Tandia (38 page)
Peekay sighed inwardly. 'He was doing too much talking but it was too late now. He had to go on. 'Well firstly the message, or story if you like, came from the most important wizard of them all a man who was accepted, not only by the Zulu people, but by all the tribes as the greatest of the medicine men. The story was his last; he died some weeks later. Therefore it was a message to all of the black people to take action and to do so with the absolute conviction that, in the end, they would prevail.
'But, if you understand Zulu, the message was not of a sudden uprising. What it carried was a plan. A course of action and a result. Inkosi-Inkosikazi foretold great suffering; the ball rolling down the hill with the beetle hanging on could go on for years, perhaps even decades. It also tells of the white men's determination,
their
willingness to suffer to hold on to their heritage. To the African, suffering is a familiar experience. The African people have always suffered and did so long before the advent of the white man. Suffering is an expected component of life. Shaka, the first great warrior king who forged the Zulu nation into the greatest war machine Africa has ever seen, could make an entire regiment march over a three-hundred foot cliff to demonstrate their obedience and their loyalty. The Zulu people expect that they'll have to fight, expect that they will suffer, expect that the Boer will not capitulate easily. Nevertheless the story of the dung beetle and the ants is a blueprint, a foretelling of a future with a certainty that, in the end, the people will prevail. It is the certainty of victory which will make them fight long and hard until they win. Victory is no longer an "if"; with Inkosi-Inkosikazi's prophecy, it has become a "when".'
Peekay was conscious of how melodramatic his words must sound to this rational and totally civilised man. He looked about the slightly untidy room. He was in a perfectly ordinary study in a great seat of learning in a country where the fundamental belief was that a combination of God, Queen, good manners and a fair-minded attitude to your fellow man was a perfectly valid prescription for life and one which the rest of the world shouldn't find too difficult to grasp. Witchcraft, superstition and any of the other tenets of a primitive culture played no part in this perception.
Some fucking Oxford undergraduate he'd turned out to be! He wasn't clever at all. This place was filled with people who were light years ahead of him. Not simply the dons, most of the students as well. They spoke better, thought better and certainly argued better. Peekay felt a sudden panic. E.W. wasn't obliged to take him. 'Christ! If he rejects me, what the hell will I do?'
E.W. was silent for a long time. Finally he said slowly, 'We are all believers in magic. Very few things are wrought by logic alone. Man has always fought for improbable causes, often against impossible odds, enduring incredible hardship in the name of some truth or other. In my own way, I too succumbed to the power of a just idea, when a moment's reflection and an ounce of common sense would have shown the futility of the struggle into which I threw my puny weight.' E.W. looked a trifle embarrassed. 'I spent six months as a true believer, among other things winding bandages in Spain.'
A sudden vision of E.W's gaunt frame in an ill-fitting, republican uniform in the Spanish Civil War brought a smile to Peekay's lips.
E.W. grinned. 'Well you may laugh, I readily confess to having been a ridiculous soldier, too much Quixote and not enough Hemingway. Like the peripatetic Don Quixote on his horse, I was moved from one ordnance job to another in an attempt to find something I couldn't effectively mess up. Bandages were my last stop and then our side lost. I came home just in time to be recruited into Hitler's war. On the strength of my bandage-winding experience, which obviously, in the eyes of the War Office, counted for a great deal more than a degree in jurisprudence, I spent the entire Second World War in Plymouth lecturing to young ladies in the WRNS on contraception and sexually transmitted diseases gained as an indirect result of accepting gifts of silk stockings and candy from randy American marines.'
Peekay laughed as E.W. hoped he might. He'd watched the young South African carefully. Peekay's student details, submitted to Magdalen College by his headmaster, St John Burnham, indicated that he was a champion boxer and a good all-round sportsman as well as an outstanding student, who had been shortlisted as a Rhodes scholar pending completion of his first degree. As a rule Rhodes scholars didn't impress E.W. who found them, more often than not, too busy with cricket or rugby to manage much more than a lower second.
