The Power of One

by Bryce Courtenay

  “No knockdown!” Meneer de Klerk shouted. “Get back to your corner, Kroon!” He jerked me to my feet and pulled my pants up. I had been covering my snake with my gloves. In those days nobody wore underpants. But I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was Killer Kroon in the ring with me. “Box on,” Meneer de Klerk said. I turned to face Killer Kroon’s corner. He was standing with his back to me and his chest was still heaving. Suddenly a towel lofted over his head and landed at my feet. Kroon’s corner was throwing in the towel; the fight was over! Meneer de Klerk moved quickly over to me, and with a huge grin on his face held my hand aloft. “Winner on a technical knockout, Gentleman Peekay!” he announced. The crowd shouted and cheered and Lieutenant Smit and Klipkop jumped into the ring. Klipkop lifted me high above his shoulders and turned around in the ring and everyone went wild.

  Meneer de Klerk had moved over to Kroon’s corner and now he came back to the center of the ring and held his hand up for silence. Klipkop put me down again. “The Lydenburg squad want me to say that Martinus Kroon retired because of an asthma attack.” A section of the crowd started to boo and there was general laughter. “More like a Rooinek attack!” someone shouted. The referee held up his hand once more. “I just want you to know that I had the fight scored two rounds to none for Gentleman Peekay and I also had him ahead on points in the third round. The technical knockout stands. Let me tell you something, this boy is going to be a great boxer; just remember where you saw him first.” The crowd whistled and stomped and cheered and Lieutenant Smit held my hand up and then we left the ring.

  “I think Geel Piet and the people will be very happy tonight,” Doc said as he handed me a towel. “I go to get you a soft drink? What color do you want?”

  “But we haven’t got any money,” I said.

  “That’s what you think, Mister Schmarty Pantz!” Doc fished into his pocket and produced two half-crowns.

  “Five shillings!” I said in amazement.

  He grinned slyly. “I am making this bet with a nice man from Lydenburg.”

  “A bet! You bet on me? What if I’d lost? You couldn’t have paid him!”

  Doc scratched his nose with his forefinger. “You couldn’t lose, you was playing Mozart,” he said.

  I asked for an American cream soda. It was the drink Hoppie had bought me in the café at Gravelotte and it was still my favorite. It was also the closest I could come to sharing my win with Hoppie. If Geel Piet and Hoppie could have been there, everything would have been perfect. Not that it wasn’t perfect. But more perfect.

  THIRTEEN

  By the time we got to the last fight of the evening, the Barberton Blues had won five of the eight finals and only the heavyweight division remained. Gert was matched with a giant called Potgieter from Kaapmuiden.

  Potgieter was a better boxer than he first appeared and in the first round he had Gert hanging on twice, but Gert won the round by landing more clean punches. In the heavyweight division a knockdown did not mean the end of the fight and in the second round Potgieter connected with an uppercut and Gert dropped to the canvas. The bell went at the count of five.

  In the final round Gert started hitting Potgieter almost at will. The big man knew he was behind on points so he dropped his defense, confident he could take anything Gert dished out. Finally Potgieter managed to trap Gert in a corner. The uppercut caught Gert on the point of the jaw. The warder was out cold even before his legs had started to buckle. The referee counted him out and Klipkop and Lieutenant Smit lifted him unconscious from the floor and carried him to his corner. Gert had, as usual, fought with too much heart and not enough head.

  It was after ten when we left Nelspruit. We kids huddled together in the back of the bakkie. The indigo night was pricked with sharp cold stars. We’d spent what energy remained in lavish praise of each other and of the glorious Barberton Blues, and now we were silent and sleepy. Klipkop drove as Gert had gone home with Lieutenant Smit.

  I was enormously tired but couldn’t doze off. In my mind each of my three fights kept repeating itself. I played them all back in sequence as though they were scenes on a loop of film that I was able to edit in my imagination, remaking the fights, seeing them as they should have been.

  I didn’t know it then, but this ability totally to recall a fight scenario made me a lot more dangerous when I met an opponent for the second time.

  It was nearly midnight when we stopped outside our house. Everything was in darkness. I crept around the back because the kitchen door was never locked. A candle stub burned on the kitchen table and on the floor, each rolled in a blanket, lay Dum and Dee. I tried to tiptoe past but they both shot up into sitting positions.

  They were overjoyed at my return and switched on the light to examine me. They burst into tears when they saw my swollen ear and it took some effort to calm them. Despite my protests, for I was almost too tired to stand up, Dum sat me down and washed my face, hands and feet. At last I was allowed to totter off to bed.

  Geel Piet had not expected me to win through to the finals in Nelspruit. The most he had hoped for was a berth in the semis. His delight at the Monday-morning training session knew no bounds. “The people are very happy. I’m telling you, since we heard the news they have talked of nothing else, man.” He laughed. “The Zulus say you are surely a Zulu chief disguised as a white man, for only a Zulu can fight with this much courage.”

  At my piano lesson, Doc found an excuse for Geel Piet to come into the hall and I played back the three fights blow by blow to him. He nearly died laughing when I told him about my pants falling down.

