The Power of One (40 page)

The bell for the final round went, and we met in the center of the ring and touched gloves. Killer Kroon was still breathing hard, and his chest was heaving. As we moved away, he said, “I'm going to kill you, you blery
rooinek.”

Geel Piet had said you always had to answer back so they know you're not afraid. “Come and get me, you Boer bastard!” I shot back at him. He rushed at me and I stepped aside, but his swinging arm caught me as he passed and knocked me off my feet. It wasn't a punch, it was the inside of his arm, but it sat me down. I couldn't believe it had happened. One knockdown and you lose the fight. I had lost the fight! I had opened my mouth to talk, lost my concentration, and lost the fight! I couldn't believe it was I sitting on the canvas. There was a roaring in my ears and a terrible despair in my heart.

“No knockdown, continue to box!” I heard Meneer de Klerk shout as though in a dream. I was coming to my feet, but it felt as though I was underwater. The thought of defeat had drowned my senses. Killer Kroon rushed in, and that clumsy left uppercut just missed my chin. This time he should have used the right cross, as I couldn't move upward to my feet and sideways at the same time. A right cross would have caught me flush on the chin and finished me for keeps. Instead I simply moved my head backward and the uppercut whizzed safely past the point of my chin. I was back on my toes and dancing out of reach, moving around him. The stupid bastard couldn't box for toffee. No way was he going to get a second chance at me.

I was making him miss pretty easily and began to realize that there was something wrong with him. His breath was coming in rasps, his chest was heaving, and his punches had lost their zing. I moved up and hit him as hard as I could with a two-fisted attack to the spot under his heart. His hands fell to his sides. His gloves came around my waist, but there was hardly any strength left in him and he leaned heavily on me, his gloves working up and down my waist. The thumb of his glove must have caught the elastic band of my boxing shorts, for they slipped neatly over my hips and fell to my ankles. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't step backward for fear of falling, anyway his arms and weight made it impossible to move. So I just stood there and hit him again and again as he draped his arms over me, my bare arse pointed at the crowd. Then he gave me a last desperate push and I tripped over the shorts caught around my ankles and fell down. I tried to pull my pants up with my boxing gloves but without success. The crowd was convulsed with laughter, and Killer Kroon was standing over me with his hands on his knees, head hanging. He was rasping and wheezing and trying to take in air.

“No knockdown!” Meneer de Klerk shouted. “Get back to your corner, Kroon!” He grabbed me by the wrist and jerked me to my feet and then pulled my pants up. I had been covering my snake with my gloves. In those days nobody wore underpants, and I was bare-arsed and fancy free in front of everyone. But I didn't care a damn. The only thing that mattered was Killer Kroon in the ring with me. I would have fought him with no clothes on if necessary. Meneer de Klerk wiped my gloves on his pants. “Box on,” he said. I turned to face Killer Kroon's corner. He was standing with his back to me and his chest was still heaving. Suddenly a towel lofted over his head and landed at my feet. I couldn't believe my eyes. Kroon's corner was throwing in the towel—the fight was over! Meneer de Klerk moved quickly over to me and with a huge grin on his face held my hand aloft. “Winner on a technical knockout, Gentleman Peekay!” he announced. The crowd stood up for the second time and shouted and cheered and Lieutenant Smit and Klipkop jumped into the ring. Klipkop lifted me up, held me high above his shoulders, and turned around in the ring and everyone went wild.

Meneer de Klerk had moved over to Kroon's corner, and now he came back to the center of the ring and held his hand up for silence. The timekeeper rang his bell until the crowd quieted down. Klipkop put me down again. “The Lydenburg squad want me to say that Martinus Kroon retired because of an asthma attack.” A section of the crowd started to boo and there was general laughter. “More like a
rooinek
attack!” someone shouted. The bald referee held up his hand once more. “I just want you to know that I had the fight scored two rounds to none for Gentleman Peekay, and I also had him ahead on points in the third round. The technical knockout stands. Let me tell you something, this boy is going to be a great boxer. Just remember where you saw him first.” The crowd whistled and stomped and cheered again and Lieutenant Smit held my hand up and then we left the ring. Doc was crying and I had to sit down and hold his hand for a bit and then we went together to the showers. But first Doc and I shared the last two pumpkin scones.

“I think Geel Piet and the people will be very happy tonight,” Doc said as he handed me a towel. “I go to get you a soft drink? What color do you want?”

