The Power of One (48 page)

Captain Smit had dragged himself to his feet and stood facing Borman, who was no longer trying to get out of the bear hug Klipkop held him in. Bringing both his gloves up, Smit signaled to Borman to come and fight. Klipkop released his grip and Borman rushed at Smit, walking into a straight left from Smit that stopped him in his tracks. Borman charged in again and Captain Smit stopped him again, repeating the straight left into the face. It was obvious that Borman had never been a boxer. A trickle of blood ran from his nose, and he brought his arm up to wipe it. A smear of blood covered the top of his arm, and he stared down in horror at it. “Shit, I'm bleeding!” he cried. “Jesus Christ, I'm bleeding!”

Then Captain Smit stepped up and smashed his glove into Borman's face. The blow seemed to flatten Borman's nose, and he dropped to the canvas. Covering his face with his gloves, he wailed, “Don't hit me, please don't hit me!”

Captain Smit signaled to Klipkop to get Borman back onto his feet. Klipkop got his arms under Borman's armpits, but the man refused to get up. The blood from his nose had stained his white shirt, and his eyes were wide with terror. Klipkop let him go, and he dropped to the ground; then he crawled on all fours toward Captain Smit and held him around the legs. “Please don't hit me, Captain. I don't understand, why you doing this to me? It was only a kaffir, a dirty stinking yellow man, why you hitting a white man over a kaffir?”

Captain Smit kicked his legs free of Borman's embrace. “You can't even fight, you low bastard. You can't even stand up and fight like a man!” It was the first time Smit had spoken since they'd entered the ring. He turned and extended his hands to Klipkop, who unlaced and removed the gloves. Then Smit went over to the neutral corner, picked up the canvas roll, and unrolled it beside the sobbing Borman. Klipkop grabbed Borman by the legs, Captain Smit grabbed him around the wrists, and they lifted him and placed him on the bloodstained canvas and rolled it around him. “This kaffir's blood will haunt you till you die,” Captain Smit said. He picked up his shoes, and then he and Klipkop climbed from the ring. Klipkop moved over to the wall and, reaching for the switch, plunged the ring into darkness.

In the darkness from the direction of the swing doors, there came a sudden shout:
“Abantu bingelela
Onoshobishobi Ingelosi!” The people salute the Tadpole Angel! The door opened slightly, and in the shaft of light it threw we saw a black figure slip quickly out of the gymnasium. The people knew. The curse was fixed. Lieutenant Borman was dead meat.

When I got outside, the
tiekiedraai
dancing was already going full swing with someone on the Mignon hammering out Boer music, accompanied by a man with the piano accordian and a banjo player. Outside, on the parade ground, warders and their wives stood around the barbecue fires, now burnt down to glowing embers. Homemade sausages known as
boerewors
were held over the fires, and the sizzle of the fat dropping from the sausage skins made the embers flare in the dark.

Doc and Mrs. Boxall were nowhere to be seen. I watched the guy beating the Mignon half to death, thankful he wasn't using Doc's Steinway, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Howzit?” It was Gert. “How you getting home?” he inquired. “Maybe I can borrow the Plymouth and take you all.” I explained that Mrs. Boxall had brought us in her old crock, which made a fearful racket, and I was doubtful that it had long to live. “You know where the professor and that lady is, don't you?” Not waiting for my reply, he said, “I seen them going into the administration building with the brigadier and the kommandant.”

Gert was amazing like that; he always seemed to know what was going on. “Maybe the professor will get a medal or something for the kaffir concert.” Then he giggled. “Jesus! I hope the brigadier never finds out that Geel Piet was only a broken-down old lag.” He punched me lightly on the shoulder. “Sorry, man, about shutting your mouth back there.” I hung my head, the memory of the bloodstained canvas still too sharp in my mind for me to chance looking at him.

“You did right,” I said softly.

“So long, Peekay, I'd better kick the dust,” Gert said.

At last Doc and Mrs. Boxall came out. I ran up to them, and I could see Mrs. Boxall was excited.

“By Jove, Peekay, miracles will never cease. I do believe we've done it!” she exclaimed.

“Done what?” I asked.

“Have done what?” she corrected automatically. “We have been given permission to start a letter-writing service. Isn't that simply grand news? The brigadier says that every prisoner may send and receive one letter a month. It's the first time it has happened in South Africa, and it's going on trial for six months.”