E.W. was a man who exalted in the human mind and thought of the body as a rather clumsy method of carrying it about. Boxing, a sport which was known to damage the brain, he found both repulsive and primitive and he'd had serious reservations about accepting Peekay.
'And you? You believe in the erâ¦witch doctor's prophecy, Peekay?'
'Well, yes, I suppose I do. I'm African myself. The fact that a man of Inkosi-Inkosikazi's power and intelligence, who lived his life in peace as the spirits of the dead decreed he should, would turn around and instruct the people to rise against the white man, could mean only one thing. These same spirits, the great kings, elders and the shadows of his ancestors, Shaka, Dingane and Cetewayo, had joined to ensure the outcome. By allowing the wizard of peace to carry the message of war, the ancestral shadows had cast the bones and read the smoke. The people have no choice but to respond.'
E. W. brought his hands together, the tips of his fingers touching his lips. He appeared to be deep in thought. 'I'm sure we're on the same side, Peekay. But in terms of your time at Oxford perhaps we ought to use a different term of reference. The situation in South Africa is undeniably racist, but this is by no means unique. Almost every culture practises covert racism to a greater or lesser degree. The real enemy is the denial of personal integrity for the white South African, and that of social dignity and opportunity for the black South African.
'That one tribe is thought to be superior to another is once again, common enough. In this country for centuries we've used the class system to the same effect. What makes the situation in South Africa extraordinary from the point of view of jurisprudence, is the existence of actual legislation which decrees that a person of one colour is
born
superior to a person of another colour.
'This single element of the law is the linchpin which holds everything else together. While legislation of this kind exists, corruption of the spirit is inevitable. In the next three years together you and I will
not
discuss this problem in terms of black or white, but in terms of morality, integrity and how the law, used wisely, can indeed be the universally accepted instrument of truth and become accountable for justice in a civilised society.'
This was it, a true analysis of South Africa's plight. One that cut through the bombast and the dogma and the special circumstances. Peekay was overwhelmed with admiration. This was finally what he had come for, to learn to think clearly without sentiment.
'I wish I could have said that,' Peekay said softly. E.W. brushed away the compliment. 'And you have come to Oxford. Why?'
Peekay answered as simply as he could, 'To do what you suggest. I have come to learn how to make the law honest.' Looking directly at his young student, E.W. said, 'I'm not sure Oxford can give you what you want, Peekay. It is not the law which keeps a people safe, but the hearts and minds of some few good men and women who are its custodians. Conventional justice, when it is not in the hearts and minds of men, has only the power to corrupt. The letter of law may be upheld but its spirit is withheld. Isn't this what you are talking about?'
Peekay laughed. 'I'm not sure. You see South Africa doesn't have
honest
racial laws which can be corrupted by dishonest and venal men. We have no custodians to see that justice is done, because justice, in racial terms, is
never
done, almost by definition cannot be done! The good guys have no precedent, no fundamentally just law upon which to anchor their arguments.' Peekay frowned, looking for another way of putting his argument. 'Because racial injustice is perfectly legal, it is like shadow bOXing. When you throw a punch there is nothing to hit.'
'And making the law honest? Do you have a vision, a picture in your mind, of what this means?'
'Well, yes, it seems to me that justice should be easy to understand, a natural outcome. The prisoner, sitting alone in his cell, confronted with what he has done, should be able to admit his guilt to himself and accept the verdict because he understands he has broken his contract with a society whose laws he agreed to honour.' Peekay paused, searching for the right words. 'The law should be based on the concept of natural justice. Too often the black prisoner doesn't consider himself guilty, doesn't even understand why he is being sentenced. Too often the law itself is a denial of natural justice!'
E.W's eyebrows shot up. 'Good! That's good, we can use that.' When he smiled his teeth were slightly uneven and stained yellow from years of smoking a pipe. The young man seated opposite him was vulnerable and gauche, certainly an idealist, but his convictions were not entirely based on the dreary tenets of social injustice every nineteen-year-old undergraduate who pretended to think carried around like a big stick. Nor did he think he knew the answer to everything.
