The Spiral House by Claire Robertson

Author:Claire Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781415205228
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

12

IN THESE LAST DAYS OF THE UNION, CAPTAIN TEICHERT IS gripped by the idea that something will happen to spoil or thwart the coming first day of the new republic, that it will happen here, and that he, Valentine Teichert, is the one to stop it. Slagterskop’s Special Branch policeman locks away his files and thinks, then rises from his desk.

Pretoria is preoccupied with its own fears about the day; Teichert will not trouble Pretoria with his plan; he will use the materials he finds here. First, he visits the headmaster of the Hoërskool Agricus and has his proposition endorsed. Then he makes the rounds of the butchery and bottle store, arranges things with the hotel and travels to the next town to spend his own money at the ok Bazaars. On a Saturday afternoon after the rugby match he waits under the palm tree outside the Slagterskop Hotel; the headmaster delivers six tall boys; the policeman leads them through the hotel to a garden at the back where coals glow in a split steel drum and quart bottles of Lion Lager bob in melting ice in a metal washtub. On a table under a fran-gipani tree six new khaki bush hats jostle in a row. There is a board leaning against the trunk of the little tree; on it is a map showing the border region; a pearly pin lances the ‘e’ in ‘Slagterskop’.

Warily at first – he is suddenly unsure about the hats – Teichert describes the lurking threat to the coming republic. The boys’ grunts carry him along and he grows more confident as their eyes lock on his. From Westminster and Moscow it comes, he tells them, to attack this brave, this special nation, out of jealousy, out of blindness. He tells them, ‘You ask yourselves, what can I do? But Captain Teichert says to you, sons: you must ask, what does my Fatherland want me to do?’

He nods, and nods again, then, realising from their waiting faces that he will have to treat the question as more than rhetorical, he tells them. After this he feeds them roasted meat and beer, has them repeat an oath of loyalty to the Afrikaner nation as each receives his hat. He listens as the boys mutter about this great thing they are part of, voices gruff or hoarse, bumping fists on one another’s shoulders to outdo the other with their theories and plans. At nine o’clock the headmaster arrives to collect them, each boy clutching a hat and sleepy with beer and brotherhood, and the teacher and Teichert nod and shake hands like men of serious purpose who have done a serious and necessary thing.

The next night or the night after that the boys and the security policeman form what they call, among themselves, a commando. Teichert drives the truck, the boys are in the rear, encased by the vehicle’s high sides as it sways and jolts along a dirt track for an hour, then turns onto the firebreak that marks the country’s border.

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