The Power of One

by Bryce Courtenay

  “Lieutenant Smit, a very nice man, came to see me this morning, though I’m not sure I liked what he had to say. I’ve spoken to your grandfather and I made it the subject of my quiet time with the Lord after lunch. He gave me no clear guidance on the matter, though your grandfather seems to think it can’t do you any harm.” Her head jerked back in a sudden gesture of annoyance. “Oh, how I wish you’d stick to the piano. It’s clearly the Lord’s wish that you do so or He wouldn’t have made it possible for you to learn under such trying circumstances. Lieutenant Smit seems to think you have a natural talent as a boxer, which is more than the professor has admitted about your music.”

  “Doc has said my Chopin is coming along extra good,” I said.

  My mother sighed. “You’ll have to sleep on Friday afternoon if you’re going to be up that late on Saturday night.”

  I jumped with joy. “Thank you, thank you,” I cried, and gave her a hug and a kiss.

  On Friday morning, Lieutenant Smit called us all together around the ring. “I want to tell you first a few things,” he said. He turned to the five kids standing to one side with Geel Piet. “The rules for under fifteen say, you get knocked down, you out. No use getting up, man, you finished. So don’t get knocked down, hey.” He indicated Klipkop, who was standing on his right. “Sergeant Oudendaal is a semipro so is not allowed to fight, so Gert will fight in the heavyweight division and Sergeant Oudendaal and me will be your seconds. You all know the rules, the most clean blows landed wins, that’s how Geel Piet here taught you.” He was turning to leave the ring when his eye caught something at his feet. He stooped and picked up a small blue singlet, on the front of which in yellow were the letters BB, standing for Barberton Blues. He turned the singlet around to face us; on the back, in neat cut-out letters, we saw PEEKAY. “Welcome, Peekay,” he said, and everyone clapped. “Welcome to the Barberton Blues.” My throat ached as I choked back the tears. Lieutenant Smit bent down again and picked up a pair of blue shorts with a yellow stripe down the side, and bundling shorts and singlet together, he threw them at me.

  I showed Doc my singlet and shorts and he seemed very pleased for me and I told him about the three rounds. “Do you think you can go three rounds with Mr. Chopin, Peekay?” he asked. I nodded, determined to show Doc that his precious music was not taking a backseat. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Geel Piet enter the hall. It was unusual for him to come into the hall at this time. I always put the day’s mail in the piano seat and later, when he came in to polish the Steinway, he would retrieve it. We had decided the three of us should never be seen together near the postbox. He stood pretending to clean a window and finally Doc noticed him.

  “You must not come when we practice,” he admonished.

  The battered little man trotted toward us. “Please, baas, it is very important.” Geel Piet withdrew a parcel wrapped in a piece of cloth. “In the bootmaker’s we have made for the small baas a present.” He opened the cloth to reveal a pair of boxing boots. I gasped. They were beautiful, the black leather brought to a soft sheen and the soles the bluish white of raw new leather. “It is from all the people, a present for the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi, so that you will fight a mighty fight tomorrow, small baas. It is why I asked you for the tackies, small baas.” He gave me a big, toothless smile. “It was to know the size.”

  I leapt from the piano stool and quickly pulled my school boots off and put the boxing boots on. The leather was soft and pliant and the boots felt light as a feather and fitted perfectly. “Geel Piet, they are the nicest present anyone ever gave me, honest.”

  “They are from all the people. It is their way to thank you.”

  Without warning he dropped to his knees and, using the cloth in which the boxing boots had been wrapped, he started to polish the floor around my feet. Some instinct in him that never rested had sensed danger. A good five seconds elapsed before the warder actually stood at the entrance to the hall.

  He was a new sergeant; his name was Borman and he had been transferred to the lowveld from Pretoria.

  He stood, one hand holding the door frame. “Professor, the Kommandant wants to see you. Report to administration after breakfast, you hear?” He turned to go, then caught sight of Geel Piet. “Kom hier, kaffir!” he rapped.

  The little man ran across the hall. “Ja, baas, I come, baas,” he cried.

  “What you doing in this place?” the warder demanded.

