The Power of One (64 page)

The ref blew his whistle and Atherton kicked off, a short kick that landed in the middle of their forwards. Pissy Johnson, by some miracle, got there first and bowled over the Helpmekaar forward, who caught the ball. A loose scrum formed, but the ball wouldn't come out and the ref blew his whistle for a set scrum.

It was our loose head and, despite a big push from Helpmekaar, the ball came to me quite cleanly. We were halfway between the halfway mark and their twenty-five and Atherton was standing almost on the halfway line directly behind me. I knew he was going to go for the drop kick which, even for him, seemed a bit ambitious. I flipped the ball back at him as their flankers broke away and seemingly with time to spare he put the ball straight through the posts for four points. It was the best drop kick I had ever seen from him, and it set the tone of the match.

Shortly afterward we scored a converted try and just before halftime they landed a free kick. At halftime it was nine-three, but their heavier pack was taking its toll and we were exhausted.

In the second half Helpmekaar closed down the game and eventually scored by pushing our lighter pack over the line. It was nine to eight with ten minutes to go, and I could see our forwards were dead on their feet. It was just a matter of time before Helpmekaar scored. Somehow we hung on, tackling everything in sight.

Morrie had the pipe major on the sideline and he was blasting away, but we were too tired to care or even hear him. Geldenhuis had given me a torrid time and was overanxious to get at me. On two occasions during these last minutes of the game when they were camped on our line I'd dummied a pass from the scrum and his overeagerness to get to me had put him offside and given us a free kick. These two relieving kicks alone may well have saved us.

With two minutes to gd we packed down for a scrum on our five-yard line. It was our loose head, but they were pushing us hard toward the line. Somehow we managed to ruck the ball. I dummied a pass to our fullback, and Geldenhuis hesitated for a fraction of a second, enough time for me to move down the blind side. I drew their wing and passed to Atherton, who'd come around with me. He cut inside, drew their fly half and kicked the ball across the field toward the far corner posts. Lyell, our right winger, beat the fullback to the ball and scored in the corner. The Prince of Wales School went berserk, despite the fact that they'd all lost their money. Atherton failed to convert the try, but we'd won twelve to eight.

When all the bets were counted and we'd paid the faithful handful who'd bet against Helpmekaar, we were left with 487 pounds, fifteen shillings, and sixpence. Of the eighteen hundred kids in the two schools, almost every one of them had bet on the outcome. It was the mightiest scam of all time, and my share paid Solly Goldberg for the next two and a half years with money to spare.

Morrie broke out a fiver for a party in the team dressing room and sent Geldenhuis and the Helpmekaar team a case of Pepsi and four dozen cream buns. He opened a cream bun, placed a tenner in it, and put it on top of the pile of buns going to the Helpmekaar dressing room.

The Solly Goldman gym in Sauer Street was just like any gym you've been in or read about. It smelled of sweat, chalk, liniment, and hope. Solly ran his gym color-blind, the way gyms are run the world over. His only concession to apartheid was a locker room for non-Europeans. The rest depended on your skill as a boxer. The Johannesburg police turned a blind eye to Solly's personal racial integration program. The police commissioner, Kruger, was a boxing man, and to boxing men black isn't black in the ring. Too many great black boxers existed in the world, and a man jabbing a pair of twelve-ounce gloves into your face wasn't a dirty kaffir, he was a boxer, if only for the duration of the fight.

While a number of amateurs worked out in the gym, none of them was instructed by Solly, who had his work cut out handling the pros. Boxing was becoming a big-time sport in the African townships surrounding Johannesburg, and Solly had a regular stable of black fighters he trained in return for a percentage of the purse. Black and white boxers were not allowed to fight in public for the same title, but they'd spar together and sometimes the sparring would get out of hand when a white or a black guy— but it was mostly the white boxers—decided to have a go.

The first time Morrie and I appeared, Solly put me in with a young pro bantamweight who hadn't been out of the amateur ranks very long. After two rounds he stopped the sparring session.

“Who taught you to box, Peekay?”

I told him about Geel Piet without giving him the exact details.

“Next time you see him, my boy, you give him my compliments.”

“He's dead, Solly.”

Solly cocked his bald head to one side. “Well, he didn't die in vain, my son. He's given you an almost perfect grounding, you use the ring like a wizard.”

“Thank you,” I said, not quite knowing what else to say. Solly

Goldman was the best, and I found his overgenerous compliments unnerving.

