The Power of One (3 page)

The strange bone-yellow dice that would solve my bedwetting habit briefly clicked together in his hands and then fell onto the ground in front of him. Inkosi-Inkosikazi flicked at them with his forefinger, and as he did so, tiny rolls of thunder came from his throat. With a final grunt he gathered them up and tossed them back into his ancient leather satchel.

Inkosi-Inkosikazi's eyes, sharp pins of light in his incredibly wrinkled face, seemed to look right into me. “I visited you in your dreams, and we came to a place of three waterfalls and ten stones across the river. The shinbones of the great white ox say I must take you back so that you can jump the three waterfalls and cross the river, stepping from stone to stone without falling into the rushing torrent. If you can do this, then the unfortunate business of the night water will be over.”

I nodded, not knowing what to say. After all, five-year-old kids are pretty rotten at riddles. His face became even more simianlike as he chuckled, “When you have learned this lesson I will show you the trick of the chicken sleep.”

I had seen the faint marks of last night's circles, but no chickens. I guessed that they had been consigned to the communal tummy. I only hope he doesn't use one of Granpa's black Orpingtons, what a kerfuffle that would be, I thought.

“Now listen to me carefully, boy. Watch and listen. Watch and listen,” he repeated. “When I tell you to close your eyes, you will do so. Do you understand?”

Anxious to please him, I shut my eyes tightly. “Not now! Only when I tell you. Not tight, but as you do when your eyes are heavy from the long day and it is time to sleep.”

I opened my eyes to see him crouched directly in front of me, his beautiful fly switch suspended slightly above my normal sightline. The fall of horsehair swayed gently before my eyes.

“Watch the tail of the horse.” My eyes followed the switch as it moved to and fro. “It is time to close your eyes but not your ears. You must listen well, for the roaring of water is great.”

A sudden roar of water filled my head and then I saw the three waterfalls. I was standing on an outcrop of rock directly above the highest one. Far below me the river rushed away, tumbling and boiling into a narrow gorge. Just before the water entered the gorge and churned white, I noted the ten stepping stones, like ten anthracite teeth strung across its mouth.

Inkosi-Inkosikazi spoke to me, his voice soft, almost gentle. “It is late. The bush doves, anticipating nightfall, are already silent. It is the time of day when the white waters roar most mightily, as water does when it is cast in shadow.

“You are standing on a rock above the highest waterfall, a young warrior who has killed his first lion and is worthy now to fight in the legion of Dingaan, the great
impi
that destroys all before it. Worthy even to fight in the
impi
of Shaka, the greatest warrior king of all.

“You are wearing the skirt of lion tail as you face into the setting sun. Now the sun has passed beyond Zululand, even past the land of the Swazi, and now it leaves the Shangaan and the royal
kraal
of Modjadji, the rain queen, to be cooled in the great, dark water beyond.

“You can see the moon rising over Africa and you are at peace with the night, unafraid of the great demon Skokijaan, who comes to feed on the dark night, tearing its black flesh until, at last, it is finished and the new light comes to stir the sleeping herd boys and send them out to mind the lowing cattle.”

As I stood on the great rock waiting to jump into the water, I could see the new moon rising, bright as a new florin above the thundering falls.

“You must take a deep breath and say the number three to yourself as you leap. Then, when you surface, you must take another breath and say the number two as you are washed across the rim of the second waterfall, then again a deep breath as you rise and are carried over the third. Now you must swim to the first stone, counting backwards from ten to one. Then count each stone as you leap from it to the next to cross the rushing river.” The old medicine man paused long enough for me to work out the sequence he had given me. “You must jump now, little warrior of the king.”

I took a deep breath and launched myself into the night. The cool air mixed with spray rushed past my face and then I hit the water below, sank briefly, rose to the surface, and expelled the deep breath I had taken. With scarcely enough time to take a second breath, I was swept over the second waterfall and then again I fell down the third roaring cascade to be plunged into a deep pool at the base of the third waterfall. I swam strongly and with great confidence to the first of the great stones glistening black and wet in the moonlight. Jumping from stone to stone I crossed the river, counting down from ten to one, then leaping to the pebbly beach on the far side.