  Doc bent down and picked up one of my school boots. “The boy got some kak on his boots. He come to clean them,” he said, waving the boot at the warder and then pointing to where Geel Piet had been cleaning the floor. “Also some was on the floor when he walked in.”

  Sergeant Borman grinned. “Next time make the black bastard lick it clean.” He turned and walked away.

  Geel Piet came padding over to us, his bare feet making hardly any sound. “Thank you, big baas,” he said with a grin. He turned to me. “Box with your feet, small baas, punch clean so it is a scoring shot. No clinches, that way a bigger boxer can push you over. Good luck, small baas, the people are with you.”

  “Thank you, Geel Piet, tell the people I thank them.”

  “Ag, man, it is nothing, the people love you, you are fighting for them.” He was gone.

  Doc cleared his throat to break the silence. “Maybe now we can play Chopin, yes?”

  I gave him a big hug. “That sure was quick thinking, Doc.”

  He chuckled. “Not so bad for a brokink-down old piano player, ja?” He frowned suddenly. “I wonder what wants the Kommandant?”

  We were to leave for Nelspruit, a distance of some forty miles, at eight the following morning. Though I avoided having to rest on Friday afternoon, I had been ordered to bed at six o’clock. I woke as usual just before dawn and lay in bed trying to imagine the day ahead. What if I was beaten first off? With seven Eastern Transvaal teams competing, I had to win twice to get to the final. I had never boxed six rounds in my life, and even if I got through them I would have to box another three in the finals!

  I quickly dressed and ran through the garden. In a little more than ten minutes I was on top of the hill sitting on our rock.

  It was early spring and the dawn wind was cold. I shivered a little as I watched the light bleed into the valley and merge with the darkened town below me, smudging the darkness until the roofs and streets and trees were rubbed clean. Patches of bright red from spring-flowering flamboyant trees already dotted the town. I tried to think how Granpa Chook would have looked at the situation. He would have taken things in his stride, just like any other day. Granpa Chook remained a sort of checkpoint in my life. A reference on how to behave in a tight spot. I thought of Hoppie too. If only Hoppie could have been there to see me. “First with your head and then with your heart, Peekay.” I could almost hear his cheerful and reassuring voice.

  I made my way back down the hill as the sun began to rise. When I got back to the house Dee and Dum had prepared breakfast: porridge, fried eggs and bacon. On the kitchen table stood my school lunch tin. I wondered what they’d packed to sustain me, hopefully for nine rounds of boxing. They opened the tin to show me six pumpkin scones neatly wrapped in greaseproof paper. “We baked them last night, your favorite!” Dum said.

  I packed all my stuff into my satchel, including my beautiful boxing boots. At half-past seven I had already said my farewells to my granpa and my mother and was sitting on the front wall waiting for the blue prison ute, which was to pick me up. I could have gone to the prison but Gert said, “It’s only a few minutes out of our way, save the energy for the ring!” Gert wasn’t like the other warders. He liked to help people and he once told me he only hit kaffirs if they really did wrong. “A kaffir hurts also, maybe not like a white man, ’cause they more like monkeys, but they hurt also when you hit them.”

  I saw the ute coming up the hill with Gert at the wheel. Next to him someone sat reading a newspaper; I couldn’t see who it was. Gert stopped outside the gate. “Jump in the back with the
other kids, Peekay,” he said cheerfully. I climbed into the back, Gert changed gears and we pulled away. A fourteen-year-old called Bokkie de Beer was in charge and he told me no one was allowed to stand up. All the other kids were giggling and splurting into their hands as they looked at me.

  “What’s so funny?” I shouted above the sound of the wind and the roar of the engine. Bokkie de Beer pointed to the rear window of the driver’s cabin. There, framed in the window, wearing his unmistakable panama hat, was the back of Doc’s head. All the kids fell about laughing at my astonishment. I just couldn’t believe my good fortune.

  It was the first time since my arrival by train three years earlier that I had left the small town. It was a perfectly clear spring morning as we traveled across the valley toward a row of distant hills. The thornveld and the flat-topped acacia had already broken into electric green leaf.

  By nine-thirty we’d reached Nelspruit and drew to a halt in a parking lot behind the town hall. I rushed to open the door of the ute for Doc. His blue eyes were shining and I think he was almost as excited as I was.

