Брайс Кортни: The Power of One

The fierce hissing noise and the deluge of icy piss stopped suddenly. I opened my eyes to find no Mevrou. Instead, the Judge stood before me, his pyjama sleeve rolled up, his arm wet where he’d reached in to turn off the shower. Behind him stood the jury and all the smaller kids from my dormitory.

As the water cleared from my eyes I tried to smile gratefully. The Judge’s wet arm shot out; grabbing me by the wrist he jerked me out of the granite recess. The jury formed a ring around me as I stood frightened, my hands cupped over my scrotum. My teeth chattering out of control, a weird, glassy syncopation inside my head. The Judge reached out again, and taking both my wrists in one large hand he pulled my hands away and pointed to my tiny acorn. ‘Why you piss your bed, Rooinek?’ he asked.

‘Hey, look, there is no hat on his snake!’ someone yelled. They all crowded closer, delighted at this monstrous find.

‘Pisskop! Pisskop!’ one of the smaller kids shouted and in a moment all the small kids were chanting it.

‘You hear, you a pisshead,’ the Judge translated. ‘Who cut the hat off your snake, Pisskop?’

I looked down to where he was pointing, my teeth changing into a quieter timpani. All looked perfectly normal to me, although the tip was a bright blue colour and had almost disappeared into its neat round collar of skin. I looked up at the Judge, confused.

The Judge dropped my arms and using both his hands parted his pyjama fly. His ‘snake’, monstrously large, hung level with my eyes and seemed to be made of a continuous sheath brought down to a point of ragged skin. A few stray hairs grew at its base and, I must say, it wasn’t much of a sight.

More serious trouble lay ahead of me for sure. I was a Rooinek and a pisskop. I spoke the wrong language. And now I was obviously made differently. But I was still alive, and in my book: where there’s life, there’s hope.

By the end of the first term I had reduced my persecution time to no more than an hour a day. I had the art of survival almost down pat. Except for one thing: I had become a chronic bed wetter.

It is impossible to be a perfect adapter if you leave a wet patch behind you every morning. My day would begin with a bed-wetting caning from Mevrou, after which I would make the tedious journey alone to the showers to wash my rubber sheet. When the blue carbolic soap was rubbed against the stiff cane bristles of the large wooden scrubbing brush I was made to use, fiercely stinging specks of soap would shoot up into my eyes. But I soon worked out that you didn’t need the soap like Mevrou said; you could give the sheet a good go under the shower and it would be okay.

My morning routine did serve a useful purpose. I learned that crying is a luxury good adapters have to forgo. I soon had the school record for being thrashed. The Judge said so. It was the first time in my life that I owned something that wasn’t a positive disadvantage to adaptation. I wasn’t just a hated Rooinek and a pisskop, I was also a record holder. I can tell you it felt good.

The Judge ordered that I only be beaten up a little at a time. A punch here, a flat-hander there, and if I could stop being a pisskop he’d stop even that, although he added that, for a Rooinek, this was probably impossible. I must confess, I was inclined to agree. No amount of resolve on my part or saying prayers to Nanny or even to God seemed to have the least effect.

Maybe it had something to do with my defective acorn? I forced a hole in the side pockets of my shorts through which my forefinger and thumb would fit. I took secretly to pulling my foreskin and holding it over the tip of my acorn as long as I could in the hope that it would lose elasticity and render me normal. Alas, except for a sore acorn, nothing happened. I was doomed to be a pisshead for the rest of my life.

The end of the first term finally came. I was to return home for the May holidays: home to Nanny who would listen to my sadness and sleep on her mat at the foot of my bed so the bogey man couldn’t get me. I also intended to enquire whether my mother had stopped breaking down so I would be allowed to stay home.

I rode home joyfully in the dicky-seat of Dr ‘Henny’ Boshoff’s shiny new Chevrolet coupé. Dr Henny was a local hero who played fly-half for the Northern Transvaal rugby team. When the Judge saw who had come to pick me up, he shook me by the hand and promised things would be better next term.

It was Dr Henny who had first told me about the nervous breakdown, and he now confirmed that my mother was ‘coming along nicely’ but her nervous breakdown was still with her and she wouldn’t be home just yet.

Sadly this put the kibosh on my chances of staying home and never leaving again until I was as old as my grandpa, maybe not even then.

As we choofed along in the car, with me in the dicky-seat open to the wind and the sunshine, I was no longer a Rooinek and a pisskop but became a great chief. We passed through African villages where squawking chickens, pumping wings desperately, fled out of the way and yapping Kaffir dogs, all ribs and snout and brindle markings, gave chase. Although only after my speeding throne had safely passed. As a great chief I was naturally above such common goings-on. Life was good. I can tell you for certain, life was very good.

Nanny wept tears that ran down her cheeks and splashed onto her huge, warm breasts. She kept rubbing her large, dark hand over my shaven head, moaning and groaning as she held me close. I had expected to do all the crying when I got home but there was no competing with her.

It was late summer. The days were filled with song as the field women picked cotton, working their way down the long rows, chatting and singing in perfect harmony while they plucked the fluffy white fibre heads from the sun-blackened cotton bolls.

Nanny sent a message to Inkosi-Inkosikazi to the effect that we urgently needed to see him on the matter of the child’s night water. The message was put on the drums and in two days we heard that the great medicine man would call in a fortnight or so on his way to visit Modjadji, the great rain queen.

The whites of Nanny’s eyes would grow big and her cheeks puff out as she talked about the greatness of Inkosi-Inkosikazi. ‘He will dry your bed with one throw of the shin-bones of the great white ox,’ she promised.

‘Will he also grow skin over my acorn?’ I demanded to know. She clutched me to her breast and her answer was lost in the heaving of her belly as she chortled all over me.

The problem of the night water was much discussed by the field women who pondered deeply that a matter so slight could bring the great one to visit. ‘Surely a grass sleeping mat will dry in the morning sun? This is not a matter of proper concern for the greatest medicine man in Africa.’

It was all right for them, of course. They didn’t have to go back to the Judge and Mevrou.

Almost two weeks to the day Inkosi-Inkosikazi arrived in his big, black Buick. The car was a symbol of his enormous power and wealth, even to the Boers, who despised him as the devil incarnate yet feared him with the superstition of all ignorant God-fearing men. None was prepared to pit the catechism of the Dutch Reformed Church against this aged black goblin.

All that day the field women brought gifts of food. By late afternoon a small mountain of Kaffir corn and mealies, gem squash, native spinach and water melons had grown under the big avocado tree next to the slaughter house. Bundles of dried tobacco leaf were stacked up beside it, and separated by two large grass indaba or meeting mats lay six scrawny Kaffir chickens. These were mostly tough old roosters, four-hour boilers, their legs tied and their wings clipped. They lay on their sides with their thin, featherless necks and bald heads caked with dust. Only an occasional ‘sckwark!’ and the sudden opening of a bright, beady eye showed that they were still alive, if not exactly kicking.