“Thank me later, my boy, there's a lot of work to get through. You need a little more starch in your left hand, and your right is no great shakes neever. Like all amateurs you're looking for points, you hold your hands too bleedin' high. You're fast enough to drop ‘em a little and give yourself more punching power. We'll get you onto weights and build up your upper body. It would also be very comforting indeed to know you also packed a good left-right combination. Before I'm through with you, my son, you're going to be the only amateur boxer in South Africa who can put a thirteen-punch combo together. That's the showstopper, that's the one-man band that starts with a bleedin' mouf organ and ends with a big bass drum.”

I was amazed that Solly Goldman could read so much into my boxing after watching me for only two rounds. But he was true to his word. By the Christmas holidays I was a vastly improved boxer with a lot more power in both hands. We fought as usual in the Eastern Transvaal Championships that December, and Captain Smit couldn't believe the difference. The championships were in Barberton, and it seemed the whole town turned out to see me box. My mother stayed at home, but my granpa had a ringside seat with Doc, Mrs. Boxall, Miss Bornstein, and old Mr. Bornstein. Miss Bornstein told me later that old Mr. Bornstein winced every time I threw a punch, while Doc, by now a seasoned campaigner, pretended to take it all in his stride.

I was awarded the trophy for best boxer in the tournament, after which my granpa and I walked home while Mrs. Boxall drove Doc to his cottage. We reached the front gate, and my granpa patted me on the shoulder. “I've never been so proud in my life, son,” he said. Then, to cover his embarrassment, he reached into his white linen jacket for his pipe.

I had been home a week. The train from Johannesburg had arrived at Nelspruit at nine
a.m
. on the previous Saturday. Usually I would go on to Kaapmuiden and wait until midafternoon for the coffeepot to Barberton, which would crawl exhausted into town about ten in the evening. But to my delight Gert was waiting for me at Nelspruit.

“Ag,
man, we had to put in some papers here about a white drunk and disorderly who attacked a prison gang with a pick handle, so Captain Smit said take the car and pick up Peekay at the same time.” He extended his hand. “How goes it, man?”

On the road back to Barberton, Gert told me that Doc had been in a storm in the hills and had caught pneumonia and spent a week in hospital. “He's looking old, Peekay. I reckon he'll be making his peace pretty soon.”

I was stunned. “He's a tough old goat, he'll be okay, I'm telling you,” I said, more to comfort myself than as a reply.

“Ja,
he's tough all right, but the old bugger must be eighty-five, maybe more, he can't last forever, man.”

“Well, he's still climbing into the hills, that's something at least.”

“Not since he was sick. He talks about it, about when you get back, but I dunno, man, I reckon he's finish and
klaar.
I told him I'll send a gang anytime to work in the cactus garden, but he says he can still manage. But I dunno, man.”

I said nothing. A huge lump grew in my throat and the road in front of me blurred. The thought of Doc not being there when I returned home from school was too distressing even to contemplate.

“Those two kaffir girls at your house look after him like he's a chief. They spend all their spare time over at his place and they bring food every day and now they even shave him.”

Doc was the most independent person I'd ever known, and I knew at once that Gert wasn't imagining things. If Dee and Dum had to shave him, his hands must have become very shaky.

The Singer sewing machine I'd bought for Dee and Dum they'd turned into a regular little business making cotton shifts for the local house servants. My mother and Marie had shown them how to cut out clothes and how to make buttonholes and hem by hand, and they were going great guns. I was to learn by accident that Dee and Dum were using their small earnings from sewing to look after Doc, who could no longer take in his little girls for music lessons. When I could after that, I would send them money for him. The Bank was a regular source of income, and I could generally manage a pound a week. What with one or two other scams Morrie and I had going, between the girls and me, Doc was okay.

Realizing that my mother would expect me home on the coffeepot, I asked Gert to drop me off at the bottom of Doc's road. Hiding my suitcase under some bushes, I climbed up to the cottage. He was sitting in the shade on the
stoep
in his favorite
riempie
chair, and I thought he must be asleep. But he looked up, saw me approaching, and rose from his chair a little stiffly, one hand on the small of his back. His six-foot-seven-inch frame almost touched the rafters of the verandah, and he seemed to be swaying slightly as his arms went out to me. I ran up to him and he put his hands on my shoulders. Then I could no longer contain myself, and I grabbed him fiercely.

“Please, Doc, please don't die,” I sobbed.

