Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  So the next Saturday the big event took place in the church grounds. As far as the business of Gawie the Afrikaner Boy Genius was concerned, two chairs were placed on a special platform, one for him and the other for Meneer Prinsloo, who was there as the official Government Father. And behind the chairs is a banner that says:

  Meet the Genius 6d!

  It’s sixpence to shake their hand and congratulate them. A member of the congregation was standing there to take the money and encourage the crowd. He has an old-fashioned megaphone that helps his voice to be louder. ‘Roll up! Roll up! Meet the genius! Only sixpence a head, the body is free!’ he yells. People like this joke and soon there’s a long queue waiting to shake hands and say a kind word.

  There’s a tin bucket on the platform that you throw your sixpence into and it’s going ‘ting, ting, ting’ every minute or so and they’re raking in the money. It doesn’t take the Third Class Rooster long to get into the swing of things, and the announcer is saying, ‘Ask the genius anything you like, he’ll know the answer. If he doesn’t, then it’s a stupid question below his dignity to answer.’ Most people are too shy to ask, but some say things like, ‘What’s 124 plus 209 minus sixty-three divided by nine?’ And Gawie would think for a moment and say, ‘Dertig, Meneer, baie dankie.’ Him giving them the answer straight off and then saying, ‘Thirty, thank you, Sir,’ really impresses them. You’d hear people moving away from the platform saying things like, ‘Not only a genius, but also respectful. He will make a very good president.’

  Then Doctor Dyke comes to the edge of the platform with this half smile on his face. ‘So tell me, genius, what is the theory of Pythagoras?’ he asks. You could see Gawie was caught out, but luckily it’s something I know. I’m standing near so I walk quickly to the back of Gawie’s chair and whisper, ‘Say after me, Gawie, the square of the hypotenuse.’ So Gawie says, ‘The square of the hippopotamus.’ I’m trying not to laugh, ‘. . . of a right-angled triangle,’ Gawie gets this part right ‘. . . is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.’ Gawie completes this correctly, shouting it out loud to Doctor Dyke, who is standing far enough away for him not to hear me whispering behind the chair.

  ‘Not only correct, but also funny!’ Doctor Dyke laughs. ‘Hippopotamus, eh? Very amusing. The boy has wit as well as brains. An Afrikaner genius is worth more than a sixpence, here, take two shillings, son.’ Big ting.

  In the chair next to Gawie, Meneer Prinsloo clears his throat and sticks his nose in the air. He still thinks it was Doctor Dyke who cut off Piet Retief’s tail feathers so his own miserable Rhode Island Red rooster could win Best Rooster at the Pietersburg Agricultural Show. Then when Doctor Dyke had gone Meneer Prinsloo said, ‘He’s just showing off, throwing two bob in the bucket.’

  Anyway, the whole event is a big success and they going to do it every year for Gawie, so the town can take care of its own genius so he doesn’t have to ask for handouts. After supper that night Meneer Prinsloo is smiling and still puffed up with pride from the whole day because more than a hundred people came up to him and congratulated him for producing a Government-owned genius. Sitting in the big leather chair on the ‘Meet the Genius’ platform he had smiled modestly and said to these people, ‘On The Boys Farm they are all like my own sons, you hear?’ Then he’d turn to face Gawie. ‘But right from the beginning I knew this boy was a big brain. It wasn’t always easy because we on a strict budget and I don’t believe in mollycoddling, you understand? But it was worth the sacrifice to bring him up with a few extra learning privileges. After all, a genius is a genius and God only makes a very few.’ He’d shrug his shoulders, ‘What can I say? We can’t all be geniuses. I only did my job to encourage him like any decent human being would do that is also a good Afrikaner.’

  So now Gawie Grobler has gone from surrogaat to Third Class Rooster to Afrikaner Genius, and I think he was very happy for a change. It’s not every day you get called a genius. After we’d come out of the dining room he came up to me. ‘I still can’t be your friend any more, Voetsek,’ he said, ‘but now, what I’m going to do is let you have shit squares again. I’ll put them under your mattress, you hear?’ Then he asked, ‘That word you said that sounded like hippopotamus, what was it again?’

