The Power of One (5 page)

And then, on September 3, 1939, Neville Chamberlain finally and sadly concluded that Herr Hitler was not a gentleman, not to be trusted, and not open to negotiation. That Britain, having let Czechoslovakia down thoroughly, couldn't face the embarrassment of doing the same thing to Poland and so found it necessary to declare war on Germany. The new headmaster had arrived.

At lunch in the hostel dining hall, the old headmaster with the drinking problem addressed us. He stood, swaying slightly, both hands holding the edge of the table. Then, picking up a knife, he thumped it on the table with the handle. “Silence!” he roared. Whereupon Miss du Plessis, lips pursed, rose quickly, and left through the swinging doors. The old headmaster seemed not to notice. Dropping the knife onto the table, he started to talk in a very loud voice, as though he were addressing hundreds of people. “Today England has declared war on Germany!” He paused to gauge the effect of his words on us. There was no reaction except for a low murmur from where the senior boys sat. “Do you know what this means, man?” Not waiting for an answer, he continued. “It means freedom! Freedom and liberty for our beloved fatherland! Adolf Hitler will destroy the cursed English and remove the yoke of oppression placed on the Afrikaner nation by these
uitlanders
who burn down homes and imprison Boer women and children in concentration camps where twenty-six thousand died of starvation, dysentery, and blackwater fever!”

The headmaster made it sound as though it was all happening at that very moment in South Africa. I suddenly realized that this was what had really happened to my mother. She had been mistaken for a Boer woman and been put in a concentration camp.

The headmaster took a couple of steps back from the table and then lurched forward again. His spit-flecked mouth worked silently, as though he were trying to say something but it wouldn't come out. Instead he raised his arm in the same way the Judge had done in the dormitory. “Heil Hitler!” he blurted out at last.

Just then the doors burst open and Mevrou entered the dining room. Through the briefly open doors we could see Miss du Plessis standing in the hallway biting her knuckles. Mevrou marched up to the headmaster, and taking him firmly by the elbow she led him quickly from the dining hall.

“Heil Hitler!” he shouted back at us as he passed through the swinging doors.

We sat there bewildered. Then the Judge jumped to his feet and stepped up onto the bench on his side of the top table. He rolled the sleeve of his shirt up over the top of his shoulder so we could all see the crude blue crossed and angled lines of his swastika tattoo.

“Adolf Hitler is the king of Germany and God has sent him to take South Africa back from the English and give it to us.” He jabbed at the swastika on his arm. “This is his sign... the swastika! The swastika will make us free again.” His right hand shot up in the same salute the headmaster had given moments before. “Heil Hitler!” he cried.

We all jumped to our feet and, thrusting our arms out in the manner of his own, yelled, “Heil Hitler!”

It was all very exciting. To think that this man, Adolf Hitler, who was going to save us all from the accursed English, was going to be our new headmaster!

Then, slowly at first, the words of the Judge on the first night back at school began to form in my mind, gathered momentum, and then roared into my consciousness: “Don't be fucking stupid, Pisskop! you ARE the
verdomde
English!”

My long march to the sea had begun.

Flap-lips de Jaager at our table just kept on shouting “Heil Hitler” and soon everyone was chanting it louder and louder. A piercing whistle from the Judge finally stopped them.

“Some of us have sworn a blood oath to Adolf Hitler, and the time has now come to march the
rooineks
into the sea. After school we will meet behind the shithouses for a council of war!”

I don't suppose any of us had much idea of where the sea was supposed to be, somewhere across the Lebombo Mountains and probably over the Limpopo River. Whichever direction, it was a long, long way away. The long march to the sea would be a pretty serious undertaking, and I could understand why it would take some planning.

The dining room buzzed with excitement and the Judge held up his hand to silence us. Then he pointed directly at me. “Pisskop, you are our first prisoner of war!” He brought his fingers together and raised his arm higher. “Heil Hitler!” he shouted.

