Tom Sharpe - Riotous Assembly

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.'