The Power of One (71 page)

L. J. Fisher

Secretary to the Committee

The people around me had become accustomed to my winning. It was a habit they shared, an indulgence they took for granted. I could see they were shocked and bitterly disappointed that, their having done their part, I had somehow failed them. Miss Bornstein and Mrs. Boxall were distraught beyond belief, having quickly convinced themselves of some sort of plot. My mother, after shedding a few tears, soon concluded that the Lord had decided it was not His will for me and that, if only I would accept Him into my heart and into my life, His purpose for me would become clear. Two days later she announced at the dinner table that the Lord had guided her quite clearly and that I should give up boxing as it displeased Him. When I had done so, I would be guided in the Lord's special plans for me.

When I replied that boxing was too important to me, she had burst into tears. “That is the devil in you talking. God is not mocked!” she shouted, leaving the table with her face buried in her table napkin.

“There, there. There's a good lad,” my granpa soothed. The following day a letter arrived from Singe ‘n' Burn in which he said that he was confident I would ride through the disappointment and that I had the internal fortitude to grow stronger from the experience. He added that the true Renaissance man accepted defeat as the ingredient that made eventual success worth striving for, blah, blah, blah. He then added that he had received a letter from Professor Stonehouse of Witwatersrand University, who, it turned out, was Ichabod Crane. In it Stonehouse had remarked that the committee had been visited by a Captain Swanepoel, who had not been complimentary about the school and its activities and in particular my implication in these activities. He wanted to assure Singe ‘n' Burn that should he hear otherwise, this involvement by the police had not affected his judgment nor had it, he felt sure, affected that of his colleagues. Stonehouse concluded by saying that my application for a scholarship to Witwatersrand had been accepted and that he hoped the headmaster would be able to influence me to accept.

The following week the second scholarship, to Stellenbosch, was confirmed and I received an invitation to apply to Natal University. But I knew that in the minds of those who loved me, this would be accepting the crumbs from the rich man's table. They were emotionally involved with Oxford, and no other place, no matter how grand, would have satisfied their expectations for me and rewarded them for the parts they had played.

Only my granpa seemed unconcerned. He'd said nothing when the letter from the committee had arrived, except, of course, “There's a good lad.” I found him later in the garden grafting rose stock, and we sat out of the blazing December sun in the dark shade of one of the big old English oaks. As usual he took ten minutes to tap and tamp and strike and eventually puff up a blue haze around his head. I'd given him a tin of Erinmore I'd bought in Johannesburg, and the honey-treated tobacco smoke smelled delicious as it swirled around his head.

“My brother Arthur went to Oxford. He was the clever one in our family. Like you he won scholarships, first to grammar school and then to Oxford.” He puffed and looked over the roof, which still hadn't been painted. “In my time not too many grammar school boys made it through to the dreaming spires of Oxford and Cambridge.”

“What happened to him, Granpa?”

The old man puffed at his pipe and stared out into space for ages, puff, puff, puff. “I don't know what went wrong, lad. He rose to be Lord Chief Justice of Appeal and was completely crippled by arthritis by the time he was forty. A miserable life really, made a lot of money and a lot of misery for himself and everyone else. According to my sister Jessie, he died rich and lonely.” He puffed on his pipe a little longer. “Funny thing about Arthur, he never could get things in their right perspective.”

Morrie had sent a telegram every week demanding to know if the results had come out and asking me to phone him reverse charge when they did. I called him from Mrs. Boxall's office in the library.

“Hard luck, Peekay. So close, so bloody close!” There was a click on the phone, and then a woman's voice. “Operator here, please do not swear on the public telephone.” The phone clicked again. “Christ! Who was that?” Morrie said on the other end. The phone clicked again and went dead. I dialed the exchange.

“Operator, I was cut off.”

“Peekay, this is Doris Engelbrecht!” Doris was a woman in her mid-twenties, a Marie “tonsillectomy” convert who now taught Sunday school at the Apostolic Faith Mission. “I am supposed to cut off calls that contain obscene language. Your party in Pretoria used filthy language and has taken the Lord's name in vain. I can't allow it on the public telephone even if he is paying reverse charges.”

“I'm sorry, Doris, he just talks like that. He means no harm, it's just his way.”

“Ag, sis, Peekay, how can you know such a person? You who are so clever and all and whose mother is a very high up born-again Christian?”

“Doris, you're not supposed to be listening. Telephone calls are meant to be private.”

“It says in the book I must not allow people to use obscene language on the telephone. How can I not allow them when I don't hear them?”

There seemed to be no ready answer to this. “Doris, if you get me my party in Pretoria, I'll tell him not to use bad language.”

“Tell him also to wash his mouth out with Lifebuoy soap!” Doris said.

The phone rang a couple of minutes later. I grabbed it and before Morrie could speak said, “Watch your mouth, Levy. Doris the born-again Christian is monitoring you.”

There was only the slightest pause on the phone. “What's your favorite chocolates, Doris?” Morrie asked. There was silence. “Black Magic or one of those big three-pound boxes with the picture of an English cottage on the outside showing all the flowers in the garden, you know, with a big pink ribbon?” The silence continued. “I just want to say I'm sorry for my language. Language like that can upset certain parties.”

Doris's voice cut in sharply. “Tell the party on the other end I will not be tempted by the devil, Peekay!”

“Ag, man, Doris, my friend has a chocolate factory. It is just a way of saying sorry,” I coaxed.

“A box so big you can't pick it up with one hand, Doris,” Morrie said.

“The box with the garden and the pink ribbon, then,” Doris piped in a small voice.

“Okay, then you've got to promise not to listen anymore, Doris,” I said.

“Only if you promise on the Lord's name that your friend won't swear some more,” she said, a trace of warning still in her voice.

