A SONG IN THE MORNING (7 page)

The detectives parked the escort car. They would wait outside for Frikkie and his assistant until their work was clone.

The assistant drove to the gates. The lights beamed down on them. A television camera jutting from the wall followed them. By a hidden hand the gates glided open. The car drove inside. The gates closed behind. More gates in front.

An airlock. Close walls. An iron grille for a roof.

Through a glass panel a warrant officer looked down into the car from his control centre.

The assistant wound down his window, showed their two cards perfunctorily, then passed their hand guns up to the waiting hand. It was two minutes to four o'clock. The gates ahead of them opened and they drove on.

The hangman and the hangman's assistant had reached their place of work. All of the "condemns" who had been sentenced to death in courts throughout the Republic were brought to Beverly Hills to while away the months before their appeal, before the State President deliberated on the matter of clemency. All of the condemns whose appeal failed, whose plea for clemency was rejected, died on the Republic's single gallows beam in Beverly Hills.

They were in a small parkland. Their headlights caught a startled antelope and a warthog in the white light. Frikkie thought it a good thing that a hanging gaol should harbour a small nature park between the perimeter walls and the cell blocks. He liked to see the animals. If he had been asked he would have said that he thought it unfortunate that the cells of the condemns did not have windows that looked out onto the animals. The windows were set too high for the condemns to see out. But Frikkie was never asked what he thought, and he would not have ventured an opinion of any matter that was not his business.

As soon as he was inside the administration with its cathedral steps he heard the singing. The singing used to upset him when he first came to the old Pretoria Central with his uncle. He had learned through his uncle's indifference to accept it. The whole of A section and B section singing, all of the Black condemns. Not a sound from C section, the White condemns hardly ever sang. Frikkie de Kok was a regular churchgoer, he knew his hymns. He'd never heard singing the like of that in Beverly Hills on the mornings that he worked. Wonderful hymns that the Blacks had learned in the mission schools and their own fine natural rhythm. When the Black condemns sang about Jesus, then they sang with feeling and with love. Best thing. He had many times told his assistant, the singing helped their work.

They were escorted to the duty officer's room. They were given coffee.

The singing helped because it calmed the condemns who were to be handled that morning. The singing gave them strength, seemed to drug them, meant they didn't give any trouble.

Creamy coffee and sugar. Only half a cup. As Frikkie had told his assistant, he didn't want his bladder under strain when he was working.

There hadn't been any trouble for years, but the trouble then had been so bad that Frikkie de Kok would never forget it, so if the singing helped to quieten the boys then that was fine by him. His last assistant had packed it in after that piece of trouble. Four condemns had barricaded themselves in a cell and they couldn't be forced out when the execution detail came for them. They'd sent for the riot gas canisters and the whole block had been screaming, and they'd kept Frikkie de Kok waiting. Once they'd opened the doors the execution detail had moved so fast that they hadn't stopped to get their masks off before they reached the gallows building.

The duty officer passed a remark about the weather. He didn't think it would rain, not from the forecast given the previous evening on the S.A.B.C. It hadn't rained for three and a half months in Pretoria so it was a fair bet that it wouldn't rain. Frikkie just acknowledged him. The assistant didn't speak.

Most of them went well. Most of them had a lot of guts.

The Whites always went well, especially after the Blacks were gassed to the gallows. The sort of White that he hanged was the sort of guy who wanted to show that he had more guts than a Black.

At three minutes to five Frikkie de Kok levered himself up from the easy chair. He nodded his thanks to the duty officer for the coffee.

They crossed the prison. There was the slither of their shoes, and the crack of the boots of their escort. There were voices that warned of their approach so that doors could be opened ahead of them. The singing was rising to its pitch.

They climbed the steps.

Frikkie de Kok pushed open the heavy double doors.

This was his preserve, where his orders were not questioned.

He was in the preparation room. A high room, brilliantly lit by a fluorescent strip. There were a dozen men waiting there, all in the uniform of the prison service. He recognised three of them, they were three who were always there. It was a job of work for Frikkie de Kok, but he always marvelled that some made it their business to be present each and every time. The other nine were youngsters, five Black and four White. It was the law of Beverly Hills that every man who served there must attend a hanging. None of these execution virgins caught his eye.

