Whitethorn (26 page)

‘In the meantime, they, the Roman Catholics, are forgetting all about mentioning Jesus who was the Son of God and it is all Pope and Mary this, and Mary and Pope that, and so-called holy statues everywhere. With Roman Catholics in Germany and with Italy being one hundred per cent Roman Catholic, Adolf Hitler couldn't just come out and say he was a proper Christian and didn't worship idols or Virgin Marys.'

Then the
Dominee
said that because we don't live in a perfect world, sometimes there has to be political compromise. ‘But just you wait and see, after Hitler wins the war the Catholics will be the next to go up in smoke!' The
Dominee
got very worked up saying all this stuff and the beetle chewed overtime on the beard grass. He kept thumping the pulpit and the light coming from the window behind made the beetle's ears blood-red and he thumped so hard the Bible fell with a mighty thump to the floor.

One of my big problems was that when you saw a person shout a lot and thump things like the Bible, you knew that he wanted you to believe stuff that maybe you should look at a bit more carefully before you did. Meneer Prinsloo was another such person, a shouter whose hands were windmills and who pushed his stomach out so his braces had to hang on for dear life, and so you also knew you had to be careful because a lot of what he said was sheer, utter and complete bullshit.

Now I must say it came as a big surprise to learn that there were people called Jews still hanging around the place after all this time since the Bible. I mean, there were no English or Afrikaners in the Bible because they didn't exist yet. But according to everyone the Jews were still here and they were
still
guilty of crucifying the Son of God. That is not a thing you can forgive lightly, and the ones escaping from Germany needed to be kept out of South Africa at all costs. Everybody said we already had enough Christ-killers allowed in by the British and the Smuts Government. The Jews now owned all the goldmines and diamonds and wanted to sack decent-living white miners and put
kaffirs
in to work underground because the Jews could give them less wages and make more profit.

So you see I was trying to sort all of this stuff out in my head, and in one of our many discussions on the library rock I said to Gawie Grobler, ‘Okay, answer me this. If Jesus died for our sins so that we could have eternal life like the
Dominee
says, then why are we angry with the Jews for killing him? He came down from heaven and was supposed to be killed in the first place. God said to Him, “Go down there and talk to people about us, then you have to die so their sins can be forgiven and they can start all over again, washed in the blood of the lamb, which is you.” When the Jews did it to him like they were supposed to, all of a sudden they can't come into South Africa? Didn't God know all the time they were supposed to do it? The
Dominee
says the Jews were God's chosen people, after the Afrikaners, so God must have chosen them to do it to Jesus!'

Gawie thought for a while, then said, ‘No,
Voetsek
, you got it wrong, man. It was the Romans that were supposed to do it all the time. God said Jesus had to die but the Romans had to do it. At the last minute the Jews said they wanted to have a part in it but that was never supposed to happen because up to then the Jews were God's chosen people.' He added, ‘But they not anymore, we are.'

I knew he meant the Afrikaner
volk
and not me, because the
Dominee
said that the Afrikaners could easily be one of the lost tribes of Israel, so they had every right to claim that they were now God's chosen people. The
Dominee
pointed out that they'd also done a lot of wandering in the wilderness among the heathen, as a matter of fact, for more than forty years, which beat the pants off Moses's record. What's more, there had been no backsliding by worshipping craven images, like Aaron did the moment Moses's back was turned when he climbed up the mountain to talk to God about some laws to be made called the Ten Commandments. ‘The Afrikaner tribe,' the
Dominee
said, ‘had kept the true faith to this very moment, and mostly the Ten Commandments and so were definitely a first-class chosen people who God could trust not to let Him down.'

So if, according to Gawie, that took care of why God didn't like the Jews any more, it still didn't answer why He hated the Romans who were only following His orders.

‘But why do we hate the Romans when God said they had to kill Jesus? It's not their fault, if God says something you've
got
to do it, man,' I insisted.

