The Power of One (77 page)

to my haunches as the scab on the side of my leg stretched, and read the mud-splashed card on the wreath,
R.I.P. THE MANAGEMENT, RHONE ANTELOPE MINE
. That was all. I had taken Rasputin's old shotgun with me, and now I rose and, lifting the old gun to my shoulder, I fired both barrels oyer his grave. It was a pointless gesture, I guess, and the kick of the gun into my bruised shoulder made me hop around in pain. But it was just the sort of thing that could happen in a Wednesday matinee western and of which I could see Rasputin thoroughly approving.

The following day I returned to the grave, having loaded all Rasputin's wooden balls into the back of a borrowed utility. With a long-handled lasher's shovel I flattened the mound and buried the shotgun next to him; then I built a pyramid over the grave, using all the wooden balls. When I was finished it stood five feet tall. Taking careful measurements, I had the welding shop at number nine shaft make me a pyramid-shaped containing frame with small bars running parallel every four inches across the sides, so that the balls, while being clearly seen, could not be removed. The metal frame was completed in two days, and with the help of Zoran the Yugo I rigged a hoist over Rasputin's grave and dropped it neatly over the wooden balls, seating the corners into a cement footing. It made a very impressive tombstone, and when his headstone arrived Rasputin's grave would be the pride of the tiny cemetery.

Together with Zoran, who could speak a little Russian, we went through Rasputin's papers. There wasn't very much to tell of his past: Norwegian seaman's papers bearing his name, a Russian passport, and his discharge papers from the Russian navy, which indicated he'd been a stoker. Finally we found a sheet of paper on which a woman's name similar to the one in his passport was written. It was followed by an address in Russia. Zoran had said that a slight difference in surname was common in Russia, and I gathered he meant that this was a feminine version of the male surname. Rasputin's bank account came to nearly seven thousand pounds, and I arranged to send this to the name on the slip of paper, after taking Zoran with me and convincing the district magistrate that this was Rasputin's closest kin. A wife, a sister, or a mother? But at least someone, somewhere, other than me, who would remember him for the good fortune he had brought her.

I had been visited in hospital by Fats Greer, the part-time insurance agent. He pushed a piece of paper in front of me. “Sign here, Peekay,” he said, his pudgy finger indicating a blank line on the sheet of paper. I signed. “I need two checks for twenty pounds each, don't date them.” To my surprise he produced my checkbook. “Elijah, your number one boy, delivered your
chorla
bag to the mine captain after your accident. I took the liberty of using the keys in it.” I nodded, still a bit dazed and not really knowing what was happening; as far as I knew, he had refused to cover me on grizzlies for the last two months. I signed the checks and asked him what it was all about. “I'll tell you when you feel a little better.” He grinned. “The crazy Russki gave you more than his life, son.” A week later I was to learn that Rasputin had a long-standing insurance policy with Fats Greer for a thousand pounds and had made me the benefactor. Fats also handed me a check for five hundred pounds. “What's this for?” I asked.

“Your accident compo,” he replied. “Check your check stubs. You never missed a premium.” He walked away, whistling to himself.

It meant that I had no need to return to the mines for a further three months. As Solly Goldman would have put it, “You're home and hosed, my son!” With the money I had saved and Rasputin's legacy, I had sufficient funds for three years at Oxford. I also had enough left over to travel to London once a week for coaching under the famous Dutch Holland. Holland didn't usually take amateurs, but Morrie had sweet-talked him into allowing me to show my stuff. If he liked what he saw, he'd take me into the professional ranks under his care.

I had three weeks' sick leave after coming out of hospital, and I knew that the best way to get rid of my bruises was to work my body. I put in a lot of road. I also rigged an extra-heavy homemade canvas punching bag the mine sailmaker had made for me, hanging it from a rafter Zoran had reinforced on the verandah of my
rondavel.
Beside it hung the speedball and the lighter punching bag I had brought from South Africa and on which I had worked out every day I had been at the mines.

