The Power of One (67 page)

I had never been as exhausted in
my life. Not only
had I never boxed six rounds before, I'd never taken as much punishment. I tried to walk with dignity to the neutral corner as Natkin Patel started to count Mandoma out.

For the first time in the fight I heard the crowd, who were going absolutely wild.

“Onoshobishobi... shobi... shobi... Ingelosi!” The chorus rolled like thunder across the football field. On and on it went until the microphone was pushed back into the ring and Gideon Mandoma's seconds had helped him to his corner. I walked over to see if he was all right and to shake his hand.

“You are the great chief, you are he who is Onoshobishobi Ingelosi,” Mandoma said, and, standing on still trembling legs, he held up my hand. The crowd went wild.

“It is you who are a chief, your spirit is still with you. We will be brothers, Gideon Mandoma.”

“I see you, Peekay. We have taken the milk from the same mother's breast, we are brothers.” I held up his hand, and the crowd roared its approbation.

Mr. Nguni was back at the microphone and after some trouble got the crowd to quiet down. I had returned to my corner and was sitting on the pot while Solly was rubbing me down and Morrie held a fresh towel to drape over me.

“We have seen what we have seen. You must all go to your homes, tell the people that the spirit within the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi lives also in the man. You have seen it with your own eyes, and it is so,” he said simply. He turned and called Gideon Mandoma and me over and we stood next to him with our arms around each other. “We have seen the spirits fight. In this we are all brothers.” Mr. Nguni said, and the roar of the black crowd closed the proceedings.

I touched Gideon on the shoulder and returned to my corner. It was just beginning to move into darker twilight, and the smell of wood smoke and coal fires came to me again. In the distance a train whistled, cutting through the hubbub of the departing crowd. All around us black faces were grinning, and some of the men stretched out and touched me lightly as though I was a talisman. But most looked at me, and I could see that they believed. The legend had been cast deeper and would spread further. I wondered if it would ever end. I suddenly realized that every bone in my body felt as though it had been broken.

With my arm around Morrie's shoulders for support, we walked through the corridor of black bodies on our way back to the school. Black hands touched me. Wiping sweat from my body, they rubbed it onto their faces.

“There you are, what did I tell you, lads, didn't I say it would be a t'riffic fight?” Solly said as we entered the school. “Blimey! Twice there I thought you was gone, my son. It's good to know you can take a punch. Lemme tell you, I never seen an amateur throw a perfect thirteen-punch combination before. It was worth comin' just for that.”

“Cut it out, Solly, can't you see Peekay's hurting?” Morrie cut in.

“Not as much as the
swartzer,
my boy,” Solly said.

When we got to the shower block, I sat down and started to cry. It was as though I saw the years ahead. The pain in my body had somehow sharpened the focus of my mind. I saw South Africa. I saw what would come. Something had happened to me. Morrie was talking, but it was as though his voice were in an echo chamber. No, not an echo chamber; in the crystal cave of Africa. His voice echoed across the tops of the rain forest, down the valley, just as the barking baboons had done. “I've found it, Doc. I've found the power of one!” Morrie's voice was saying. The cave about me was shining crystal, the crystal became my pain, and the pain sharpened as the light grew more intense. My concentration focused down to a pinpoint. The sadness I felt was overwhelming; sadness for the great Southland. In the whiteness, in the light, was a sound, as if the light and the sound were one. It was the great drum and the voices of the People. They came together as an echo. “
Mayibuye Afrika! Afrika! Afrika
!” Come back, Africa! Africa! Africa! My life, whatever it was to become, was bound to this thing; there was no escaping it, I was a part of the crystal cave of Africa. And in the pain and confusion I wept, I could see only destruction and confusion and the drum beat, boom, boom, boom, and the light began to fade and Doc entered the cave, his hair white as snow, tall as ever. “You must try, Peekay. You must try. Absoloodle!”

Morrie put his arm around me. “There's more to this Onoshobishobi Ingelosi than I know about, isn't there, Peekay?”

“Christ, I dunno. I just don't know,” I sobbed.

“Don't worry, Peekay, no one can hurt you. No bastard can hurt you while I'm alive!”

“Doc's dead!” I heard my voice saying as though it were totally divorced from my body.

