Whitethorn (20 page)

When we got back to The Boys Farm after church, I went and found an old paraffin tin with the top cut off and the sharp edges hammered down. There were lots of these because when they were empty you'd put a wire handle on them so that you could use them in the vegetable gardens as buckets to water the orange and avocado pear trees. Old ones that had a leak were thrown away and it was one of these tins I went and got. Tinker and I went back to the big rock where she used to stay and I placed the tin in the hole that used to be her kennel. Then I fetched the book from under the hydrangeas and put it in the tin and covered up the entrance so rain couldn't get in and people passing by wouldn't see it. Not that anyone ever came to the big rock now that Fonnie du Preez had gone to reform school in Pretoria and Pissy Vermaak had been sent to Pietersburg to be closer to his mother.

Every day Tinker and I would visit the book that I'd cleaned up and you could hardly see where the green mould had been on the nice red-leather cover. I don't know why, but I just liked to hold that book, which was sort of warm and alive and you'd turn some of the gold-edged pages and the words would dance up at you, millions of them, like gnats buzzing in the air. Sometimes I thought about taking it back and creeping under the doctor's house and putting it in that big wooden box. But then I'd think it was like burying it again and I loved it to be alive the way it was with the words dancing like that. I knew I'd committed a sin stealing it and sometimes sitting in church with the
Dominee
raging on about the English and the beetle he'd have chomping away at his beard I'd feel guilty and decide to take it back, but when I held it again, I couldn't.

Lots of weeks went by and holidays came and went. Not that the holidays were much use to us because we had to work in the vegetable garden and around the place so that school was better. Some of the big boys were allowed to go and work on farms during the holidays, which they liked a lot, but it meant us little ones had to work a bit harder when they were gone. Christmas came and we had jelly and ice-cream and two new shirts and pants from the Government and roast pork for Christmas dinner with second helpings and roast potatoes. At church on the Christmas morning the
Dominee
didn't say anything against the English because ‘It was a time of peace and goodwill towards all men and a Saviour was born on this day to die for all of us regardless of colour or creed. Christmas was the best time to confess our sins because we and not Jesus were born in sin and could only be saved if we were born all over again in His precious name. We'd be washed in the blood of the lamb.'

With all this being-born-again stuff going on I wondered if I should tell about the book and confess my sins, but then the
Dominee
said, ‘We will become as innocent as a little child when we give our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ.' So me being a little child and all and, besides, I didn't much like the idea of being washed in lambs' blood, I decided I must be innocent. I'd had a bit too much blood in my life lately, so I thought it best to say nothing about the book and wait until I was grown up and had become an official sinner and then I'd tell about stealing it from under Doctor Van Heerden's house.

Christmas was soon over and nothing much changed around the place. But when school started I was pretty excited because I was going to learn to read. Juffrou Marais, my teacher, said I was even further behind the class that had been seven the beginning of the previous year and now were all eight and I was still seven until May. So I had to start with the reading beginners who'd just turned seven this year, even though I was now seven and three-quarters.

‘Please, Juffrou, can I try to catch up?' I begged.

‘Most of them have turned eight and you're still seven until May. It's the rules, you have to start with the beginner class and you can't just jump a whole year when you don't know the first thing about reading,' she replied. ‘Besides, I don't have time to give you extra lessons, you hear?'

So from being the youngest in the class I'd suddenly become the oldest at learning to read. It didn't seem fair, but then fairness wasn't something you came across much so I decided I'd learn extra hard. I didn't know if I was clever because nobody ever told us if you were, but I thought I'd just work at learning because I wanted to read my big red book more than anything in the world.

You must think I'm stupid because it was a grown-up book and little kids can't just start out reading books like that but I told myself that there would be words in there that I recognised. Maybe only the very little ones, but that didn't matter because I would grow up one day and be able to read them all. I soon became the best reader in the class and, even if I say so myself, I left all the other kids in the dust. But when, every day, I went to the big rock with Tinker and we'd sit down and I'd take my big red book out and open it, nothing happened. I'd search and search but couldn't find a single word I could recognise until one day I found ‘die'
,
which means ‘the' in Afrikaans
.
I can tell you, that was a day and a half! I was pretty pleased with myself. At last I'd begun the long journey into the dancing words. But alas, my progress halted with this single word because I couldn't find any others I'd learned from the primers they gave us to read at school. You'd think you'd find some, but with the exception of ‘die' there was nothing. I couldn't understand this, because all the words we learned were ones you could speak, but when it came to my book they'd all disappeared.

Suddenly my life changed forever. Juffrou Marais, who we all thought was just getting slowly fat because she'd got married the year before, left because she was going to have a baby. A new teacher, Juffrou Janneke Phillips, who Meneer Van Niekerk, the headmaster, said was ‘only temporary' and was a practice teacher from Johannesburg, came to take our class. She was very pretty and looked quite young and had red nails and was nice to us all and we soon liked her a lot. After a week or so Juffrou Phillips said I must stay back after school to see her. I was a bit worried because if we didn't march back to The Boys Farm after school we had to have a note from our teacher to say why we had to stay back. If it was because of something bad that you'd done you got double punishment, one from the school and the other from Mevrou. I forgot to say they always checked us at line-up when we got back from school. So you can see, I was a bit anxious when all the other kids traipsed out and I was left sitting at my desk.

‘Tom, why are you in this reading class? Your reading is far better than any of the other children,' my teacher said.

‘I don't know, Juffrou, maybe because I'm a bigger seven than they are.'

‘Did you all start learning to read at the same time?'

