The Power of One

photographs and also one of his small spiral-bound notepads. The colonel held up one of the newspapers. ‘Really, this kind of hysterical nonsense makes it very difficult for us. The trial of aliens is distressing enough without having the general population turning the butcher, the baker and the music maker into enemies of the State. The only charge Professor Von Vollensteen faces is a technical one, that of not having registered as an alien.’ He rose from his chair and smiled briefly at me. ‘I only wish I could be here to have a chat with you when your jaw is better, young man. I am also beginning to form a healthy respect for the teachings of your professor.’ He shook Mrs Boxall and Mr Andrews by the hand and said something privately to him, then Mr Andrews hustled us out of the room.

When we got back to the waiting room Mr Hankin of the Goldfields News was waiting. Mr Andrews spoke to him and he nodded towards the colonel’s office. Mr Hankin rose and walked towards the office. ‘I think Mr Hankin’s career as a spy catcher is about to come to a sticky end,’ Mrs Boxall said to me and then started to laugh. ‘We won, Peekay, we won!’ she said triumphantly.

But we hadn’t won. While Doc was acquitted of all the charges just as the colonel said he would be, he was charged with being an unregistered alien and the court ordered him to be detained in a concentration camp for the duration of the war. The Goldfields News headline read, NO SPY BUT STILL A GERMAN! It was a year before Mrs Boxall agreed to resume her column, ‘Clippings from a Cultured Garden by Fiona Boxall’.

ELEVEN

Doc was to be kept in custody at the Barberton prison until arrangements could be made to send him to a concentration camp somewhere in the highveld. Two days after Doc had been sentenced I went to the library to take a bunch of roses from my mother to Mrs Boxall. Mr Andrews had explained to my mother how my evidence had saved Doc from a severe sentence, one that might well have killed a man of his age. He had also persuaded her that we had nothing to be ashamed of and that he only wished his two sons, now at boarding school in Johannesburg, had had the benefit of a man as remarkable as the professor. My mother decided that the Lord had guided her in the matter and that His will had been quite clearly wrought through me. The roses to Mrs Boxall were her sign that the librarian’s trespass into the hospital to see me had been forgiven.

Mrs Boxall seemed excited when she saw me come through the door. ‘I’m so fearfully glad you came, Peekay, I have a letter for you.’ I handed her the roses. ‘How very nice of your mother.’ She placed them on the book-sorting table and withdrew into her tiny office to return with a small blue envelope which she handed to me. The envelope was sealed and I opened it carefully pulling back the flap at the back, the glue giving way reluctantly. ‘Do hurry, Peekay, I can’t bear the suspense,’ Mrs Boxall said, looking over my shoulder. I withdrew a single sheet of cheap exercise paper and opened it. Doc’s neat hand covered the page. ‘Oh dear, I’m such an awful nosy parker! May I read it with you?’ Besides Hoppie’s note, it was the only letter I had ever received and the first one sealed in an envelope. I would have preferred to read it alone but of course I couldn’t possibly say so and I nodded my agreement.

Dear Peekay,

What a mess we are in. Me in this place where they tear down a man’s dignity and you with a broken jaw. But things could be worse. I could be a black man and that would be trouble and half. Absolute.

I have been placed under open arrest, it means I can go anywhere in the prison grounds and my cell is not locked. Best of all, it means I can have visitors. Will you come and see me?

Ask Mrs Boxall to telephone the people here and make arrangements. There is also good news about the Steinway. The Kommandant is going to allow me to have it in the prison hall. This is good news, ja?

I do not think of myself as a German. What is a German? To say a man is a German what is that? Does it tell you if he is a good man? Or a bad man? No, my friend, it tells you nothing about a man to say he is German. A man must think what he is inside, what he is on the outside, how can this matter?

Also, because I am German, I am well treated by the warders. This also is stupid. Have you planted the Senecio serpens? No of course not, I am getting old and think only of my own welfare. Perhaps Mrs Boxall will take the books in the cottage and put them in the library? In the meantime I am treated well and whisky is getting easier not to have. Please come soon.

Your friend, Doc

‘We will call the prison at once,’ Mrs Boxall said, inviting me into her office. The superintendent of Barberton prison, Kommandant Jaapie Van Zyl, told Mrs Boxall that Colonel de Villiers had said Professor Von Vollensteen should be allowed access to the boy within the normal rules of the prison. He added that he had heard of my bravery and wanted to meet me himself. That if Mrs Boxall cared to have me bring Doc library books this would be permitted. The professor was a musician and a scholar and Barberton prison was honoured to have him.

Mrs Boxall selected three botanical books she knew to be among Doc’s favourites and I set out with a note from her to visit Doc in prison.

I arrived at the gates of the prison which were made of wrought iron and locked with a huge chain and padlock. It was the biggest lock I had ever seen, nearly twice the size of a grown-up’s hand. I wondered how big the key would have to be to open it. The gate seemed about twelve feet high and along the top there were pipes welded every two feet or so. They were about three feet long, bent inward at a thirty-degree slant threaded with strands of barbed wire six inches apart and set into huge blocks of blue granite. Without thinking I identified the components of the rock, mainly felspar and quartz, quarried in the Barberton district so in addition it contained a fair amount of mica. After a year with Doc it had become second nature to identify almost anything that didn’t move and I was an expert at the geology of the district.

I decided that escape from inside the wall would be impossible. Set high up to the side of the gate was a church bell and from it, hanging almost to the ground, was a rope. A sign fixed onto the wall said, Ring for attention. My heart beat wildly as I tugged on the rope and the noise from the bell seemed deafening as it cracked the silence. Almost immediately, a warder carrying a rifle slung over his shoulder came out of the guard house some twenty feet from the gate and walked towards me. His highly polished black boots made a scrunching sound on the white gravel driveway. I handed my note to him through the bars of the gate and he opened it suspiciously. He looked at the note for a bit and then looked up at me.

‘Praat jy Afrikaans?’ he asked.

I nodded my head, indicating to him that I understood Afrikaans. The swelling in my tongue had subsided and while my voice had very little volume and sounded a bit gravelly I could talk quite clearly through my wired-up mouth. The young guard looked relieved and started to talk in Afrikaans. He asked me to read the note as he didn’t have much English, coming from the North Western Transvaal where only the taal is spoken. ‘It says that I am here to visit Professor Von Vollensteen and have permission from Kommandant Van Zyl,’ I told him.

‘I will get on the telephone and ask. Better wait here, you hear.’ He walked over to the guard house and I could see him talking on the phone. He was quite young and looked nervous. Finally he replaced the receiver and stuck his head out of the door. ‘Kom!’ he beckoned to me. But the gate was locked and he shook his head in exasperation and disappeared to return with a very large key on a huge ring. To my surprise the gates opened smoothly and closed with a clang as he locked them behind me.

The young warder told me to report to the office in the administration block and pointed it out to me. ‘Totsiens and thanks for reading the note, you are a good kerel,’ he said.

The area between the gate and the administration block was completely bare. Lawn stretched from either side of the gravel driveway for about five feet and thereafter the square turned into a parade ground of sun- hardened red clay. The strip of living green on either side of the pathway was a brilliant though incongruous contrast to the baked earth of the parade ground and the dead blue-grey walls and buildings. I could see a warder’s head in the window of a little tower built onto and jutting out from the wall. There was a stretch of walkway for fifty feet on either side of the tower. Two guards with rifles slung over their shoulders paced up and down this walkway. I seemed to be the only person on the ground below them and I wondered how, on my way out, they’d know I