I woke at dawn to the by now familiar lickity-clack of the carriage wheels. From the colour of the light coming through the compartment window I could see it was the time Granpa Chook would come to the dormitory window and crow his silly old neck off. I supposed he had conditioned me to waking at first light.
The light which fled past the compartment window was still soft with a greyish tint; soon the sun would come and polish it till it shone. The landscape had changed in a subtle way. Yesterday’s rolling grassland was now broken by an occasional koppie, rocky outcrops with clumps of dark green bush, each no more than a hundred feet high. Flat-topped fever trees were more frequent and in the far distance a sharp line of mountains brushed the horizon in a wet, watercolour purple. We were coming into the true lowveld.
I sat up and became aware of a note pinned to the front of my shirt. I undid the safety pin to find a piece of paper with a ten-shilling note attached to it. I was a bit stunned. I’d never handled a banknote and it was difficult to imagine it belonged to me. If one sucker cost a penny, I could buy one hundred and twenty suckers with this ten shillings. On the piece of paper was a carefully printed note from Hoppie.
Dear Peekay,
Here is the money you won. We sure showed that big gorilla who was the boss. Small can beat big. But remember, you have to have a plan – like when I hit Jackhammer Smit the knock-out punch when he thought I was down for the count. Ha, ha. Remember always, first with the head and then with the heart. Without both, I’m telling you, plans are useless!
Remember, you are the next contender. Good luck, little boetie.
Your friend in boxing and always, Hoppie Groenewald
PS Say always to yourself, First with the head and then with the heart, that’s how a man stays ahead from the start. H. G.
I was distressed at having left the best friend after Granpa Chook and Nanny that I had ever had, without so much as a goodbye. Hoppie had passed briefly through my life, like a train passing in the night, I had known him a little over twenty-four hours, yet he had managed to change my life. He had given me the power of one, one idea, one heart, one mind, one plan, one determination. Hoppie had sensed my need to grow, my need to be assured that the world around me had not been specially arranged to bring about my undoing. He gave me a defence system and with it he gave me hope.
In the early morning the lickity-clack of the carriage wheels sounded sharper and louder as though racing towards the light. It was only by concentrating hard that I could hear the cadence of someone breathing, first an inhalation, deep and mournful, then complete silence for a few moments and then a powerful whistling sound as a great volume of air was exhaled. At first I thought it might be a part of the train. After all, I was not much of an expert on trains.
But then I began to suspect that the whistling sound had something to do with the smell in the compartment. It was so severe I had to cover my nose with my sheet. Holding my nose, I peered over the edge of the bunk. In the bunk below me lay Big Hettie still fully dressed. She was heaving in her sleep like a beached sperm whale. With every intake of air her bosom and stomach rose almost to touch the bottom of my bunk. Wow! Kapow! What a stink! Her arm was stretched out with her hand planted firmly on the carpet, acting as a prop to prevent her from tumbling to the floor.
On the bunk directly opposite her was a smallish suitcase and a very large square wicker picnic hamper. Big Hettie and I had the compartment to ourselves. Which was just as well as Big Hettie’s brandy breath filled it and I knew that if I remained in my bunk I was done for. I moved to the bottom of my bunk and managed to push the compartment window down. Sitting as close to the window as possible I gulped at the fresh air flying past. Then, withdrawing my head when my nose was almost frozen, I removed the doek from my pocket and carefully folding Hoppie’s note and the ten-shilling banknote together I tied them into the corner with Granpa’s shilling. Then I pinned the doek back into my pocket, feeling dangerously rich.
Dangling from my bunk I managed to swing clear of Big Hettie’s body to land with a soft thud on the floor. My heart beat wildly at the thought of waking her up, but it soon became apparent that she was pretty fast asleep. The door to the compartment was open just a crack, and using both hands I slid it open just enough to squeeze through into the corridor. The corridor window almost directly opposite was half-open, and by standing on my toes I could get my nose into the fresh air.
I stood there watching the early morning folding back. It can be very cold in the lowveld before the sun rises and without a blanket I soon began to shiver. I tried to ignore the cold, concentrating on the lickity-clack of the carriage wheels. I became aware that the lickity-clack was talking to me: Mix-the-head with-the-heart you’re-ahead from-the-start. Mix-the-head with-the-heart you’re-ahead from-the-start the wheels chanted until my head began to pound with the rhythm. It was becoming the plan I would follow for the remainder of my life; it was to become the secret ingredient in the power of one.
It grew too cold to stand there in the corridor with the window open, so I made my way down to the end of the carriage and sat on the lavatory with the door closed. Then I felt like having a piss and I did that and pulled a lever at the side of the toilet and a trap door at the bottom of the toilet bowl opened directly onto the tracks. The noise of the wheels rose up at me and you could see a blur of gravel and a flash of sleepers as the train whizzed over them. I stood there with my hand on the lever; since the episode with the Judge I had thought a bit about shit. At the hostel we did it in tins which would be taken away every week and empty ones that smelt of disinfectant put in their place. I often wondered where they took all the stuff. At least now I knew what the railways did with theirs.
It grew too cold even in the lavatory and so I made my way back to the compartment. As I slid back the door, I saw that a calamity had befallen Big Hettie. The arm that had propped her up all night had finally collapsed and she lay with the top half of her massive body on the floor while her legs remained on the bunk. The skirt of her dress had ridden up to cover her face. With each intake of breath, it was sucked tightly against her face and with every exhalation it billowed out like the collar on a frill-necked lizard. Her huge legs, bluish-white and laced with varicose veins, stuck out of an enormous pair of shiny pink bloomers, the elastic ends of which reached down to just above her knees. She appeared to be carrying most of her weight on her neck and shoulders, and I observed that her face was growing increasingly flushed and tiny bubbles were forming at the corners of her mouth. I tried to wake her by shaking her as hard as I could. ‘Wake up, Mevrou Hettie,’ I begged, but she just grunted and inhaled, was silent and exhaled with a whistle of stale air and a short snort which brought on the bubbles. I soon realised that she couldn’t remain half in and half out of the bunk in such a topsy-turvy position, but lifting her back onto it was plainly beyond me.
