Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

Pastor Mulvery said a lot of things about it being the end of Doc’s travail and his vale of tears. He had called Doc a great piano player and gardener. ‘The Lord Jesus has given our beloved professor a garden in heaven filled with the fragrance of pansies and sweet peas where he can play his music for a choir of angels.’

The regulars in the congregation must have thought it was one of his better descriptions of the born again hereafter and they peppered Pastor Mulvery’s eulogy with ‘Praise the Lord’ and ‘Blessed be His glorious name’. I heard it all, but it didn’t make any sense, it had nothing to do with Doc. Absoloodle not.

‘Oh, dear, oh goodness, dearie me. Our dear, dear professor would most certainly have chosen eternal hellfire in preference to an eternity spent in a bed of pansies and sweet peas, playing for a choir of angels,’ said Mrs Boxall, having been exposed to Pastor Mulvery and the workings of the Apostolic Faith Mission for the first time.

The aloe was in bloom on the hillside above the rose garden and early on the day of the service I had climbed to our rock and cried for a while until the sun came up over the valley. On the way down I gathered several candelabra of aloe blossom which I put in a large copper vase I found in the back room of the church. When I entered the church later to attend the funeral it had been removed and an arrangement of pink and orange gladioli had been put in its place.

Even old Mr Bornstein, wearing a hat throughout, attended the service with Miss Bornstein. Miss Bornstein’s shiny lipstick and long red nails looked strangely out of place in a church which taught that make-up of any sort, except for face powder, was a sin. I once heard long painted nails described by a lady witnessing for the Lord as the devil’s talons dripping with the blood of sinners. Miss Bornstein looked beautiful among the scrubbed, plain-faced women, with their greying hair pulled back and held by cheap celluloid clips, their hats stuck with sprigs of linen flowers, some small attempt at adornment. I could see them stealing glances at her, at her perfect complexion, magnificent shining, almost purple black hair, green eyes and brilliant sinful lips and nails. They would spit it all back in righteous vituperation when next they gaggled around a cup of tea to tell each other they had seen sin in the flesh, the devil himself sitting among them.

Outside the church after the service, as there was no Doc in a coffin to look solemn about, the regulars were able to congratulate Marie for her spectacular conversion. Even my mother got a bit of gratuitous praise for her original foresight in bringing Doc into focus as a potential candidate for salvation.

All the warders who knew Doc, including Captain Smit and the Kommandant came to pay their respects. Afterwards Captain Smit invited me back to the prison where the boxing team was having a wake. This turned out to be a jolly affair, more like a braaivleis and singsong and I tried hard to be cheerful, for I suspect it was held as a gesture and as a bit of a cheer-up for me. Doc would have approved much more of this than of the sanctimonious burial service.

Gert took me to one side. When I’d arrived back to help in the search for Doc, I’d taken over from him. He had barely slept for three days and had been exhausted. ‘Tell me, man, how come we never found him? You know every place he went.’

‘Ja, it’s funny that, but you know Doc, Gert. He probably had a place in an old mine shaft that only he knew about, someplace he found years ago before he met me.’

Gert looked at me directly. ‘No man, no way. You and him was too close. I reckon you know but, ag man, you right, I wouldn’t tell also if it was me.’ Gert was a naturally quiet person who didn’t miss much; he’d just been promoted to sergeant and everyone said he was going places.

Doc left everything he owned to me, including the Steinway. He left a small insurance policy worth about twenty pounds to Dee and Dum. My mother had the Steinway moved to the lounge at home where it practically filled the room so that the two chairs which matched the sofa had to be put on the back verandah. A jolly good idea because that’s where everyone sat anyway. Except for church ladies and town people coming for fittings, we never had proper visitors of the kind that got sat uncomfortably in the front room, so the back stoep was perfect for the old ball and claw brocade chairs, which after forty years of being stuck in the parlour saw some real ‘bottom work’ at last.

At first I think my granpa was a bit hurt about the banished chairs. His beautiful wife, for whom the rose garden had been created, had originally bought the furniture. But by the time I was back for the holidays again one of the chairs was permanently claimed as his and had several small burn holes in the upholstery where bits of glowing tobacco ash had fallen from the bowl of his pipe to burn through the faded brocade.

Doc’s cottage was well away from any other European houses on a small koppie , and his will read to me by young Mr Bornstein showed that he owned the whole of the small hill. I moved Dee and Dum in as caretakers, although it was really intended as their home. The tiny three-room cottage with lean-to kitchen was a veritable mansion after the small brick room next to the rose nursery which they had shared. They had both been terribly distressed at Doc’s death. Doc had asked them to pack food for three days and not to speak to anyone about his departure. When he hadn’t returned on the fourth day Dee had gone to see Mrs Boxall who had raised the alarm. True to her word, Dee had simply told Mrs Boxall that Doc hadn’t returned from the hills the previous evening as his bed had not been slept in and the ash in the tiny potbelly stove was cold. They had both confessed to me about Doc requesting food for three days, which meant that when Mrs Boxall had called me, Doc had actually been gone four days. When I had known with absolute certainty after the fight with Gideon Mandoma that Doc was dead, he had been out three days. It would have taken him two days to reach the crystal cave of Africa, whereupon he would have rested and then, sometime on the third day, climbed the cliff. Doc was a methodical man, he would have planned everything meticulously to the last ounce of his energy. Marie told me that while he was in hospital he had complained each night of being unable to sleep and they had given him a sleeping pill. Doc would never have taken a pill, which he termed ‘putting bad chemicals in the blood’. I knew that he would now have the sleeping pills with him. Doc never did anything carelessly and he wasn’t going to be any different in planning his death.

It was Dee and Dum keeping faith with Doc which prevented the search parties from going further into the hills. In one day a frail old man recovering from pneumonia could not have travelled far into the foothills, least of all across the Saddleback Range. I knew Doc better than that; he would have planned it, knowing his chances for success.

I waited until the day before I was due to return to school and the furore of Doc’s death was beginning to die down a little so that I would be allowed to go into the hills alone. Telling my mother at supper the previous evening that I was going for a last ramble in memory of Doc, I left home before dawn. I knew there was still something Doc needed: if it had not been so he would have left some sort of message for me. Together with Dee and Dum, I searched the cottage and the cactus garden in vain. Doc wanted me to perform some last duty, I felt quite sure about this; and in any case, I needed to perform some sort of ritual of my own to mark Doc’s passing. I packed a can of sardines, a couple of oranges and filled my old school lunch tin with a tomato, two boiled eggs and a couple of leftover cold potatoes, and with a bottle of water and a torch, I set off. To avoid suspicion I didn’t take rope as I was certain I could climb the cliff without it.