Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

He was a new sergeant whom we’d only met once in the mess. His name was Borman and he had been transferred down to the lowveld from Pretoria Central because of his wife’s asthma.

He stood, one hand holding the door frame. ‘Professor, the Kommandant wants to see you, report to administration after breakfast you hear?’ he turned to go, then caught sight of Geel Piet. ‘Kom hier, Kaffir!’ he rapped.

The little man jumped up and ran across the hall. ‘Ja, baas, I come, baas,’ he cried.

‘What you doing in this place?’ the warder demanded.

Doc bent down and picked up one of my school boots. ‘The boy got some kak on his boots, he come to clean them.’ He appeared to be scrutinising the sole of one of my boots. ‘Ja this is so,’ Doc said, waving the boot at the warder and then pointing to where Geel Piet had been cleaning the floor. ‘Also some was on the floor when he walked in.’

Sergeant Borman grinned. ‘Next time make the black bastard lick it clean, he is used to eating shit.’ He turned to Geel Piet, ‘That’s right isn’t it, Kaffir? You all eat each other’s shit, don’t you?’

Geel Piet had his head bowed and was standing to attention, though his thin, bandy legs, crossed with scars and blobbed with black scar tissue from past bush sores, didn’t actually come together at the knees. ‘No, baas,’ he said softly. There was no fear in his voice, only a sort of resignation. He seemed to know what would happen next.

The warder reached out and grabbed him by his canvas shirt. ‘When I say so, you say yes, understand? Now, do you eat shit, Kaffir?’

‘Yes, baas,’ Geel Piet replied.

‘Loud! Say it loud, you shit-eating bastard!’

‘YES, BAAS!’

‘Yes, baas what?”

‘Yes, baas, we eat each other’s shit!’

The sergeant from Pretoria turned to us. ‘There you are, Professor. I told you they eat each other’s shit. Next time make him lick it up, it will be a proper treat for him.’ He turned and walked away.

Geel Piet came padding over to us, his bare feet making hardly any sound on the sprung wooden floor. ‘Thank you, big baas,’ he said with a grin. ‘He is right, man, in prison we all eat shit.’ He turned to me as he picked up the bucket. ‘Your feet, small baas, box with your feet, punch clean so it is a scoring shot. No clinches, that way a bigger boxer can push you over. Good luck, small baas, the people are with you.’

‘Thank you, Geel Piet, tell the people I thank them.’

‘Ag man, it is nothing, the people love you, you are fighting for them.’ He was gone.

Doc cleared his throat to break the silence. ‘Maybe now we can play Chopin, yes?’

I gave him a big hug. ‘That sure was quick thinking, Doc.’

He chuckled. ‘Not so bad for a brokink-down old piano player, ja?’ He frowned suddenly. ‘I wonder what wants the Kommandant?’

We were to leave for Nelspruit, a distance of some forty miles, at eight a.m. the following morning. Though I avoided having to rest on Friday afternoon, I had been ordered to bed at six o’clock. I woke as usual just before dawn and lay in bed trying to imagine the day ahead. What if I was beaten first off? How would I hide my despair? With seven Eastern Transvaal teams competing, I had to win twice to get to the final. I had never boxed six rounds in my life, and even if I got through them I would have to box another three in the finals! What if I lost concentration and the other kid pushed me over? Even if I was winning, I’d lose because I’d hit the canvas!

I couldn’t stand the ‘What ifs’ any longer and I quickly got out of bed and dressed and ran through the garden. In a little more than ten minutes I was on top of the hill sitting on our rock.

It was early spring and the dawn wind was cold, I shivered a little as I watched the light bleed into the valley and merge with the darkened town below me, smudging the darkness until the roofs and streets and trees were rubbed clean. The jacaranda trees were not yet in bloom but patches of bright red from spring-flowering flamboyant trees already dotted the town. I tried to think how Granpa Chook would have looked at the situation. He would have taken things in his stride, just like any other day. While Granpa Chook was a less important mentor now, he remained a sort of check-point in my life. A reference on how to behave in a tight spot. I thought of Hoppie too. If only Hoppie could have been there to see me. ‘First with your head and then with your heart, Peekay.’ I could almost hear his cheerful and reassuring voice.

After a while I felt much calmer. I made my way back down the hill as the sun began to rise. Some of the aloes, mostly the taller Aloe ferox , were showing early bloom. I watched as a ray of sunlight caught a tiny jewelled honey-sucker as it hovered around a spray of orange aloe blossom. Its long hooked needle beak probed for nectar, the tiny bird’s wings beating so fast they held it suspended in one spot, too fast even to make a blur in the surrounding air. I imagined being able to punch that fast, my opponent retelling the fight to someone else. ‘I was still thinking about throwing a right when the welterweight champion of the world hit me three hundred times on the chin.’ Even to me it sounded improbable.

When I got back to the house Dee and Dum had prepared breakfast, brown Kaffircorn porridge, fried eggs and bacon. On the kitchen table stood my school lunch tin. After their day spent as purveyors of sandwiches to the Earl of Sandwich Fund at the Easter fête they regarded themselves as world authorities on the sandwich and my school lunch was always a bit of a surprise. Grated carrot and jam was one of the combinations that would crop up once in a while, or avocado pear and peanut butter. I had drawn the line at onion and papaya, and gooseberry jam and Marmite was another variety struck off their culinary repertoire.

I wondered briefly what they’d packed to sustain me, hopefully for nine rounds of boxing, but refrained from looking. Until, unable to contain themselves, they opened the tin to show me six pumpkin scones neatly wrapped in greaseproof paper. ‘We baked them last night, your favourite!’ Dum said and I could see they were both very pleased with themselves.

I packed all my stuff into my school satchel, including my beautiful boxing boots which Dee had given another polish, even though they were spotless. At half-past seven I had already said my farewells to my granpa and my mother and was sitting on the front wall waiting for the blue prison light utility which was to pick me up. I could have gone to the prison but Gert said, ‘No problems, it’s only a few minutes out of our way, save the energy for the ring!’ Gert wasn’t like the other warders. Indeed all the kids thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. He like to help people and he once told me he only hit Kaffirs if they really did wrong. ‘A Kaffir hurts also, maybe not like a white man, ’cause they more like monkeys, but they hurt also when you hit them.’

After breakfast when I had gone to bid my granpa goodbye I put the question to him about being knocked down so that even if I was winning the fight I would lose it. The usual tamping and puffing and lighting up took place. Finally, squinting into a haze of blue smoke he answered.

‘I think you’d best do what I did in the Boer War.’

‘What was that?’ I asked anxiously.

‘Why lad, run away as much as possible.’

That was the trouble with my granpa, the advice he gave when you needed it most wasn’t always very useful.

I saw the blue prison ute coming up the hill with Gert at the wheel. Next to him someone sat reading a newspaper; I couldn’t see who it was. Gert stopped outside the gate. ‘Jump in the back with the other kids, Peekay,’ he said cheerfully. I climbed into the back of the ute, helped by one of the others. It was an exciting business all right as Gert changed gears and we pulled away. A fourteen-year-old called Bokkie de Beer was in charge and he told me no one was allowed to stand up. All the other kids were giggling and splurting into their hands as they looked at me.