The Power of One (7 page)

I had no idea that South Africa was on England's side; from where I sat the English were most definitely the local enemy.

While I knew myself to be English, I regarded this as my misfortune, like being born into a poor and degenerate family.

Most of my information came from the regular war councils the Judge held behind the school shithouses. All the senior hostel boys were storm troopers, and Danie Coetzee, as head of the small kids' dormitory, was also allowed to attend. As the official prisoners of war, Granpa Chook and I were dragged along for the purposes of interrogation and torture.

I was blindfolded and tied to the trunk of a jacaranda tree with a rope around my chest and waist, leaving my arms and legs free. This was because two of the main tortures required my hands to be free.

Most torture sessions began with the iron bar, which was known as “Chinese torture” after the make of the Judge's big, cheap pocket watch, one of his most treasured possessions. I was required to hold the bar out in front of me while he timed each session, so that I would have to hold the bar up longer than the previous time before dropping it. My times were duly recorded by a kid called Boetie van der Merwe, who was known in the Nazi party as Storm Trooper, Timekeeper, and Tallyman.

Van der Merwe was very proud of his job and would remind me at every opportunity of the minimum time allocated for the next Chinese torture session. If I failed to best my previous time, I got a severe cuff from the Judge and the six storm troopers whose turn it was to beat me up.

The second main torture was another one that required my hands to be free and was referred to as “shooting practice.” Every storm trooper carried a catapult as his deadly weapon. Farm kids all have catapults for shooting birds and grow very skilled at using them. While they were not allowed to be worn openly, all the senior boys had one stashed away, and they would wear these around their necks at Nazi party meetings.

For shooting practice I was required to stretch my arms out on either side of me with my palms open and turned upward. An empty jam tin was placed on either hand, and each of the storm troopers was allowed two shots to try to knock the tins down. The six best results for the day earned the right to beat me up on the next occasion it became necessary. As usual, Boetie van der Merwe was the tallyman.

I must say this for those Nazis, while they hit the tins from twenty feet often enough, only once did I collect a stone that thudded into the butt of my hand. Luckily it was my left hand, as I was unable to use it for several days.

Granpa Chook would fly up onto a branch of the jacaranda, where he would keep a beady eye on the proceedings. He was known to the Nazi party as Prisoner of War Kaffir Chicken Rooinek. There isn't too much interrogation and torture you can do to a chicken, and as Mevrou's leading kitchen insect exterminator, Granpa Chook was pretty safe. Tough as the Judge was, he wasn't willing to take Mevrou on.

He would look up at Granpa Chook and say menacingly, “Your time will come, Prisoner of War Kaffir Chicken Rooinek, don't think we've forgotten about you, you hear?”

I was constantly fearful for Granpa Chook, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Like me, he was a prisoner of war. Together we just had to hope for the best and try to muddle through. Besides, Granpa Chook had it easy up there in the jacaranda tree, while I was the one who suffered at ground level.

The Nazi party sessions were held twice a week. Although they would leave me trembling for hours afterward, the physical damage wasn't too bad. I only got hit if I dropped the iron bar too soon or for one or two other conditions, like when the Judge got very excited or I failed to answer one of his ranting questions fast enough for his liking.

“What is your mother, Pisskop?”

“A whore, sir!” I had no idea what a whore was, but I knew it was the answer he wanted.

“Who does she sleep with?”

“Kaffirs, sir.”

“Ag, sis
, man! Dirty, stinking kaffirs!” the rest of the Nazis would chorus, groaning and sticking their tongues out and clasping their hands to their throats, pretending to vomit.

Even the smallest farm kid knows about animal sex, though it never occurred to me that humans performed the same function. And so I would wonder why this particular answer was so insulting. After all, Nanny had slept with me on her sleeping mat at the foot of my bed all my life and to the Nazis she was a kaffir.

“What are you, Pisskop?”

“A piece of shit!” I would respond.

“Not shit! Dog shit!” they would all chorus back.

You can get used to anything, I discovered. They expected me to make the mistake so that they could all pantomime back. Halfway through the interrogation I would be blindfolded.

Then, often in the middle of an interrogation, someone would throw a bucket of water over me. Knowing it might come but not knowing when meant that I would get an awful shock. The imagination is always the best torturer.

Or they would release half a dozen red ants down my trousers and watch me frantically trying to find them as the ants bit painfully into my scrotum and the soft inner parts of my legs. If I tore my blindfold away it would mean a double clout from every member of the party. I soon learned that a red ant tends to bite only once if you leave it alone. But let me tell you something, that one bite isn't a very nice experience.

If some new trick, like the red ants, worked, they would congratulate each other loudly and yell with laughter as my legs pumped up and down and my hands searched frantically in my khaki shorts to rid myself of the marauding ants.

The Judge encouraged new insults and tortures, but he ruled out any torture that left obvious bruises. For instance, Chinese burns—where one of the storm troopers would grab my arm slightly above the wrist with both his hands and then rotate them in opposite directions until the skin burned painfully—were allowed but pinching was out. As the last term wore on, their limited minds ran out of ideas, and as I knew all the answers to all the dumb questions and had admitted to everything they accused me of while happily accepting all their insults, the proceedings quieted down a lot. I have found in life that everything, no matter how bad, comes to an end.

One thing got to all of them more than anything else. They couldn't make me cry. Even the Judge, with all the fear he could provoke, could not make me cry. I suspect they even began to admire me a bit. Many of them had little brothers of my age at home, and they knew how easy it is for a five-year-old to cry. In fact, I had turned six but nobody had told me, so in my head, I was still five.

Not being able to cry was the hardest part for me as well. Crying can be a good camouflage. In truth, my willpower had very little to do with my resolve never to cry. I had learned a special trick and, in the process, had somehow lost the knack of turning on the tap.

