Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

‘What do I do now please, Mevrou Hettie?’ I enquired nervously. I had put on my tackies, even though I knew I was to change trains and wouldn’t arrive in Barberton until well into the evening. At the beginning of my journey the original over-sized tackies had been a banal signal of the end of the Judge, his stormtroopers, the hostel and Mevrou: a grotesque chapter in my life. Equally this second pair, fitted to my feet so perfectly by the beautiful Indian lady, seemed to symbolise the unknown. Sometimes we live a lifetime in two days. The two days between the first tackies and the snugly fitting ones I now wore were the beginning of the end of my small childhood, a bridge of time that would shape my life to come.

‘We must wait here, Peekay. Hennie Venter will bring some men to help me and then I will put you on the train to Barberton. There is plenty of time, your train leaves at six o’clock.’ Big Hettie was obviously in great discomfort and now that relief from her ordeal was at hand her great body had started to tremble with shock.

I watched from our compartment window as our carriage was uncoupled and, with much fuss, shunted into a small siding where a gang of men were waiting. Among them was Hennie Venter. As we came to a halt, he stuck his head through the open window.

‘Nearly over, Hettie, we’ll soon have you back on your feet,’ he said cheerfully.

I passed all our stuff through the window and then, rather than clamber over Big Hettie again, I came through the window myself, jumping the short distance onto the siding. It was nice to be standing in the sun again. Two of the men climbed through the window onto one of the bunks. Using monkey wrenches, they managed to loosen the bolts attaching the bunk to the compartment wall. Then they slung ropes around both ends of the bunk, secured them to the one above and removed the bolts so the bunk was held suspended away from Big Hettie. Climbing onto the top bunk, they were able to lift the suspended one sufficiently for two men, crouching in the doorway of the compartment, to lift Big Hettie into a sitting position. The four men then tried to raise her to a standing position, but her weight was too much for them and she seemed unable to use her legs. Big Hettie was plainly in some distress and her face was very red. After a while it became plain that the whole ordeal was too much for her and she was too exhausted and too weak to stand up. She simply sat on the floor of the compartment, flushed and panting, her back propped up by a mound of pillows. A huge, sadly battered rag doll.

The men left to fetch a block and tackle. I returned to the compartment and sat on the bunk next to Big Hettie. Hennie Venter remained outside looking into the compartment, his arms resting on the window sill.

Big Hettie’s breathing was becoming more laboured as she asked Hennie Venter to go to her hamper which now rested on the platform outside and take the remaining chicken and potatoes and fruit from it, pack them into the cake tin and put it into my suitcase. He nodded and left the window.

‘It will be late before you get to Barberton, liefling. What will your oupa think of me if you have had no supper?’ she panted, her hand clutching at her left breast.

I was too polite to tell Big Hettie that eating chicken was no longer my speciality. Instead I thanked her and then asked, ‘Will you not be coming to the train like you said, Mevrou Hettie?’

She said nothing for a long while as though she were trying to gather up enough strength to speak without gasping. ‘I think it is the final round coming up for me, Peekay. I have a terrible pain.’ The colour had drained from her face and her lips had turned blue. Her left hand was kneading her left breast.

I scrambled over to the window. Hennie Venter had opened my suitcase and was putting the big cake tin into it. ‘Meneer Venter! Come quick, Mevrou Hettie is sick!’ I yelled.

I turned back to look at Big Hettie. Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. ‘Hold my hand, Peekay,’ she gasped. I moved back along the bunk and she took my hand into her own. Her grasp was weak, as though no strength remained in her.

‘I don’t think I can come out for the next round, liefling.’ The words were sandwiched between sighs, quite different from the windy breathing of the morning.

Hennie Venter stuck his head through the window. ‘Oh my God! I’ll fetch the doctor.’ I could hear his boots scrunching on the gravel as he started to run.

‘Please don’t die, Mevrou Hettie,’ I begged, suddenly very afraid.

‘Ag, Peekay, it has not been much of a life since my flyweight left me, it’s not so much to give up.’ She turned to look at me and a tear squeezed out of the corner of her eye and rolled in slow motion down her cheek. ‘Peekay, you will be a great welterweight, I know it. You have pride and courage. Remember I told you about pride and courage?’

‘Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it,’ I repeated, my lips trembling.

‘You will be a great fighter, I know it,’ she whispered. Big Hettie gave a little jerk and the pressure on my hand increased momentarily. Then her huge hand opened and she slid back into the pillows. For such a big, loud woman it was such a small, quiet death.

I started to cry. It wasn’t a pain like Granpa Chook, it was a sadness. Even then I instinctively understood that the blithe spirit is rare among humans and that, for the period of an evening and a day, I had been with a part of the human condition at its best.

After a while I could hear the men returning with the block and tackle. They were laughing and chatting as men do when they are having a bit of a holiday from routine. Big Hettie could be moved now.

It was just after ten in the evening when the train puffed into Barberton station. The conductor woke me before we were due to arrive. My head was dizzy with sleep and mussed up with the events of the day.

Hennie had put me on the train, his mood a mixture of concern for me and the need to get back to the action, where he was such an important cog in the sad machinery of the day. ‘You eat something, you hear. Here’s a tickey to buy a cool drink,’ he said handing me a tiny silver coin.

‘I have money, Meneer Venter.’

But he insisted I take the threepenny bit. ‘Go on, take it, take it, it is only a blêrrie tickey!’ he blustered.

Fortunately he didn’t have to hang around too long, we had only just made it to the Barberton train in time. As we departed with a great chuffing sound that seemed too big for the little coffee-pot engine, Hennie shouted: ‘I will tell Hoppie Groenewald you behaved like a proper Boer, a real white man!’

I climbed down the steps of the carriage onto the gravel platform of Barberton station, struggling with my suitcase which had now become quite heavy with Big Hettie’s tin. I had left its contents untouched, too tired and bewildered to eat. The platform was crowded with people hurrying up and down, heads jerking this way and that, greeting each other and generally carrying on the way people do when a train arrives. My granpa didn’t seem to be amongst them. I decided to sit on my suitcase and wait, too tired to think of anything else I might do. I must have been crying without knowing it, maybe it was just from being tired or something. I had been in worse jams than this one, and I expected any moment that I would hear my nanny’s big laugh followed by a series of tut-tuts as she swept me into her apron. That’s when everything would be all right again.

A lady was approaching, although I could only see her dimly through my tears. She bent down beside me and crushed me to her bony bosom. ‘My darling, my poor darling,’ she wept, ‘everything will be the same again, I promise.’