The Power of One (22 page)

My mother was sitting at the machine unpicking stitches as I entered the sewing room. Her eyes were red from crying, but otherwise she seemed quite composed. I put the cup of tea down carefully on the table next to the machine and fished in my pocket for the Aspro, which I placed next to the cup. “Thank you,” she said in a tight voice, not looking up at me. “Now go straight to your room, you may not come out until morning.”

It was light punishment; I had expected far worse. In the chamberpot Dum and Dee had left three cold sausages, two big roast potatoes, and a couple of mandarins, a proper feast. There wasn't much else to do but go to sleep after that. It had been a long day and a very good one. The loneliness birds had flown away and I had grown up and made a new friend called Doc and had learned several new things.
Euphorbia grandicornis
was an ugly green cactus with long, dangerous-looking thorns,
Aloe microsfigma
was a tiny spotted aloe that liked to hide under rocks, and a professor was a teacher who taught music. Also, there was a rose called Mrs. Butt and another called Imperial Sunset.

Tomorrow I would write a letter to Nanny and send her my ten shillings. She would like that, and she would know that somebody loved her. I fell asleep thinking about how big the hole would have to be to bury Big Hettie in, about Hoppie fighting Adolf Hitler, which would probably be an easier fight than the one against Jackhammer Smit, and about how I was going to become welterweight champion of the world.

Two days later I was sitting on the front
stoep
watching army trucks passing the front door, for I had discovered that an army camp was being set up in the valley about three miles out of town. The big khaki Bedford, Chevrolet, and Ford trucks, their backs covered with canvas tarpaulin canopies, had been passing for two days. Some contained soldiers, who sat in the back carrying .303 rifles. But mostly they carried tents and timber and other things needed for building an army camp.

My granpa, when he had heard the news on the wireless, had said it was typical of the army bigwigs, putting a military camp at the end of a branch line, which couldn't move troops out fast enough to anywhere, least of all to Lourengo Marques, where the Portuguese couldn't be relied on to maintain their neutrality for one moment.

My Adolf Hitler fears returned immediately. Lourengo Marques, I discovered, was no more than eighty miles away if they came through Swaziland. I was glad that my granpa had Nanny's address in Zululand and that I had sent her off a postal order for my ten shillings, my love in a letter, and a photograph taken much earlier showing her holding me. If she couldn't get somebody to read the letter, she'd know it was from me and my original escape plan would still be intact.

I was also glad the army was so close at hand. Lourengo Marques, the nearest seaport, was obviously where Adolf Hitler planned to march all the
rooineks
from these parts into the sea. Even an army at the end of a branch line was better than no army at all.

My mother added that Lourengo Marques was probably seething with German spies at this very moment, and they were probably using code words on Radio Lourengo Marques to relay messages to the Boer Nazis who were plotting to tear down the country from within. I thought about the Judge and Mr. Stoffel and how they always listened to the wireless. When my granpa said that was a lot of poppycock, I was not so sure.

I thought about these things as I watched a convoy of 105 army trucks go by, the biggest yet by far, so I didn't notice Doc coming up the hill until he almost reached the gate.

“Goot morning, Peekay.” He was dressed in a white linen suit and wore a panama hat, so that I hardly recognized him. He carried a string bag and a silver-handled walking stick and under one arm was a large manila envelope.

“Good morning, Doc,” I said, jumping to my feet. I found it a little strange to say his name out loud, though in my head I'd said it a thousand times.

“I can come in
yjaV
I hurried down the steps to open the gate. “This is an official visit, Peekay, I have come to see your mother.”

I felt stupidly disappointed. I hadn't known he knew my mother. I followed him up the steps. “You will introduce us, please,” he said as we reached the veranda.

Unreasonably pleased that I was his first friend, I opened the front door and led him into the parlor. Visitors to the farm had been infrequent, but the routine was unerring. First you sat people down, and then you gave them coffee and cake. I asked Doc to sit down and he did so, but not before he had stood in the center of the zebra skin and slowly turned around, taking the room in. When he reached the grandfather clock, he paused and said, “English, London, about 1625, a very good piece.” He took a gold hunter from his fob pocket and, snapping it open, examined it briefly. “Four minutes a month,” he said, returning the watch to his pocket. I was amazed he should know how much our grandfather clock lost, for he was right. I thought perhaps my granpa had told him.

“Do you know my granpa?” I asked Doc.

“I have not yet had this pleasure, but it will be okay, we are both men of thorns, with me the cactus, with him the rose. The English and the Germans are not so far apart. It will be all right, you will see.” He said this just as I was about to leave the room to get Dum and Dee to bring coffee and cake.

I was dumbfounded. Professor von Vollensteen was a German! What should I do? My grandfather had gone to the library in town to change his books, that was one good thing anyway. You never knew what he might do, coming face to face with a German, although even against Doc I didn't fancy his chances. I decided to say nothing to my mother; she might have a conniption on the spot.

Dum and Dee had somehow known we had a guest and were putting out the tea things and half a canary cake on a plate. I could hear the sewing machine zizzing away as I walked over to the far side of the house to tell my mother she had a guest. I knocked before opening the door.

“There is someone to see you, Mother,” I shouted over the sound of the whirring machine. She stopped sewing and looked up.

“Tell her to come in, darling, it must be Mrs. Cameron about her skirt.”

“It is Professor von Vollensteen. He wants to see you,” I said in a low voice.

“Professor whom?” she asked, removing her glasses and looking directly at me.

“He is a teacher, a teacher of music,” I said urgently in an attempt to hide my confusion. She rose to her feet and patted her hair and reached for her bag. From it she took a compact and, looking into the tiny mirror on the inside flap of the bag, hurriedly powdered her nose.