“But we haven't got any money,” I said.

“That's what you think, Mister Schmarty-pants!” Doc fished into the pocket of his white linen suit and produced two half crowns.

“Five shillings! Where'd you get that?” I said in amazement.

He grinned slyly. “I am making this bet with a nice man from Lydenburg.”

“A bet! You bet on me? What if I'd lost? If I'd lost you couldn't have paid him!” Doc dropped the coins back into his coat pocket with a clink and scratched his nose with his forefinger. “You couldn't lose, you was playing Mozart,” he said.

I asked for an American cream soda. It was the drink Hoppie had bought me in the cafe at Gravelotte after we'd changed the tackies at the Patel's shop, and it was still my favorite. It was also the closest I could come to sharing my win with Hoppie. If Geel Piet and Hoppie could have been there, everything would have been perfect. Not that it wasn't perfect. But more perfect.

BY
the time we got to the last fight of the evening, the Barberton Blues had won five of the eight finals and only the heavyweight division remained. Naturally it was the event from which the crowd expected the most, and they were not disappointed. Gert was matched with a giant of a man called Potgieter, a railway fettler from Kaapmuiden who was six foot seven and a half and weighed 289 pounds. Gert was no lightweight, either, and at six foot one he weighed 220.

Potgieter was a better boxer than he first appeared, and in the first round he had Gert hanging on twice, but Gert won the round by landing more clean punches. In the heavyweight division a knockdown did not mean the end of the fight, and in the second round Potgieter, way behind on points, connected with an uppercut under the heart that doubled Gert up like a collapsed mattress before he dropped to the canvas. The bell went at the count of five, but it looked all over for him anyway.

To our surprise, he came out for the final round and started hitting Potgieter almost at will. The big man knew he was behind on points, so he dropped his defense, confident he could take anything Gert dished out. Gert dished out plenty and there was blood all over the giant's face and one eye was completely closed. He smiled throughout the fight, a grotesque, dangerous-looking smile from a mouth that was missing the front teeth. Gert's straight left and right were working like pistons into a face that was moving relentlessly forward. Potgieter chopped his way to within range of Gert and finally managed to trap him in a corner. The uppercut seemed to be in slow motion as it caught Gert on

the point of the jaw. The warder was out cold even before his legs had started to buckle, and we thought he'd been killed. The referee counted him out, and Klipkop and Lieutenant Smit lifted him unconscious from the floor and carried him to his corner. Gert had, as usual, fought with too much heart and not enough head. If only he had known about Mozart.

It was after ten o'clock when we left Nelspruit. We kids huddled together in the back of the utility, sharing two rough prison blankets. The indigo night was pricked with sharp cold stars. We'd spent what energy remained in lavish praise of each other and the glorious Barberton Blues, and now we were silent and sleepy. Klipkop drove this time, as Gert was not in such good shape and had gone home in the ‘39 Chevy with Lieutenant Smit.

Bokkie, Fonnie, Nels, and Maatie were soon sleeping fitfully. Jolts woke them momentarily, their dulled eyes opening for a minute before heavy lids shut them down again. I was enormously tired as well but couldn't doze off. In my mind, each of my three fights kept repeating themselves. I played them back in sequence as though they were scenes on a loop of film that I was able to edit in my imagination, snipping here, joining there, remaking the fights, seeing them in my mind as they should have been.

I didn't know it then, but this ability to recall a fight scenario totally made me a lot more dangerous when I met an opponent for the second time. In the years ahead I also taught myself to fight as a southpaw so I could switch if necessary in the middle of a fight, as though it were entirely natural for me to do so.

It was nearly midnight when the ute stopped outside our house. Everything was in darkness. I crept around the back because the kitchen door was never locked. A candle stub burned on the kitchen table and on the floor, each rolled in a blanket, lay Dum and Dee. I tried to tiptoe past, but they both shot up into sitting positions, like Egyptian mummies suddenly come to life, the whites of their eyes showing big with alarm.

They were overjoyed at my return and switched on the light to examine me. They burst into tears when they saw my swollen ear, and it took some effort to calm them. When I told them I had won, they showed only polite joy. They clucked and tuttutted like a pair of old
umfazis
around a cooking pot and declared they'd be up at dawn to look for poultice weed against the horrible bruises that were undoubtedly concealing themselves all over my body. Despite my protests, for I was almost

too tired to stand up, Dum sat me down and washed my face, hands, and feet with water from a kettle kept warm on the stove. Dee dried me on a coarse towel, and at last I was allowed to totter off to bed.

