Tandia

by Bryce Courtenay

  In an almost inaudible voice the little Jew added, 'Then they take us in the train, in the cattle trucks, to Buchenwald.' Peekay knew what was to follow. The huddled mass of Jews in the cattle trucks, fighting for air, shitting where they stood or sat, some of the older people dying mercifully of heart attacks. The arrival at Buchenwald, the dogs, the huge Alsatian dogs, yapping at the heels of the hapless Jews. The sliver of bright hope at the civilised sound of the orchestra playing Strauss as the fit and the able are separated from the women and children and old people. 'Carpenters, we need carpenters! Carpenters step forward at once! Mechanics, we need mechanics!' The hoarse, violent voices of the non-commissioned officers, indifferent to the fate of their victims, practised in the routines of death. The promise of showers and medicine, the Teutonic efficiency of the operation raising their hopes. The cruelty of the journey is forgiven. 'It is wartime, trains are scarce, the authorities, they try but times are hard, the trains are for the troops, for the Russian front. Who knows? Things could be worse. On the other hand, they could be better.' The bitter humour and the desperate, comforting lies people tell among themselves when they feel the shadow of death fall over them. And in the background an old man, his prayer shawl over his shoulders, the leather phylactery on his head, as he sings the ancient prayer for the dead. He understands. He has seen the shadow. He is too old to be fooled. Too wise to waste his thin, reedy voice on hope.

  'I was lucky,' Mr Rubens said at last. 'They needed carpenters, before the dolls I was a carpenter. My wife and daughter not so. Hans Kellerman not so.' His voice tailed off.

  The old man sat quietly for a long time, his elegant hands like two white birds resting in his lap. After a while he looked up at Peekay. 'So now it is the turn for love and hope,' he said softly.

  There was nothing Peekay could say. Carmen loved Elizabeth Jane, but how could her love for the doll compare with the pain the old man felt, the pain and the betrayal?

  'Your grand-daughter? Your grand-daughter may be alive and she may find you?'

  'Ja, this is true.'

  'And that is why you want the Hans Kellerman?' The old man said nothing, not looking up from his hands. Peekay could see his shoulders were shaking as he wept, but no sound came from him.

  'Love has won, Mr Rubens,' Peekay said gently, putting his hand on the old man's shoulder. 'You want the Hans Kellerman doll for the love you have for your granddaughter. Love and hope have won, they have beaten pain and despair.'

  Mr Rubens agreed to sell the Hans Kellerman doll to Peekay for a thousand pounds, which was the value placed on it by Sotheby's. The money he declared would go to an orphanage in Brixton.

  It was an enormous sum but Peekay had agreed to pay it in instalments. Now, with only a lead-up fight to go to the world championship, he owed just two hundred pounds.

  In the background Peekay could hear Mr Rubens shouting for Doris to come to the phone. There was the sudden rattle of the receiver being picked up. 'Hello, lovely, the old man givin' you an 'ard time then?' Doris was her usual bright self. 'You better come down, he's been fussin' over his bloomin' chessboard, re-playing your last match for a month, sayin' all kinds of nasty things about the Russians.' Peekay laughed. 'It was about time I took a game off the old bugger.' Peekay made arrangements to pick Doris up at the shop.

  'Smashin', it's about bleedin' time an' all! Too much work and not enough play makes Peekay a dull boy. Tell yer what? I'll wear me new Merry Widow, it don't do me no 'arm, even if I say so meself!'

  The thought of Doris in a Merry Widow bra left Peekay feeling quite faint.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Peekay completed his final examinations in July 1955 and felt he'd not done too badly. Oxford had treated him well and, mostly through the Odd Bodleians, he'd made friends he would keep for the remainder of his life. He was walking with E.W in the physic garden at Magdalen in his last week at Oxford when his tutor turned to him and asked, 'Well, Peekay, we've come a long way together. Can you give me just one thing you will take from Oxford?'

  Peekay thought for a few moments; he'd received so much and so little at Oxford. Not the least of what he'd gained was the wisdom of the white-haired doctor of law who'd posed the question. He'd arrived a callow youth and now, three years later, would leave a young man with a quiet assurance and a mind he'd learned to trust in a world which needed to be repeatedly questioned.

