‘Never mind, Peekay, a little more never hurt. You’ve got to be like the Bushmen in the Kalahari desert, they eat as much as they can get in the good times till their bottoms stick out like their stomachs. Then when the bad times come they live off their own fat.’ She chuckled softly, ‘I reckon a person like me could go a whole year, or even more, living off their own fat, but you, my poor little blossom, I doubt if you’ll get to Kaapmuiden.’
Hennie Venter returned with a large tray of food which he carefully balanced on Big Hettie’s stomach. He left us to serve breakfast to the other passengers in the dining car, closing the door behind him and promising to return later.
The tray went up and down as Big Hettie breathed. She could only see what to take from a plate on a down breath, for on an up breath the tray raised above her eye level. I managed to eat one more sausage. Big Hettie didn’t seem to notice and polished off my breakfast as well. Though when she finished she said, ‘You’ll never get to play rugby for the Springboks if you eat like a bird, Peekay.’
‘That’s okay, Mevrou Hettie,’ I answered, ‘I’m going to be a welterweight, which is not so big.’
She seemed amused. ‘Just like that good for nothing, Hoppie Groenewald, huh? Well you could do worse, I suppose. Not a bad bone in his body that one. He could have made it big time but he doesn’t hate. Not even Kaffirs, which isn’t natural.’
I was shocked. Hoppie hadn’t said anything to me about the necessity of hate. Was this something he had neglected to tell me?
‘How do you learn to hate, Mevrou Hettie?’ I was fearful that it might prove to be something beyond the ability of a five-, really six-year-old. Perhaps that’s why Hoppie hadn’t mentioned this hate business. But hadn’t he said I was a natural? If I was a natural, then I would be able to learn it for sure.
‘The killer instinct, he hasn’t got the killer instinct. You can tell when a fighter’s got it. It’s proper hate, like the Boere hate the Rooineks. It has to be blind hate like that, them or us, him or me, nothing less. Hoppie Groenewald just never learned to hate.’
‘Then I will learn to hate also,’ I said with conviction.
Big Hettie rocked with laughter. ‘Plenty of time for that, Peekay. Better still to concentrate on love, there is already too much hate in this land of ours. This country has been starved of love too long.’
I wasn’t listening, my mind was busy with the need to learn to hate. ‘Didn’t Hoppie hate Jackhammer Smit?’
‘That was pride, Hoppie has plenty of that. And courage and even brains.’ Big Hettie suddenly sensed my anxiety. ‘Look here, man, maybe that’s enough.’ She chuckled softly, ‘He sure out-foxed that big ape, Smit!’
I cast my mind back to when I had done the Judge’s homework, just like that! I had no doubt I had brains. But during the torture sessions I hadn’t shown any pride and precious little courage, although I had to admit to myself I wasn’t at all sure what pride meant. Maybe I was fatally flawed? Only brains and nothing to go with them?
‘How do you learn to have pride and courage, Mevrou Hettie?’
‘My goodness me, we are full of questions, Peekay. Now let me see.’ She thought for a few moments and then replied, ‘Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it.’ She looked up to see the confusion in my face. ‘Never mind, Peekay, the understanding will come suddenly when you need it.’
I wasn’t at all sure about that. Big Hettie’s advice seemed downright stupid to me. I knew already that camouflage was the only way, that bowing your head with the rest was the best way to survive. Take the incident with Miss du Plessis, hadn’t I raised my head then and she damn near cut it off? And Granpa Chook, if he hadn’t shat in the Judge’s mouth, we’d still be together. There were no two ways about it, when you stood out in the crowd, trouble was sure to follow.
Maybe there was something more to understand, the world of grown-ups seemed very complicated. I was good at remembering things, so I tucked big Hettie’s words away. Someday they might make sense.
Nanny was the only grown-up I knew who answered questions properly and she wasn’t really a grown-up because she was a nanny. When you asked her a thing she would answer with a story or a song and when she hadn’t an answer she would say, ‘That is a matter for later finding out.’ She was always right, sooner or later the answer would come from somewhere. It seemed to me that white people grown-ups always had to have an answer on the spot. Like Pik Botha, they lived most of their lives being miserable and asking, ‘Why me?’ all the time. Nanny would say, ‘Sadness has a season and will pass.’ Then she would laugh and hug me and say, ‘But it isn’t the season for sadness yet.’
