Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Falling in Love with the World

  I HAVE TO TELL you now about how I became a thief. It all had to do with having hot showers. You see, in summer we had cold showers, but up there in the mountains it got cold as anything in the winter mornings and the pipes would freeze. Not snow, there had never been snow, probably not since the beginning of time, but in the morning the frost lay like a silver blanket on the ground and the pale, smooth bark of the blue gum trees were cold to touch. Some days on the way to school, until the sun rose, your toes would freeze to death. We got a jersey for the winter and you could pull the sleeves over your hands, that helped a bit, but on cold mornings it wasn’t really enough and you were cold as billyo.

  Back to hot showers, which needed extra wood for the boilers. The work in the vegetable gardens was less in the winter and instead we had to chop wood on a Saturday morning. Or rather, the big boys who weren’t in a school rugby team had to chop wood and all the small ones would be sent along the creek to gather tinder – old branches that had fallen and the ones you could reach to snap off.

  I’d found this big branch and started to drag it back to the woodshed, which was a long way away, and by the time I got back the bell for lunch had gone and everyone had left. Lunch on a Saturday was just bread and jam that they left out on a long table on the stoep, and also coffee. I knew it was useless trying to have some, because it was a free-for-all and we little kids didn’t often get very much. Even if you ran like anything to be there first and stuffed some bread and jam into your mouth as fast as you could, you never got more than one slice down before the others arrived and then you’d better get out of the way fast, man!

  With me bringing in the big branch I would have been much too late to get even a single bite. Maybe some crusts, but you couldn’t guarantee it and that’s why I always got double crusts for Tinker on Saturday. So I just stayed behind because there wasn’t rollcall or a clean-hands inspection or anything like that on a Saturday. I dragged the branch to the big wooden box where we put kindling and started breaking off branches because they all had to be nearly the same size, about twelve inches.

  That was when I saw a chopper resting on a woodblock. I’d always wanted to use a chopper but that wasn’t allowed until you were ten years old. My hands were tired from breaking pieces of kindling, so I said to myself, Why not the chopper? Nobody was looking, so I picked it up and was surprised at how heavy it was. It wasn’t one of those big choppers they used for splitting logs from tree trunks, just a small one called an axe, but it was still pretty heavy. I put a branch on the woodblock, took the chopper in both hands and lifted it up above my head and . . . Crash! Instead of chopping the branch in half like it was supposed to, the branch went flying into the air and landed several feet away. I remembered how I’d watched Mattress chop kindling for his fire when he cooked his mieliepap in the black three-legged kaffir pot he had. He’d hold one end of the stick and pick up the axe with one hand and, still holding the stick resting on the chopping block, he’d chop the stick in half, easy as can be, right in the middle.

  So that’s what I did and it worked easy as anything until I misjudged one stick and went whack! with the chopper and it cut deep into the forefinger of my left hand. At first there was nothing as I hopped up and down, but then the blood started to come out and I knew I was in the deep shit. If you got a cut doing something you weren’t supposed to do you tried to hide it so no one could find out. But my finger seemed to be half off, not as bad as Mattress’s lip, but I knew I couldn’t hide it. I went to the dairy and found some of that old cheesecloth and wrapped it around my finger. It was soon red with blood because my finger wouldn’t stop bleeding, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to work without someone seeing it. So Tinker and me went over to the creek, because after lunch we had a free hour, and I washed it in the water, but the blood still kept coming.

  There was nothing I could do but report to Mevrou at the sick room. On Saturdays she didn’t like things happening, even though it wasn’t her day off. She would have a good lie down in the afternoon. We knew this because if you went past the hydrangeas outside the sick-room window you could hear her snoring. She couldn’t go to her own room in the staff quarters because she was supposed to be on duty, so she lay down on the doctor’s leather examination couch where Pissy had told his pack of lies. Talk about sawing wood! Her snoring, if it was a cross saw, would have done the whole week’s shower boiler supply in ten minutes flat.

  So I crept through the hydrangeas to check to see if she wasn’t asleep and she wasn’t. She was sitting in a chair doing some embroidery of red roses, a tablecloth or something like that. So I crept back out of the bushes and went in and knocked on the sick-room door. By this time the cheesecloth was soaked and my finger was going throb-throb.

