Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘One last question, when you and Fonnie were present was there any discussion, threat, implication or suggestion that Mattress might be dealt with, other than reporting him to Sergeant Van Niekerk?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Pissy replied, not understanding my question. ‘Meneer Prinsloo gave Frikkie permission to go three rounds with him in the boxing ring?’

  ‘Ja, not that, some other threat. In the clinic Mevrou said “that kaffir is already dead, you hear”. Was there anything else like that said in your presence, any further threat made to kill him?’

  Pissy shook his head. ‘No, man, just that Frikkie wanted to teach the kaffir a lesson before they handed him over to the police.’ Recalling the incident, he laughed. ‘Only he ended up himself with a broken jaw. That was one tough kaffir, hey?’

  It seemed now almost certain that Mevrou had acted on her own. To an Afrikaner woman the sexual assault by an African of a child of her own kind would be the vilest crime she could possibly imagine. In her mind, death, violent and slow, was the only possible penalty and she’d have had little trouble persuading her six brothers to murder Mattress. She’d simply reacted the way her people had dealt with such problems for the last 300 years. I also had Frikkie’s evidence that the Van Schalkwyk brothers had admitted murdering the kaffir when they’d been together in the Stormjaers, the seven-man Nazi-inspired sabotage cell when, during the war, they’d attempted unsuccessfully to blow up the railway culvert to derail a troop train. Frikkie, you will remember, sustained his terrible injuries and the six Van Schalkwyk brothers had run away and left him to die. By telling me they’d admitted to him that they’d murdered Mattress, Frikkie was hoping to exact revenge for what they’d done to him. With good behaviour the life sentences given to the six Van Schalkwyk brothers could be reduced to fifteen years, which meant they could be out in three years. If this happened I wanted to be ready for them. It was a promise I’d made to myself, at first as a small child half-consciously; it was also one I’d made to Frikkie Botha. It was also my major motivation to study law.

  ‘There’s something else I haven’t told you, Voetsek,’ Pissy said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The bruises the doctor looked at and took the snap, they weren’t only from Fonnie du Preez.’

  ‘What do you mean? That’s why he went to the reformatory in Pretoria. He also pissed on you and you performed fellatio on him.’

  ‘Ja, the last two, but he wasn’t the only one who fucked my arse or I sucked off.’

  ‘Who else? It wasn’t Mattress?’

  He looked at me slyly. ‘Can’t you guess, hey?’

  ‘Not Frikkie Botha?’ I asked, looking surprised.

  ‘No, man, I already told you he was straight.’

  ‘Who then?’ I said, relieved.

  Pissy seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘Meneer Prinsloo!’

  ‘What? Meneer Prinsloo was sexually assaulting you? You were ten years old, for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘Ja, I know, it hurt a lot. It happened one Sunday when I’d had a fit the day before and I was in the sick room on my own because Mevrou was visiting her farm. Meneer Prinsloo came in to see me, and then it happened. After that it was every Sunday in the sick room after we came back from church and everyone had to work in the vegetable gardens and the orchards and there wasn’t anybody around the hostel. Remember, I was always too sickly to go with you guys.’

  The cruel, sanctimonious, sycophantic, Bible-bashing, hypocritical heap of excrement was also a paedophile. ‘You poor little bastard, you never had a chance, did you?’ I cried.

  Pissy shrugged. ‘Ag, Voetsek, it’s easy to feel sorry for yourself in life.’ He looked directly at me. ‘You know what it’s like, man. You were there. You an orphan. You haven’t got any parents, a mother and a father, nobody loves you, you just a piece of shit. Then somebody powerful who can give you things and make life easier comes along.’ He paused and looked down at his feet. ‘If you a piece of shit anyway, what have you got to lose?’ He looked up again. ‘It was only on a Sunday.’

  ‘Pissy, you were just a little kid, that fat bastard was committing a crime. Look, if Fonnie du Preez was buggering you, that’s pretty bad, but it’s two kids maybe experimenting, that kind of thing happens in institutions all the time. But Prinsloo knew he was sexually assaulting a minor, knew he was committing a crime. Knew he was destroying your life. Look, I’m a lawyer, you can still lay charges against him whenever you like, I’ll help you mount the case.’

  Pissy looked horrified. ‘No way, man!’

