Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

‘What’s so funny?’ I shouted above the sound of the wind and the roar of the engine. Bokkie de Beer pointed to the rear window of the driver’s cabin. I followed his hand and there, framed in the window, wearing his unmistakable panama hat, was the back of Doc’s head. I couldn’t believe my eyes and all the kids fell about laughing at my astonishment. I just couldn’t believe my good fortune.

It was the first time since my arrival by train three years earlier that I had left the small town. It was a perfectly clear, early spring morning as we travelled across the valley towards a row of distant hills. The thornveld and the flat-topped acacia had already broken into electric green leaf. In a month they would be a mass of tiny pom-poms that turned the valley into a sea of yellow and pink.

The road from Barberton was tarred all the way and by nine-thirty we’d reached Nelspruit. My wind-blown skin felt tight around the eyes and cheeks, and I was glad to get out of the back of the ute when we drew to a halt in a parking lot behind the town hall. I rushed to Doc’s side to open the door for him. His blue eyes were shining and I think he was almost as excited as I was.

‘We are together outside again, Peekay. It is goot, ja? Absoloodle.’

‘How did you escape?’ I asked clumsily.

He chuckled. ‘With the permission of the Kommandant. That’s what he wished to see me about after breakfast yesterday.’ He saw me frown, we both knew the way of the prison system where nothing is given unless something is taken in return. Doc shrugged. ‘It is not so much he wants. He wants only I should play a little Chopin when the brigadier comes from Pretoria next month.’

I knew how Doc felt about playing in public. He refused to play at any of the town concerts and had long since retired as a musician. While he overcame his fear when he triumphed at the Beethoven lunchtime recital in the market square, Doc was a perfectionist and it gave him great pain not to meet the standards he demanded for himself. When I told him Mrs Boxall had said there was no one in Barberton who didn’t think he was the greatest pianist they had ever heard, he had replied, ‘You must thank Madame Boxall for her kindness, but I am too old and too weak to inflict badly played Beethoven and Mozart on myself.’

‘You should have said no!’ I said.

‘Tch-tch, Peekay, then I would not see you in your début. One day I will say, I was there when the welterweight champion of the world made his boxing début. Absoloodle!

‘You still shouldn’t have.’

‘Beethoven yes, Mozart yes, Brahms yes, but Chopin I can still play enough not to tear myself to little bits. I will play Chopin to this Mr Brigadier. That is not so hard, ja.’

We entered the town hall through a back door and walked down a corridor until we reached a room which said Barberton Bloue on a piece of paper stuck on the door. The room smelt of dust and sweat, even though nobody had changed yet. Lieutenant Smit was standing against the far wall and next to him stood Klipkop.

‘This is where you will change today, but not all at once, hey?’ The room tittered. ‘This morning are the preliminary fights for the kids and this afternoon for the weight divisions. Tonight, starting six o’clock, the finals. Nobody leaves the town hall and if I catch anyone drinking a beer, I’m warning you now, there’ll be trouble. We come here to win and that is what we going to do! Okay, so what’s our motto?’

‘One for all and all for one,’ we all shouted. Doc put his hand on my shoulder and I felt very proud. ‘I wish Geel Piet was with us,’ I whispered. The room emptied and Klipkop shouted for the kids to say behind. Doc, who was in charge of first aid, left to fetch the towels and the first-aid kit from the parking lot but promised to be right back.

Klipkop grinned. ‘Today, man, I’m Geel Piet.’

‘Does that mean we can hit you and you can’t hit back?’ Bokkie de Beer said cheekily, and we all laughed.

Klipkop smiled. ‘I will look after you, and the lieutenant and me will be your seconds. You can all get changed now and I’ll fetch you in fifteen minutes. Don’t nobody go nowhere, you hear?’

I found a corner and took my boots from my book satchel and put them on first. All the kids crowded around. ‘Where’d you get those, man?’ Bokkie de Beer exclaimed. I had been too excited to think up an explanation.

‘My, my granpa made them,’ I stammered.

‘Boy, you lucky having a bootmaker for your granpa,’ Fonnie Kruger said.

‘Well, he’s not really a bootmaker, more a sort of gardener.’

‘Well he’s blêrrie clever, that’s all I can say.’ Bokkie de Beer said enviously and the other kids seemed to agree with him.

I rolled my grey school socks down so they made a collar just above the boots. Then I put my lovely blue singlet on and the blue boxing shorts with the yellow stripe down the side. Geel Piet had sized the waist perfectly but the length was wishful thinking. The bottoms of the shorts went way past my knees. When I stood up the other four kids broke up. Maatie Snyman and Nels Stekhoven even rolled on the floor. I guess I must have looked pretty funny with my sparrow legs sticking out, but I also felt terribly proud.

Fonnie Kruger and myself were the first of the Barberton Blues to fight as we were in the under twelves, the most junior division. We waited for Klipkop and followed him into the town hall. Kids from other major towns in the Eastern Transvaal were standing in groups with adults and they too were changed and ready. I looked around wondering whom among them I would have to fight.

Doc entered the hall and moved over to me. We sat on two chairs, slightly away, but within easy beckoning distance from the others. Doc held my hand and I think he was more nervous that I was. He had taken out his bandanna and was wiping his brow. ‘I think examinations in the conservatorium in Leipzig when I was so big as you was not so bad as this, ja. Absoloodle.’

‘I’ll be okay, Doc. I’ll dance and everything, just like Geel Piet says. Lieutenant Smit says I’m blêrrie fast, you’ll see they won’t hit me, for sure.’

‘It’s nice of you to say this, Peekay. But what happens when comes one big Boer and connects?’

I grinned, trying to make him feel better. I repeated Hoppie’s comment. ‘Ag man, the bigger they are the harder they fall.’ I felt pretty corny saying it and I knew now why Hoppie had said it to me. He must have felt pretty corny too.

Doc groaned and buried his head in his red bandanna. ‘Peekay, I want you should be very careful. In that ring are not nice people.’ Just then Klipkop called me over and Doc squeezed my hand. ‘You must use your feet to run away, Peekay. In my head I can hear only Wagner. No Mozart, only Wagner.’

Klipkop and Lieutenant Smit were standing with a large bald man with a big tummy who wore long white pants and a white singlet. A few feet from them stood two adults and a kid. The kid was quite a bit bigger than I though not as big as Snotnose. He wore a red singlet and in white on the front was the word Sabie. That was the town where Klipkop had his nooi, to whom he had recently become engaged.

The big man in the singlet looked at me and then at Lieutenant Smit. ‘He is not very big. Are you sure you want him to fight?’

The lieutenant nodded. ‘It will be good for him.’

The big man looked at the boy from Sabie and then looked doubtfully back at me. He turned to Lieutenant Smit. ‘His opponent is eight inches taller and has probably got five inches more reach, man.’

‘If I think he’s getting hurt I’ll pull him out.’

‘I blêrrie well hope you know what you doing, man,’ the big man said, shaking his head. The two men from Sabie were grinning and I could hear what they were saying inside their heads. They were glad their kid was going to get an easy fight first up.