Speed was something I couldn't afford to lose, and while the work in the mines had built up my body so that I was by now almost a welterweight, I didn't want to forego speed for the extra power I had gained. The year away from boxing had been good for me. While I hadn't talked about it to anyone even in the letters I wrote, the flame that lit my ambition to be welterweight champion of the world burned as fiercely as ever and had never left me for even one single moment of one day.

In fact, when I regained consciousness in the hospital I thought that I had been fighting for the world championship and that I had been knocked out. The disappointment I felt was enormous, and when I was fully conscious and aware of what had happened I comforted myself with the knowledge that I now knew what it felt like to lose the world championship. It now only remained for me to experience winning it.

I sweated out the aches and pains over three hard training sessions a day. Within a fortnight the scabs were beginning to flake off, leaving large blotches of new pink skin all over my body, which made me look a little like an albino who'd been passed backward through a meat grinder. My head had also been shaved to get at a cut on my skull that had turned out to be pretty superficial and had only required five stitches. As Solly Goldman would have said, I looked a proper Charlie. The mine required that I complete a final shift, though not on a grizzly, so that I could sign all my papers and be passed as completely fit again. This was so that I couldn't sue them at some later date for some real or imagined aftereffect.

I spent the last week of my sick leave writing home to Miss Bornstein and Mrs. Boxall and of course to Morrie, who had written to me weekly from Oxford. I also wrote to Gert and to Gideon Mandoma, who was already beginning to write quite well himself. Finally I wrote to Singe ‘n' Burn, whose retirement from the Prince of Wales School coincided almost exactly with my own from the mines. They had all written regularly, with Miss Bornstein and Mrs. Boxall keeping up with Morrie. Singe ‘n' Burn, to my constant surprise, also wrote every six weeks or so. After his initial disappointment over my refusal to take a scholarship to a South African university, he had become imbued with the idea that I should make it to Oxford under my own steam and had arranged for me to be accepted at Magdalen College with Morrie. I knew this final letter telling them all that I'd made it would be a big event for them. I was back on track, and all would be forgiven. The prodigal son had returned. I even wondered if old Mr. Bornstein might let me win another game of chess.

There had been almost a full case of brandy left in Rasputin's hut, and I decided to take it up to the Crud Bar on the Saturday before my final workday on Monday. I left it this late, not wishing to be seen much in public. By now I was quite well known around town because I played scrum half for the Luanshya rugby team and had been selected on three occasions to play for the Copperbelt. It embarrassed me to be made a fuss of, and so I kept pretty much to myself.

I intended to go to the Crud Bar just after three o'clock, when Fritz One, Two, and Three came on duty. The idea of going earlier when the Mrs. Fritzes were doing the morning shift and being fussed over by the three fat fraus was too much to contemplate.

I planned to ask Fritz whoever to raffle off the case of brandy and to use the proceeds to buy ice cream for the kids at the Wednesday matinee in memory of Rasputin. I figured the brandy would more than likely raise enough money to pay for ice cream for several weeks. It was something I felt sure Rasputin would have liked.

I had attended the last two Wednesday matinees, sitting in the same place Rasputin and I had sat. The kids had come in as usual and sat all around me. I groaned and moaned and shouted and generally carried on a treat in all the places the big Russian would have done. At first the kids did not respond, but I persisted and soon they fell into the familiar mood and we all had a good time. Except at the end of the first Wednesday I began to cry, which had spoiled it a bit for them. As usual during interval, I bought ice creams all around, and the kids went along with the new game, knowing full well what I was attempting to do. When, at the third Wednesday matinee after Rasputin's death, I told them I would be leaving, two small boys had approached me.

“Don't you worry about Russki's grave and the wooden balls and all. We'll look after them for you, Peekay,” the larger of the two assured me.

“Yes, for ever and ever!” the smaller one added.

Rasputin's affairs were finally in the only hands he would have personally trusted. “You'll have to paint the metal pyramid frame every year, or it will rust away after a while,” I said.