  ‘What do you mean? He’s a fucking paedophile! He ought to go to prison!’

  ‘Bullshit!’ Pissy cried suddenly. ‘Whoa! Voetsek, not so fast, man. He was kind to me, he said he loved me like his own son that he didn’t have because “the Lord hadn’t blessed him with issue”. He brought me sweets, even sometimes a whole Nestlé chocolate. You yourself know what such a thing meant. It was Christmas every Sunday. Nobody was kind to me before.’ He stopped suddenly and took a breath. ‘Even then when I was only ten, I knew I was different. Later on I understood that I was a homosexual in my blood, from birth maybe. He said I could call him Oom Piet, and he’d be like a father to me.’

  ‘A father doesn’t fuck his ten-year-old son!’ I shouted angrily. ‘Thank God you got sent to Pietersburg and out of the bastard’s clutches.’

  Pissy threw back his head and laughed. ‘No, man, even there he’d visit me. Twice a month. He’d take me in his big Plymouth to a hotel to eat something nice, then we’d do it after. Then later, after his wife died, he was transferred to be the superintendent at the Pietersburg orphanage. He’s still there, he retires next year.’

  ‘So how long did it go on?’

  ‘The whole time, until I was sixteen and left the orphanage and came to Pretoria.’

  ‘To work at the health club, which was more of the same?’

  ‘Ja, but by then, like I jus’ told you, I knew what I was. Look, man, you have to make the best out of life with what you’ve got. I worked hard at that place and learned everything there is to know about running a place like that: the steam room, laundry, front of house, kitchens, bar. I know all that stuff like the back of my hand.’ He shrugged. ‘You going to be the big-time lawyer and I’m telling you, man, I’m going to make a lot of money with a Turkish bath for Afrikaner homosexuals. Just another six months in the mines and I’ll have my share of the money. Now why would I want you to make a big court case? It would fuck up my chances to start such a business. You think I’m mad or stupid or something?’

  ‘Jesus, Pissy, what can I say? I’m just bloody sorry life happened to you like that.’

  Pissy gave a short, sharp laugh, more like a bark. ‘Life sucks, but then I’m an expert at sucking, man!’ he said sardonically. ‘Look, I know I was responsible for that kaffir, Mattress, being murdered and I’m sorry. When you become a big-time lawyer you’ll re-open the murder enquiry, because I think that’s why you asking me all these questions, isn’t it? Okay, you got me out of the army, so I owe you big-time, man. But if you make me a witness in the case I won’t cooperate and Oom Piet, Meneer Prinsloo, won’t also, you hear? No way!’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘Who do you think is going to be my partner in the club?’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, no!’

  ‘When he retires. It’s not so stupid as it sounds, you hear? Meneer Prinsloo knows how to run a place. He’s had lots of experience running an orphanage for boys, and these men he understands, you hear? He’s also very respectable-looking, a fat old man with a gold watch chain, a regte Boer, who laughs a lot. He can give the Afrikaner customers a drink, talk to them, make them feel at home, run the kitchen and the dining room, he can tell them his funny chicken stories. The people who come to use the back part won’t be nervous with him when they first come to the club. They’ll know their secret is safe with Oom Piet. What happens out the back in the private steam room is my business.’ He laughed and added gratuitously, ‘He’s a harmless ol
d man. He can’t even get it up anymore. For him the hanky-panky, it’s finish and klaar!’

  It was becoming obvious to me that there were two Pissy Vermaaks: the hapless, sobbing misfit that we’d seen in the barracks and a homosexual who knew his way around his own world and was a shrewd and cynical manipulator. Perhaps not even cynical, simply someone who lacked the normal moral standards most people accept as social behaviour. Knowing his background, this was hardly surprising and I wondered whether I might have assumed a similar philosophy if I hadn’t received the breaks I’d been given in life. I confess, I hadn’t realistically expected that he or Meneer Prinsloo would volunteer to be a witness. I’d have to subpoena them and hope for the best. But I was heartened by the fact that I now had something to hold over their heads. The case, if I could get it up, would almost certainly make the national papers. There had never been one quite like it before and the threat of revealing the details of a club for Afrikaner homosexuals might be sufficient to get them to cooperate in the witness stand.

