The Power of One (56 page)

At fourteen I couldn't see things as clearly as this, but I instinctively understood that power is beguiling and a person does not lightly give it up. People will bend the truth and warp their own values to maintain their grip on power. I was a child of Africa, a white child to be sure, but nevertheless Africa's child. The black breasts that had suckled me and the dark hands that had bathed and rocked me had left me with a burden of obligation to resist the white power that would be the ultimate gift from those who now trained me.

I saw this same sense of aloneness in Morrie. I sensed his Jewish alienation and I understood the intelligent, clear-eyed pessimism that seemed a part of everything he did. He had inherited loneliness. Despite his need for me, he knew himself ultimately to be on his own. Though we never spoke of it, our friendship was forged on this common knowledge. We had instinctively come together to learn, each from the other, the lessons we needed to use the power within us to think and act differently from those around us.

To win began to take on a new meaning. It was still part of my fierce determination to become the welterweight champion of the world. In the years to follow, winning would become the ultimate camouflage as I trained to be a spiritual terrorist. To achieve this new and barely understood aim, I had to appear to be damn near perfect in everything I did even at the risk of appearing to be a bit of a pain.

Morrie, as manager of the boxing team, was working his boxing machine into high gear, and in the third form, after we'd finally lost the wooden spoon, he was ready to move into the big time.

Each week I received letters from Doc, Mrs. Boxall, and Miss Bornstein. While I wrote home fairly regularly, I think my mother must have been too busy sewing to write very often. Sometimes on the bottom of Doc's letters would appear two inky thumbprints, under which Doc would write in his small neat hand, “From Dee and Dum, who ask who is washing your clothes, and baking rusks for your coffee in the morning?” Dee and Dum continued to make the sojourn to Doc's cottage for the weekly clean-up, and he had grown very fond of them. Doc's letters were about the hills and his beloved cactus, and while I had continued my piano under the instruction of the school music master, he never mentioned music in his letters. I think Doc knew I was destined for other things. Mrs. Boxall would write all the town gossip, and she said that the Assemblies of God had supplied two young missionaries who could speak four African languages between them to take on the prison letters. She was still in charge, determined that God would not be allowed to interfere with the perfectly lovely business of writing a letter to your loved ones. In one of her letters she added that the People sadly missed King George and that letter writing had fallen off a fair bit after I had left.

The Earl of Sandwich Fund had started to spread, and Mrs. Boxall was elected chairwoman of seven different groups that had started prison rehabilitation work among black prisoners in

South Africa. Many of these early members of the Sandwich Fund were to become the leaders of the Black Sash Movement, a movement among white South African women that started in the late forties to protest apartheid and injustice against the black people. It continues as one of the few voices of freedom coming out of this sad land; a voice muted from protest against a regime afraid to hear the just and anguished cries of the People.

Miss Bornstein was determined to develop my intellect and insisted on knowing in some detail exactly which books we were reading, what math we were doing, and, in fact, everything. I had written to her about Morrie, and she included him in her letters, which would consist mostly of pages and pages of questions and discussion points. Finally, she would always include in her weekly letter a chess move for each of us from old Mr. Bornstein, who in the six years we were at school we never managed to beat.

Morrie would groan loudly when the weekly letter arrived, plump with questions. He'd hold his hands to the side of his face and rock in an exaggerated manner. “Oy vey!” he'd say, imitating his granma. “The only reason I elected to come to this institution for Christian gentlemen was to get away from Jewish women. Now I'm at bloody correspondence school with one!” But Miss Bornstein had a way, even at long distance, of involving one's pride, and the interest she stimulated in her letters put Morrie and myself far ahead of anyone else in the A class at school.

Morrie was the first to use what became a famous expression throughout the school. We were in “Mango” Cobett's history class, and Mango, an asinine man who taught with a very highbrow bias and was a dreadful snob, was talking about the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Mango carried the nickname because he had an oval-shaped head with fine blond hair that clung to his skull and a sharp blond goatee, the whole assemblage resembling a well-sucked mango pip. Though South African born, he was an avowed Anglophile and spoke in a dewy-eyed manner about the bravery of Lord Cardigan in the Charge of the Light Brigade.

From the back of the class, where we both sat, Morrie interjected, “According to Miss Bornstein, he demonstrated a lamentable lack of control over the French. He also lacked common sense and a sense of responsibility to his men, sir.”

There was a stunned silence. Mango's mouth was half open, and he could hardly believe his ears.

“According to Miss Bornstein, Lord Raglan was also completely out of his depth, in fact, a bumbling old fool,” Morrie added.

Mango Cobett finally regained his voice. “According to whom, Levy?”

“According to Miss Bornstein of the famous Jewish correspondence school, sir,” I interjected. The classroom broke into an uproar.

“Shut up! Everyone shut up at once!” Mango Cobett yelled. The classroom quickly murmured down into silence. Both Morrie and I were known as brains, and Mango wasn't game enough to simply punish us with a couple of hours' detention without first asserting his superior historical perspective.

“I was unaware that the Jews played a part in the Crimean War. I take it your Miss Bornstein is a history scholar of some distinction, perhaps a better source than
The Invasion of the Crimea
by A. W. Kinglake.” He picked up one of the books that lay on the desk in front of him and held it high, squinting slightly as he read the spine. “William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1864. I'd say that was from the horse's mouth, wouldn't you?”

“More like the horse's arse, sir,” Morrie quipped, and the classroom broke up again.

