Power of the Sword

by Wilbur Smith

  Manfred dropped his hands and stepped back.

  ‘I can’t do that, Uncle Tromp,’ he protested.

  ‘Can’t do what, Jong? What can’t you do?’

  ‘I couldn’t hit you. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be respectful.’

  ‘So we are talking respect now, not boxing. We are talking powder puffs and ladies’ gloves, are we?’ Uncle Tromp roared. ‘I thought you wanted to fight. I thought you wanted to be a man and now I find a snot-nosed whining baby.’ He changed his voice to a cracked falsetto. ‘It wouldn’t be right, Uncle Tromp, it wouldn’t be respectful,’ he mimicked.

  Suddenly his right hand shot out and the open palm cracked against Manfred’s cheek, a stinging slap that left the scarlet imprint of fingers on his skin.

  ‘You’re not respectful, Jong. You’re yellow. That’s what you are, a yellow-bellied whimpering little boy. You’re not a man! You’ll never be a fighter!’

  The other huge paw blurred with speed, coming so fast and unexpectedly that Manfred barely saw it. The pain of the blow filled his eyes with tears.

  ‘We’ll have to find a skirt for you, girlie, a yellow skirt.’

  Uncle Tromp was watching him carefully, watching his eyes, praying silently for it to happen as he poured withering contempt on the sturdy youth who retreated, bewildered and uncertain. He followed and struck again, cutting Manfred’s lower lip, splitting the soft skin against his teeth, leaving a smear of blood down his chin.

  ‘Come on!’ he exhorted silently, behind the jeering flood of insults. ‘Come on, please, come on!’

  Then with a great explosion of joy that filled his chest to bursting, he saw it happen. Manfred dropped his chin, and his eyes changed. Suddenly they glowed with a cold yellow light, implacable as the stare of a lion in the moment before it launches its charge, and the youth came at him.

  Though he had been waiting for it, expecting it, praying for it, still the speed and savagery of the attack caught Uncle Tromp off-balance. Only the old fighter’s instinct saved him, and he deflected that first murderous assault, sensing the power in the fists that grazed his temple and ruffled his beard as they passed, and for the first few desperate seconds there was no time for thought. All his wits and attention were needed to stay on his feet and keep the cold, ferocious animal he had created at bay.

  Then experience and ringcraft, long forgotten, reasserted themselves, and he ducked and dodged and danced easily just beyond the boy’s reach, deflecting the wild punches, watching objectively as though he sat in a ringside seat, assessing with rising delight the way in which the untutored youth used either fist with equal power and dexterity.

  ‘A natural two-handed puncher! He doesn’t favour his right, and he gets his shoulders behind every punch without being taught how,’ he exulted.

  Then he looked again at the eyes and felt a chill of awe at what he had loosed upon the world.

  ‘He’s a killer.’ He recognized it. ‘He has the instinct of the leopard who kills for the taste of blood and the simple joy of it. He no longer sees me. He sees only the prey before him.’

  That knowledge had distracted him. He caught a right-hander on his upper arm and it jarred the teeth in his jaws and the bones of his ankles. He knew it would bruise him from the shoulder to the elbow, and his breath burned in his throat. His legs were turning to lead. He could feel his heart drumming against his ribs. Twenty-two years since he had been in the ring; twenty-two years of Trudi’s cooking and his most vigorous exercise undertaken either at his desk or in the pulpit, while the youth before him was like a machine, boring in remorselessly, both fists swinging, those yellow eyes fixed upon him in a murderous myopic stare.

  Uncle Tromp gathered himself, waited for the opening as Manfred swung right-handed, and then he counter-punched with his left, always his best, the same blow that had dropped black Jephta in the third, and it went in with that beautiful little click of bone against bone.

  Manfred dropped to his knees, stunned, the killing yellow light fading from his eyes to be replaced by a dull bemused look, as though awakening from a trance.

  ‘That’s it, Jong.’ The Trumpet of God’s fine note was reduced to a breathy gasp. ‘Down on your knees and give thanks to your Maker.’ Uncle Tromp lowered his bulk beside Manfred and placed a thick arm around his shoulders. He raised his face and his unsteady voice to heaven. ‘Almighty God, we give You thanks for the strong body with which You have endowed Your young servant. We give You thanks also for his natural left – while realizing that it will need a lot of hard work – and we humbly beseech You to look favourably upon our efforts to instil in him even the rudiments of footwork. His right hand is a blessing directly from You, for which we will always be eternally grateful, though he will have to learn not to telegraph it five days in advance of the punch.’