He opened the interior door. He switched on the lights.

No official from the prison service would have presumed to go ahead of him. The gallows room was a blaze of light.

Along the far wall, where the railed steps went below, lay the shadows of the long beam and four nooses. The four ropes above the nooses were coiled and fastened with cotton thread. It was as he had left it the previous day when he had made his arrangements, tested the lever and the trap, measured each rope for the drop, made his calculations based on height and weight.

The district surgeon came to him. There was the first sheen of dawn in the skylight. The district surgeon told him that the four men were in good shape and none of them had asked for sedation. The district surgeon, a pale-faced gangling young man, was the only person that Frikkie de Kok would speak to at this time. That was privileged and valuable information.

He stood on the trap. Firm.

He wrapped his fist on the lever. Shining and oiled.

He looked at the cotton holding up the nooses to chest height. Correct.

He glanced at his watch. Three minutes before half past five.

He nodded to the duty officer waiting at the door of the preparation room. The duty officer raised his personal radio to his mouth.

Frikkie de Kok knew of the crimes for which the four had been convicted. One had stabbed to death a White housewife after they had disagreed on what he should be paid for sweeping her drive. One had raped a six-year-old girl, White, and strangled her. One had shot to death a petrol station attendant during an armed robbery in East London. One had been sentenced to death for ritual witch-craft murder, the killing of two men and the cutting out of their organs for
mud.
To Frikkie de Kok's mind execution by hanging was the correct penalty for such crimes.

He had stipulated in which order the four should be brought down the corridor and into the preparation room.

He had heard once of a mistake, many years ago, before his uncle's time. Two men, one heavy and tall, one slim and small, brought in the wrong order. The small fellow had had the short rope and they'd had to pull on his legs under the trap. The big fellow had been on the long drop and nearly lost his head with his life.

Frikkie de Kok had never made a mistake.

The singing approached him. A tumult of harmony. He liked it when they were brave because that made it easy for him, and if it were easy for him then he could do better by them.

He waved the spectators into the gallows room and over to the far wall. He saw that the governor had arrived in the preparation room. They acknowledged each other. Frikkie straightened his tie.

A good hymn. Not four weeks before that hymn had been sung in his church in Waterkloof. Sung in Afrikaans, of course. Good theme, good words. He had the four freshly laundered white cotton hoods in his hand.

They came fast into the preparation room. The first man had a prison officer supporting one arm and the chaplain the other, the three that followed had a prison officer on each side of them.

They were wide-eyed, they were shivering. In the preparation room the words of the hymn died in their throats and the chaplain sang on alone, lustily. All the reading of the warrants, all the formalities, had been completed back in the cell block . . . time now just to get the work finished.

Frikkie de Kok remembered each face from the view he had had of them in the exercise yard the previous afternoon.

They were in the right order. He nodded his head. No man spoke in the hanging shed, only the chaplain sang. The four whimpered and seemed to fight to find their voices. They were moved inside. Moved onto the trap. If it were one man, or even two, then the assistant would have pinioned the legs, but with four it was necessary for the hangman to take two and his assistant to take two. They moved quickly and quietly behind the men, fastening the leather thongs. The chaplain was in front of them.The chaplain knew he was at God's will, otherwise how could he have looked them in the face.

Hoods on.

Two of them were singing. Muffled, indistinct, quavering.

Nooses round the necks. Frikkie did this himself.

Tightened the knot under each of the left side jaw bones.

He saw the feet in line of the trap. He flicked his hand. The prison officers stepped back, releasing their hold on the condemns.

With both hands he gripped the lever.

* * •

The explosion of the trap.

Jeez lay rigid on his bunk.

His breath came in great pants.

The silence.

He had heard the feet stamping and shuffling on their way to the gallows. He had heard the swell of the singing, seeking out new heights of sympathy. Then the crash of the trap.

An awful sorrowing silence. The singing was to support four men, and the men were gone from where singing could boost them. The singing had ceased with the fall of the trap, cut in mid phrase.