  I make no excuses for myself, in my own way I was being just as hard and cynical as Pissy. I knew I couldn’t rest until I felt I’d done all I could to bring Mattress’s murderers to justice. I also knew that my chances of doing so were not high, that to most South Africans the whole endeavour would seem a pointless exercise in jurisprudence. Some people in the law, even the judge, might think I was grandstanding, a young advocate looking for publicity. I knew that re-opening a murder enquiry that concerned an illiterate black man who looked after cows and pigs and six Afrikaner brothers and a sister, a family who many thought of as folk heroes and who’d already served twelve years in prison, was utterly pointless. Perhaps even cruel and vindictive, and it wasn’t going to do my fledgling career in law any good, the legal Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

  It must be explained, at the time, even the most liberal of South Africans, usually English-speaking, secretly thought of the African race as inferior to the white. A murder trial where there was nothing to gain but some sort of pyrrhic victory, which, in the process, reopened old racial wounds, was no honourable win for any system of justice. It might even have been possible that Mattress’s wife and son, Mokiti Malokoane, also known as Joe Louis, didn’t even know he’d been murdered. They might simply think he’d disappeared, as so many black men who left Zululand or their homelands to find a job to support their family had done in the past.

  I hadn’t tried to find Mattress’s family. Perhaps, incorrectly, I reasoned that until I attempted to bring his murderers to justice there wasn’t any point. (Who’s the insensitive racist now?) I felt that by the time I was able to contact them, their grieving for his disappearance would be over. Then, if I were to win the case and see the Van Schalkwyk brothers convicted, at least they’d know that somebody cared.

  It was almost time to leave Pissy Vermaak. I’d made arrangements to meet Mike Finger later in town for a drink, and to attend another heavily chaperoned dance at the YWCA. ‘Pissy, I got to go. Thank you for being so frank with me.’

  ‘That’s okay, Voetsek, I owed you, but you got to promise you won’t tell anyone at the barracks, you hear?’

  I laughed. ‘That’s an easy promise. They’re already so grateful you’re gone, I’m a big hero anyway.’

  Pissy laughed, then looked suddenly serious. ‘Voetsek, maybe I can help you some more about the kaffir’s murder.’

  ‘Oh? How’s that?’

  Then he dropped his bombshell. ‘Look, there’s something else, something that didn’t come out in the newspapers, in the Zoutpansberg Gazette. The kaffir’s balls and prick wasn’t there, they was cut out.’

  I stared at Pissy, too shocked at first to comprehend. ‘Jesus!’ I exclaimed. Then I came to my senses. ‘How do you know this, Pissy?’

  ‘I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Seen it? How? What?’ I was sounding like an imbecile.

  ‘Mevrou. She showed me. They were, you know, his testicles and cock, floating in this half-size canned-fruit jar, pickled in a half-jack of Tolley’s five-star brandy.’

  I felt, well, I didn’t know at the time how I felt, numb I suppose. I know I wanted to throw up, then I felt incredibly sad and suddenly very angry. ‘Pissy, you’re a consummate liar, if you are making all this up I’ll find out and I promise you I’ll tell the mine about your epilepsy!’

  ‘I swear it on my mother’s grave!’ he said, looking extremely hurt. ‘I wouldn’t lie to you about a thing like that, man!’

  The fact that he didn’t have a mother or even know if she was dead was by the way. I took a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. ‘Tell me everything, Pissy,’ I demanded. ‘You’ve got a good memory, I want every fucking detail, right down to if she farted or sneezed or scratched her arse.’

  He smiled, recalling. Mevrou would often scratch her bum, digging her stumpy fingers deeply into her elephantine crevices.

  ‘It was the Sunday night after the Sunday when the murder happened and she’d come back from visiting her farm in the high mountains. After supper she said I must come to the clinic to take some medicine because, it was true, I had a bad cough and I must bring my pyjamas also, because otherwise I’d keep the dormitory awake all night. So I did. I had my medicine and went to bed in the sick room and I must have fallen asleep. I woke up, I don’t know how late because how could I tell, the window of the sick room looked out on the long stoep and there was always a light on at night and the light was on in the sick room. Mevrou was sitting on the edge of the bed and she had one hand on my shoulder, shaking me.

