The Power of One

soon be gone.’ I followed him to the lean-to kitchen where he placed an enamel basin on the hard earth floor and poured water into it from a jug. I took the jug and refilled it from the rainwater tank behind the cottage. Doc’s cottage, isolated from the town by the small hill, had no running water. He stripped down in the lean-to kitchen and using a loofah washed himself from head to toe. I brought him the fresh jug of water and, stepping out of the lean- to into the garden, he stood beside a tall cactus and poured it over his head, giving the cactus the benefit of the over-flow. Then he wiped himself briskly with an almost threadbare towel. He was brown all over, for we often lay on a rock in the hills to sun ourselves after a swim in a mountain creek. His thin body was hard and sinewy and the snowy-white hair on his chest seemed incongruous. I had seen my granpa nude and while he too was a thin man, he didn’t have the same hard-as-nails look.

The sergeant had grown impatient waiting around the kitchen and had wandered into the music room where he was playing chopsticks on the Steinway. Doc seemed not to hear as he shaved carefully, stropping his cut-throat razor for ages until it was perfect. Then he dressed slowly in his white linen suit and black boots. Finally he placed a spare shirt and his shaving things in a sugar bag, and walking through to the book room he selected a large book from the very top shelf of one of the bookshelves which he had constructed from bricks and pineboard planks. ‘Put it also in the bag, Peekay.’ I took the large leather-bound volume from him and looked at the spine. It was an old book whose maroon leather binding was scuffed and mottled with rough brown leather spots showing through the once smooth and polished cover. The title embossed on the spine was hard to read as the gold had mostly worn away leaving only the pale embossing. It read, ‘Cactaceae. Afrika und Amerika. K. J. Von Vollensteen.’ I opened the heavy book to find that it was written in German. I walked into the whisky room where Doc had left the sugar bag, and using the edge of the blanket on the small, hard bed I wiped the dust from the cover of the book and put it in the bag. On the packing case dresser next to the bed was half a bottle of Johnnie Walker and this too I put in the bag. Then heaving it over my shoulder I joined Doc who was standing at the front door. He removed his panama hat from a hook on the wall and picked up his silver-handled walking stick leaning in the corner behind the door. ‘We are ready, sir,’ he said, turning slowly to the sergeant a few feet away in the music room.

The sergeant rose from the piano stool. ‘That’s a blerrie good peeana you got there, professor. Once in the bioscope I saw this fillim star dance on the top of a peeana just like this one, only it was all white. I think it was Greeta Garbo but I’m not sure.’ He took a last look around the cottage. ‘Okay man, let’s go.’ He took the sugar bag from my shoulder and looked into it. ‘Hey, what’s this? You can’t take whisky where you going, are you stupid or something?’ I started to apologise, but he checked me with his hand and grinned. ‘If you like we can have a quick spot now, oubaas?’ he said to Doc. ‘Who knows when you’ll get another chance hey?’ He gave him a conspiratorial wink and uncorked the bottle. Raising it to his lips, he took a long drag of whisky. He winced as he withdrew the bottle from his mouth, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and the top of the bottle with the palm of his hand. ‘Lekker, man, that’s blerrie good whisky! No use leaving it lying around hey?’ He handed the bottle to Doc who raised his hand in refusal. ‘C’mon don’t be stupid, man. It’s going to be a long time between drinks, better make the most of it.’ He held it towards Doc after taking another long swig. In two goes he had reduced the whisky to less than a quarter of a bottle. Doc took the bottle of Johnnie Walker and held it briefly to his lips without opening his mouth before handing it back. The sergeant shrugged. ‘Suit yourself, man, all the more for me, it’s blerrie good whisky. Who knows? Tomorrow maybe we’re all dead.’ He took another long swig and walked over to the piano. ‘In this fillim this man was playing the peeana like at a funeral, then a drunk tipped some whisky on it and suddenly it was playing like mad.’ He tipped the remaining whisky over the keys of the Steinway. Doc, who had been standing passively waiting, seemed to come alive. He raised his stick and rushed at the sergeant.

‘Schweinhund! Do not defile the instrument of Beethoven, Brahms, Bach and Liszt!’ He brought his cane down hard onto the sergeant’s wrist and the bottle fell from his hand to smash on the cement floor. Gripping his wrist, the sergeant danced in agony amongst the broken glass. Doc, using the sleeve of his linen jacket, ran his arm across the keys in an attempt to wipe them and sent the piano into a glissando. Then he turned and walked towards the front door.