The God awful silence around Jeez, like he was alone, like he was the only man in the bloody place.

He always heard the trap go.

He heard it the day before when the hangman was practising his drops with the earth-filled sacks, he heard it go on the morning of a hanging. As the crow flies or the worm crawls, Jeez lay on his bed just 29 yards from the gallows beam. He heard everything in the hanging room, and everything in the workshop and the washhouse underneath.

They'd be suspended now, they let them hang for twenty minutes. Then there would be the water running in the washhouse as they cleared up the mess after the district surgeon had completed his postmortem. Then there would be the hammering in the workshop as the trusties nailed down the coffin lids. Last there would be the sounds of the revving of an engine and the sounds of the van pulling away, running down the hill.

Beverly Hills wasn't a place for seeing what happened.

Christ, it was a place for hearing.

Listen to a multiple execution.

Singing, trap, silence, water, silence, hammering, van engine.

Those were the sounds of four men getting to be stiffs.

God Almighty, Jeez . . . It was the route they had in mind for Jeez. While he had been at Beverly Hills he had heard the sounds of one hundred and twenty-one guys getting stretched. And now one hundred and twenty-five. Jeez had heard the trap go under each last one of the mothers.

He shouldn't have written the letter all the same.

The letter was weakness. Shouldn't have involved her.

But he had heard the trap go so many times. Shit, and he had to to call for
someone
. . . he felt so alone.

This was a civilised gaol, not like the one a long time back. There were no beatings here, no malnutrition, no rats, no disease, no forced labour. Here, his cell door wouldn't be thrown open without warning for a kicking and a truncheon whipping. No risk that he would be frog marched into a yard and kicked down and shot in the nape of the neck.

This was five star. So bloody civilised that Jeez had sat in a cell for more than a year, a cell that measured six foot by nine foot, while the lawyers debated his life. Three meals a day here, a good medic here, because they wanted him healthy on the day. He had written his letter because he was losing hope.

What were the bastards doing? Why hadn't the bastards got him out?

He hated himself for believing they'd forgotten him.

They'd got him out the last time. Took the bastards long enough, but they'd got him out. They couldn't let a man, one of their own, couldn't let him . . . never finished.

Couldn't let him . . . Course they couldn't. He hated himself when the hope went, because that wasn't the Jeez way.

He was one of a team, a bloody good team, a team that didn't forget the men out in the field.

He was fine on the days when he didn't hear the trap fall.

It was only on those sodding days that the doubts bit.

He'd done them well. He'd kept his mouth shut through interrogation, bloody weeks of it. He'd kept his mouth shut through the trial. He'd kept his mouth shut when the security police from Johannesburg and the intelligence men from Pretoria had come to talk to him in his cell. He hadn't let the team down.

Jeez heard the spurting of the water hose in the washhouse.

On the high ceiling of the cell the bulb brightened.

Another day. God Almighty, it just wasn't possible that the team had forgotten about Jeez.

In an hour, and after he had eaten his breakfast, he would hear the hammering start.

* * •

It was difficult ground for the Minister. Any by-election would be in these days, but the Orange Free State was the heartland of the Afrikaner world. A dozen years before, in Petrusburg and Jacobsdal and Koffiefontein, he'd been cheered to the echo by the White farmers when he talked of the inviolability of the policy of separate development.

Today he would have to speak to the same White farmers with the currency collapsed, with further foreign sanctions in the air, with unrest in the townships, with taxes up, with markets disappearing. No easy matter up here to sell the ending of the homelands policy, to uphold the repeal of the Immorality Act, to defend their record in the collapse of law and order. One thing for the State President and his ministers to talk in Pretoria about dismantling separate development, quite another out in the constituencies to explain to the faithful the reasons for the retreat. They had a big enough majority in Parliament, the National Parly, but by-elections counted. The most recent by-elections had shown the subsidence of the Party's vote and the increase of the pulling power of the Conservative right. The State President was enjoying the greasepaint and the television lights and his broadcasts via satellite to the American networks where he spoke earnestly of reform. The ministers, the donkeys, they were the ones who legged it down to the grass roots to explain that everything that was traditional and taught from the mother's knee was now subject to revision.