Whitethorn (12 page)

Naturally we were all pretty excited but also a bit confused. There were only three sixteen-year-olds big enough to be called a heavyweight and the rugby season had just started and they were all in the school team because they were the front row forwards. But on Saturday the school rugby team was going to play Tzaneen High, which was in a town about fifty miles away, so how could they be in a heavyweight boxing contest? Besides, they weren't very good boxers and only one of them, Jannie Marais, had managed to get to the second round of the district schools' championship and Frikkie Botha said it was a disgrace, but on the other hand all three of the referees were from other schools, so what could you expect. So who was going to fight whom on Saturday was what everyone wanted to know.

Fortunately Pissy came back to the dormitory that night and told us everything that he said happened. He lied through his teeth, of course, because what he told us wasn't at all what happened. He didn't tell us anything about Doctor Van Heerden and the box brownie snaps. Nor did he say that the boxing match had nothing to do with what was going to happen to Mattress afterwards. I only learned about that some years later. He made it sound like
only
the fight between Frikkie Botha and Mattress was happening and the rest was all forgotten.

What he made up was this. He was in the sick room and Frikkie Botha came in because he had cut his arm from fixing a barbwire fence and wanted some sticking plaster. Meneer Prinsloo came in to talk to Mevrou about something or other and the conversation about how the pig boy had let the black cow eat the deadly nightshade took place. Pissy said Frikkie Botha asked Meneer Prinsloo if he could put on the fight because if he just beat Mattress with a
sjambok
he wasn't
absolutely
certain that he was to blame for what happened to the cow and he wanted to be just and fair. He wanted to give the
kaffir
a chance to hit back. Meneer Prinsloo said all right because it wasn't taking justice into your own hands. Pissy told us how it goes to show that Frikkie Botha is a salt-of-the-earth type and a
regte
Boer. Everybody knows a good lie must contain a fair element of the truth and Pissy already knew that and had it down pat, so for a change he was a hero in the small kids' dormitory.

You have to remember that only him and me and Fonnie du Preez knew the new Mevrou version of the story of what was supposed to have happened at the big rock. Even though I wasn't supposed to know, having only overheard it by mistake. Mevrou's latest version, you will remember, was still a whole pack of lies. All the other kids still believed in the original pack of lies, that the accident happened when Fonnie was supposed to have tripped and fallen when some rock gave way.

Talk about confused, I didn't know if I was coming or going and I had to keep reminding myself that the licking and sucking and Mattress rescuing me and throwing Fonnie against the rock was the real God's honest truth. As I lay in bed I asked myself what could it all possibly mean? One moment they were going to take Mattress to Pretoria and hang him till he's stone dead and the next he's fighting Frikkie Botha in a boxing match because of a cow.

I alone knew that Doctor Van Heerden had been to see Pissy's bum. Although you couldn't be one hundred per cent certain that's why he came, you had to ask yourself why else would he come at night in his new Chevrolet with the dicky-seat when Pissy was the only one in the sick room? Even a person who was seven could work that one out. But I'd been dead wrong about everything else. When Mevrou said that Mattress was already a dead
kaffir
, what I thought would surely follow was a big blow-up, with the police coming and Sergeant Van Niekerk bringing his three big Alsatian dogs in case Mattress tried to run away up the mountains. So I'd run down to the pigsty to warn Mattress. Suddenly, everything had changed. The only bad thing was that Mattress was going to get a good hiding from Frikkie Botha for letting a cow feed on a deadly bush. I told myself this was a lot better than Mattress being ‘a dead
kaffir
'.

I was still pretty worried for Mattress but I didn't cry. You got used to what was unfair about that place and if you waited around for fair to come along you'd eventually turn into a pillar of salt. What was going to happen to Mattress in the boxing ring was unfair alright. He'd stayed up all night and nursed that sick cow and saved its life. I knew also if the cow ate the deadly nightshade it wouldn't have been Mattress's fault. To a Zulu a cow is a very important person and he would never let it happen on purpose. It was just an accident that could happen to any cow. I went to sleep feeling very sorry for Mattress but also feeling a lot better about the situation than I had the night before.
The following morning before school I took my crusts down to Tinker and stopped to visit Mattress.