‘
Ag
,
Voetsek
, you don't understand! God doesn't hate the Romans because they killed Jesus! He hates them because after they killed Him they turned into Roman Catholics, and now they worship the Pope and the Virgin Mary and Jesus only comes in third possie. That's why we have to hate Roman Catholics as well.'

‘Okay, I buy that, but why do we let the Roman Catholics into South Africa and not the Jews, hey?'

‘We didn't, the English did. It's just another one of their terrible sins.' To drive the point home he said, ‘You don't see any Afrikaners who are Roman Catholics, do you?'

I was forced to admit that I didn't know a single Afrikaner who was a Roman Catholic. I wasn't even sure if I'd recognise a Roman Catholic or a Jew if I saw one. There certainly weren't any in Duiwelskrans. ‘How do you know if someone's a Roman Catholic or a Jew?' I asked Gawie.

‘Easy, man,' he said with great authority. ‘My uncle in Pretoria says you can tell a Roman Catholic because they wear a big gold cross around their neck and count beads that's supposed to be their prayers. They don't do proper prayers like us, they've got this necklace and every bead on it is a prayer that's already been said lots of times before. So if they just count them, they think it's the same as saying them, and in the meantime they're saving time. Imagine if you're God and you're waiting to hear all the prayers coming up to heaven at night and on Sunday morning all you hear is click “one”, click “two”, click “three” going on down below. How is He supposed to remember all the prayers they've gone and turned into numbers?
Wragtig
! It's an insult to God!'

‘And Jews? How do you know if you run into one?'

Gawie paused, then said, ‘My uncle in Pretoria says they've got this really big hooked nose and a black beard and long curly hair and they wear a round hat.'

‘You mean they all look like Jesus?'

‘No, man! Jesus had a straight nose, just like yours and mine, and he didn't wear a hat,' he said, growing impatient with my questioning.

‘
Oom
Paul Kruger, the President of the Transvaal Republic during the Boer War, had a beard, a hooked nose and long hair and he wasn't a Jew!' I protested. We'd recently seen this picture of the young ‘
Oom
Paul' in a history lesson at school, taken before he got fat, and to me he fitted the description Gawie's uncle had given of a Jew down to a T.

Gawie sighed this long sigh. ‘
Voetsek
,
Oom
Paul had a big blobby nose and all Boere at that time had beards, and his hair was long because he was so busy fighting the British he didn't have time to get his mother to cut it.'

I thought it best to leave the discussion there. You couldn't argue about
Oom
Paul Kruger because that could take me back into blasphemy territory and I was still suffering from the flag business. While I thought I might be able to recognise a Roman Catholic by the big gold cross dangling around his neck and his beads clicking away while he's counting instead of saying prayers, I wasn't at all sure about knowing a Jew should I eventually came across one. There were plenty of Boere around with black beards and hooked noses that wore big hats. The
Dominee
was one for a start. Maybe it was the hair that would give them away. Because most people around the place had the short back and sides, so if a man suddenly had curly black hair, like a girl's, you'd know he was a Jew who shouldn't be allowed into South Africa. But, on the other hand, maybe he was just a Boer who needed a haircut. Some of the Boere coming down from the high mountains for
Nagmaal
had their hair long, so you could easy make a big mistake.

I was also getting a bit worried about Gawie's uncle in Pretoria. Like most of the kids, Gawie never had any relations visit at Christmas time. Already I'd been in The Boys Farm since I was four years old and I don't remember Gawie's uncle ever coming to visit and he never once went to Pretoria on a holiday. His uncle must have done an awful lot of talking to him about hen's teeth and snoring in fires and Jews and Catholics counting beads before Gawie came, which was when he was only five years old.

