Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  Meneer Prinsloo stopped and looked around the room. ‘But, of course, we also know the fire that nearly burned everything down was started by burning some English books, by a person or persons unknown.’ His hands began to wave and his lips curled and the elastic braces began to stretch and strain at the leather fasteners that clipped onto the buttons on his trousers that ended in the middle of his stomach. ‘These books in question belonged to Tom Fitzsaxby and were also read by the now surrogaat Engelsman, Gawie Grobler.’

  You could tell from his voice that he was disgusted with us, especially Gawie who was an Afrikaner and not a hard-case Englishman who caused so much trouble around the place. ‘This surrogaat Engelsman who we thought was so clever and also an Afrikaner now we know likes to read English books and maybe believe what no good Afrikaner can believe if he has a conscience!’ Then he went on to say he wanted the boy or boys responsible for starting the fire to confess as it was a big disgrace to have a policeman snooping about the place and that the good reputation of The Boys Farm was at stake. ‘But maybe we can’t find this person, or persons, perhaps it will be like the criminal person who stole Piet Retief’s tail feathers and is never to be found!’

  Meneer Prinsloo knew as we all did that nobody was going to confess. There was not a snowball’s hope in hell of such a thing happening. But at least he wasn’t accusing Gawie and me of starting the fire, like he’d told Sergeant Van Niekerk he definitely had witnesses who saw us do it. With Pissy Vermaak no longer here, you couldn’t just go around finding witnesses that would swear on a stack of Bibles that we’d started the fire when we didn’t. Maybe the other boys had no time for me but they had even less for members of the staff, particularly Meneer Prinsloo. But by calling Gawie a surrogate Englishman, it was all finish and klaar with him.

  Poor Gawie was in the super-deep shit and all because of me. Going to school on Monday, he didn’t walk with me, nor had he talked with me in the dormitory the previous night or in the wash house when we were washing our face and hands and feet before going to bed. Just before we got to school he walked past me and said in a loud voice so everyone could hear, ‘Voetsek, Voetsek!’ I think it was supposed to be funny, and then he clouted me behind the head and moved on. I wasn’t scared of Gawie and I reckon I could have taken him any time he liked, but now I had a bandaged hand. What was the use of doing that, anyway? Everyone laughed and someone shouted, ‘You not game to take him, hey, Voetsek?’ And then the kids started chanting, ‘Surrogaat! Surrogaat! Surrogaat!’ and they all laughed some more, but this time at poor Gawie, who was only trying to show them he was a regte Boer all the time and that he didn’t like me any more.

  As for me, I was pretty sad. I’d lost Gawie and my books all at the one time. Where was I? I was nowhere, that’s where! A nobody, nowhere! Now there was just Tinker and me and the burnt red book, starting all over again from scratch. I would have to write and tell Miss Phillips what had happened. What if she was very cross that I hadn’t taken better care of the books she’d sent? They’d cost good money of her own, and perhaps I couldn’t make a person like her, who hadn’t grown up in an orphanage, understand that you weren’t allowed to keep things in the dormitory. On the other hand, keeping books in old paraffin tins under a big rock sounds a pretty dumb thing to do. What if just a natural bushfire came along? Maybe she’d think I was ungrateful and that I just threw her books into old paraffin tins after I’d read them. ‘You ungrateful child, after all I’ve done for you! Paraffin tins, and not even new ones!’

  I was now ten, nearly eleven, and I wasn’t sure how well I spoke English. But by now, thanks to Miss Phillips, I could read and write it pretty well. I used to speak English to Tinker who would listen and put her head to one side and even sometimes bark. I also told her she was English, being a fox terrier and all. I said, ‘If you even say it in Afrikaans it’s foksterriër, so this is definite proof that, like me, you are English. It’s just that we’ve somehow got ourselves born in the wrong place.’ I don’t think she really cared if she was Afrikaner or English, because she was a one-man dog and if I had been an Eskimo she wouldn’t have cared less. She loved me lots and lots and didn’t ask questions about a person all the time.

