The Power of One (78 page)

Under normal circumstances I would easily have avoided his clumsy lunge, but the shock of recognition caused me to freeze on the spot. Tattooed high up on Botha's left arm was a jagged, badly etched swastika. I had seen this tattoo before—on the Judge.

Botha, the Judge now grown into a crazed giant of a man, grabbed my shirtfront with one massive hand, and with the other he grabbed the back of my belt. He lifted me from the ground and, moving through the door, he threw me over the long bar into the barroom beyond.

I landed on all fours but managed to break my fall with the butt of both hands. An anger so cold and fierce possessed me that I felt my mind would have to be torn from it, like a finger torn from dry ice. My concentration was so complete that the edges of the room disappeared and the huge form of the Judge as he climbed over the bar came into such sharp focus that, at ten feet, I could see the individual hairs on his day-old stubble.

“First with the head and then with the heart, that way small can beat big.” It was Hoppie's voice I heard in my head, and my resolve became a solid force, a pure, clean feeling, totally controlled by my head.

“Jaapie Botha, come! Come, man, come, I've been waiting for you for most of my life.” There was a menacing growl in my voice I had not heard there before.

Fritz Three, back behind the safety of the long bar, screamed at me. “He been sniff gelignite, he crazy! Run, Peekay. That Boer kill you!”

The Judge dropped from the bar and with an angry roar charged toward me. A powder headache as severe as his could cause temporary insanity, and I knew he was capable of killing. I stepped to the side and hit him with a left uppercut hard on the nose, seating the punch deep, aware that the crude explosion of pain into the swollen sinus tissue would be devastating. A man my size would certainly have passed out from the blow. Bellowing like a wounded animal, the Judge turned to face me again, blood and mucus running from his nose.

I had waited a long time for this moment; I knew exactly what to do. The Judge was the bull, and I was the matador. It was I who would shape the fight. I knew suddenly that all of Geel Piet's footwork had been designed for this moment. It was time for the
klein baas
to dance.

The Judge was a man of around twenty-five, but he had already let himself go around the middle and his brandy gut hung over his belt. Years of working on a farm and then in the mines had built up his bulk, and he was probably at the height of his physical strength. But, looking at him, I knew his condition was poor. With his sinuses already severely blocked, I would try to work on his mouth. If I could make him swallow enough blood as well as lead him into frequent charges, he'd soon be winded. My hands were strong from carving Rasputin's balls, and the skin and knuckles were hardened from the canvas punching bag I had worked with my bare fists. The Judge charged repeatedly, and each time he came at me I stepped in with a lightning punch and hit him on the nose or in the mouth. Soon he was spitting a lot of blood, his chest heaving deeply as he tried to regain his breath. The salty blood would be mixing with the brandy in his stomach by now. Later I would put a Geel Piet eight right into the nexus of the solar plexus, where all the nerve ends come together.

He was beginning to move more slowly, trying to get me into a corner where he could crush me. I let him work me until he had my back right into the corner, then I lifted my hands up as if I were going to plead for mercy. His punch came from ten miles away. I ducked and weaved out of the corner as his huge fist smashed into the wall. His knuckles split, the bones in his wrist smashing through the skin, splattering blood all over the tiles as his wrist and hand broke.

The cold rage inside me cocooned me into a circle of concentration centered on the Judge and myself. As in a Goya painting, only the action in the center mattered; the rest was blurred peripheral, belonging to another place and another time. I was unaware that the space behind the bar had filled and a couple of hundred miners were standing three deep along the sixty-foot counter. The Judge turned suddenly and lumbered toward the bar. Men pushed back in fear, colliding with shelves and bottles of spirit that rained down on them. The Judge grabbed a halfempty bottle of brandy from the counter that no one had thought to remove. He smashed it on the edge of the bar, sending a spray of brandy into his face, some of it going into his eyes and blinding him. The Geel Piet eight went into the blinded man's gut, and I finished it off with an uppercut into his pulped and smashed nose. By the time he swung the broken bottle, I was clear again.

The Judge, as though in slow motion, fell to his knees and threw up onto the floor. The fight had been going nearly twenty minutes, and I hadn't said a word, my fury concentrated in both my hands. My knuckles were raw and bleeding from hitting him, but I felt nothing.

As he sat there in his own vomit, a small child's voice cried out from somewhere deep inside my body. “You killed Granpa Chook!”

The Judge rose slowly to his feet, using the broken bottle to push himself up off the floor. His face was a bloody mess, blood dripped from his broken hand and wrist, and the front of his shirt stuck to his chest and stomach, soaked with brandy, blood, and vomit. He lifted his head and looked up at me, and through his broken lips he whispered the single word “Pisskop.” Using his remaining strength, he hurled the broken bottle at me, missing me by several inches. His useless broken hand and wrist hung at his side, and he swayed unsteadily on his feet. The Solly Goldman thirteen went in, each punch deep and hard into the Judge's gut. The hurl of vomit traveled three feet before it splashed to the floor as the Judge collapsed unconscious.