  “We are together outside again, Peekay. It is goot, ja? Absoloodle.”

  “How did you escape?” I asked clumsily.

  He chuckled. “With the permission of the Kommandant. That’s what he wished to see me about yesterday.” He saw me frown; we both knew the way of the prison system, where nothing is given unless something is taken in return. Doc shrugged. “It is not too much he wants, only that I should play a little Chopin when the brigadier comes from Pretoria next month.”

  I knew how Doc felt about playing in public. While he had overcome his fear when he triumphed at the Beethoven recital in the market square, Doc was a perfectionist and it gave him great pain not to meet the standards he demanded for himself.

  “You should have said no!” I said.

  “Tch-tch, Peekay, then I would not see you in your début. One day I will say, I was there when the welterweight champion of the world made his boxing début. Absoloodle! I will play Chopin to this brigadier. That is not so hard, ja?”

  We entered the town hall and walked down a corridor until we reached a room that said Barberton Bloue on a piece of paper stuck on the door. The room smelt of dust and sweat. Lieutenant Smit and Klipkop were both there.

  “This morning are the preliminary fights for the kids and this afternoon for the weight divisions,” Lieutenant Smit announced. “Tonight, starting at six, the finals. We come here to win and that is what we going to do! Okay, so what’s our motto?”

  “One for all and all for one,” we all shouted. Doc put his hand on my shoulder and I felt very proud. “I wish Geel Piet was with us,” I whispered. Then Doc, who was in charge of first aid, left to fetch the towels and the first-aid kit but promised to be right back.

  Klipkop grinned. “Today, man, I’m Geel Piet.”

  “Does that mean we can hit you and you can’t hit back?” Bokkie de Beer said cheekily, and we all laughed.

  Klipkop smiled. “You can all get changed now and I’ll fetch you in fifteen minutes.”

  I found a corner and put my boots on first. All the kids crowded around. “Where’d you get those, man?” Bokkie de Beer exclaimed.

  “My—my granpa made them,” I stammered.

  “Boy, you lucky having a bootmaker for your granpa,” Fonnie Kruger said.

  “Well, he’s not really a bootmaker, more a gardener.”

  I rolled my gray socks down so they made a collar just above the boots. Then I put my blue singlet on and the boxing shorts with the yellow stripe down the side. Geel Piet had sized the waist perfectly but the bottoms of the shorts went way past my knees. When I stood up the other four kids broke up. Maatie Snyman and Nels Stekhoven even rolled on the floor. I must have looked pretty funny with my sparrow legs sticking out, but I also felt terribly proud.

  Fonnie Kruger and myself were the first of the Barberton Blues to fight as we were in the under-twelves, the most junior division. We followed Klipkop into the town hall. Kids from other towns in the Eastern Transvaal were standing in groups and they too were changed and ready. I looked around, wondering who among them I would have to fight.

  Doc entered the hall and moved over to me. I think he was more nervous than I was. He had taken out his bandanna and was wiping his brow. “I think examinations in the conservatorium in Leipzig when I was so big as you was not so bad as this. Absoloodle.”

  “I’ll be okay, Doc. I’ll dance and everything, just like Geel Piet says. Lieutenant Smit says I’m blerrie fast. You’ll see—they won’t hit me, for sure.”

  “It’s nice of you to say this, Peekay. But what happens when comes one big Boer and connects?”

  I grinned, trying to make him feel better. I repeated Hoppie’s comment. “Ag, man, the bigger they are the harder they fall.” I felt pretty corny saying it and I knew now why Hoppie had said it to me. He must have felt pretty corny too.

  Doc groaned. “Peekay, I want you should be very careful. In that ring are not nice people.”

  Klipkop and Lieutenant Smit were standing with a large bald man who wore long white pants and a white singlet. A few feet from them stood two adults and a kid. The kid was quite a bit bigger than me, though not as big as Snotnose. He wore a red singlet and on the front was the word “Sabie.” That was the town where Klipkop had his nooi, to whom he had recently become engaged.

  The big man in the singlet looked at me and then at Lieutenant Smit. “He is not very big. Are you sure you want him to fight?”