That evening when we returned
to Morrie's place in Pretoria
there was a message to call Mrs. Boxall.

“Peekay, we have sad news. The professor has disappeared! Gert and all the warders not on duty and half the men in town are in the hills looking for him, but he's been gone two days. Now they say there's little chance of finding him alive!” Her voice faltered and then broke as she began to sob. The line from Barberton was crackling, fading in and out, and Mrs. Boxall's sobs grew and receded. “Please come home, Peekay, please come quickly. You're sure to find him, you went so many places together,” she wept.

Morrie forced me to sleep. “We'll wake you at two
a.m
. and a chauffeur can drive you the two hundred miles to Barberton, you'll arrive by sunup.”

I knew where to find Doc. I knew that somehow he had done the impossible and had reached the crystal cave of Africa. Doc would be lying on the platform, his arms across his chest. In one hundred thousand years people would find the cave again and would climb up to the magic platform and they'd say, “What a strange coincidence, that looks just like the shape of a man made of crystal. A very tall, thin man.” And then I cried myself to sleep.

NO
one, not even I, knew Doc's religion, but after a week during which I had visited all our old haunts (except one) with various teams of men, it was decided that a church ceremony should take place. Marie came forward and claimed that Doc had found Christ while he was in hospital with pneumonia, and my mother was ecstatic. Pastor Mulvery claimed the right to hold a burial service
sans
Doc's mortal remains. I didn't protest. Marie had convinced herself that Doc had said yes to Jesus, and she had notched him up as one of her most important salvations. I don't think Doc would have minded too much. Besides, his love for the great Southland was complete in the most beautiful eternity he could conceive of, not dust and ashes but a wonderful pagan burial that would make him a living part of his beloved Africa. His spirit would dwell in the crystal cave of Africa, looking out across the rain forest, down the misty valley, and over distant mountains smudged blue as a child's crayon drawing.

Doc's death left me completely numb. I went through the motions, but it was as though I had lost my center of gravity. Everything seemed topsy-turvy. People would speak to me, but I wouldn't hear them. Their mouths opened like goldfish in a bowl, but nothing came out. Their movements seemed exaggerated, as though by walking up to me they were growing bigger from the same spot, their feet not moving but their bodies just elasticizing cartoonlike to where I stood. The pain was all inside, deep and dull, and I knew it was this that made me feel numb. I felt I would never be quite the same again, that I could never love as much again. I kept telling myself that I had known Doc

was going to die, that Doc had been telling me himself for months, but I knew nothing about this sort of death. Death was violent and ugly like Granpa Chook and Geel Piet, or even macabre like Big Hettie. Death, as I had come to know it in Africa, had no gently slipping awayness about it, no dignity. And so I felt Doc had cheated, he'd just gone, he'd disappeared, he had made death happen rather than have it happen. I felt cheated, even angry. Why hadn't he waited for me? Why hadn't he told me so that I could have taken him to the crystal cave? But secretly I knew that I couldn't have done it, I would have clung to the last thread of life in him. I also knew that he would have known this. But it didn't help the numbness. It didn't take away the need, the dull permanent ache under my heart on the exact spot where you work on another boxer till he runs out of steam. That was it precisely: the bell had gone, but I couldn't find the strength and the will to come out for the next round on my own.

Pastor Mulvery said a lot of things about it being the end of Doc's travail and his vale of tears. He had called Doc a great piano player and gardener. “The Lord Jesus has given our beloved professor a garden in heaven filled with the fragrance of pansies and sweetpeas, where he can play his music for a choir of angels.” The regulars in the congregation must have thought it was one of his better descriptions of the born-again hereafter, and they peppered Pastor Mulvery's eulogy with “Praise the Lord” and “Blessed be His glorious name.” I heard it all, but it didn't make any sense, it had nothing to do with Doc. Absoloodle not.

“Oh dear, oh goodness, dearie me. Our dear, dear professor would most certainly have chosen eternal hellfire in preference to an eternity spent in a bed of pansies and sweetpeas, playing for a choir of angels,” said Mrs. Boxall, having been exposed to Pastor Mulvery and the workings of the Apostolic Faith Mission for the first time.

