Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

I placed less importance on my intelligence than on my prowess as a boxer. If the Prince of Wales School tried to disabuse me of my ambition to be the welterweight champion of the world, then the intellectual nourishment it might furnish as compensation would not be sufficient incentive for me to remain. But I wasn’t about to let this happen. No more camouflage for Peekay, I would simply be the best. I hadn’t discussed this with either Doc or Miss Bornstein. I was on my own again and I had to do my own thinking, so when Hymie started on about beating the system I knew immediately what he was on about.

He passed me a stick of Spearmint and commenced talking again. ‘Now my theory is that to beat any system you have to know it intimately. Rebellion is senseless and being pointedly different only leads to persecution, the only way to control any system is from inside it the way the Jews have always done.’

‘It didn’t seem to help them with Hitler,’ I said. I didn’t know much about the Jews in Nazi Germany but Miss Bornstein had told me a little and had added that Old Mr Bornstein actually felt guilty for escaping the Holocaust.

‘A-ha, that was different. Hitler’s Nazi party presented an impossible problem for the Jews of Germany. After all, you can’t undermine a system from within when you’re excluded from it in the first place, can you?’

Hymie’s point was not well made. I was to learn that he was obsessed with the Holocaust, that it sometimes clouded his otherwise excellent judgement. I could never quite understand why he possessed this obsession, his parents had escaped from Warsaw before the Jews were incarcerated in the ghetto or were even unduly persecuted. Hymie had never known any real racial prejudice, yet he had a strong sense of alienation as well as, it seemed to me at times, of guilt.

Doc had taught me well and I wasn’t about to let Hymie get away with a cheap shot like that.

‘Every system tends to be mutually exclusive, they’re all about keeping someone or something out, by keeping the Jews out of the Nazi party Hitler was acting typically. No system wants to be undermined or abused and therefore it is constantly on guard to exclude those who would destroy it. If, as you say, it is a common Jewish tactic to invade from within then this should have been possible even with the Nazi party. We have to conclude that the Jews failed to defeat Hitler, failed to defeat the system and as a consequence paid a terrible price. It wasn’t an exception at all.’

Hymie grinned. ‘Hey! You can think. I’m not used to that in a goy. Here, shake a paw.’

I allowed the compliment and shook his hand, although I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. ‘What’s a goy?’

‘A Christian, a gentile. Hey, can we be friends, I mean proper friends, Peekay?’

‘Sure,’ I said, not really meaning it.

‘You see, you’re different. I know that now. And I’m certainly different, I always have been, but being a Jew at a school like this makes me even more so. I reckon we’ll need each other.’

‘What for? You mean to beat the system?’

‘No, no, to use it. I’ve got a hunch we’ll be a terrific combo.’

I wasn’t sure he was right. I still had a problem. While I had all the physical and intellectual equipment needed to succeed within the system, I lacked one thing. Money. The only way I could succeed without money was by being a loner. Friendship with this particular tribe of Christian gentlemen required resources. You were expected to pay your way. The only other way was by ingratiation, but I was damned if that was ever going to happen to me again. Pisskop was still the dark shadow of Peekay, still alive in my mind; come what may, I would never again stoop to conquer.

Added to this was the fact that I was basically a loner. Other than Doc, and when I was small, Granpa Chook, I’d never been in the position of having a partner and I’d never really had a best friend who was my own age. Having an immediate friend in this strange new environment sounded nice, but it also made me feel vulnerable.

‘Have you honest and truly only got one name?’ Hymie asked suddenly.

‘Well sort of, you see I’ve only ever used one name. One name is me.’

‘They won’t let you get away with it you know, the system can’t handle things like that.’

‘It’s just going to have to,’ I replied, sounding a lot braver than I really was. I longed suddenly to ask Doc what he would advise under the circumstances, though I already knew the answer. He would simply have said that a man has the right to any name he wants to give himself; if a man is saddled with a name he didn’t choose, how can he possibly be free for the rest of his life? ‘We got to be who we got to be. Absoloodle!’ he’d conclude after we had carefully and fully discussed the matter. Doc was not a man to make compromises on important issues such as determining who a person really is in his own mind.

‘I bet you’re good at sport. Me, I’m rotten,’ Hymie said.

‘I’m okay.’

‘What’s your best sport,’ Hymie asked, humouring me, ‘rugby?’

‘No, I box.’

Hymie jerked back in his seat, plainly shocked. ‘You what?’

‘I’m a boxer.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought you said. Why man, that’s positively Neanderthal.’

‘You could get badly hurt saying that to the wrong boxer,’ I grinned.

Hymie reeled back in mock terror, ‘Careful, man, in a court of law a boxer’s hands are considered lethal weapons.’ He was suddenly serious again. ‘I tell you what, I’m a gambler and you’re a boxer, that’s yet another reason why you and I have to stick together, Peekay.’

‘What do you gamble on?’ I asked.

Hymie sighed. ‘I’m a Jew. People expect Jews to be good with money. So what do Jews do? They oblige. My old man is filthy rich and he’ll give me all the money I need. But that’s the very problem, you see. I have to make my own, it’s an intellectual thing not a greedy thing. I’m not really a gambler, gamblers are stupid, making money is simply a way of keeping myself mentally fit, can you understand that?’

‘No.’

‘Are you rich, Peekay? I mean your parents?’

‘Hell no, I won a scholarship here. My mum’s a dressmaker.’

‘Well, that’s why you don’t understand. For me money is like boxing is for you, it’s my way of getting even with the world. For a rich Jew money is a weapon, unless I know how to make it on my own I will be defenceless.’

I was suddenly fascinated. It wasn’t that Hymie’s philosophy was the antithesis of all I’d been taught, although I knew the Lord was against money and definitely in favour of the poor. It was just that, well, Doc and Mrs Boxall, or even Miss Bornstein, had never mentioned money or its importance in the scheme of things. I’d been forced into thinking about money for the first time when the list for my school clothes had arrived and I had already worked out that not having any at a boarding school for the sons of the rich was pretty well going to shape my school career.

‘Are you very good at making money?’ I asked Hymie.

‘About as good as you are at boxing,’ he replied.

‘You’ve got yourself a partner, Hymie. Money is something I have to learn about.’

Hymie grinned, ‘It’s a deal, Peekay. I had a feeling you were a bloody good boxer.’

I was by nature a fairly quiet sort of a guy and had no trouble getting on with things. As a new boy I was at the bottom of the heap but was fortunate enough to be selected as the fag for the head of the house, Fred Cooper, who was also the second prefect of the entire school and the captain of the First XV Rugby. This immediately gave me some extra status amongst the other new boys all of whom, like me, were allocated to a school or house prefect.