  ‘Kom!’ I heard her call, so I opened the door.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said, looking up. ‘You know I don’t like anyone to come in the afternoon, you must wait until after supper.’

  ‘I don’t think I can, Mevrou,’ I said, holding up the red-coloured cheesecloth.

  ‘Look out, you stupid boy!’ she suddenly yelled. The cheesecloth couldn’t take any more blood and some drops fell on the lino floor.

  ‘Ek is baie jammer, Mevrou, I am very sorry, Mevrou,’ I stammered, looking down at the crimson drops. Then I did a stupid thing and tried to wipe them away with the sole of my foot.

  ‘Don’t!’ she yelled again. ‘What do you think? I’ve got all day to clean up blood from the floor, hey?’ She put her embroidery aside and went to a cupboard and found some cottonwool and told me to come over to the sink. She took the cheesecloth off and washed my finger. ‘It needs stitches,’ she announced. ‘What have you gone and done, you stupid child?’

  ‘I cut it on a sharp stone when I was looking for twigs, Mevrou,’ I lied.

  ‘You are nothing but trouble, Voetsek. When you first came here you wet your bed and had to get the sjambok every morning till it stopped. You always naughty and now you got that mongrel dog. It’s a good thing it catches rats or we’d wring its neck, you hear? When your mother brought you she couldn’t stop crying. If she loved you so much why didn’t she keep you, hey? The Afrikaners wouldn’t do that, crying in public like that. The bedroom is where a woman cries, not when her husband is around so he can hear. You a real little kaffirboetie, Voetsek, always talking to the Zulu that ran away up the mountains like he was a proper white man. You got no respect, you hear?’

  I forgot to tell you that Sergeant Van Niekerk had taken fingerprints of Mattress off the alarm clock and sent them to Pretoria, together with the prints they took of him when he was dead. It was him all the time. So now everyone knew that the kaffir with no face was the pig boy and the victim of the lynching. But Mevrou still said he’d run away into the mountains.

  ‘Sorry, Mevrou,’ I said softly. She was the only one of the grown-ups to call me Voetsek and not by my Christian name.

  ‘The lorry is broken down,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to walk into town. Doctor Van Heerden has Saturday afternoon surgery at his house, do you know where it is?’

  ‘Nee, Mevrou.’

  ‘Ag, everybody knows where the doctor’s house is,’ she said impatiently. ‘Just ask someone.’

  ‘Ja, Mevrou.’

  She dried the finger and some new blood came, but not too bad and much better than before. Then she wrapped my finger in a big wad of cottonwool and put some sticking plaster around to hold it. She gave me a cloth, a big one you use for drying dishes. ‘If it bleeds some more, wrap around this dishcloth,’ she instructed.

  So I set off for town and just got to the gate when I thought, Why not take Tinker? So I went to the dairy and fetched her. It was nice, not so lonely with Tinker coming with me.

  Mevrou had done a good job because I only had to use the dishcloth when I was almost in town. When I got there I went to the café where Sergeant Van Niekerk had taken me for the ice-cream with everything on
top and the strawberry milkshake. Dogs couldn’t come inside and Tinker had never been inside anywhere, except the shed behind the dairy. I told her to wait and she did, just outside the café. I entered expecting to find Mevrou Booysens, but she wasn’t there. A girl, who was about sixteen, told me how to find the doctor’s house. ‘It’s on stilts at the front, and you have to go around the side of the house where there’s a path because the surgery is at the back, you hear?’ I thanked her and turned to go when she asked, ‘What’s wrong?’, pointing to the dishcloth, but there wasn’t any blood showing through where she looked.

  ‘I cut my finger,’ I replied.

  ‘Is it bad? How’d you do it?’ she said, asking two questions at once.

  ‘It needs stitches,’ I said, feeling quite brave. ‘I cut it with a rock,’ I lied again.

  ‘Do you want me to go with you?’ she asked.

  I shook my head. ‘No, thank you, Miss, I can find it myself.’

  ‘Ma!’ she called out, then turned back to me. ‘Wait, little boy.’

