Christopher Hope - Kruger's Alp

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.