My granpa cleared his throat. “Were there not a couple of chaps who were crucified on either side of Christ, thorough scallywags, as I recall?”
“The Word refers to them as thieves who were crucified beside the Lord, though I don’t see that they have anything whatsoever to do with the matter,” my mother replied, her irritation thinly disguised. “I do not recall it saying in the Bible that they wrote home from jail.” I knew that my granpa’s opinions on biblical matters were not very highly regarded.
“I seem to remember that Christ forgave one of them, promising him a berth in heaven right there on the spot. Or am I mistaken?”
“Goodness! The Lord does not promise people ‘berths’ in heaven,” my mother said sharply. “ ‘Verily I say unto you, today shalt thou be with me in paradise’ is what the Lord said.”
“It seems to me, from that remark, that Christ has no objections to convicted felons entering the kingdom of God,” he declared.
“Of course he doesn’t! That’s the whole point. Jesus was sent to save the most miserable sinners among us. His compassion is for all of us. Seek His forgiveness and you’re saved. You’re no longer a murderer or a thief, you’re one of the Lord’s precious redeemed. The thief on the cross beside Him was saved when he confessed his sins.”
“Hallelujah, praise His precious name,” Marie offered absently. Marie, under my mother’s instruction and with the help of Pastor Mulvery, had become a born-again Christian and she and my mother would give out tracts in the hospital and witness for the Lord to the captive sick whether they liked it or not.
“And the prisoners here in Barberton. Like him, could they also be saved?”
“You know as well as I do they could,” my mother said primly.
“How?”
“By accepting Christ into their lives, by renouncing the devil and …” My mother stopped and looked straight at my granpa. “You know very well how.”
“Oh, I see. You are going to make it possible?”
“Well, no. We’ve prayed a great deal about this, prayed that the Lord would make it possible for the Apostolic Faith missionaries to spread His precious word and bring the gospel to those poor unfortunate sinners.”
“Has it not occurred to you that the Lord may have answered your prayers?” my granpa asked.
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Well, if the lad has direct access to the prisoners, could he not distribute tracts?”
It was a master stroke. In return for being allowed to take dictation on Sunday at the prison, I was required to take gospel tracts in Sotho and Zulu from the Apostolic Faith missionaries and give one to each prisoner after he had dictated his letter to me. My mother and Marie had scored another major triumph, first in the hospital and now the prison; they were earning recognition as a couple of hard-core fighters in the Lord’s army. What’s more, my time on a Sunday was counted as first-class work for the Lord.
I don’t exactly know how it happened but I did it just the once; then it suddenly got done all the time. One of the prisoners had said that tobacco was sorely missed, and the next week I cut a piece of tobacco leaf exactly the same size as a tract and slipped it inside one. The next thing I knew Dee and Dum were slipping these neatly cut squares of tobacco leaf into every tract, and I would take a whole bunch with me and sort them into their African languages and put them in the drawer of the desk at which I sat, leaving an “innocent” pile of Sotho tracts in front of me. After one of the people had dictated his letter to me I would hand him a tract from the drawer. This was Doc’s idea and on two occasions the warder who attended the letter-writing sessions absently picked up a tract, looked at it in a cursory manner and then returned it to the pile on the desk.
Letter writing suddenly became very popular and those of the people who didn’t have anyone to write to would ask me to write to King Georgie. When I asked them what they wanted to say to George VI, the King of England, it was almost always the same thing.
Dear King Georgie,
The people are happy because you are our great king. I send greetings to the great warrior across the water.
Daniel Mafutu
After a while a letter to King George was simply a euphemism for a tract. One tract and contents made two cigarettes. Not only had the Tadpole Angel contrived to continue the supply of tobacco into the prison, but the people no longer had to pay for it and it came together with paper to roll it in. For a generation afterward, cigarettes in South African prisons were known as King Georgies. More importantly for the Kommandant, the letter-writing experiment proved a huge success and before the summer was over he had been made a full colonel and received a commendation from Pretoria for his work in prison reform. The Apostolic Faith missionaries kept up the supply of tracts and when I told Doc that King Georgies now came in Swazi and Shangaan he smiled and said, “I think, Peekay, because the people cannot read they now send smoke signals up to God.”
