The Power of One

He turned away abruptly, walked over to where Darby White was standing juggling his balls and looking pleased with himself. I could see they were both looking at me and Darby White had a proprietorial grin on his face.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned to see the big kid I’d fought. He wore a large pink elastoplast patch over his left eyebrow. ‘Howzit?’ He stuck his hand out. ‘Jannie Geldenhuis. No hard feelings, okay? You won fair and square, man,’ he said in English with a thick Afrikaans accent.

‘Thanks for the fight,’ I replied in Afrikaans as I shook his hand.

He grinned and seemed pleased that I’d replied in Afrikaans. ‘Ag man, I don’t think I even hit you once, I’ve never done that before. It’ll teach me a blerrie good lesson, you looked such a little bugger, I thought I had a easy fight on my hands.’

I smiled at him. ‘You’re such a big bastard I thought I was going to get a hiding.’ Gert had always said that a man should be magnanimous in victory and Jannie Geldenhuis seemed like a nice bloke.

‘Ja, that was the blerrie trouble, man, so did I.’ He grinned again. ‘Just you wait, man, I’ll get you back on the rugby field, what possie you play?’

‘Scrum-half. By the way, my name’s Peekay.’

‘Ja, I already know. Me too, I’m also a scrum-half. Alles van die beste, Peekay.’ He turned to go and then turned back and rubbed the point of his jaw, ‘Jesus, you hit me a beauty in the beginning of the first round!’ Then he went to join his school mates.

‘Ja, so long, Jannie,’ I said, pleased it had ended this well.

Hymie walked up just as Geldenhuis departed. ‘Howzit? What did the hairy back want, your autograph?’

‘Nothing. He just said no hard feelings, he’d see me on the rugger field.’

Hymie grinned, ‘I’ll say no hard feelings, we’re rich!’ He frowned suddenly, ‘But we’ve still got to hate the bastards.’

‘Shit, Hymie, not after it’s over!’ I said grinning.

‘It may only have been a boxing match to you!’ Hymie pointed to the wooden spoon hanging from the beam above our heads. ‘To me it’s the beginning of getting rid of that! We can only do that by learning to hate.’

I sighed. ‘Hymie, you’ve got to learn there are good Boers and bad Boers, just like everyone else. You can’t just lump them all together.’

‘The only good Boer is a dead Boer!’ Hymie snorted.

‘The only good Kaffir is a dead Kaffir is where that came from,’ I said, chiding him for his lack of originality.

‘Yeah, them too,’ he added ruefully.

‘Christ, Hymie, you’re a Jew! How can you say things like that?’

Hymie laughed, ‘I’m a very complicated Jew,’ he said. ‘Peekay, if we’re going to win against those Boers we’ve got to learn to hate them. Don’t you even understand the fundamentals?’

‘Bullshit!’

‘Yeah, it is. You’re right, it is bullshit.’ He looked at me and grinned again, ‘But for Christ’s sake, don’t tell the others, we’ve got them thinking they can win, that the enemy isn’t invincible.’

He was the only one on the boxing squad who hadn’t congratulated me and I wondered why. I was to learn that Hymie was the world’s best persuader, he could pump courage and spirit into a dejected boxer, soothe his battered ego and recover his self-esteem. Hymie soothed words on and gently massaged them in as though they were a magic balm. But he only used them this way for a pre-determined purpose and only with people he considered less than his equal. A light pat on the back was all I ever got. Hymie considered me his equal and he allowed me to share his superior intellect, which was usually two or three jumps ahead of anyone else.

‘Well tell me?’

‘Tell you what?’ Hymie asked.

‘How much? How much did we make?’

Hymie grinned, ‘Enough for you to buy Cooper several hundred cream buns if you ever have to again. I reckon we’ll get a fiver out of it each.’

‘Jesus, Hymie, that’s wonderful!’