Now that the war was on we also were getting extra lectures after dinner from Meneer Prinsloo who, like everyone else in the district, supported the Nationalist Party like all decent, God-fearing Afrikaners. They were bitterly opposed to the United Party and ‘that traitor to his own people, Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts, who ought to be locked up for treason and the key thrown away!' We weren't supposed to talk about these lectures if a grown-up who was a stranger asked. Meneer Prinsloo wanted us to understand that there were evil things going on that were designed to destroy the Afrikaner people, ‘who couldn't be destroyed and would still be racially pure when the second coming of Jesus comes!'

In one of his braces-straining sessions he said, ‘This whole war is an example of British/Jewish imperialism, and we in the Nationalist Party must fight them tooth and nail!' I hoped he wasn't expecting too many tooth-and-nail fighters from The Boys Farm because we didn't have too many teeth left after the horse pliers, and most of us chewed our nails right down to the quick.

Meneer Prinsloo also agreed with the
Dominee
that Hitler was an okay person for all the same reasons. But he also said, in the Boer War the Germans were on our side all the way up to their eyebrows but couldn't fight for us because they didn't want to get into trouble with the British, but they sold Mauser rifles and bullets to us really cheap, and gave us bandages and medicine for nothing, and built portable field hospitals also for nothing.

‘Instead of killing our women and children like the British, they saved our lives!' Meneer Prinsloo's braces were stretched to breaking point and his stomach stuck out beyond the platform where the staff table was, and his hands were moving so fast in the air around him that they were blurry.

It was a good point, even coming from Meneer Prinsloo. ‘Now, boys, let me be quite fair and put the case to you. If somebody says to you that you must pick a side to fight on,' he paused and looked down at us from the platform, ‘on the one side is someone who kills Afrikaner women and children in concentration camps and on the other is someone who saves their lives with bandages, medicine and whole field hospitals.' He took a breath, then said, ‘As an Afrikaner, who you going to pick, hey?' Another pause to make sure we all got the point. ‘So, I ask you, why are we fighting on the British side all of a sudden? Let me tell you why – because of British/Jewish imperialism! The Jews and the British own the goldmines and the diamonds and because Adolf Hitler says, “No more Jews in Germany, finish and
klaar
!” so now we got to fight against our old friends. Now is that fair? Is that what a Boer, a
regte
Boer, would do? A man of high honour and outstanding principles?'

Up to this point he had been pretty calm for someone like him, but all of a sudden his hands did somersaults in the air, and his arms practically flew off his shoulders and he roared at us, ‘
Never
! You hear, never! Never! Never! Never! I swear it on the graves of my dead grandmother Hester Prinsloo and great
Tante
Freda, who died of blackwater fever in the British concentration camps! God rest their souls and give them a home in heaven as far away from any British as possible!' When you think about it, he didn't have to worry – how could there be any British in heaven after what they'd done?

Then Frikkie Botha and Mevrou and even old Mevrou Pienaar the cook stood up and clapped and Frikkie Botha extended his hand in the Nazi salute. All of a sudden all the adults copied. Meneer Prinsloo stood there on the edge of the platform with his right arm raised and his stomach pulled in as much as it could for a change and the braces practically not extended. We all stood up and clapped and pushed out our arms in the Nazi salute. When I stood up the two boys on either side of me pushed me down again and held me down with a hand on either shoulder so they couldn't clap but could still salute, except one of them had to salute with the wrong arm.

Frikkie shouted, ‘
Heil
Hitler!' Everyone shouted back and Meneer Prinsloo's arm that had been in the salute started to wave around slowly at first, then the other one did as well, and they both started to windmill and he shouted, ‘Victory to the Third Reich and freedom to the Afrikaner
volk
!' Everybody cheered like mad. I've got to tell you, it was very confusing. I decided on the spot that if ever I came across a Jewish imperialist who owned a gold or diamond mine, I was going to give him a piece of my mind. I'd also tell them to have a haircut quick smart because while a beard is okay, you can't go walking around with long, curly black hair sacking white people who've got jobs in your goldmine just so they can put a bit of food on the table for their wife and children.