The aloe was in bloom on the hillside above the rose garden, and early on the day of the service I had climbed to our rock and cried for a while until the sun came up over the valley. On the way down I gathered several candelabra of aloe blossom which I put in a large copper vase I found in the back room of the church. When I entered the church later to attend the funeral, it had been removed and an arrangement of pink and orange gladioli had been put in its place.

Even old Mr. Bornstein, wearing a hat throughout, attended the service with Miss Bornstein. Miss Bornstein's shiny lipstick and long red nails looked strangely out of place in a church that taught that makeup of any sort, except for face powder, was a sin. I once heard long painted nails described by a lady witnessing for the Lord as the devil's talons dripping with the blood of sinners. Miss Bornstein looked beautiful among the scrubbed, plain-faced women with their graying hair pulled back and held by cheap celluloid clips, their hats stuck with sprigs of linen flowers, some small attempt at adornment. I could see them stealing glances at her, at her perfect complexion, magnificent shining, almost purple black hair, green eyes, and brilliant sinful lips and nails. They would spit it all back in righteous vituperation when next they gaggled around a cup of tea to tell each other they had seen sin in the flesh, the devil himself sitting among them.

Outside the church after the service, as there was no Doc in a coffin to look solemn about, the regulars were able to congratulate Marie for her spectacular conversion. Even my mother got a bit of gratuitous praise for her original foresight in bringing Doc into focus as a potential candidate for salvation.

All the warders who knew Doc, including Captain Smit and the kommandant, came to pay their respects. Afterward Captain Smit invited me back to the prison where the boxing team was having a wake. This turned out to be a jolly affair, more like a
braaivleis
and singsong, and I tried hard to be cheerful, for I suspected it was held as a gesture and as a bit of a cheer-up for me. Doc would have approved much more of this than of the sanctimonious burial service.

Gert took me to one side. When I'd arrived back to help in the search for Doc, I'd taken over from him. He had barely slept for three days and had been exhausted. “Tell me, man, how come we never found him? You know everyplace he went.”

“Ja,
it's funny, that, but you know Doc, Gert. He probably had a place in an old mine shaft that only he knew about, someplace he found years ago, before he met me.”

Gert looked at me directly. “No, man, no way. You and him was too close. I reckon you know, but,
ag,
man, you right, I wouldn't tell also if it was me.” Gert was a naturally quiet person who didn't miss much; he'd just been promoted to sergeant and everyone said he was going places.

Doc left everything he owned to me, including the Steinway. He left a small insurance policy worth about twenty pounds to Dee and Dum. My mother had the Steinway moved to the lounge at home, where it practically filled the room so that the two chairs that matched the sofa had to be put on the back verandah. A jolly good idea, because that's where everyone sat anyway. The only ones who came to see us were church ladies and townspeople coming for fittings; we never had proper visitors of the kind that got sat uncomfortably in the front room, so the back
stoep
was perfect for the old ball-and-claw brocade chairs, which, after forty years of being stuck in the parlor, saw some real “bottom work” at last.

At first I think my granpa was a bit hurt about the banished chairs. His beautiful wife, for whom the rose garden had been created, had originally bought the furniture. But by the time I was back for the holidays again one of the chairs was permanently claimed as his and had several small burn holes in the upholstery where bits of glowing tobacco ash had fallen from the bowl of his pipe to burn through the faded brocade.

Doc's cottage was well away from any other European houses on a small
koppie,
and his will, read to me by young Mr. Bornstein, showed that he owned the whole of the small hill. I moved Dee and Dum in as caretakers, although it was really intended as their home. The tiny three-room cottage with lean-to kitchen was a veritable mansion after the small brick room next to the rose nursery which they had shared. They had both been terribly distressed at Doc's death. Doc had asked them to pack food for three days and not to speak to anyone about his departure. When he hadn't returned on the fourth day, Dee had gone to see Mrs. Boxall, who had raised the alarm. True to her word, Dee had simply told Mrs. Boxall that Doc hadn't returned from the hills the previous evening as his bed had not been slept in and the ash in the tiny potbelly stove was cold. They had both confessed to me about Doc requesting food for three days, which meant that when Mrs. Boxall had called me, Doc had actually been gone four days. It would have taken him two days to reach the crystal cave of Africa, whereupon he would have rested and then, sometime on the third day, climbed the cliff. Doc was a methodical man; he would have planned everything meticulously, to the last ounce of his energy. Marie told me that while he was in hospital he had complained each night of being unable to sleep, and they had given him a sleeping pill. Doc would never have taken a pill, which he termed “putting bad chemicals in the blood.” I knew that he would now have the sleeping pills with him. Doc never did anything carelessly, and he wasn't going to be any different in planning his death.