‘It’s only the beginning, Peekay. This time we gambled and won. Next time you fight we’re going to know the form. We’re going to know everything it is possible to know about your opponent. Every time he scratches his bum we’re going to analyse why. The making of money should never be left to chance.’

After my solo victory against Helpmekaar, Atherton, Cunning-Spider and Pissy Johnson immediately joined the boxing squad, along with twelve of the other new boys. It soon became apparent that Pissy Johnson was totally uncoordinated and would never make a boxer, but Atherton and Cunning-Spider were natural athletes and quickly caught on. Hymie called the new boys ‘the Wooden Spoon Goons’, swore us all into an elaborate brotherhood and elected himself President for Life and me Captain.

Hymie knew the value of a little mystique, the initiation into the Wooden Spoon Goons involved the exchange of everyone’s blood except his own. He swore each of us into the brotherhood and then instructed me to swear him in as President for Life. He had personally composed the protocol for the ceremony and when his turn came he handed me a slip of paper to read which went like this: ‘Do you, Hymie Solomon Levy, solemnly agree to fight with all your wit and skill and nerve to restore The Prince of Wales School to its former boxing glory?’ This came as somewhat of a surprise to all of us as we had no idea there had been any former glory to restore us to.

‘I do,’ Hymie said.

‘Do you agree to act selflessly without thought of personal glory or gain as the President for Life of the Wooden Spoon Goons?’ I wondered how he managed to reconcile this with our business arrangements.

‘This I do solemnly declare to do,’ Hymie said in an impressive flourish of grammatical construction.

‘In consideration for so doing and in the year nineteen hundred and forty-six in the reign of His Gracious Majesty King George the Sixth, I, Peekay, Captain of The Wooden Spoon Goons, declare Hymie Solomon Levy, President for Life.’

Hymie had confided to me in a rare moment of introspection that in naming him his parents had thrown the whole bloody Polish ghetto at him. ‘Why couldn’t they have given me just one Goy name, like Derek or Brian or Arthur or something?’ It was the only time I ever heard him question his Jewishness.

Later, as we were walking back to Wellington, I ribbed him about the restoring us to our former glory bit in the swearing in ceremony and also mentioned the no personal gain clause in his oath as president for life.

Hymie stopped and turned to face me. With an exaggerated sigh, as though he had seriously come to doubt my sagacity, he said, ‘For Chrissake, Peekay, don’t you read history? It doesn’t matter how much of a crap-up a country makes, by the time it gets into history it’s been turned into glorious tradition. It’s the same with an institution, you can’t go having the school losing on its boxing team generation after generation, history simply doesn’t allow for that sort of truth. Of course we’ve got a glorious tradition, because if we haven’t we have now and as Wooden Spoon Goons we’re going to have to restore the Prince of Wales to its former glory, whatever the fuck happened in real life.’

‘Wow!’ as Doc would say. ‘No doubtski aboutski, Hymie Levy was the absoloodle best!’

‘As for the personal gain, our primary purpose is to restore the school to its former boxing glory, there is no thought of not doing so if we can’t make a quid out of it. That’s what I mean by no thought of gain. We are not creating a business situation, we are merely exploiting one. Not to do so would be tantamount to sheer neglect, almost criminal if you ask me.’

There had been one strange happening at that first fight against Helpmekaar. Sarge had approached Darby White just before the fight to say that about a dozen blacks, all very neatly dressed and very clean, were standing outside the gymnasium and wanted permission to come in and watch. Darby, with much juggling of his balls, was reluctant. If they were caught on the streets without a note from their employers they would violate the pass laws which put a nine o’clock curfew on all Africans. He didn’t want to have a run-in with what he referred to as ‘the constabulary’, which if you have ever had any dealings with the South African Police Force is a very benign way of describing one of the toughest paramilitary forces in the world.

However, all the blacks showed him notes from their respective employers and he finally allowed them to stand by the door with Old Jimbo, the boot boy from School House who hadn’t missed a fight at the school for