Power of the Sword

by Wilbur Smith

  However, in this climate of indulgence the bullies and sadists who lurk in any community took full advantage of the sanction accorded them. There were a few merciless beatings, and one freshman was tarred and feathered. Manfred had heard light talk of this punishment, but had not been able to imagine the dreadful agony that it inflicted when the victim’s skin was sealed and his scalp and body hair matted and coated with hot tar. The boy was hospitalized and never returned to the university, but the affair was hushed up completely.

  Other freshmen dropped out in those first weeks, for the self-appointed guardians of the university tradition made no allowance for delicate physical or mental constitutions. One of the victims, an asthmatic, was judged guilty of insubordination by the seniors and was sentenced to formal drowning.

  This sentence was carried out in the bathroom of the residence. The victim was pinioned by four hefty seniors and lowered head first into the toilet bowl of the lavatory. Two fifth-year medical students were present to monitor the victim’s pulse and heartbeat during the punishment, but they had not made allowance for his asthma, and the drowning almost ended as the real thing. Only frantic efforts by the budding doctors and an intravenous injection of stimulant started the boy’s heart beating again; he left the university next day, like the other dropouts, never to return.

  Manfred, despite his size and physique and good looks, which made him a natural target, was able to bridle his anger and check his tongue. He submitted stoically even to extreme provocation until in the second week of torment a note was pinned on the board in the residence common room:

  All flatus will report to the university gymnasium at 4 pm on Saturday to try out for the boxing squad.

  Signed: Roelf Stander

  Captain of Boxing

  Each of the university residences specialized in some particular sport: one was the rugby football house, another was field and track; but Rust en Vrede’s sport was boxing. This, together with the fact that it was Uncle Tromp’s old house, was the reason why Manfred had applied for admission in the first place.

  It was also the reason why the interest in the freshmen tryout was far beyond anything that Manfred had expected. At least three hundred spectators were assembled, and the seats around the ring were all filled by the time that Manfred and his fellow flatus arrived at the gymnasium. Marshalled by one of the senior men into a crocodile column, they were marched to the changing-rooms and given five minutes to change into tennis shoes, shorts and vests, then lined up against the lockers in order of height.

  Roelf Stander strolled down the rank, glancing at the list in his hand and making the matchings. It was obvious that he had been studying them during the preceding weeks and grading their potential. Manfred, the tallest and sturdiest of all the freshmen, was at the end of the line, and Roelf Stander stopped in front of him last.

  ‘There is no other fart as loud and smelly as this one,’ he announced, and then was silent for a moment as he studied Manfred. ‘What do you weigh, Flatus?’

  ‘This flatus is light heavyweight, sir,’ and Roelf’s eyes narrowed slightly. He had already singled Manfred out as the best prospect and now the technical jargon heartened him.

  ‘Have you boxed before, Flatus?’ he demanded, and then pulled a wry face at the disappointing reply.

  ‘This flatus has never boxed a match, sir, but this flatus has had some practice.’

  ‘Oh, all right, then! I am heavyweight. But as there is no one else to give you a match, I’ll go a few rounds with you, if you promise to treat me lightly, Flatus.’

  Roelf Stander was captain of the university squad, amateur provincial champion and one of South Africa’s better prospects for the team which would go to Berlin for the Olympic Games in 1936. It was a rich joke cracked by a senior student and everybody laughed slavishly. Even Roelf could not hide a grin at his own preposterous plea for mercy.

  ‘All right, we’ll begin with the flyweights,’ he continued, and led them out into the gymnasium.

  The freshmen were seated on a long bench at the back of the hall with an imperfect view of the ring over the heads of the more privileged spectators as Roelf and his assistants, all members of the boxing squad, put the gloves on the first trialists and led them down the aisle to the ring.

  While this was going on Manfred became aware of somebody in the front row of seats standing and trying to catch his eye. He glanced around at the senior men who were in charge of them, but their attention was on the ring so for the first time he looked directly at the person in the crowd.