What they didn't know was that behind the blindfold I had learned to be in two places at once. I could easily answer their stupid questions while with another part of my mind I would visit Inkosi-Inkosikazi. Down there in the night country, by the waterfalls, I was safe from the storm troopers, who were unable to harm me or make me cry.

As they tied the dirty piece of rag over my eyes, I would take three deep breaths. Immediately I would hear Inkosi-Inkosikazi's voice, soft as distant thunder: “You are standing on the rock above the highest waterfall, a young warrior who has killed his first lion and is thus worthy to fight in the
impi
of Shaka, the greatest warrior king of all.”

I stood in the moonlight on the rock above the three waterfalls. Far below I could see the ten stones wet and glistening and the white water as it crashed through the narrow gorge beyond. I knew then that the person on the outside was only a shell, a presence to be seen and provoked. Inside was the real me, where my tears joined the tears of all the sad people to form the three waterfalls in the night country.

The last term of the year had come to an end. Only one more day remained, just one more interrogation, then freedom.

The Judge had pleased Mr. Stoffel with his efforts in the final term, and his poor performance earlier in the year had been forgotten. He was top of his class by the time the term ended. Mr. Stoffel would hold him up as an example and I think he also liked to take a bit of the credit. The Judge had been considered a hopeless case, and now he was the star performer. The Judge had showed me his report card which said, in black and white, that he had passed. He had come to accept his brilliance and expected the compliments of his fellow party members. Not only was he tough, he was also smart. It was a most satisfactory situation.

Therefore I had no reason to expect anything but a light going-over at the last interrogation and torture session before the Judge would disappear from my life forever. After all, he owed me something, and as Adolf Hitler, despite his smashing victory at a place called Dunkirk, hadn't arrived yet, the Judge hadn't been compromised one bit.

Prisoners of War Pisskop and Kaffir Chicken Rooinek were marched off to the jacaranda tree for the last time under the Nazi leadership of the Judge. This time I was blindfolded immediately, as I was being tied to the tree in the usual manner. I could hear Granpa Chook squawking away in the branches above me. I was about to visit the night country when the Judge's voice rang out harshly.

“This is the last time, English bastard!”

With a sudden certainty I knew today would be different. That

in his mind, the Judge owed me nothing. The bad times were back. I tried to get down to the safety of the night country, to the three waterfalls, but the fear rose in me like spewing vomit, and I was unable to detach myself from it.

“Today, Englishman, you eat shit.” His use of the word “Englishman” rather than the familiar, almost friendly
rooinek
, added greatly to his menace.

“Hold your hands out in front of you.” I could hear him sniff as I held my hands out in front of me, palms upward. He grabbed my arms about the wrists and held them so tightly I couldn't move them. “Bring it here, Storm Trooper van der Merwe,” I heard him say.

A soft object was dropped first into the one hand and then into the other. “Close your hands, bastard,” the Judge commanded.

The pain in my wrists was almost unbearable. Slowly I closed my hands. “Take his blindfold off,” the Judge commanded again. The rest of the Nazis had grown very quiet, and one of them unknotted the blindfold. I blinked at the sudden light. My nose as well as my eyes had been covered by the blindfold, and before even I'd looked down a terrible smell rose up at me. My hands were sticky, and I looked down as I opened them to see they contained two squashed human turds.

The Judge released my wrists. “Now lick your fingers,” he demanded.

I stood with my hands held out in front of me, not knowing what to do.

“I am going to count to three. If you haven't licked your fingers, I'm going to knock your blery head off, shitface!” The Judge stood pop-eyed in front of me, and I could see he was trembling.

I was too deeply shocked to react. I think I would have eaten the shit when the message finally made it through to my disconnected brain. But at that moment all the wires were fusing.

“Een—twee—drie!”
he counted. The Judge reached three and I remained with my hands held out in front of me, quaking with terror. He made a gurgling sort of animal sound deep in his throat. Then, grabbing my wrists, he forced my hands into my mouth. My teeth were clamped shut in fear, and the shit was rubbed all over my lips and teeth and the rest of my face. Some of it must have gotten onto the Judge's hands because he released my wrists and wiped it through my closely cropped hair.

Then he grabbed the tree trunk about two feet above my head, his body straddled over mine. First he tried to shake the tree. Then he began to beat at it with his clenched fists. Suddenly he threw his head back so that he was looking directly upward into the tree.

“Heil Hitler!” he screamed.

In the tree high above the Judge, Granpa Chook's anus opened, and from it dropped a perfect bomb of green and white chicken shit, straight into the Judge's open mouth.

Granpa Chook had waited until the last day of term to give his opinion of the Nazi party. As usual it was short, accurate, and to the point.

The Judge spat furiously, bent double, and raced around in circles, clutching his throat and stomach, hawking and spitting, and then finally throwing up. He raced for the tap, filled his mouth, and spat out about six times. Then he stuck his index finger into his mouth like a toothbrush, rubbed his teeth and gums, took more water, and spat and spat.

“Run, Granpa Chook! Run, man, run!” I screamed up into the tree.

But Granpa Chook had done enough running for one old kaffir chicken. Sitting squawking up there among the purple jacaranda blossoms, he sounded as though he was laughing his scraggy old head off.

“Please run, Granpa Chook, please, please run! The bastard will kill you!” I screamed, oblivious to the shit on my face and in my hair.

Granpa Chook hopped onto a lower branch and then, to my horror, flew onto my shoulder and gave my ear one of his famous Granpa Chook kisses. I grabbed him, intending to throw him on his way, but as I lifted him from my shoulder there was an explosion of feathers in my face. Granpa Chook let out a fearful squawk as he was blasted from my hands and fell to the ground. The Judge stood a few feet away, his empty catapult dangling in his left hand.