“Thanks, Doris,” we both said. The phone clicked and Doris was gone.

“For Christ's sake, don't forget to send the chocolates, Morrie. Fve got to live in this town.”

“Is it safe to talk now?” Morrie said.

“Of course! You have the word of a born-again Christian!”

“I won't forget. We keep a roomful of obscenely large boxes of chocolate at the carpet emporium. My dad calls them his ‘sweeteners.' Every customer gets a box when a salesman determines it's time to close the sale. My dad claims his entire carpet empire is built on chocolate.” Morrie laughed. “He even calls the salesmen his chocolate soldiers!”

His voice changed abruptly. “The offer still stands, old mate. You don't have to take the money, it's just a loan. Now that you've passed the Oxford entrance examination and all.” Like me, Morrie had received distinctions in his Oxford entrance.

“Morrie, we've been through that! You promised you wouldn't bring it up again.”

“Cripes, Peekay, what are you going to do?”

I told him about the three scholarships I'd been offered and the paragraph in the letter that encouraged me to apply again when I had obtained my first degree.

Morrie was silent for a moment. “Got it! We'll go together to whatever university you choose and then we'll take the last two years at Oxford. You're only just seventeen and I'm just eighteen, we've got lots of time!”

It was my turn to be silent. “You've forgotten one thing,” I said finally.

Morrie was quick as a flash. ‘-Of course I haven't. We'll go to Witwatersrand and Solly can continue to train you and the old combo will stay together.”

“It sounds great, Morrie, but you've already been accepted for Oxford. This doesn't fit in at all with your plans.”

“Plans! Plans are
meant to be
broken. This is a much better plan.”

But I knew it wasn't.

“Let me think, Morrie. I just need a few days to think things out.” I knew quite suddenly that I would have to visit the crystal cave of Africa, that I had to “speak” with Doc. Doc was still a very real part of my life, and I had come to think of the crystal cave of Africa as the place I would be closest to him.

“Call me, reverse charge, in a week, you promise now? So long, Peekay.”

The next morning I packed a rucksack and left before dawn for the cave. By midmorning I had climbed to the shelf next to the cave. I had no desire to enter; Doc's spirit was everywhere. I was as close as I needed to be.

The shelf faced west and caught the late afternoon sun so that now I sat in shadow, the smooth dolomite surface still cold from the night. I closed my eyes as Inkosi-Inkosikazi had shown me how to do so many years ago.

Now there came the sudden roar of water in my head, and then I saw the three waterfalls. I was standing again in the moonlight on an outcrop of rock directly above the falling water. Far below me the river rushed, tumbling into a narrow gorge. Just before the river entered the gorge an apron of green water spread from the base of the last of the falls and across its center, a small boy's jump separating them, were the ten black stepping-stones, their smooth wet surfaces only inches above the swirling current.

I took a deep breath and launched myself from the rock; the cool air mixed with spray rushed past my face. I hit the pool at the bottom of the first waterfall. The sound of the splash drowned in the roar of the water. I surfaced to be swept over the second of the falls and then again over the third, landing in the deep pool of swirling green water. I fought my way to the surface and struck out toward the first of the black stones. Pulling myself up onto it, I hurriedly jumped from one stone to another, finally leaping for the pebbly beach beyond. I felt my toes and the ball of my foot touch the smooth round river pebbles, and as I landed I found myself inside the crystal cave of Africa.

The cave was illuminated as though by soft sunlight, and I had no trouble seeing around me. It was more magnificent than I had ever imagined, the stalactites suspended in every imaginable color, some hanging thirty feet from the ceiling. I walked toward Doc's platform, skirting the mirror-still pools of water reflecting the grotesque and beautiful stone icicles. A ray of sunlight, as sharply defined as if it were painted in a Raphael skyscape, fell onto the platform. I looked up to see a perfectly round hole in the ceiling through which the sun shone as though predestined for this precise hour of this precise day. The beam of light shone through the crystalline structures above the platform and spilled down the steps leading up to it. Slowly I climbed the rough, natural steps until finally, standing on the top step, I looked down onto the platform where Doc lay at my feet.

Doc lay as I had imagined he would, fingers extended, arms bent at the elbows and crossed at the wrists across his breast, his legs straight, like the effigy of a medieval knight at rest on a gothic tomb in a quiet corner of a great cathedral. He was made of pure crystal, the soft sunlight reflected from the effigy, dancing at the edges. Doc's sculptured face was surrounded by burnished light.

I told him of my fear of losing control of my destiny; how, because I had camouflaged myself so well, I seemed now to be shaped and directed too much by the needs of others. How the power of one within me was being dissipated even though their purposes for me were not corrupt or ill-intentioned. On the contrary, their deeds came swaddled in the innocence of love. I was becoming powerless as those around me plundered my spirit with the gift of themselves.

It was as though there were a voice inside me explaining me to myself: I had become an expert at camouflage. My precocity allowed me, chameleonlike, to be to each what they required me to be. To Doc a companion, to Mrs. Boxall an enchantment, to the People a champion, to Captain Smit a fulfillment, to Miss Bornstein a bright lint in a dull warp, to Morrie a foil, to Singe ‘n' Burn a product, and to my peers an idealized schoolboy, a winner and a great guy.

I was a poor boy among rich ones, and in my mind the status they gained by the simple expedient of being wealthy was leavened only by my superior performance in every other expectation. I had come to identify with my camouflage to the point where the masquerade had become more important than the truth. While this posturing was so finely tuned it was no longer deliberate, it had nevertheless been born out of a compulsion to hide. As a small child I had discovered that only two places are available to those who wish to remain concealed. The choices are to be a nonentity or an exception. You either disappear into a plebian background or move forward to where most others fear to follow.