  He had forgotten how pretty Sarah was, either that or she had blossomed in the weeks since he had last seen her. Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks were flushed with excitement as she waved a lace handkerchief and mouthed his name happily.

  He kept his expression inscrutable, but lowered one eyelid at her in a furtive wink and she blew him a two-handed kiss and dropped back into her seat beside the mountainous bulk of Uncle Tromp.

  ‘They have both come!’ The knowledge cheered him enormously; until that moment he had not realized how lonely these last weeks had been. Uncle Tromp turned his head and grinned at him, his teeth very white in the frosted black bush of his beard; then he turned back to face the ring.

  The first bout began: two game little flyweights going at each other in a flurry of blows, but one was outclassed and soon there was blood sprinkling the canvas. Roelf Stander stopped it in the second round and patted the loser on the back.

  ‘Well done! No shame in losing.’

  The other bouts followed, all of them spirited, the fighters obviously doing their very best, but apart from a promising middleweight, it was all very rough and unskilled. At last Manfred was the only one on the bench.

  ‘All right, Flatus!’ The senior laced his gloves and told him: ‘Let’s see what you can do.’

  Manfred slipped the towel off his shoulders and stood up just as Roelf Stander climbed back into the ring from the changing-room end. He now wore the maroon vest and trunks piped with gold that were Varsity colours, and on his feet were expensive boots of glove leather laced high over the ankles. He held up both gloved hands to quieten the whistles and good-natured cheers.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen. We do not have a match for our last trialist; no other freshman in his weight division. So if you will be kind enough to bear with me, I’m going to take him through his paces.’

  The cheers broke out again, but now there were shouts of ‘Go easy on him, Roelf,’ and ‘Don’t kill the poor beggar!’ Roelf waved his assurance of mercy at them, concentrating on the section of seats filled with girls from the women’s residences, and there were muted squeals and giggles and a tossing of permanently waved coiffures, for Roelf stood six feet, with a square jaw, white teeth and flashing dark eyes. His hair was thick and wavy and gleaming with Brylcreem, his sideburns dense and curling and his moustache dashing as a cavalier’s.

  As Manfred reached the front row of seats he could not restrain himself from glancing sideways at Sarah and Uncle Tromp. Sarah was hopping her bottom up and down on her seat, and she pressed her clenched fists to cheeks that were rosy with excitement.

  ‘Get him, Manie,’ she cried. ‘Vat hom!’ and beside her Uncle Tromp nodded at him. ‘Fast as a mamba, Jong! Brave as a ratel!’ he rumbled so that only Manfred could hear; and Manfred lifted his chin and there was a new lightness in his feet as he ducked through the ropes into the ring.

  One of the other seniors had taken over the duty of referee: ‘In this corner at one hundred and eighty-five pounds the captain of Varsity and amateur heavyweight champion of the Cape of Good Hope – Roelf Stander! And in this corner at one hundred and seventy-three pounds a freshman—’ in deference to the delicate company, he did not use the full honorific, ‘ – Manfred De La Rey.’ The timekeeper struck his gong and Roelf came out of his corner dancing lightly, ducking and weaving, smiling thinly over his red leather gloves as they circled each other. Just out of striking distance, around they went, and then back the
other way, and the smile left Roelf’s lips and they tightened into a straight thin line. His light manner evaporated; he had not expected this.

  There was no weak place in the guard of the man who faced him; his cropped golden head was lowered on muscled shoulders, and he moved on his feet like a cloud.

  ‘He’s a fighter!’ Roelf’s anger flared. ‘He lied – he knows what he’s doing.’ He tried once more to command the centre of the ring, but was forced to turn out again as his adversary moved threateningly into his left.

  As yet neither of them had thrown a punch, but the cheers of the crowd subsided. They sensed that they were watching something extraordinary; they saw Roelf’s casual attitude change, saw deadly intent come into the way he was moving now; and those who knew him well saw the little lines of worry and perturbation at the corners of his mouth and eyes.