Doc and I seldom showed emotion. Our love for each other was so fierce that it burned like a flame inside of us. But now I was suddenly overcome. Gert's conversation on the way over mixed with the emotion of seeing him standing with his arms outstretched to me, frail as a wisp of smoke, was too much.

His hand came around and patted me on the back. “Absoloodle! We have no time to die, Peekay, the hills are still green and waiting. It is not yet time for the crystal cave of Africa.”

I pulled away from him and he sat down in his chair. Still sniffing, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “You've been sick, Doc. Gert told me you've been sick?”

“Just a bad cold, Peekay. It was nothing.”

“It was pneumonia!”

“Ja,
this is true, but some pneumonia is big, some is small, this was a pickaninny, a very small pneumonia for sure and absoloodle.” He rose again from the chair. “Come, I make coffee, Peekay.”

“Marie will tell me how bad it was.”

Doc threw up his hands. “Marie! Such a person! ‘Professor, you must give your life to Jesus, there is not much time. You must choose between the eternal damnation of hellfire or the love of Jesus Christ.' T think maybe I stay a little longer here, Miss,' I say to this Marie. I think she was quite a lot disappointed.
Ja,
I think so,” Doc said, chuckling as he poured a mug of strong black coffee for me, holding the coffeepot in both hands to stop himself shaking.

We sat on the verandah sipping our coffee from big tin mugs, Doc's only half full so that he wouldn't spill it. He was up to all his tricks to hide his frailty. We said very little. I could see Doc was happy I was back, and I felt I would give him strength. We talked about the crystal cave of Africa, which Doc now regarded as our greatest discovery.

“It is good we are together again, Peekay. On Christmas Day I will be eighty-seven years old.”

“Doc, you've got to live until I'm welterweight champion of the world. You've got to make it until you're at least ninety-four or five!”

Doc chuckled at the urgency in my voice and rose slowly from his chair. “Come, I show you
Pachypodium namaquanum.
It grows so big, maybe we have the world champion here also.”

As we walked together into the cactus garden, Doc still tall and straight as
Pachypodium namaquanum
himself, there seemed to be a little more spring in his step. “Next week we will go into the mountains, Peekay, it has been too long.”

We did, mostly skirting the foothills and taking the easy paths, but Doc seemed to gain strength and was much better by the time I returned to school in mid-January.

NINETEEN
forty-eight was a great year in South Africa's history. Princess Elizabeth toured, and we all stood beside the road and waved flags and caught a glimpse of our future queen as she rode past in a long, black, open Rolls-Royce.

It was also the year South Africa got white bread, an event which excited a lot more people than catching a glimpse of the future queen of England.

History will tell of how the election of the Nationalist party headed by Dr. Daniel Francois Malan was the turning point when the Afrikaner once again became the dominant force in the country. History is bound to treat this event with great pontification, showing how the struggle between the two white tribes of Africa reached its climax. In fact, the turning point came not because of an ideological clash between white and white, but because the Nationalists promised to bring back white bread to replace the healthier whole wheat loaf which had been introduced during the war. An already overfed white minority elected to vote on its stomach. Within a week of being elected, the Nationalists kept their promise, and white South Africans derived great satisfaction from knowing that for once they had a government that kept its word. Meanwhile, the black South Africans prepared to bend their backs to the
sjambok
and for the invention of a new game where they voluntarily fell on their heads from the third story of police headquarters to the pavement below. It was curious that the whites, renowned for their sporting prowess, never learned how to play this game, and there isn't a single instance of a white South African becoming proficient at it. Nobody ever got their Springbok blazer for this new national game, even though a lot of very good heads played it with great courage.

Morrie, in a grim pun, said the election of the Nationalists to power was one of the crummiest moments in the history of any people.

Nineteen forty-eight was the year South Africa lost all hope of joining the brotherhood of man. Yet the black man held his humiliation and his anger at bay. It was not until 1952, four years later, that Chief Lutuli of the African National Congress and his counterpart, Dr. Monty Naicker of the Indian Congress, led the black and colored people in the first defiance campaign where the words “
Mayibuye A frika!
'' became the cry of the black man asking for an equal share of justice and dignity for himself and his family.

Private schools have a habit of carrying on regardless, oblivious to social or political change. Had it not been for a boxing incident that led to the establishment of a Saturday night school for Africans, the Prince of Wales School would certainly have remained smugly wrapped in its cocoon of privilege and white supremacy.

