man jabbing a pair of twelve ounce gloves into your face wasn’t a dirty Kaffir, he was a boxer, if only for the duration of the fight.
While a number of amateurs worked out in the gym, none of them was instructed by Solly, who had his work cut out handling the pros. Boxing was becoming a big time sport in the African townships surrounding Johannesburg and Solly had a regular stable of black fighters he trained in return for a percentage of the purse. Black and white boxers were not allowed to fight in public for the same title but they’d spar together and sometimes the sparring would get out of hand when a white or a black guy, but it was mostly the white boxers, decided to have a go. Solly would let it go for a couple of rounds, particularly when it looked as though the white man was getting a bit of a drubbing.
The first time Hymie and I appeared, Solly put me in with a young pro bantamweight who hadn’t been out of the amateur ranks very long. After two rounds he stopped the sparring session.
‘Who taught you to box, Peekay?’
I told him about Geel Piet without giving him the exact details.
‘Next time you see him, my boy, you give him my compliments.’
‘He’s dead, Solly.’
Solly cocked his bald head to one side. ‘Well he didn’t die in vain, my son, he’s given you an almost perfect grounding, you use the ring like a wizard.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, not quite knowing what else to say. Solly Goldman was the best and I found his over- generous compliments unnerving.
‘Thank me later, my boy, there’s a lot of work to get through. You need a little more starch in your left hand and your right is no great shakes niver. Like all amateurs you’re looking for points, you hold your hands too bleedin’ high. You’re fast enough to drop ’em a little and give yourself more punching power. We’ll get you onto weights and build up your upper body. It would also be very comforting indeed to know you also packed a good left right combination. Before I’m through with you, my son, you’re going to be the only amateur boxer in South Africa who can put a thirteen-punch combo together. That’s the show stopper, that’s the one man band that starts with a bleedin’ mouf organ and ends with a big bass drum.’
I was amazed that Solly Goldman, a cockney Jew from London, could read so much into my boxing after watching me for only two rounds. But he was true to his word. By the Christmas holidays I was a vastly improved boxer with a lot more power in both hands. We fought as usual in the Eastern Transvaal Championships that December and Captain Smit couldn’t believe the difference. The championships were in Barberton and it seemed the whole town turned out to see me box. My mother stayed at home but my granpa had a ringside seat with Doc, Mrs Boxall, Miss Bornstein and old Mr Bornstein. Miss Bornstein told me later that old Mr Bornstein winced every time I threw a punch, while Doc, by now a seasoned campaigner, pretended to take it all in his stride.
I was awarded the trophy for best boxer in the tournament, and afterwards my granpa and I walked home while Mrs Boxall drove Doc to his cottage. We reached the front gate and my granpa patted me on the shoulder. ‘I’ve never been so proud in my life, son,’ he said and then, to cover his embarrassment, reached into his white linen jacket for his pipe.
I had been home a week. The train from Johannesburg arrived at Nelspruit at nine a.m. on the previous Saturday morning. Usually I would then go on to Kaapmuiden and wait until mid-afternoon for the coffee pot to Barberton which would crawl exhausted into town about eight in the evening. But to my delight Gert was waiting for me at Nelspruit.
‘Ag man, we had to put in some papers here about a white drunk and disorderly who attacked a prison gang with a pick handle so Captain Smit said take the car and pick up Peekay at the same time.’ He extended his hand, ‘How goes it, man?’
On the road back to Barberton, Gert told me that Doc had been in a storm in the hills and had caught pneumonia and spent a week in hospital. ‘He’s looking old, Peekay. I reckon he’ll be making his peace pretty soon.’
I was stunned. ‘He’s a tough old bugger, he’ll be okay I’m telling you,’ I said, more to give myself comfort than as a reply.
‘Ja, he’s tough all right, but the old bugger must be eighty-five, maybe more, he can’t last forever, man.’
‘Well, he’s still climbing into the hills, that’s something at least.’
‘Not since he was sick, he talks about it, about when you get back, but I dunno, man, I reckon he’s finish and klaar. I told him I’ll send a gang any time to work in the cactus garden but he says he can still manage. But I dunno, man.’
I said nothing. A huge lump grew in my throat and the road in front of me blurred. The thought of Doc not being there when I returned home from school was too distressing even to contemplate.
‘Those two abafazi at your house look after him like he’s a chief. They spend all their spare time over at his place and they bring food every day and now they even shave him.’
Doc was the most independent person I’d ever known and I knew at once that Gert wasn’t imagining things. If Dee and Dum had to shave him his hands must have become very shaky.
I had bought Dee and Dum a Singer hand machine and they’d turned their sewing into a regular little business making cotton shifts for many of the local house servants. My mother and Marie had shown them how to cut out and how to make buttonholes and hem by hand and they were going great guns. I had learned by accident that Dee and Dum were using their small earnings from sewing to look after Doc who could no longer take in his little girls for music lessons. When I could after that, I would send them money for him. The Bank was a regular source of income and I could generally manage a pound a week and what with one or two other scams Hymie and I had going, between the girls and me, Doc was okay.
Realising that my mother would expect me home on the coffee pot, I asked Gert to drop me off at the bottom of Doc’s road. Hiding my suitcase under some bushes I climbed up to the cottage. He was sitting in the shade on the stoep in his favourite riempie chair and I thought he must be asleep. But he looked up and saw me approaching and rose from his chair a little stiffly, one hand on the small of his back. His six foot seven frame almost touched the rafters of the verandah and he seemed to be swaying slightly as his arms went out to me. I ran up to him and he put his hands on my shoulders and then I could no longer contain myself and I grabbed him fiercely.
‘Please, Doc, please don’t die,’ I sobbed.
Doc and I seldom showed emotion, our love each for the other was so fierce that it burned like a flame inside of us. But now I was suddenly overcome, Gert’s conversation on the way over mixed with the emotion of seeing him standing with his arms outstretched to me, frail as a wisp of smoke, was too much.
His hand came round and patted me on the back, ‘Absoloodle! We have no time to die, Peekay, the hills are still green and waiting, it is not yet time for the crystal cave of Africa.’
I pulled away from him and he sat down in his chair. Still sniffing, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘You’ve been sick, Doc. Gert told me you’ve been sick?’
‘Just a bad cold, Peekay. It was nothing.’
‘It was pneumonia!’
‘Ja this is true, but some pneumonia is big, some is small, this was a
‘Marie will tell me how bad it was.’
Doc threw up his hands. ‘Marie! Such a person! “Professor you must give your life to Jesus, there is not much time. You must choose between the eternal damnation of hellfire or the love of Jesus Christ.” I think maybe I stay a little longer here, miss, I say to this Marie. I think she was quite a lot disappointed. Ja, I think so,’ Doc said, chuckling as he poured a mug of strong black coffee for me, holding the coffee pot in both hands to stop himself shaking.
We sat on the verandah sipping our coffee in big tin mugs, Doc’s only half full so that he wouldn’t spill it. He was up to all his tricks to hide his frailty. We said very little, I could see Doc was happy I was back and I felt I would give him strength. We talked about the crystal cave of Africa, which Doc now regarded as our greatest discovery.
‘It is good we are together again, Peekay. On Christmas Day I will be eighty-seven years old.’
‘Doc, you’ve got to live until I’m welterweight champion of the world, you’ve got to make it until you’re at least ninety-four or five!’
Doc chuckled at the urgency in my voice and rose slowly from his chair. ‘Come, I show you
