Брайс Кортни - The Power of One

‘You have marks like a Kaffir woman on your arm,’ I heard myself saying.

The Judge’s eyes seemed to pop out of his head. He snorted in amazement and the snolly-bomb shot out of his nostril and landed on my face. His hand followed a split second later. I felt an explosion in my head as I was knocked to the floor.

I got to my feet. Stars, just like in the comic books, were dancing in a red sky in front of my eyes and there was a ringing noise in my ears. But I wasn’t crying. I cursed my stupidity, the holidays had blunted my sense of survival; adapt, blend, become part of the landscape, develop a camouflage, be a rock or a leaf or a stick insect, try in every way to be an Afrikaner. The jury was silent, struck dumb by my audacity. A warm trickle of blood ran from my nose, across my lips and down my chin.

The Judge grabbed me by the front of my pyjamas and pulled me up to his face, lifting me so that I stood on the very tips of my toes. ‘This sign means death and destruction to all Rooineks. And you, Pisskop, are going to be the first.’ He released me and I stumbled backwards but managed to stay on my feet.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said, my voice barely audible.

‘This is a swastika, man! Do you know what that is?’

‘N… no, sir.’

‘God has sent us this sign from Adolf Hitler who will deliver the Afrikaner people from the hated English!’

I could see the jury was deeply impressed and I was too.

The Judge turned to address the jury, prodding at the swastika.

‘We must all swear a blood oath to Adolf Hitler,’ he said solemnly. The jury crowded around his bed, their eyes shining with excitement.

‘I will swear too,’ I said hopefully. The blood was still running from my nose and some had dripped to the floor.

‘Don’t be fuckin’ stupid! Pisskop, you are the English.’ The Judge stood upright on the bed and held his arm aloft at an angle, with his fingers straight and pointing to the ceiling. ‘In the name of Adolf Hitler we will march every Rooinek bastard into the sea.’

I had never been to the sea but I knew it would be a long march all right. ‘The blood oath! The blood oath!’ the jury chanted.

‘Come here, Pisskop,’ the Judge commanded. I stepped over to his bed. ‘Look up, man.’ I looked up at him as he stood high above me on the bed. He wiped his forefinger under my nose and then he pushed me so that I sat down hard on the floor. He held up his finger, my blood on its tip shining in the moonlight.

‘We will swear this oath with the blood of a Rooinek!’ he announced solemnly. Two members of the jury lifted me to my feet while the others crowded around me, sticking their pudgy fingers into the blood running from my nose. The supply wasn’t coming fast enough and one boy tweaked my nose to increase the flow.

This seemed to cause it to stop altogether, so that the last two members were forced to dab their fingers into the drops of blood on the floor.

The Judge, wiping the blood on his finger across the swastika, instructed the jury to do the same. Soon the swastika on his arm was almost totally concealed. ‘Death to all Englishmen in South Africa, the fatherland,’ the Judge cried, raising his arm once more.

‘Death to all Englishmen in South Africa, the fatherland!’ the jury chorused.

The Judge looked down at me. ‘We won’t kill you tonight, Pisskop. But when Hitler comes your days are numbered, you hear?’

‘Yes, sir, when will that be, sir?’ I asked.

‘Soon!’ He stepped from the bed, and placing his huge hand over the top of my head he turned me towards the dormitory door and gave me a swift kick up the bum which sent me sprawling headlong across the polished floor. I could smell the wax polish on the floorboards and then I got to my feet and ran.

Back in my own dormitory the little kids leapt out of bed, crowding around me, demanding to know what had happened. Too upset to mind my tongue, I sniffed out the story of the swastika and the blood oath and my threatened demise upon the arrival of Hitler.

An eight-year-old named Danie Coetzee shook his head solemnly.

‘Pisskop, you are in deep shit, man,’ he said.

‘Who is this person called Adolf Hitler who is coming to get Pisskop?’ a fellow we called ‘Flap-lips’ de Jaager asked.

It was apparent nobody knew the answer until Danie Coetzee said, ‘He’s probably the new headmaster.’

There had been some talk among the kids the previous term about the headmaster and his ‘drinking problem’. I had wondered at the time what a drinking problem was. Obviously it was something pretty bad or the huge, morose man we all feared wouldn’t be leaving.

One of the kids started to chant softly: ‘Pisskop’s in trouble… Pisskop’s in trouble…’ The others quickly took up the chant which grew louder and louder. I placed my hands over my ears to try to stop it.

‘Still!’ The dormitory rang to the command. Mevrou stood at the doorway, her huge body filling the door frame.

‘We was just talking, Mevrou,’ Danie Coetzee said. As the oldest of the small kids he assumed the position of spokesman.

‘You know that talking after lights out is verboten, Coetzee.’

Danie Coetzee was left standing at the end of my bed as the others tiptoed back to their beds. ‘Ja, Mevrou. Sorry, Mevrou.’ His voice sounded small and afraid.

‘Bend over the bed, man,’ Mevrou instructed. The cane cut through the air in a blur as she planted it into the seat of Coetzee’s pyjamas. He let out a fearful yelp, and holding his bum with both hands hopped up and down. Without further ado, Mevrou left the dormitory.

For a moment there wasn’t a sound and then Danie Coetzee, his voice on the edge of tears, blurted out, ‘You will pay for this you blêrrie pisskop Rooinek!’

I waited until everyone was asleep and then crept quietly to the window. The full moon brought a soft sheen to the leaves of the grapefruit trees which seemed to shimmer in the ghosted light. Granpa Chook’s headless snake made a silver loop in the moonlight, a beautiful and unexpected decoration on the branch of the cassia tree. ‘I didn’t cry. They’ll never make me cry again!’ I said to the moon. Then I returned to my bed. It was the loneliest moment that had ever been.

Granpa Chook’s cover was blown the following morning. Like all Kaffir chickens he was an early riser. Before even the six o’clock wake-up bell went, the whole dormitory had awakened to his raucous crowing. I awoke, startled out of a deep sleep, to see him perched on the window sill nearest my bed, his long scrawny neck stretched in a mighty rendition of cock-a-doodle-doooo! Then he cocked his head to one side, gave a tiny squawk and, from the window, flew onto my iron bed head. Stretching his long neck towards me, almost to the point of losing his balance, he gave my ear a gentle peck.

The kids raced from their beds to surround me. ‘It’s an old Kaffir chicken come to visit Pisskop,’ Flap-lips de Jaager yelled excitedly.

Granpa Chook, imperious on the bed head, fixed them with a beady stare. ‘He is mine,’ I said defiantly, ‘he is my friend.’

Well! You should have heard them carry on. Danie Coetzee, temporarily forgetting his revenge for the caning the previous night, chortled: ‘Don’t be stupid, man, nobody has a Kaffir chicken for a friend!’

‘I do, he can do tricks and everything.’

‘No he can’t! He’s a dumb Kaffir chicken. Wait till the Judge hears about Pisskop’s new friend,’ Flap-lips de Jaager volunteered and everyone laughed.

The wake-up bell went, which meant Mevrou would arrive in a minute or two, and so we all scrambled back into bed to await her permission to get up. I barely had time to push Granpa Chook through the window into the orchard and climb back into bed when her huge form loomed through the door.