Clear as an echo, his voice cut through the roar of the falls. “We have crossed the night water to the other side and it is done, you must open your eyes now, little warrior.” Inkosi-Inkosikazi brought me back from the dreamtime and L looked about me, a little surprised to see the familiar farmyard. “When you need me you may come to the night country and I will be waiting. I will always be there. You can find me if you go to the place of the three waterfalls and the ten stones across the river.” Pointing to what appeared to be an empty mealie meal sack, he said, “Bring me that chicken and I will show you the trick of the chicken sleep.”

I got up, walked over to the sack, and opened it. Inside, the sharp, beady red eye of the chicken that looked like Granpa blinked up at me. I dragged the sack over to where the previous circles Inkosi-Inkosikazi had made in the dust had been and the old man rose and called to me to draw a new circle in the dirt. Then he showed me how to hold the old rooster. This is done by securing the main body of the chicken under your armpit like a set of bagpipes and grabbing high up on the chicken's neck with your left hand so that its featherless head is held between forefinger and thumb. Getting a good hold of its feet with your free hand, you dip the chicken toward the ground at an angle of forty-five degrees while squatting on the ground with the chicken's beak not quite touching the rim of the circle. The beak is then traced around the perimeter three times, whereupon the bird is laid inside the circle.

The old man made me practice it three times. To my amazement and his amusement, the old rooster lay within the circle docile as a sow in warm mud. To bring the chicken back from wherever chickens go in such trying circumstances, all I needed to do was touch it and say in a gruff voice, “Chicken sleep, chicken wake, if chicken not wake then chicken be ate!” Which is, I suppose, a pretty grim warning to a chicken.

I did not ask Inkosi-Inkosikazi how a Shangaan chicken could understand Zulu, because you simply do not ask such questions of the greatest medicine man in all of Africa.

I was as yet unaware that this chicken was pretty exceptional, that the ability to understand a couple of African languages was probably not beyond him.

“The chicken trick is our bond. We are now brothers bound in this common knowledge and also the knowledge of the place of the waterfalls in the dreamtime. Only you and I can do this trick or come to that place.”

I'm telling you something, it was pretty solemn stuff.

With a yell across the farmyard the old man called for his driver, who was asleep in the back of the Buick. Together we walked toward the big Buick.

“You may keep this chicken to practice on,” Inkosi-Inkosikazi said as he climbed into the backseat of the car.

As if from nowhere, the car was surrounded by field women, who loaded up the trunk with the tributes they'd bought the previous day. Nanny handed the old man a small square of brightly colored cloth into the corner of which were knotted several coins. Inkosi-Inkosikazi declined the offer of what was, for Nanny, two months' salary.

“It is a matter between me and the boy. This place is on my way to the Molototsi River, where I go to see Modjadji, the rain queen.” He stuck his head out of the rear door window and gazed up into the sky. “The rains have not come to Zululand and in this matter, her magic is greater than mine.”

The rains had been good north of the Drakensberg Mountains, and now Nanny grew fearful as she asked for news of her people.

“The fields are plowed three months and the seed maize is ready in the great seed pots, but the wind carries away the soil as we wait for the rains to come,” the old man sighed.

Nanny translated the news of the drought to the women. Drought is always news to be shared among the tribes. The women broke into a lament, doing a shuffling dance around the Buick and singing about the great one who brought the rains, gave barren women the sons they craved, and cured the bite of snakes, even of the great snake, the black mamba.

Inkosi-Inkosikazi stuck his ancient head out of the window again and shook his fly switch impatiently. “Be gone with you, you stupid old crows, sing for Modjadji the rain queen, this old rainmaker has failed to squeeze a drop from the sky.”

With a roar from its mighty V-8 engine, the big black automobile shot down the road, raising a cloud of dust behind it.

By the time the holidays were over, Granpa Chook, for that was what I called my chicken gift, and I were practically inseparable. Calling a chicken a “chook” was a private joke my mother and I had shared. We had received a bunch of photos from a distant cousin in Australia, one of which had shown a small boy not much older than me feeding the chickens. On the back of the photo was written “Young Lennie, feeding the chooks on the farm in Wagga Wagga.” We had called the two old drakes who always quacked around the farmyard together Wagga Wagga, and had started referring to Granpa's black Orpingtons as “the chooks.”

