Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

‘You are the great chief, you are him who is Onoshobishobi Ingelosi,’ Mandoma said, and standing on still trembling legs he held up my hand. The crowd went wild.

‘It is you who are a chief, your spirit is still with you, we will be brothers, Gideon Mandoma.’

‘I see you, Peekay. We have taken the milk from the same mother’s breast, we are brothers.’ I held up his hand and the crowd roared their applause.

Mr Nguni was back at the microphone and after some trouble got the crowd to quiet down. I had returned to my corner and was sitting on the pot while Solly was rubbing me down and Hymie held a fresh towel to drape over me.

‘We have seen what we have seen. You must all go to your homes, tell the people that the spirit within the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi lives also in the man. You have seen it with your own eyes and it is so,’ he said simply. He turned and called Gideon Mandoma and me over and we stood next to him with our arms around each other. ‘We have seen the spirits fight, in this we are all brothers,’ Mr Nguni said and the roar of the black crowd closed the proceedings.

I touched Gideon on the shoulder and returned to my corner. It was just beginning to move into darker twilight and the smell of wood smoke and coal fires came to me again. In the distance a train whistled, cutting through the hubbub of the departing crowd. All around us black faces were grinning and some would stretch out and touch me lightly as though I were a talisman. But most looked at me and I could see that they believed. The legend was cast deeper and would spread further. I wondered if it would ever end. I suddenly realised that every bone in my body felt as though it had been broken.

With my arm around Hymie’s shoulders for support we walked through the corridor of black bodies on our way back to the school. Black hands touched me, wiping sweat from my body and wiping it onto their faces.

‘There you are, what did I tell you, lads, didn’t I say it would be a t’riffic fight?’ Solly said as we entered the school. ‘Blimey! Twice there I thought you was gone, my son. It’s good to know you can take a punch. Lemme tell you, I never seen an amateur throw a perfect thirteen-punch combination before. It was worth coming’ just for that.’

‘Cut it out, Solly, can’t you see Peekay’s hurting,’ Hymie cut in.

‘Not as much as the swartzer, my boy,’ Solly said.

When we got to the shower block I sat down and started to cry. It was as though I saw the years ahead. The pain in my body had somehow sharpened the focus of my mind. I saw South Africa. I saw what would come. Something had happened to me; Hymie was talking but it was as though his voice were in an echo chamber. No, not an echo chamber; in the crystal cave of Africa. His voice echoed across the tops of the rainforest, down the valley just as the barking baboons had done. ‘I’ve found it, Doc. I’ve found the power of one!’ Hymie’s voice was saying. The cave about me was shining crystal, the crystal became my pain and the pain sharpened as the light grew more intense. My concentration focused down to a pinpoint. The sadness I felt was overwhelming; sadness for the great Southland. In the whiteness, in the light, was a sound, as if the light and the sound were one. It was the great drum and voices of the people. They came together as an echo.’ Mayibuye Afrika! Afrika! Afrika!’ Come back, Africa! Africa! Africa! My life, whatever it was to become, was bound to this thing; there was no escaping it, I was a part of the crystal cave of Africa. And in the pain and confusion I wept, I could see only destruction and confusion and the drum beat; boom, boom, boom, and the light began to fade and Doc entered the cave, his hair white as snow, tall as ever, ‘You must try, Peekay. You must try. Absoloodle!’

Hymie put his arm around me. ‘There’s more to this Onoshobishobi Ingelosi than I know about, isn’t there, Peekay?’

‘Christ, I dunno. I just don’t know,’ I sobbed.

‘Don’t worry, Peekay, no one can hurt you. No bastard can hurt you while I’m alive!’

‘Doc’s dead!’ I heard my voice saying as though it were totally divorced from my body.

That evening when we returned to Hymie’s place in Pretoria there was a message to call Mrs Boxall.

‘Peekay, we have sad news, the professor has disappeared! Gert, and all the warders not on duty, and half the men in town are in the hills looking for him, but he’s been gone two days. Now they say there’s little chance of finding him alive!’ Her voice faltered and then broke as she began to sob. The line from Barberton was crackling, fading in and out and Mrs Boxall’s sobs grew and receded. ‘Please come home, Peekay, please come quickly, you’re sure to find him, you went so many places together,’ she wept.

Hymie forced me to sleep. ‘We’ll wake you at two a.m. and a chauffeur can drive you the two hundred miles to Barberton, you’ll arrive by sun-up.’

I knew where to find Doc. I knew that somehow he had done the impossible and had reached the crystal cave of Africa. Doc would be lying on the platform, his arms across his chest. In one hundred thousand years people would find the cave again and would climb up to the magic platform and they’d say, ‘What a strange coincidence, that looks just like the shape of a man made of crystal. A very tall, thin man.’ And then I cried myself to sleep.

No one, not even I, knew Doc’s religion, but after a week where I had visited all our old haunts (except one) with various teams of men, it was decided that a church ceremony should take place. Marie came forward and claimed that Doc had found Christ while he was in hospital with pneumonia and my mother was ecstatic. Pastor Mulvery claimed the right to hold a burial service sans Doc’s mortal remains. I didn’t protest. Marie had convinced herself that Doc had said yes to Jesus and she had notched him up as one of her most important salvations. I don’t think Doc would have minded too much, besides, his love for the great Southland was complete in the most beautiful eternity he could conceive of, not dust and ashes but a wonderful pagan burial that would make him a living part of his beloved Africa. His spirit would dwell in the crystal cave of Africa looking out across the rainforest down the misty valley and over distant mountains which smudged blue as a child’s crayon drawing.

Doc’s death left me completely numb. I went through the motions but it was as though I had lost my centre of gravity. Everything seemed topsy-turvy, people would speak to me but I wouldn’t hear them. Their mouths opened like goldfish in a bowl, but nothing came out. Their movements seemed exaggerated as though by walking up to me they were growing bigger from the same spot, their feet not moving but their bodies just elasticising cartoon-like to where I stood. The pain was all inside, deep and dull and I knew it was this that made me feel numb. I felt I would never be quite the same again, that I could never love as much again. I kept telling myself that I knew Doc was going to die, that Doc had been telling me himself for months, but I knew nothing about this sort of death. Death was violent and ugly like Granpa Chook and Geel Piet, or even macabre like Big Hettie. Death, as I had come to know it in Africa had no gently slipping awayness about it, no dignity. And so I felt Doc had cheated, he’d just gone, he disappeared, he had made death happen rather than have it happen. I felt cheated, even angry. Why hadn’t he waited for me? Why hadn’t he told me so that I could have taken him to the crystal cave? But secretly I knew that I couldn’t have done it, I would have clung to the last thread of life in him. I also knew that he would have known this. But it didn’t help the numbness. It didn’t take away the need, the dull permanent ache under my heart on the exact spot where you work on another boxer till he runs out of steam. That was it precisely: the bell had gone but I couldn’t find the strength and the will to come out for the next round on my own.