I kept wetting the towel for Big Hettie and got her two Aspro from her handbag. She told me to scrounge around because she might have some peppermints in there. I found half a packet, and she said, ‘Give me a couple and try one yourself, Peekay.’
I took two large round white peppermints out of the pack and put them in her hand and popped a third into my mouth. At first nothing. Then, pow! I lasted about two good sucks and then spat the peppermint into my hand, it was like swallowing fire! I watched Big Hettie suck away happily. Talk about courage! But I must say those peppermints cleaned up her breath a treat.
Big Hettie and I just lay there, she on the floor and me on the bunk. She talked about her life, which seemed to have been quite a good one, but with some sadness also. Mostly she talked about men.
‘Men, Peekay, are a good woman’s downfall. Most of them are rotten but you’ve got to have them anyway. Without a man a woman’s life is more rotten than with one. It’s no use pretending you don’t care, that you’re stronger than a man. Because even it if is true, it means nothing except loneliness. Men are pigs who sleep with Kaffir women and get drunk and beat you up. But a good beating never hurt and sometimes it’s the only way those stupid men can show you they love you. It’s stupid, heh?’
I tried to imagine a man beating up Big Hettie. ‘My granpa couldn’t beat up a flea,’ I said, trying to comfort her. Big Hettie stood six foot seven inches and weighed nobody knows how much. Even the Judge with all his stormtroopers couldn’t get the better of her.
‘Once I loved this little flyweight,’ she continued. ‘That’s how I learned about boxing, Peekay. It was during the great depression and you couldn’t find work nowhere, man. Me and that little flyweight, we used to travel all over the Transvaal and once to the Orange Free State to fight. There was never another flyweight to fight, the Boere like to see the bigger men and so he always had to fight way out of his division. A middleweight usually. If he was lucky he’d get a welterweight, but it didn’t happen very often.
‘That little flyweight of mine was game and he loved to fight, but you can’t give away that much weight and he used to take some terrible poundings and nearly always lost. Afterwards I’d patch him up and he’d make me talk to him about the fight. Blow by blow, where he was good and where he went wrong. I’d tell him how he was always winning, which was true, he’d be a mile ahead on points and then the big ape he was fighting would catch him a lucky shot and put him away. And he used to look at me and say, “Next time, Hettie, you’ll see. I’ll win for sure.”
‘And then we would buy a bottle of cheap brandy and drive out of the town we were in and sit in the back of the Model T and get drunk. When he was drunk it was his turn to replay the fight, only he’d get it all mixed up in his head and he’d think he was still in the fight and I was his opponent and he’d beat the shit out of me. And I always let him, because he had to have some wins for his pride.
‘Then when I had taken a beating and he had counted me out, we would drink some more and replay the fight again, which this time he won fair and square. We would then find some nice place behind some bushes and take our blankets and make love. I’m telling you, Peekay, most men can’t get it up when they’re drunk, but not my flyweight, he could go all night. What a man he was. They were good times. Oh, oh, such good times.’
Big Hettie’s story worried me no end. Here it seemed big always beat small, except in a set-up. ‘Hoppie was smaller than Jackhammer Smit and he beat him fair and square,’ I said, somewhat defensively.
‘Ja, that is true, Hoppie has brains. My flyweight had mashed potato for brains. But I loved that little fleabite until the day he died from taking on one big ape too many.’ Big Hettie’s eyes welled with tears. ‘He was coming out for the sixth round when he staggered and fell, the crowd booed and booed, but he never faked anything in his life and I knew something terrible had happened. He had a brain haemorrhage, just like that. I carried him out of the hall in my arms and we sat on the grass outside in the fresh air with lots of stupid people in a circle looking down at us. But I didn’t see any of them, just my darling little flyweight. And then he died right there in my arms.’ Big Hettie was sobbing softly.
‘Don’t cry, Mevrou Hettie, please don’t cry.’ I quoted Nanny, ‘Sadness has a season and will pass.’
