Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  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.

  Ten o’clock came and everyone was there, even old Mevrou Pienaar, the cook, and Mevrou herself and also, a big surprise, the superintendent’s wife, Mevrou Prinsloo. The three women sat in chairs ringside and everyone else stood, including the rest of the staff. The six kitchen boys were also there because Meneer Prinsloo said it was only fair that somebody was on the pig boy’s side. Although, you never know, they were Shangaan and they weren’t supposed to like the Zulus, but you’d expect, just this time, they’d put the tribal thing aside and be on the side of another black man. Anyway, they wouldn’t be allowed to cheer for Mattress because then they’d be cheeky kaffirs and get into trouble. Maybe in their hearts they’d be on his side.

  In the meantime Frikkie Botha was walking around outside the ring, blowing out air in big sudden puffs every few seconds and smashing his twelve-ouncers together while looking fierce with his teeth out. Mattress stood with the kitchen boys, his arms at his side and looking down at his big cracked platform feet. He still wore the dirty cut-off-below-the-knees khaki pants with holes, because he only had one other pair, a good pair that he used for going home once a year to see his wife and Joe Louis, his son. I tried to catch his eye but he just kept looking down.

  Meneer Prinsloo with his fat stomach and braces holding up his trousers that only went down to the top of his polished brown boots had to be helped into the ring and was already puffing and red in the face when he got in to make the announcement. Not that he said a lot. For a start he didn’t say why the fight was on. But, of course, everybody knew it was about the cow and how a kaffir has to be taught a lesson when he is careless. That Frikkie Botha was going to teach him a lesson he’d never forget . . . anyway, you know all that.

  Meneer Prinsloo, breathing heavily, said, ‘In the eyes of God all men are equal, even kaffirs.’ He then said that there was a special place in God’s heaven for kaffirs to go. This was because God was a merciful and compassionate God and if a kaffir decided to be a Christian he was saved from everlasting damnation and wasn’t a heathen any more so he wouldn’t go to hell. ‘ “In my Father’s house are many mansions and I go to prepare a place for you” the Bible says. So you see, kaffirs can have houses in heaven as well. That is, as long as it isn’t with white people, but you must understand, what they’ve got is also very nice.’

  I was busy wondering what all this had to do with Frikkie Botha fighting Mattress when he very cleverly came around to the subject. ‘There are only two places where a kaffir and a white man can be equal,’ he claimed. ‘Those two places are in heaven and in the boxing ring. You see, in a boxing ring there are two separate places for the opponents, one corner for the white man and another for the black man. In the middle they come together and God is the referee to see everything is fair.’ He stood back and paused expectantly and everyone knew they must suddenly clap. He smiled an acknowledgement for this clever speech. ‘What we going to now have is a fair fight where the kaffir boy is allowed to fight back and may the best man win.’ You could see everybody was very impressed. ‘Now, I must ask the two opponents to step into the ring,’ the superintendent said. ‘I will personally see as a Christian that this is a fair fight,’ he concluded. You could see he was well satisfied with his introductory speech and we all clapped again.

  Frikkie Botha climbed through the ropes, walked around the ring and held his gloves above his head. Everyone cheered like mad. He went to his corner and stood leaning back against the corner post with the top boxing ring rope under both his outstretched arms. Mattress slowly approached, parted the ropes and climbed in. Nobody said anything, it was just mumbles all around. The kitchen boys stayed silent. I don’t know whether it was because they were Shangaan or just afraid. I admit I was afraid to do anything, to be seen to be on the side of Mattress. He stood in the centre of the ring holding his gloved hands clasped across one of his wrists and in front of him like he was protecting his balls.

  Meneer Prinsloo pointed to the opposite corner of the ring and indicated Mattress should stand there. He didn’t call them together like you’re supposed to in a boxing match so that they could hear the rules. He just stood in the centre of the ring and everyone said shhhush! When it was quiet the superintendent said to both boxers, ‘Hit clean, you hear? No dirty tactics, hey? Below the waist is not allowed.’ He took a whistle out of his pocket and this big gold watch that had a chain that draped across his fat stomach. ‘Three-minute rounds, I will blow the whistle at the end of every round and then you must stop fighting.’ I was not sure Mattress understood any of this. He just stood there looking at his platform feet.

  Meneer Prinsloo blew the whistle and Frikkie Botha came charging out of his corner while Mattress just stood. Mattress hadn’t ever seen a boxing match and he hadn’t been to the bioscope where sometimes they showed a big world championship in the newsreel, so he didn’t know what to do. But he could see Frikkie Botha coming at him and before you could say ‘Watch out!’, which I did without thinkin
g, Frikkie had landed a big swinging right to the side of Mattress’s head. Mattress hadn’t even stepped out of his corner and already he was in big trouble. He brought his gloves up to protect his head, and next came a left hook under the jaw. Mattress’s head went back and he sank to the canvas on his knees.

  Meneer Prinsloo seemed to have been taken by surprise but after a few seconds he started to count. ‘One . . . two . . . three!’

  Frikkie Botha shouted at Meneer Prinsloo, ‘The kaffir is bluffing, don’t count some more!’

  The superintendent was taken aback. You have to remember he wasn’t an experienced referee, he didn’t do the boxing for The Boys Farm; that was under Frikkie Botha’s control. So he did what he was told and stopped counting.

  Mattress rose slowly and you could see he wasn’t at all sure where he was. Frikkie Botha said to the superintendent, ‘Make him fight.’

  ‘C’mon, kaffir, you got to fight,’ Meneer Prinsloo ordered.

  By this time maybe you could have counted to thirty and I could see Mattress was again steady on his feet.

  ‘C’mon, kaffir, fight!’ Frikkie Botha called. ‘Come out and fight, you black bastard!’ He was beckoning with his right glove for Mattress to come forward. He pretended to spit on the canvas and said in Zulu, ‘You are igwal! You are a coward!’

  Mattress let out a roar and ran at Frikkie Botha, his arm raised to strike him down. Frikkie sidestepped and smashed Mattress in the jaw. Mattress took three steps backwards, lost his balance and landed on his back with his legs in the air. But this time he got up right away, before even the superintendent could start to count. Frikkie waited for him and popped Mattress with a hard right hand in the eye and then drove a left into his stomach. The whistle blew and it was the end of the round. Mattress hadn’t landed a single blow and already his eye was closing up big-time. All the guys were screaming and yelling and I saw the old black man who was the head cook when old Mevrou Pienaar was sick with her asthma shake his head and walk away. He didn’t want to see the humiliation of the pig boy.