We all jumped up again, but the two kids on either side of me pushed me back into my seat. “Heil Hitler!” the rest of the dining hall chorused back.

It was the most exciting day in the school's history, although my own prospects looked pretty bleak. What was certain was that Granpa Chook and I were living on borrowed time and needed to make some pretty urgent escape plans. I was in despair. Even if I did know how to get home, which I didn't, how far could a little kid and a chicken travel without being spotted by the enemy?

That afternoon in class, Miss du Plessis, who seemed even more upset than usual, rapped my knuckles sharply on two occasions with her eighteen-inch ruler. In the end she grew totally exasperated when, deep into my escape plans, I simply didn't hear her ask what three times four came to.

“Domkopf
You will have to stay in after school!” The idea was impossible. Granpa Chook and I had to escape before the council of war met behind the shithouses.

“Please, miss! I'm sorry, miss. It won't happen again, miss,” I begged. In a desperate attempt to make amends, I blew my camouflage. I recited the nine times table, then the ten, eleven, and twelve. I had carefully concealed my knowledge of anything beyond the four times table and, what's more, we hadn't even reached the eleven and twelve times tables in class. The effect was profound. By the time I had almost completed the twelve times table, which I'd learned from the back of the Judge's arithmetic book, Miss du Plessis was consumed by anger.

“Twelve times twelve is, ah... one hundred and... er, forty-four,” I announced, my voice faltering as I perceived the extent of her indignation.

“You wicked, rotten, lying, cheating child!” she screamed, raising her steel-edged ruler. The blows rained down on me, though, in her agitation, her aim was wild and I took most of them on my arms and shoulders. One swipe got through my guard and the thin metal strip in the ruler sliced into the top of my ear. I dropped my guard and grabbed at my ear, which was stinging like billyho. The warm blood started to run through my fingers and down my arm.

The sight of the blood snapped Miss du Plessis out of her frenzy. She looked down at me and brought her hand to her mouth. Then she screamed and fell dead at my feet.

The shock of seeing Miss du Plessis drop dead at my feet was so great that I was unable to move. The blood dripped from my ear onto her spotless white blouse until a crimson blot the size of my fist stained the area just above her heart.

“Shit! You've broken her heart and killed her,” I heard Flap-lips de Jaager say as he ran from the classroom. All the others followed, screaming as they fought each other to vacate the scene of the crime. I just stood there, unable to think, the blood leaking from my head.

I was unaware of anyone entering the room until a huge hand lifted me and hurled me across the classroom, where I landed against the wall. I was too stunned to hurt and sat there propped up by the wall like a discarded rag doll. Mr. Stoffel, the master who taught the Judge's class, was on his knees bending over Miss du Plessis and shaking her by the shoulder. His eyes grew wide as he observed the blood on her blouse. “Shit, he's killed her!” I heard him say.

Just then Miss du Plessis opened her eyes and sat up like Lazarus. Then she looked down and saw her bloodstained blouse and with a soft sigh she passed out again. Mr. Stoffel slapped her cheeks and she opened her eyes and sat up. “Oh, oh, what have I done!” she sobbed.

Quite suddenly the classroom grew very still and dark, like a cloud passing over the sun. I could dimly see Mr. Stoffel coming toward me, his long, hairy arms flapping at his sides as though in slow motion, his shape wavy at the edges. I tried to cover my face but my arms refused to lift from my lap.

“Look what happens when you forget your camouflage, Pisskop,” I observed to myself. Then I must have passed out.

I awoke in my bed in the small kids' dormitory, but before I'd opened my eyes I could smell Mevrou at my side. She must have seen the flicker of my eyelids. “Are you awake, Pisskop?” she asked, not unkindly.

“Ja,
Mevrou.” I was back in the real world and I quickly gathered my mental camouflage about me. My head was swathed in a thick crepe bandage and I was wearing my pajamas. My head didn't hurt a bit, but my shoulder ached where I'd landed against the wall.