It was Dee and Dum's keeping faith with Doc that prevented the search parties from going further into the hills. In one day a frail old man recovering from pneumonia could not have traveled far into the foothills, least of all across the Saddleback Range. I knew Doc better than that; he would have planned it by building up his condition for weeks, maybe months, knowing his chances for success. When I'd called, Mrs. Boxhall had said he was in good shape.

I waited until the day before I was due to return to school and the furor of Doc's death was beginning to die down a little so that I would be allowed to go into the hills alone. Telling my mother at supper the previous evening that I was going for a last ramble in memory of Doc, I left home before dawn. I knew there was still something Doc needed: if it had not been so, he would have left some sort of message for me. Together with Dee and Dum, I searched the cottage and the cactus garden in vain. Doc wanted me to perform some last duty, I felt quite sure about this. In any case, I needed to perform some sort of ritual of my own to mark Doc's passing. I packed a can of sardines and a couple of oranges and filled my old school lunch tin with a tomato, two hard-boiled eggs, and a couple of leftover cold potatoes. With a bottle of water and a torch, I set off. To avoid suspicion, I didn't take rope, as I was certain I could climb the cliff without it.

Pausing only at sunrise to drink and to eat a potato, by midmorning I had arrived at our old campsite on the edge of the rain forest. Above me loomed the cliff, now suddenly meaning so much more to me. Doc, as I had expected, had used the site again. There had been no rain for the last ten days, and the ash in the fire hole I'd dug was still fresh and powdery. To make certain, I went to the spot where I had buried our rubbish and dug it up. Sure enough, a second bully beef tin and the wrapping from a packet of Baker's Pretty Polly Crackers had been added. Doc loved the dry, tasteless crackers and always bought the same brand.

Half an hour later I was standing on the shelf that led to the cave. At first there seemed to be no sign of Doc having been there, and my heart beat furiously. What if Doc hadn't made it? What if he had fallen trying to scale the cliff and lay somewhere in the thick rain forest that grew at its base? I fought back the panic, for I knew I would have to find him and somehow get him up the cliff and into the cave and onto the platform: a task that would take me two days, if I could achieve it at all.

I also knew that if Doc lay in the crystal cave of Africa he would not have wanted me to enter. Doc was a man of great sensitivity, and the idea of subjecting me to the sight of his corpse on the platform would be unthinkable. He would have left me instructions outside the cave, in daylight; that's where his message would be. I began to search the shelf inch by inch. Doc had trained me to be observant, and I knew he would expect me to make the kind of detailed examination of the shelf which would be beyond the casual searcher so that if he had hidden something it would not be apparent to any but a trained eye.

I searched for half an hour, but the limestone shelf had been worn out of the cliff face by a hundred thousand years of wind, rain, and water erosion, the hollowed-out shelf was smooth and regular, and there were no cracks in the dolomite rock. I began to doubt. Doc might have intended to leave me a message but been on the point of collapse when he finally made it up to the shelf, saving every ounce of strength for the task of reaching the platform.

And then I saw it. A dark stripe of some sort of mineral sediment, long since dry, had stained a small part of the shelf. I ran my hand over the stained rock and received a sudden sharp prick. I pulled my hand back and looked at it; a tiny drop of blood formed on my palm. Sticking out of the middle of the dark patch no more than an eighth of an inch was the point of the blade of Doc's Joseph Rogers pocketknife.

Doc had discovered that the dark sedimented patch was softer than the rock surrounding it, and he had gouged a hole into the center of it, using the pocketknife. He had then mixed the sand that came out of the hole with a little water from his water bottle and, first inserting the knife with the tip of the blade only just showing, he had repacked the granules of sand to mend invisibly where he had buried the knife.

It was typical of Doc; he trusted his training of me so much that he knew he could make the hiding place difficult for others to find, and that I would find it. I scraped the dirt away from the point of the blade and dislodged the small knife. Around its handle, tied with cotton thread, was a note.