Kinglake's
The Invasion of the Crimea
was one of the volumes my granpa had at home, along with the complete works of Charles Dickens, and I'd read both volumes of Kinglake's account when I was eight. According to Miss Bornstein, Kinglake's account was remarkable, but she had also read the Russian and French accounts and now felt the official British version was heavily jingoistic and apt to blame the French and the Turks, while allowing that Lord Raglan, the British commander in chief, though competent, was somewhat inexperienced and asserting Lord Cardigan to be a man of great sagacity and leadership skills. Miss Bornstein, Morrie, and I had been conducting an involved correspondence on the very volumes Mango was quoting from.

“According to Miss Bornstein,” Morrie continued, “A. W. Kinglake was commissioned by the War Office to write the series, which was never a good start. The book had been republished several times, and the 1864 version, slightly amended, was the fourth edition. More appeared after the first Boer War, when the Transvaal had regained its independence, having previously been shamefully annexed by Britain after gold had fortuitously been discovered. The history was meant to remind the British of their recent glorious past so that they wouldn't dwell too heavily on the trouncing they'd received from a handful of determined farmers who aimed straight and didn't form into a square to fight. According to Miss Bornstein, it is rather long on glory and somewhat short on the true facts. The volumes were republished again, just two years before the declaration of the second Boer War. They were, of course, ideally timed to put the British public in the mood for more territorial rape and pillage in the name of Queen and Empire.” Morrie had exactly quoted a passage in one of Miss Bornstein's letters, it was word-perfect, even comma-perfect.

Mango Cobett's usually deathly pale face had flushed a dark red. “Are you challenging the integrity of one of the finest historians to come out of the British Isles, Levy?”

“No, sir,” Morrie said. “Miss Bornstein is.” The class broke into spontaneous laughter again.

“Shut up! Shut up!” Mango yelled. “I've heard enough!” The class settled down, and a flushed Mango Cobett commenced to walk up and down the length of the classroom. “The Battle of Alma, the first in the Crimea, where the British took the Russian General Menshikov head on, Russians nine thousand dead, British two thousand! Those, gentlemen, are the facts.”

I jumped in. “According to Miss Bornstein, Lord Raglan lost control of the Battle of Alma almost from the moment it started. He set the frontal attack and then lost control while the French climbed the steep cliffs near the mouth of the river and outflanked Menshikov with very few casualties.”

“Nine thousand Russians, two thousand British!” Mango said emphatically.

“Two thousand dead in three hours!” I retaliated. “The French lost less than two hundred men.”

“The Russians were peasants without any training and fought in dense columns. Menshikov had scrambled eggs for brains,” Morrie said, to the delight of the classroom.

Mango Cobett pressed on. “The Battle of Inkerman, Russians eleven thousand dead, the British two thousand six hundred and for
-ty!”
He leaned on the figure “forty” to emphasize his exact knowledge of the numbers involved.

“According to Miss Bornstein, Lord Raglan exercised no influence on the course of the fighting. The Battle of Inkerman was called the ‘Soldiers' Battle,' because units were committed to the battle piecemeal and the soldiers had to work it out for themselves,” Morrie replied.

“The Russians, on the other hand, were commanded by General Russian Eggs himself,” I said smugly, causing the class to laugh once more.

“That will be enough, Peekay,” Mango said, not too happy about arguing on two fronts. “We have one more battle to go, the Redan.”

“Ah, the Redan! According to Miss Bornstein—”

“Quiet, Levy!” Mango commanded. “The Russian losses are not known but are thought to be twice that of the British.”

“The British lost five thousand men at the Redan, and again Lord Raglan lost control of the battle,” I said, determined that he should not be allowed to cover up the British losses.

“Lord Raglan was a very sick man and died of cholera ten days after the Redan. He can't be entirely blamed for the huge losses,” Mango retorted.

“You've missed the Charge of the Light Brigade, sir,” Morrie said with a grin.

“Yes, yes, Lord Cardigan's Light Brigade, a mistake, a question of a misunderstanding and an ill-drafted order.”

“And under pig's-trotters-for-brains Lord Cardigan seven hundred mounted troopers charged into the valley of death and four hundred died!”

“I don't like your attitude, Levy. Lord Cardigan was a member of the British aristocracy and is not subject to schoolboy humor. While we're on the subject, Peekay, Menshikov was a respected Russian general and also above your puerile wit. You will both see me outside the masters' common room at the conclusion of school. Your attitude to this history lesson has been reprehensible, to say the least.” The bell went for recess, and the color drained back out of Mango Cobett's face. As we were leaving the class, Mango Cobett had one last jibe. “Let me assure you both, England did not conquer half the known world, including this country, because she placed stupid commanders in the field.”

“According to Miss Bornstein—” we both began, and Morrie finished the thought, “—that's not true.”

The expression was born. From that moment on, any boy in the Prince of Wales School who disagreed with a statement made by a master would signal his disagreement by prefacing it with “According to Miss Bornstein—” The expression caused so much exasperation among the teaching staff that it was eventually taken to the headmaster, St. John Burnham, M.A. (Oxon), known as Singe ‘n' Burn, who prided himself on being a liberal educationalist. To the mortification of the masters and in particular Mr. Hunning, the senior English master, Singe V Burn declared the expression “A legitimate paraphrase for a dissenting opinion.” And so the expression “According to Miss Bornstein” was officially written into the school vocabulary.

We arrived outside the masters' common room just after three o'clock, armed with Miss Bornstein's two letters on the subject of the Crimean War. But Mango refused to continue the argument and simply gave us two hours of detention and a two-thousand-word essay to write on the Crimean War. He added that the next indiscretion would result in a visit to the head.

Morrie said in disgust, “I told you history was all bullshit. There goes another generation of Christian gentlemen schoolboys who will grow up to believe the Charge of the Light Brigade was one of England's finest hours.”

“But it was,” I said.