“Well, he can't teach music here, we haven't got that sort of money,” she said, putting the pad back into the compact and snapping it shut. I followed behind her, not at all sure of the reception Doc would get.

But my mother was country-bred and all visitors were treated courteously, no matter what their purpose. Doc rose from the lounge as she entered and extended his hand. “Madame,” he said, bowing slightly, “Professor Karl von Vollensteen.”

My mother extended her hand and Doc took it lightly and bowed over it, bringing his heels together. “Please sit down, Professor. Will you take coffee with us?” She reached no higher than his waist, and when he sat down her head was level with his.

“You are very kind, madame. Today we have two things.” He reached into the string bag at his feet and produced a jam tin, which held a small plant. The plant had only two leaves, which stuck straight up out of the tin and were tinged with pink around the edges. They looked exactly like two light green rabbit ears. “Allow me please to introduce
Kalanchoe thyrsiflora,
quite rare in these parts, often mistaken for a common plant, but I assure you, Madame, a true cactus.” Doc handed the jam tin to my mother, who remarked that she couldn't possibly remember the name and laughed her nervous laugh.
“Ja,
it is a difficult name but, if you wish, you may just call it Rabbit Ears,” Doc said charitably, though he somehow left the impression that the little cactus was demeaned by such a common name.

Dum and Dee entered, Dee carrying a tray with cups and cake and Dum carrying the china coffeepot we used for visitors. Dee set the tray on the traymobile and carefully wheeled it over to my mother, who sent her back to fetch a knife for the cake. Dum, keeping her back straight and her arm rigid, bent her knees almost to the ground so she could put the coffeepot down on the traymobile without any possibility of spilling it. Dum too was sent back to the kitchen, for the coffee strainer.

“You can tell them a hundred times over, it's useless. I don't know what goes on inside their heads,” my mother sighed, putting the tiny plant on the shelf under the traymobile. I had been standing beside her chair, and now she turned to me. “Run along now.”

Doc looked up. “With your permission, madame, I would like for Peekay to stay, please?”

“Who?” my mother said.

“Your son, madame, I would much like him to stay.”

My mother turned to me. “What on earth have you been telling the Professor? Who is Peekay?”

“It's my new name. I—I haven't told you about it yet,” I said, flustered. My mother laughed, but I knew she was annoyed.

“Why, you have a perfectly good name, my dear.” She gave me a funny look, then turned to Doc. “Of course he may stay, but I'm afraid our family never had much of an ear for music and lessons would be much too expensive.”

Without looking at Dee and Dum, who had reentered the room and now stood beside her, she held her hand out for the knife and strainer and dismissed them with an impatient flick of her head.

“I am most grateful, madame.” My mother lifted the coffeepot. “Black only, no sugar,” Doc said, leaning forward in anticipation.

My mother poured his coffee. “A nice piece of cake, Professor?” Doc put his hand up in refusal. “Thank you,” he said. It was a speech habit I was going to find hard to get used to, saying “Thank you” when he meant “No, thank you.” Clearly my mother misunderstood him, for she placed a piece of the canary cake on a side plate and handed it to him with his coffee. He accepted the cake without further protest.

Doc put the coffee and cake on the zebra hide between his legs and picked up the manila envelope. “And so now we have the second thing.” His eyes sparkled as he handed the envelope to my mother.

“Goodness, what can it be?” she said, pulling out the tucked-in flap of the large brown envelope. She withdrew the largest photograph I had ever seen, which, to my amazement, turned out to be of me sitting on the rock on top of the hill. “Goodness gracious!” My mother stared at it, momentarily lost for words. The photograph showed every detail, even the lichen on the rock, more clearly than any I had seen before. Shafts of sunlight shining through a silver-edged cloud seemed to be directed straight at the rock on which I sat. My body, half in shadow, appeared to be as one with the rock. I didn't know it at the time, but it was an extraordinary picture. At last my mother spoke. “Wherever did you take this? It is so sad! Why did you take a picture of him when he was looking sad?”

Doc rubbed his chin. It was plainly not the comment he expected, and he needed a moment to think about the answer. Ignoring the first question, he leaned forward as he answered the second.
“Ja,
this is so. Only one great picture shows a man when he smiles. Frans Hals,
Laughing Cavalier,
1624.” He pointed at the grandfather clock. “At that time they make this clock also. The smile, madame, is used by humans to hide the truth. The artist is only interested to reveal the truth.” He leaned back, clearly satisfied with his reply.

“Goodness, Professor, all that is much too deep for simple

country people like us. He's only a very little boy, you know? I prefer him to smile.”

“Of course! But sadness, like understanding, comes early in life for some. It is part of intelligence.”

My mother's back stiffened. “You seem to know a lot about my son, Professor. I can't imagine how, he has only been home from boarding school for three days.”

Doc clapped his hands gleefully. “Boarding school! Ha, that explains, I think, everything. For a boy like this boarding school is a prison,
jaV

My mother was beginning to show her impatience. Her fingers tapped steadily on the arm of the chair, a sure sign that things were not going well. “We had no choice in the matter, Professor. I was ill. One does the best one can under the circumstances.” She looked into her lap, her coffee untouched.

Doc suddenly seemed to realize that he had gone too far. “Forgive me, madame.” He leaned forward. “It is not said to make you angry. Your son is a gifted child. I don't know where, I don't know how. I only pray it is music. Today I have come to ask you, please, madame, let me teach him?” He had spoken to my mother softly and with great charm, and I could feel her relax as his voice stroked her ego.

“Humpf! I must say, you seem to know more about him than his mother. I can't see how he is any different to any other child of his age,” she said huffily, though I could tell this was just a pretense and that she was secretly pleased by the compliment. My mother was a proud woman and didn't expect charity from anyone. “It is out of the question. Piano lessons don't grow on trees, Professor.”