  But Gawie was a different matter altogether. To be a surrogaat Engelsman was like you don’t know who you are all of a sudden. All your life you’ve been a proud Afrikaner, regte Boer with an uncle in Pretoria (even if it wasn’t true). Now you are an in-between something or other, neither a rooinek like me, nor a proper Boer. I mean, if someone came up to me and handed me some beads and a big gold cross and said, ‘Sorry, Voetsek, from now on you a Roman Catholic, man!’ How would I feel? Not very happy, I can tell you! You’d have to learn all those prayers so you could go ‘click’ one, ‘click’ two, ‘click’ three and so on, because God would know if you didn’t know them off by heart and you’d be punished for trying to take shortcuts with praying! I’d probably be all right because, if I could learn to recite the red book, I reckon I could do those bead prayers also. It still wouldn’t be nice one moment to be who you really are and talking to God direct, and the next it’s beads clicking and crosses dangling and you’re somebody else altogether. Somebody you never even thought you were going to be until Meneer Prinsloo said you were it.

  That week in school I was trying to get up enough courage to write to Miss Phillips. I could only have two goes. You couldn’t waste paper because of the war, and if you tore a page out of the exercise book the Government gave you at school then you had to go to the middle where the staples were so two would come out. That’s two pages and nobody would know you’d torn them out. But four pages would be too many and maybe they’d find out. So I had to practise the letter I was going to write in my head and then write the one I decided on, and after that make a clean copy with the page that was leftover.

  So after I got it all straight in my head, I wrote:

  Dear Miss Phillips,

  I have some very bad news. There has been a terrible fire and all my books have been burned. It is a tragedy but not my fault, somebody else did it because of what the Dominee said in church about books in English should be burned because lurking in the pages is evil. You reading along nicely and then when you not looking a bit of evil is written. In Germany it happened, but Adolf Hitler has a man called Joseph Goebbels who finds out every time and they burn that book. You can take him into a whole library and he’ll go straight to the bad book and burn it. But the English don’t do that and so the Dominee said we mustn’t read English books because most of them have evil lurking. Doctor Van Heerden says that’s rubbish, but too late, someone already burned all my books you sent me. I don’t know what to say, except that I’m very sorry because you paid good money for them and I loved them very much. You must understand about the old paraffin tins, there was nowhere else, we are not allowed to keep things like books under our beds and so I had to hide them under the big rock in a small cave I dug. I am asking for your forgiveness because I am very grateful for what you did for me. I hope you are not going to be very cross reading this. Now some good news! I rescued the red book at the last minute. Hooray! Now for the bad news! It is burned on the corner and some words are also gone missing, but not a lot. Also, I burned my hand taking it out of the fire. But it is not too bad and only has a bandage and some sulphur on it and I have to exercise it so I don’t lose my fingers. Did you know that the Boere used honey on burns in the Great Trek?

  Your obedient student,

  Tom Fitzsaxby

  Woof–Woof!

  I wasn’t too sure about the ‘Woof–Woof!’ ending because I didn’t know if I was going to be in disgrace. But sometimes in life you have to hope for the best. I sent the letter off with the next exercise that luckily I’d already done before the fire. I was waiting for Gawie to finish his, but now it looked as if he wasn’t going to. I didn’t mention this to Miss Phillips because I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me losing a friend when she had every right to be angry over the burn
ed books. And anyway, there wasn’t any room left on the page.

  The day after I’d posted my letter to Miss Phillips, Meneer Van Niekerk, who I now knew went to teachers’ college when his little boetie Sergeant Van Niekerk couldn’t go because there was no money, sent for me.

  ‘Come in, Tom,’ he called in English when I knocked on his open door. He pointed to the chair in front of his desk. ‘Sit down, son.’ It was the same chair that was always there, but now I could sit on it and my feet were flat on the floor even if I leaned back. I still didn’t like sitting in front of such a high-up person, but we did it quite a lot because Miss Phillips sent her envelopes to Meneer Van Niekerk to give to me, and he’d always have a chat with me and ask how I was going and I had to answer him in English.