The incident happened during the ten-day Easter break in 1949. Morrie's parents decided to spend Passover with relatives in Durban. Morrie elected to stay home and invited me to spend the short holidays with him. I wrote to Mrs. Boxall, who wrote back to say Doc was well, so I agreed. The cook and the rest of the staff would take care of us, and one of the chauffeurs would drive us the forty miles from Pretoria to Johannesburg every day to work out in Solly Goldman's gym.

Solly protested, but we insisted he be paid extra for the holidays. Morrie's entrepreneurial sense extended to all things. He'd go to Barclays Bank in Yeoville on Saturday morning and demand a brand new five-pound note. Keeping it unfolded, he'd place it beside the week's entry in a large leather-bound ledger. On Sunday morning, after I'd worked out, we'd go into Solly's ramshackle office and Morrie would open the ledger, where he had written in his neat, precise hand, “Paid to S. Goldman, five pounds for services rendered. He would make Solly sign the ledger and remove the five-pound note from the page. Then they'd shake hands solemnly like a couple of little old men, whereupon Solly would get his revenge by stuffing the pristine five-pound note carelessly into the back pocket of his dirty gray flannels.

Solly was a very natty street dresser, but in the gym he always wore a sweatshirt and the same old gray flannels tied around the waist with a frayed brown striped tie.

“Why do you go to all that trouble when he just shoves it into his back pocket?” I once asked Morrie.

“So he'll stick it carelessly into his back pocket. Every week my stupid ritual and his defiance remind him not to take us for granted. Every time he sticks it into his back pocket like that, I know he won't.”

On the third day of the Easter holidays, Solly asked whether he could see Morrie and me in his office. He pointed to two old cane upright chairs and, pushing a pile of papers out of the way, sat on the corner of a desk covered to a depth of six inches in evenly distributed paper. In addition to boxing bills, unopened letters, and general paper clutter, there was a silver cup about ten inches high, green with verdigris; a telephone and a large desk blotter added to the mess. The telephone sat on top of the desk blotter, which was covered with coffee rings and hundreds of names and numbers. If anyone had ever replaced the top layer of blotting paper, Solly's gym would have ground to a halt.

“You've had an offer of a fight for Peekay in Sophiatown next Saturday night. It's not my decision, mind, but it can't do the lad no ‘arm.”

“Sophiatown! You mean the black township?”

“Yeah. I'll admit it's a bit unusual, it's a young black bantam who's just turned pro.”

“Solly, are you crazy? Peekay's an amateur, he can't fight a pro!”

“The black kid's not from up here, he isn't registered in the Transvaal yet. Technically he's an amateur here. Anyway, if the fight takes place in a native township, who the hell's going to know?”

“You should know better than that, Solly.”

Ignoring Morrie's remark, Solly appealed directly to me. “This fight would do you a lot of good, sharpen you up nicely for the South African Schools Championships and all.”

“Christ, Solly, you're off your rocker!” Morrie continued. “You find a professional bantamweight, probably in his twenties, and you want to put him against Peekay, who's fifteen years old?”

“That's just the point, my son. Peekay wouldn't be mismatched, the black kid is only just sixteen. Three professional fights. Now I ask you, my son, would I mismatch Peekay? Don't insult my intelligence.”

“Hey, hang on, wait a minute, both of you.” I turned to Solly. “There's more to this, isn't there? First we're fighting a black man in a black township, that's not allowed for a start. Then an amateur is fighting a pro . . .”

“An unregistered pro,” Solly interjected.

“You haven't answered my question, Solly,” I repeated.

“It's not what you're thinking, Peekay, there's no money in it, there would be no purse for the fight.”

“What about the book?” Morrie asked.

“No betting, gawd's onna!” Solly folded his hands on the desk in front of him and stared down at the untidy blotter.

“We're waiting, Solly,” Morrie said.

“It's Nguni, he wants the fight—Mr. Nguni.”

“Who's he when he's at home?” I asked.

“He's a black fight promoter. Owns the game in the black townships.”

“So what's that to us?” I asked.

Solly looked up at me. “He reckons if ‘e was to match you with this Gideon Mandoma, it would be a t'riffic fight, that's all.”

“If you'll come clean with the real reason you want this fight, we could discuss it. What's the real reason, Solly?” I asked again.

Solly threw his hands up. “Okay, it's business. Mr. Nguni brings in the blacks, I train ‘em, we share in the action. When you've got fifteen percent of fifty black fighters on the black township circuit, it's a nice little earner. I don't honestly know why ‘e wants this fight, I admit it don't make a lotta sense.”

