The Power of One

of the rock. Even at close quarters they would have been hard to see and to an untrained eye almost impossible. The old man brushed the grass out of the way, and lying flat on his tummy he focused the camera on the tiny succulents. Behind him the sunset bathed the plants in a red glow. ‘The light is perfect but I must work quick.’ His hands, fumbling with the camera, were shaking with excitement. Finally he clicked the shot and got slowly back to his knees. Removing a Joseph Rogers from the pocket of his overalls, he used the small knife to separate four of the aloes, leaving twice as many behind. He held the tiny plants in his hand for me to see. ‘Wunderbar, Peekay, small but so perfect, a good omen for our friendship.’

I must say I was not too impressed but I was glad that he was happy. ‘You haven’t said what a professor is.’

He wrapped the tiny aloes in his bandanna and placed them carefully into his canvas bag which he then slung back over his shoulder. ‘Ja, I like that, you have good concentration, Peekay. What is a professor? That is a goot question.’ He stood looking at the dying sun. ‘A professor is a person who drinks too much whisky and once plays goot Beethoven and Brahms and Mozart and even sometimes when it was not serious, Chopin. Such a person who could command respect in Vienna, Leipzig, Warsaw and Budapest and also, ja, once in London.’ His shoulders sagged visibly. ‘A professor is also some person who can not anymore command respect from little girls who play not even schopstics goot.’

I could see his previous mood of elation had changed and there was a strange conversation going on in his head. But then, just as suddenly, his eyes regained their sparkle. ‘A professor is a teacher, Peekay. I have the honour to be a teacher of music.’ He put his hand on my shoulder. It was the first time he had touched me and the gesture was unthinking and friendly, like another kid might hold you when you are playing. ‘You can call me Doc. You see I am also Doctor of Music, it is all the same thing. I am too old and you are too young for Mister this or Professor that. You and me will not hide behind such a small importance. Just Peekay and Doc. I think this is a goot plan?’

I nodded agreement, though I was too shy to say the word out loud. He seemed to sense my reluctance. ‘What is my name, Peekay?’ he asked casually.

‘Doc,’ I replied shyly. Hoppie was the only other adult with whom I had been on such familiar terms and I found it a little frightening.

‘One hundred per cent! For this I give you eleven out of ten. Absoloodle!’ he said and we both started to laugh.

The sun sets quickly in the bushveld and we hurried down the hill, small rocks rolling ahead of us as we raced to beat the dark. Below us the first lights were coming on, the chimneys were beginning to smoke as tired servants prepared supper for their white mistresses before washing the dishes and going home to the native location.

‘So it is you who live now in the English rose garden,’ Doc said when we reached the dark line of mulberry trees. ‘Soon I will show you my cactus garden.’ While it was too dark to see his face, I sensed his smile. ‘We will meet again, my goot friend Peekay.’ He touched me lightly and I watched his tall, shambling figure with the Euphorbia grandicornis sticking up beyond his head moving into the gathering darkness.

‘Good night, Doc!’ I said, and then on a whim shouted, ‘Euphorbia grandicornis and Aloe microsfigma!’

The old man turned in the dark, ‘Magnificent, Peekay. Absoloodle!’

Euphorbia grandicornis, I rolled the name around in my head. Such a posh name for a silly old cactus with thorns. I wondered briefly how it might sound as a name for a fighter, but almost immediately rejected it. Euphorbia grandicornis was no name for the next welterweight champion of the world.

When I entered the kitchen, Dum and Dee averted their eyes and Dee said, ‘The missus wants to see you, Inkosikaan.’ She looked at me distressed. Dum walked over and reached out and touched me.

‘We have put some food under your bed in the pot for night water,’ she whispered and they clutched each other and whimpered in their anxiety that they might be discovered.

I knocked on the door of my mother’s sewing room. ‘Come in,’ she said and looked up as I entered. Then she bent over her sewing machine and put her foot down on the motor and sewed away for quite a while.