  ‘I am very sorry to hear about the fire, the burning of your books,’ he began, then paused and seemed to be thinking for a long time, with the end of one of the arms of his spectacles stuck in the corner of his mouth. ‘There is still a lot of ignorance and bigotry in this world and the Afrikaner volk are not without their share. Even a Dominee is not always wise in what he says, and words are sometimes put into God’s mouth that are not always the absolute truth. I must tell you that I was also at that sermon and was very ashamed at what the Dominee told the congregation. Evil can be and is written in books from time to time, but we must read each book and decide for ourselves. Reading is a way of opening minds and burning books is about closing minds. The Bible says, “Seek the truth and it will set you free”. Reading books from everywhere and about everything is seeking the truth, and it will free you from bigotry and those ignorant men who would otherwise take advantage of your ignorance. Some of the greatest books ever written are in the English language, but also in German, French, Russian and so on, no nation owns a greater share of genius or stupidity. Do you understand?’

  ‘Ja, Meneer. Yes, Sir,’ I hastily corrected myself.

  The headmaster was saying the same thing as Doctor Van Heerden, only in a different way. He reached out and picked up a piece of paper and I saw it was the list of books I’d given to Sergeant Van Niekerk.

  ‘I have called the CNA in Pietersburg and ordered all these books. When they arrive we will keep them here at the school, but they will be yours, not government property. They will belong to you, Tom, you understand? You can take any one of them back to The Boys Farm whenever you like, but you will always know the others are safe.’

  Talk about surprise! ‘Thank you, Sir,’ I said. It didn’t seem enough to say but I couldn’t think of anything else. So I just said it again. ‘Thank you, Sir.’

  ‘Do you have a locker where you can keep one book safe, Tom?’

  ‘We can keep four things under our bed, Sir. They are safe there because we got an agreement that you can’t steal from anyone in your own dormitory.’ I was having difficulty believing I was going to get all my books back. It was the best news you could get except for one thing – I’d already sent the letter to Miss Phillips. If only I could have waited one more day she would never have known about the fire. Sometimes in life a person should wait for things to cool down a bit.

  In case you don’t know, the CNA is short for Central News Agency. I knew this because on the bottom right-hand corner on the inside of the back cover of some of my books there was this little piece of white paper about the size of a postage stamp, and on it was written:

  CNA

  Central News Agency

  1217 Eloff St, Jhb.Tvl.

  Books & Stationery

  Suppliers Nationwide

  ‘Under your bed, that’s good. Have you got anything else there?’

  ‘Yes, Sir, an old tennis ball I found that I throw for Tinker and she brings it back, and a broken alarm clock that doesn’t work anymore.’ I didn’t tell him that Sergeant Van Niekerk had given me the old alarm clock in Mattress’s hut after he’d taken his fingerprints off it. I liked it a lot. This was because it reminded me of Mattress as well as his son, Joe Louis. Also his wife who only wanted goats when he only wanted cows so he could sit under a nice shady tree and drink kaffir beer all day.

  ‘So, if you take a book back with you, there’s room for one more thing?’ the headmaster asked. I nodded, and from under his desk he produced this huge book, bigger even than the red book. ‘It’s not new as I’ve had it a long time, but now it’s yours, Tom.’ He placed the big black leather book on the desk in front of me. On the cover it said The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

  I was too dumbfounded to speak, not only because it was a wonderful gift but also because a high-up person like Meneer Van Niekerk would even think about doing such a thing for someone who was only nine, nearly ten, who was owned by the Government. One other thing is for sure, if this was the shorter Oxford Dictionary, then I’d hate to see the longer one!