My head exploded. The roar in my head became white light. It was time for the heart. I was onto his body in a flash, straddling his torso. The snot and blood ran from his nose as his head rested on his right arm just above the broken wrist. His left arm lay across his face as if he were protecting it from a blow. I was unaware of having gone to my shorts, but Doc's Joseph Rogers pocketknife was open in my hand and the mamba struck, high up the left arm like always, high up above the swastika tattoo. The razor-sharp blade cut through the epidermis above the ragged swastika, cutting a square about four inches across and three down. Then it crossed the square from corner to corner to make an X in a cross of St. Andrew and then again from center to center to make the cross of St. George, cutting deep almost to the muscle. The blood, before it started to run down Botha's arm, made a perfect Union Jack. Across the jagged blue lines of the swastika the mamba-driven blade cut “PK.” Then followed the injection of poison. Smearing my hand into the mess on his shirtfront, I rubbed it into the Union Jack and into the initials to set up a massive infection and cause a keloid to build up on the arm. Nothing would ever remove the wide band of scar tissue which would form to make up the flag and the initials that canceled out the swastika.

The white heat started to fade, like a gas lamp suddenly dimmed. I wiped my hands and the blade of Doc's knife on the back of the Judge's shirt and rose to my feet. Snapping the blade of the Joseph Rogers into its handle, I returned it to the pocket of my blood-splattered shorts. There was nothing more to say. The slate was wiped clean. The hate was gone. Poor bastard.

I became aware of the men behind the bar. They hadn't moved and were silent, their eyes following me as I walked slowly toward the western-style saloon doors and then out of the Crud Bar. Outside, high above me, a full moon, pale as skimmed milk, floated in a day sky. I felt clean, all the bone-beaked loneliness birds banished, their rocky nests turned to river stones. Cool, clear water bubbled over them, streams in the desert.

ASEGAI
. Zulu fighting spear.

BLERY
. Corruption of the expletive “bloody.”

BOER
. Farmer or Afrikaans-speaking South African.

BOERE
. Belonging to the Boers, i.e.,
boerewors
(farm sausage).

BOEREMUSIK
. Boer music.

BOERS.
Plural of Boer.

BOEREWORS
. Farm sausage.

BOETIE
Brother.

BOK-BOK
. A boys' game.

BRAAIVLEIS
. Barbecue.

CHARAH
. Derogatory name for a person of Indian descent.

DAGGA
. Cannabis.

DAMES EN HERE
. Ladies and gentlemen.

DANKIE
. Thank you.

DOEK
. Small cloth or woman's headscarf.

DOMKOP
. Dumbhead.

DONGA.
Gully.

DORP
. Small town.

DUMMKOPF.
Dumbhead (German).

FANAGALO
. Language made up of Afrikaans, English, and Zulu words.

FLY HALF
. Position in back line of a rugby game.

GOBSTOPPER
. Candy that lasts hours when sucked.

GOEIE MORE
. Good morning.

HOE GAAN DIT? How
goes it? (How are you?)

INDABA
. An important meeting.

INFASI
. Woman.

INKOSI
. Superior being (a god).

JUJU
. Black magic.

KAFFIR
. Black person.

KAK
. Shit.

KÊREL
. Fellow.

KLAAR
. Finished.

KLEILAT
. A stick used to flick a ball of clay fixed on its end in a whiplike manner (kids' game).

KLEIN
. Small.

KLOOF
. Gorge.

KOPPIE
. Small hill.

KRANS.
Cliff.

LEE-METFORD.
Rifle used by the British in the Boer War.

LEKKER.
Delicious.

LIEFLING
. Darling.

MAAR.
Mate.

MAGTIG
. Mighty (exclamation).

MAUSER
. Rifle used by Boers in the Boer War.

MAYIBUYE AFRIKA
. Come back, Africa (a salute).

MENEER
. Mister.

MEVROU
. Mrs.

MOOTIE
. Slang for medicine.

NEE.
No.

OUBAAS
. Elderly Afrikaner (term of affection).

OUNOOI
. Elderly female Afrikaner (term of affection).

OUPA
. Grandfather.

RIEMPIE
. Thin rawhide straps.

RINDERPEST
. Disease in cattle.

RONDAVEL.
Round thatched hut.

ROOINEK
. Meaning redneck (though not white trash). It comes from the Boer War where the English soldiers, not used to the sun, had their necks badly burned.

VERDOMDE ROOINEK
. Damned Englishman.

SCHWEINHUND
. Swinehound (German expletive).

SCRUM HALF
. Position in rugby football, sis. Yuk!

SJAMBOK
. Whip made entirely from plaited leather.

SKATTEBOL
. Ball of fluff (endearment).

SKELM
. Rascal.

STOEP
. Verandah.

STOMPIE
. Cigarette butt.

TACKY
. Shoe of canvas with rubber soles.

TICKY
. Threepence.

TIEKIEDRAAI
. Folk dancing.

TOT SIENS
. Good-bye.

UITLANDER
. Foreigner.

UMFAZI
. Female.

VELTKORNET
. Lieutenant.

VERDOMDE.
Damned.

WONDERLIK
. Wonderful.

WRAGDIG.
Verily.

Bryce Courtenay
was born in South Africa, educated there and in England and, in 1958, emigrated to Australia. He is Creative Director at George Patterson Advertising and lives in Sydney. THE POWER OF ONE is his first novel.