‘You fucking Nazi bastard!’ the sergeant yelled. I hurried after Doc and he caught up with us on the path outside the cottage. ‘I’ll show you, you child fucker!’ He was trying to remove a pair of handcuffs from his belt as he ran. ‘Stop! You’re under military arrest!’ But Doc, his head held high, simply continued down the path towards the van. The sergeant grabbed Doc’s arm and clicked a handcuff around his compliant wrist. Doc seemed hardly to notice and just kept walking, obliging the sergeant to hang onto the other handcuff as though he were being dragged along like a prisoner. He took a swinging kick at Doc, knocking his legs from under him and bringing the old man to his knees on the path. In his fury and humiliation he aimed a second kick just as, screaming, I flung myself at his legs. The army boot intended for Doc’s ribs caught me under the chin knocking me unconscious.

I awoke in Barberton Hospital with a man in a white coat shining a torch into my eyes. My head was ringing as though voices came from the other end of a long tunnel. ‘Well, thank God for that, he’s regained consciousness,’ I heard him say.

‘Thank you, Jesus,’ I heard my mother say in a weepy voice. I looked around to see her seated at the side of the bed. She looked pale and worried and her hair hung in wisps around her eyes for she had come out without her hat and still wore her pink sewing smock. My granpa was also there, sitting on a chair at the opposite side of the bed. I tried to talk but found it impossible and my jaw hurt like billy-o. I managed a weak grunt without opening my mouth, but that was all. My mouth tasted of blood and, running my swollen tongue around my palate, I realised that several of my teeth were missing.

The doctor spoke to me. ‘Now son, I want you to tell me how many fingers I’m holding up in front of you.’ He held up two and I held up two fingers. ‘Again.’ He held up four fingers and I too held up four. He repeated this with several combinations before he finally said, ‘Well, that’s something anyway, he doesn’t appear to have concussion. We’ll have to X-ray the jaw, though I think it’s probably broken.’ He turned to my mother and granpa. ‘The boy is in a lot of pain, we’ll be taking him into theatre almost immediately, we may need to wire his jaw and there are several broken teeth which we will have to clean up. He’ll be sedated when he comes out so there isn’t any point in your staying.’

They both rose and my mother leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow morning, darling. You be a brave boy now!’ My granpa touched me lightly on the shoulder. ‘There’s a good lad,’ he said.

I watched them leave the emergency ward where I appeared to be the only emergency, as the other three beds were unoccupied. My jaw ached a great deal and while I think I may have been crying, I only recall being terribly concerned for Doc.

It turned out my jaw had been broken. They wired the top jaw to the bottom one in the closed mouth position so I was unable to talk. I couldn’t enquire about him. Adults decide what they want kids to know and all my mother would say when she came to visit was, ‘You’ve had a terrible shock, darling, you mustn’t think about what happened.’

In fact, that was all I could think about. Doc was the most important person in my life and the thought of him lying in a dark cell probably dying was almost unbearable. I managed to communicate to a junior nurse called Marie, who had taken to calling me her little skattebol, that I wanted paper and a pencil. She brought a pad and a pencil and in running writing I wrote, ‘What’s happened to Professor Von Vollensteen?’ She read the note and her eyes grew large.

‘Ag no, man! Sister says we can’t tell you nothing.’ She held out her hand for the pad and pencil but I quickly tucked it under the quilt. ‘Give it to me back! Please, I’ll get into trouble with Sister!’ I shook my head, which hurt. ‘I’ll tell on you, you hear!’ But I knew she wouldn’t. I felt less vulnerable with the pad and pencil beside me. I tore a single sheet from the small pad and brought it out from under the bedclothes. Placing it on the cabinet beside my bed, I leaned over and wrote, ‘My name is not skattebol, it is PEEKAY.’ I didn’t much like the endearment as I didn’t see myself as a fluffy ball which is a name you give to really small kids. I tore the bit I’d written on from the sheet of paper and handed it to her. She read it slowly then walked to the end of the bed.

‘That’s not what it says here,’ Marie said, looking down at the progress chart which hung from the foot of the bed. ‘Don’t you know your proper name then?’ she teased. ‘It’s wrong,’ I scribbled, tearing off a second note and holding it out to her. ‘Sis, man! You don’t even know your own name. I never heard of a name like Peekay, where’d you get a silly name like that?’ On the remaining scrap of paper I wrote, ‘I just got it.’

Marie took a sharp breath. ‘Anyway, it’s a rotten name for a hero who tackled a German spy when he was trying to escape.’ Her eyes grew big again and she moved her spotty face close to mine. ‘It says in the paper you