Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

‘He will grow, Smit. As I recall, you and your younger brother started very young. Is he still fighting?’

‘Yes, sir, his next fight is against Oudendaal.’

‘That’s right, the Lowveld heavyweight title next Saturday, you must get me tickets, lieutenant.’

‘Yessir, your secretary has them, sir.’

Kommandant Van Zyl ushered us to the door. ‘All the best, Peekay.’

When we reached the bottom of the stairs Smit stopped, and getting down on his haunches he grabbed me by the front of the shirt. He had said nothing when we left the Kommandant’s office, but I was too good at listening to silence not to know I was in real trouble. I closed my eyes, waiting for the clout across the head that must inevitably come. I hadn’t been hit for a year except for a few hidings from my mother which you couldn’t really call hidings after what I’d been through. But the memory of a skull-stunning blow across the head was still very much a part of my experience. To my surprise the blow didn’t come and I opened my eyes again to look straight into Lieutenant Smit’s angry face. ‘I’m telling you flat, don’t do that to me again, you hear? When I tell you something I mean it, man!’ He shook me hard, expecting me to cry; instead I held his gaze. ‘Who are you looking at? You trying to be cheeky?’

‘Please, Meneer, I saw your brother fight in Gravelotte last year. That’s when I decided.’

A look of amazement crossed Smit’s face. ‘You were there? Wragdig ? You saw that fight?’

I nodded. ‘He fought Hoppie Groenewald… Kid Louis,’ I corrected. Lieutenant Smit released his grip on the front of my shirt.

‘I was there also. Magtig! That was a fight and a half. You saw it? Honest?’ He rose from his haunches and suddenly his eyes grew wide. ‘The kid with Hoppie Groenewald! I remember now. We thought you was his kid.’

We had reached the office again. Klipkop was on the floor doing push-ups and broke his sequence and stood up rather foolishly as we entered. ‘You know the fight in Gravelotte my brother had against Groenewald the welterweight last year?’ Klipkop nodded. ‘Peekay saw that fight, he is a personal friend of Groenewald.’

The warder laughed. ‘I lost a fiver on that fight. Who would have expected a welter to beat a light-heavy?’

‘I’m telling you, Groenewald isn’t just an ordinary welter. You mark my words, if he comes out of this war he’s going to be South African champ, you can put money on it,’ Smit said. ‘He’d take you with one arm behind his back, man.’

Klipkop grinned, ‘That’ll be the frosty Friday. No way, man! I’m going to do the same to your brother on Saturday as he did.’

‘Don’t be so blêrrie sure of yourself, Oudendaal. Jackhammer Smit is no pushover, this time he’ll be fit. Don’t count your blêrrie chickens before they hatch!’

Smit turned to me suddenly. ‘Okay, I changed my mind, you on the squad. But no fighting for two years, you hear? Just training and learning your punches and technique, you understand me?’

I nodded, overjoyed. My eyes brimmed with tears. I had taken the first step to becoming the welterweight champion of the world.

‘Klipkop, take Peekay to see the professor. I’ll make a phone call and you can meet him in the warders’ mess.’ He turned to me. ‘Come back when you’re finished and I’ll have your permanent pass ready for you.’

We left the administration block and passed through another building. ‘This is the gymnasium for the prison officers,’ Klipkop said. We walked over to the punching bag and the boxing ring set up at one end of the large room. Large leather balls lay on the floor and Klipkop bent down and scooped one up in his hand. ‘Here, Peekay, hold on to this.’ I put both my hands out and he flipped the ball lightly into them and suddenly I was sitting on the floor with Klipkop laughing over me. ‘It’s a medicine ball and it weighs fifteen pounds. When you can throw one of these over my head you’ll be strong enough to begin to box.’ I got up, feeling very foolish, then I bent down and tried to pick the large brown leather ball up. Using all my strength I managed to lift it but was happy to let it drop again. ‘Not bad, Peekay,’ Klipkop said with a grin. We were standing next to the ring and I liked the smell of the canvas and the sweat. I wondered how I could possibly wait two years before I climbed into the ring to face a real opponent.

We left the gymnasium and crossed the huge indoor courtyard, an area half the size of a football field which I had seen from the top of the hill in my first morning in Barberton. The prison blocks rose up on every side of the square where two old lags were raking its neat gravel surface so all the tiny rake lines ran diagonally across the quad. ‘It’s Friday, diagonal lines. I like Monday best when they make a big star in the middle,’ Klipkop said. I wasn’t sure what he meant but I was soon to learn that each day had a different rake pattern. It was how the prisoners knew what day of the week it was.

‘Where are all the prisoners, Klipkop?’ I asked. The two old lags doing the raking were the only humans I had seen since leaving the administration building.

‘Ag man, they’re all out in work gangs. Most work on farms, some at the quarries and some at the saw mills at Francinos Rust. The people who hire them must call for their gangs at four o’clock in the morning and they got to be back here by six o’clock at night. What you see around here in the day time is just old lags, too old to work hard like that black bastard who makes our tea. Also the murderers, they not allowed to come out of their cells, even to eat. But we don’t keep them long, man. It’s not good to have murderers around, the other Kaffir prisoners get very restless.’ He grinned, ‘The warders don’t like them around also, so we hang them jolly quick smart, I’m telling you.’

‘What about the white prisoners, do they also work in the gangs?’

Klipkop looked surprised. ‘No blêrrie fear! Gangs is not a white man’s work. Mostly white men are only here in transit to Pretoria. They don’t have to work so hard, because they are not here for long. If they real hard cases, like that guy who murdered his wife and three children in Noordkaap, we just locked him up till the district judge sentenced him, then we put him on the train to Pretoria. If you lucky you get sent along as a guard, you get a day off in Pretoria and ten and sixpence expenses.’

We had crossed the gravel quad and passed through a narrow archway which led to the back of the prison. A long corrugated-iron shed stretched from the main building and smoke rose from three chimneys along its length. ‘Kitchens. The warders’ mess is on the other side,’ Klipkop said.

Doc was overjoyed to see me and he hugged me and patted me on the head and his sharp blue eyes went watery. ‘Now I see you I can sleep again. Let me see your jaw? Tut-tut-tut, I wish only I could have taken the kick, then you would be okay. Yes, I think so? Peekay, why are the peace lovers always the first to suffer in the war? Can you talk?’ I had never seen him so worked up and his words tumbled out so that I had no chance of getting a word in.

‘My jaw is not so bad. They are going to take the wire out in six weeks, maybe even four, but I have learned to talk with my mouth shut.’

Doc laughed. ‘You and I, Peekay, even when they cement our mouths, we find a way to talk.’ He was still patting me on the head as though to reassure himself that it was really me.

I handed him the books from Mrs Boxall and he held them briefly before putting them on the table beside him. ‘She is a goot woman, not so stupid either. You and she, Peekay, eleven out of ten for brains. Absolute. Also Mr Andrews. I do not think they would listen to a poor old German professor of music on his own. German measles was in the air and only you and Mrs Boxall don’t catch a big dose, ja?’ He chuckled at his sad little joke.