then the Lord sent me a sign I was looking for. Your grandfather told me about the visit of that awful old witchdoctor and that it had been at your nanny’s instigation.’ Her face grew angry, ‘That disgusting, filthy, evil old man was tampering with the mind of my five-year-old son! God is not mocked! How could I let a black heathen woman riddled with superstition bring up my only son?’ She picked up her cup and took a polite sip. ‘Your nanny was possessed by the devil,’ she said finally, satisfied the discussion was over.
I tried very hard not to cry. Inside me the loneliness birds were laying eggs thirteen to the dozen. Forcing back the tears, I got down from my chair and stood looking directly at my mother. ‘The Lord is a shithead!’ I shouted and rushed from the room.
I ran through the Alice in Wonderland tunnels and under the mulberry trees to the freedom of the hill, my sobs making it difficult to climb. At last I reached the safety of the large boulder and allowed myself a good bawl.
The fierce afternoon sun beat down, and below me the town baked in the heat. When was it all going to stop? Was life about losing the things we love the most, as my granpa had said? Couldn’t things just stay the same for a little while until I grew up and understood the way they worked? Why did you have to wear camouflage all the time? The only person I had ever known who didn’t need any camouflage was Nanny. She laughed and cried and wondered and loved and never told a thing the way it wasn’t. I would write her a letter and send her my ten-shilling note, then she would know I loved her. Granpa would know how to do that.
As I sat on the rock high on my hill, and as the sun began to set over the bushveld, I grew up. Just like that. The loneliness birds stopped laying stone eggs, they rose from their stone nests and flapped away on their ugly wings and the eggs they left behind crumbled into dust. A fierce, howling wind came along and blew the dust away until I was empty inside.
I knew they would be back, but that for the moment, I was alone. That I had permission from myself to love whomsoever I wished. The cords which bound me to the past had been severed. The emptiness was a new kind of loneliness, a free kind of loneliness. Not the kind which laid stone eggs deep inside of you until you filled up with heaviness and despair. I knew that when the bone-beaked birds returned I would be in control, master of loneliness and no longer its servant.
You may ask how a six-year-old could think like this. I can only answer that one did.
NINE
‘It is a fine sunset, ja? Always here is the best place.’ I looked behind me, and there was a tall, thin man, taller, much taller and perhaps even thinner than my granpa. He wore a battered old bush hat and his snowy hair hung down to the top of his shoulders. His face was clean shaven, wrinkled and deeply tanned, while his eyes were an intense blue and seemed too young for his face. He wore khaki overalls without a shirt and his arms and chest were also tanned. The legs of his overalls, beginning just below the knees, were swirled in puttees which wound down into socks rolled over the tops of a pair of stout hiking boots. Strapped to his back was a large canvas bag from which, rising three feet into the air directly behind his head, was a cactus, spines of long, dangerous thorns protruding from its dark green skin. Cupped in his left hand he held a curious-looking camera which appeared to be secured by a leather strap about his neck.
‘You must excuse me, please, I have taken your picture. At other times I would not do such a thing. It is not polite. It was your expression. Ja, it is always the expression that is important. Without expression the human being is just a lump of meat. You have some problems I think, ja?’
At the sound of his voice I had stood up hastily and now faced him a little sheepishly, looking down at him from the rock, a good six feet higher than where he stood. He made a gesture at me and the rock and even at the sky beyond.
‘I shall call it Boy on a Rock.’ He paused and cocked his head slightly to one side. ‘I think this is a good name. I have your permission, yes?’ I nodded and he seemed pleased. Dropping the camera so that it hung around his neck, he extended his right hand up towards me. He was much too far away for our hands to meet but I stuck mine out too and we both shook the air in front of us. This seemed to be a perfectly satisfactory introduction. ‘Von Vollensteen, Professor Von Vollensteen.’ He withdrew his hand and gave me a stiff little bow from the waist.
‘Peekay,’ I said, withdrawing my hand at the same time as he dropped his. His friendliness was infectious and no hint of condescension showed in his manner. Best of all, I could hear nothing going on behind the scenes.
‘Peekay? P-e-e-k-a-y, I like this name, it has a proper sound. I think a name like this would be good for a musician.’ He squinted up at me, thinking, then took a sharp intake of breath as though he had reached an important decision. ‘I think we can be friends, Peekay,’ he said.
‘Why aren’t the thorns from that cactus sticking into your back?’ The canvas bag was much too lightly constructed to protect him from the vicious three-inch thorns.
‘Ha! This is a goot question, Peekay. I will give you one chance to think of the answer then you must pay a forfeit.’
‘You first took off all the thorns on the part that’s in the bag.’
‘Ja, this is possible, also a very goot answer,’ he shook his head slowly, ‘but not true. Peekay, I am sorry to say you owe me a forfeit and then you must try again for the answer.’ He stroked his chin. ‘Now let me see… Ja! I know what we shall do. You must put your hands like so,’ he placed his hands on his hips, ‘at once we will stand on one leg and say, “No matter what has happened bad, today I’m finished from being sad. Absoloodle!”’
I stood on the rock, balanced on one leg with my hands on my hips, but each time I tried to say the words the laughter would bubble from me and I’d lose my balance. Soon we were both laughing fit to burst. Me on the rock and Professor Von Vollensteen dancing below me on the ground, slapping his thighs, the cactus clinging like a green papoose to his back. I could get the first part all right, but the ‘Absoloodle!’ at the end proved too much and I would topple, overcome by mirth.
Spent with laughter, Professor Von Vollensteen finally sat down, and taking a large red bandanna from the pocket of his overalls, wiped his eyes. ‘My English is not so goot, ja?’ He beckoned me to come down and sit beside him. ‘Come, no more forfeiting, too dangerous, perhaps I die laughing next time. Come, Peekay, I will show you the secret.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder indicating the cactus. ‘But first you must introduce yourself to my prickly green friend who has a free ride on my back.’
I scrambled down from the rock and came to stand beside him. ‘Peekay, this is
‘Hello,’ I said to the cactus, not quite knowing what else to say.
‘Goot, now you have been introduced you can see why Mr
‘Aaw! If you’d given me another chance I would’ve got it,’ I said, immediately convincing myself that this was so.
‘Ja, for sure! It is always easy to be a schmarty pantz when you know already the trick.’
‘Honest, Mr Professor Von Vollensteen, I think I could’ve known the answer,’ I protested, anxious now to impress him.
‘Okay! Then I give you one chance more. A professor is not a mister but a mister can be a professor. Answer me that, Mister Schmarty Pantz?’
I sat down on a small rock trying to work this out, my heart sank, for I knew almost immediately he had the better of me. I had simply thought his first name, like Peekay, was a little unusual. I had never heard of anyone called Professor, but then I was also the first Peekay I knew of, so who was I to judge?
‘I give up, sir,’ I said, feeling rather foolish. ‘What is a professor?’ He had removed the canvas bag from his back and once again held the camera cupped in his hands.
‘Peekay, you are a genius my friend! Look what we find under this rock where you are sitting. This is