At Sunday school the next morning Pastor Mulvery noticed my fat ear and gave me a lightning on/off smile, showing his escape-attempting front teeth. “Have you been listening to the devil again, Peekay?” He hee-hawed quite a lot over his clever joke and no doubt repeated it to the Lord later. He always said you had to tell the Lord everything.

I remained unsaved, unborn-again, despite the fact that I was officially slated in the minds of every lady in the church as my mother's special prayer burden. I guess if they'd known what was going on in the prison they'd have mounted a whole revival campaign to try to bring me to the Lord. Once I asked in Sunday school if black was equal with white in heaven. The Sunday school teacher, a lady with big breasts and a sharp nose named Mrs. Kostler who looked like a fat pigeon, stopped in midreply and sent one of the other kids to look for Pastor Mulvery.

“Not exactly, but not exactly not,” Pastor Mulvery said and then, thumbing through Mrs. Kostler's Bible, he read, “In my father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.” He put the Bible aside.” ‘Many mansions' is the Lord's way of saying that he loves all of mankind but that he recognizes there are differences, like black and white. So he has a place for black angels and another place for white angels,” he said smugly. I could see he was pretty pleased with his reply.

A girl called Zoe Prinsloo asked, “Does that mean we don't have to have dirty kaffirs in our mansion?”

“Ag,
man, Zoe,” Mrs. Kostler cried, “In heaven nobody is dirty, you hear, not even kaffirs!”

“Will they still work for us?” I asked.

Mrs. Kostler looked to Pastor Mulvery for a reply. “Of course not. Nobody works in heaven,” he said, a little impatiently.

“If nobody is dirty and nobody works in heaven and black and white are equal, why then can't they live in the same place as us?”

Pastor Mulvery gave a deep sigh. “Because they are black and it wouldn't be right, that's all. The Lord knows more about such things than we do, man. We mustn't question the wisdom of the Lord. When you are born again you'll understand his infinite wisdom and you won't ask such silly questions.” I knew Mrs.

Kostler would report all this at the next ladies' prayer meeting and I'd have to face another session with my mother. It wasn't easy being a sinner.

She would send me to my room and come and sit on my bed and sigh quite a lot. Then she would say, “I'm very disappointed in you, son-boy. Mrs. Kostler says that you were questioning the word of God. Why do you mock the Lord so? You are not too young for His wrath. T am not mocked,' sayeth the Lord. I pray for your precious soul every day, but you harden your heart and one day the Lord will not proffer up unto you His mercy and His everlasting forgiveness and you will be damned.” She would sigh a few more times. It was the sighs that got to me; I couldn't bear to think I was hurting her so much. But I didn't really know how to stop, either. It was natural for me to ask questions. Doc demanded them, had trained my mind to search for truth. To confront that which lacked logic or offended common sense was as natural for me as climbing trees. I was a sleuth in search of the truth, and once on the track of biblical malpractice I found it impossible to let a contradiction pass or an assumption go unquestioned.

I would ask for forgiveness and agree to apologize to Mrs. Kostler or whomever at the Apostolic Faith Mission I might have offended. But it was never enough. My mother demanded an orgy of confession. She wanted me to renounce my sins, retract my point of view, and go down on my knees and beg forgiveness from the Lord. I couldn't do it, and so I compounded her disappointment in me.

So she would make me stay in my room and go without supper instead.

I kept a stick of biltong under my mattress for these occasions. Marie often brought these hard sticks of dried game home from the farm, and Dee and Dum and I, being the only ones without false teeth, were the only ones who could eat it. I would sit in bed reading, cutting off delicious slivers of sun-dried venison with my Joseph Rogers pocketknife. It was Doc's, really, but I was minding it for him while he was in prison.

