Riotous Assembly (17 page)

Behind him in the hall Els had left the stage and was telling a plain-clothes cop in the
front row how he would stuff him if he went on laughing. On the platform Kommandant van
Heerden had had his third heart attack.

 In Piemburg Prison Jonathan did not share his sister’s belief in the dignity of
God. After a lifetime spent in the service of the Lord and a month in Bottom he felt
unable any longer to believe that whatever had chosen to reveal itself to him in the
depths of the swimming-pool had been even vaguely beneficent. As to its having been sane,
his view of the world and its ways led him to suppose that its Maker must have been out of
His mind.

“I thould think He must have needed a rest on the seventh day,” he told the old warder who
insisted on bringing him consolation, “and as for its being good. I think the facts
speak for themselves. Whatever was responsible for the Creation cannot possibly have
had anything good in mind. Quite the opposite if you ask me.”

The old warder was shocked. “You’re the first man to occupy that cell,” he said, “that
didn’t come round to being converted before he was hanged.”

“It may have something to do with the fact that I am innocent,” said the Bishop.

“Oh is that what it is,” said the old warder with a yawn. “They all say that,” and shuffled
off to give his advice to Konstabel Els who was practising in Top. Alone in his cell the
Bishop lay on the floor and listened to the noises that reached him from the gallows. By
the sound of things he was less likely to die from a broken neck than from some appalling
form of hernia.

 Executioner Els wasn’t finding his new job at all easy. For one thing he was fed
up with all the work it entailed. He had had to empty the Gallows Shed of all the junk that
had accumulated there for the past twenty years. With the help of half a dozen black
convicts, he had moved several tons of old furniture, garden rollers, disused
cat-o’-nine-tails, and corroded lavatory buckets before he could begin to get the
scaffold ready for its task, and when the shed was empty he was not sure what to do.

“Pull the lever,” the old warder told him when Els asked him how the thing worked, and the
new hangman had returned to the shed and had pulled the lever. After falling twenty feet to
the floor of the shed as the trap opened beneath him, Els began to think he was getting the
hang of the contraption. He tried it out with several unsuspecting black convicts
standing there, and they seemed to disappear quite satisfactorily. He was
disappointed that he wasn’t allowed to try it out properly.

“You can’t do that,” the old warder told him, “it’s not legal. The best thing I can
suggest is a sack filled with sand.”

“Fussy old sod,” thought Els and sent the convicts off to fill some sacks with sand. They
were quite satisfactory as stand-ins and didn’t complain when the noose was fitted round
their necks which was more than could be said for the black convicts. The trouble was that
the bottom dropped out every time one was hanged. Els went back into Bottom to consult the
old warder.

“He’s not here any longer,” the Bishop told him.

“Where’s he gone to?” Els asked.

“He’s applied for sick leave,” the Bishop said. “He’s got stomach trouble.”

“It’s the same with those sacks,” said Els and left the Bishop wondering which was worse,
hanging or disembowelling.

“I don’t suppose it makes a great deal of difference,” he thought finally. “In any case
there is nothing I can do about it.”

 Kommandant van Heerden did not share the Bishop’s fatalism. His third heart
attack had convinced him that he too was under sentence of death, but he had decided that
there was something he could do about it. He had been assisted in reaching this
conclusion by Konstabel Oosthuizen whose experience of major surgery made him an
unrivalled source of medical information.

“The most important thing is to have a healthy donor,” the Konstabel told him, “after
that it’s a piece of cake, compared to my operation.” Kommandant van Heerden had hurried
off to avoid having to listen to a description of the operation in which the greater
portion of Konstabel Oosthuizen’s digestive tract figured so memorably.

Sitting in his office he listened to Luitenant Verkramp discussing very loudly the
case of his uncle who had died of heart trouble. The Kommandant had noticed recently
that an extraordinarily large proportion of the Verkramp family had succumbed to what
was evidently an hereditary defect and the manner of their passing had been uniformly
so atrocious that he could only hope that Verkramp would go the same way. The Luitenant’s
solicitude was getting on his nerves, and he was equally tired of inquiries about how he
felt.