  Roelf flicked out his left, a testing shot, and the other man did not even deign to duck; he turned it off his glove contemptuously, and Roelf’s skin prickled with shock as he sensed the power in that fleeting contact and looked deeply into Manfred’s eyes. It was a trick of his, establishing domination by eye contact.

  This man’s eyes were a strange light colour, like topaz or yellow sapphire, and Roelf remembered the eyes of a calf-killing leopard that his father had caught in a steel spring trap in the hills above the farm homestead. These were the same eyes, and now they altered, they burned with a cold golden light, implacable and inhuman.

  It was not fear that clenched Roelf Stander’s chest but rather a premonition of terrible danger. This was an animal in the ring with him. He could see the hunger in its eyes, a great killing hunger, and he struck out at it instinctively.

  He used his left, his good hand, driving in hard at those pitiless yellow eyes. The blow died in the air and he tried desperately to recover, but his left elbow was raised, his flank was open for perhaps a hundredth part of a second, and something exploded inside of him. He did not see the fist; he did not recognize it as a punch, for he had never been hit like that before. It felt as though it was inside him, bursting through his ribs, tearing out his viscera, imploding his lungs, driving the wind out of his throat in a hissing agony as he was flung backwards.

  The ropes caught him in the small of the back and under the shoulderblades and hurled him forward again like a stone from a slingshot. Time seemed to slow down to a trickle; his vision was enhanced, magnified as though there was a drug in his blood, and this time he saw the fist; he had a weird flash of fantasy that it was not flesh and bone but black iron in that glove, and his flesh quailed. But he was powerless to avoid it and this time the shock was even greater – unbelievable, beyond his wildest imaginings. He felt something tear inside him and the bones of his legs melted like hot candlewax.

  He wanted to scream at the agony of it, but even in his extremity he choked it off. He wanted to go down, to get down on the canvas before the fist came again, but the ropes held him up and his body seemed to shatter like crystal as the gloved hand crashed into him and the ropes flung him forward.

  His hands dropped away from his face and he saw the fist coming yet again. It seemed to balloon before his eyes, filling his vision, but he did not feel it strike.

  Roelf was moving into it with all his weight and his skull snapped back in whiplash against the tension of his spinal column and then dropped forward again and he went down on his face like a dead man and lay without a tremor of movement on the white canvas.

  It was all over in seconds, the crowd sitting in stunned silence, Manfred still weaving and swaying over the prostrate figure that lay at his feet, his features contorted into a mask of savagery and that strange yellow light glowing in his eyes, not yet human, with the killing sickness still strong upon him.

  Then in the crowd a woman screamed and instantly there was consternation and uproar. The men were up on their feet, chairs crashing over backwards, roaring in bewilderment and amazement and jubilation, rushing forward, clambering through the ropes, surrounding Manfred, pounding his back, others on their knees beside the maroon-and-gold-clad figure lying deathly still on the canvas, jabbering instructions at one another as they lifted him gingerly, one of them dabbing ineffectually at the blood; all of them stunned and shaken.

  The women were pale-faced with shock, some of them still screaming with delicious horror, their eyes bright with excitation which was tinged with sexuality, craning to watch as Roelf Stander was lifted over the ropes and carried down the aisle, hanging limp as a corpse, his head lolling, blood running back from his slack mouth across his cheek into his gleaming hair – turning to watch Manfred as he was hustled along to the changing-rooms by a group of seniors. The women’s faces betrayed fear and horror but some of their eyes smouldered with physical arousal, and one of them reached out to touch Manfred’s shoulder as he passed.

  Uncle Tromp took Sarah’s arm to calm her, for she was capering and shrilling like a dervish, and led her out of the hall into the sunlight. She was still incoherent with excitement.

  ‘He was wonderful – so quick, so beautiful. Oh, Uncle Tromp, I have never seen anything like that in my life. Isn’t he wonderful?’

  Uncle Tromp grunted but made no comment, listening to her chatter all the way back to the manse. Only when they climbed the front steps onto the wide stoep did he stop and look back, as though to a place or a person that he was leaving with deep regret.

