The Power of One

TWENTY-TWO

No one, not even I, knew Doc’s religion, but after a week where I had visited all our old haunts (except one) with various teams of men, it was decided that a church ceremony should take place. Marie came forward and claimed that Doc had found Christ while he was in hospital with pneumonia and my mother was ecstatic. Pastor Mulvery claimed the right to hold a burial service sans Doc’s mortal remains. I didn’t protest. Marie had convinced herself that Doc had said yes to Jesus and she had notched him up as one of her most important salvations. I don’t think Doc would have minded too much, besides, his love for the great Southland was complete in the most beautiful eternity he could conceive of, not dust and ashes but a wonderful pagan burial that would make him a living part of his beloved Africa. His spirit would dwell in the crystal cave of Africa looking out across the rainforest down the misty valley and over distant mountains which smudged blue as a child’s crayon drawing.

Doc’s death left me completely numb. I went through the motions but it was as though I had lost my centre of gravity. Everything seemed topsy-turvy, people would speak to me but I wouldn’t hear them. Their mouths opened like goldfish in a bowl, but nothing came out. Their movements seemed exaggerated as though by walking up to me they were growing bigger from the same spot, their feet not moving but their bodies just elasticising cartoon-like to where I stood. The pain was all inside, deep and dull and I knew it was this that made me feel numb. I felt I would never be quite the same again, that I could never love as much again. I kept telling myself that I knew Doc was going to die, that Doc had been telling me himself for months, but I knew nothing about this sort of death. Death was violent and ugly like Granpa Chook and Geel Piet, or even macabre like Big Hettie. Death, as I had come to know it in Africa had no gently slipping awayness about it, no dignity. And so I felt Doc had cheated, he’d just gone, he disappeared, he had made death happen rather than have it happen. I felt cheated, even angry. Why hadn’t he waited for me? Why hadn’t he told me so that I could have taken him to the crystal cave? But secretly I knew that I couldn’t have done it, I would have clung to the last thread of life in him. I also knew that he would have known this. But it didn’t help the numbness. It didn’t take away the need, the dull permanent ache under my heart on the exact spot where you work on another boxer till he runs out of steam. That was it precisely: the bell had gone but I couldn’t find the strength and the will to come out for the next round on my own.

Pastor Mulvery said a lot of things about it being the end of Doc’s travail and his vale of tears. He had called Doc a great piano player and gardener. ‘The Lord Jesus has given our beloved professor a garden in heaven filled with the fragrance of pansies and sweet peas where he can play his music for a choir of angels.’

The regulars in the congregation must have thought it was one of his better descriptions of the born again hereafter and they peppered Pastor Mulvery’s eulogy with ‘Praise the Lord’ and ‘Blessed be His glorious name’. I heard it all, but it didn’t make any sense, it had nothing to do with Doc. Absoloodle not.

‘Oh, dear, oh goodness, dearie me. Our dear, dear professor would most certainly have chosen eternal hellfire in preference to an eternity spent in a bed of pansies and sweet peas, playing for a choir of angels,’ said Mrs Boxall, having been exposed to Pastor Mulvery and the workings of the Apostolic Faith Mission for the first time.

The aloe was in bloom on the hillside above the rose garden and early on the day of the service I had climbed to our rock and cried for a while until the sun came up over the valley. On the way down I gathered several candelabra of aloe blossom which I put in a large copper vase I found in the back room of the church. When I entered the church later to attend the funeral it had been removed and an arrangement of pink and orange gladioli had been put in its place.

Even old Mr Bornstein, wearing a hat throughout, attended the service with Miss Bornstein. Miss Bornstein’s shiny lipstick and long red nails looked strangely out of place in a church which taught that make-up of any sort, except for face powder, was a sin. I once heard long painted nails described by a lady witnessing for the Lord as the devil’s talons dripping with the blood of sinners. Miss Bornstein looked beautiful among the scrubbed, plain-faced women, with their greying hair pulled back and held by cheap celluloid clips, their hats stuck with sprigs of linen flowers, some small attempt at adornment. I could see them stealing glances at her, at her perfect complexion, magnificent shining, almost purple black hair, green eyes and brilliant sinful lips and nails. They would spit it all back in righteous vituperation when next they gaggled around a cup of tea to tell each other they had seen sin in the flesh, the devil himself sitting among them.

Outside the church after the service, as there was no Doc in a coffin to look solemn about, the regulars were able to congratulate Marie for her spectacular conversion. Even my mother got a bit of gratuitous praise for her original foresight in bringing Doc into focus as a potential candidate for salvation.

All the warders who knew Doc, including Captain Smit and the Kommandant came to pay their respects. Afterwards Captain Smit invited me back to the prison where the boxing team was having a wake. This turned out to be a jolly affair, more like a braaivleis and singsong and I tried hard to be cheerful, for I suspect it was held as a gesture and as a bit of a cheer-up for me. Doc would have approved much more of this than of the sanctimonious burial service.

Gert took me to one side. When I’d arrived back to help in the search for Doc, I’d taken over from him. He had barely slept for three days and had been exhausted. ‘Tell me, man, how come we never found him? You know every place he went.’

‘Ja, it’s funny that, but you know Doc, Gert. He probably had a place in an old mine shaft that only he knew about, someplace he found years ago before he met me.’

Gert looked at me directly. ‘No man, no way. You and him was too close. I reckon you know but, ag man, you right, I wouldn’t tell also if it was me.’ Gert was a naturally quiet person who didn’t miss much; he’d just been promoted to sergeant and everyone said he was going places.

