The Power of One (51 page)

The school charabanc, driven by Sarge, took us through the skyscrapered streets out through a place called Hillbrow, where we followed a tram down into increasingly quieter suburbs. We left the tram at its terminal and drove into a leafy suburb named Houghton, where the houses, set in perfectly manicured lawns and brilliant gardens, were bigger than any I had ever seen. The top of the charabanc brushed against the cool dark oak trees that lined the quiet streets. We passed an occasional nanny wheeling a baby carriage with large wheels that even sported springs. All the nannys wore identical black dresses with starched white pinafores, and all the baby carriages seemed to have come from the same factory. I wasn't much for symbols; my life had somehow contrived to be a mixture of people so that social status meant very little to me. Nevertheless, I sensed that I was entering a new kind of world with a different set of rules.

We turned into a gateway, through a huge open gate with the crown and three ostrich feathers outlined in its wrought iron design, and continued down a roadway bordered on each side by giant English oaks. On the way to Wellington House, one of the three boarders' houses at the Prince of Wales School, we passed an emerald-green cricket pitch with a rotating hose chit-chit-chittering a jet of water in a large circle around the pitch. On the far boundary, neatly enclosed by a white picket fence, stood a small white pavilion, behind it grew another row of giant oaks, and beyond them rose several sets of rugby posts. Still further, the neo-Gothic clock tower of the main school rose above the trees. It seemed the perfect place for a posh school, but I was not at all sure that it was the perfect place for the future welterweight champion of the world.

Morrie Levy had seated himself beside me on the ride to school and had set about explaining his theory of survival. We were, he decided, odd-bods, he a Jew and me with only one name. Odd-bods, he asserted, were always singled out by plebians, the worst kind of which were middle-class, Anglo-South African Protestants, who undoubtedly made up the remainder of the school. I wasn't quite sure whether belonging to the Apostolic Faith Mission qualified me as a Protestant, but I had to agree with him that my background was probably different from that of the other guys in the bus. From my previous bout of boarding school, I had already learned that being different doesn't pay off. This time I was determined to enter the school environment on my own terms. There wasn't too much I was frightened of, and I was fairly confident that I could compete intellectually. It was time to remove my camouflage. All my life I had let others provide for me, and while I loved the people who had nurtured and built me intellectually, I felt that emotionally it was time to look after myself. Everyone on the intellectual side of my life seemed to agree that an exclusive private school education was what I needed, while those on the physical side, mainly the boxing squad, were more than a little dubious about an elitist
rooinek
school education. I had been torn between the two, never clearly deciding who I was, changing my camouflage to suit. I had accepted an education at an elitist boarding school while at the same time nurturing my ambition to become the welterweight champion of the world. It didn't take too many brains to figure out that world champion boxers are not usually spawned within a system designed to educate upper-middle-class Christian gentlemen.

I placed less importance on my intelligence than on my prowess as a boxer. If the Prince of Wales School tried to disabuse me of my ambition to be the welterweight champion of the world, then the intellectual nourishment it might furnish as compensation would not be sufficient incentive for me to remain. But I wasn't about to let this happen. No more camouflage for Peekay; I would simply be the best. I hadn't discussed this with either Doc or Miss Bornstein. I was on my own again and I had to do my own thinking, so when Morrie started on about beating the system I knew immediately what he was on about.

He passed me a stick of spearmint gum and commenced talking again. “Now my theory is that to beat any system you have to know it intimately. Rebellion is senseless, and being pointedly different only leads to persecution. The only way to control a system is from within it, the way the Jews have always done.”

“It didn't seem to help them with Hitler,” I said. I didn't know much about the Jews in Nazi Germany, but Miss Bornstein had told me a little and had added that old Mr. Bornstein actually felt guilty for escaping from Nazi Germany.

“Aha, that was different. Hitler's Nazi party presented an impossible problem for the Jews of Germany. After all, you can't undermine a system from within when you're excluded from it in the first place, can you?”

Morrie's point was not well made. I was to learn that he was obsessed with Hitler's persecution of the Jews and that it sometimes clouded his otherwise excellent judgment. I could never quite understand why he possessed this obsession, as his parents had escaped from Warsaw before the Jews were incarcerated in the ghetto or were even unduly persecuted. Morrie had never known any real racial prejudice, yet he had a strong sense of alienation as well as, it seemed to me at times, guilt, which he spent a lot of time trying to cover up by pretending to be toughminded.

Doc had taught me well, and I wasn't about to let Morrie get away with a cheap shot like that.

“Every system tends to be mutually exclusive. They're all about keeping someone or something out. By keeping the Jews out of the Nazi party, Hitler was acting typically. No system wants to be undermined or abused, and therefore it is constantly on guard to exclude those who would destroy it. If, as you say, it is a common Jewish tactic to invade from within, then this should have been possible even with the Nazi party. We have to conclude that the Jews failed to defeat Hitler, failed to defeat the system, and as a consequence paid a terrible price. It wasn't an exception at all.”

Morrie grinned. “Hey! You can think. I'm not used to that in a
goy.
Here, shake a paw.”

I allowed the compliment and shook his hand, although I wasn't quite sure what he meant. My response had been natural. Doc and Mrs. Boxall had taught me to question any statement when it was presented glibly as a fact. “What's a
goy?”
I asked.

“A Christian, a Gentile. Hey, can we be friends, I mean proper friends, Peekay?”

“Sure,” I said, not really meaning it. “Anything's okay with me.

“You see, you're different. I know that now. And I'm certainly different, I always have been, but being a Jew at a school like this makes me even more so. I reckon we'll need each other.”

“What for? To beat the system?”

