The Power of One (6 page)

His expression changed, and I could see that he was upset. “We are all South Africans, son. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.” He spoke with a quiet vehemence, then repeated, “Don't let anyone ever tell you anything else!”

I had certainly had better days, but a two-sucker day doesn't come along very often, so it wasn't all bad.

Despite my prisoner of war status, the kids were pretty good for the next few days. My stitches made me a hero in the small kids' dormitory, and even Maatie de Jaager kept his loose mouth buttoned for a change.

We had a new teacher, Mrs. Gerber, who turned out to be the wife of the government vet who had once come out to the farm to check Granpa's black Orpingtons for Newcastle disease. Mrs. Gerber wasn't nervy and I don't think she even knew I was a
rooinek.
She wasn't a real teacher, so she was quite nice.

There was a rumor going around that Miss du Plessis had suffered a nervous breakdown. I knew, of course, that I was to blame and it struck me with dismay that I had probably been “the direct cause of my mother's nervous breakdown as well. I must be a nervous breakdown type of person. First my mother, now Miss du Plessis, and, while I hadn't given Mevrou one yet, I had caused her to piss in her pants, which was probably the next best thing.

Granpa Chook and I discussed our predicament at some length but were unable to reach a useful conclusion. After all, Granpa Chook was a kaffir chicken and they don't have such a good life. One minute you're walking along scratching about and the next you're dinner for a jackal or a python, or bubbling away in a three-legged cast iron cooking pot. Granpa Chook, a proven survivor, worked on the principle that if anything bad could happen it would. A five-year-old isn't much of a pessimist, though we agreed that one thing was for sure, something pretty bad was bound to happen.

THE
night after I had my stitches out I was summoned to appear before the Judge and jury.

The Judge had been quite nice to me over the past week and, because of my sore shoulder, hadn't required that I carry his books to school each day. In fact, because Miss du Plessis was generally disliked, I'd become a bit of a hero.

But
rooineks
in this part of the world are not designed to be permanent heroes. I knew it would soon come to an end: when the stitches were out, my temporary reprieve would be over. So here I was again, being marched straight into another calamity.

“Stand to attention, prisoner Pisskop,” the Judge snarled.

I drew myself up, my arms ramrods at my side. “Bring your stupid legs together, man!” one of the jury shouted.

“Name?”

I was confused. Everyone knew my name.

“What is your name, Pisskop?” the Judge asked again.

“Pisskop?” I ventured, still not certain what he meant.

“What does your name mean?”

Again I looked querulous. “That I piss my bed?”

“Ja,
and chickens shit in it as well! What is a
rooinek?”

“I am English.”

“Yes, I know, man! But how do you know you're a
rooinek?”

“I—I just know, sir.”

The Judge shook his head and gave a deep sigh. “Come here. Come closer, man.”

I stepped forward to stand directly in front of where he sat cross-legged on his bed. The Judge's arm came up and my hand

flew up to protect my face, but instead of hitting me he pulled at the cord of my pajama pants, which collapsed around my ankles.

“Your blery snake has no hat on its head,
domkop!
That's how you know you're English! Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” I bent down to pull my pajama pants back up.

“Don't!” he shouted, and I jumped back to attention. “What am I, Pisskop?” the Judge demanded.

“A Boer, sir?”

“Yes, and what is a Boer?”

“An Afrikaner, sir.”

“Yes, of course... but what else?”

“A Boer has a hat on his snake.”

Why, when he had made all white people look alike, had God given the English snakes without a hat? It seemed terribly unfair. My camouflage was perfect except for this one little thing.

“Tonight you will learn to march. We must get you ready for your march into the sea.” The Judge pointed to the corridor between the beds and gave me a push. I tripped over my pajama pants and fell to the floor. One of the jury reached down and pulled the pants away from my ankles. I rose bare-arsed and looked uncertainly at the Judge. “March!” he commanded, pointing down the corridor between the beds once more. I started to march, swinging my arms high. “Links, regs, links, regs, halt!” he bawled. Then again: “Left, right, left, right, halt! Which is your left foot, prisoner Pisskop?” I had no idea but pointed to a foot.
“Domkop!
Don't you even know your left from your right?”