“Now listen to me, Pisskop.” There was a note of urgency in Mevrou's voice. “When the doctor comes you must tell him you fell out of a tree, you hear?”

“Ja,
Mevrou.”

“What tree did you fall out of, Pisskop?” she asked.

“There was no tree, Mevrou.” I had fallen at once for the trick.

“Domkop!”
she shouted. “Wash out your ears. What did I just tell you, man?”

“It was the mango tree, the big one next to the playground,” I corrected.

“Ja,
that's good, the mango tree.” She rose from the chair beside my bed. “You have a good memory when you try, Pisskop. Remember to tell the doctor when he comes.”

No sooner had she left than I leaped from the bed and ran to the window where I whistled for Granpa Chook. In a few moments he appeared, clucking and beady eyed as ever as he came to rest on the window sill beside me.

“Granpa Chook, we're in a lot of trouble,” I told him and explained about the arrival any day now of Adolf Hitler, who was coming to march us into the sea. “Can you swim?” I asked him. Granpa Chook was so amazing that it wouldn't have surprised me if he turned out to be the only chicken in the world who could swim.

“Squawk!” he replied, which could have meant he could or he couldn't, who's to say? Granpa Chook wasn't always easy to understand.

We could hear voices coming toward the dormitory, so I quickly pushed Granpa Chook back into the orchard and jumped into bed.

To my joy Mevrou entered with Dr. Henny. He sat on my bed and unwound the bandage around my head. “What's the matter, son? You look pretty done in.”

Even if Dr. Henny wasn't a
rooinek,
I knew he was on my side, and I longed to burst into tears and tell him all my troubles. But I had already blown my camouflage once that day with near-disastrous results. A bandaged ear and a sore shoulder weren't too bad as a result for having been unforgivably stupid. Next time I might not be so lucky. Choking back the tears, I told him how I had fallen from the big old mango tree next to the playground.

I must have laid it on a bit thick because he turned to Mevrou and in Afrikaans he said, “Hmm, except for the cut between the ear and the skull there are no contusions or abrasions. Are you quite sure this child fell from a tree?”

“The other children saw it happen, Doctor. There is no doubt.” Mevrou said this with such conviction that I began to wonder myself. I realized that Dr. Henny's line of questioning could only mean trouble for me.

“It's true, sir. That's what happened, I fell out of the tree and hurt my shoulder against the wall.”

Dr. Henny didn't seem to notice that I'd replied in Afrikaans. “The wall? What wall?”

Fear showed for a moment in Mevrou's eyes, but she quickly recovered. “The child doesn't speak Afrikaans very well. He means the ground.”

“Ja,
the ground,” I added, my camouflage damn nearly blown sky high.

Dr. Henny looked puzzled. “Okay, let's look at your shoulder, then.” He rotated my shoulder clockwise. “That hurt? Tell me when it hurts.” I shook my head. He moved it the opposite way with the same result. Then he lifted it upward and I winced. “That's sore, hey?” I nodded. “Well it's not dislocated anyway.” He checked my heart and chest and my back with his stethoscope, which was cold against my skin. “Seems fine. We'll just put in a couple of little stitches and you'll be right as rain,” he said in English.

“Can I go home, please?”

“No need for that, old son. You'll be brand new tomorrow.” He dug into his bag and produced a yellow sucker. “Here, this will make you feel better, you get stuck into that while I fix up these stitches.”

He must have seen the look on my face.
“Ja,
it's going to hurt a bit, but you're not going to cry on me now, are you?”

“He's a brave boy, Doctor,” Mevrou said, relaxed now that the truth had remained concealed.

Later, dabbing my stitches with Mercurochrome, Dr. Henny said, “Well done. No need for a bandage, we'll be back in a week to remove the stitches.” He turned to Mevrou. “Let me know if he complains of backache.” He took a second sucker from his bag and handed it to me. “That's for being extra brave.”

“Thank you, sir. Dr. Henny, are you English?” I asked, taking the second sucker.