Doc left everything he owned to me, including the Steinway. He left a small insurance policy worth about twenty pounds to Dee and Dum. My mother had the Steinway moved to the lounge at home where it practically filled the room so that the two chairs which matched the sofa had to be put on the back verandah. A jolly good idea because that’s where everyone sat anyway. Except for church ladies and town people coming for fittings, we never had proper visitors of the kind that got sat uncomfortably in the front room, so the back stoep was perfect for the old ball and claw brocade chairs, which after forty years of being stuck in the parlour saw some real ‘bottom work’ at last.

At first I think my granpa was a bit hurt about the banished chairs. His beautiful wife, for whom the rose garden had been created, had originally bought the furniture. But by the time I was back for the holidays again one of the chairs was permanently claimed as his and had several small burn holes in the upholstery where bits of glowing tobacco ash had fallen from the bowl of his pipe to burn through the faded brocade.

Doc’s cottage was well away from any other European houses on a small koppie, and his will read to me by young Mr Bornstein showed that he owned the whole of the small hill. I moved Dee and Dum in as caretakers, although it was really intended as their home. The tiny three-room cottage with lean-to kitchen was a veritable mansion after the small brick room next to the rose nursery which they had shared. They had both been terribly distressed at Doc’s death. Doc had asked them to pack food for three days and not to speak to anyone about his departure. When he hadn’t returned on the fourth day Dee had gone to see Mrs Boxall who had raised the alarm. True to her word, Dee had simply told Mrs Boxall that Doc hadn’t returned from the hills the previous evening as his bed had not been slept in and the ash in the tiny potbelly stove was cold. They had both confessed to me about Doc requesting food for three days, which meant that when Mrs Boxall had called me, Doc had actually been gone four days. When I had known with absolute certainty after the fight with Gideon Mandoma that Doc was dead, he had been out three days. It would have taken him two days to reach the crystal cave of Africa, whereupon he would have rested and then, sometime on the third day, climbed the cliff. Doc was a methodical man, he would have planned everything meticulously to the last ounce of his energy. Marie told me that while he was in hospital he had complained each night of being unable to sleep and they had given him a sleeping pill. Doc would never have taken a pill, which he termed ‘putting bad chemicals in the blood’. I knew that he would now have the sleeping pills with him. Doc never did anything carelessly and he wasn’t going to be any different in planning his death.

It was Dee and Dum keeping faith with Doc which prevented the search parties from going further into the hills. In one day a frail old man recovering from pneumonia could not have travelled far into the foothills, least of all across the Saddleback Range. I knew Doc better than that; he would have planned it, knowing his chances for success.

I waited until the day before I was due to return to school and the furore of Doc’s death was beginning to die down a little so that I would be allowed to go into the hills alone. Telling my mother at supper the previous evening that I was going for a last ramble in memory of Doc, I left home before dawn. I knew there was still something Doc needed: if it had not been so he would have left some sort of message for me. Together with Dee and Dum, I searched the cottage and the cactus garden in vain. Doc wanted me to perform some last duty, I felt quite sure about this; and in any case, I needed to perform some sort of ritual of my own to mark Doc’s passing. I packed a can of sardines, a couple of oranges and filled my old school lunch tin with a tomato, two boiled eggs and a couple of leftover cold potatoes, and with a bottle of water and a torch, I set off. To avoid suspicion I didn’t take rope as I was certain I could climb the cliff without it.

Pausing only at sunrise to drink and to eat a potato, by mid-morning I had arrived at our old campsite on the edge of the rainforest. Above me the cliff loomed, now suddenly meaning so much more to me. Doc, as I had expected, had used the site again. There had been no rain for the last ten days and the ash in the fire hole I’d dug was still fresh and powdery. To make certain, I went to the spot where I had buried our rubbish and dug it up. Sure enough a second bully beef tin and the wrapping from a packet of Bakers Pretty Polly Crackers had been added. Doc loved the dry tasteless crackers and always bought the same brand.

Half an hour later I was standing on the shelf which led to the cave. At first there seemed to be no sign of Doc having been there and my heart beat furiously. What if Doc hadn’t made it? What if he had fallen trying to scale the cliff and lay somewhere in the thick rainforest which grew at its base? I fought back the panic, for I knew I would have to find him and somehow get him up the cliff and into the cave and onto the platform. A task which would take me two days, if I could achieve it at all.

I also knew that if Doc lay in the crystal cave of Africa he would not have wanted me to enter. Doc was a man of great sensitivity and the idea of subjecting me to the sight of his corpse on the platform would be unthinkable. He would have left me instructions outside the cave, in daylight; that’s where his message would be. I began to search the shelf inch by inch. Doc had trained me to observe and I knew he would expect me to make the kind of detailed examination of the shelf which would be beyond the casual searcher so that if he had hidden something it would not be apparent to any but a trained eye.

I searched for half an hour but the limestone shelf had been worn out of the cliff face by a hundred thousand years of wind, rain and water erosion, the hollowed-out shelf was smooth and regular and there were no cracks in the dolomitic rock. I began to doubt. Doc might have intended to leave me a message but been on the point of collapse when he finally made it up to the shelf, saving every ounce of strength for the task of reaching the platform.

And then I saw it. A dark stripe of some sort of mineral sediment, long since dry, had stained a small part of the shelf. I ran my hand over the stained rock and received a sudden sharp prick. I pulled my hand back and looked at it; a tiny drop of blood formed on my palm. Sticking out of the middle of the dark patch no more than an eighth of an inch, was the point of the blade of Doc’s Joseph Rogers pocket knife.

Doc had discovered that the dark sedimented patch was softer than the rock surrounding it and he had gouged a hole into the centre of it using the pocket knife. He had then mixed the sand which came out of the hole with a little water from his water bottle and, first inserting the knife with the tip of the blade just showing, he had repacked the granules of sand to mend invisibly where he had buried the knife.