“I feel all right, damn it,” he told Verkramp a hundred times.

“Ah,” Verkramp said sadly, “that’s often the way it seems. Now my Uncle Piet said he was
feeling fine the day he died but it came on all of a sudden.”

“I don’t suppose it was quick,” the Kommandant said.

“Oh no. Very slow and agonizing.”

“I thought it would be,” said the Kommandant.

“A dreadful business,” said Verkramp. “He-”

“I don’t want to hear any more,” the Kommandant shouted.

“I just thought you’d like to know,” said Verkramp and went out to tell Konstabel
Oosthuizen that irritability was a sure sign of incurable heart disease.

In the meantime the Kommandant had tried to occupy his mind by devising a suitably
caustic reply to the Commissioner of Police, who had written ordering him to see that
the men under his command got plenty of outdoor exercise and had even hinted that it
might be a good thing to organize a brothel for the police barracks in Piemburg. The
Kommandant could see that Konstabel Els’ confession was still preying on the mind of the
Police Commissioner.

“How do you spell taxidermist?” he asked Konstabel Oosthuizen.

“Oh, I wouldn’t go to one of them,” the Konstabel replied. “You need a proper
surgeon.”

“I wasn’t thinking of going to a taxidermist,” the Kommandant shouted. “I just want
to know how to spell the word.”

“The first thing to do is to find a suitable donor,” the Konstabel went on, and the
Kommandant had given up the attempt to finish the letter. “Why don’t you have a word with
Els? He should be able to fix you up with one.”

“I’m not having a kaffir,” said the Kommandant firmly. “I’d rather die.”

“That’s what my cousin said the very day he passed on,” Verkramp began.

“Shut up,” snarled the Kommandant, and went into his office and shut the door. He sat
down at his desk and began to think about Konstabel Els’ capacity for supplying a donor.
Half an hour later he picked up the phone.

 It was with some surprise that Jonathan Hazelstone learnt that Kommandant van
Heerden had put in a request to see him.

“Come to gloat, I suppose,” he said when the Governor brought him the note from the
Kommandant. He was even more astonished at the way the request had been worded.
Kommandant van Heerden did not actually beg an audience with the Bishop, but his note
spoke of “a meeting perhaps in the privacy of the prison chapel, to discuss a matter of
mutual interest to us both”. Jonathan racked his brains to think of some matter of
mutual interest, and apart from his coming execution which Kommandant van Heerden
must have had considerable interest in if his pains to achieve it were anything to go by,
he couldn’t think of any interests he might share with the Kommandant. At first he was
inclined to refuse the request, but he was persuaded to go by the old warder, whose bowel
trouble had stopped, now that Els had ceased rupturing the sacks.

“You never know. He might have some good news for you,” the warder said, and the Bishop
had agreed to the meeting.

They met in the prison chapel one afternoon just a week before the execution was due to
take place. The Bishop clanked over firmly chained and manacled to find the Kommandant
sitting in a pew waiting for him. At the Kommandant’s suggestion the two men made their
way up the aisle and knelt side by side at the altar rail, out of hearing of the warders at
the chapel door. Above them in the windows scenes of edifying horror done in late
nineteenth-century stained glass filtered the sunlight that managed to penetrate the
dense colours and the bars behind the glass, until the whole chapel was glowing with maroon
gore.

While Kommandant van Heerden offered a short prayer the Bishop, having declined the
Kommandant’s invitation to say one, gazed up at the windows awestruck. He had never
realized before how many ways there were of putting people to death. The windows
provided a comprehensive catalogue of executions and ranged from simple crucifixion
to burning at the stake. St Catherine on the wheel entirely merited her fame as a
firework, the Bishop decided, while St Sebastian would have made an ideal trademark for
pincushions. One after another the martyrs met their terrible ends with a degree of
realism that seemed to mark the artist out as a genius and an insane one at that. The
Bishop particularly liked the electric chair in one window. With a truly Victorian
obsession for naturalism combined with high drama, the figure in the chair was
portrayed encased in an aura of electric-blue sparks. Looking up at it, the Bishop was
glad that he had agreed to the meeting. To have seen these windows was to know that his own
end on the gallows, no matter how badly bungled by the incompetent Els, would be
positively enjoyable by comparison with the sufferings portrayed here.

