Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Didn’t you get into trouble with Mevrou Van Schalkwyk?’

  I kept my head down and answered in a small voice, ‘I told her a lie, Sir. That I’d done it on a sharp rock.’ I glanced up at him. ‘You won’t tell Mevrou will you, Sir?’

  He was cleaning my finger and it was hurting but his questions had distracted me. ‘Lots of secrets, hey, Tom? Well, never you worry, doctors are good at keeping secrets and I don’t think we’ll bother to mention this one, eh?’

  Doctors are very high-up persons and so I was surprised that he was turning out so nice.

  The nurse came back with a cup of tea. ‘The boere drank all the coffee, Doctor,’ she said. Tea wasn’t something we got a lot at The Boys Farm, only sometimes. I liked it and when I took a sip it was nice and sweet.

  ‘Did Mevrou at The Boys Farm give you the sucker sticking out of your pocket?’ Doctor Van Heerden asked.

  I couldn’t believe it! I’d clean forgot, here was a yellow sucker, a pineapple-flavoured sucker, in my pocket and I’d forgotten to suck it. Something must have been really wrong! ‘No, Sir, it was Mevrou Booysens at the café, they told me where to come.’

  ‘Gallstones. Terrible. Poor woman must have really suffered, never complained.’ I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. ‘Now, I’m going to give you an injection so your finger will go dead before I put in the stitches,’ the doctor said.

  I must say I didn’t much like the idea of having a dead finger. ‘Will it drop off?’ I asked.

  ‘Will what?’ Doctor Van Heerden asked, puzzled.

  ‘When my finger goes dead, will it fall off my hand after it gets rotten?’ I asked.

  He laughed. ‘It will come alive again in an hour or so,’ he said. ‘In the meantime the worst is over, you were very brave when I cleaned your finger, Tom.’ It was another compliment from a high-up and I must say I liked it because I didn’t think I was ever brave about anything before. Except, of course, the sjambok but that didn’t count because if you cried it was worse for you. That was because of what the other guys would say about you being a rooinek who couldn’t take it like a real man, and like all the English, you were a sissy. Even if your bum burned something terrible from six of the best you forced yourself not to cry.

  When Doctor Van Heerden put in the needle to make my finger dead I nearly jumped through the roof. ‘Eina!’ I yelled out, even though I didn’t mean to.

  ‘Ja, I don’t like it myself when the dentist does it to me,’ he said sympathetically.

  He must have had the Government dentist pull out his teeth because Doctor Dyke with his horse pliers didn’t believe in injections. After about five minutes, so I could drink my tea, he tested my finger.

  ‘Can you feel this, Tom?’ he asked and squeezed my finger. You could see him press the finger really hard and near the cut, but I couldn’t feel a thing.

  I shook my head. ‘It’s dead,’ I declared.

  He sewed up my finger, neat as anything, and put a bandage on it. The fat nurse had gone and got her handbag and said goodnight just after she brought me the cup of tea. She had a basket with two pineapples and some mangoes and avocadoes. Then the telephone rang and Doctor Van Heerden answered and said, ‘Yes, fighting, kaffir beer, badly cut, gut, prepare the theatre, how many?’ He turned to me. ‘Tom, there’s been a tribal fight in the native location and six Bantu men have been badly stabbed. I have to go to the hospital at once. Stay here and rest, I’ll have someone call The Boys Home when I get to the hospital and have them pick you up. You’ve lost a lot of blood, so don’t try and get up until you feel better, you hear? Don’t leave on your own, you’re not strong enough to walk back to The Boys Farm and it’s quite dark outside. See Mevrou Van Schalkwyk in the morning and have her put on a fresh dressing.’

  He pointed to my shirt pocket. ‘Suck that sucker, it is sugar for energy.’ Then he left and I heard him get into his ’39 Chevvie with the dicky-seat and drive away.

  I took the sucker from my shirt pocket and had some trouble removing the cellophane wrapper because I now had a giant bandage on my forefinger. Eventually, using my teeth, I got the wrapper off. I must say yellow was delicious, nearly as good as the red one, and from what I remember, better than the green, so perhaps I’d still take red any time but if someone ever offered me two, I might think about yellow instead of green.

  I waited an hour and nobody came. I remembered that there was a tiekiedraai competition and dance at the town hall and probably Meneer Prinsloo was there with Mevrou Prinsloo because she was supposed to be a judge of folk dance and it was the district championship final that night. We knew this because after dinner on Friday, Meneer Prinsloo said that we all had to congratulate his lady wife because she had just been made head judge of folk dancing in the district. So we all clapped. He said on Saturday night she’d decide the fate of dancers who came from as far as Messina near the Rhodesian border and Nelspruit in the Lowveld. If the lorry was broken there was only Meneer Prinsloo’s Plymouth, and maybe it was at the dance so they couldn’t use it to fetch me, even if they wanted. Which I didn’t think they would, because you needed to be dying for them to borrow the Plymouth that we had to wash and polish every week because it was the Government’s property, the same as us.

  I waited a long time and patted Helmut, the old dog that kept farting. I became very tired, so I left the surgery because Tinker was giving these little whines to tell me she was lonely out there on the stoep. I walked outside and the old dog followed me, slowly as anything, but still wagging his tail. Here’s the funny thing, he just sniffed at Tinker and then they were friends. Not playing or anything, because Helmut was too old, but I think they liked each other. It was cold already and I didn’t have my jersey.