  Oxford was one of the great citadels of the civilised and cultivated mind but it was ill suited to the raw keening of an Africa trying to lift itself out of generations of ignorance, suspicion, hatred and despair.

  Oxford was about the detail, the cuffs and the collars and the manner and style of the buttons on the garment of civilisation, Africa had yet to know the feeling of cloth on its back.

  How very nearly Peekay had become seduced by the mannerisms and accepted truths of an older world. How easy it would have been to carry a self-righteous torch into the darkness as so many others had done to no avail. But in time he'd realised it wouldn't work. Africa needed a much tougher solution than the sweet reconciliations of civilised European man. It would require a sinewed toughness and a fighting spirit which came more from the boxing ring and his understanding of the protagonists involved than from these ivy-covered portals of stone.

  This was not to say that he didn't aspire to Oxford ideals. It was simply that the weapon of civilised truth wasn't a great deal of use to him in an environment which was totally corrupted by men who accepted only those truths which maintained the status quo and in which the white man was superior to the black. Peekay, with others who thought as he did, must pry justice and compassion and truth from a furnace of hate and suspicion. It would be a long, hard, slow task and required a resilience and toughness Oxford could never understand. He must be prepared to give his life if necessary.

  And so when he answered E.W., it was with a careful and truthful reply which contained no mention of the doctrines and philosophies taught at the great institution of learning.

  'The buildings. I'll take with me these buildings. You once said to me that Oxford was no different in many ways to any other institution of higher learning but for its tutorial system. But you forgot to mention the buildings. They add to the sum of an Oxford man. To have spent time in and about these buildings is both an education in itself and an assurance that intelligence and the spirit of man will always prevail. I have been educated by the Portland stone, the spires and the mullioned views, the gargoyles, the quiet crevices and moss-softened corners, the grandness and the piety of old stone. I shall forever remember the granite and the greatness of Oxford.'

  E.W. seemed pleased by the reply. 'You have answered well, Peekay. I believe it expresses what many of us feel about this place.'

  Harriet had drawn deeper and deeper into herself. Her Walking Madonna had taken almost a year from the maquette to the point when it was ready to be cast in bronze. Carmen had kept her promise and had returned to pose for the work, giving Harriet two-and-a-half weeks of her three-week holiday at Cow Cottage.

  Peekay and Togger saw very little of her and when they did she talked of little else but Harriet and the Madonna.

  Carmen had fallen under Harriet's spell and from all accounts seemed to have overcome Harriet's desire to be alone and claimed, without affectation, that they'd talked for hours on end while she'd posed.

  'For the first time in me life I feel I've got a brain, not just a body but a noggin I can use and I reckon I know how I'm gonna use it an' all.'

  They'd been sitting at the bar in a small Soho pub and now she drew herself up, throwing her head back as she looked disdainfully at them both. 'In Paris I'm learnin' how to put clothes on, not take 'em off. I gotta job in a fashion house on the Faubourg St-Honoré.' Carmen paused at the look of surprise on both their faces. 'Okay, I admit, it's not too flash, a bit of sewin' and cuttin' and a bit of house modellin', but I'm learnin'.' She leaned forward grabbing T
ogger suddenly by the arm, her eyes shining. "Ere, you remember how when I was a little nipper I used to sew all the clothes for Elizabeth Jane and later, when I was about eleven or twelve, I'd make all me own dresses? Well, now I'm learnin' to cut and design proper. I'm gonna save and save and nights I'll go to the Poly technique; then I'm gonna make children's clothes, the most beautiful children's clothes in the whole bleedin' world!' Carmen was breathless with the excitement of telling them her plans, but she suddenly pulled herself upright on the stool again, afraid she'd said too much.

  A large grin spread over Togger's face. 'I think we just come to the end of the nearly-but-not-quite Browns. When me boxing career's over I reckon I'm gonna invest me prize money with you, no risk!'

  Carmen smiled, holding a beautifully manicured hand out to Togger.'Put it there, partner!'

  'Here's to Brown and Brown! If Hymie was here and not in New York he'd order champagne.' Peekay turned to the barman. 'Barman, a bottle of Bollinger, please!'

  When the bottle was empty at last Carmen's eyes grew soft and her mood nostalgic. 'You staying in London overnight in Hymie's flat then?' she asked Peekay.

