Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

Clear as an echo, his voice cut through the roar of the falls. ‘We have crossed the night water to the other side and it is done, you must open your eyes now, little warrior.’ Inkosi-Inkosikazi brought me back from the dreamtime and I looked around, a little surprised to see the familiar farmyard about me. ‘When you need me you may come to the night country and I will be waiting. I will always be there in the place of the three waterfalls and the ten stones across the river.’ Pointing to what appeared to be an empty mealie meal sack, he said: ‘Bring me that chicken and I will show you the trick of the chicken sleep.’

I got up and walked over to the sack and opened it. Inside, the sharp, beady red eye of the chicken that looked like Granpa blinked up at me. I dragged the sack over to where the previous circles he’d made in the dust had been and the old man rose and called over to me to draw a new circle in the dirt. Then he showed me how to hold the old rooster. This was done by securing the main body of the chicken under your right armpit like a set of bagpipes and grabbing it high up its neck with your left hand so that its featherless head is held between forefinger and thumb. Getting a good hold of its feet with your free hand, you dip the chicken towards the ground at an angle of forty-five degrees while squatting on the ground with the chicken’s beak not quite touching the rim of the circle. The beak is then traced around the perimeter three times whereupon the bird is laid inside the circle.

The old man made me practise it three times. To my amazement and his amusement, the old rooster lay within the circle docile as a sow in warm mud. To bring the chicken back from wherever chickens go in such trying circumstances, all I needed to do was touch it and say in a gruff voice, ‘Chicken sleep, chicken wake, if chicken not wake then chicken be ate!’ Which is, I suppose, a pretty grim warning to a chicken.

I did not ask Inkosi-Inkosikazi how a Shangaan chicken could understand Zulu because you simply do not ask such questions of the greatest medicine man in all of Africa.

I was as yet unaware that this chicken was pretty exceptional, that the ability to understand a couple of African languages was probably not beyond him.

‘The chicken trick is our bond. We are now brothers bound in this common knowledge and also the knowledge of the place in the dreamtime. Only you and I can do this trick or come to that place.’

I’m telling you something, it was pretty solemn stuff. With a yell across the farmyard the old man called for his driver who was asleep in the back of the Buick. Together we walked towards the big, black car.

‘You may keep this chicken to practise on,’ Inkosi-Inkosikazi said as he climbed into the back seat of the car.

As if from nowhere, the car was surrounded by field women who loaded up the trunk with the tributes they’d brought the previous day. Nanny handed the old man a small square of brightly coloured cloth into the corner of which were knotted several coins. Inkosi-Inkosikazi declined the offer of what was, for Nanny, two months’ salary.

‘It is a matter between me and the boy. This place is on my way to the Molototse River where I go to see Modjadji, the rain queen.’ He stuck his head out of the rear door window and gazed up into the sky. ‘The rains have not come to Zululand, and in this matter her magic is greater than mine.’

The rains had been good north of the Drakensberg Mountains and now Nanny grew fearful as she asked for news of her people.

‘The fields are ploughed three months and the seed maize is ready in the great seed pots, but the wind carries away the soil as we wait for the rains to come,’ the old man sighed.

Nanny translated the news of the drought to the women. Drought is always news to be shared among the tribes. The women broke into a lament, doing a shuffling dance around the Buick and singing about the great one who brought the rains, gave barren women the sons they craved and cured the bite of snakes, even the great black mamba.

Inkosi-Inkosikazi stuck his ancient head out of the window again and shook his fly switch impatiently. ‘Be gone with you, you stupid old crows, sing for Modjadji the rain queen, this old rain maker has failed to squeeze a drop from the sky.’

With a roar from its mighty V8 engine, the big, black automobile shot down the road, raising a cloud of dust behind it. ∗

By the time the holidays were over Granpa Chook, for that was what I had called my chicken gift, and I were practically inseparable. Calling a chicken a ‘chook’ was a private joke my mother and I had shared. We had received a bunch of photos from a distant cousin in Australia one of which had shown a small boy not much older than me feeding the chickens. On the back of the photo was written: ‘Young Lennie, feeding the chooks on the farm in Wagga Wagga.’ We had called the two old drakes who always quacked around the farmyard together Wagga Wagga, and had started referring to Granpa’s black Orpingtons as, ‘the chooks’.

Granpa Chook was, I decided, a splendid name for the scraggy old rooster who came running the moment I appeared at the kitchen door. There was no doubt about it, that chicken had fallen for me. I don’t mind admitting, I felt pretty powerfully attracted to him as well.

We practised the chicken trick for a couple of days but he got so smart that the moment I drew a circle in the dust he stepped into it and settled down politely. I think he was only trying to be co-operative, but it meant that I had lost all my power. Granpa Chook was the first living creature over which I held power and now this not-so-dumb cluck had found a way of getting back on even terms which was damned annoying if you ask me.

The holidays came to an end. My bed-wetting habit had, of course, been cured, but not my apprehension at the prospect of returning to boarding school. As for my hatless snake, I’d asked Inkosi-Inkosikazi about that and he’d hinted that we were similarly unique which was why we were so special. It was comforting at the time, but now I wasn’t so sure.

Nanny and I had a good old weep on the last evening at home. She packed my khaki shorts and shirts and two pairs of pyjamas and a bright red jumper my mother had sent from the nervous breakdown place. We laughed and laughed, in between crying of course, because one sleeve was about ten inches shorter than the other. Nervous breakdowns probably do that sort of thing to people’s knitting. By unpicking it at the shoulders Nanny made it into a nice red jumper.

We set out after breakfast in Granpa’s old Model A Ford truck. On the way we picked up fat Mrs Vorster, the widow who owned the farm next door. Granpa spoke no Afrikaans and she no English so she thumped up and down in silence with her chins squashing onto her chest with every bump of the old truck.

I was delighted to be in the back with Nanny and Granpa Chook, who was concealed in the mealie sack where he lay so still you’d have sworn he was an empty sack. Nanny was going to town to send money to her family in Zululand to help with the terrible drought.

Granpa Chook’s wing feathers had practically grown again and by taking a run-up, his long legs pumping up and down, he could take off and land high up on a branch anytime he liked. I have to admit, while he was heavier, he wasn’t any prettier. His long neck was still bare and his head still bald, his cock’s comb was battered and hung like an empty scrotum to one side of his head. Compared to the black Orpingtons he was a mess.

We stopped at the school gates and Nanny handed me the suitcase and the bag with Granpa Chook playing possum. ‘What have you got in the bag, son?’ Granpa asked.

Before I could reply Nanny called from the back, ‘It is only sweet potatoes, baas.’