It was not long after Geel Piet’s death that Lieutenant Borman seemed to be losing weight and Captain Smit advised him to see a doctor.
“It’s God’s justice,” Gert confided to me.
No one said anything but you could see it in their eyes. Those of us who had been in the gym that night all knew Borman was under a curse.
Geel Piet had once told me how prisoners could think so hard that, collectively, they could make things happen.
“Ja, it is true, small baas, I have seen it heppen lots of times,” Geel Piet had said gravely. “Sometimes, when there is enough hate, this thinking can kill. The people will think some person to death. Such a death is always long and hard, because the thinking takes place over a long time. It is the hate; when it boils up there is no stopping it. The person will die because there is no muti you can take to stop this hating thing.”
Anyone born in rural Africa is superstitious and the warders, who were mostly backwoodsmen, were particularly so. We all watched Borman as he started to shrink. The flesh started to fall off him. He seemed to age in front of our eyes. Then he experienced a severe hemorrhage and was rushed to Barberton hospital, where the surgeon’s examination revealed the presence of cancer. In less than a month he was dead.
Within weeks of leaving prison Doc was fit enough to head for the hills and we would climb away from the town at first light every Saturday. We’d breakfast on hard-boiled eggs and bread with a thermos of sweet, milky coffee high up on a ridge somewhere or beside a stream. Sometimes we’d make for Lamati Falls, ten miles into the hills, and we’d wait for the morning sun to whiten the water where it crashed into a deep pool that stayed icy cold throughout the year. Doc was like a small boy. The years seemed to fall away from him as we scampered up the sides of mountains or slid down into deep tropical kloofs, where giant treeferns and the canopy of yellowwood turned the brilliant sunlight into twilight.
Doc was busy taking the photographs for his new book and sometimes we’d hunt all day for a single perfect specimen. It was good to be working with Doc again. Some days we’d communicate all day in Latin and in this way Doc gentled me into Ovid, Cicero, Virgil and Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. Mrs. Boxall countered this with the English poets. Wordsworth, Masefield and Keats were her favorites. I asked Doc about German poets, and he replied that Goethe was the only one in his opinion who could be considered worthy, but that personally he found him a terrible bore and that the Germans put all their poetry into music. He declared I should study the English for their poetry and the Germans for their music.
It was a lopsided sort of education, added to by Miss Bornstein, who had been busy preparing me for a scholarship to a posh private school in Johannesburg. An education well beyond my mother’s income as a dressmaker. I was not yet twelve, the minimum required age for entry into a secondary school, and I had languished in Standard Six for three years, during which Miss Bornstein had privately educated me in “all those things there’s never time to learn at school.”
A month before my twelfth birthday I sat
for the scholarship exam to the Prince of Wales School, and at the end of the term to my absolute mortification Mr. Davis, the headmaster of Barberton school, announced that I had received the highest scholarship marks this school had ever given. That I would be starting as a boarder in the first term of 1946. Doc, Mrs. Boxall and Miss Bornstein had trained me well. Above all things I had been taught to read for pleasure and for meaning, as both Doc and Mrs. Boxall demanded that I exercise my critical faculties in everything I did. In teaching me independence of thought they had given me the greatest gift an adult can give to a child, besides love, and they had given me that also.
And so the last summer of my childhood came to an end. I also sat for the Royal College of Music Advanced Exams and passed, although my marks weren’t spectacular. I think this was as much as Doc expected from me. He knew I had no special gift for music and what I achieved had been simply out of love for him. For his part he had fulfilled his contract with my mother, for whom my passing the exam was confirmation of my genius. It was one of the major disappointments in her life that at boarding school I would elect to play in the jazz band. Jazz was the devil’s music.
Before Geel Piet died he had been teaching me how to put an eight-punch combination together. I worked solidly all summer on this and at the championships held in Boksburg I retained the under-twelve title.