  ‘Hypotenuse,’ I replied. ‘It’s the side opposite the right angle in a triangle.’

  ‘Ja, that’s right, I just forgot for a moment. Hypotenoose.’

  ‘Hypotenuse, it’s like news, not noose.’ He didn’t say anything and just walked away. I don’t suppose geniuses like to have ordinary people correcting them.

  I was really pleased at getting the shit squares again. Keeping up with the war news was very hard work because there were six lavatories, and I’d have to secretly visit them all and go through the wad of shit squares on the wire hooks. If there was any war news on them I’d rip that square off the hook and so on. But you never got the full story in one go. Mostly you were left in mid-air with a headline that said, ‘Russians liberate —’, and then ‘Jews burned in ga—’, then ‘Dresden bombed —’. How did these Jews get themselves burned? Was the ‘ga’ a garage, garden, gap, gang, gallery, gaol, garret? You’d look and look through the shit squares, and sometimes like a miracle you’d find the connecting piece. Mostly someone had already wiped their arse on where the Jews were burned, and it was gone forever, and you never knew what happened to them. Of course, months later you learned that the ‘ga’ stood for terrible inhuman things, gas ovens.

  But you could tell, even from these only-bits-of-shit-square-news, that Adolf Hitler was on his last legs. There was also other ways that things were going badly for the Germans because suddenly there were no more Ossewabrandwag meetings, and all the guys in uniforms had disappeared from the face of the earth. The Dominee had also stopped telling us that underneath everything Hitler was secretly a God-fearing man. But he did say when Italy surrendered in 1943, ‘What can you expect from Roman Catholics? They cowards that Hitler should have known would let him down in a crisis.’

  Then one night at supper, Meneer Prinsloo said, ‘If anyone asks about the Ossewabrandwag you say nothing, you hear? If any boy says they know someone who is one, all I can say is God help him because that boy better start fearing for his life, and they going to hear the sjambokking he gets from me in Pretoria.’

  The weeks flew by like a flock of startled birds. The school holidays soon came, and Christmas and January went, and it was time to say goodbye. Then the last day came, and after breakfast, Tinker and me went down to the big library rock. The grass around it was long since summer brown, grown green after the fire, and now dried out in the late January heat. The lemon-stemmed whitethorn was back, cicadas shredded the vapoury air, and the sky was a don’t-care blue.

  We climbed to the top of the rock, and Tinker sat on my lap and I stroked her silky little ears and began to sob. There was no use saying anything, so I just let the tears come from deep down in my chest where the loneliness stones lived. Tinker licked my wet face and I could feel her little heart beating against my chest. My throat was so full of pain I couldn’t even say goodbye out loud. I just kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, and sobbed some more.

  Then Tinker and me had to wait at the front gate for Marie and Mevrou Van Heerden to come and pick up Tinker and me and take us to the doctor’s house. I had Tinker’s old sack that she’d always slept on at the dairy with me, so she’d know she had to stay at her new home. We didn’t have long to wait, and Marie could hardly fit in the front of the car as she was ‘any day now’, with her stomach bigger than a prize pumpkin. The idea was for me to go home with them and spend the rest of the day to settle Tinker in, and then around four in the afternoon they’d drive me back to The Boys Farm to pack my suitcase and get into my school uniform.

  The church planned a big send-off at seven o’clock for Gawie that was to take place at the railway station an hour before the train left. Gawie was to be taken to the station by Meneer Prinsloo in his Plymouth,
and I’d be taken in the back of the lorry with some of The Boys Farm boys who sang in the church choir. I was leaving on the same train, but I wasn’t included in the big farewell. I didn’t mind because Marie and Sergeant Van Niekerk, and Doctor Van Heerden was going to try if he didn’t have an emergency at the hospital, and Mevrou Van Heerden were coming along to see me off. Unfortunately Meneer Van Niekerk the headmaster couldn’t make it because he was attending a regional headmasters’ conference in Pietersburg with his wife, Mevrou Van Niekerk.

