Riotous Assembly (21 page)

Dr Erasmus was frantic. “Who said this was beating?” he yelled, slapping the withered
object that hung out of the old lady’s chest. (She had in fact been run over by a
twenty-five-ton truck while crossing the road.) “This hasn’t beaten for days and, when it
last worked, it didn’t bloody beat. It winced once in a while. I wouldn’t feed this heart to a
starving dog let alone put it into that maniac’s body.” He sat down and wept.

After half an hour during which the mortuary was searched again and again, and various
possible donors in the hospital wards had their deaths hastened by teams of desperate
surgeons who came masked and predatory to stare at them and feel their pulses hopefully,
Dr Erasmus pulled himself together and taking a quick tot of ether addressed the heart
team.

“Gentlemen and ladies,” he said, “what we have all been witness to this afternoon is of
such a regrettable and dreadful nature that the sooner we forget about it the better. As
you know I never wanted to undertake this transplant in the first place. We were forced to
agree to it by that bloody lunatic there.” He pointed to Kommandant van Heerden’s
unconscious body. “We acted under immense pressure and, thank heaven, in absolute
secrecy. And now owing to the prison authorities’ delay in letting us have the donor,
and looking at her injuries I can fully appreciate why there was this delay, we are
quite unable to proceed with the operation. I intend to stitch the patient’s chest up and
leave his own heart beating perfectly healthily in place.”

There were murmurs of protest from the other members of the transplant team.

“Yes, I know how you feel and given any further provocation I would agree to remove his
heart and let the bastard rot. But I have decided against it. Thanks to the secrecy that
surrounds this whole irregular business I have a better plan. I think it will be better
to allow the Kommandant to remain in complete ignorance of the good fortune that has
prevented him from getting this,” and Dr Erasmus slapped the old woman’s heart again. “We
will simply maintain the fiction that the transplant has been completed successfully
and I have every confidence that his stupidity is so colossal that it will never cross
his mind to question our statement that he has a new heart.”

Amid congratulations and a few cheers, the eminent surgeon turned to Kommandant van
Heerden and stitched him up.

 An hour later the Kommandant woke up in his room. He felt rather sick and the wound
in his chest hurt when he moved but otherwise he didn’t seem to feel any ill-effects from
his operation. He took a deep tentative breath and listened to his new heart. It sounded
perfect.

As the great cloud of black dust swelled out in the centre of the prison courtyard and the
last piece of rotten masonry fell with a final thud, an awestruck silence settled on the
black convicts cowering in their cells. Konstabel Els, treading on Governor Schnapps’
scrotum as a last tribute to the man who had ruined his career as a hangman, clambered
painfully to the top of the pile of debris and stared into the murk. It was hardly a peak
in Darien and the prospect ahead could hardly be called pacific but in his own way
ex-Hangman Els was a proud man. At the very centre of a slowly expanding ball of black
dust, Konstabel Els knew that he had once again put his great gifts of annihilation to
good use. Below him lay the bodies of Governor Schnapps, the Chaplain and, he still hoped,
the man he had attempted to hang. He, Hangman Els, had topped them all and no one would
ever forget the day that Els had hanged a man in Piemburg Prison. He had made more than a
reputation for himself, he had made a name, a great name. And as Els clambered down from
the mound of debris and emerged dazed from the black cloud, he had no regrets.

Naked, bruised and black as the ace of spades, Els stepped forth to meet the world. He
walked slowly and unsteadily up the great courtyard and as he walked men began to pour out
of their prison cells where they had been waiting in silent fear, while the first hanging
Piemburg Prison had known for twenty years took place. From every doorway overlooking the
courtyard the convicts poured to gaze at the scene of disaster.

At first they stood and stared in silent wonder, and then a great cry went up, followed by
shouts of joy and presently a man broke into song and a moment later the great courtyard
was a mass of dancing and singing men who stamped their feet and clapped their hands in an
ecstatic and triumphant dance. One thousand black convicts, Zulus to a man, danced as
they had never danced before round the mound that had once been the dreaded Death House.
Rank after rank they stamped and swayed and as the earth and sky reverberated to their
dance they sang.

And their song was a great requiem of joy at the passing of Els, Kaffir-Killer Els,
Hangman Els, the scourge of the Zulus. In their midst stamping and dancing and singing for
dear life, naked and black as the best of them, was Els.

Someone threw a match on to the pile of masonry and rotten wood and a moment later the
remains of the scaffold were ablaze. As the dust slowly subsided a plume of black smoke
arose into the cloudless sky. Rising almost vertically in the still air the black plume
signalled far and wide that something extraordinary and significant had occurred.

The swaying convicts, advancing with their knees raised high for the emphatic stamp of
their feet and backing again for another triumphant surge, accompanied the flames and
the roar of the fire with their endless chant.

 “Els is dead, Kaffir-Killer Els,

Gone to the devil where his soul belongs

Raper of our women, killer of our men

We won’t see the swine again.”