Marie had surrendered to the army of the Lord and in some measure made up for my recalcitrance. Creating born-again Christians for Pentecostals was like scalp hunting for Red Indians. Occasionally there was a really big coup, when a well-known drunk or fornicator or even a three-pack-a-day cigarette smoker was brought trembling to his knees before the Lord. This person then testified in front of the congregation. I'm telling you, some of these past sinners washed in the blood of the Lamb really got carried away when the congregation started to respond. When the hallelujah-ing and praise the Lord-ing and spontaneous bursting into song and clapping of hands and sighs of joy were going on, the convert would be crying and sniffing and having a really good time telling about all his really bad deeds. Every time the testimony got really juicy, a silence fell on the congregation as they soaked up the last drop of vicarious sin. I have to admit, it was pretty impressive when a repentant drunk was saved. One day you would have to cross the road so as not to go near him and the next, after he was born again, he was called brother, shaken warmly by the hand, and loved by everybody. I guess the Lord has to be given credit for that.

But sometimes being born again didn't last and the person who used to be loved was said to have backslid. Backsliding was the worst thing that could happen in the Apostolic Faith Mission. It meant that all the spontaneous love had been wasted and the devil had won. Mind you, this was generally seen as a temporary setback. To the Pentecostals the things of the flesh, tempting as they might be, didn't compensate for the promise of everlasting life. Once you were born again and then became a backslider you challenged this premise and jeopardized the whole glorious presumption of pay now, play later. The born-again Christians were all working very hard for their segregated mansions in heaven.

I think I instinctively recognized winners and losers, and it seemed to me the members of the Apostolic Faith Mission were to be found more often on the loser's side of life. This was a situation they seemed to enjoy. “Blessed are the poor, for they shall see the kingdom of God.” A converted drunk or a sinner who admitted to adultery was such an obvious loser that he just naturally belonged. Backsliding was therefore not easily accepted, and a lot of work went into bringing the lost child back to the Lord. The stakes were pretty high. In return for bringing a really lost soul to the Lord, you gained a fair amount of real estate in the sky, according to Pastor Mulvery: at least a two-story mansion set back from the street with trees and green lawns where the soft breezes carried the glissando of harps. Which was a damn sight better than the crackle of hell and the dreadful moans of the everlastingly condemned.

For the drunks who were smart enough to become born-again and then backslide, the Apostolic Faith Mission served as a sort of drying-out clinic where love and reassurance, fresh clothes, and a new start could be found from time to time. Really juicy backsliding testimonies filled the church and gave everyone present a precious time with the Lord and Pastor Mulvery a bigger collection plate. Church members put a lot more work and enthusiasm into a bad sinner than someone like Marie who came to them meek as a lamb without any spiritual blemishes, hardly worth a spontaneous hallelujah and certainly not worth a good public weep to the glory of the Lord.

Marie's spiritual moment of glory came later, when she testified in front of the congregation and told how she had brought an eighty-nine-year-old Boer to the Lord on his deathbed. How he had been afraid to die and when she had brought him to Christ he had closed his eyes and with a soft sigh gone to meet his maker.

I privately thought this an almost perfect solution. The old man had spent his life as a sinner and then, at the last possible moment, was snatched from the jaws of hell by a pimply-faced girl whose heart was filled with love and compassion. I wondered briefly whether this entitled him to a full heavenly mansion or maybe just the garden shed at the bottom of Marie's garden? Anyway, she got a terrific response from the congregation. Snatching lost souls from the brink of the fiery furnace was pretty high on the list of important conversions, and it immediately altered her previous status of sweet girl to that of a capable and resourceful soldier in the army of the Lord.

Like me, Dum and Dee were holding out, although to them the whole business was a bit confusing and their true status was never really known. They had been semiordered to be born again by my mother, and naturally they had complied. My mother gave them a Shangaan Bible, but it was left to me to teach them to read it, and we had concentrated more on the Old Testament, where the stories of the warriors, drought, and famine were much more to their liking. Their favorite was the one about Ruth in the cornfield trying to find enough corn to feed her family after the harvesters had been through the fields. The concept of a white man coming along and forgiving everyone's sins and then getting nailed to a post for his trouble seemed to Dum and Dee a highly unlikely story. As Dum pointed out, white men never forgive sins, they only punish you for them, especially if you are black. To accept the black man's sins and agree to be responsible and even crucified for them only proved he must have been crazy. Dee then asked, if he'd already done the dying for black people's sins, then why was the white man always punishing the black man? I was prepared to agree she had a point, and as I also found the miracles very suspect we just naturally stayed with the Old Testament, which had witch doctors like Elijah and great leader kings like Moses and fierce and independent generals like Joshua. A book like this made sense and posed all the problems and terrors their own legends told about.