'Will you take me then, E. W?' Peekay asked, concerned.
'I thought I'd indicated that earlier, my boy?'
'Well, it's just thatâ¦well, I wanted to make sure we get it right from the beginning.'
'What on earth do you mean, Peekay?'
'Well, you see, we white South Africans tend to have an enormous chip on our shoulders, mostly because we feel guilty, are guilty. I simply cannot afford to waste my time at Oxford trying to justify my guilt. I'd like you to accept that I'm guilty, but that I intend to do something about it.'
'My dear fellow, that will hardly do. You may be guilty wherever else you desire, the exception being in this study. Discussion is the basis of the college system; two or more inquiring minds in a small room is what Oxford is all about. The personal tutorship you receive here is essentially why you would choose to come to Oxford. You are a boxer I believe? Here you will learn to attack and defend, the punch and counter-punch of discussion. You will win by using your intellect, it will be your only means of defeating an opponent. In this room there is no guilt. I simply won't have it!'
E.W. looked steadily at Peekay. 'We shall spend the remainder of your first term discussing natural justice.' He fumbled in the pockets of his tweed coat and produced a pipe from one pocket and a tobacco pouch and large box of Swan Vesta matches from the other. 'We may well spend the remainder of your time at Oxford discussing it. The rest of what you need to pass your examinations you can pick up in lectures and from the books I shall let you have.' He tapped the bowl of his pipe against the edge of the large copper ashtray, which gave off a loud ringing sound, and prepared to light it.
Peekay's grandfather smoked a pipe and the elaborate ritual about to take place was familiar. Finally the small study was filled with blue, molasses-flavoured smoke. Peekay knew that this was temporary, that pipes go out as a matter of ritual soon after they're lit, when they're put down, allowed to cool slightly and then taken up again. The second smoking is the meaningful one.
He sat patiently and watched his tutor, reflecting on what he had learned. Now that he was actually here, Peekay understood that he would be judged by the quality of his mind. No more sporting hero, nice guy, natural leader, the stuff of which schoolboy legends are made; here only the intellect counted.
It would be like being back with Doc. When things got tough, Doc used to say, 'Listen always on the inside, Peekay. Inside of your head, in a quiet place, is sitting waiting the answer.' He was going to enjoy E. W. White's Oxford.
E.W. removed his pipe from his mouth and placed it in the copper ashtray. Then he took one last gulp of tea and, rising, said, 'I say, what do you think of this tea?'
Peekay was somewhat taken aback. He'd just undergone an afternoon which consisted almost entirely of verbal spankings and in almost the same breath E. W. White was asking him whether he approved of his thoroughly shitty tea.
He rose, preparing to go. 'Well, it was a bit strong.'
Peekay ventured.
'A chap named Goonesena whom I tutored in '47 sends it to me from Ceylon. It comes in a ten-pound plywood. box beautifully sealed in tin foil, regular as clockwork every two months.' E.W. looked up at Peekay despairingly. 'I'm rather forced, as you can see, to make it in very large quantities or I should never use it up. Alas, (he pronounced it 'A-la as') what you see is a Darjeeling man, condemned forever to drink Ceylon.' He seemed genuinely upset.
Peekay had never thought very much about tea. He generally took it with milk and two sugars about midbrown. The idea that tea should come in more than one flavour had never occurred to him.
'Ceylon is seeking independence from Great Britain. Why don't you do the same thing to them?' Peekay said, hoping he didn't sound too flippant.
E. W. White threw back his head and laughed loudly. 'I say! Well done, Peekay. Hoist with my own petard, what!' He found his pipe on the trolley and paused to re-light it. 'I think you and I are going to get along splendidly. Next week I shall require two thousand words. Please write clearly. I'd like your thoughts on the concept of natural justice and how it affects the law.'