It was typical of Doc; he trusted his training of me so much that he knew he could make the hiding place difficult for others to find, and that I would find it. I scraped the dirt away from the point of the blade and dislodged the small knife. Around its handle, tied with cotton thread, was a note.

The hole appeared deeper than I had first suspected, deeper and wider, and behind the knife was Doc’s gold hunter. With the tip of the knife I pulled the fob chain out and then the beautiful old gold pocket watch. I stuffed the watch and chain into my trouser pocket and with clumsy, trembling hands picked at the cotton thread tying the note to the black bone handle of the knife.

It was a page torn from one of Doc’s small field notepads and margin to margin from the top to the bottom of one side of the page were musical notes, minute in size but exact, a precisely written piece of music. I turned the page. In Doc’s neat handwriting was a short note centred on the page.

My dear Peekay,

In all the world no man has such a friend as you. Last night is come some music to my head, when it is coming I know it is time for me to go. Maybe, who can say, it is the music for Africa? Maybe only it is my music to you? Not so good as Mozart, never like Mr Beethoven or like Mr Brahms, but maybe better than a Chopin nocturne. Such a little piece of music for such a long life. I am such domkopf. But not such domkopf that I don’t let you be my friend. For this I am having eleven out of ten. I must go into the crystal cave of Africa now. You must not follow until it is your time also. Maybe in one hundred thousand years we will meet again.

Goodbye, Mr Schmarty-Pantz welterweight champion of the world.

Your friend,

Doc

I had done my crying for Doc and the note gave me comfort. Doc was safe and where he wanted to be and his secret would be kept forever. I entered the tunnel leading to the outer cave. Testing the rope handrail we’d built for Doc’s entry to the cave the first time, I found it still strong. He would not have had a great deal of difficulty getting into the narrow entrance. It took me only a few minutes to work the steel hook out of the tunnel wall and to remove the rope.

I returned to the cliff shelf and removed the second spike and put the two spikes and the rope into my rucksack. In a very few years the small holes the spikes had made would be eroded from the rock face, leaving no trace of man. Only the baboons or an occasional leopard would visit the outer cave, but neither would enter the dark, damp inner crystal cave of Africa. Doc would be safe for the hundred thousand years it would take to turn him into crystal, forever a part of Africa.

I was home again just as the moon was rising over the valley. The pain, the deep dull pain under my heart had lifted. Sadness remained, but I was now proud that Doc had achieved what he wanted to do. And we would always be bound together, he was very much a part of me. He had found a small, frightened and confused little boy and had given him confidence and music and learning and a love for Africa and taught me not to fear things. Now I didn’t know where the boy began and Doc ended. I had been given all the gifts he had. Now that Doc was resting right I knew we could never be separated from each other.

The coffee pot left at four the next day to connect with the all-night sleeper from Kaapmuiden to Johannesburg.

That last morning at home I walked into the front room and opened the Steinway and started to practise Doc’s music, which I’d earlier transcribed onto three sheets of music manuscript. After I picked at the notes for an hour, the melody began to form. It was a nocturne with a recurring musical phrase running through it. Very beautiful, it was unmistakably African, with a sadness and yearning for something that seems to be in the music of all of the people. The musical phrasing and the recurring melody were somehow familiar, like something I’d heard in a dream or the dreamtime or which simply races unknown through your blood. And then I realised what it was. It was the chant to the Tadpole Angel.

I stopped bewildered. Doc had never heard the chant which had started only after I had gone to boarding school. I played the music again; it was no coincidence, the chant was clearly a part of the music, it ran through the nocturne repeating itself in a dozen variations but always there: clear, unmistakable, wild, beautiful. Onoshobishobi Ingelosi… shobi… shobi… Ingelosi, the piano notes enunciated as clearly as if the people themselves were singing it.

It was getting late and it was time to say my goodbyes to Mrs Boxall, old Mr Bornstein and Miss Bornstein. Gert had promised to pick me up and run us down to the station in the prison’s new Chevy which meant my mother and my granpa didn’t have to rely on Pastor Mulvery, whose anxious-to-escape front teeth and unctuous presence I found increasingly depressing, and I was glad that he wouldn’t add to the awkwardness I always felt at departures.

I put Doc’s music between the pages of a slim volume of poetry by Wilfred Owen which Mrs Boxall had given me. ‘Not as soppy as Rupert Brooke, but a better war poet I feel sure,’ she had said.

Leaving home with the knowledge that when I returned it would be to a place which no longer meant Doc made this parting almost unbearably sad for me. My mother tried to chat brightly, but she wasn’t much of a bright chatterer and my granpa just tapped and tamped and puffed and turned and looked up at the mountains and said, ‘The cumulus nimbus is building up, could be a storm tonight, just as the Frensman are in loose bud.’ Frensman was a deep red long-stemmed rose and unless the petals were still in tight bud the storm would damage them. Gert, who at the best of times didn’t have too much small talk, added to my sense of foreboding and made the waiting for the coffee pot to pull out almost unbearably long. I put my hand into the pocket of a new pair of grey flannel slacks, made for me by old Mr Bornstein, and took out Doc’s hunter. I was about to click it open when I was conscious of my stupidity and quickly slipped the beautiful old watch back into my pocket. My haste in doing so immediately pointed to my guilt. I thought I might have escaped detection but after a couple of minutes, when my mother had turned to talk to my granpa, Gert whispered, ‘So you found him, hey? I’m blêrrie glad, Peekay.’ I ignored his remark, pretending not to hear him, and I knew Gert would remain silent.

A whistle warned of our departure and the small crowd on the platform became animated, as happens when an over-extended farewell is suddenly terminated. It occurred in our group too, each of us secretly glad that the waiting was over. ‘Look after yourself, son boy,’ my mother said, offering the side of her powdered cheek.

