Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

I bundled up his coat and threw it over to Hennie Venter who draped it over the hapless Pik Botha’s shoulder. With one hand carrying his boots and the other clutching his waterworks, he hobbled away down the corridor towards the guard’s van.

Hennie Venter turned out to be the practical sort. He made me fetch a second pillow which he added to the first one to prop Big Hettie’s head up as far as she could go. He even managed to get her to drink a cup of coffee by herself. He inspected the situation carefully and then announced that there was no way of lifting Big Hettie without first removing the lower bunks.

‘Sorry, Hettie,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘we’re going to have to wait until we get to Kaapmuiden.’ He started to pour Hettie another cup of coffee.

‘No damn fear!’ she said quickly. ‘Unless you want to cut a blêrrie hole in the floor.’

Hennie Venter scratched his head, giving Big Hettie a quizzical look. ‘What the hell are you doing on this train anyway?’

Big Hettie half turned to look backwards and up at him, her mouth in a pout of annoyance. ‘Do you think for one moment that I would let this poor child travel all the way to Kaapmuiden on his own?’ she asked.

Hennie Venter persisted. ‘You were also a little drunk, maybe?’

‘Pissed as a newt, drunk as a skunk,’ she giggled. ‘What a fight it was eh, Hennie?’

‘You can say that again, Hettie,’ Hennie said happily. ‘I won two weeks’ wages with a ten bob bet. Magtig! What a fighter that Hoppie Groenewald is. A real white man!’

Big Hettie looked up at me sheepishly. ‘I came to look after you, Peekay.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘Anyway, man, let’s make the most of a bad situation, heh? I always say, if you can’t change things then you have to make sure you’re riding on the front elephant and not walking with the poor people at the back. It’s time for breakfast and I must say I’m starving.’ She looked back at Hennie Venter. ‘Off you go, you skelm, six sausages, six rashers of bacon, nice ’n’ crisp mind, five hard-boiled eggs to constipate me and half a loaf of toast cut thick with lots of butter. No more coffee, you know what coffee does to a person, I’m going to have to cross my legs as it is. For Peekay, the same only half.’

‘ Nee, nee, Mevrou Hettie, I have already had breakfast,’ I protested.

‘Nonsense, child, you are no bigger than a sparrow. What will your mama say if I hand you over like this? We must feed you up and that’s all there is to it.’

Hennie Venter left us to fetch breakfast and I imagined Big Hettie feeding me up in the next eight hours so that I arrived in Barberton as big, if not bigger than the Judge. There my granpa would be, looking around for a real skinny kid to get off the train, and there I’d be, big as the Judge. What a nasty shock he would get! ‘I already ate a whole plate of things, Mevrou Hettie,’ I said again.

‘Never mind, Peekay, a little more never hurt. You’ve got to be like the Bushmen in the Kalahari desert, they eat as much as they can get in the good times till their bottoms stick out like their stomachs. Then when the bad times come they live off their own fat.’ She chuckled softly, ‘I reckon a person like me could go a whole year, or even more, living off their own fat, but you, my poor little blossom, I doubt if you’ll get to Kaapmuiden.’

Hennie Venter returned with a large tray of food which he carefully balanced on Big Hettie’s stomach. He left us to serve breakfast to the other passengers in the dining car, closing the door behind him and promising to return later.

The tray went up and down as Big Hettie breathed. She could only see what to take from a plate on a down breath, for on an up breath the tray raised above her eye level. I managed to eat one more sausage. Big Hettie didn’t seem to notice and polished off my breakfast as well. Though when she finished she said, ‘You’ll never get to play rugby for the Springboks if you eat like a bird, Peekay.’

‘That’s okay, Mevrou Hettie,’ I answered, ‘I’m going to be a welterweight, which is not so big.’

She seemed amused. ‘Just like that good for nothing, Hoppie Groenewald, huh? Well you could do worse, I suppose. Not a bad bone in his body that one. He could have made it big time but he doesn’t hate. Not even Kaffirs, which isn’t natural.’

I was shocked. Hoppie hadn’t said anything to me about the necessity of hate. Was this something he had neglected to tell me?

‘How do you learn to hate, Mevrou Hettie?’ I was fearful that it might prove to be something beyond the ability of a five-, really six-year-old. Perhaps that’s why Hoppie hadn’t mentioned this hate business. But hadn’t he said I was a natural? If I was a natural, then I would be able to learn it for sure.

‘The killer instinct, he hasn’t got the killer instinct. You can tell when a fighter’s got it. It’s proper hate, like the Boere hate the Rooineks. It has to be blind hate like that, them or us, him or me, nothing less. Hoppie Groenewald just never learned to hate.’

‘Then I will learn to hate also,’ I said with conviction.

Big Hettie rocked with laughter. ‘Plenty of time for that, Peekay. Better still to concentrate on love, there is already too much hate in this land of ours. This country has been starved of love too long.’

I wasn’t listening, my mind was busy with the need to learn to hate. ‘Didn’t Hoppie hate Jackhammer Smit?’

‘That was pride, Hoppie has plenty of that. And courage and even brains.’ Big Hettie suddenly sensed my anxiety. ‘Look here, man, maybe that’s enough.’ She chuckled softly, ‘He sure out-foxed that big ape, Smit!’

I cast my mind back to when I had done the Judge’s homework, just like that! I had no doubt I had brains. But during the torture sessions I hadn’t shown any pride and precious little courage, although I had to admit to myself I wasn’t at all sure what pride meant. Maybe I was fatally flawed? Only brains and nothing to go with them?

‘How do you learn to have pride and courage, Mevrou Hettie?’

‘My goodness me, we are full of questions, Peekay. Now let me see.’ She thought for a few moments and then replied, ‘Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it.’ She looked up to see the confusion in my face. ‘Never mind, Peekay, the understanding will come suddenly when you need it.’

I wasn’t at all sure about that. Big Hettie’s advice seemed downright stupid to me. I knew already that camouflage was the only way, that bowing your head with the rest was the best way to survive. Take the incident with Miss du Plessis, hadn’t I raised my head then and she damn near cut it off? And Granpa Chook, if he hadn’t shat in the Judge’s mouth, we’d still be together. There were no two ways about it, when you stood out in the crowd, trouble was sure to follow.

Maybe there was something more to understand, the world of grown-ups seemed very complicated. I was good at remembering things, so I tucked big Hettie’s words away. Someday they might make sense.

Nanny was the only grown-up I knew who answered questions properly and she wasn’t really a grown-up because she was a nanny. When you asked her a thing she would answer with a story or a song and when she hadn’t an answer she would say, ‘That is a matter for later finding out.’ She was always right, sooner or later the answer would come from somewhere. It seemed to me that white people grown-ups always had to have an answer on the spot. Like Pik Botha, they lived most of their lives being miserable and asking, ‘Why me?’ all the time. Nanny would say, ‘Sadness has a season and will pass.’ Then she would laugh and hug me and say, ‘But it isn’t the season for sadness yet.’