  That morning Lieutenant Smit had made a short speech. “I’m proud of you all, you hear? Not one boxer let us down; even those of you who lost, you fought good. The under-twelve finals was the best boxing match I have ever seen.” Fonnie Kruger punched me in the ribs and I didn’t know how to stop my face burning. “No, honest, man, if you all want a lesson in boxing then watch Peekay.” He paused and looked directly at Geel Piet standing behind us. “Geel Piet, you just a yellow kaffir, but I got to hand it to you, you a good coach.”

  We all looked round to see Geel Piet cover his face with both hands and dance from one foot to another as though he were standing on hot coals.

  The prison photographer came into the gym and Lieutenant Smit announced we were going to have our picture taken but not our fingerprints. We all laughed and the photographer lined us up. There was an explosion of light as he took the picture, and then he said he wanted to take another. Lieutenant Smit looked about him as Doc entered the hall. “Come, professor, stand here,” he invited, and then to everyone’s surprise he beckoned to Geel Piet. “You too, kaffir,” he said gruffly.

  Klipkop stepped out of the photographer’s former arrangement. “No way, man! I’m not having my photo taken with a blerrie kaffir!”

  Lieutenant Smit brought his hand up to his mouth and blew a couple of breathy notes down the center of his closed fist. “That’s okay, Sergeant Oudendaal,” he said pleasantly. “Anybody else want to step out?”

  Geel Piet stepped out of where he was standing on the edge of the group. “I am too ugly for a heppy snap, baas.” He grinned.

  “Get back, kaffir!” Lieutenant Smit commanded.

  Geel Piet returned to the group, whereupon the remainder of the adult boxers stepped out with the exception of Gert; then Bokkie de Beer moved away, followed by the other kids. I could see they were real scared. Only Doc, Gert, Geel Piet and I were left when Lieutenant Smit stepped back into the picture.

  The photograph captured the exact moment when I understood with conviction that racism is a primary force of evil.

  We were all given a ten-by-eight photograph of the Barberton Blues and the photographer gave Doc, Gert and me a copy of the second photograph. The lieutenant refused his copy, which I begged from the photographer and gave to Geel Piet privately. He kept it in the piano stool and looked at it every day when he collected the prisoners’ mail.

  Some weeks later L
ieutenant Smit was promoted to captain and people even started to talk about him being the next Kommandant. He called me aside one morning and asked if I would return the second photo and get Doc’s copy back as well. I had no option but to obey, and Gert did the same. Captain Smit tore them up but forgot about the extra copy. He obtained the plate from the photographer and destroyed this also. A man cannot be careful enough about his career.

  Between Doc and Mrs. Boxall, my education was in fairly safe hands. Mrs. Boxall consulted with Doc by note and they decided on my serious reading. She was the expert on English literature and he on the sciences, music and Latin. The Barberton library, apart from containing Doc’s botanical collection, had been the recipient of two more good private collections and Mrs. Boxall said it was choked with intellectual goodies for a growing mind. Both Doc and Mrs. Boxall were natural teachers. Doc set exams and Mrs. Boxall conducted them in the library on Tuesday and Friday every week. I grew to love this time spent with Mrs. Boxall.

  Two of me were emerging, a small boy approaching eleven who climbed trees, used a catapult, drove a billycart and led an eager gang in kleilat and other games, and a somewhat precocious child who often left the teachers at school unable to cope with the fact that I was well in advance of anything they had to teach.

  In my tenth year a new teacher, Miss Bornstein, arrived at the school. She taught the senior class, getting them ready for the leap into high school, and while I was still two classes below the seniors she had summoned me to her classroom after school one Friday.

  “Hello, Peekay, come in,” she said.

  “Good afternoon, miss,” I said, entering a little fearfully.

  “Miss Bornstein, please, Peekay. They tell me you’re rather clever.” She looked up and smiled and my head began to zing as though I’d been clocked a straight right between the eyes. Miss Bornstein was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. She had long black hair and huge green eyes and a large mouth that shone with lipstick. She was dazzling.

  Miss Bornstein tried me on Latin vocabulary and verbs. It was pretty simple stuff but as Latin was only taught in high school she seemed impressed. She then handed me the book she had been reading. “Do as many of these as you can in ten minutes,” she instructed.

  The book was full of little drawings and sentences with missing words and trick questions where you had to pick the answer from several choices. It was like old homework for me. Doc had a great many books on logic and thinking, as he would call it, out of the square. Miss Bornstein’s book was for beginners and I finished the whole thing in under five minutes.

  I had to wait while she marked the answers. After the first page she looked up and tapped her pencil against her beautiful white teeth. Then she said, “I wouldn’t say you were stupid, Peekay.” She turned to the last page and marked it. “No, I wouldn’t say that at all. I think you and I are going to see quite a lot of each other.” She thanked me for coming and said that on Monday I was to report to her class.

  Miss Bornstein, who had been lecturing at the university in Johannesburg, had returned home because her mother was dying of cancer. Miss Bornstein’s father and mother had come to South Africa from Germany in 1918, and were the only Jews in Barberton. Mr. Bornstein was in partnership with Mr. Andrews as the town’s only solicitors. I heard all this from Mrs. Boxall who, it turned out, had known Miss Bornstein “since she was a gel.”