Granpa Chook was, I decided, a splendid name for the scraggy old rooster, who came running the moment I appeared at the kitchen door. There was no doubt about it, that chicken had fallen for me. I don't mind admitting, I felt pretty powerfully attracted to him as well.

We practiced the chicken trick for a couple of days, but he got so smart that the moment I drew a circle in the dust he stepped into it and settled down politely. I think he was only trying to be cooperative, but it meant that I had lost all my power over him. Granpa Chook was the first living creature over which I had held power, and now this not-so-dumb cluck had found a way of getting back on even terms, which was damned annoying if you ask me.

THE
holidays came to an end. My bed-wetting habit had, of course, been cured, but not my apprehension at the prospect of returning to boarding school. As for my hatless snake, I'd asked Inkosi-Inkosikazi about that, and he'd hinted that we were similarly unique, which was why we were so special. It was comforting at the time, but now I wasn't so sure.

Nanny and I had a good old weep on the last evening at home. She packed my khaki shorts and shirts and two pairs of pajamas and a bright red jumper my mother had sent from the nervous breakdown place. We laughed and laughed, in between crying of course, because one sleeve was about ten inches shorter than the other. Nervous breakdowns probably do that sort of thing to people's knitting. By unpicking it at the shoulders Nanny made it into a nice red jumper.

We set out after breakfast in Granpa's old Model A Ford truck. On the way we picked up fat Mrs. Vorster, the widow who owned the farm next door. Granpa spoke no Afrikaans and she no English, so she thumped up and down in silence with her chins squashing onto her chest with every bump of the old truck.

I was delighted to be in the back with Nanny and Granpa Chook, who was concealed in a mealie meal sack where he lay so still you'd have sworn he was an empty sack. Nanny was going to town to send money to her family in Zululand to help with the terrible drought.

Granpa Chook's wing feathers had practically grown in again and by taking a run-up, his long legs pumping up and down, he could take off and land high up on a branch anytime he liked.

I have to admit, while he was heavier, he wasn't any prettier. His long neck was still bare and his head still bald, his cock's comb was battered and hung like an empty scrotum to one side of his head. Compared to the black Orpingtons, he was a mess.

We stopped at the school gates and Nanny handed me the suitcase and the bag with Granpa Chook playing possum. “What have you got in the bag, son?” Granpa asked.

Before I could reply Nanny called from the back, “It is only sweet potatoes,
baas.”

The tears were, as usual, running down her cheeks and I wanted to rush back and hide myself in her big safe arms. With a bit of a backfire and a puff of blue exhaust smoke, the truck lurched away and I was left standing at the school gates. Ahead of me lay the dreaded Mevrou, the Judge and the jury, and the beginning of the power of one—how I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed.

I released Granpa Chook from the sack and gave him a pat. Pisskop the
rooinek
possessor of a hatless snake, was back in town. But this time, for damn sure, he was not alone. He had with him a gift from the greatest medicine man of them all.

The playground was empty as we crossed it. Granpa Chook darted here and there after the tiny green grasshoppers that landed on its hot, dusty surface. They too seemed to be in enemy territory, for not a blade of grass grew on the sun-baked square of earth. To make it across to safety they were forced to land frequently, exposing themselves to the dangers of a marauding Granpa Chook. The odds were rather better for them; there were hundreds of them and only one Granpa Chook, while it was the other way around with the two of us.

We seemed to have arrived early and so I made for my secret mango tree, which grew on the other side of the playground. Leaving my suitcase at its base, I climbed into its dark, comforting canopy of leaves. Granpa Chook, taking a run-up and flapping his wings furiously, flew up and perched on a branch beside me, swaying and wobbling and making a lot of unnecessary noise and fuss.