‘Do you know how to box?' I asked him.

Mattress laughed. ‘For boxing I am not good,
Kleinbaas.
I am Zulu and I can throw a spear.' He picked up a smallish stone and aimed it at the swill churn, which was about twenty yards away, and let fly. The stone crashed with a clang into the side of the churn. ‘For boxing it is Big
Baas
Botha who can show you this.
Ahee
, he is very, very good that one.'

‘But how will you fight him then?' I asked.

Mattress looked genuinely astonished. ‘Why I am fighting Big
Baas
Botha?'

‘Because he says you let the cow eat the deadly bush by the creek.' I didn't know the name in Zulu for deadly nightshade.

Mattress looked puzzled and then a little indignant. ‘That one black cow she is sick from the bloat, I am telling you before,
Baas
Botha also knows, she is eating too much the green clover, she is not eating that bush by the river.'

‘That's not what Big
Baas
Botha says. He says because he can't prove that you let the cow do it, that's why you have to fight him, so fair's fair.'

Mattress didn't reply but shook his head slowly. I got the impression that his silence was over my peculiar and decidedly difficult-to-believe news. If I had been a Zulu he might simply have scoffed at me and told me I was talking rubbish. You couldn't blame him, two days before I'd come huffing and puffing to tell him he was in mortal danger and to flee into the hills. Now I was telling him he had to fight Frikkie Botha in the boxing ring because of the cow whose life he'd saved. Finally, I think to be polite, he looked at me and explained, ‘
Kleinbaas
, I cannot do this boxing, Big
Baas
Botha, he can beat me if he wants with his
sjambok
, but a white
baas
and a black man they cannot do the boxing together, it is not allowed.'

‘I know!' I said urgently. ‘Only this time they going to allow it!' I added, ‘I swear it's true, on my word of honour.' It was getting late and I had to go to school and I hadn't fed Tinker the scraps of bread in my pocket. I whistled and called her name. Moments later she came dashing down from the dairy at a thousand miles an hour, and a great deal of leaping and tumbling and running around in circles and yapping with pleasure took place before her final leap into my arms and the licking of my face occurred.

I stood holding Tinker and I said, ‘Mattress, I just want you to know that I will be on your side.' I put Tinker down and produced the bread crusts and a great gobbling and happiness of eating took place at my feet.

Mattress smiled. ‘We are friends,' he said. I shook his hand in the traditional way. ‘
Hamba kahle
, go carefully,' he said.

‘
Sala kahle
, stay well,' I replied. It was good to know I had two things in my life that I loved.

That was Friday and the fight was to take place the following morning and when I returned to play with Tinker in the afternoon after school Frikkie Botha had informed Mattress about the fight. I found him sitting on the pigsty wall with the swill churn next to him. Even from a distance I could see he wasn't happy.

‘
Sawubona
!' I called as I approached, but for once he didn't even raise his head and smile but simply remained looking forlorn. As I drew close he looked up. ‘It is true,
Kleinbaas.
Big
Baas
Botha he want to fight me with the boxing tomorrow.'

I wasn't as tall as Mattress was, even though he was sitting on the wall, but I stood on my toes and put my arm around his shoulder. ‘I am on your side, Mattress,' I said. ‘You are a Zulu warrior and the grandson of a great warrior who fought with Dingaan against the Boere.' I added, ‘It is not possible for you to be afraid.'

Mattress turned and looked at me in astonishment. ‘I am not afraid,
Kleinbaas
! But what we are doing, this boxing, Big
Baas
Botha and me, it is not right.'

‘Yes, but you
must
hit him back when he hits you! This time it's officially allowed, man! It's the rules in the boxing ring.' I didn't tell him that Frikkie Botha was once a district amateur champion heavyweight and had narrowly lost on a points decision in the finals of the Northern Transvaal Championships in 1933. He would be hard to hit if you didn't know how to box him back, which was likely to be the case with Mattress.