  Manfred was still shaking his head and rubbing his jaw, but he responded to the probing thumb in his ribs with a fervent ‘Amen.’

  ‘We will begin roadwork immediately, O Lord, while we set up a ring in the toolshed in which to learn the ropes, and we humbly beseech Your blessing on our enterprise and Your co-operation in keeping it from coming to the notice of Your servant’s partner in holy matrimony, Trudi Bierman.’

  Most afternoons, under the pretext of visiting one of his parishioners, Uncle Tromp would put the pony in the trap and drive out of the front gate with a flourish, waving to his wife on the front stoep. Manfred would be waiting at the clump of camel-thorn trees beside the main Windhoek road, already barefoot and stripped to khaki shorts, and he would trot out and fall in beside the trap as Uncle Tromp shook the fat pony into a canter.

  ‘Five miles today, Jong – down to the river bridge and back, and we’ll do it a bit faster than yesterday.’

  The gloves that Uncle Tromp had smuggled down from the trunk in the loft were cracked with age, but they patched them with woodglue and the first time he laced them onto Manfred’s hands he watched while the lad lifted them to his nose and sniffed them.

  ‘The smell of leather and sweat and blood, Jong. Fill your nostrils with it. You’ll live with it from now on.’

  Manfred punched the tattered old gloves together, and for a moment that flat yellow light glowed in his eyes again, then he grinned.

  ‘They feel good,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing feels better,’ Uncle Tromp agreed, and led him to the heavy canvas kitbag filled with river sand that hung from the rafters in the corner of the toolshed.

  ‘To begin with I want to see that left hand do some work. It’s like a wild horse; we have to break it and train it, teach it not to waste strength and effort. It has to learn to do our bidding, not flap around in the air.’

  They built the ring together, quarter-full size for the toolshed would take no more, and they sank the corner poles deep in the earthen floor and cemented them in. Then they stretched a sheet of canvas over the floor. The canvas and the cement had been commandeered from one of Uncle Tromp’s wealthy parishioners, ‘For the glory of God and the Volk,’ an appeal that could not be lightly dismissed.

  Sarah, sworn to secrecy by the most solemn and dreadful oath that Manfred and Uncle Tromp could concoct between them, was allowed to watch the ringwork, even though she was a thoroughly partisan audience and cheered shrilly and shamelessly for the younger participant.

  After two of these sessions, which left Uncle Tromp unmarked but blowing like a steam engine, he shook his head ruefully. ‘It’s no use, Jong, either we have to find you another sparring partner, or I’ll have to start training again myself.’

  Thereafter the pony was left tethered in the camel-thorn clump and Uncle Tromp grunted and gasped beside Manfred on the long runs, while the sweat fell from his beard like the first rains of summer.

  However, his protuberant gut shrivelled miraculously, and soon from under the layers of soft fat that covered his shoulders and chest the outline of hard muscle reappeared. Gradually they stepped up the rounds from two to four minutes with Sarah, elected
official timekeeper, measuring each round with Uncle Tromp’s cheap silver pocket watch which made up for its dubious accuracy by its size.

  It was almost a month before Uncle Tromp could say to himself, though he would never have dreamed of saying it to Manfred, ‘He is starting to look like a boxer now.’ Instead he said: ‘Now I want speed. I want you to be fast as a mamba – brave as a ratel.’

  The mamba was the most dreaded of all Africa’s serpents. It could grow as thick as a man’s wrist and reach twenty feet in length. Its venom could inflict death on a fully grown man in four minutes, an excruciating death. The mamba was so swift that it could overhaul a galloping horse, and the strike was so swift as to cheat the eye.

  ‘Fast as a mamba – brave as a ratel,’ Uncle Tromp repeated, as he would a hundred, a thousand times in the years ahead.

