Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

‘Two roasted chickens, nearly a full leg of mutton, some corned beef, three mangoes, lots of cold potatoes and sweet potatoes too, two oranges and there is also a big tin.’

‘Thank the Lord I brought the tin,’ Big Hettie said with obvious relief. ‘Open it, Peekay. Quick, man, open the tin!’ I was surprised at the urgency in her voice. I lifted the large round tin out of the hamper and, clamping it between my knees, struggled to remove the lid. It came away suddenly, sending me sprawling backwards on the bunk, and the tin slid over the edge of the bunk, spilling half of a large chocolate cake onto Big Hettie’s stomach. In two swift movements her arm rose and fell, the edge of her hand sliced through the thick layer of deep brown chocolate icing rending the cake into two large pieces. She had started to pant and her eyes were glazed as she crammed her mouth full of cake. She grunted and snorted and even moaned as she demolished the first hunk and then reached greedily for the second. Her face was covered with chocolate icing. Stuffing the last bits into her mouth she sucked at her fingers as a small child might, two at a time. Then she plopped her thumb in and out of her mouth several times and ran her hand across her bosom, her fingers moving like a fat spider hunting for any cake she might have missed. She looked up at me and I dropped my gaze, ashamed and frightened, though at the same time I instinctively knew I was watching a sickness or a sadness or even both.

When she had finished Big Hettie was in a lather of sweat, the front of her dress soaked in perspiration, covered with cake crumbs and stained with chocolate icing. She used the damp towel to wipe her face and then lay there panting heavily, her eyes closed. I watched as tears ran down the side of her face, but she said nothing for a long while.

When she had recovered her breath she opened her eyes, which were red and looked puffy. ‘I am sorry, Peekay. I am very, very sorry,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper.

‘It is nothing, Mevrou Hettie, it was only that you were hungry. Chocolate cake makes me feel like that all the time.’

‘I’m sorry I ate all the cake, Peekay. But now you get first pick of everything!’

It had been a long time since I had been given first pick of anything and I laughed. ‘There is enough for the whole train in here, Mevrou Hettie. I will have cold roast potatoes, after that sweet potatoes, they are my two favourites.’

‘And maybe a nice piece of chicken, heh?’

Granpa Chook’s death was still much too close to me. The prospect of eating one of his distant relatives, even if this chicken hadn’t been a proper chicken person or even a Kaffir chicken like Granpa Chook, was impossible to contemplate. Biting into a delicious golden potato, I shook my head.

‘To be a welterweight you must eat properly, Peekay. Meat will make you strong. Some mutton perhaps?’ she said coaxingly.

When pressed by my mother to have a second helping, my granpa used to say: ‘A cow has eight stomachs but I, alas, have one. A cow must keep on chewing but I, my dear, am done.’ I swallowed the potato and recited this to Big Hettie. It was bound, I felt, to cheer her up.

Instead she started to cry again.

‘I’m sorry, Mevrou Hettie, I’m very sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry again, it is only a silly thing my granpa says to my ma just to tease her.’

Big Hettie sniffed, blew her nose and wiped her eyes. A piece of chocolate icing from the cloth smeared on the bridge of her nose. ‘It is not you, liefling. It’s old Hettie. She’s the one I’m crying for.’ She smiled weakly through the tears. ‘What the hell, Peekay, what do you say?’ she sniffed. ‘Might as well die eating as starving, pass me the leg of mutton, my good man!’

I handed her the leg of mutton, one half of which had been sliced away almost to the bone. Resting the big end on her chest, she commenced to happily tear away at the meat on the bone while I demolished a large sweet potato and a mango.

When she had finished, the bone had been picked almost clean. To my surprise, she asked me to tear up one of the chickens and place the pieces on her stomach, also to put the slices of corned beef with it. She tore at the chicken as though she were starving, even crunching some of the softer bones. The chicken and the corned beef were soon demolished and with a soft sigh she wiped the grease and sweat from her face. Using the cake tin, I gathered up the chicken bones scattered over the area of her stomach and tipped them out of the window.

I then washed the mango from my face and hands, and set to work, soaking and squeezing out the only remaining towel. This I handed to Big Hettie and retrieved the old one which I washed with a bit of soap, rinsed and hung over the compartment window sill to dry. I had seen Dum and Dee, our kitchen maids, do the same thing with the wiping up cloths at home after dinner, so I knew I was doing it right. Only they used to hang the cloths from a small line at the side of the big black wood stove so the dry cloths always smelt a little of soup.

Big Hettie put the new cloth, wet as it was, over the front of her dress. ‘It’s so nice and cool and the heat of my body will soon dry it,’ she said, but I knew it was an attempt to hide the chocolate and grease stains. I thought about having to wash Big Hettie’s dress. It would take all day and would need a basin as big as a small dam.

There was a sudden rattle as the compartment door slid open and Hennie Venter appeared. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so long, Hettie, but Pik Botha says he can’t walk and is sulking in the guard van and I have had to do conductor duty because Van Leemin the guard is drunk again. But also I have had to serve lunch,’ he finished in an apologetic voice.

‘What’s for lunch?’ Big Hettie asked.

Hennie seemed surprised by the question. ‘Beef stew with mashed potato and peas like always.’

‘Keep it! The boy and me would rather starve than eat that pig’s swill,’ she said haughtily.

‘Banana custard for pudding today,’ Hennie said enticingly.

‘Ummph, and tastes like what comes out of a baby’s bum,’ Big Hettie said scornfully.

‘Well, if you don’t want any help I’ll kick the dust,’ Hennie looked over at the open hamper and winked at me. ‘I’m sorry you two decided to starve, are you sure there is nothing I can do for you?’

‘You can get me off this blêrrie floor, man.’ Hettie said in a forlorn voice.

The waiter clucked his tongue sympathetically. ‘Soon, Hettie. We get to Kaapmuiden in two hours. There they will know what to do.’

Hoppie had explained to me that from Kaapmuiden I would have to take the branch line to Barberton, a further three hours journey ‘in a real little coffee pot’, he had said. He had told me the story of a washerwoman with a huge pile of freshly ironed washing on her head who was walking along the railway line when the Barberton train drew up beside her. The driver had leaned out of the train and invited her to jump board into the Kaffir carriage. ‘No thank you, baas,’ she had replied, ‘today I am in a terrible big hurry.’ It was a funny story when Hoppie told it, but I knew it wasn’t true because no white train driver would ever think to offer a Kaffir woman a ride in his train.

The afternoon was still and hot and it was nearly four o’clock when we arrived in Kaapmuiden. The train pulled slowly, shyly into the busy junction, the way trains do when they arrive in places where there are other trains. Kaapmuiden served as the rail link between the Northern and Southern Transvaal and the Mozambique seaport of Lourenço Marques and so was full of its own self-importance.

The station was all huff and puff, busier even than Gravelotte, with engines shunting, trucks banging, clanging and coupling on lines criss-crossing everywhere like neatly arranged spaghetti. Our train drew slowly into the main platform and with a final screech of metal on metal, drew to a standstill.