State of Siege

“I’ve kept some clean clothes specially for the occasion, Major. But it’s a hot day. Do you think I need to wear a tie?”

He gave me a wintry smile. “A sense of humour is an excellent thing at times like these. It helps a man to be philosophical.” There were voices along the corridor outside. “Go back now, Mr. Fraser,” he added, and then turned and walked out quickly. As I went back through the living room, I could hear his voice in the corridor. “Everything is prepared, Boeng. Shall I give orders for coffee to be sent to you?”

Rosalie had just returned. She had heard us talking in the kitchen and was eager to know what was going on.

I told her briefly most of what I had learned.

“And it will be ended by tonight?” she asked.

“Apparently.”

We looked at one another in silence for a moment; then she drew a deep breath and nodded.

“So.”

“Yes.” I picked up my towel. “I think that it’s about time I went and shaved.”

8

The shelling of the area around the Van Riebeeck Square began at one o’clock.

For three hours before that, insurgent troops had been straggling back from the forward positions and occupying the block of buildings which included the Air House and the Ministry of Public Health. On my way back from the bathhouse, I had looked over the balustrade and seen two more two-pounders being manhandled through the big doorway of the Air Terminal offices below, and a truck full of wounded being driven in the direction of the Telegraf Road. The only civilians to be seen were children. Some of them stood in awe-struck silence, watching the troops; others, bolder, were playing a war game round a bomb crater and jumping in and out of the fox-holes.

A little after eleven, there were several violent outbursts of firing. They seemed to come from about a mile away to the north. Immediately after the first one, the telephone in the next room began to ring. During the half-hour that followed, there was scarcely a moment when Sanusi or Roda was not on the telephone; but for most of the time there was such a lot of noise going on outside that, although I could distinguish odd words and sentences, I could not make sense of what was being said. Eventually, Sanusi and Roda went out on to the terrace, and there was a muttered conference over a map. If the bad news was beginning to filter through to them, they clearly did not want their staff inside the room to know too much about it. In the middle of the conference, Roda was called in to the telephone again; but Sanusi remained on the terrace, fidgeting uneasily with the map and staring down into the square. After a minute or two, Roda came back and there was another furtive discussion. Some decision seemed to come out of it, for in the end Sanusi nodded, and the two men turned and walked back inside. A few minutes later the radio was switched on, and I guessed that the staff had been left to their own devices.

The official communique was being broadcast at intervals of fifteen minutes, and part of it was similar enough to the one I had invented earlier that morning to make us both laugh. The rest was not so amusing, however. Six persons attempting to obstruct the movements of the National Freedom Army had been shot; twenty others had been arrested on suspicion of sabotage, and were being questioned. There was a warning that persons failing to obey orders promptly, or displaying reluctance to assist the National Freedom Army in its fight against the colonialist reactionaries who were attempting to defeat the will of the people, would be liable to summary trial and imprisonment with forfeiture of all property.

Rosalie began to worry about her sister and Mina. The fighting seemed to be moving towards the quarter in which they lived, and she was afraid that, in trying to get away from it, they would run into worse trouble when the Government forces began to close in from the east. We talked about it for some time, but I made no effort to reassure her; not merely because I knew that my reassurances would be worthless, but because I hoped that the more she worried about Mina and her sister, the less she would worry about herself.

A little after mid-day there were two extra-violent explosions that brought down some more fragments of plaster, and a few moments later we saw two columns of smoke mushrooming up over the warehouses in the direction of the old town. Rosalie said that one of the oil companies had their gasoline storage tanks in that area, but the smoke looked to me more like the result of demolition charges. I thought it probable that the defenders were now trying to delay the Government’s encircling movements by blowing up canal bridges, and wondered if they yet knew that there were enemies, not friends, waiting across the line of their retreat.