  The ratel was the African honey badger, a small animal with a loose but thick tough skin that could defy the bite of a mastiff or the fangs of a leopard, a massive flattened skull from which the heaviest club bounced harmlessly, and the heart of a lion, the courage of a giant. Normally mild and forbearing, it would fearlessly attack the largest adversary the instant that it was provoked. Legend had it that the ratel possessed an instinct for the groin and that it would rush in and rip the testicles out of any male animal, man or bull buffalo or lion, who threatened it.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you, Jong.’ Uncle Tromp led Manfred to the big wooden chest against the back wall of the toolshed and opened the lid. ‘It’s for you. I ordered it by mail order from Cape Town. It arrived on the train yesterday.’

  He placed the tangle of leather and rubber in Manfred’s arms.

  ‘What is it, Uncle Tromp?’

  ‘Come, I’ll show you.’

  Within minutes Uncle Tromp had rigged the complicated contraption.

  ‘Well, what do you think, Jong?’ He stood back, beaming hugely through his beard.

  ‘It’s the best present anyone has ever given me, Uncle Tromp. But what is it?’

  ‘You call yourself a boxer and you don’t know a speed bag when you see one!’

  ‘A speed bag! It must have cost a lot of money.’

  ‘It did, Jong, but don’t tell your Aunt Trudi.’

  ‘What do we do with it?’

  ‘This is what we do!’ cried Uncle Tromp, and he started the bag rattling against the frame in a rapid staccato rhythm, using both fists, taking the ball on the bounce, keeping it going unerringly until at last he stepped back panting.

  ‘Speed, Jong, fast as a mamba.’

  Faced with Uncle Tromp’s generosity and enthusiasm, Manfred had to gather all his courage to speak the words that had been burning his tongue all these weeks.

  He waited until the last possible moment of the last possible day before blurting out, ‘I have to go away, Uncle Tromp,’ and he watched in agony the disappointment and disbelief flood over the craggy bearded face that he had come so swiftly and naturally to love.

  ‘Go away? You want to leave my house?’ Uncle Tromp stopped short in the dust of the Windhoek road and wiped the sweat from his face with the threadbare towel draped around his neck. ‘Why, Jong, why?’

  ‘My pa,’ Manfred answered. ‘My pa’s trial starts in three days’ time. I have to be there, Uncle Tromp. I have to go, but I will come back. I swear I will come back, just as soon as I can.’

  Uncle Tromp turned from him and began to run again, pounding down the long straight road, the dust puffing from under his bearlike feet at each pace, and Manfred sprinted up beside him. Neither of them spoke again until they reached the clump of trees where the pony trap was hitched.

  Oom Tromp climbed up into the driver’s seat and picked up the reins. He looked down at Manfred standing beside the front wheel.

  ‘I wish, Jong, that I had a son of my own to show me such loyalty,’ he rumbled softly, and shook the pony into a trot.

  The following evening, long after dinner and the evening prayers, Manfred lay on his bed, the candle on the shelf above his head carefully screened so that not a glimmer could alert Aunt Trudi to his extravagance. He was reading Goethe, his father’s favourite author. It wasn’t easy. His German had improved vastly. On two days a week Aunt Trudi insisted that no other language was spoken in the household, and she initiated erudite discussion at the dinner-table in which all members of the family were expected – nay, forced, to participate. Still Goethe wasn’t a romp, and Manfred was concentrating so fiercely on his convoluted use of verbs that he didn’t know Uncle Tromp was in the room until his shadow fell across the bed and the book was lifted from his hand.

  ‘You will ruin your eyes, Jong.’

  Manfred sat up quickly and swung his legs off the bed while Uncle Tromp sank down beside him.

  For a few moments the old man leafed through the book. Then he spoke without looking up. ‘Rautenbach is going in to Windhoek tomorrow in his T-model Ford. He is taking in a hundred turkeys to market, but he will have room for you on the back. You’ll have to put up with flying feathers and turkey shit, but it’s cheaper than the train.’

  ‘Thank you, Uncle Tromp.’

  ‘There is an old widow in town, devout and decent – also a very good cook. She’ll take you in. I’ve written to her.’ He drew a sheet of his notepaper from his pocket and placed it in Manfred’s lap. The single sheet was folded and sealed with a blob of red wax, a back country minister’s stipend could not encompass the luxury of envelopes.

  ‘Thank you, Uncle Tromp.’ Manfred could think of nothing else to say. He wanted to fling his arms round that thick bearlike neck and lay his cheek against the coarse grey-shot beard, but he controlled himself.