  I told Doc about the whole incident on Monday morning and at the end he asked a question. “Tell me, Peekay, how bad in love are you?”

  I told him that I didn’t know much about love but it was like being hit in the head with a really good punch.

  “I think maybe you in love bad, Peekay. Absoloodle.”

  With Lieutenant Smit’s promotion to captain, Sergeant Borman became the new lieutenant. This was not a popular promotion.

  Lieutenant Borman was too old to belong to the boxing squad, but he often talked big about the fighter he had once been. Gert said that a man who talks about how tough he is is probably yellow. But, while the warders didn’t like Borman, they respected him for being a professional. If there was any trouble in the prison, the Kommandant had soon learned to put Sergeant Borman in charge. It was his ability to terrorize the prisoners, both physically and mentally, that made him the Kommandant’s choice to take over when Lieutenant Smit was promoted.

  Lieutenant Borman deeply resented the freedom Geel Piet had achieved in the gymnasium under Captain Smit, and Geel Piet was careful to keep out of his way. When Borman entered the gym, unless he was in the ring actually coaching one of the kids, Geel Piet would quietly slip away. Lieutenant Borman’s eyes would follow him as he crept out. “He will get me. One day, for sure, he will get me. I hope I come out the other side alive,” the battered little colored man confided in me.

  Captain Smit would watch Geel Piet leave the gymnasium when Borman entered, but he remained silent. Borman saw the alliance of Doc, Geel Piet and myself as a basic breakdown of the system. Because he was a professional, he was quick to realize that such a break in the normal discipline of the prison could lead to other things. As a sergeant his influence did not carry to the Kommandant. But as a lieutenant his power increased enormously.

  Had it not been for the Kommandant’s desire to keep Doc sweet for the biannual visit of the inspector of prisons, our freedom within the prison would have been severely curtailed. Doc at his Steinway was to be the cultural component of the inspector’s visit. The Kommandant had no intention of allowing Lieutenant Borman to disrupt his careful plan.

  The war in Europe was rapidly drawing to a close. The Allies had crossed the Rhine and were moving toward Berlin. Doc was terribly excited. After four years’ incarceration he had a deep need for the soft green hills, the windswept mountains and the wooded kloofs. We would talk about walking all the way to Saddleback Mountain on the border of Swaziland. In these last days of the war we spent most of our hour together discussing our plans for Doc’s release and talking about the photos we needed for his book.

  Doc’s second book on the cacti of Southern Africa had been written while he was in prison. This one was in English, each page edited by Mrs. Boxall, who in the end had to confess that there was more to the jolly old cactus than she could possibly have imagined.

  Doc, Geel Piet and I had discussed the matter of my love for Miss Bornstein and, I must say, neither of them was a lot of help. Among the three of us we knew very little about women. The two of them finally decided that regular bunches of roses from my granpa’s garden was a good idea.

  “I think maybe just let the roses do the talking, Peekay,” Doc advised.

  My granpa seemed much more informed on the subject of love. His own had been of the highest quality, involving the building of an entire rose garden. When I said that I was not prepared to give up being world welterweight champion for Miss Bornstein, amid a lot of tapping and tamping and staring into space, he announced that the quality of my love was certainly worth a dozen long-stemmed roses a week but fell short of a whole garden. I accepted this verdict, although I knew it was impossible to love anybody more than I loved Miss Bornstein.

  The Kommandant promised Doc he would be released the day peace was declared in Europe. We were already into the first days of summer, and Doc and I had talked about being out of prison in time for the firebells, the little orange lilies flecked with specks of gold, which bloomed throughout the hills after the bushfires. Doc was disappointed when the firebells came and went and VE, or Victory in Europe, day had not arrived.

  We had already arranged for a new depository for the tobacco leaves, sugar and salt and, of course, the precious mail. These were placed in a watering can made out of a four-gallon paraffin tin. The can had been doctored by Geel Piet. A false bottom had been inserted, leaving a space cunningly fitted with a lid to look like the real bottom. Filled with water, the watering can looked perfectly normal, and would even work if it became necessary to appear to be watering plants. It was left standing in Doc’s c
actus garden and on my way to breakfast I would simply pass through the garden and put the mail and whatever I’d brought into the false bottom of the can. It was natural enough for me to go to the warders’ mess via Doc’s cactus garden as I often brought new plants. The warders almost never came this way and habitually used the passage in the interior of the building to get to the mess. We had been using this method for some months as the idea was to make it routine before Doc left and the piano stool with him. The Kommandant decided the cactus garden would remain as a memorial to Doc’s stay, also allowing that Geel Piet could maintain it. As I would be continuing with the boxing squad, the new system was nicely designed to work without Doc.

  The writing of the letters proved to be a more difficult task. Geel Piet wrote with difficulty. Without Doc to take dictation, the prisoners would be unable to get messages to their families. This was solved when Geel Piet and I approached Captain Smit to ask if, for half an hour after boxing, I could give Geel Piet a lesson to improve his reading and writing. Captain Smit was reluctant at first but finally gave his consent.