  Later, after I’d left his office, I opened the front cover and on the inside in neat copperplate handwriting Meneer Van Niekerk had written:

  For Tom Fitzsaxby

  ‘The truth shall set you free.’

  de Wet van Niekerk

  Duiwelskrans 1943

  I thought you would like to know the names of the books that were burned so I’ve written them all down for you. I had to do it anyway because Sergeant Van Niekerk wanted them and so did the headmaster. I’m not sure why but Sergeant Van Niekerk said it was part of his police investigation and Meneer Van Niekerk, who knows? There were only fifteen English books in the school library and fifty-one in Afrikaans, and I’d read all the English ones and twenty of the Afrikaans. Anyway, here is the list I wrote out three times, the last time in case some day you may want to buy some really good books for your children and you’re not sure which are the best.

  Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales

  Winnie-the-Pooh by AA Milne

  Christopher Robin’s Storybook by AA Milne

  A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis

  Stevenson

  Aesop’s Fables

  The Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear

  Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffman

  Reynard the Fox by John Masefield

  A collection of poetry, limericks, ballads, riddles in

  rhyme

  and nonsense verse

  Then, when I got a bit older, from around about eight years on, this is what Miss Phillips sent to me.

  Peter Pan by JM Barrie

  The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum

  The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

  The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting

  Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving

  Then from there to right up to the time the books were burned, when I was reading very fast and couldn’t get enough stuff to read and even Gawie’s shit squares couldn’t keep up.

  The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

  The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

  Kim by Rudyard Kipling

  Stalky & Co by Rudyard Kipling

  Just William by Richmal Crompton

  At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald

  Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

  Robin Hood by J Walker McSpadden

  The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

  These were a bit harder but I liked them a lot.

  Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

  White Fang by Jack London

  Jock of the Bushveld by Percy Fitzpatrick

  Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett

  Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes

  The Story of an African Farm by Olive Shchreiner

  Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

  Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

  Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules

  Verne

  King Solomon’s Mines by
Henry Rider Haggard

  Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

  Missionary Travels and Researches in Africa

  by David Livingstone

  I can tell you, that is a lot of reading that got burned. Thousands and thousands of words just disappeared into thin smoke. But when Miss Phillips wrote back to me she said, ‘Don’t think of your books as gone, they are quite safe now because they are in your head forever.’ To my surprise she wasn’t angry with me at all. She also said she was sorry for the boys who burned them because they had been made to believe that they were doing God’s work. She said it was nothing of the sort and what they’d done was an iniquity. Others, who should know better, were to be blamed and she wished this war would jolly well hurry up and be over so that we could all start working together and forget the hatred of the past and be one nation. Then she said something strange, ‘Were the paraffin tins there because they poured paraffin on the flames to get the fire started?’

  So I looked up iniquity in my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. It means, 1 wickedness; unrighteousness. 2 gross injustice.

  Words can be very clever if they want and can sometimes save you a lot of time, so it’s definitely worth knowing some.

  Now, I don’t want to get back to the Dominee because I now had two high-up warnings about him and another half of a one from Sergeant Van Niekerk, who didn’t say anything about the preacher but just sighed and shook his head, and I could see he was glad he was writing up charges on a Sunday morning about kaffirs stabbing each other in the Location so didn’t have to be in church. But this sermon was about Elijah and the burning bush. Now maybe you don’t read the Bible, so you don’t know the story, so I’d better tell you because it happened a long time ago. There was this prophet in the Old Testament called Elijah, and his people called the Israelites who decided he was no good. So he took them into the wilderness and said, ‘See that bush?’ And the people said, ‘Yeah, okay?’ Then Elijah showed them both hands so they could see he didn’t have any matches. He said, ‘Search me if you like,’ because in the olden days prophets wore sort of long dresses. Then still standing a long way away from the bush he shouted, ‘Abracadabra!’ in the Israelite language and suddenly the bush is burning and he’s not even close. ‘God is in that bush! Beware, oh ye of little faith!’ he shouted at the multitudes. ‘From now on, have some respect!’