Брайс Кортни - The Power of One

‘Look, Doc, it’s like Merlin’s altar in the crystal cave!’

Doc sucked in his breath, ‘Ja, in such a place went Merlin for sure.’ He pointed to the throne, ‘To lie on this altar and in a hundred and fifty thousand years maybe the body would be a part of this cave. A part of the crystal cave of Africa. Imagine only this, Peekay.’

I grinned. ‘Can you hold off for a while, please Doc, I still need you here.’ The thought of Doc dying had never entered my head. I often thought of him growing old, unable to do things we’d done in the past; but I never thought of him as disappearing, not being there, not being a part of my life. I understood death, it happened at any time. It was a brutal accident like the death of Granpa Chook or Geel Piet, or Big Hettie’s flyweight. Even Big Hettie’s death could be explained in that she was freakishly big and thus fell into the category of unexpected death. Doc did not fall into any of the criteria I had set aside in my mind for death. Doc was calm and reason and order and the kind of death I knew had no part in the expectations for our relationship.

He had walked ahead up to the crystal-like speleothems which formed the steps to the platform. Climbing these, his boots made a scrunching noise on the hard calcium deposits, and soon he stood on the platform. Suddenly, without warning, he squatted and then stretched out full length, so his body was lost from my sight.

‘Ah, come on, Doc! That’s not funny,’ I said, suddenly a little scared. Doc’s torch shone upwards, lighting the stalactites falling from the ceiling above him so that they looked like crystal bolts of lightning frozen in place above him. It was the most frightening and magnificent effect I have ever seen.

Doc’s voice came back to me, sounding serene. ‘It is beautiful, Peekay, we must never tell any person about the crystal cave of Africa.’

‘C’mon, Doc, you’re giving me the creeps,’ I answered, not fully taking in what he had said.

Doc stood up, shining the torch straight into my eyes so that I was blinded by the light. ‘You must promise me, Peekay. It is very important. You must promise, please?’ He withdrew the torch from my face and in the fuzziness the temporary blinding had created he looked just like Merlin, standing between huge spikes of crystal on the platform ten feet above me.

‘Doc, please come down. I promise, now please come down.’

‘Ja, I come. Remember you have promised, Peekay.’ He made his way down from the platform carefully and I ran to give him a hand. He was breathing heavily, and as I helped him down I could feel the excitement in the old man.

We made our way back to the bat cave and Doc shone the Eveready back into the chamber. ‘Peekay, we have found a place in Africa no man has ever seen, the purest magic cave, the crystal cave of Africa.’

‘Come on, Doc, let’s skedaddle, what’s the time?’ He fished into his trouser pocket for his hunter and shone the torch on its face. ‘Half clock ten,’ he said. Doc always told the time in this funny manner.

‘We’ve got to go. If we get back to camp by noon it’ll be dark by the time we get home.’ Fortunately most of the way home was downhill and we knew we would gain a couple of hours on the way back. I calculated it would be around eight that evening before we would be home. Walking the foothills in the dark wouldn’t be much fun and Doc would be exhausted. My anxiety to get going had taken the edge off my excitement. Doc grabbed me by the arm, he was still shaking. ‘Remember, Peekay, this is our cave, the crystal cave belongs only to you and to me.’

‘Okay, Doc, I promise. I already promised. Now let’s get the hell out of here.’ It wasn’t at all like Doc to be so insistent, anyway he knew he could trust me implicitly. The cave had had a tremendous effect on him and I knew he’d want us to come back, though I doubted that he’d be able to make such a tough climb for much longer. I’d cut the rope we’d taken into the cave but had left the rope handrail intact for Doc to use getting out. Once we were back on the ledge I began to retrieve the two metal spikes, as we’d already lost two by having to leave them embedded in the tunnel wall.

‘No, leave them, Peekay,’ Doc said suddenly, ‘there is no time.’ It was unlike Doc, who was always very careful about equipment. We’d account for everything before moving on from a camp site or where we had been collecting specimens. It was the first time he had ever been devious and I realised how emotionally charged he had become over the crystal cave; the old bugger was determined to come back.

We arrived back in the foothills above the town just as a giant moon was coming up over the escarpment, flooding the de Kaap valley in silver light. It was a full moon again and that was always a difficult time for me. It had been a full moon when Granpa Chook died and while the memory of that funny old rooster had dimmed, when the moon was full memories came galloping through the silver night to sadden me. It had also been a full moon when Geel Piet had died.

I was right, this would be the last big trek with Doc, who was at the point of collapse by the time we finally reached his cottage. I laid him on top of his bed and removed his boots. He had two large blisters, one under each big toe, so I threaded a needle and cotton and ran a loop of cotton through each blister which I then tied, leaving them overnight to drain the fluid. It was a technique Doc had shown me years before and I knew that by morning the blisters would have flattened and there would be no pain. I washed his face and put Vaseline over a cut under his eye and threw an army blanket over him. He was a tough old blighter and in the morning I was pretty sure he’d be okay.

‘Ours. The crystal cave, Africa. You, me, Peekay,’ he mumbled and then seemed to drift off into sleep. I waited until his breathing was deep and even before leaving for home. On the way the moon was so bright that one could see the purple blossom of the jacaranda trees. I was saddened at the thought of never again being with him in the high mountains. Each time I came back from school Doc seemed a little more frail. We had found the crystal cave of Africa but would I see it only once? Perhaps I would return, perhaps not. When you share things, as Doc and I had done, somehow it seemed wrong to halve the secret by returning alone. I thought of the rope rotting and perhaps in a hundred years they’d find the holes where the spikes had long since rusted out and observe the rust stains in the dolomite. They’d search and find minute metal fragments which they’d analyse, and then propound all sorts of theories that would have nothing to do with a six foot seven inch German professor of music and the future welterweight boxing champion of the world.

The second term of form three began with a new aspect of school life. Singe ’n Burn’s tutorials three times a week were quite unlike school. We talked for an hour and from it would come at least three hours of reading and preparation for the next tutorial. The headmaster had a wide grasp of subject and he was quick to discover where a boy’s special aptitudes lay. These he would cultivate carefully while at the same time balancing the mental menu with the discipline of tackling subjects which, though less interesting, he thought essential to a well-rounded education. Sinjun’s People seldom met as a group and once chosen they were never mentioned again in the activity of the Prince of Wales School. No attempt was ever made to make any one of us seem special or especially important, although a powerful struggle between the six took place in the normal course of school, with each one of Sinjun’s People competing fiercely in the classroom for honours. All this, combined with boxing and rugby football, left me very little time to myself.