  Peekay grinned. 'I reckon it's my turn to ask you home.'

  On those occasions when Harriet needed someone to enter the circle of her self-imposed solitude, apart from her two-and-a-half weeks with Carmen, it was Hymie she chose. Hymie was the first person to see the completed Walking Madonna.

  'Christ, Peekay,' he reported, 'it almost touches the central beam, that's bloody nearly fourteen foot from the ground. It's astonishing, a masterpiece.'

  Peekay felt a little hurt that Harriet hadn't chosen him as the first to witness her triumph, but he'd more or less reconciled himself to losing her, at least while she was involved with the sculpture.

  'And what of Harriet? Has the Walking Madonna changed her? Will she again be the Harriet we both know?'

  'You mean will she return to you?'

  Peekay didn't protest. 'Yes, I suppose I do mean that. Have I lost her, Hymie? Has she gone to you?' A new thought seemed to occur to him. 'Or have we both lost her?' Hymie sat quietly thinking. They were in the small sitting-room of Hymie's flat overlooking Sloane Square. Finally he spoke. 'I was hoping I could tell you she was mine, Peekay. That I'd won her back. I wouldn't have minded that. All's fair in…Do you find that strange?'

  Peekay shook his head and Hymie continued. 'You had your turn, I'd like to think now it was mine.' He grinned, 'I admit it would have given me some satisfaction! But it's not true, old son. Harriet, as I said right at the beginning and she quite emphatically maintained herself, never belonged to either of us. Not even in the least sense. Sure she loves us both. But we lie a poor second, perhaps even lower on her list of emotional needs. From now on, you will see, she will take us only on her terms.' Hymie sighed. 'For me that's enough. I haven't any sexual ego to get in the way, to compete. For you, I sense it will not be enough. If I appear to have grown closer to Harriet it is because I've capitulated. Utterly!' Hymie looked up and grinned. 'It's just as well you're bedding Doris with the marvellous tits, Peekay, the next physical relationship Harriet has will not be with you. lt will be with whoever she is pleased to have at her moment of need, which is rare enough, like a dry creek bed taken in sudden flood and then, as suddenly, empty again.'

  Peekay gave Hymie a wry grin. 'I can't say I'm not disappointed, I am. Bitterly. Even though the past year's been pretty bloody, I guess I was lucky to get what I got, not just sex, but the time spent with Harriet. It was like being plugged into electricity. She was wonderful.'

  'Will you tell her that, Peekay?'

  'I'll try.'

  'Peekay, it isn't over. Why don't you try falling in like with Harriet? If Harriet was a man, let's face it, we'd be awestruck, overwhelmed by the sheer talent brought to the friendship. Try forgetting she's a woman, someone you took to bed.'

  Peekay laughed. 'I can't. Hymie, I have to try to get her back. I can't simply walk away and call it a day. It wasn't just a sex thing. I admit it, I started sleeping with Doris when Harriet and I were still together, still relatively happy.

  If it was a sex thing it would have died then. It was, it is, a lot more.'

  Hymie was silent for a moment, pulling his lower lip into his mouth. 'Peekay, she's changed, she's different.'

  'Changed how? You mean the new Harriet wants a different kind of man? Older?'

  'Peekay! For Christ's sake, leave it alone. Harriet's changed, that's all. I didn't say anything about a man!' Peekay felt himself go cold. 'Carmen?'

  Hymie observed that Peekay had turned white. 'You don't supose she slept on the chesterfield for two-and-a-half weeks do you?'

  'Christ! It never bloody entered my head. Harriet and Carmen sleeping together! Harriet a lesbian?'

  'Hey, now! Wait a minute, Peekay, don't go jumping to conclusions! It doesn't have to be one thing or the other. I told you, the new Harriet takes what she wants when she wants it. She was modelling a female body so she got involved with it. It was simply an object of intense interest. Being intimate with Carmen, with Carmen's body, was perfectly natural for her. What I'm saying is that from now on you don't judge her, you simply accept her. Accept her as a friend. Gender has bugger-all to do with it.'

  'And Carmen? Christ, I lost my virginity with Carmen.'

  'Peekay, Carmen's been around. She's probably no more a lesbian than you are a homo. She's a big girl" you always knew that!'

  'When did you know? Shit! Why didn't you tell me earlier?'