She grabbed me with one hand and Doc with the other and we danced around in a circle to the sound of the
tiekiedraai
music coming from the hall. “You're going to be needed because you speak three African languages as well as English and Afrikaans. Every Sunday morning after church we'll come out for two hours and take dictation from the prisoners. I say, it's a real victory for the forces of good. The brigadier was most impressed when I told him that it would be done under the auspices of the Earl of Sandwich Fund.” She stopped, puffed from the dancing, and then giggled. “The kommandant assured the brigadier that the Earl of Sandwich Fund was a very respected organization with worldwide contacts and that all the warders' wives baked for it at the Christmas and Easter shows.” We all started to laugh. Doc finally said, “Madame Boxall, you are absoloodle the best. For this I give you eleven out of ten.”

She did a small curtsey. “Why, thank you, kind, sir!” She gave Doc one of her extra-special smiles. We hung around for a while longer just so we wouldn't seem rude and finally made our way to the car. As we approached, we could hear soft grunting sounds and then we saw a pair of boots sticking out from under Charlie. Gert slid from under the little car, got up sheepishly, and wiped his grease-blackened hands on the sides of his khaki shorts. He bowed awkwardly to Mrs. Boxall.

“Does Mevrou speak Afrikaans?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “I'll translate if you like?”

Gert nodded. “Tell her she's got more power now, you only had one cylinder firing.” He spoke fast, swallowing his words as he fought his shyness. “But you still got a bad knock in the diff.” He turned to Mrs. Boxall. “If you can get it here tomorrow, maybe after you been to church, I'll borrow the Plymouth and drive you home and I'll fix the car up for you.” I introduced Gert to Mrs. Boxall and translated what he'd said. Mrs. Boxall was very grateful and called Gert “a dear, sweet boy,” which I didn't translate but I think he understood because he seemed very embarrassed.

“Oh dear, I have no idea what a knock in the diff is. Is it something very bad?”

“It's the differential, I think it's pretty bad,” I replied without consulting Gert.

Pulling up his socks, which were already pulled up, Gert stammered, “Good night, Missus,” in English and then walked quickly away into the dark.

We zoomed away, and Mrs. Boxall had no trouble driving up the Sheba Road hill. The difference in Charlie was amazing now that we were driving on both cylinders. We dropped Doc off at the bottom of his hill. I think the new two-cylinder Charlie could've made it easily, but Mrs. Boxall had never been invited by Doc to his cottage and she said as she drove me home, “This wasn't the right time”—whatever that was supposed to mean.

MRS.
Boxall promised to talk to my mother about the new letter-writing arrangement in the prison. These were to take place on a Sunday morning, and I had some real doubts about being allowed to partake in them. Sunday was difficult for me. It was a day filled with taboos, beginning with Sunday school and church in the morning and ending with evening service, which consisted of a short message from Pastor Mulvery and then “a precious time,” when the congregation witnessed for the Lord. I wasn't allowed to do anything except the Lord's work on a Sunday, but as I wasn't a born-again Christian, any of the Lord's work I might do, like reading the Shangaan Bible to Dee and Dum, wasn't creating any bricks for my mansion in the sky. Reading the Bible was regarded as the most superior type of work for the Lord. I was required to read three pages of the New Testament every day and ten pages on Sunday, and I did my compulsory Sunday reading during Pastor Mulvery's “Message from the Lord.” You'd think if something was called a message from the Lord, it would be a proper message, such as you might give to a person. But Pastor Mulvery's messages rambled all over the place, threading bits of the scripture together and frequently leading to wildly unusual conclusions that tended to prove Pastor Mulvery was right while all the gospel scholars since St. Paul were wrong. He would call the Catholic Church the “Catlicks,” and they were his special target. He would go to endless trouble to demonstrate that the Catlicks had perverted the Word of God. He would point out that the Latin scholars who had translated the King James version into English from an original Catlick translation had not understood the original Greek translation of the original Hebrew. As Pastor Mulvery knew no Latin and no Greek and certainly no Hebrew and never gave examples of the corrupted Words of God in Latin or Greek so that I could at least check his accuracy with Doc, he was able to build some pretty impressive arguments against the perfidy of the Catholic Church. I can tell you one thing, you wouldn't have wanted to be a Catlick at a Sunday evening service with Pastor Mulvery delivering one of his messages.

Because reading the Bible on Sunday didn't count for my heavenly brick account, I was expected to find other kinds of good deed stuff. Each Sunday evening my mother would question me closely about this. Sometimes I really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for things to claim, like praying for Hitler. Which I hadn't done, of course, but it sounded good and was unusual enough to throw my mother off the scent.

In fact, praying for Hitler created a real crisis at that evening's debate. Marie, who was always there for supper on Sundays, said praying for Hitler wasn't valid coming from me, as it was a case of one sinner praying for another. My mother then debated with her as to whether a sinner praying for a sinner was an okay idea. My granpa said he thought it was time he was excused from the table so that he could go to his room and pray for fewer debates of this sort. My mother then said that as it was Sunday, she was not going to tell him how rude and hurtful his remark had been.