Everyone seemed pleased that I had won a scholarship to the Prince of Wales School in Johannesburg. I kept my apprehension about returning to boarding school to myself; it seemed I would once again be the youngest kid in the school, though this aspect anyway now left me unconcerned. If they had a Judge at the Prince of Wales School, all I could say was he’d better be able to box. In fact, the only question I asked about the school was about boxing. The reply came back that boxing was a school sport and the boxers were under the instruction of an excruiserweight champion of the British Army.
The final crisis of that summer came when the clothing list arrived from the Prince of Wales School. As she read it the tears started to roll down my mother’s cheeks. Marie was there on her afternoon off from the hospital so it must have been a Wednesday. My mother read the list aloud. “Six white shirts with detachable starched collars, long sleeves. Three pairs of long gray flannel trousers (see swatch attached). Six pairs gray school socks, long. One school blazer (see melton sample attached), school blazers or blazer pocket badge and school ties obtainable from John Orrs, 129 Eloff Street, Johannesburg. One gray V-neck jersey, long sleeves. Shoes, with school uniform, brown. Shoes, Sunday, black. Blue serge Sunday suit, long trousers.
“We don’t have the money, we simply don’t have the money,” she kept repeating.
“Ag man, jong, where’s your faith?” Marie said indignantly, not impressed by my mother’s tears. “The Lord will supply everything, just you see. We going to pray right now, so down on our knees and give the precious Lord Jesus Peekay’s order. C’mon, let’s do it now!”
My granpa rose from the table and excused himself but I was obliged to kneel with Marie and my mother. Marie took the clothing list from my mother and handed it to me. “We going to pray out loud to the Lord. It’s always best when you need something bad to pray out loud. When I tell you, you read out the list, okay?”
I nodded.
“Precious Lord Jesus, we got a real problem this time,” Marie began.
“Praise the Lord, praise His precious name,” my mother said.
“You know how clever Peekay is and how he has won a thing to go to a posh school in Johannesburg for nothing.”
“Precious Savior, hear Thy humble servants,” my mother said, attempting to bring a bit of tone into the whole affair.
“Well, we got lots of trouble, man, I mean, Lord,” Marie continued, “the clothing list arrived today. The cupboard is bare, there are no clothes for school hanging up in it. What we need, Lord Jesus, Peekay is going to say right now, so please listen good and you talk up, Peekay, so the Lord can hear,” Marie prayed, cueing me in.
I must say I was quite nervous. “Ah, er … six white shirts with detachable starched collars, long sleeves,” I read. “Three pairs of long gray flannel trousers (see swatch attached).”
“Show Him the swatch, man,” Marie whispered urgently. I didn’t know quite what to do so I held the swatch of gray flannel up to the ceiling. When I reasoned the Lord had had a good enough look, I continued, “Six pairs gray school socks, long.”
“Only three pairs, man! What about the three pairs you already got for school here?” Marie said in a stage whisper.
“Oh,” I said. “Only three pairs, please.” My mother had stopped punctuating Marie’s remarks and I looked at her. At first I thought she was crying; her face was all squished up and she was holding her hand across her mouth. Then I realized she was desperately trying not to laugh. I started to giggle.
Without opening her eyes Marie admonished me. “Peekay, stop it! It’s hard enough asking the Lord for you, you not even being born again an’ all that! But if you laugh we got no chance.” Her voice became conciliatory. “Sorry, Lord, he didn’t mean it. Go on, start reading again. The Lord hasn’t got all day, you know!”
I went on reading the list and also showed the Lord the swatch of green melton blazer cloth. When I got to the bit about school badges being obtainable from John Orrs, 129 Eloff Street, Johannesburg, Marie whispered again.
“You don’t need to give Him the address, He knows where it is.” I finally got to the blue serge suit. “That’s his Sunday suit for going to church, Lord,” she said. My mother threw in a few more “Praise the Lord, praise His precious name’s” and the request for the contents of my clothing list was over.
Marie’s eyes blazed with faith. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that the Lord would provide. My mother also seemed considerably cheered up and called for Dum to make tea. I must confess I didn’t share their confidence. All I had was three pairs of gray socks, two pairs of gym pants and the tackies. These latter items had appeared in a separate list titled “Sport and Recreation,” which included two rugby jerseys, house and school colors, rugby socks, rugby boots, white cricket shirt and shorts Form One and Two, cricket longs Form Three onward. The optional section on this list included cricket boots and white cricket sweater with school colors. It seemed an amazing collection of clothes for one person.