  The lieutenant nodded. “It will be good for him.”

  The big man looked at the boy from Sabie and then looked doubtfully back at me. “His opponent is eight inches taller and has probably got five inches more reach, man.”

  “If I think he’s getting hurt I’ll pull him out.”

  “I hope you know what you doing, man,” the big man said, shaking his head. The two men from Sabie were grinning and I could hear what they were saying inside their heads. They were glad their kid was going to get an easy fight first up.

  Klipkop turned to me. “This is Meneer de Klerk, Peekay. He is the referee and also the judge. He just came down from Pretoria last night.”

  “Good morning, meneer,” I said, sticking out my hand. The referee shook it lightly.

  “You got nice manners, son,” he said.

  Then Meneer de Klerk examined both sets of boxing gloves and declared them suitable. “Ten-ounce gloves. I don’t want to see no kid hurt,” he said. “Okay, glove up. We on in five minutes.” He turned to a man sitting at a table directly beside the ring. The man nodded and consulted a large pocket watch in front of him. He also had a bell and was obviously the timekeeper.

  Klipkop and Lieutenant Smit both worked on lacing me up. I felt very important.

  “Remember, Peekay, boxing is a percentage game. Just make sure you hit him clean and more times than he hits you. No clinches, in clinches he can throw you off your feet. Stay out of the corners, stay off the ropes.”

  The man at the table rang the bell and we walked over to the ring. Klipkop helped me through the ropes and then he and the lieutenant climbed in after me. There was a proper stool in the corner and Lieutenant Smit told me to sit on it. I felt a bit silly because the kid from Sabie was standing up and punching into the air and I was sitting like a little kid on a chamberpot.

  “Right! Both in the middle,” Meneer de Klerk called, and climbed into the ring. “What’s your names?”

  “Du Toit, meneer.”

  “Peekay, meneer.”

  “I want a clean fight, you hear? No clinches. When I say break, you break. No hitting below the waist or behind the head. One knockdown and the fight is over. You understand, Peekay? Du Toit?”

  “Ja, meneer,” we both said.

  “Right, when you hear the bell you come into the center of the ring, touch gloves and start boxing. Good luck.”

  I walked back to my corner. Because it was the first fight of the day, all the teams were gathered
around the ring. It was my first boxing crowd and my heart was beating. Du Toit was looking around too. I don’t think either of us wanted to make eye contact. He seemed very big, but I had waited too long for this moment to be afraid.

  The bell rang. “Box him, Peekay, you hear,” Klipkop said as I jumped from the stool.

  We touched gloves in the middle of the ring, and as he pulled away I darted in and snapped a left and a right to Du Toit’s jaw. His eyes widened in surprise. I could see that the punches hadn’t hurt him, but nevertheless my early aggression had caught him unawares.

  He was a good boxer and didn’t lose his composure but circled around me. He threw a straight left, which went over my shoulder and flew past my ear. I went in under the arm with a quick uppercut and caught him in the ribs. I knew I’d hit him hard. He caught me with a right on the shoulder and spun me around. I anticipated the left coming at me and ducked under it and got another good body blow on exactly the same spot as before. His arms wrapped around me and I was in a clinch, which I wasn’t supposed to be in. I hit him furiously in the ribs with both hands, but my blows were too close to be effective and I knew he could hold me as long as he liked.

  “Break!” I heard the ref say, and as Du Toit’s arms slackened I got right out of the way. For the rest of the round I let him chase me. I was much the faster boxer and had much better footwork. Toward the end of the round I could see by the way he set his feet which punch was going to come next. Just as the bell went I got inside with a short right and clipped him neatly on the point of the chin.

  I had heard nothing during the fight and now realized that the crowd was making quite a noise and that my name was being shouted in encouragement. At the end of the round there was a lot of clapping and one or two whistles.

  “You done good, Peekay,” Klipkop said. Lieutenant Smit wiped my face with a towel. “He’s missing with the right cross, but not by much. Watch it, man. If that kid finds his range he’s going to hurt you bad. Keep your chin buried in your shoulder, that way if he gets one through you’ll take most of it on the shoulder.”