‘Piece sa cake, Peekay. I already told you, man. You’re a natural.’ Hoppie’s words were like seed pods with wings. They flew straight out of his mouth and into my head where they germinated in the rich, fertile, receptive soil of my mind.
The remainder of the morning was taken up with Hoppie writing up some books in the guard’s van where he had a bunk, table and wash basin and a cupboard all to himself. Attached to a hook in the ceiling was a thing he called a speedball, for sharpening your punching. I was too short to reach it but Hoppie punched it so fast he made it almost disappear. I was beginning to like the whole idea of this boxing business.
Hoppie explained that at Gravelotte the train had to take on antimony from the mines. There would be a nine-hour stop before the train left for Kaapmuiden at eleven o’clock that night. ‘No worries, little boetie. You will be my guest at the fight and then I will put you back on the train.’
At lunch my eyes nearly popped out of my head. We sat down at the same table as before and the man who had been at breakfast, whose name turned out to be Gert, brought Hoppie a huge steak and me a little one.
‘Compliments of the cook, Hoppie. The cook’s got his whole week’s pay down on an odds-on bet with four miners. He says it’s rump steak, red in the middle to make you a mean bugger.’ Gert laughed. ‘I reckon his wife is going to be the mean bugger if you don’t win.’
Hoppie squinted up at Gert. ‘I get my head knocked in, the cook loses his money, but the man who keeps the book always wins, eh Gert?’
Gert looked indignant. ‘Not always, Hoppie. I dropped a bundle when you lost to that blerrie Rooinek in Pretoria.’
‘My heart bleeds for you, man, fifteen fights, fourteen wins and you’ve always given my opponents the better odds. Christ, I’ve made you rich!’ Hoppie said and began to tuck into his steak.
At breakfast we had been in too early to see any other passengers, but at lunch the dining compartment was full and everyone was talking about the fight. Gert was moving from table to table, and in between serving was taking ten-shilling and pound notes from passengers and writing it down in his book.
Hoppie looked up at me, the handle of his fork resting on the table with a piece of red meat spiked on the end. ‘You a betting man, Peekay?’
I looked at him confused. ‘What’s a betting man, Hoppie?’
Hoppie laughed. ‘Mostly a blerrie fool, little boetie.’ Then he explained about betting. He signalled for Gert to come over. ‘What odds will you give the next welterweight contender?’ he asked, pointing to me.
Gert asked how much I had.
‘One shilling,’ I said nervously.
‘Ten to one,’ Gert said, ‘that’s the best I can do.’
‘Is this an emergency?’ I asked, fearful for Granpa’s shilling.
‘At ten to one? I’ll say so!’ Hoppie answered.
It took positively ages to get the safety pin inside my pocket loose and then to undo the doek Granpa’s shilling had been tied into. I handed Gert the shilling and he wrote something down again in his little book. Hoppie saw the anxiety on my face. It wasn’t really my shilling and he knew it.
‘Sometimes in life doing what we shouldn’t do is the emergency, Peekay,’ he said.
We arrived in Gravelotte at two-thirty on the dot. The heat of the day was at its most intense and the vapoured light shimmered along the railway tracks. Hoppie said the temperature was one hundred and eight degrees and tonight would be a sweat bath. There were lots of rails in what Hoppie called the shunting yards and our train was moved off the main track into a siding.
‘This is where I got my shunting ticket. When the ore comes in from Consolidated Murchison and you got to put together a train in this kind of heat, I’m telling you, Peekay, you know you’re alive, man,’ Hoppie said, pointing to a little shunting engine moving ore trucks around.
We crossed the tracks and walked through the railway workshops where they were working on a train. The men stopped and talked to Hoppie and wished him luck and said they’d be there tonight, no way they were going to work overtime. The temperature inside the corrugated-iron workshops seemed worse than outside and most of the men wore only khaki shorts and boots, their bodies shining from grease and sweat. Hoppie called them ‘Grease Monkeys’ and said they were the salt of the earth.
