Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (10 page)

With my having become a familiar figure for Mr Nochumson, leniency was far from our chairman’s agenda when it came to me. The incident with the police, as it happened, was the final straw. I was formally expelled. It was decided that I be sent to Norman House, a reformatory or haven for juvenile delinquents.

During the period I was at Arcadia we enjoyed the privilege of attending the school of our choice, and the majority of us chose King David Victory Park. Once I was in the care of Arcadia, the committee had complete control over our education and our lives until we left school. My mother, who was living in Hungary for most of this period, was not consulted and nor did she involve herself in any way in these decisions.

The decision by the committee to expel me left me distraught. In fact, I was devastated. I felt a great injustice had befallen me, a view that was shared by my fellow matric students at school, headed by Roy Lotkin, then my best friend at King David. The students of King David drafted a petition pleading with the Arc committee to retract my punishment and allow me to complete my matric. Another meeting was arranged and Mr Jeffrey Wolf, who was the principal at King David, attended the meeting, by choice, in my defence.

Luckily, I had a good reputation at school. Not only was I in the swimming team, but I also played in the First XV rugby team for two consecutive years and was awarded half-colours for my performance. I was also a house captain, and during the year we had won all the inter-house sports activities, except for the rugby, where we took second place.

Thanks to Mr Wolf’s intervention, I was given permission to stay on at Arcadia for the remainder of my matric, on the condition that I was gated for three months and my allowance be withheld for the same period. It was further agreed that I attend counselling with the psychologist at Arcadia, whose name was Vivienne Budlender. She turned out to be a lovely person and we formed a strong friendship. She was a compassionate woman, someone who never accepted anything at face value. We remained friends for years. Thanks to Mr Wolf, Vicky and the King David matrics, I had an opportunity to make amends.

Vicky informed me soon after the meeting that he had never before heard a person speak so highly of another individual as Mr Wolf had spoken of me. I was humbled by this. All the same, I didn’t do very well in my matric prelims; however, I did pass and attained a distinction in Art.

Skateboarding had just become the new craze. Most of my time and energy during this period was channelled into skating. I had a Snowy Smith board with alpha wheels – the Mercedes of skateboards at the time. What a trip it was! Imagine skating down Oxford Road and overtaking double-decker buses – well, that’s what we did. I had just turned 18. I was at the peak of my youth, invincible and ready to take on the world. Matric prelims, which made up 15 per cent of our final grades, were behind us. But instead of studying for the real thing still ahead, I was out perfecting my skills on my skateboard.

How I had made it to matric was a miracle in itself. My History teacher expected me to be the only student out of the entire matric group to fail outright, while my Economics teacher was confident I could obtain a distinction. Besides my Art teacher, though, as far as I was concerned, the rest of my teachers couldn’t have been bothered. Whenever I arrived for English lessons, I was told: ‘Mr Krebs, take your place at the back of the class and do whatever you wish, but don’t disturb the rest of us.’

I never expected to pass at the end of the year. This wasn’t because I wasn’t academically inclined. I just had no interest whatsoever in schoolwork. I was actually of the opinion that school was hindering my education. I wanted to get out into the real world, the world being the true master of life’s greatest lessons. Unlike my peers, most of whom would go on to university and had already chosen careers, I knew that my grades wouldn’t be good enough for me to achieve a university pass, although I would have liked to have studied Fine Art.

Over and above this, I also wanted to get my spell in the army behind me. I didn’t join up out of patriotism or a sense of obligation, but because military training in South Africa in the 1970s was compulsory. We would get our call-up papers while we were still at school and I had already received mine. I had been called up to serve 18 months at the signals unit in Heidelberg, from June 1978 to the end of 1979. I rather looked forward to being a soldier. As they said, you were not a man until you had been through the army.