  Mevrou Booysens came out from the back wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Oh, hello,’ she said, and seemed to recognise me, ‘the ice-cream boy, isn’t it?’ She turned to the girl. ‘He had all ten toppings on his ice-cream and still wasn’t sick, then a milkshake. He’s got a stomach like a cement-mixer,’ she explained. ‘You’re from The Boys Farm, aren’t you?’

  ‘Ja, Mevrou.’

  ‘And you also in town alone?’

  ‘I’ve got my dog,’ I answered.

  ‘He’s cut his finger and has to have stitches,’ the girl explained. ‘Can I take him to Doctor Van Heerden, Ma?’

  ‘Ja, certainly,’ Mevrou Booysens said. ‘There should have been someone come with you in the first place.’

  ‘They couldn’t,’ I explained. ‘The lorry’s broken.’

  She shook her head and came around from behind the counter. ‘Let me take a look, hey?’

  I removed the dishcloth and she could see that the cottonwool under the sticking plaster was completely soaked with blood and there was quite a lot on the dishcloth, but it hadn’t soaked through yet.

  ‘Here! Those people on that Boys Farm should be ashamed!’ She turned to the girl. ‘Marie, take him quick, you hear?’ Then she turned back to me. ‘What colour sucker would you like? Where is your dog?’

  Two questions at once again. Suckers don’t come along every day of the week and you have to choose carefully. Green is nice but red is better. ‘A red one please, Mevrou,’ I answered. ‘She’s waiting at the door.’

  ‘The boy has nice manners,’ Mevrou Booysens said. ‘What’s your name, son?’ she asked.

  ‘Voetsek,’ I said, not thinking.

  ‘Voetsek?’ she said, drawing back in surprise. ‘I don’t believe you!’

  ‘That’s what they call me because I’m English,’ I explained. ‘My real name is Tom.’

  ‘They should be ashamed,’ she said again. ‘Calling a child a name like that.’ She gave me a red sucker and unwrapped the top, carefully removing the cellophane. Then she took a yellow one and put it in the pocket of my khaki shirt. ‘Sometimes you have to wait a bit. Saturday all the farmers come to see the doctor. Goodbye, Tom, come and see us some more, you hear? You always welcome at the Impala Café.’

  The girl called Marie left me and Tinker when we got to the doctor’s house and pointed to the path round the side that led to the surgery.

  ‘Good luck, Tom,’ she said. ‘Come and visit again soon, hey.’ She bent down and gave me a kiss. ‘Totsiens.’ It was the first kiss I could ever remember getting, and it was nice and soft on my cheek. She patted Tinker, which was the first time a girl had patted her. ‘Bring your dog next time also, we’ll give him a nice bone,’ she promised.

  ‘He’s a she,’ I said, but I don’t know if she heard because she’d already turned and was walking away. With all the distractions and a sucker and then a kiss and all, I hadn’t noticed that my finger was really throbbing and the blood had now come through the dishcloth.

  When I got to the surgery there were a whole lot of people there. Mevrou Booysens was right, they all seemed to be farm folk. You could tell because they’d brought stuff for the doctor. Here a sack of potatoes, there a case of mangoes or avocado pears, another sack of oranges, someone had six pineapples and one fat tante had a whole basketful of eggs and another auntie sat with a wooden box with jars of canned fruit and jam at her feet. Farm people don’t like to visit the doctor empty-handed. Doctor Van Heerden was a very high-up person and they liked to give him something from the farm to show they trusted him. Even when he came to The Boys Farm he always got stuff from the vegetable garden and eggs from Meneer Prinsloo’s black shiny-feathers chickens. The Dominee got the same. People brought stuff for him when they came to church. I don’t suppose both of them ever had to buy anything to eat except flour and sugar, maybe some salt and coffee, stuff like that.

  With all the farmers already waiting and being there a long time before me, I had to wait my turn. There was also an old dog asleep and I didn’t want it to come and start a fight with Tinker, but it didn’t take any notice or even open its eyes. So I went and sat with Tinker under a nearby mango tree because all the benches on the surgery stoep were already full. It was by now quite late in the afternoon and I must say I was beginning to feel very tired and glad I didn’t have to walk any more because my legs felt weak. By now the dishcloth had turned red completely.