  ‘ “Ja, now you awake, hey,” she said. I’d seen her drunk on brandy before when, on other times, I was in the sick room. She’d sit in the front room till late and drink, and sometimes she’d wake me by giving me this big kiss on the mouth. Sis, man, with the brandy breath it tasted terrible. “You are my little skattebol, Kobus,” she’d say in her drunk voice. Sometimes she’d fall over the bed, over my body, and I couldn’t move until she got up. But now, this time she was different. Her hair was all over the place, some falling over her face, and her nightdress was pulled away from her one shoulder to her waist on one side with her arm out, so one big tit was also hanging out nearly to her waist. She had some sweat, like little bubbles under her nose, you know, where she had her woman’s moustache, and her eyes were all blood-red. I can tell you, man, I was frightened she was crazy. “Ja, Mevrou, I am awake,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

  ‘ “Some medicine for your cough, Kobus, sit up, jong,” she said to me.

  ‘I sat up but she wasn’t holding the cough mixture and a spoon, jus’ this small canned-fruit jar, half-full of brown stuff. I didn’t know then it was brandy and I thought it must be some sort of medicine maybe she’d brought from their farm. You know, boere medisyne. “Look, Kobus,” she cackled.

  ‘ “What is it, Mevrou?” I asked her.

  ‘She held the jar up to the light. “Your revenge!” she said, and then she really began to laugh like crazy. She brought the jar down and held it in front of me, close, so I could see into the brown stuff. “What do you see? Tell me, Kobus!” She sounded angry.

  ‘ “I dunno, Mevrou, it looks like a black worm and two little eggs. Is it muti?”

  ‘She thought this was very funny and laughed some more, like she was hysterical and couldn’t stop, the tears were rolling down her fat face. Then at last she said, “Ja, Kobus, this is the muti, the medicine, you give a stinking kaffir when he puts his dirty black piel inside one of our children, inside an Afrikaner child!” She clasped the jar against her naked tit, holding it against her heart in both hands. “They going to send you to Pietersburg, to the orphanage there.” She began to cry. “You like my own child, Kobus!” Then she put the jar down on the table near the bed. “Come to Mama, skattebol.” She reached out and pulled me against her big breasts, the nightdress covered one and the other one sticking out. She started to rock me and she smelled of brandy and stale sweat from under her hairy arms, and she held me so tight with my
face against her I could hardly breathe and I started to cough. Then she let me go and she reached for the jar and handed it to me. “Here, hold it, Kobus, feel how it is to have revenge! That black cock is safe now, it can’t hurt you anymore!”

  ‘ “Nee, Mevrou!” I pushed away from her. “I don’t want to. It’s not nice.”

  ‘ “Kobus, lissen to me, I want you to hold it so you know an Afrikaner child is always safe from a dirty kaffir’s black piel. Here, take it, hold it,” she put her hand on her naked breast, over her heart, “against your heart so you’ll never forget! Then I’ll keep it forever for you, you hear?” She smiled. “It’s our little keepsake, skattebol.”

  ‘I took the jar and held it against my heart, I could feel it was thumping like anything. I can tell you, I was shaking all over my body. “Now, look inside, Kobus, you must be proud of your Volk, we God’s own people, we don’t wait for a so-called police enquiry, we have our own justice, God’s justice, an eye for an eye. Suffer little children to come unto me, sayeth the Lord.” ’

  Pissy looked directly at me. ‘I guarantee, somewhere on the Van Schalkwyk farm is that canned-fruit jar.’

  Half an hour later I met Mike Finger in a bar in town and we had a couple of quick beers. Apart from greeting him I didn’t say much, my mind still reeling from the visit to Pissy Vermaak.

  ‘You seem preoccupied, old chap,’ Mike said halfway through the second glass of Lion lager.

  ‘Ja, I apologise, I’ve just been to see Vermaak at the hospital.’

  ‘That’s decent of you, I would have thought you were glad to see the back of him.’

  I smiled. ‘My barracks owes you a big favour, Mike.’

  ‘Not at all, you were right to come to me. He was, as you observed, genuinely sick, least I could do.’

  ‘There were just one or two details I needed to clear up with him,’ I said, explaining but not explaining my visit.

  ‘Tom, I have news, I’m going back to Kenya,’ he announced.