  ‘His life has changed, and ours will change with him,’ he murmured soberly. ‘I pray Almighty God that none of us ever lives to regret what happened to us this day, for I am the one who brought this about.’

  For three more days the ritual of initiation continued, and Manfred was still denied contact with anybody but his fellow freshmen. However, to them he had become a godlike figure, their very hope of salvation, and they crowded to him pathetically through the final humiliations and degradation to take strength and determination from him.

  The last night was the worst. Blindfolded and denied sleep, forced to sit unflinching on a narrow beam, a galvanized bucket over their heads against which a senior would crack a club unexpectedly, the night seemed to last for ever. Then in the dawn the buckets and blindfolds were removed and Roelf Stander addressed them.

  ‘Men!’ he started, and they blinked with shock at being called that, for they were still in a stupor from lack of sleep and half deafened by the blows on their buckets. ‘Men!’ Stander repeated. ‘We are proud of you – you are the best damned bunch of freshers we’ve had in this house since I was a fresher myself. You took everything we could throw at you and never squealed or funked it. Welcome to Rust en Vrede; this is your house now, and we are your brothers.’ And then the seniors were swarming around them, laughing and slapping their backs and embracing them.

  ‘Come on, men! Down to the pub. We are buying the beer!’ Roelf Stander bellowed and, a hundred strong, arms linked, singing the house song, they marched down to the old Drosdy Hotel and pounded on the locked door until the publican in defiance of licensing hours finally gave in and opened up for them.

  Light-headed with sleeplessness and with a pint of lager in his belly, Manfred was grinning owlishly and hanging surreptitiously onto the bar counter to keep on his feet when he had a feeling that something was up. He turned quickly.

  The crowd around him had opened, leaving a corridor down which Roelf Stander was stalking towards him, grim-faced and threatening. Manfred’s pulse raced as he realized that this was to be their first confrontation since that in the ring three days before, and it was not going to be pleasant. He set down his empty tankard, shook his head to clear it and turned to face the other man, and they glowered at each other.

  Roelf stopped in front of him, and the others, freshers and seniors, crowded close so as not to miss a single word. The suspense drew out for long seconds, nobody daring to breathe.

  ‘Two things I want to do to you,’ Roelf Stander growled, and then, as Manfred braced himself, he smiled, a flashing charming smile, and held out his righ
t hand. ‘First, I want to shake your hand, and second, I want to buy you a beer. By God, Manie, you punch like no man I’ve ever fought before.’ There was a howl of laughter and the day dissolved into a haze of beer fumes and good fellowship.

  That should have been the end of it, because even though formal initiation had ended and Manfred had been accepted into the Rust en Vrede fraternity, there was still a vast social divide between a fourth-year honours man, senior student and captain of boxing, and a freshman. However, the following evening, an hour before house dinner, there was a knock on Manie’s door and Roelf sauntered in dressed in his academic gown and hood, dropped into the single armchair, crossed his ankles on top of Manie’s desk and chatted easily about boxing and law studies and South-West Africa geography until the gong sounded, when he stood up.

  ‘I’ll wake you at five am tomorrow for roadwork. We’ve got an important match against the Ikeys in two weeks,’ he announced, and then grinned at Manie’s expression. ‘Yes, Manie, you are on the squad.’

  After that Roelf dropped in every evening before dinner, often with a black bottle of beer in the pocket of his gown which they shared out of tooth mugs, and each time their friendship became more relaxed and secure.

  This was not lost on the other members of the house, both seniors and freshers, and Manie’s status was enhanced. Two weeks later the match against the Ikey team was contested in four weight divisions and Manie donned the university colours for the first time. Ikeys was the nickname for the students at the University of Cape Town, the English-language university of the Cape and traditional rival of Stellenbosch, the Afrikaans-language university whose men were nicknamed Maties. So keen was the rivalry between them that Ikey supporters came out the thirty miles in busloads, dressed in their university colours, full of beer and rowdy enthusiasm, and packed out half the gymnasium, roaring their university songs at the Matie supporters on the other side of the hall.