‘I am a Zulu,' Mattress said.

I have to admit in my heart of hearts I didn't think that would be enough to stop him getting murdered by Frikkie Botha.

It was Saturday and it was a day everyone thought would never come, such was the anticipation. It's not every day that you see a white and a black man fighting it out – may the best man win. We'd all seen blacks getting a hiding, but that wasn't the same, they just stood there and had to take the
sjambok
without being allowed to retaliate. It's funny, there seemed to be some deep sense of satisfaction going through the place that now it wouldn't be like that, that this time the
kaffir
could fight back if he wanted. Naturally, he would be severely beaten in the process, everyone knew a black man couldn't beat a white man in a thousand years. In America maybe, but in South Africa the white man would always be better if they weighed the same.

This was the perfect match-up, two heavyweights slogging it out. Well, hopefully slogging it out. The fear was that the
kaffir
wouldn't put up much of a fight and while that would still be good, because of what it proved, it wouldn't be as much fun. Everyone hoped the fight would go the three rounds, but expected it would result in a first-round knockout. ‘What does a black
kaffir
know about boxing, hey?' ‘And remember he's coming up against an ex-districts champion.' That's how everyone was talking.

What I'm trying to show is what was going on in the hostel in the minds of the boys. Nobody thought Mattress had a hope and, I'm afraid, that included me. But, in my case, not because he was black, but because he lacked the skill as a boxer. Or maybe I'm telling a lie. Perhaps I did think like all the others, that it was because Mattress was a black man. In an
assegai
-throwing competition he'd have eaten Frikkie Botha for breakfast, but boxing was altogether another thing.

The saddest people in The Boys Farm were the three guys who had to get up early and go into town and catch the bus that was taking the rugby team to Tzaneen. They even talked about going sick all of a sudden, but you couldn't just go and replace a whole front row. They were very good too. In later years they would pack down as the front row for the Springboks when the New Zealand All Blacks came to play us in 1949, the first tour after the war ended.

Breakfast was finished at seven o'clock and people all over the place were jumping out of their skins with impatience waiting for ten o'clock to come along. After breakfast I ran down to feed Tinker his crusts and to see Mattress. He was cleaning the dairy floor, washing it on his hands and knees. It was red cement and it also had to be shined after with polish. I'd seen him do it before and he'd be covered with sweat when he finished. It didn't seem like much of a preparation for a boxing match.

There wasn't much conversation going on between us because we both, for once in our lives, didn't know what to say. I looked at his nice face with his white teeth and wondered how it would look after Frikkie Botha was finished with him. Frikkie had false teeth that he took out when he was in the ring and it made his face, with his flat nose that I supposed was broken, look sort-of collapsed with his chin and mouth all bunched up together under his nose. His hair stood up like the bristles of a brush in what would one day be called a GI because American soldiers did it like that. Frikkie Botha, everyone said, was ‘a hard man'.

I left Mattress polishing the floor. He wore only some cut-off-below-theknees old khaki pants with lots of holes and he had really big muscles in his arms and back that shone when he polished that dairy floor. If he wasn't as heavy as Frikkie Botha he was just as tall, about six feet and four inches, and he had a flat stomach that had ripples. If he knew something about boxing he could have been good you'd think, just looking at him. But then again I don't know, everyone said Frikkie Botha ‘was as strong as a bull'. I said goodbye and wished Mattress luck and we shook hands. ‘Remember you allowed to
shaya
him back, to hit him back,' I said hopefully.

‘I am a Zulu,' he replied and went back to polishing the floor. Usually when he did it he'd be singing with a deep voice and mostly what the song was about was cattle and the mountains and rivers and finding good grazing after the spring rains in Zululand. Sometimes it was about a young man hunting a lion so that he could become a man. But today he was silent. Just every now and again he gave a grunt that sounded a bit like the big sow. In two hours he would be standing in the ring and Frikkie Botha was going to beat the living daylights out of him. My heart started to beat faster.