“No, no, to use it. I've got a hunch we'll be a terrific combo.”

I wasn't sure he was right. I still had a problem. While I had all the physical and intellectual equipment needed to succeed within the system, I lacked one thing. Money. The only way I could succeed without money was by being a loner. Friendship with this particular tribe of Christian gentlemen required resources. You were expected to pay your own way. The only other way was by ingratiation, but I was damned if that was ever going to happen to me again. Pisskop was still the dark shadow that walked two paces behind Peekay. Come what may, I would never again stoop to conquer.

Added to this was the fact that I was basically a loner. Other than Doc, and when I was small Granpa Chook, I'd never been in the position of having a partner, and I'd never really had a best friend who was my own age.

“Have you honest and truly only got one name?” Morrie asked suddenly.

“Well, sort of. You see, I've only ever used one name. One name is me.”

“They won't let you get away with it, you know. The system can't handle things like that.”

“It's just going to have to,” I replied, sounding a lot braver than I really was. I longed suddenly to ask Doc what he would advise under the circumstances, though I already knew the answer. Doc would simply have said that a man has the right to any name he wants to give himself. If a man is saddled with a name he didn't choose, how can he possibly be free for the rest of his life? “We got to be who we got to be. Absoloodle!” he'd conclude after we had carefully and fully discussed the matter. Doc was not a man to make compromises on important issues such as determining who a person really is in his own mind.

“I bet you're good at sport. Me, I'm lousy,” Morrie said.

“I'm okay.”

“What's your best sport?” Morrie asked, humoring me. “Rugby?”

“No, I box.”

He jerked back in his seat, plainly shocked. “You what?”

“I'm a boxer.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought you said. Why man, that's positively Neanderthal.”

“You could get badly hurt saying that to the wrong boxer,” I grinned.

Morrie reeled back in mock terror. “Careful, man, in a court of law a boxer's hands are considered lethal weapons,” he kidded. “I tell you what, I'm a gambler and you're a boxer, that's yet another reason why you and I have to stick together.”

“What do you gamble on?” I asked.

Morrie sighed. “I'm a Jew. People expect Jews to be good with money. So what do Jews do? They oblige. My old man is filthy rich, and he'll give me all the money I need. But that's the very problem, you see. I have to make my own. It's an intellectual thing, not a greedy thing. I'm not really a gambler, gamblers are stupid. Making money is simply a way of keeping myself mentally fit. Can you understand that?”

“No.”

“Are you rich, Peekay? I mean, your parents?”

“Hell no, I won a scholarship here. My mum's a dressmaker.”

“Well, that's why you don't understand. For me money is like boxing is for you, it's my way of getting even with the world. For a rich Jew money is a weapon. Unless I know how to make it on my own I'd—well, be defenseless.”

I was suddenly fascinated. It wasn't that Morrie's philosophy was the antithesis of all I'd been taught, although I knew the Lord was against money and definitely in favor of the poor. It was just that, well, Doc and Mrs. Boxall, and even Miss Bornstein, had never mentioned money or its importance in the scheme of things. I'd been forced into thinking about money for the first time when the list for my school clothes had arrived, and I had already worked out that not having any at a boarding school for the sons of the rich was pretty well going to shape my school career.

“Are you very good at making money?” I asked Morrie.

“About as good as you are at boxing, I reckon.”

“You've got yourself a partner, Morrie. Money is something I have to learn about.”

Morrie grinned. “It's a deal, Peekay.” He extended his hand, and we shook.

I was by nature a fairly quiet sort of a guy and had no trouble getting on with things. As a new boy I was at the bottom of the heap but was fortunate enough to be selected as the fag for the head of house, Fred Cooper, who was also the second prefect of the entire school and the captain of the First XV rugby team. This immediately gave me some extra status among the other new boys, all of whom, like me, were allocated to a school or house prefect. Fagging was hard work, and we were on standby for the school and house prefects from first bell at six
a.m
. until lights out at nine-thirty
p.m. No
chore was thought too menial, and a prefect had only to yell from his study and all the fags within hearing distance would have to come running. Last new boy to arrive did the chore. In addition to this, each fag had a list of duties he was obliged to perform for his personal prefect. He made his bed, shone his shoes and cadet and rugby boots, or during the summer blancoed his cricket boots, washed his rugby togs, and, if the prefect was an officer in the cadet corps, polished his Sam Browne and brasses, laid out his clothes, tidied his study, ran his messages, and made trips to the tuck shop on his behalf.

The first tanning I received was for scooping the tiniest dab of cream off the top of a cream bun I was delivering to Fred Cooper. At least, it started with the tiniest dab and then, in an attempt to smooth the scooped part, I took one or two more small scoops on the end of my finger. By the time I arrived at Fred Cooper's study, the bun looked somewhat rearranged.

“You rotten little bugger! You've been norking my cream bun!” Cooper yelled at me.

“My hand slipped over it and I had to lick it off, sort of, sir,” I explained, not quite willing to tell an outright lie.

“Shit! Did you lick my bloody bun, Peekay?”

“No, sir, just my hand.”

“Close the door, boy. We have an excellent way to train slippery hands.” Cooper reached for the cane that hung behind the door. “How many times do you reckon it slipped?” he asked.

“Not many, sir,” I said fearfully.

“Not many is once or twice or three times, tell me, man?”

“Once?” I said hopefully.

“Right, bend down.” I bent down, holding my knees and proffering my arse.
Whack!
“That's one for your slippery hand.”
Whack!
“That's one for your slippery tongue.”
Whack!
“And that's one for your poor memory.” Cooper returned the cane to the back of the door and pointed to the cream bun on his desk. “Eat it! And go and get me another one with your own money.”