Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

Klipkop’s mouth fell open and then he grinned. ‘Okay, so I hit him because he steals the sugar, what’s the difference?’

The phone rang and Lieutenant Smit picked it up and listened for a moment. ‘Right,’ he said into the receiver and replaced it. He turned to me. ‘The Kommandant is back, come on, son.’

Grabbing Mrs Boxall’s books I followed the lieutenant up a set of stairs to the second floor. We entered a small outer office where a lady sat behind a desk typing on a big black machine which had Remington Corona in gold letters on its back. ‘Go right in, Lieutenant Smit, the Kommandant is waiting for you,’ she said, smiling at me.

We entered a large office, dark brown and filled with dead animals. A kudu head was mounted directly behind the Kommandant’s desk with a sable antelope head beside it, the elegant curved horns touching the wall. There were gemsbok and eland heads to complete the display of larger antelope and next to them, in a cluster of five heads, were the smaller variety of buck: grey duiker, klipspringer, steenbok, reebok and springbok. I turned to face the wall behind me, for it too was covered in trophies. This time a large black-maned lion looked down at me, mouth in the full roar position. Next to it were a leopard and a cheetah. All the carnivores were on one side of the door while on the other were their most common prey, a zebra and a black wildebeest. Below these, fixed to brackets on the wall, were a Boer Mauser and a British Lee-Metford. Immediately below these two Boer War rifles was a long-shafted Zulu throwing assegai. The rest of the wall space was taken up with small framed pictures, mostly of hunting parties standing over dead animals.

The room was furnished with two heavy leather club chairs and a large matching sofa and on the polished floorboards were a zebra and a lion skin. Directly behind the Kommandant’s head and below the kudu and sable antelope hung two large portraits. One was of King George and the other of President Paul Kruger, the last president of the defeated Boer Republic. The picture of the Boer president was in an elegant oval walnut frame. King George looked to be the sort of official photograph in a cheap gilt frame issued to public institutions and requiring mandatory display.

Kommandant Van Zyl rose from behind his desk, which was really a large ball and claw dining room table with a sheet of glass covering its surface. There was nothing on the table except the pad on which he appeared to be writing, his fountain pen and an ashtray.

‘Good morning, Smit. Sit down, please.’ He turned to look down at me. ‘So this is the boy, eh?’ He walked out from behind his desk and stuck out a huge hand. ‘Good morning, Peekay.’ He was even bigger than Lieutenant Smit and his tummy stuck out in front of him even more than Harry Crown’s. Like the Lieutenant and Klipkop, he wore the grey military-style uniform of a prison warder. The only differences were four stars and a crown on his shoulder tabs and a small tab of blue velvet inserted into the top of his lapels. I shook his hand shyly, not quite knowing what to say.

‘Sit, son.’ He pointed to the remaining leather chair. I pushed myself up into the large chair. By sitting on the edge I could make my feet almost reach the ground. Kommandant Van Zyl sat down heavily on the sofa.

‘So, you want to see our professor?’

I nodded my head, ‘Yes please, sir.’

The Kommandant adjusted himself on the sofa, his body soaking up most of it. ‘The law says he must be detained and I must follow the law, but inside this place, I am the law. In here he can come and go as he pleases provided he stays within the gates. Also he can have visitors in official visiting hours.’ He looked at me and smiled. ‘I have decided to make an exception in your case. You can come any time you want, only not Sundays,’ he paused and looked at me again, ‘how do you like that, hey? Two old maats together again.’

‘Thank you, Meneer Van Zyl,’ I said.

‘Ag man, it’s nothing.’ He looked at Lieutenant Smit as though he felt the need to explain his decision. ‘A friendship between a man and a boy is not a thing to be broken. This boy has no father, I know what that is like, man. My father died with the Carolina burghers at Spion Kop when I was the same age.’

‘Yessir,’ Lieutenant Smit said, looking down at his hands which were crossed in his lap.

‘Make out a permanent pass for the boy so he can come any time except Sunday, you hear?’

‘Ja, Kommandant.’ Smit looked at the larger man. ‘What about the professor’s peeano?’

Kommandant Van Zyl slapped his hand on his thigh. ‘I clean forgot. Thank you, Smit.’ He turned to me. ‘We are going to let the professor have his peeano here, there are already many musicians amongst us. Everybody thinks Boere are not cultured, but I’m telling you, man, when it comes to music we leave everyone for dead. For us it is an honour to have a man such as him in our prison community. Magtig! A real professor of music, here, in Barberton prison. Wonderlik! ’

‘Thank you for letting me come to see him, Meneer.’

‘The boy has nice manners. I like that,’ he said to Lieutenant Smit. ‘It’s nothing. You can come any time, you hear.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘Peekay, we need just a small favour. On Monday, about one o’clock, we will be having a nice little surprise for the town folk in the market square. I already telephoned the mayor but I can’t trust him to tell people. Will you inform Mrs Boxall who telephoned about you and who, I understand, is also a friend of the professor? Ask her to tell everyone, you hear?’ I nodded and he seemed pleased. ‘Dankie, Peekay, I think we will like each other a lot. Now Lieutenant Smit is going to take you to see the professor. I see you have some books for him.’ He stretched his hand out. ‘Show me.’ I jumped down from the big chair and handed the books to him. He opened the top one and leafed through it for a few moments. ‘Plants, I don’t know much about plants. Animals, that’s my speciality, you can ask me anything about animals, you name it,’ he brought his hands up as though he were squinting down the barrel of a rifle, pulled an imaginary trigger and made a small explosive sound, ‘I’ve shot it.’ He lowered the imaginary rifle and grinned at me. He had two gold teeth. ‘I love wild animals,’ he said. His hands returned to the books which he handed back to me, and his face wore a look of benign satisfaction as he scanned the trophies around the walls.

Lieutenant Smit cleared his throat loudly and the Kommandant turned back to us. ‘Well it’s been nice to meet you, Peekay.’ He patted me briefly on the shoulder. ‘If you want anything you just come and see me, you hear?’

It was like the time I had to decide whether to offer to do the Judge’s arithmetic. Like then, I was doing pretty well. Why risk it? If I got on the wrong side of the lieutenant, I stood to lose everything, even the chance of becoming a boxer once I turned ten.

‘Please, Meneer Van Zyl. Could I learn to box here?’

The Kommandant had already risen from the sofa, preparing to dismiss us. ‘You want to box?’ he looked at me. ‘That’s the lieutenant’s department.’

‘I already told the boy he must wait until he is ten, then maybe,’ Smit said, trying not to sound terse.

‘When you’re seven it’s a long time to wait till you’re ten. That’s nearly half your life,’ the Kommandant said.

‘We train at five-thirty in the morning. Unless he lived here, how could he get here?’

‘I will get here, I promise. I will never miss, not even once. Please, Meneer Smit?’

Lieutenant Smit looked down at his boots for a long time. ‘We can try when your jaw is fixed. But I must have a note from your mother to say it’s okay to teach you.’ He looked up, appealing directly to the Kommandant. ‘He is too small, Kommandant.’