  So when the ’39 Chevvie stopped at the gate, Marie’s mum, who was driving, stopped and then called out, ‘Take a look in the dicky-seat, Tom.’ I looked and there was the most beautiful quilt you have ever seen. Colours like the rainbow and rolled up and tied with two cloth straps that’s joined with a cloth handle so it could be carried.

  Then Marie called out, ‘Do you like it, Tom?’

  ‘Ja, it’s truly beautiful, Marie.’ I walked round to her door and climbed on the running board. ‘Thank you, thank you, Marie! Miss Phillips will love it more than anything!’

  ‘It’s amazing what can come from a few rooster tail feathers,’ she laughed.

  ‘What’s this about rooster tail feathers?’ Mevrou Van Heerden asked.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Marie said hastily, ‘just an old joke.’ Then she turned back to me. ‘Tom, take the quilt and put it with your suitcase, we’ll wait for you here. But maak gou, because we in a bit of a hurry, hey, I’ve been getting contractions since midnight last night, but don’t worry they not hurting yet and they still half an hour apart.’

  It was nice to know that Marie hadn’t told her mum about Piet Retief’s tail feathers because it means perhaps women can sometimes keep a secret. Even though it’s only goose feathers and bits of cloth a quilt can be quite heavy, but still it was the best thing I could imagine to buy with my ten shillings and now I had a proper thank you for Miss Phillips. ‘What’s contractions?’ I asked.

  ‘The baby’s beginning to come, but it could be not until tomorrow, first pregnancy is always a long time.’ I can tell you, I grabbed that quilt and took it to the dormitory, then I ran back to the gate and Tinker and I got into the dicky-seat quick smart.

  I was really worried about Tinker adapting to her new home, even though it was a much nicer place to live than behind the dairy. I’d told her this a hundred times and, if she was a bit homesick, she still had her sack to smell. I didn’t want her going back to The Boys Farm looking for me and then not knowing what to do when she couldn’t find me.

  When we got to the doctor’s house there was a big surprise waiting for Tinker. Not only did she have a new home, but also her own house and a backyard. Doctor Van Heerden had painted Helmut’s kennel with new green paint, and above the door was stencilled in white, ‘Tinker’. Helmut was a big old labrador and Tinker was a tiny fox terrier so it was more like a mansion than a house for a dog like her. I put her sack inside the kennel and she went in and turned around three or four times, then lay down. This was taken by all of us as a very good sign. You never do know just what dogs understand when you talk to them. Tinker was, of course, a super-smart dog and must have understood right off that this was her new home. I only hoped she understood the next part, where I told her I was going away for a little while, but would be back for the school holidays. Around the kennel Doctor Van Heerden had built a fence of chicken wire so that Tinker had a yard of her own. He’d explained that this was so Tinker could grow accustomed to her new home for a few days after I left. ‘After that I’ll take it down, Tom, because, like Helmut, she’ll be one of the family.’

  We had a nice lunch, but early about eleven o’clock, some cold meat called polony and salad with a cold potato. This was because the maid had her afternoon off so couldn’t cook. Marie said to Mevrou Van Heerden that she wasn’t hungry and didn’t want any lunch but she better have a bit of a lie down because of all the excitement coming later with me catching the train. Marie’s mum said she had to go and fetch the midwife in Tzaneen as the lady who did it in Duiwelskrans was sick. Then, on the way back she’d see if the doctor was finished at the hospital where he was operating, taking out an appendix, tonsils and something that sounded very complicated with a name you couldn’t remember. She said she’d be back around four o’clock when the midwife would be with Marie so she could drive me back to The Boys Farm.

  So Tinker and me went exploring the doctor’s backyard, and looking at the chickens. Tinker found a hole beside the garden-shed wall, and started sniffing like mad and whimpering, and I knew that the rats that lived in there better say their prayers. Then I heard Marie shouting my name from the house and to come quick.

  What I saw you’d never believe. Marie was sitting on the kitchen floor with her back against a cupboard and her legs wide open. She was sweating like mad and groaning.

  ‘Tom, get on the telephone in the surgery, my baby is coming,’ she gasped. ‘Tell the doctor the contractions are coming very close together.’

  ‘What’s a contraction?’

  ‘For Chrissake, Tom, just do it!’ she screamed. ‘Ooh!