  I must have fallen asleep because suddenly there was someone shaking me and it was getting dark and Tinker was growling. ‘Wake up, little boetie,’ a large woman said to me. ‘Does your dog bite? Are you here to see the doctor?’ Two questions again. Then she must have seen the dishcloth. ‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed, drawing back. ‘Get up quick and come and see the doctor!’

  I tried to get up but I couldn’t and the large auntie helped me to my feet, but I could hardly stand and my knees were wobbling on their own – knock, knock, knock.

  ‘Just look at you!’ she said, and I looked down and the whole front of my shirt was covered with blood. ‘How long have you been waiting?’ she asked.

  ‘There were lots of farm people, eight, I had to wait, Mevrou.’ I was still holding her hand so I could keep my balance and looked at the surgery veranda and there was nobody left, all the farmers had gone home to their farms. Only the old dog remained, still asleep.

  ‘We were just closing the surgery,’ she said. ‘Can you walk? You’ve lost a lot of blood.’

  With her help we got into the surgery and Tinker followed. When we got to the old dog I told Tinker to stay and the old dog got up and followed me. He sort of dragged his hind legs but I could see he liked me, his tongue was lolling out and he was panting even though all he’d done was lie asleep all day. I heard Tinker whine softly because she didn’t want the old dog to go in and she had to stay outside. I think she thought it was unfair. Doctor Van Heerden was writing and looked up as we entered.

  ‘What’s this, Nurse?’ The old dog lay down with a plop on the lino floor.

  ‘He, this boy, he’s been sitting under the mango tree, he’s lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘Yes, I can see.’ He looked at me sternly. ‘Why didn’t you come straight in? When did you arrive, son? Why are you alone? Where are you from?’ He pointed to a chair in front of his desk. ‘Sit here.’ Four questions and an instruction all at once, so I answered them backwards, in case I forgot the first one.

  ‘The Boys Farm, Sir.’

  ‘Who brought you?’

  ‘Nobody, Sir, the lorry was broken so I had to walk, but I took my dog with me.’

  He shook his head and got up from his chair, saying nothing as he became busy taking off the dishcloth, and then the sticking plaster and the cottonwool while I was hoping I could remember the last two questions. The old dog must have farted because suddenly there was this poo smell everywhere in the air.

  ‘Helmut is a very old dog,’ the doctor explained, shaking his head. ‘We
must respect the old and the young.’ I think he was really saying he knew it wasn’t me who’d farted.

  He turned to the nurse and said, ‘Make the boy a cup of coffee and put four teaspoons of sugar in.’ He pulled the cottonwool away. ‘Hmm, nasty! You’re going to need stitches. What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Tom Fitzsaxby, Sir.’ You can’t go and just give your first name to a high-up person like a doctor, that much I knew for sure.

  ‘You’re the young lad who helped Sergeant Van Niekerk with his enquiries, aren’t you?’

  I now knew what an enquiry was, so I said, ‘He asked me about Mattress’s platform feet, Sir. He had this big photo.’

  ‘Well done, Tom, I believe you were a great help to the police.’

  ‘Meneer Prinsloo mustn’t know, Sir,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Of course he mustn’t, and he’ll not get any information from me. I feel very sorry for the Bantu, your friend . . . Mattress. A great tragedy, sometimes I am ashamed of my volk, my people.’ I wondered how he could know all this, but then I suppose doctors know everything. ‘I’ll just clean this up a bit. It may hurt so I must ask you to be brave because I can only give you an injection when I put in the stitches. How did this happen, Tom?’

  Suddenly I was in a lot of trouble, you can’t lie to a doctor or a preacher because it’s like lying to God and you’ll be found out and thrown into the everlasting fires of hell. ‘With a chopper, Sir.’

  ‘You were chopping wood? At your age?’

  ‘No, I’m not allowed, only to collect kindling.’

  ‘But the chopper was there and nobody was looking so you just picked it up and used it?’ he asked. ‘Next thing you nearly chopped off your finger.’

  It’s true! Doctors do know everything. I was glad I hadn’t told him it was a rock. ‘Yes, Sir,’ I said, not wishing to look him in the eye, so I looked down at the bloodstains on my shirt and it was a good thing tomorrow was Sunday and clean-clothes day because I wouldn’t be able to go to school in this shirt, that’s for sure.