 The song was picked up by the Zulus in the street outside the prison and they took
up the refrain. From house to house, from street to street, the chant spread like wildfire as
servants poured into the streets to watch the smoke of the funeral pyre rise over Piemburg
Prison. Within an hour all Piemburg reverberated to the Zulus’ chant. Lying in his bed
in Piemburg Hospital Kommandant van Heerden dozily caught the refrain and smiled. It
seemed a good omen. He began to hum it cheerfully. It put him in good heart.

 As dusk fell the convicts were still dancing and singing. In the administrative
block the warders cowered in terror and peered fearfully through the bars at the black
figures silhouetted against the flames. The old warder cursed Els and his bloody hanging
but he knew better than to try to put a stop to the celebrations. He wasn’t going to get
himself torn to bits by the mob by trying to intervene and when he rang the police
station to ask for reinforcements he had been told by Luitenant Verkramp that the police
station was itself under siege and he would have to pray and wait for the exuberance to
die down of its own accord. Verkramp had not been exaggerating. The streets of Piemburg
were filled with dancing crowds. Traffic ground to a halt and white drivers walked home or
spent the night in their offices rather than risk trying to drive through the excited mobs.
Not that there was any sign of anger among the crowds, only a great sense of liberation and
joy.

As the plane for London passed low over Piemburg that night a large cheerful clergyman
drew the attention of his companion to the fire and the crowds dancing in the
streets.

“So all within is livelier than before,” he remarked enigmatically.

His companion put down the catalogue of rubber goods she had been reading. “I’m sure
you’ll make a very good college chaplain,” she said and sighed, “but I doubt if I’ll find a
Zulu cook in London.”

 It was only a month before Kommandant van Heerden was well enough to leave
hospital. His new heart had shown no signs of being rejected and the doctors were
delighted with his progress. There had been a little trouble over the matter of
injections and it had taken six male nurses all their strength to hold the Kommandant
down, but apart from that he had been a model patient. After a fortnight he had been
allowed out of bed and only then had he learnt the full story of the tragedy at Piemburg
Prison.

“It was a miracle the ambulance men managed to get the body away in time,” he told Dr
Erasmus. “Another minute and I wouldn’t be here today.”

Dr Erasmus had to agree. “A genuine miracle,” he said.

“You’re quite certain there won’t be any rejection of the new heart?” the Kommandant
asked, and was relieved that the doctor was so confident all would be well.

“I can honestly say,” said Dr Erasmus, “that to all intents and purposes the heart
that beats in your chest at this moment might well have been the one you were born with,” and
with this assurance that there would be no rejection, the Kommandant smiled happily to
himself.

When he finally left hospital, the Kommandant took a month’s leave and spent it on the
beach at Umhloti acquiring a healthy tan and reading books about the Hazelstone family.
For a while he toyed with the idea of changing his name to van Heerden-Hazelstone. “After
all, I’m practically one of the family,” he thought, but he gave up the idea finally as
being not in the best of taste. Instead he cultivated an air of arrogance which
irritated Luitenant Verkramp and was ignored by everybody else. The doctors had told
him that his new heart needed plenty of exercise and the Kommandant tried to get out of
his office and walk about the town as much as possible.

His favourite stroll took him up Town Hill to Jacaranda Park where he would wander down
the drive to the house. It was still empty and there was talk of turning it into a museum
or even a National Park. In the meantime Kommandant van Heerden liked to go and sit on
the stoep and recall the events of the week that had changed his life so momentously.

He often thought of Konstabel Els and now that Els was dead he felt quite sorry. There
had been a good side to the Konstabel’s nature, he supposed, and he had to admit that Els
had saved his life more than once.

“If it hadn’t been for Els and that damned gun, I wouldn’t be here today,” he said to
himself before remembering that it had been Els’ lunacy that had caused his heart
trouble in the first place. Still he could afford to be magnanimous now. Els died as he had
lived, killing people. “He went with a swing,” he thought, and recalled nostalgically the
Konstabel’s epic struggle with the Dobermann. It reminded him of a case he had read about
in the paper recently. It concerned a coloured convict on a prison farm in Northern
Zululand who had bitten a guard dog to death before hanging it. The fellow’s name had
been Harbinger, which the Kommandant thought sounded vaguely familiar. Anyway he had
been given twenty lashes for indecent assault and the Kommandant thought he deserved
them.

He settled himself comfortably in a wicker chair and looked out over the lawn at the
new bust of Sir Theophilus which he had had erected at his own expense - or rather at the
expense of the reward money Els no longer had any use for. He had paid the taxidermist too
for his trouble, and had taken the stuffed Toby and put it in his office at the police
station where it gave him an opportunity to wax eloquent to the new Konstabels on the
virtues of Konstabel Els who had killed the dog to save his Kommandant’s life.

All in all, the Kommandant reflected, he had good cause to be happy. The world was a
good place to be in. South Africa was white still and would remain so. But above all he knew
that he merited the high place he held in Piemburg and that his greatest ambition had
finally been achieved. Within his chest there beat the heart of an English gentleman.