I carefully explained the situation to him. He just sat there and tossed his silly cock's comb and squawked a lot. I tried to impress on him that this was the big time, that things were different here from down on the farm. I must say that any chicken

who could outsmart Inkosi-Inkosikazi's cooking pot and get the better of his magic circle had to be a real professional, so I didn't lecture him too much. Granpa Chook was a survivor, and I felt fortunate to have him as my friend.

After a while we left the mango tree, and skirting the edge of the playground we made our way to the side of the hostel that contained the small kids' dormitory. It looked out onto a rundown citrus orchard of old, almost leafless grapefruit trees. Half a dozen cassia trees had seeded themselves over the years, and their bright yellow blossoms brought the dying orchard back to life. The ground was covered with khakiweed and blackjack that reached to my shoulder. No one ever came here. It was the ideal place for Granpa Chook to stay while I reported to Mevrou.

Deep inside the orchard I set about making a small clearing among the rank-smelling weed and in the process unearthed a large white cutworm with a gray head and a yellow band around its neck. Granpa Chook thought all his Christmases had come at once, and with a sharp squawk he had that plump grub in his beak. You could see the progress of that worm as it made a bulge going down his long, naked neck.

The clearing complete, I drew a circle on the ground and he settled politely down into it. It still annoyed me a bit that he refused to go through the whole magic rigamarole, but what's the use, you can't go arguing with a chicken, can you?

I found Mevrou in the washhouse folding blankets. She looked at me with distaste and pointed to a tin bucket that stood beside the mangle. “Your rubber sheet is in that bucket. Take it.” she said.

I tried not to sound scared. “I—I am cured, Mevrou,” I stammered.

“Ha! Your
oupa's
beatings are better than mine then,
ja?”

I stood with my head bowed, the way you were supposed to in the presence of Mevrou. “No, Mevrou, your beatings are the best—better than my granpa's. It just happened. I just stopped doing it.”

“My
sjambok
will be lonely.” Mevrou always called the bamboo cane she carried her
sjambok
She handed me a coarse towel and a blanket. “You are too early, there is no lunch. The other children will be here not till this afternoon.” The blanket smelled of camphor balls, and with the familiar smell the old fear returned. And with it came doubt that perhaps I wasn't cured of my bed-wetting habit.

I dropped my blanket and towel off in the small kids' dormitory and returned to Granpa Chook. The absence of lunch didn't bother me. Nanny had packed two large sweet potatoes in my suitcase and I now planned to share one of these with Granpa Chook.

As I approached the abandoned orchard I could hear a fearful squawking coming from Granpa Chook. Suddenly he rose from above the weeds, his short wings beating the air. I lost sight of him again as he plunged back into the undergrowth. Up he came again, neck arched, legs stretched with talons wide. Down again, the weeds shaking wildly where he landed. This time he didn't come up and he had stopped squawking, though the khakiweed continued to shake where he'd disappeared. My heart beat wildly. Something had gotten Granpa Chook. A weasel or a feral cat? It was my fault, I'd left him helpless in the magic circle.

I stumbled blindly toward the tiny clearing where I'd left him, khakiweed and blackjack lashing out at me, holding me back. Granpa Chook stood inside the circle; held firmly in his beak was a three-foot grass snake.

With a vigorous shake of his head and a snip of his powerful beak he removed the head from the snake and, to my astonishment, swallowed it. The snake's head went down in the same way as the fat cutworm had done. Unaware that the show was over, the snake's brilliant green body continued to wriggle wildly in the weeds.

The toughest damn chicken in the whole world tossed his head and gave me a beady wink. I could see he was pretty damn pleased with himself. I'll tell you something, I don't blame him. How could you go wrong with a friend like him at your side?

The snake had ceased to wriggle and I picked it up and hung it from a branch of a cassia tree that grew only a few feet from the window nearest my bed in the little kids' dormitory. Now there were two hatless snakes in the world and I was involved with both of them.

The afternoon gradually filled with the cacophony of returning kids. I could hear them as they dumped their blankets and suitcases in the dormitory and rushed out to play. Granpa Chook and I spent the afternoon making his shelter from bits of corrugated iron I found among the weeds. He seemed to like his new home, scratching for worms where I'd pulled up the weeds. He would be safe and dry when it rained.