‘There’s a good lad,’ puff, puff, my granpa shook my hand. As I looked into his face I realised that his blue eyes had become a little rheumy and that the skin around his cheeks and mouth stretched tightly, as happens with thin men when they begin to grow old.

Gert gripped my hand in the traditional excessively firm Afrikaner manner. ‘All the best, Peekay, see you in July, man.’ He jumped into a boxing stance, it was a small physical joke to hide his awkwardness. ‘Keep your hands up, you hear.’ He grinned and leaned forward so that only I could hear, ‘No more fighting Kaffirs you hear, their heads is too hard, man.’

The coffee pot gave a blast of steam whistle, loud enough to belong to a much bigger, more important train. The people in the third-class Blacks Only carriage yelled and screamed with delight, five or six heads and a dozen arms to each carriage window waving bandannas and generally making the most of the farewell occasion, as the little train slowly left the platform. I continued to wave until the train had passed the long bend which took the platform from sight. With a conscious sigh of relief I leaned back into the green leather seat. I knew I’d have the compartment to myself until Kaapmuiden, and I cherished the idea of being on my own. It had been a long week since I had fought Gideon Mandoma.

Hymie was full of news when we got back to school. He’d worked out a formal business arrangement with Mr Nguni and now there were twenty young black boxers training at Solly’s gym, as well as three black boxing officials who would be trained in the handling of boxers and would eventually sit for their referee’s tickets.

Gideon Mandoma and three other young fighters were separated from the other blacks to do their workouts with me on Wednesday afternoons and before church on Sunday morning. Gideon soon became more than just a good sparring partner. He laughed a lot and had a quick wit which delighted me. His English wasn’t strong and at first we mostly spoke in Zulu, until after a workout some three weeks into the term he patted me on the shoulder with his glove. ‘No more Zulu, Peekay, your Zulu comes from my mother’s breast now my English must come from your fists. You must teach me English.’ He propped and slowly stroked his hair in a backward movement the way Hymie would do it, lightly touching it as though preening in front of a mirror. ‘I have one good English words from Hymie.’ He mimicked the way Hymie spat words out: ‘Cheeky bloody Kaffir!’ Gideon threw back his head and laughed happily. ‘This English I understand very good.’

It was then that I hit on the idea. ‘We’re going to start a school for Solly’s black boxers,’ I announced to Hymie on the tram back to school after training.

‘Christ, Peekay, isn’t that going a bit far? Educate the black bastards and before you know where you are they’ll want to take over the country.’

‘It’s as much theirs as it is ours. More actually,’ I said, surprised at his outburst.

‘You’re perfectly right, but can’t we let them take a little longer to find out? Keep the buggers in the dark as long as possible?’

‘Hymie, what are you saying? I thought you were a liberal thinker?’

Hymie laughed. ‘First and foremost I’m a pragmatist but there’s bound to be a quid in it somewhere, although I’m buggered if I can see where. How do you propose going about it, integrate the Prince of Wales School?’

‘C’mon, Hymie, take this seriously. If we go to Singe ’n Burn and put it to him as two Renaissance men and give him a whole line of bullshit about liberalism blah, blah, blah, I’m sure he’ll be in it. We could have the black school in one of the classrooms on a Saturday night.’

‘Already I like it! One lesson a week shouldn’t pose too much of a threat to white civilisation as we know it on the southern tip of Africa.’

‘Well, what do you reckon?’

‘Off hand I can’t think of a way to make any money out of it but as Karl Marx, or was it Christ, said: “Man does not live by bread alone”. Okay, whatever you say.’

‘Great! Because you have to open the subject with Singe ’n Burn by telling him that as a Jew you know what it’s like to be an oppressed people.’

Hymie thought for a moment. ‘Fine, nothing to it, I simply go in and ask Singe ’n Burn to open a black school in this citadel of white privilege, pointing out to him that as an expertly oppressed person for roughly nineteen hundred years …’

‘Good, I’ll make an appointment to see him after school tomorrow.’

Singe ’n Burn proved more difficult than we had anticipated. He was not at all sure of the attitude the Nationalist government might take to one of the country’s most famous English-speaking private schools becoming the cradle of black adult learning.

There were, of course, black schools and some very good ones. But most Africans left school before they reached high school and a great many more after only two or three years of the most basic education. Some, perhaps a majority, never made it to school at all. If, in later years, they wished to learn to read and write, then no adult school facilities existed for them.

We seemed to have reached a stalemate, with Singe ’n Burn promising to put the issue to the school governors, where it was almost certain to be defeated. Their idea of Christian gentleman did not include the brotherhood of man, if it meant lowering the colour bar.

Our arguments had been sound but our politics naive. In South Africa, when a black skin is involved, politics and social justice have very little in common.

‘We’ve been a couple of schmucks to think he’d buy it straight off like that, we’re going to have to make the bastard feel guilty, it always works with a Renaissance man,’ Hymie said. We were sitting in the prefects’ common room which was seldom used by the other prefects after school and was a nice private place to talk or work.

‘I thought we’d already made him feel guilty?’

‘Guilty in the mind, intellectual guilt yes. But guilty so it hurts inside, that’s different. Jews are expert at soul guilt. Let me illustrate what I mean. Until we fought in Sophiatown, the only black people I knew well were Mary, our cook, and Jefferson, the butler. And, of course, the various other nameless servants who pretended to work around the place. The afternoon of the fight was the first time I had ever been close to African people. I mean actually experienced them as people, not just servants or faithful family retainers, but as people with problems. I mean just like other ordinary people. I haven’t told you before, but the effect was shattering. I found myself liking them. More than that, I understood for the very first time how the persecuted Jew must have felt. When they sang for you, not just for Gideon, that was understandable, but for you also, the generosity of spirit made me ashamed of my white skin. That’s the sort of guilt I mean.’