“No, sir,” I said, feeling stupid. But I did know, the left side was where my shoulder hurt.

“Every day after school you will march around the playground for five thousand steps, you hear?” I nodded. “You will count backward from five thousand until you get to number one.”

I couldn't believe my luck; no one had laid a hand on me. I retrieved my pajama pants and scurried back along the dark passage to my dormitory.

Being a prisoner of war and learning how to march weren't such bad things. I had nothing to do after school anyway. But I must admit, counting backward from five thousand isn't much of a way to pass the time. It's impossible anyway, your thoughts wander and before you know it you're all jumbled up and have to start all over again. I learned to mumble a number if anyone came close, but mostly I did the Judge's homework in my head. Carrying his books from school, I would memorize his arithmetic lesson and then I would work the equations out in my head as I marched along. If things got a bit complicated, I'd make sure nobody was looking and I'd work out a more complex sum using a stick in the dirt. It got so I couldn't wait to see what he'd done in class each day.

The Judge was an awful
domkop.
In the mornings, carrying his books to school, I'd check his homework. It was always a mess and mostly all wrong. I began to despair for him and for myself as well. You see, he could only leave the school if the work he did during the year gave him a pass mark. So far, he didn't have a hope of passing. If he failed, I'd have him for another year. That is, if Hitler didn't come to march me away.

Escape seemed impossible, so I'd have to think of something else. Over a period of several marching afternoons a plan began to form. The something else, when it finally emerged, was breathtakingly simple, though fraught with danger. For the next two days I thought of little else. If I blew my camouflage and helped the Judge with his homework so that he would pass, would he not be forced to spare Granpa Chook and me if Adolf Hitler arrived before the end of term?

I must say I was worried. Every time I had blown my camouflage, disaster had followed. Finally, after a long talk with Granpa Chook, we agreed it was a chance worth taking.

After breakfast the following morning, when I was folding the Judge's blanket and arranging his towel over his bed rail, I broached the subject. He was sitting on a bed licking his pencil and trying to do some last-minute arithmetic.

“Can I help you, sir?” My heart thumped like a donkey engine, though I was surprised how steady my voice sounded.

“Push off, Pisskop. Can't you see I'm busy, man?” The Judge was doing the fractions I'd done in my head the previous afternoon and getting them hopelessly wrong.

Gulping down my fear, I said, “What happens if you don't pass at the end of the year?” The Judge looked at me. I could see the thought wasn't new to him. He reached out and grabbed me by the shirtfront.

“If I don't pass, I'll kill you first and then I'll run away!”

I took my courage in both hands. “I—I can help you, sir,” I stammered.

The Judge released me and went back to chewing his pencil, his brow furrowed as he squinted at the page of equations. He appeared not to have heard me. I pointed to the equation he'd just completed. “That's wrong. The answer is seven ninths.” I moved my finger quickly. “Four fifths, six eighths, nine tenths, five sevenths...” I paused as he grabbed my hand and looked up at me, open-mouthed.

“Where did you learn to do this, man?”

I shrugged. “It's just easy for me, that's all.” I hoped he couldn't sense how scared I was.

A look of cunning came into his eyes. He released my hand and handed me the book and the pencil. “Just write the answers very softly and I'll copy them, you hear?”

The camouflage was intact and I'd moved up into the next evolutionary stage. From knowing how to hide my brains I had now learned to use them. Granpa Chook and I were one, step further away from the sea.

But I had already experienced the consequences of revealing too much too soon. I knew if a
domkop
like the Judge went from the bottom to the top of his class overnight, Mr. Stoffel would soon smell a rat. Telling the Judge he was a duffer was more than my life was worth. Besides, I was beginning to understand how manipulation can be an important weapon in the armory of the small and weak.

“We have a problem,” I said to the Judge.

“What problem, man? I don't see a problem. You just write in the answers very soft, that's all.”

“Judge, you're a very clever fellow.”

“Ja,
that's right. So?”

“So arithmetic doesn't interest you, does it? I mean, if it did you could do it,” I snapped my fingers, “just like that!”

“Ja,
if I wanted to I could. Only little kids like you are interested in all that shit!”

I could see this conclusion pleased him, and I grew bolder. “So you can't just get ten out of ten today when yesterday you only got two sums right out of ten. Mr. Stoffel will know there's some monkey business going on.”