We arrived at the railway mess where Hoppie lived. We had a shower and Hoppie opened a brown envelope which a mess servant brought to him when we arrived. He read the letter inside for a long time and then, without a word, put it into the top drawer of the small dressing table in his room. He said it was best to keep my old clothes on because we would have another shower before the fight and I could put a clean shirt and pants on then.
‘We are going shopping, little boetie, and then to the railway club to meet my seconds and have a good look over the big gorilla I’m fighting tonight. Bring your tackies, Peekay, I have an idea.’
We set off with my tackies under my arm. The main street was only a few hundred yards from the mess and there didn’t seem to be too much happening. Every time a truck passed it sent up a cloud of dust, and by the time we got to the shop Hoppie was looking for I could taste the dust in my mouth and my eyes were smarting. It sure was hot.
The shop we entered had written above the door, G. Patel & Son, General Merchants. On its verandah were bags of mealie meal and red beans and bundles of pickaxes, a complete plough and a dozen four-gallon tins of Vacuum Oil paraffin. Inside it was dark and hot and there was a peculiar smell quite unlike anything I had previously experienced.
‘It smells funny in here, Hoppie.’
‘It’s coolie stuff they burn, man, it’s called incense.’
A young woman dressed in bright swirls of almost diaphanous cloth came out of the back of the shop. She was a mid-brown colour, her straight black hair was parted in the middle and a long plait hung over her shoulder almost to her waist. Her eyes were large and dark and very beautiful. On the centre of her forehead was painted a red dot.
Hoppie nudged me with his elbow. ‘Give me your tackies, Peekay,’ he whispered. I handed him the two brown canvas shoes which had endured no more than twenty or so steps and showed no sign of wear.
‘Good afternoon, Meneer, I can help you please?’ she said to Hoppie.
Hoppie did not return her greeting and I could tell from the way he looked at her that she was somehow not equal. I thought only Kaffirs were not equal, so it came as quite a surprise that this beautiful lady was not also. ‘Tackies, you got tackies?’ he demanded.
The lady looked down at the tackies Hoppie was holding. ‘Only white and black, not brown like this.’
‘You got a size for the boy?’ Hoppie said curtly. The lady leaned over and looked at my feet and went to the other end of the counter. She brought a whole lot of tackies tied together in a bundle back with her. She unpicked a pair and handed them to Hoppie, who said, ‘Try them on, Peekay. Make sure they fit, you hear?’
I slipped into the tackies which were white and looked splendid. They fitted perfectly. ‘Tie the laces,’ Hoppie instructed.
‘I can’t, Hoppie. Mevrou didn’t show me how.’ The beautiful dark lady came around the counter, went down on her haunches and started to tie the laces. Her coal black hair was oiled and the path down the centre of her head was straight as an arrow. When she had finished tying the laces she tested the front of the tackies with the ball of her thumb, pressing down onto my toes, then she looked up at me and smiled. I couldn’t believe my own eyes, she had a diamond set into the middle of one tooth!
She turned to look up at Hoppie. ‘They fit good,’ she said.
Hoppie waited until she was back behind the counter. ‘Okay, now we make a swap. Those tackies for these tackies.’ He placed my old tackies in front of her.
The lady stood looking at Harry Crown’s tackies and then shook her head slowly. ‘I cannot do this,’ she said quietly.
Hoppie leaned his elbows on the counter so he was looking directly into her eyes. His back was straight, his jaw jutted out and his head was held high, his whole body seemed to be threatening her. He allowed his silence to take effect, forcing her to speak again.
‘These are not the same, where did you buy these tackies?’ She picked up one and examined the sole, then she turned towards the door behind the counter and said something in a strange language. In a few moments we were joined by a man with the same straight black hair and brown skin but dressed in a shirt and pants just like everyone else. The lady handed the tackie to the man, speaking again in the strange language. He seemed much