“What color?” the bigger one asked.

“Red, of course!” the smaller answered.

“Yes, red, that would do nicely,” I said.

“You see, I told you! Russians like red,” the small boy said in triumph.

I lugged the case of brandy up to the Crud Bar. It was early yet, and only a handful of men were there. On the few occasions I had been in the bar I had done my drinking with Fritz Three, and I now walked over to his section of the long bar and explained my purpose.

“Ja,
for sure, we do this, but you must make sa book,” Fritz Three replied emphatically, as though the idea had been his all along. Without my asking he made up a large lemon squash with soda and a dash of bitters the way I liked it.

“No, no, I don't want to bet, just a raffle, Fritz Three.”

“Ja,
raffle! you make sa book, come, I show you.” He raised the bar panel to let me in behind his bar. Lifting the case of brandy, he indicated that I should follow him into a back room, which turned out to be an office. From a drawer he withdrew a staple gun, a roll of adding machine paper about two inches wide, an old Croxley fountain pen repaired with an inky piece of sticking plaster, scissors, an ink pad, and a rubber stamp. Working quickly, he cut off a four-inch length of paper and wrote the number one at each end of the strip, doing this until he had twenty slips of paper marked from one to twenty, which he then stamped on the right-hand side with the rubber stamp, which read
LUANSHYA CLUB
, and stapled at the opposite end to make a neat little book of raffle tickets.

“Now we have one raffle book, You make like this for five hundred tickets . . . okey dokey?” I nodded and then told him I wanted to buy two more bottles of brandy to complete the case. “No, Fritz buy!” he said, jabbing his finger at his chest. “Russki, he my fren.” He left me in the office and returned to his bar.

I worked happily making tickets for an hour or so, creating a sophisticated version by using a large pin to punch a perforation line down the center of each book I completed so the bit the customer retained could be parted easily. The noise in the bar grew steadily as more and more men came in. Making the raffle tickets was routine work and I was soon lost in thought, oblivious to the noise outside.

A soft, though urgent, whistle cut through my daydreaming. I looked up to see the large shape of Fritz Three filling the doorway. I was immediately aware that there was silence in the Crud Bar. The fat German seemed agitated, his mouth working wordlessly and one hand hooking the air in an urgent gesture for me to approach.

“What's wrong, Fritz?” He winced at the sound of my voice.

“Shh! You will be quiet, please, we have here some trouble,
ja.
” I rose and walked quietly toward him. “Botha! Botha, the diamond driller, he got powder headache and he go mad.” He stabbed his forefinger over his shoulder. “If he find you, he vill kill you!” he whispered hoarsely.

“Shit, Fritz, Botha's my diamond driller, he wouldn't hurt me,” I whispered back.

Fritz Three grabbed me by the shirt front. “He does this before. All men must bugger off from Crud Bar when Botha drink the brandy, until he is
kaput
and falls on the floor.
Ja,
this is when I call the hospital. If he catch you, he kill you, Peekay.” He pointed to the window. “Please, you will jump now.”

I moved over to the window and attempted to open it, but it had been nailed shut. Suddenly the snake was back in my mind's eye, its diamond-shaped head with tiny darting tongue flicking faster than I could blink. I turned back at the sound of a cry of panic from Fritz Three to see his fat body jerked backward into the bar beyond. A huge man, almost the size of Rasputin, rushed forward, crashing his forehead against the top of the doorway. He let out a roar of astonished pain, and blood ran from his head as he stooped to enter. His eyes were puffed and swollen and shot with blood. From his nostrils ran a thick trickle of yellow mucus.

“Kom hier, jou fokker
!” he roared as he came at me with both hands, bending forward slightly as though he were about to catch a trapped rabbit.

“It's me, Botha! It's Peekay, your grizzly man!” I shouted back at him.

The huge man seemed not to hear me. “I kill you! I kill you, you bastard!” His sleeves were rolled up almost to the top of the shoulder in the Afrikaans manner, and as he lunged at me I saw the tattoo.