“I suppose I can be grateful for small mercies,” he said to himself as the Kommandant
mumbled his final prayer which in the circumstances the Bishop thought was rather
curiously worded.

“For what we are about to receive may the good Lord make us truly thankful, Amen,” said
the Kommandant.

“Well?” said the Bishop after a short pause.

“You’ll be glad to hear that your sister is doing very well at Fort Rapier,” the
Kommandant whispered.

“It’s nice to know.”

“Yes, she is in the best of health,” said the Kommandant.

“Hm,” said the Bishop.

“She has put on some weight,” said the Kommandant. “But that is only to be expected
with hospital food.” He paused, and the Bishop began to wonder when he was coming to the
point.

“Overweight is something to be avoided,” said the Kommandant. “Obesity is the cause
of more premature deaths than cancer.”

“I daresay,” said the Bishop, who had lost two stone since he had been in prison.

“Particularly in middle age,” whispered the Kommandant. The Bishop turned his head
and looked at him. He was beginning to suspect that the Kommandant was indulging in a
rather tasteless joke.

“You haven’t come here to lecture me on the dangers of being overweight, I hope,” he
said. “I thought your note said that you wanted to discuss something of interest to us
both, and frankly obesity isn’t one of my problems.”

“I don’t suppose it is,” said the Kommandant sadly.

“Well then?”

“I have trouble with it myself.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with me,” said the Bishop.

“It can lead to all sorts of complications. It’s one of the main causes of heart
disease,” said the Kommandant.

“Anyone would think from the way you go on that I was in danger of having a coronary
when in fact I don’t think I am going to be allowed that particular luxury.”

“I wasn’t really thinking of you,” said the Kommandant.

“I didn’t suppose you were.”

“It’s more my own obesity I’m thinking of,” continued van Heerden.

“Well, if that’s the only thing you’ve come here to talk to me about, I think I’ll go back
to my cell, I have something better to think about in the hours left to me than the state of
your health.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” said the Kommandant mournfully.

“I can’t think what else you supposed I would do. You surely didn’t come here for
sympathy. Have a heart.”

“Thank you,” said the Kommandant.

“What did you say?”

“Thank you,” said the Kommandant.

“Thank you for what?”

“For a heart.”

“For a what?”

“A heart.”

The Bishop looked at him incredulously. “A heart?” he said finally. “What the hell are
you talking about?”

Kommandant van Heerden hesitated before continuing. “I need a new heart,” he said
finally.

“It hasn’t escaped my notice,” said the Bishop, “that a change of heart would do you a
power of good, but to be frank I think you’re too far gone for any prayers of mine to help
you. In any case I am afraid that I have lost faith in the power of prayer.”

“I’ve tried prayer already,” said the Kommandant, “but it hasn’t done any good. I still
get palpitations.”

“Perhaps if you truly repented,” the Bishop said.

“It’s no good. I’m a doomed man,” said the Kommandant.

“Metaphorically I suppose we all are,” said the Bishop. “It happens to be part of the
condition of man, but if you don’t mind my saying so I’m a damned sight more doomed than you
are, and it’s thanks to you that I’m going to be hanged next Friday.”

There was a long silence in the chapel while the two men considered their futures. It
was broken by the Kommandant.

“I don’t suppose you’d do something for me,” he said at last. “A last bequest.”

“A last bequest?”

“A small thing really and nothing you’ll have much use for.”

“You’ve got a nerve coming here and asking to be included in my will,” the Bishop said
irritably.

“It’s not in your will,” the Kommandant said desperately.

“No? Well where the hell is it?”

“In your chest.”

“What is?”

“Your heart.”

“You keep going on about my heart,” said the Bishop. “I wish you would stop it. It’s bad
enough knowing you’re going to die without having someone harp on about your heart.
Anyone would think you wanted the thing.”

“I do,” said the Kommandant simply.