So getting to the prison for two hours every Sunday to take dictation wasn't simply a question of Mrs. Boxall asking my mother. A great deal of to-ing and fro-ing to the Lord would have to take place, and my fear was that the Lord was going to be hard put to see that taking dictation from a bunch of criminals was the very best possible use of my indentured Sabbath.

My fears proved to be correct, and the scheme had to be delayed a month while my mother and the Lord came to grips with the small print. A major investigation such as this one would begin by looking for a precedent in the Bible. In this regard I scored a direct hit when I pointed out that St. Paul, in his Epistles, had written from prison in Rome. This was just the sort of material my mother liked to take with her when she had a chat with the Lord, and so I expected an early reply from him. My granpa said later that my St. Paul research was a stroke of genius. But it turned out the Lord wasn't all that satisfied because Paul was a born-again Christian, personally converted on the road to Damascus, and he was in prison under an unjust Roman regime. The prisoners in Barberton prison were criminals being punished by a just regime. The point here was that Paul was doing the Lord's work, while I was potentially aiding the devil writing letters from hardened criminals who were bound to be up to no good, spreading a network of subterfuge and intrigue throughout South Africa.

To my wife, Umbela,

I send you greetings in my shame. Who is putting food in the mouths of our children? It is hard in this place, but one day I will come to you again. The work is hard but I am strong, I will live to see you again.

Your husband, Mfulu

I wasn't able to tell my mother how innocent the letters really were because she didn't know about the previous letters or the tobacco, sugar, and salt. So for the next week I read the New Testament like mad. There had to be something in there to help me. Pastor Mulvery was always taking bits and pieces of disconnected scripture and putting them together to mean just about anything; surely I could do the same.

I took the problem to Doc, but for once he wasn't much help. He pointed out that according to the great German Lutheran scholars the prison writings of St. Paul probably took place about 63
A.D
. Which was nice to know, but no help whatsoever.

Doc's mind was far too logical for this kind of thing, so I took the problem to my granpa, who, after my telling opening move with St. Paul, seemed anxious to see that the debate was conducted fairly. We sat on the steps of one of the rose terraces, my granpa tapping and tamping and lighting and staring squinty-eyed through the blue tobacco smoke over the rusty roof into the pale blue beyond. After a long time he said, “All I know about the Bible is that wherever it goes there's trouble. The only time I ever heard of it being useful was when a stretcher bearer I was with at the battle of Dundee told me that he'd once gotten hit by a Mauser bullet in the heart, only he was carrying a Bible in his tunic pocket and the Bible saved his life. He told me that ever since he'd always carried a Bible into battle with him and he felt perfectly safe because God was in his breast pocket. We were out looking for a sergeant of the Worcesters and three troopers who were wounded while out on a reconnaissance and were said to be holed up in a dry
donga.
In truth, I think my partner felt perfectly safe because the Boer Mausers were estimated by the British artillery to be accurate to eight hundred yards and we were at least twelve hundred yards from enemy lines. Alas, nobody bothered to tell the Boers about the shortcomings of their brand-new German rifle, and a Mauser bullet hit him straight between the eyes.” He puffed at his pipe. “Which goes to prove, you can always depend on British Army information not to be accurate, the Boers to be deadly accurate, the Bible to be good for matters of the heart but hopeless for those of the head, and finally, that God is in nobody's pocket.” He seemed very pleased with this neat summary, which nevertheless wasn't a scrap of help to me.

However, on Sunday night three weeks after Mrs. Boxall had first approached my mother, my granpa elected to play a part in the supper debate. My mother opened by saying the Lord was “sorely troubled” over the whole issue, which had “weighed heavily upon her.” She liked to use words like “sorely troubled” and “weighed heavily” in her debates, and I knew they impressed the pants off Marie.

Marie's cousin had lost her husband in a shooting accident, leaving her with a small child. My mother had comforted Marie by saying that she would ask the Lord to “bind up the wounds of her heart and pour in the balm of His comfort. That He would be Husband to the widow and Father to the orphan.” Marie sniffed a bit and said they were the most beautiful words she had ever heard.

My granpa cleared his throat. “Were there not a couple of chaps who were crucified on either side of Christ, thorough scalliwags, as I recall?”

“The Word refers to them as thieves who were crucified beside the Lord, though I don't see that they have anything whatsoever to do with the matter.” My mother's irritation was thinly disguised. “I do not recall it saying in the Bible that they wrote home from jail.” I knew that my granpa's opinions on biblical matters, coming as they did from a sinner who had steadfastly refused to accept Christ into his life, were not very highly regarded.