In November, just before our finals, King David held a speech night at school. Everybody was required to attend. Awards would be presented and the principal would deliver a farewell speech, in which he would inform the matrics about their duties and responsibilities as the future guardians of their country, and the importance of furthering their education and becoming productive members of society. It was a tradition, and for most students speech night was also an inspiration. The door to adulthood was opening and we would be responsible for our own actions from then on. I couldn’t have cared less about speech night. I couldn’t wait to leave school and be free.

The morning before speech night, a close friend of mine, Craig, told me that he would fetch me an hour earlier as he and three of our teachers were getting together for a short private farewell, just before the evening’s official events. He wanted me to join them. I wasn’t quite sure what was going down, but the prospect of socialising with our mentors was an invitation too enticing to refuse.

As a keen sportsman, I didn’t smoke cigarettes and I was totally anti-drugs. I knew Craig smoked weed whenever we went to parties, and invariably there was a small group of friends who would sneak away and smoke, but I was never in the least tempted. I just let them do their thing. I didn’t question their choices, but I didn’t show any interest in joining them.

Craig picked me up and we drove to the Emmarentia shops where he pulled up beside some guy on the street corner. Words and money were exchanged and we then drove around the block. When we got back to the same spot, another guy walked up to the car and dropped two matchboxes through the window onto Craig’s lap, who at this stage seemed quite anxious and was nervously looking around to see whether anybody had seen or was watching us. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he handed me the matchboxes and we drove off. I had no idea what was going on, but I did understand that we had just done something forbidden. Being inquisitive by nature, I opened one of the two boxes.

‘What the fuck?’ I said, looking at Craig.

I recognised the contents immediately. Before I could prevent them, memories from my childhood began flashing through my mind. I tried to force them back down, out of my head, out of me altogether.

Craig said, ‘Take it easy man – it’s only weed.’

I knew what weed looked like. I knew what it smelt like. I knew the effect it had on people. I knew a lot of things I didn’t want to know, and most of them I knew before I even had pubic hair.

‘Oh, really?’ I retorted. ‘You’re kidding. I know what the fuck it is, and you know very well that I don’t approve of this shit.’

Craig said it was for our meeting with the school teachers, as if that would make things better.

‘What?’ I said. Man, I couldn’t believe it! Here was my school friend doing weed with our teachers!

‘Is that cool or what, china?’ Craig said, looking to me for my approval.

I was still more than a little confused, but I settled down. And the more I thought about it, the cooler I actually began to think it was. Schoolteachers were the fount of knowledge, understanding and everything that was morally right. Teachers were responsible for instilling in us these very principles. Then surely it had to follow that, if they smoked weed, all the taboos surrounding its use must be false. Suddenly I felt a whole new respect for my friend; he seemed far better versed in the ways of the world than I was.

Maybe, I reasoned, weed wasn’t so bad for you after all; in fact, there was no evidence that I knew of to prove that it was. It had become quite fashionable at our age to smoke weed. I did point out to Craig that, besides being illegal, I had heard that excessive smoking could cause temporary loss of memory and that it destroyed your brain cells. If nothing else, these two things should have been of some concern to him.

Craig just chuckled. ‘That’s bullshit, china,’ he told me. ‘It’s only illegal because it makes you feel good.’

That kind of made sense as I recalled whenever my stepfather had smoked weed, which he did regularly, it did seem to alter his state of mind. Janos did seem more chilled when he was stoned.

‘You’ll see when you try, china,’ Craig added, rolling down the window, ‘it’s such a buzz.’

The fresh air felt cool on my face, and I mulled over what Craig had been saying. He had a point, I thought. There was no harm in trying. I needed to find out for myself. We drove to the bird sanctuary, which was this beautiful tree-filled park with big open fields where people would walk their dogs. It was almost dark when we arrived. There was nobody in sight, no other parked cars.

Craig started crushing and cleaning the weed in the palm of one of his hands, going through exactly the same rituals that were now coming back to me vividly. He handed me a cigarette and asked me to empty the tobacco out; I had no problem doing it, and it must have looked like I had done it before. No sooner had we finished preparing a few joints than we became aware of two sets of headlights approaching in convoy. Nervously, Craig quickly hid the joints just behind the front wheel of the car and pretended to take a leak. Then, when both cars were well in our line of vision, he made a sign and said, ‘Oh, it’s Mr Fairchild and party.’