  Ahhhh!’

  I ran to the surgery that was at the back of the house and on the opposite side to the kitchen. I’d never used a telephone in my life, but, of course, I’d seen it done lots of times. Doctor Van Heerden’s phone wasn’t on the branch-line and I was halfway to the surgery when I remembered I didn’t know the hospital number. I rushed back.

  ‘What’s the hospital phone number?’ I called from the kitchen door.

  ‘Fifteen . . . Ahhhh!’

  My hand was shaking as I pushed my forefinger into the little round holes and dialled. What seemed like ages passed before a female voice on the other end said ‘Duiwelskrans Hospital.’

  ‘Marie’s having her baby, can you fetch the doctor quick!’ I shouted down the phone, forgetting to say please.

  ‘Can you bring the patient in?’ the voice asked calmly.

  ‘No, no. It’s happening on the kitchen floor!’ I yelled.

  ‘The name of the patient, please?’ the voice asked, still all calm and unconcerned.

  ‘Marie Booysens, I mean Van Niekerk,’ I shouted.

  ‘Marie! Our nurse Marie?’

  ‘Yes, quick, it’s happening, her baby, it’s happening!’ I called in a panicked voice.

  ‘Wait there!’ the voice instructed, no longer sounding calm or disinterested.

  Ages passed and you could hear Marie screaming from the kitchen. ‘Ahhhhhh!’ Sounds like that and also, when I ran back from the surgery after the phone call, you could hear the ‘Ooh! Oohs!’ as well.

  Then the voice came back, but this time it was Doctor Van Heerden.

  ‘Tom, I can’t leave here for two-and-a-half hours at least, I’m in the middle of a tricky operation. Isn’t my wife back from Tzaneen with the midwife?’

  ‘No, Doctor.’

  ‘Is Katrina the maid there?’

  ‘No, it’s her afternoon off.’

  ‘So you’re alone with Marie?’

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’

  ‘Don’t worry, son, I’m sure the midwife will be there any time now,’ he reassured me. ‘Now tell me, Tom, how far apart are the contractions?’

  I still didn’t know precisely what a contraction was, only that they came. ‘What’s a contraction look like?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s the time between every time Marie screams out?’ he answered calmly.

  ‘Very close, every minute, maybe less,’ I said, trying to estimate the time between the ‘Ahhhhhhs’.

  ‘Damn!’ I heard him say. ‘The ambulance has been called out on another maternity call at an outlying farm. Now listen, Tom, you’ll have to be the doctor until my wife arrives with the midwife. Labour for a first child can take anything up to twenty-four hours, sometimes more, I don’t expect the baby will come until later tonight. Stay calm, babies are born every minute of the day. Next to the bathroom is a cupboard with lots of towels, take them all out and put them
in the bedroom ready for Marie’s birth.’

  ‘She’s on the kitchen floor!’ I was still shouting down the receiver, not knowing how to use the phone properly.

  ‘Damn!’ I heard him say again, then, ‘Ja, okay, that’s a hard surface, that’s even better because she’s going to get a bad backache if she hasn’t got it already. Put some towels under her bottom and the base of her spine, Tom. I’ll get someone to call Sergeant Van Niekerk. If my wife and the midwife don’t get there in time I want you to hold Marie’s legs as wide apart as possible. She’ll kick and scream but take no notice, just hang on. But don’t worry, Tom, just comfort her, the first baby is unlikely to come so soon.’

  Back in the kitchen Marie had jammed her back into the corner where the two kitchen cupboards meet. She was completely wet with perspiration, and her dress was soaked, and her huge pumpkin stomach was rising and falling, her dress was clinging to her skin so you could see her bellybutton through the thin cotton. She was gasping for breath, and then screaming out, ‘Ahhhhhh!’ and the screams were longer than before but coming more often. I put the big black cast-iron kettle filled with water on the stove, which was cream enamel and very posh and electric. I had to turn the stove to high, but I didn’t know which switch was which plate and there was no time to work it out so I turned them all on to high. Then I fetched the towels and managed to get three of them under Marie’s bottom, which was quite a business, I can tell you.