“I seem to remember that Christ forgave one of them, promising him a berth in heaven right there on the spot. Or am I mistaken?”

“Goodness! The Lord does not promise people ‘berths' in heaven,” my mother said sharply.” ‘Verily I say unto you, today shalt thou be with me in paradise,' is what the Lord said.”

“It seems to me from that remark that Christ has no objection to convicted felons entering the kingdom of God,” he declared.

“Of course he doesn't! That's the whole point. Jesus was sent to save the most miserable sinners amongst us. His compassion is for all of us, his love everlasting, and his understanding infinite. Seek his forgiveness, and you're saved. You're no longer a murderer or a thief, you're one of the Lord's precious redeemed. The thief on the cross beside him was saved when he confessed his sins, he was washed by the blood of the Lamb.”

“Hallelujah, praise his precious name,” Marie offered absently.

“And the prisoners here in Barberton. Like him, could they also be saved?”

“You know as well as I do they could,” my mother said primly.

“How?”

“By accepting Christ into their lives, by renouncing the devil and ....” my mother stopped and looked straight at my granpa. “You know very well how.”

“Oh, I see. You are going to make it possible?”

“Well, no. The Anglicans and the Dutch Reformed have got the prison ministry and they do absolutely nothing. It's iniquitous. We've prayed a great deal about this, prayed that the Lord would make it possible for the Assembly of God missionaries to have the prison mission so that they can spread His precious word and bring the gospel to those poor unfortunate sinners.”

“Has it not occurred to you that the Lord may have answered your prayers?” my granpa asked.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Well, if the lad has direct access to the prisoners, could he not distribute tracts and that sort of thing?”

It was a masterstroke. In return for being allowed to take dictation on Sunday at the prison, I was required to take gospel tracts in
Sotho and Zulu from the
Assembly of God missionaries and give one to each prisoner after he had dictated his letter to me. My mother and Marie had scored another major triumph, first in the hospital and now in the prison; they were earning recognition as a couple of hard-core fighters in the Lord's army. What's more, my time on a Sunday was counted as first class work for the Lord.

I don't exactly know how it happened, but I did it just the once, then it suddenly got done all the time. One of the prisoners had said that tobacco was sorely missed, and the next week I cut a piece of tobacco leaf exactly the same size as a tract and slipped it inside one. The next thing I knew, Dee and Dum were slipping these neatly cut squares of tobacco leaf into every tract, and I would take a whole bunch with me and sort them into their four African languages and put the various piles in the drawer of the desk at which I sat, leaving an “innocent” pile of Sotho tracts in front of me on the desk. After one of the people had dictated his letter to me, I would hand him a tract from the drawer. This was Doc's idea. On two occasions the warder who attended the letter-writing sessions absently picked up a tract, looked at it in a cursory manner, and then returned it to the pile on the desk. At least the tracts were being useful. It had never occurred to my mother that none of the prisoners could read.

Letter writing suddenly became very popular, and those of the people who didn't have anyone to write to would ask me to write to King Georgie. When I asked them what they wanted to say to the king of England, it was almost always the same thing.

Dear King Georgie,

The people are happy because you are our great king. I send

greetings to the great warrior across the water.

Daniel Mafutu

After a while a letter to King Georgie was simply a euphemism for a tract. One tract and contents made two cigarettes and were an unimagined luxury. Not only had the Tadpole Angel contrived to continue the supply of tobacco into the prison, but the people no longer had to pay for it and it came together with paper to roll it in. For a generation afterward, cigarettes in South African prisons were known as “King Georgies,” and some old lags still use this expression today. And of course the mystique that surrounded the Tadpole Angel continued to grow; nothing, it seemed, was impossible for him. More important for the kommandant, the letter-writing experiment proved to be a huge success, and before the summer was over he had been made a full colonel and also received a commendation from Pretoria for his work in prison reform. The Assembly of God missionaries kept up the supply of tracts and even had them translated into Swazi and Shangaan. When I told Doc that King Georgies now came in Swazi and Shangaan, he smiled and said, “God's ways are mysterious, Peekay. I think because the people cannot read they now send smoke signals up to God.”

It was not long after Geel Piet's death that Lieutenant Borman started to complain of piles. “Now I'm in administration I sit too much,” he'd say to any person who'd listen. “I can't eat steak, it hurts too much passing through, man, there's even blood in my shit.” It was true, he seemed to be losing weight, and Captain Smit advised him to see a doctor. “It's only piles, my old man was a train driver, he had the same thing.” His wife sewed a special cushion for him which he brought to work, and sometimes he'd walk around carrying the cushion in case he had to suddenly sit somewhere.