Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

Captain Smit had dragged himself to his feet and stood facing Borman, who was no longer trying to get out of the bear hug Klipkop held him in. Bringing his gloves up, Smit signalled to Borman to come and fight. Klipkop released his grip and Borman rushed at Smit, walking into a straight left from Smit that stopped him in his tracks. Borman charged in again and Captain Smit stopped him again, repeating the straight left into the face. It was obvious that Borman had never been a boxer. A trickle of blood ran from his nose and he brought his arm up to wipe it. A smear of blood covered the top of his arm and he stared down in horror at it. ‘Shit, I’m bleeding!’ he cried. ‘Jesus Christ, I’m bleeding!’

Then Captain Smit stepped up and smashed his glove into Borman’s face. The blow seemed to flatten Borman’s nose and he dropped to the canvas. Covering his face with his gloves, he wailed, ‘Don’t hit me, please don’t hit me!’

Captain Smit signalled to Klipkop to get Borman back onto his feet. Klipkop got his arms under Borman’s armpits but the man refused to get up. The blood from his nose had stained his white shirt and his eyes were wide with terror. Klipkop let him go and he dropped to the ground; then, crawling on all fours towards Captain Smit, Borman held Smit around the legs. ‘Please don’t hit me, Captain. I don’t understand, why you doing this to me? It was only a Kaffir, a dirty stinking yellow man, why you hitting a white man over a Kaffir?’

Captain Smit kicked his legs free of Borman’s embrace. ‘You can’t even fight, you low bastard. You can’t even stand up and fight like man!’ It was the first time Smit had spoken since they’d entered the ring. He turned and extended his hands to Klipkop who unlaced and removed the gloves. Then Smit went over to the neutral corner, picked up the canvas roll and unrolled it beside the sobbing officer. Klipkop grabbed Borman by the legs and Captain Smit grabbed him around the wrists and they lifted him and placed him on the blood-stained canvas and rolled it around him. ‘This Kaffir’s blood will haunt you till you die,’ Captain Smit said. He picked up his shoes and then he and Klipkop climbed from the ring. Klipkop moved over to the wall and reaching for the switch plunged the gymnasium into darkness.

In the darkness from the direction of the swing doors there came a sudden shout, ‘ Abantu bingelela Onoshobishobi Ingelosi!’ The people salute the Tadpole Angel! The door opened slightly and in the shaft of light it threw we saw a black figure slip quickly out of the gymnasium. The people knew. The curse was fixed. Lieutenant Borman was dead meat.

When I got outside, the tiekiedraai dancing was already going full swing with someone on the Mignon hammering out the Boeremusiek accompanied by the man with the piano accordion and a banjo player. Outside, on the parade ground, warders and their wives stood around the barbecue fires now burnt down to glowing embers, homemade sausages known as boerewors were held over the fires and the sizzle of the fat dropping from the sausage skins made the embers flare in the dark.

Doc and Mrs Boxall were nowhere to be seen. I watched the guy beating the Mignon half to death, thankful he wasn’t using Doc’s Steinway, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. ‘Howzit?’ It was Gert. ‘How you getting home?’ he enquired. ‘Maybe I can borrow the Plymouth and take you all.’ I explained that Mrs Boxall had brought us in her old crock which made a fearful racket and I was doubtful that it had long to live. ‘You know where the professor and that lady is don’t you?’ Not waiting for my reply, he said: ‘I seen them going into the administration building with the brigadier and the Kommandant.’

Gert was amazing like that; he always seemed to know what was going on. ‘Maybe the professor will get a medal or something for the Kaffir concert.’ Then he giggled, ‘Jesus! I hope the brigadier never finds out that Geel Piet was only a broken down old lag.’ He punched me lightly on the shoulder, ‘Sorry man, about shutting your mouth back there.’ I hung my head, the memory of the blood-stained canvas still too sharp in my mind for me to chance looking at him.

‘You did right,’ I said softly.

‘So long, Peekay, I’d better kick the dust,’ Gert said. At last Doc and Mrs Boxall came out. I ran up to them and I could see Mrs Boxall was excited.

‘By Jove, Peekay, miracles will never cease. I do believe we’ve done it!’ she exclaimed.

‘Done what?’ I asked.