‘Christ, Hymie, you didn’t tell me any of this.’

‘So what’s to tell? You can’t tell it, you have to feel it. That’s what Singe ’n Burn needs. He needs to feel not what he is denying but whom he is denying. We’re going to introduce him to Gideon.’

‘You had ten thousand Africans singing Sikelel’ i Afrika to experience, do you think Gideon can convince him on his own? He’s the only tone deaf Zulu ever born.’ It was true, Gideon had a singing voice like a rusty rasp on hardwood.

‘No, of course not. But by the time we’re finished with that cheeky black bastard he’s going to sound like Othello.’

Hymie and I composed a speech for Gideon Mandoma which, I must say, was pretty terrific. The idea was that Gideon would learn it in Zulu and I’d translate it into English as though hearing it for the first time. Singe ’n Burn would be so knocked out by the language, the poetry and the brilliance that he would realise the black man was not just a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, nor even a noble savage, but someone who had all the brilliant potential even to become one of Sinjun’s People.

We trained Gideon in the speech and, dressed in a white shirt, neatly patched pair of pants from an old suit and with his old black shoes shining, we presented ourselves at Singe ’n Burn’s study. I must say he was very gracious and we all sat in his big old leather armchairs and Miss Perkins, his secretary, brought us tea and Marie biscuits. We’d anticipated the offer of tea and had practised Gideon in the balancing of a cup on his knee so he looked pretty suave and at home. But I knew on the inside he’d be all tom-toms and flutter.

I explained to Singe ’n Burn that Gideon’s English wasn’t sufficiently fluent for him to conduct a conversation and that I would act as interpreter. I think the fact that one of Sinjun’s People could conduct the interview in Zulu impressed the old boy no end.

Gideon, as we had rehearsed it, began in English. His beautiful white teeth flashing in one of his best smiles: ‘Excuse for my English, sir, she is not so good for tell this thing in my heart.’

The head nodded sympathetically. I could see the plan beginning to work already. Gideon cleared his throat and then began in Zulu. After each carefully rehearsed sentence I translated in my best voice, keeping it low and dramatic.

‘I do not come from a nation of slaves, but I have been made a slave. I come from a people who are brave men, but I am made to weep. I, who am to become a chief, have become what no man ought to be, a man without rights and without a future.’ I paused dramatically before continuing, ‘I am seventeen summers, I have killed a lion and sat on the mat of the high chief, but I have been given my place. That place is not a seat at the white man’s table, and that place is not a voice in the white man’s indaba.’ I could see Singe ’n Burn was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He wouldn’t know what hit him by the time we were through. Talk about guilt, old Singe hadn’t seen anything yet.

To my surprise Gideon suddenly stopped following the script. ‘My bondage is not of the white man’s making. My bondage is not forced upon me by the white man’s sjambok. My bondage is in my own brain. Here in my head I carry the Zulu pride of my ancestors but I also carry no learning. My stupidity is my bondage, it is the instrument of the black man’s misery and despair. If the white man would give me his rights and the same voice, I would not be able to use them, I would still be in bondage. I would still be a servant, a black Kaffir, an inferior human, because I would not know how to use these rights, how to make my voice felt amongst the people. Please, sir, my mind cries for knowledge. I wish to cup knowledge in my hand and drink it as one drinks water by the side of a stream. I am naked without knowledge. I am a nothing without learning. Please, sir, give me this knowledge, give me this learning, so that I too can be a man.’

Gideon’s words had been so easily put that I had no trouble making an almost perfect translation and his flow was hardly interrupted. The tears rolled down his cheeks and he made no effort to wipe them away. I realised suddenly that for a Zulu to cry is a great shame, but he couldn’t wipe away his tears with the cup and saucer balanced on his knee. I leaned forward and removed the cup and looked over at Hymie, not daring to look at Singe ’n Burn. I could see Hymie was annoyed that I’d removed Gideon’s cup, the tears were the best part, the clincher. Othello had nothing on Hymie’s cheeky black bastard.

‘The tears are not for myself, they are for the people, Inkosi,’ Gideon said softly, wiping them away with the back of his hand. I sneaked a look at Singe ’n Burn and saw his eyes had grown misty and he too was struggling with his emotions.

‘Remarkable, quite remarkable.’ Then turning to Hymie and me, he said: ‘This young man shall have his school and I charge you both to give of your best.’

We’d won! Singe ’n Burn, the senior house master from Winchester School and trustee of the great private school tradition to the colonies, Renaissance man and liberal thinker, had been made to touch the heart and feel the soul of black Africa.

Hymie was the first to react. ‘Can the school supply exercise books and stationery, sir?’ Singe ’n Burn nodded.

‘See Miss Perkins for a stationery authority, Levy. Your students must be properly equipped.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said then turned to Gideon to tell him the news. Gideon broke into a giant smile.

‘Many boy, same like me, we thank you, Inkosi.’ Singe ’n Burn acknowledged Gideon with a nod of his head. It was plain he was enchanted with the young Zulu chief.

The school began with the black boxers from Solly’s gym its only pupils. Within a month, local chauffeurs, cooks and houseboys had swelled the ranks and Pissy Johnson, Cunning-Spider and Atherton, as well as two guys from School House who could speak Sotho, were roped in to teach on Saturday nights.

Even before the head’s agreement we had despatched a long letter to Miss Bornstein asking her how we should best go about teaching language and numbers to adult Africans; she had responded with a superb set of teaching notes and several textbooks which enabled Hymie and me to prepare a complete curriculum which I was able to translate into Sotho, Zulu, Shangaan as well as Fanagalo.

