this distressed the old man terribly. “Can you imagine it, can you imagine it?” he is supposed to have said. “Can you see, these Americans, queuing up to see this great disaster inflicted on our suffering people?” The knowledge tortured him. Visitors to the Kruger House in Clarens gave him graphic descriptions of the preparation for Cronje’s little piece of theatre in faraway St Louis.’