Morrie spoke as though he was thinking aloud. “The black guy is squeezing you, and now you're putting the hard word on us. I can understand that. But even if he is making book, and you say he isn't, that's not a big enough reason. He could lose his boxing promoter's licence if he got caught.”

“Morrie's right, Solly. There has to be a better reason. Either Nguni is a fool or he's taking an enormous risk for a reason we don't know about. Either way, we wouldn't want to get involved. By the way, this Mandoma, is he a Zulu? I had a nanny named Mandoma.”

“Buggered if I know. Until they earn me a quid they're just black guys wearing boxing gloves.”

Morrie's chauffeur was waiting in the Buick, which was parked on a vacant lot a block away. As we walked to the car,

Morrie kept shaking his head. “I don't get it. This Nguni guy would have to be crazy to take the risk of putting on a fight between a nigger pro and an amateur white guy in a black township. The cops would have him on about ten counts. I mean what's the angle? A fifteen-year-old schoolboy boxer and a sixteen-year-old black bantamweight is not exactly big time, even in a black township.”

“You haven't figured it out, have you?” I said quietly.

“No, not yet, but I will.”

“Don't bother. It's got something to do with the People.”

Morrie spun around and grabbed me. “You're right, Peekay. The Tadpole Angel!”

We turned into the vacant lot to find the Buick shining like a great black beetle among the cut-down forty-four-gallon drums half filled with solid tar, piles of bricks, and the accumulated debris that always seems to furnish vacant city blocks. The chauffeur, who was talking with a tall, well-dressed African, stepped forward as he saw us approaching.

“Well, we're going to know what the scam is, in about thirty seconds. Look who's here, Morrie.” The tall black man straightened slightly as we came up. He was the tall African who always led the People in the chant to the Tadpole Angel.

“This man, he want speak you,
baas,
” the chauffeur said to me.

“I see you,” I said in Zulu to the African, who towered above me.

“I see you,
inkosi,
” he replied and shook my extended hand lightly, barely touching it. Politeness required that we talk about other things before coming to the reason he wanted to speak to me. This is the Zulu way.

“The weather has been hot and the rains have not come. Where I come from the crops will be thirsty.”

“It is so also in my place, the herd boys will need to drive the cattle far from the
kraal
to find grazing and the river will be dry but for a few water holes.”

“What's he saying?” Morrie chipped in.

“Nothing yet, we're still talking about the weather.”

“Your
kraal
is a far place from here?” I asked.

“Many, many miles,
inkosi,
my
kraal
is near Ulundi in Zululand.” The royal homesteads of three of the four great Zulu kings, Dingaan, Mpande, and Cetshwayo, had been near Ulundi, and the chances were that the tall man in front of me was a highborn Zulu.

“It is a long way from your wives and children. It is not good to be away from them.”

“It is the custom,
inkosi.
For the white man's pound the black man must leave his family. These are hard times, and I have few cattle and land.”

The time had come to introduce myself. “I am Peekay,” I said softly, extending my hand for a second time.

“I know this,
inkosi.
I am Nguni.” We shook hands a second time, this time first in the white man's manner and then by slipping the hand over the other's thumb to grip it in a kind of salute which is a traditional African handshake.

“I see you, Nguni.”

“I see you, Peekay.” It was considered audacious of Nguni to call me by my name, but I didn't mind. I felt as though he had known me a long time, anyway.

“Is it about the business of the boxing in Sophiatown?”

“It is so,” Nguni confirmed softly.

“Can we speak in English so my friend can share this talk?”

Nguni laughed, showing a brilliant smile. “My English, she is not so good,” he said in English.

Nguni's English turned out to be very good, and Morrie seemed relieved that he could share in the conversation.

“It's about the Sophiatown business,” I said to Morrie.

“Ask him, no wait on, I'll ask him myself—”

“Morrie, this is Mr. Nguni.” I turned to Nguni. “This is my best friend, Morrie Levy.”

“How do you do,” Nguni said to Morrie, instinctively not extending his hand but bowing his head slightly instead.

“Howzit!” Morrie said, not yet used to the idea of meeting a black man on equal terms. “Why did you ask Mr. Goldman if you could arrange a fight for Peekay?”

Nguni looked surprised. “It is always so in boxing, to ask the trainer?”

“I'm the manager, it is me you have to ask.”

Nguni threw back his head and laughed. “We knew this thing, but also if your trainer he say this thing cannot happen, I do not think you will listen?”