The Judge looked worried. “You mean you're not going to help me?”

“Of course I am. But you will get better a little bit each week and you'll tell Mr. Stoffel that you suddenly got the hang of doing sums.”

The Judge looked relieved and then grinned slyly.
“Jy is ‘n slimmertjie,
Pisskop,” he said.

The Judge had called me clever. Me! Pisskop!
Rooinek
and possessor of a hatless snake! It was the greatest compliment of my life, and I was beside myself with pride.

But before the Judge could notice the effect of his words on me, I quickly resumed my obsequious manner. The thrill of the compliment had almost caused me to forget my other anxiety.

“What will happen if Adolf Hitler comes before the end of term?” I asked, my heart beating overtime.

The Judge looked at me blankly, then suddenly grinned, understanding the reason for my question. “Okay, man, you got me there. I will say nothing to Hitler about you until I've passed at the end of the year.” He shook his head and gave me a look not entirely without sympathy. “I'm sorry, Pisskop, after that I will have to tell him. You must be punished for killing twenty-six thousand Boer women and children. You and your stupid kaffir chicken are dead meat when he comes. But I'll tell you something, I give you my word as a Boer. If I pass in sums, I swear on a stack of Bibles not to tell Adolf Hitler until next term.”

The Judge, his brow furrowed as though he were doing the calculations himself, started to copy over the answers I had written in his exercise book.

I had won: my plan had worked. I could hardly believe my ears. Granpa Chook and I were safe for the remainder of the term.

The Judge had come to the end of his copying. I had never seen him quite so happy, not even when he was Heil Hitlering all over the place. I saw my opportunity and, taking a sharp inward breath, said quickly, “It will be difficult to march every afternoon and still do your homework, sir.”

The inside of my head filled with a zinging sound. Had I gone too far? I'd won the battle and here I was risking all on a minor skirmish. Marching around wasn't so bad. Quite fun, really. What if he realized I used the time to do his homework anyway?

The Judge sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Orright, no more marching. But you do my homework, you hear? If I catch you and that kaffir chicken messing around, you'll do twice as much marching as before. You are both prisoners of war, and you better not forget it, man.”

Victory was mine a second time. My first conscious efforts at manipulation had been successful. It was a heady feeling as Granpa Chook and I followed the Judge to school that morning.

One thing is certain in life. Just when things are going well, soon afterward they are certain to go wrong. It's just the way things are meant to be.

Mrs. Gerber told us that day in class that there had been an outbreak of Newcastle disease on a chicken farm near Merensky Dam. Her husband, the vet, had left to visit all the surrounding farms.

Even the youngest kids know what havoc a disease of any kind can cause with poultry or livestock. Of course, rinderpest and foot-and-mouth disease among the cattle were the worst, but every farm keeps at least fifty chickens for eggs, so Mrs. Gerber's news was met with consternation. My mother had once said that if my granpa lost all his black Orpingtons it would break his heart.

It was pretty depressing to think of my mother with her nervous breakdown in an English concentration camp knitting jumpers with funny sleeves. Knitting away with all the Boer mothers and children as she waited to starve to death or die of blackwater fever. Meanwhile, back on the farm, there was poor old Granpa, slowly dying of a broken heart. That was, if Adolf Hitler didn't arrive first. If he did, I knew Granpa wouldn't even have the strength to make escape plans or drive the Model A, and then what would become of me?

Maybe I could live with Nanny in Zululand? This thought cheered me up a lot. Adolf Hitler would never look for a small English person in the middle of Zululand. Inkosi-Inkosikazi would hide me with a magic spell and they wouldn't have a hope. As for Granpa Chook, Adolf Hitler would never be able to tell an English-speaking chicken apart from all the other kaffir chickens. I decided right there and then that when I got back to the farm, I would put this excellent plan to Nanny.

From what we could gather from the Judge, who was allowed to listen to the news on Mr. Stoffel's wireless on Saturday nights, the war was going pretty badly for the English. Adolf Hitler had taken Poland, which I took to be a place somewhere in South Africa, like Zululand, but where the Po tribe lived. The Judge made it sound as though Adolf Hitler could be expected any day now in our neck of the woods.