  'Sitting on the sidelines you sometimes see the game more clearly than the players. What was I supposed to tell you? You and Harriet haven't been together for yonks.'

  'Ja Hymie, but you know how I felt! For fuck's sake, it would have helped to know!'

  Hymie took out a cigarette. He'd given up the dark brown Russian sobranies and now smoked Benson & Hedges in a small square red tin. He tapped the end of the cigarette on the lid of the tin. He realised the extent of Peekay's hurt, the crushing blow to his pride. It had taken a lot of courage for Peekay to maintain his love for Harriet. He had to play things in a lighter vein, to allow Peekay to get out from under. 'Peekay, you know what your trouble is? You're a hopeless bloody romantic! What's more you're also a homy one! Women watch you a certain way. They bed you with their eyes. When you fall in like, as you have done with Doris with the marvellous tits, at least you're in control. You of all people should know that achieving the things you want is all about control. Our future success against the injustice of the system when we return to the bloody fatherland is dependent on control. We will survive only because we never lose control. Remember that! Forget the romantic part, the love part, the falling in part. The only thing you're likely to end up falling in is shit!'

  Peekay watched as Hymie lit his cigarette. For the first time in his life Peekay found himself completely at odds with him. He could understand the logic, the intellectual truth of what Hymie was saying, but it was not sufficient to convince him.

  Peekay, who had spent his life camouflaged, never allowing his emotions to show, knew suddenly, hopelessly and with not a little real fear, that in the matter of love his heart was capable of ruling his head. It was a weakness against which he sensed he had no protection. It was like finding you have an incurable disease when you feel no symptoms. It was there, lurking in the womb, snapped onto the sperm, invading the egg, a gene transferred to destroy him prematurely, waiting for just the right time to manifest itself in his body.

  *

  After leaving Oxford, Peekay moved into Hymie's flat in London. He was to fight the American, King Coon Sinders just two weeks after the end of the Trinity term. Hymie had managed to arrange for the fight to take place at the US Marine base in Munich.

  Hymie, through the company they'd set up to handle the financing and proceeds of the title fights, Angel Sport, sold the fight to the US military in Germa
ny, permitting them to buy the television rights to every US base in Europe. This money he used as expenses and for the boxers' purse money. In addition he contracted the US TV network crew to film the fight for a ridiculously small amount of money, which helped to gain additional publicity in the States for the Tadpole Angel.

  At last Peekay was ready to challenge Jake 'Spoonbill' Jackson. The welterweight championship of the world had all the makings; the poor boy from the South with a ninth grade education and the brilliant young law student from Oxford. A.J. Liebling, writing for the New York Times, referred to it as 'The Catfish and Caviar Contest'. Sports Illustrated were smart enough to include a reaction from the champion in the feature they ran on Peekay.

  Jake 'Spoonbill' Jackson's comment was quoted verbatim:

  You know what is a Spoonbill, man? A Spoonbill, he got long legs and he walks in the water and when he sees a goddamn tadpole he gobbles it up! Tell him all that education he got, it ain't gonna help. All that tadpole gonna need is enough education to count to ten, after that he with the angels…permanent!

  Peekay had two and a half months to prepare for the world championship fight which was scheduled to take place on 27th October in Madison Square Garden. He would train initially in England and then they'd take the boat to New York to spend the final two months at a training camp in Colorado.

  Jam Jar had come up with the idea of having Peekay train at the highest possible altitude. Most of the Odd Bodleians were by now experts at boxing and he reasoned that the fight might well go to the man with the most stamina. By training at the highest possible altitude and then coming down to sea level for the fight, Peekay would have extra capacity. It was a theory well worth exploiting. They'd hired the services of a small-town boxing promoter named Mike Graw to set up a camp and he'd managed to rent a small dude ranch high in the mountains near Pike's Peak in Colorado.

  Dutch had been against the mountains at first. He'd brought a fighter to the States before and there was an accepted way of doing things if you were a serious contender. If you were fighting in 'The Garden' you selected a training camp not too far from the action, somewhere the more fanatical fans could visit' you and - much more importantly - where the press could drop in for a story. 'The fight game in America's all about publicity, you gotta get the newspaper boys on your side. If they give you the thumbs up it's on for one an' all! The other way and you're history.'