With Singe ’n Burn’s approval we also set about teaching the curriculum to the newly elected Sinjun’s People so that the night school could be carried on after Hymie and I matriculated at the end of the year.

After only a few weeks the results were astonishing. Students, loaded down with homework after Saturday night’s four-hour teaching session, would return with everything done, anxious for more. Word of the school spread among the Prince of Wales School boys and soon collections of nursery rhymes, primers and all sorts of textbooks were brought in and we had more volunteers than we could cope with. Then Hymie, loath to waste any free resource, hit on a one-to-one teaching method where every black student had a personal white tutor. All our black students would be taught collectively in the school hall for the first hour after which they would break away into a corner of a classroom with their personal tutors. Every tutor worked to a set of notes supplied by us and was required to stick to Miss Bornstein’s outlines.

Progress was much faster than it would have been for any white students in a conventional classroom situation. Hymie, not content with our first curriculum, worked and worked on the notes, ironing out the errors and getting them perfect.

Some four months later we were visited by a reporter and photographer from the Rand Daily Mail and in the following Wednesday morning edition we had a full page write-up, which also contained a picture of Hymie, Gideon and me.

The article, very exaggerated, told a cocked-up version of the fight I had with Gideon and how Hymie and I had opened a school for boxers which continued to grow, giving the impression we had become a major black education resource. It was full of inaccuracies but nevertheless it caused some real excitement in the school. Singe ’n Burn called Hymie and me into his study and admonished us for not checking with him before speaking to a reporter. He suggested it was altogether a rather silly thing to have done in the light of the political situation, where black schools were forbidden in white urban areas.

Coming out of the head’s office, Hymie shrugged his shoulders. ‘Any publicity is good publicity, I guess.’

‘I hope you’re right, I reckon we goofed.’

‘Yeah, so do I,’ he said softly.

The following Saturday night the police raided us. The doors of the hall were suddenly blocked by khaki-uniformed police both white and African. A police lieutenant wearing a Sam Browne belt and a holstered revolver jumped up onto the stage and blew his whistle loudly.

‘This is a police raid, everybody remain seated and nobody will get hurt, you hear!’ He stood on the stage, his legs apart, with his hand on his revolver holster as though daring one of us to move. ‘Who is in charge here?’

‘Ons is,’ I said in Afrikaans, indicating Hymie and myself.

The police officer continued in English. ‘Why is there no adult in charge?’

‘The class is run by the boys,’ I said.

‘You mean white kids teach these blêrrie Kaffirs?’

‘That’s right.’ I was beginning to gain courage after my initial surprise.

‘Ag sis, man, are you telling me you teaching blêrrie stinking Kaffirs their ABC’s? Don’t you have anything better to do with your time on a Saturday night?’

‘Have you got a search warrant?’ Hymie asked.

‘Who’re you, man?’ the policeman asked.

‘You answer my question first,’ Hymie said in an even voice.

‘Hey, you being cheeky?’

‘He merely asked if you have a search warrant, officer,’ I said. The policeman suddenly realised that we were not intimidated. In fact he was wrong, we were both scared to death.

‘And what if I heven’t?’ he challenged.

‘Then you’re trespassing and I must ask you to leave at once,’ I said.

‘You’re only a blêrrie kid, who you think you talking to, hey?’

‘If you haven’t got a warrant to enter this school then piss off!’ Hymie spat at the officer.

To my surprise the police officer suddenly grinned. Then stroking his nose with his forefinger and thumb he said, ‘You’re the Jewboy, hey.’ He turned towards me. ‘And you the boxer who fights Kaffirs.’ He pointed at the Africans seated silently in front of us. ‘Let me see the Kaffir you fought, man.’

Without being asked to do so Gideon rose from his chair. ‘Come here, Joe Louis, come and stand next to the Jewboy and the Kaffirboetie.’

The officer called a black policeman over from the doorway, and as he waited for him to come onto the stage, he undid the shiny brass button holding the flap of his khaki tunic pocket and withdrew a piece of paper which he extended in our direction. ‘Here, Jewboy, read it for yourself.’ Hymie moved over and accepted the paper which was obviously a warrant to enter and search the premises. The lieutenant turned to the black policeman at his side. ‘Tell the black bastards that they must all show their pass books and a pass from their employer to stay out after nine o’clock curfew.’

I turned to the white policeman. ‘It isn’t nine o’clock yet, Lieutenant. No one’s broken curfew.’

He grinned. ‘Ja, I know, man, but it will be when I’m finished here and any black bastard without a pass is arrested.’

‘This warrant is for St Johns College,’ Hymie said suddenly. ‘Look, see it says St Johns College, Houghton. That’s the school about a mile down the road!’

‘Don’t play silly-buggers with me, you hear? Or you three will spend the night in a cell down at Central.’

Hymie walked over to the white police officer. ‘Read it for yourself. It says St Johns College, Houghton. That’s not us. Now will you kindly leave!’

‘This is the right place, this is the place in the newspaper, I’m telling you, man! St Johns, that school, does it also teach Kaffirs?’ I could see he was suddenly confused.

‘You’ll have to ask them that yourself, officer,’ I said, not trusting myself to look at Hymie.

The police officer folded the warrant and put it back in his pocket. ‘I should arrest you for obstructing the police in their duty, you know it’s only a technical error, man. They got it wrong when they was looking on the map. This is the school, I’m telling you!’

‘That’s not what it says on your piece of paper, I really must ask you to leave, officer,’ Hymie said, playing the situation for all it was worth.