Of course, she did not know she was dealing with a veteran of interrogation and punishment and since I had suddenly grown up on the hill, I was uncrackable. A real hard case.

After a while she stopped, and taking off her glasses she rubbed the top of her nose with her forefinger and thumb and gave a deep sigh. ‘You have hurt me and you have hurt the Lord very deeply,’ she said at last. ‘Don’t you know the Lord loves you?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘The gospel says, whosoever harms a hair upon the head of one of my little ones, harmeth me also.’

I had heard the same thing said by Pik Botha, which just about confirmed everything I thought about the Lord. Pik Botha and my mother and Pastor Mulvery were all working for the same person.

My mother continued, ‘When I had my quiet time with the Lord this afternoon, He spoke to me. You will not get a beating, but He is not mocked and you will go to your room at once without your supper.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ I said and turned to go.

‘Just a moment! You have not apologised to me for your behaviour.’ Her eyes were suddenly sharp with anger.

I hung my head just like I used to do with Mevrou. ‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ I said.

‘Not sorry enough, if you ask me. Do you think it’s easy for me trying to make ends meet? I’m not supposed to get tired. I’m only your mother, the dogsbody about the place. All you care about is that black woman, that stinking black Zulu woman!’ She suddenly lost her anger and her eyes filled with the tears of self-pity. Grabbing the dress she had been sewing she held it up to her eyes, her thin shoulders shaking, and began to sob. ‘I don’t think I can take much more, first your grandfather and then those two in the kitchen and now you!’ She looked up at me, her pretty face distorted and ugly from crying. Then, with a sudden little wail, she once again buried her head in the dress and started to sob hysterically.

I felt enormously relieved. This was much more like my old mother. She was having one of her turns, and I knew exactly what to do. ‘I’ll get you a nice cup of tea and an Aspro and then you must have a good lie down,’ I said and left the room.

Dum and Dee were delighted that I hadn’t received a beating and hurriedly made me a pot of tea and then turned it around and around on the kitchen table to make it brew quickly. Dee handed me two Aspro from a big bottle kept in a cupboard above the sink and I put them in my pocket, for I was afraid that if I put them on the saucer I’d slop tea over them.

My mother was sitting at the machine unpicking stitches as I entered the sewing room. Her eyes were red from crying but otherwise she seemed quite composed. I put the cup of tea down carefully on the table next to the machine and fished in my pocket for the Aspro which I placed next to the cup. ‘Thank you,’ she said in a tight voice, not looking up at me. ‘Now go straight to your room, you may not come out until morning.’

It was light punishment, I had expected far worse. In the chamberpot Dum and Dee had left three cold sausages, two big roast potatoes and a couple of mandarins, a proper feast. There wasn’t much else to do but go to sleep after that. It had been a long day and a very good one. The loneliness birds had flown away and I had grown up and made a new friend called Doc and had learned several new things. Euphorbia grandicornis was an ugly green cactus with long, dangerous looking thorns, Aloe microsfigma was a tiny, spotted aloe which liked to hide under rocks, and a professor was a teacher who taught music. Also, there was a rose called Mrs Butt and another called Imperial Sunset.

Tomorrow I would write a letter to Nanny and send her my ten shillings. She would like that and she would know that somebody loved her. I fell asleep thinking about how big the hole would have to be to bury Big Hettie in, about Hoppie fighting Adolf Hitler, which would probably be an easier fight than the one against Jackhammer Smit, and how I was going to become welterweight champion of the world.

Two days later I was sitting on the front stoep watching army trucks passing the front door, for I had discovered that an army camp was being set up in the valley about three miles out of town. The big khaki Bedford, Chevrolet and Ford trucks, their backs covered with canvas tarpaulin canopies, had been passing for two days. Some contained soldiers who sat in the back carrying .303 rifles. But mostly they carried tents and timber and other