‘Have done what?’ she corrected automatically. ‘We have been given permission to start a letter writing service. Isn’t that simply grand news? The brigadier says that every prisoner may send and receive one letter a month. It’s the first time it has happened in South Africa and it’s going on trial for six months.’ She grabbed me by the hand and Doc by the other and we danced around in a circle to the sound of the tiekiedraai music coming from the hall. ‘You’re going to be needed because you speak three African languages as well as English and Afrikaans. Every Sunday morning after church we’ll come out for two hours and take dictation from the prisoners. I say, it’s a real victory for the forces of good. The brigadier was most impressed when I told him that it would be done under the auspices of the Earl of Sandwich Fund,’ she stopped, puffed from the dancing, and then giggled. ‘The Kommandant assured the brigadier that the Earl of Sandwich Fund was a very respected organisation with worldwide contacts and that all the warders’ wives baked for it at the Christmas and Easter show.’ We all started to laugh. Doc finally said, ‘Madam Boxall, you are absoloodle the best. For this I give you eleven out of ten.’

She did a small curtsey. ‘Why thank you, kind sir!’ She gave Doc one of her extra special smiles. We hung around for a while longer just so we wouldn’t seem rude and finally made our way to the car. As we approached we could hear soft grunting sounds and then we saw that a pair of boots was sticking out from under Charlie. Gert got up sheepishly and wiped his grease-blackened hands on the sides of his khaki shorts. He bowed awkwardly to Mrs Boxall.

‘Does Mevrou speak Afrikaans?’ he asked me.

I shook my head. ‘I’ll translate, if you like?’

Gert nodded. ‘Tell her she’s got more power now, you only had three cylinders firing,’ he spoke fast, swallowing his words as he fought his shyness, ‘but you still got a bad knock in the diff.’ He turned to Mrs Boxall. ‘If you can get it here tomorrow, maybe just after you been to church, I’ll borrow the Plymouth and drive you home and I’ll fix the car up for you.’ I introduced Gert to Mrs Boxall and translated what he’d said. Mrs Boxall was very grateful and called Gert ‘A dear, sweet boy,’ which I didn’t translate but I think he understood because he seemed very embarrassed.

‘Oh dear, I have no idea what a knock in the diff is. Is it something very bad?’

‘It’s the differential, I think it’s pretty bad,’ I replied without consulting Gert.

Pulling up his socks which were already pulled up Gert stammered, ‘Good night, Missis,’ in English and then walked quickly away into the dark.

We zoomed away and Mrs Boxall had no trouble driving up the Sheba road hill. The difference in Charlie was amazing now that we were driving on all cylinders. We dropped Doc off at the bottom of his hill. I think the new four-cylinder Charlie could’ve made it easily but Mrs Boxall had never been invited by Doc to his cottage and she said as she drove me home, ‘This wasn’t the right time’ – whatever that was supposed to mean.

Mrs Boxall promised to talk to my mother about the new letter writing arrangements in the prison. These were to take place on a Sunday morning and I had some real doubts about being allowed to partake in them. Sundays were difficult for me, it was a day filled with taboos, beginning with Sunday school and church in the morning and ending with evening service, which consisted of a short message from Pastor Mulvery and then ‘a precious time’, when the congregation witnessed for the Lord. I wasn’t allowed to do anything except the Lord’s work on a Sunday, but as I wasn’t a born-again Christian any of the Lord’s work I might do, like reading the Shangaan Bible to Dee and Dum, wasn’t creating any bricks for my mansion in the sky. Reading the Bible was regarded as the most superior type of work for the Lord. I was required to read three pages of the New Testament every day and ten pages on Sunday, and I did my compulsory Sunday reading during Pastor Mulvery’s Message from the Lord. You’d think if something was called a message from the Lord, it would be a proper message, such as you might give to a person. But Pastor Mulvery’s messages rambled all over the place threading bits of the scripture together and frequently leading to wildly unusual conclusions which tended to prove Pastor Mulvery was right while all the gospel scholars since St Paul were wrong. He would call the Catholic Church the ‘Catlicks’ and they were his special target. He would go to endless trouble to demonstrate that the Catlicks had perverted the Word of God. He would point out that the Latin scholars who had translated the St James version into English from an original Catlick translation had not understood the original Greek translation of the original Hebrew. As Pastor Mulvery knew no Latin and no Greek and certainly no Hebrew and never gave examples of the corrupted Words of God in Latin or Greek so that I could at least check his accuracy with Doc, he was able to build some pretty impressive arguments against the perfidy of the Catholic Church. I can tell you one thing, you wouldn’t have wanted to be a Catlick on a Sunday evening service with Pastor Mulvery delivering one of his messages.