By the time the wash-up bell went at a quarter to five, I was a bit of a mess from all the weeding and building. I left Granpa Chook for the night, scratching happily away in his new home, and washed under a little-used tap on the side of the building facing the orchard. By the time the supper bell went the late afternoon sun had dried me and I was good as new. I waited until the last possible moment before slipping into the dining hall to take my place at the bottom table, where the little kids sat.

Shortly after lights out that night I was summoned to appear before the Judge and the jury. It was a full moon again, just like the very first time. But also a moon like the one that rose above the waterfalls in the dreamtime, when, as a young warrior, I had conquered my fears.

The Judge, seated cross-legged on a bed, was even bigger than I remembered. He wore only pajama pants and now sported a crude tattoo high up on his left arm. Cicatrization wasn't new to me. African women do it to their faces all the time, though I had not seen a tattoo on white skin before. Reddish-pink skin still puckered along the edges of the crude blue lines that crossed at the center like two headless snakes wriggling across each other.

The Judge, absently rubbing his tattoo, shook his head slowly as he looked at me. “You are a fool, a blery fool to have come back, Pisskop.” A small lump of snot in his left nostril pumped up and down as he breathed.

“You have marks like a kaffir woman on your arm,” I heard myself saying.

The Judge's eyes seemed to pop out of his head. He snorted in amazement, and the snotty bomb shot out of his nostril and landed on my face. His hand followed a split second later. I felt an explosion in my head as I was knocked to the floor.

I got to my feet. Just like in the comic books, stars were dancing in a red sky in front of my eyes and there was a ringing noise in my ears. But I wasn't crying. I cursed my stupidity. The holidays had blunted my sense of survival: adapt, blend, become part of the landscape, develop a camouflage, be a rock or a leaf or a stick insect, try in every way to be an Afrikaner. The jury were silent, struck dumb by my audacity in comparing the marks on his arm with a black kaffir's face. A warm trickle of blood ran from my nose, across my lips, and down my chin.

The Judge grabbed me by the front of my pajamas and pulled me up to his face, lifting me so that I stood on the very tips of my toes.
“This tattoo means death and destruction to all rooineks.
And you, Pisskop, are going to be the first.” He released me and I stumbled backward but managed to stay on my feet.

“Yes, sir,” I said, my voice barely audible.

“This is a swastika, man! Do you know what that is?”

“N-no, sir.”

“God has sent us this sign from Adolf Hitler, who will deliver the Afrikaner people from the hated English!”

I could see the jury was deeply impressed, and I was too.

The Judge turned to address the jury, prodding at the swastika. “We must all swear a blood oath to Adolf Hitler,” he said solemnly. The jury crowded around his bed, their eyes shining with excitement.

“I will swear too,” I said hopefully. The blood was still running from my nose and some had dripped to the floor.

“Don't be fuckin' stupid, Pisskop! You ARE the
verdomde
English.” The Judge stood upright on the bed and held his arm aloft at an angle, his fingers straight and pointing toward the ceiling. “In the name of Adolf Hitler we will march every
rooinek
bastard into the sea.”

I had never been to the sea, but I knew it would be a long march all right. “The blood oath! The blood oath!” the jury chanted.

“Come here, Pisskop,” the Judge commanded. I stepped over to his bed. “Look up, man.” I looked up at him as he stood high above me on the bed. He wiped his forefinger under my nose, and then he pushed me so that I sat down hard on the floor. He held up his finger, my blood on its tip shining in the moonlight.

“We will swear this oath with the blood of a
rooinek
!” he announced solemnly. Two members of the jury lifted me to my feet while the others crowded around me, sticking their pudgy fingers into the blood running from my nose. The supply wasn't coming fast enough and one boy tweaked my nose to increase the flow.

This seemed to cause it to stop altogether, so that the last two kids were forced to dab their fingers into the drops of blood on the floor.

The Judge, wiping the blood on his finger across the swastika, instructed the jury to do the same. Soon the swastika was almost totally concealed. “Death to all Englishmen in South Africa, the fatherland!” the Judge cried, raising his arm once more.