  ‘There may be other expenses,’ Uncle Tromp gruffed. ‘I don’t know how you will get back here. Anyway—’ He groped in his pocket, seized Manfred’s wrist with the other hand, and pressed something into his open palm.

  Manfred looked down at the two bright half-crown coins in his hand and shook his head slowly.

  ‘Uncle Tromp—’

  ‘Say nothing, Jong – especially not to your Aunt Trudi.’ Uncle Tromp began to stand, but Manfred caught his sleeve.

  ‘Uncle Tromp. I can pay you back – for this and all the other things.’

  ‘I know you will, Jong. You will pay me back a thousand times, in pride and joy one day.’

  ‘No, no, not one day. I can pay you back now.’

  Manfred sprang eagerly from the bed and ran to the upended packing case standing on four bricks that was his wardrobe. He knelt and thrust his arm into the space below the box and brought out a yellow tobacco bag. He hurried back to where Uncle Tromp sat on the iron bed, pulling open the drawstring of the small pouch, his hands shaking with excitement and eagerness to please.

  ‘Here, Uncle Tromp, open your hand.’

  Smiling indulgently Uncle Tromp held out his huge paw, the back of it covered with coarse black curls, the fingers thick as good farmer’s sausages.

  ‘What have you here, Jong?’ he demanded jovially, and then the smile froze as Manfred spilled a cascade of glittering stones into his hand.

  ‘Diamonds, Uncle Tromp,’ Manfred whispered. ‘Enough to make you a rich man. Enough to buy you anything you need.’

  ‘Where did you get these, Jong?’ Uncle Tromp’s voice was calm and dispassionate. ‘How did you come by these?’

  ‘My pa – my father. He put them into the lining of my jacket. He said they were for me, to pay for my education and my upbringing, to pay for all the things that he wanted to do for me but had never been able.’

  ‘So!’ said Uncle Tromp softly. ‘It is all true then, all of what the newspapers say. It isn’t just English lies. Your father is a brigand and a robber.’ The huge hand clenched into a fist over the glittering treasure. ‘And you were with him, Jong. You must have been there when he did these terrible things that they accuse him of, that they will try and condemn him for. Were you with him, Jong? Answer me!’ His voice was rising like a storm wind, and now he let out
a bellow. ‘Did you commit this great evil with him, Jong?’ The other hand shot out and seized the front of Manfred’s shirt. He pulled Manfred’s face to within inches of his own jutting beard. ‘Confess to me, Jong. Tell it all to me, every last scrap of evil. Were you with him when your father attacked this Englishwoman and robbed her?’

  ‘No! No!’ Manfred shook his head wildly. ‘It’s not true. My father wouldn’t do a thing like that. They were our diamonds. He explained it to me. He went to get back what was rightfully ours.’

  ‘Were you with him when he did this thing, Jong? Tell me the truth,’ Uncle Tromp interrupted him with another roar. ‘Tell me, were you with him?’

  ‘No, Uncle Tromp. He went alone. And when he came back he was hurt. His hand – his wrist—’

  ‘Thank you, Lord!’ Uncle Tromp looked upwards with relief. ‘Forgive him for he knew not what he did, O Lord. He was led into sin by an evil man.’

  ‘My father isn’t evil,’ Manfred protested. ‘He was cheated out of what was truly his.’

  ‘Silence, Jong.’ Oom Tromp rose to his full height, splendid and awesome as a biblical prophet. ‘Your words are an offence in the sight of God. You will make retribution here and now.’

  He dragged Manfred across the toolroom and pushed him in front of the black iron anvil.

  ‘Thou shalt not steal. That is the very word of God.’ He placed one of the diamonds in the centre of the anvil. ‘These stones are the ill-begotten fruits of a terrible evil.’ He reached to the rack beside him and brought down a four pound sledgehammer. ‘They must be destroyed.’ He thrust the hammer into Manfred’s hands.

  ‘Pray for forgiveness, Jong. Beg the Lord for his charity and forgiveness – and strike!’

  Manfred stood with the hammer in his hands, holding it at high port across his chest, staring at the diamond on the anvil.

  ‘Strike, Jong! Break that cursed thing or be for ever cursed by it,’ roared Uncle Tromp. ‘Strike, in the name of God. Rid yourself of the guilt and the shame.’

  Slowly Manfred raised the hammer on high and then paused. He turned and looked at the fierce old man.