Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

Pausing only at sunrise to drink and to eat a potato, by mid-morning I had arrived at our old campsite on the edge of the rainforest. Above me the cliff loomed, now suddenly meaning so much more to me. Doc, as I had expected, had used the site again. There had been no rain for the last ten days and the ash in the fire hole I’d dug was still fresh and powdery. To make certain, I went to the spot where I had buried our rubbish and dug it up. Sure enough a second bully beef tin and the wrapping from a packet of Bakers Pretty Polly Crackers had been added. Doc loved the dry tasteless crackers and always bought the same brand.

Half an hour later I was standing on the shelf which led to the cave. At first there seemed to be no sign of Doc having been there and my heart beat furiously. What if Doc hadn’t made it? What if he had fallen trying to scale the cliff and lay somewhere in the thick rainforest which grew at its base? I fought back the panic, for I knew I would have to find him and somehow get him up the cliff and into the cave and onto the platform. A task which would take me two days, if I could achieve it at all.

I also knew that if Doc lay in the crystal cave of Africa he would not have wanted me to enter. Doc was a man of great sensitivity and the idea of subjecting me to the sight of his corpse on the platform would be unthinkable. He would have left me instructions outside the cave, in daylight; that’s where his message would be. I began to search the shelf inch by inch. Doc had trained me to observe and I knew he would expect me to make the kind of detailed examination of the shelf which would be beyond the casual searcher so that if he had hidden something it would not be apparent to any but a trained eye.

I searched for half an hour but the limestone shelf had been worn out of the cliff face by a hundred thousand years of wind, rain and water erosion, the hollowed-out shelf was smooth and regular and there were no cracks in the dolomitic rock. I began to doubt. Doc might have intended to leave me a message but been on the point of collapse when he finally made it up to the shelf, saving every ounce of strength for the task of reaching the platform.

And then I saw it. A dark stripe of some sort of mineral sediment, long since dry, had stained a small part of the shelf. I ran my hand over the stained rock and received a sudden sharp prick. I pulled my hand back and looked at it; a tiny drop of blood formed on my palm. Sticking out of the middle of the dark patch no more than an eighth of an inch, was the point of the blade of Doc’s Joseph Rogers pocket knife.

Doc had discovered that the dark sedimented patch was softer than the rock surrounding it and he had gouged a hole into the centre of it using the pocket knife. He had then mixed the sand which came out of the hole with a little water from his water bottle and, first inserting the knife with the tip of the blade just showing, he had repacked the granules of sand to mend invisibly where he had buried the knife.

It was typical of Doc; he trusted his training of me so much that he knew he could make the hiding place difficult for others to find, and that I would find it. I scraped the dirt away from the point of the blade and dislodged the small knife. Around its handle, tied with cotton thread, was a note.

The hole appeared deeper than I had first suspected, deeper and wider, and behind the knife was Doc’s gold hunter. With the tip of the knife I pulled the fob chain out and then the beautiful old gold pocket watch. I stuffed the watch and chain into my trouser pocket and with clumsy, trembling hands picked at the cotton thread tying the note to the black bone handle of the knife.

It was a page torn from one of Doc’s small field notepads and margin to margin from the top to the bottom of one side of the page were musical notes, minute in size but exact, a precisely written piece of music. I turned the page. In Doc’s neat handwriting was a short note centred on the page.

My dear Peekay,

In all the world no man has such a friend as you. Last night is come some music to my head, when it is coming I know it is time for me to go. Maybe, who can say, it is the music for Africa? Maybe only it is my music to you? Not so good as Mozart, never like Mr Beethoven or like Mr Brahms, but maybe better than a Chopin nocturne. Such a little piece of music for such a long life. I am such domkopf. But not such domkopf that I don’t let you be my friend. For this I am having eleven out of ten. I must go into the crystal cave of Africa now. You must not follow until it is your time also. Maybe in one hundred thousand years we will meet again.

Goodbye, Mr Schmarty-Pantz welterweight champion of the world.

Your friend,

Doc

I had done my crying for Doc and the note gave me comfort. Doc was safe and where he wanted to be and his secret would be kept forever. I entered the tunnel leading to the outer cave. Testing the rope handrail we’d built for Doc’s entry to the cave the first time, I found it still strong. He would not have had a great deal of difficulty getting into the narrow entrance. It took me only a few minutes to work the steel hook out of the tunnel wall and to remove the rope.

I returned to the cliff shelf and removed the second spike and put the two spikes and the rope into my rucksack. In a very few years the small holes the spikes had made would be eroded from the rock face, leaving no trace of man. Only the baboons or an occasional leopard would visit the outer cave, but neither would enter the dark, damp inner crystal cave of Africa. Doc would be safe for the hundred thousand years it would take to turn him into crystal, forever a part of Africa.

I was home again just as the moon was rising over the valley. The pain, the deep dull pain under my heart had lifted. Sadness remained, but I was now proud that Doc had achieved what he wanted to do. And we would always be bound together, he was very much a part of me. He had found a small, frightened and confused little boy and had given him confidence and music and learning and a love for Africa and taught me not to fear things. Now I didn’t know where the boy began and Doc ended. I had been given all the gifts he had. Now that Doc was resting right I knew we could never be separated from each other.

The coffee pot left at four the next day to connect with the all-night sleeper from Kaapmuiden to Johannesburg.

That last morning at home I walked into the front room and opened the Steinway and started to practise Doc’s music, which I’d earlier transcribed onto three sheets of music manuscript. After I picked at the notes for an hour, the melody began to form. It was a nocturne with a recurring musical phrase running through it. Very beautiful, it was unmistakably African, with a sadness and yearning for something that seems to be in the music of all of the people. The musical phrasing and the recurring melody were somehow familiar, like something I’d heard in a dream or the dreamtime or which simply races unknown through your blood. And then I realised what it was. It was the chant to the Tadpole Angel.

I stopped bewildered. Doc had never heard the chant which had started only after I had gone to boarding school. I played the music again; it was no coincidence, the chant was clearly a part of the music, it ran through the nocturne repeating itself in a dozen variations but always there: clear, unmistakable, wild, beautiful. Onoshobishobi Ingelosi… shobi… shobi… Ingelosi, the piano notes enunciated as clearly as if the people themselves were singing it.

It was getting late and it was time to say my goodbyes to Mrs Boxall, old Mr Bornstein and Miss Bornstein. Gert had promised to pick me up and run us down to the station in the prison’s new Chevy which meant my mother and my granpa didn’t have to rely on Pastor Mulvery, whose anxious-to-escape front teeth and unctuous presence I found increasingly depressing, and I was glad that he wouldn’t add to the awkwardness I always felt at departures.