‘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.
TWENTY-THREE
Nineteen fifty-one was the year I won the South African Schools featherweight title, and the Prince of Wales School won the schools championship for the third year running. Darby and Sarge were heroes and both had become welcome members of the masters’ common room. Success of any sort seems to break down social barriers. We all sat for our matriculation, although a first-class pass for Sinjun’s People was a foregone conclusion. Atherton was selected for the South African schoolboy rugby team to tour Argentina and Cunning-Spider had made in into the Transvaal Schools cricket team. Pissy Johnson, with a lot of coaching from Hymie and me, felt confident that he’d get the marks in his matric to study medicine. He had become an expert at fixing cuts in the ring and from this small beginning his ambition to be a doctor had blossomed.
I had, by all accounts, a brilliant school career, getting my colours in rugby and three times for boxing as well as being head prefect and a company commander in the school cadet corps. While my music hadn’t really progressed, I was still by school standards considered amongst the more superior musicians.
In Sinjun’s terms, I was well on my way to being a Renaissance man. In my own terms I felt less successful. I had survived the system but that was in many ways the problem. I seemed to be losing control of my own life, forfeiting my individuality for the glittering prizes and the accolades of my peers. The need to win had become everything, the head had become more important than the heart, Hoppie’s advice had worked too well.
I had supported myself at school with the Bank and the various scams Hymie and I had developed. But what had been intellectual amusement for Hymie was deadly serious for me. I needed the money not only to survive but as a means of dignity. Hymie and I had become inseparable friends and with the death of Doc he was certainly the most important person in my life. But I knew deep down that Hymie had been chosen because he could help me survive the system. I was a user. It had become a habit; winner that I seemed to be, I had become a mental mendicant.
I was conscious also of the price I paid. That in return people took strength from me. Hymie, Miss Bornstein, Mrs Boxall all needed me as a focal point, I was required to perform for them in return for their unstinting help and love. The concept of the Tadpole Angel which I had tried to set aside would not leave me. After the Mandoma fight the black crowds at my boxing matches had become enormous and at the South African Schools Championships the police had been called to disperse the chanting crowd outside the Johannesburg Drill Hall. I knew that eventually something more was expected of me. All my life I’d been pushed around. By the Judge. By the Lord. By the concept of the Tadpole Angel. In my own way I had fought and in return had been given Doc and Hoppie and Geel Piet as my mentors. The point of all this was difficult to understand. Perhaps, after all, life is like this. But I felt that I needed to take one independent action that would put my life back under my own control. It was as though I needed to lose but hadn’t developed the mechanism to do so. I only had one problem with this; I hadn’t any idea how to go about doing so.
The only totally independent thing in my life was my ambition to become the welterweight champion of the world. It was the only thing that couldn’t be manipulated. I either had it in me or I hadn’t. It was the thing those who loved me, with the exception of Captain Smit and Gert, couldn’t understand. It was the one thing in my life that seemed to make sense to me. In this single action there was no corruption of the spirit.
In the last week of term Singe ’n Burn accompanied me to my interview with the Rhodes scholarship board. I had sat for two scholarships. One to Witwatersrand University and another to the University of Stellenbosch, an Afrikaans-speaking university with a brilliant law school. But, more than anything, I wanted to go to Oxford. I felt I was unlikely to compromise this desire, come what may. Hymie’s family had already agreed to pay for me to go, but even as a loan I found this unacceptable. Unacceptable to me, to the memory of Doc, to Mrs Boxall, Miss Bornstein, Captain Smit, Gert, Hoppie Groenewald, Big Hettie and most of all, to Geel Piet, who had never in his life experienced a hand extended to him in help.
Even my mother, convinced that the temporal things of life were secondary and who had given the Lord the entire credit for making my education possible, had sat behind a sewing machine from dawn until dusk to support me as much as she was able.
I was a man now, I was through with taking. I felt the rest was up to me. If I didn’t know what the next step in my life was to be, I felt that I might set it in motion by acting independently of the help that was always so generously extended to me by others.
Hymie, the gambler and businessman, reckoned the odds on my winning one of three Rhodes scholarships for South Africa were less than even. As the time for my interview grew close he grew more and more distraught. He sensed my need to act independently and that to some large degree the Rhodes scholarship would achieve this aim. At the same time he wanted to cushion me from the disappointment if I lost. It was not unknown, but highly unusual to be awarded a Rhodes scholarship straight from school. Rhodes scholars were almost always chosen after an initial degree at university, when the student had already confirmed a brilliant school career with an equally brilliant first degree taken in conjunction with a sporting and cultural contribution in the university environment.
‘Christ, Peekay, in my old man’s terms the fees to Oxford are petty cash. We’d be together like always and come back home and eventually open a practice together. You can start looking after the people and I’ll make us a squillion dollars. It’s all so easy. Why do you have to make it so bloody difficult?’
‘Well, for a start I’m going to be welterweight champion of the world. If I took your dad’s money, I’d have to use all my time to justify it at university.’