The cars pulled up next to us and everyone jumped out. Some looked a little surprised to see me, but were not in the least perturbed. Mr Fairchild was tall, with long greasy hair and a beard. He reminded me of a hippie from the 1960s. The three female teachers were all dressed up, but were different in every respect. Even before we had finished greeting one another, Craig had already lit up one joint and passed it to the women.

Then he lit another for us guys and we passed it around among us. For some reason, when people smoke joints they always seem to share them. I assume it’s something to do with enhancing the bonding experience of doing something illegal, or perhaps it’s just a drug culture thing. I had no idea what the effect would be or what ‘it makes you feel good’ meant. Generally, I felt good anyway – why did I need a substance to make me feel better about myself? All the same, I sucked hard on the joint, inhaling all the smoke. It tasted awful, burning my throat, and I coughed on that first drag. It also had an unusual taste. It was very harsh and the smell was slightly different to the weed Janos had smoked. I don’t know why – maybe my expectations were too high – but nothing was happening to me.

We passed around another joint. I sucked even harder this time, and the next thing I knew Craig was saying, ‘Stop, stop’ and taking the joint away from me. He told me that he needed to doctor it because I’d been sucking so hard the joint had burned down the one side. He put spit on his finger and applied it to the area that was more burnt. I noticed that everybody’s mood had changed. Our teachers were much more relaxed and cheerful now and they all seemed to be speaking at the same time.

I, on the other hand, was rather disappointed, and could feel only a slight headache creeping up on me. I couldn’t understand why people made such a big deal about smoking weed or why it was referred to as an addictive substance. Anyway, everyone had a few good laughs, not that I could fathom what was so funny. I guessed being stoned turned you into something of a comedian. After a while our teachers bade us farewell and drove away. Craig then proceeded to put eye drops in his eyes and suggested I do the same.

‘Shani, are you goofed?’ he asked me.

‘Not really, man,’ I told him. I certainly didn’t feel stoned. I’m not sure if I felt anything at all except for my headache. I looked in the car mirror and was shocked to see how red my eyes were.

By the time we got to King David, which was a two-minute drive from the bird sanctuary, thanks to the eye drops my eyes had cleared completely. There were cars parked all the way down the road and people were still arriving. On entering the assembly hall, which was by now packed with students and their parents, we were greeted by a clamour of conversation that echoed throughout the big room. This was, after all, a pivotal moment for most of my peers.

In my eyes, however, it was nothing more than a banal affair, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that Craig and I were jointly being awarded the Art prize, I might very well not have even attended at all. Suddenly I felt a little light-headed. All eyes seemed to be on me, or was it my imagination? And all of a sudden my conscience was troubling me. What had I done? I had lost the innocence of my youth. Was this the beginning of the many evils that I was going to fall victim to? Was it possible that fate had its own plans for me?

I went to the toilet and splashed water on my face, looked in the mirror and thought to myself, you cool, my china, and went back to find my place in the hall.

The principal approached the podium. His speech seemed to go on forever. Most of what he said went straight in one ear and out the other for me, except for one thing, which did stick with me. This was something about the world being a very competitive, at times even ruthless, place where one needed all one’s wits to survive. Everybody applauded at the conclusion of his talk and then our vice-principal, who was also head of the English department, was called to address the audience. By this stage I was already bored and nothing he could say would bear any significance on the way I anticipated my future was going to be. After his tiresome rambling, the awards were presented.

The Art prize was the last to be given out. Craig and I were called to the stage. I felt unusually self-conscious. I’m not sure whether it was the fact that I was perceived by most to be an underachiever or whether it was the lingering effects of the weed we had smoked. In my eyes, the prize was a farce as we were the only two who had taken Art as a subject out of the entire 1977 matric group. What was the point of an award?