‘
Ja
, Juffrou.'

‘So you think you're more mature, is that it?'

‘What's mature mean, Juffrou?'

‘No, I don't think that's it,' she said, as if she was speaking to herself. ‘I'm going to put you up with the eights, you're a lot better reader than most of them.'

‘Juffrou Marais said the Government won't allow it,' I replied.

She laughed. ‘In this class I am the Government,' she said, then added, ‘I'm not holding a bright child back because of what the Government says.'

So I was put up with the eight-year-old readers where I seemed to go pretty okay and then Juffrou Phillips put me up a class with all my other subjects as well. But nothing helped. Now I was reading well but still no words appeared that I could find in my red book.

Up to that time I hadn't really trusted anyone who was a grown-up, except Mattress. You couldn't count Sergeant Van Niekerk because, like Doctor Van Heerden, while they'd been nice to me I didn't really know them except for two occasions over Mattress with the sergeant and only a stitched-up finger with the doctor. They were both high-ups and people like me couldn't really count them as grown-ups we knew as someone to trust. I talked to Tinker about Juffrou Phillips and asked her what she thought, should I show her the red book? I know that's stupid because a dog doesn't talk or anything, but sometimes you can just tell what they're thinking and Tinker was a very clever dog, I can assure you. You'd ask her something and she'd cock her head and look at you and often she'd give this little bark, so you knew she knew what you were saying. We decided to trust Juffrou Phillips.

During morning break when we all got a small bottle of milk and a bun, because of the rural malnutrition program the Government had, I asked if I could talk to her after school. When she said yes, I also asked if she'd give me a note to say it was all right for me to come back to The Boys Farm not in the crocodile.

After school I showed her my red book with the gold-edged pages. It was getting a bit dirty and old-looking from me always turning the pages, and I suppose my hands weren't always clean.

‘What's this, Tom?' she asked.

‘It's a book I found, Juffrou.'

‘Yes, I can see that, but why are you showing it to me?'

‘Please, Juffrou, can you teach me to read what's in it?'

She picked up the book and read the gold words on the spine that had faded a bit. ‘
Abolition of Slavery 1834
,' she read aloud.

‘None of the words are the same as you're teaching us, Juffrou,' I declared.

She laughed. ‘I don't suppose so, this book is written in English!'

‘Can you teach it to me, please, Juffrou?'

‘Can you speak English, Tom? Your name, Fitzsaxby, is that English?'

‘I think I could once before I came to The Boys Farm, but I'm not sure.' In the hope that it might influence her, I added, ‘Everybody says I'm English and a
verdomde rooinek
.'

She sighed. ‘Children are so cruel. You can't even speak the language and they call you a damned redneck.' She seemed to be thinking for a bit, then she sighed again. ‘I'm only here for another month or two at the most, it's not enough time.'

‘Please, Juffrou!' I begged. ‘Just so I can find some words in my book.'

She looked at me and took both my hands in hers. I could see her red nails were quite long and shone up at me bright as anything and I thought her hands looked so beautiful they shouldn't ever be used for writing things on the blackboard.

‘Tom, this isn't the kind of book you can learn to read,' she said softly. She must have seen the look of disappointment on my face because she quickly added, ‘until you're a lot older.'

‘How old must I be?' I asked tremulously. The idea that I might never be able to read the dancing words was unthinkable.

‘Just older,' she said kindly. ‘In the meantime I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to see the headmaster and ask him if I can put you on the English lessons the ten-year-olds in grade five do when it is compulsorily in the curriculum for English to be taught as a second language. I feel sure you'll manage their books quite easily.'

‘Then will I be able to read my red book, Juffrou?'

‘Probably not right away,' she paused and smiled. ‘Now, Tom Fitzsaxby, when we talk English together you don't call me Juffrou Phillips, you call me Miss Phillips or just Miss.'

‘
Ja
, Miss,' I said.

‘Yes, Miss,' she corrected.

I couldn't explain it but I sensed this was an important moment. As it turned out, it was more important than I could have possibly imagined. Far beyond being a carpenter or a boilermaker or a lorry driver or a bulldozer driver on the roads or an engine driver on the railways – all the things we were told were good skilled grown-up jobs for us if we worked very hard.

Miss Phillips forgot to give me the note for Mevrou and I was so excited that I didn't remember either so I got four of the best when I got back to The Boys Farm. You see, I couldn't tell Mevrou that I'd stayed back so that I could ask to be given reading in English lessons because then I would have truly been in the deep shit.

You could hear already what she'd say. ‘So Afrikaans isn't good enough for a certain person who's a
rooinek
, hey?'
Whack!
‘You think we, the true
volk
, are not good enough for you, hey?'
Whack!
‘You kill our women and children and then you think you a better type of person.'
Whack
! ‘You just a
verdomde rooinek
!'
Whack!
‘Ever since you come here,
Voetsek
, you nothing but trouble, man.'
Whack!
‘And if that's not bad enough, you a
kaffirboetie
making friends with that pig boy who ran away up into the mountains!'
Whack!
‘Take six of the best!'
Whack!
‘It's seven I know, but I've given you one extra because I've had
genoeg
!' No whack.

So I told Mevrou I'd gotten into trouble and my teacher made me stay back. It was worth the four new bits of Chinese writing on my bum because soon I'd be reading my red book. You see, I couldn't believe I'd have to wait until I was grown up to understand it. Not that Miss Phillips said that exactly, but sometimes you can hear what grown-up people are thinking in their heads.

C
HAPTER
SIX