The Power of One

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 backwards through a meatgrinder. My head had also been shaved to get at a cut on my skull which had turned out to be pretty superficial and had only required five stitches. As Solly Goldman would say, 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 after effect.

I spent the last week of my sick leave writing home, to Miss Bornstein and Mrs Boxall and of course to Hymie 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 Hymie and Singe ’n Burn, to my constant surprise, 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 Hymie. 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 work day on Monday. I left it this late, not wishing to be seen much in public. 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 Fritzs 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 spoilt it a bit for them. As usual during interval I bought ice creams all round 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 Ruski’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 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 colour?’ 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 ze 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 ze book, come I show you.’ He raised the bar panel to let me in behind the bar, and 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 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 righthand side with the rubber stamp which read Luanshya Club and stapled the opposite end to make a neat little book of raffle tickets.

‘Now we have one raffle book, ja? You make like this for five hundred tickets… Okey dokey?’ I nodded and then told him that I wanted to buy two more bottles of brandy to complete the case. ‘No, Fritz buy!’ he said, jabbing his finger at his chest. ‘Ruski 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 centre 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 day dreaming. 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 towards 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 shirtfront. ‘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 backwards 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.

Under normal circumstances I would have easily 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 bar room 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 that I heard