I mentioned the clothing crisis to Doc. Not that he could have helped. Doc, at best, lived hand to mouth with just enough over for an occasional book and film for his Leica camera. But he mentioned it to Mrs. Boxall and Mrs. Boxall mentioned it to Miss Bornstein and the two women went into action.
Miss Bornstein called me over at the end of class and asked me to copy out the clothing list. I did so and handed it over to her. “What about these swatches? Can you get the gray and the green swatch, Peekay? It’s absolutely necessary for me to have them.” I promised to get hold of the swatches, pleased that the matter of my school clothes wasn’t singularly in the Lord’s hands any longer.
“We don’t have very much money,” I said, for the first time in my life realizing that money was important. I knew we were poor but it hadn’t seemed to matter much. I’d had the occasional penny to spend on sweets; I’d never really felt poor or needed money. I always somehow managed to save up four shillings for Christmas and old Mr. McClymont at the drapery shop would give me four ladies’ hankies and a man’s one as well as a red bandanna for Doc. The ladies’ hankies would go to my mother, Mrs. Boxall and Dee and Dum, while the man’s was for my granpa. They always looked surprised when they got them, but I don’t suppose they were. Dee and Dum spread their hankies carefully over the top of their heads in the African fashion. They could never understand why white people would blow the stuff from their noses into such a pretty piece of cloth.
“There are lots of ways to skin a cat,” Miss Bornstein said. “This town isn’t going to let its enfant terrible go to boarding school looking like a ragamuffin.”
Between Miss Bornstein and Mr
s. Boxall the cloth for my trousers and blazer and blue serge suit just appeared, although I expect Mr. McClymont had a hand in it somewhere. Then Miss Bornstein sprung her surprise. Her grandfather, Mr. Isaac Bornstein, had been a tailor in Germany. He would cut the cloth and do the hand work if my mother would do the machine work. The suit was easy but we needed a blazer to make sure that mine was cut and tailored in the same way as those purchased from Johannesburg. Mrs. Andrews had sent two of her sons to the Prince of Wales School and she still had a blazer, which she gave to Mrs. Boxall. Old Mr. Bornstein took it apart to see how it was made and did a lot of tut-tutting about the poor workmanship. He then cut the blazer to my size and as the badge, which was three ostrich feathers sticking out of a crown, was almost new he cut it carefully around the edges and sewed it onto my new blazer. Mrs. Boxall sent to Johannesburg for two red, white and green striped school ties, which were her special present. All my shirts were cut from a pair of cotton poplin sheets Miss Bornstein said her mother had never used. Old Mr. Bornstein knew just how to make the necklines so that the starch collars donated by Mr. McClymont fitted perfectly. Marie and her mother knitted me three pairs of socks for Christmas.
My mother and Marie testified to the congregation of the Apostolic Faith about the Lord’s miraculous answer to their prayers. Only the requested V-neck long sleeve gray jersey was missing from my kit, but it was summer in Johannesburg and my mother knew that the Lord would provide in time for winter. Which He did. Four knitted jerseys were pushed into her hands by separate dear, sweet, Christian ladies less than a fortnight later.
Only the brown and black shoes remained, and at the prison Christmas party for all the warders Captain Smit handed me a large parcel from the boxing squad. Inside were a pair of new brown shoes and a pair of black ones and a brand-new pair of boxing boots. “Magtig, Peekay, we are all proud of you going to that posh Rooinek school in Johannesburg. Just don’t get all high and mighty on us when you get back, heh.” Everyone laughed and cheered and I felt the sorrow of leaving people I loved. The Kommandant stood up and recounted the first day he’d met me and said that I had proved that English and Afrikaner were one people, South Africans. That perhaps with my generation the bitterness would pass. He said I was a leader of men and that even the prisoners respected me for my letter writing. There was some more clapping and, shaking at the knees, I thanked them all. I can’t remember what I said but I promised I would never forget them. And I never have.
The Power of One Page 26