‘Okay, Jewboy, but don’t think you seen the last of me. I know a comminist when I see one.’ He pointed to me. ‘You too, you and your Kaffir friend. I can smell a comminist a mile off.’

He left with his men and we could hear their boots on the cobblestones as they crossed the school quad.

‘Holy Molenski! That was close,’ I said. ‘What happens now?’

Gideon grinned, a lopsided sort of smile, ‘I think it is finish… the school is finish.’

‘Not on your fucking life!’ Hymie said. ‘I’ll get my old man’s lawyers if they try doing that again.’

Gideon gave a wry laugh. ‘You will be safe but we will go to jail, it is always like so. You are very clever and the magic of the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi is make the change for the school name on the paper. But the police they are bad people, they will not give up so easy, but also I think the big baas for headmaster he will make finish with this school.’

‘Over our dead bodies,’ Hymie said. ‘I’m telling you, he’ll fight for the night school.’

But he didn’t. The next Monday the two of us were called to Singe ’n Burn’s office to be confronted by an officer of the South African police force.

‘This is Captain Swanepoel of the Johannesburg Central Police Station, he wishes to ask you a few questions,’ Singe ’n Burn said sternly. ‘It seems your report to me on the weekend doesn’t quite respond with the one submitted by the police officer who attended your class on Saturday night. I urge you to tell the complete truth to Captain Swanepoel.’

‘We told you precisely what happened, sir,’ I said to the head.

‘With respect, the officer in charge of the visit is trained to report correctly, you can take my word for that,’ the police captain said.

‘Well then, in that case there will be no difference in our versions, Captain Swanepoel. I mean if we both told the truth,’ Hymie said softly.

‘The truth? What is the truth? In my experience the truth goes out the window when emotions come in. Emotions always tell a story different, you take my word for that, Headmaster,’ Captain Swanepoel replied.

‘Captain, both these boys have been trained to observe a situation with some dispassion, even though it be one in which they are involved.’

‘Ja, I mean no disrespect, Headmaster, but I must take the written evidence of an adult police officer against two young boys who were very excited at the time.’

‘Perhaps Captain Swanepoel can tell us where our evidence differs, sir?’ I asked.

‘Well, yes, of course.’ The head cleared his throat. ‘According to Captain Swanepoel you did not co-operate with the officer in charge of the visit and you were abusive in the extreme.’

‘We were not given the opportunity to co-operate, sir. The officer was both abusive and bullying and referred to me as a Kaffirboetie, Levy as the Jewboy and to Gideon Mandoma as a blêrrie stinking Kaffir.’ I looked up to see the beginnings of a smirk on Captain Swanepoel’s face.

‘This is not possible, a police officer of the South African Police Force is trained to be respectful to the public,’ he turned to Singe ’n Burn. ‘People make things up all the time, things the police are supposed to say.’

‘Are you calling us liars, Captain?’ I said.

Swanepoel ignored my question. ‘It says here that you used abusive language to the officer in charge of the investigation?’

‘Yes, I told him to piss off,’ Hymie said, ‘but you have yet to answer Peekay’s question, Captain.’

‘I will answer it later, son, don’t you worry about that,’ Swanepoel shot back. ‘Is what you said not abusive language?’

‘Levy was extremely provoked and as the officer had no right to be on the premises the remark was not unjustified, sir,’ I replied.

‘I didn’t ask you and he didn’t answer my question.’ He pointed his finger at Hymie. ‘I’m asking you again, is what you said not abusive language?’

‘Put like that, yes, but …’

‘No but, man, you admit you were abusive to the officer then?’

‘I admit I told him to piss off, Captain,’ Hymie replied.

‘Then we are in agreement. The first face we challenge turns out to be correct, why must I not believe this report is a correct statement of what happened?’

‘I say, that’s not fair rules of debate, Captain Swanepoel,’ Singe ’n Burn demanded.

Captain Swanepoel turned to face the headmaster. ‘I am a police officer, not a school teacher, I look at the evidence, I do not play games.’

‘We have forty-two Africans as well as our own chaps who will confirm what we’ve said,’ I protested. I’d heard the warders interrogate prisoners and they would use the same technique as Swanepoel was now using on us.

‘Ah yes, forty-two hostile witnesses. Africans do not have the same idea about truth as a white man. As for the other white boys, we are reluctant to take evidence from juveniles.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question, Captain,’ Hymie said, his teeth clenched.

‘You know something, son, sooner or later your type of person comes before the police again. I will remember your face.’

‘Please! Answer our question, sir!’ Hymie shouted.

Swanepoel laughed. ‘When we meet again, I will answer it then, you hear?’

‘What happens to this report, Captain Swanepoel?’ Singe ’n Burn asked.

The police captain sighed. ‘Because of the technical error in the search warrant I must very reluctantly withdraw this report.’

‘May I please have it, Captain Swanepoel?’ I asked.

Swanepoel laughed again. ‘The South African Police do not give souvenirs, if you want some souvenirs, go to the Easter show.’

‘I’m delighted to hear that’s the last of it,’ Singe ’n Burn said, obviously relieved.

‘No, Headmaster, it is only the beginning. You can consider yourself very lucky we got the wrong school name on the search warrant because today I have come here as a friend. If we come again next Saturday night and we find that this wonderful school you have here is teaching black communists then we will be forced to make some very unfortunate conclusions.’

‘I really do protest, sir!’ Singe ’n Burn was suddenly angry.

Captain Swanepoel grinned. ‘These days it is not very hard to find a black communist.’ He looked at Hymie. ‘Or even a white one,’ then at me, ‘even more than one. When blacks want suddenly to have education you can take it from me, they up to no good, somebody else or something else is behind it.’

‘Are you telling us to close down the night school, Captain?’