  Like Marie from the café said, Doctor Van Heerden’s house was built on these stilts at the front because it was on the slope of a small hill, so I crept under the house with Tinker. It was getting very cold and I was hungry because I didn’t have any lunch and now no supper. It was pitch-black under there and a cold wind was blowing, but luckily the veranda light was on and some light beams shone through the floorboards and I could see a large box. I crept towards it and lay down behind it to protect myself from the wind. Helmut had come with me and lay down next to me, with Tinker on my other side. I held them against my body, making sure my stitched and bandaged finger was out of the way if Tinker moved. Almost immediately I fell asleep in the soft dust, against a nice warm old dog and a little one. If Helmut farted I didn’t know it because you can’t smell things when you’re fast asleep, not even smoke from a fire. Gawie Grobler said there was this man his uncle knew in Pretoria who was fast asleep when his house caught on fire and they called the fire brigade, and when they got there the flames were coming through the roof already and it was too late to go inside, but they knew this man was still in there because they could hear him snoring. That definitely proves that when you’re asleep you can’t smell things, not even smoke. The last thing I remember was that Tinker also hadn’t eaten anything except her breakfast and some milk.

  When I woke, early sunbeams were coming through the cracks in the floorboards where last night the light had come through. Tinker was licking my face. Helmut was still with us and now it was his turn to snore. I didn’t know dogs snored, but he was nearly as bad as Mevrou. I felt a bit stiff from lying with my back against the big wooden box, so I stood up. I only had to bend my head a little to stand up straight. The box had a lid and the handle was right there in front of me so I lifted it. There was now enough light for me to see inside. It was full of mouldy old books.

  It was then that I saw it. A strip of gold in the half-light that turned out to be the pages of a book with each page edged with gold. It had a red-leather jacket that was nearly all covered in green mould, and when I reached in and picked it up it felt slightly damp to the touch. I rubbed some of the mould away and you could see the name of the book done in gold lettering on the spine. I couldn’t read what it said but I sor
t of instinctively knew it must be important, being all leather and gold. What I did know was that it was the most beautiful object I had ever seen and was seized with a terrible desire to own it. I just knew that inside that book was stuff I had to have to make my life good. It was not something I can explain, even today, but I was possessed of a certainty that I must own this wonderful object.

  And that’s when the devil entered me. I took the book and stuffed it inside my bloodstained shirt. I didn’t know the time, it was still early, but it couldn’t have been too early because the sun was up. If I was late for breakfast or Mevrou had come into the small boys’ dormitory, which sometimes she didn’t on a Sunday, or if everyone had left for church already I couldn’t imagine how many cuts from the sjambok I’d get, maybe a world record.

  I couldn’t really run too hard because of this big book inside my shirt that I had to hold against my stomach with one hand while also holding my newly stitched finger out so it was safe. The streets were deserted but I passed the night cart with all the full tins on the back and three kaffirs sitting on the front of the wagon with one of them driving the four mules. If you think Helmut was bad, how those shit boys could stand it I just don’t know. They had hessian sacks cut open on one side that went over their heads and covered their backs, and from the night’s collecting they’d spilled a whole lot down their backs. But they didn’t seem to care and they were laughing and chatting and they greeted me as I went past holding my nose with my good hand and the book jumping up and down inside my shirt. The driver patted the seat beside him and said, ‘Kom op, Kleinbasie,’ inviting me to sit next to him and they all nearly fell off the wagon, they were laughing so much. It’s funny how people can work on the night cart and still laugh. I was very glad the cart was full and moving very slowly and not so fast that I couldn’t get ahead of it because the sewage farm was in the same direction as me and Tinker were going, and can you imagine if we’d had to run behind it all the way back to The Boys Farm. Though I’ve noticed that dogs seem to quite enjoy bad smells.

  You can sometimes get lucky in life and on a Sunday morning we got our clean clothes before breakfast. I just got back in time to hide the book in the hydrangea bushes and send Tinker to the kitchen to get his scoff, take a shower and be at the very back of the line. What happened is this, you’d take a shower and put your dirty clothes in a big wooden box and in this room next to the showers they put your new shirt and khaki shorts with your name on the inside. Even if you couldn’t read everyone knows what his own name looks like on his shirt and shorts. But anyway, mine were the last still there. I just got to breakfast in time, the last to go in. Talk about lucky!

  Because it was Sunday and Mevrou was going to see her sister I didn’t go to the sick room like I was supposed to, anyway my finger wasn’t throbbing or anything. It was trudge, trudge, trudge back to town to church.

  ‘You lucky hey, Voetsek,’ said Gawie Grobler. ‘Mevrou didn’t come into the dormitory for half-jack this morning so she didn’t know you weren’t there all the time, man. They all went to the dance in the lorry and came back very late.’ Which explained her early morning absence.

  ‘But the lorry was broken,’ I protested.

  ‘Broken? Nah, we had to go and clean it yesterday afternoon so it would be nice to take everyone to the tiekiedraai competition,’ Gawie said.

  Then they wanted to know where I’d been for the whole night. ‘Ag, I stayed at the doctor’s,’ I said, trying to sound casual. I could see they were impressed, me not only staying in a real house, but in the house of a high-up person. I told them about having stitches and how your finger is dead but then comes alive again. When someone asked what the doctor’s house was like I was in a bit of trouble, so I said, ‘They drink tea with lots of sugar in it and the doctor’s got all these books and an old dog called Helmut who farts and snores a lot.’ They laughed about the farting and snoring, but I wasn’t important enough for them to ask any more questions so, thank goodness, it turned out all right in the end.

  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, b
ut 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.