‘Headmaster, the law in this matter is not clear yet, but teaching black people in a white school will not be allowed in the new Group Areas Act. You can see my position, Headmaster. I must tell you also my duty in this matter is very clear. Next time we will not make a mistake with the search warrant. And when we come we will find something.’ He paused and looked again at us. ‘We always find something.’

He rose and extended his hand to Singe ’n Burn. The headmaster did not take it, instead he gripped the side of his desk and leaned forward slightly. ‘We will not be intimidated by the police, Captain Swanepoel. We have not broken the law and as far as I know this is still a free and democratic country.’

Captain Swanepoel shrugged and stooped down to retrieve his cap from the floor by his chair. ‘I am sorry you will not co-operate with the police, sir.’ He adjusted his cap, then turned back to face the headmaster, touching the peak lightly in a casual salute. ‘Good afternoon, sir.’ Without a look at Hymie or me he turned and left, closing the door quietly behind him.

‘Shit, what now?’ Hymie said under this breath.

‘What was that, Levy?’

‘Nothing, sir.’

The light from the window backlit Singe ’n Burn’s snowy hair and he looked frail as he continued to grip the desk, swaying slightly as though the motion kept him from disintegrating into a million tiny bits which would silently float away on the dusty beam of sunlight.

‘Bravo, sir,’ Hymie said.

He shook his head slowly, ‘We are beaten.’

‘But you just said …?’

‘Sheer bravado, my boy. We will have your school on Saturday and Captain Swanepoel will officially raid the Prince of Wales School, after which the board of governors will meet and their conclusion is foregone.’ He looked up. ‘Nevertheless, we will open next Saturday evening, a Pyrrhic victory to be sure, but there is an important principle at stake.’

We left the head’s office on a thorough downer. ‘Fuck the Pyrrhic victory, the principle and the principal as well!’ Hymie exploded, once we were out of earshot.

‘We’ll have to let Gideon and the other boxers know. It’s only fair that they decide for themselves whether they’ll come.’

‘Yeah, I suppose,’ Hymie said morosely. ‘What about the others?’

‘Forget it, they won’t come. Last Saturday was enough, there’s no principle involved for them, just another opportunity taken away, another door closed. They spend their lives being screwed by the system. Would you turn up if you knew you were almost certain to be arrested, thrown in jail, lose your job and be branded as a communist?’

‘I’m beginning to realise how lucky I am to have a white skin.’ Hymie was taking it worse than I was. I had been around this kind of intimidation all my life and I knew Captain Swanepoel could have been a lot more difficult had he chosen to be.

‘What are we going to do, Peekay?’

I laughed, ‘You really are a city slicker aren’t you, you still think the police are there to protect you from the big bad wolf? After Saturday night this whole scenario was predictable. The Nationalists don’t see it as a kindergarten for adult blacks, to them we are starting a black revolution in the heartland of white privilege.’

‘You can’t be serious. Our dumb school for boxers and house boys?’

‘From little acorns mighty oak trees grow. The Nats are not stupid. You should know; the Jews made that mistake before with the Nazis, they thought of them as a bunch of thugs whom they could buy off. Have you seen the educational qualifications the Nationalist government has for its cabinet? It’s probably the best educated cabinet in the world. Racism does not diminish with brains, it’s a disease, a sickness, it may incubate in ignorance but it doesn’t necessarily disappear with the gaining of wisdom!’

‘Are you telling me you knew all along this was going to happen?’

‘No, of course not. I thought we had a chance, you were right to be somewhat cynical at the beginning, but it was worth a try.’

‘But just now in the head’s office… you seemed so disappointed?’

‘Christ, Hymie, I’m not saying I wanted it to happen! I was angry and bitterly disappointed. Disappointed that I was right.’

‘You’re a complicated bastard, Peekay. I’m supposed to be the realist in this partnership. What do we do now?’

‘Well Saturday’s out for a start, no point in putting the boxers at jeopardy, not for a Pyrrhic victory anyway.’

‘Well, at least we can teach them after boxing.’

‘No way. That Swanepoel bastard will be watching us like a hawk.’

‘I feel so bloody helpless.’ Hymie looked at me and shrugged, ‘You know, before our visit to Sophiatown I couldn’t have given a damn. Yeah, sure, I’d probably have gone along with you on the school, like you’ve gone along with me on some of our scams. But after the fight, seeing those people, it’s different somehow. I begin to have a concept of the people, of what it means to be oppressed, of what it must have meant to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.’ It was the first time I’d seen Hymie confused. He’d come up against something that couldn’t be resolved with money or influence. ‘It was such a small thing they wanted and we failed. I mean, those poor blighters wanted so badly to learn, just to read and write and do a few sums. It was the least we could do.’ Hymie was almost crying from rage.

‘So, that’s what we’re going to continue to do. I didn’t spend four years with Geel Piet without learning how to beat the system.’

‘What do you mean, Peekay?’

‘Correspondence school. Miss Bornstein’s Correspondence School!’

‘Peekay! You’re a genius! We’ve already got the whole course in three African languages, as well as Fanagalo. It’s in the bag, old chap, we’ll guinea-pig the whole thing. We’ll make it free for the class who have just been expelled, then with Mr Nguni’s help and for a small sum, yet to be determined, we’ll sell a correspondence course for blacks throughout South Africa. We’ll even send one to Captain Swanepoel and tell him to jam it up his arse so that every time he farts he sounds intelligent!’

Miss Bornstein’s Correspondence School would one day become the biggest of its kind in the southern hemisphere, with Miss Bornstein as actual principal. Mr Nguni simply let it be known that the course came from the Tadpole Angel who wanted the people to take pride in learning to read and write and do sums. It would turn out to be one of the more important elements in his financial and political empire in the years to come.