I climbed over her body and onto her bunk. Using all my strength and by propping my legs against the walls of the compartment, I managed to push both her legs off the bunk so that they landed on the compartment floor with a great plop I was sure would wake her. Her huge body now filled every inch of floor space between the bunks as neatly as if she had been canned in a sardine factory in Portugal, but she did not wake. The bright red colour soon left her face and while she continued to whistle she did not snort, which I took as a good sign. Soon even the bubbles stopped.
I climbed onto her tummy and managed to pull a blanket off her bunk. I pulled her dress down and covered her with the blanket and, with some difficulty, managed to get a cushion under her head. She gave a soft sigh and then let go a huge burp which was damn nearly the end of me. Boy, did she stink!
The blanket wasn’t big enough to cover her entirely. It fell like a small blue tent, covering her bosom and tummy and reaching to the top of her legs. The Big Hettie tent was pitched right in the middle of the compartment, inhaling and exhaling and whistling away.
I wrapped myself in the remaining blanket and sat with my nose at the open compartment window. There was simply nothing else I could think to do. The sun was coming up over the distant Lebombo mountains and the African veld sparkled as though it were contained in a crystal goblet.
There was a sudden rattle at the door and a single sharp word, ‘Conductor!’ Whereupon the door slid open to reveal a slight man in a navy serge uniform just like Hoppie’s. Only this man looked very neat and his boots shone like a mirror. Around the edge of the elliptical blue and white enamel badge on his cap it read, South African Railways – Suid Afrikaanse Spoorweë, but unlike Hoppie’s which had the word Guard written across the centre, this badge read, Conductor. I don’t suppose it is important to know what a badge says, but when you’re small and on your own, you’ve got to gather all the information you can, as fast as you can. Good camouflage depends on this.
The man at the compartment door wore a thin black moustache which looked as though it had been drawn on with a school crayon. His bleak expression suggested someone already soured by the burdens of life. He looked down at the Big Hettie tent with her head only inches from his polished boots.
‘What’s going on here, man?’ he demanded.
‘Mevrou Hettie fell off the bunk, Meneer,’ I answered in a frightened voice.
‘Why me? Why always me? Why always Pik Botha? Why not somebody else? What have I ever done to anyone?’ He looked directly at me. ‘Does she belong to you?’ he asked in an accusing voice. Before I was able to reply he put a finger and thumb to his furrowed brow and with a wince corrected himself. ‘No, of course not. That is Big Hettie.’ He gasped as the realisation hit him fully. ‘My God! Big Hettie is on my train!’ He sounded as if he were about to cry. ‘What am I going to do, man!’ he wailed.
‘I, I don’t know, Meneer. She was just here when I woke up.’
Pik Botha sniffed, jerking his head back. ‘Well, I’m telling you now, man, she can’t stay like this!’ He looked down in distaste at the slumbering woman, then stuck his hand into the compartment, leaning slightly over Big Hettie. ‘Where’s your ticket? Give it here, boy,’ he said.
‘I have it here, Meneer.’ I hurriedly fumbled with the safety pin where Hoppie had pinned my ticket to the clean shirt I had changed into for the fight.
‘Bring it here, man, I can’t climb over this dead cow to get it.’ I crawled along the bunk and, by stretching out my arm as far as I could, managed to reach his hand.
‘This ticket is not clipped,’ he said accusingly. ‘You got on this train who knows where? I’m not a mind reader, this ticket is not clipped, man!’
‘I didn’t know I had to give it to be clipped, Meneer,’ I said, suddenly fearful.
‘It’s that verdomde Hoppie Groenewald! He did this on purpose to make work for me. Not clipping tickets is an offence. Just because he is going into the army he thinks he can go around not clipping tickets. Who does he think he is, man? What do you think would happen if we all went around not clipping tickets?’
‘Please, Meneer, Hoppie clipped everybody’s ticket. He only forgot mine, that’s the honest truth, honest!’ I pleaded, frantic that Hoppie would get into trouble on my behalf.
‘Humph! It wouldn’t surprise me to find that that one lets dirty Kaffirs ride for nothing and then does bad things to their women. He is not a married man, you know. First I lose one pound ten shilling betting on that big ape from the mines and now that one who calls himself after a nigger boxer goes around not clipping people’s tickets.’ He paused and cleared his throat. ‘I’m afraid it is my duty to report this,’ he said, his lips drawn thinly so that his crayon moustache stretched in a dead straight line across his upper lip.
‘Please, Meneer, he hates Kaffirs just like you. Please don’t report him.’
‘It’s all right for you. You’re his friend, you’ll say anything.’ He paused as though thinking. ‘Orright, I’m a fair man, you can ask anybody about that. But mark my word. Next time that Hoppie Groenewald is going to be in a lot of trouble or my name is not Pik Botha.’ He withdrew a pair of clippers from his waistcoat pocket and clipped my ticket.
‘Thank you, Meneer Botha, you are a very kind man.’
‘Too kind for my own good, boy! If you help others all you get is a kick in the face. But I am a born-again Christian and not a vengeful type. The Bible says, “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord”, but sometimes, I’m telling you,’ he nudged Big Hettie with the toe of his shiny boot, ‘the cross the Lord expects me to carry is very heavy, man.’ He gave Big Hettie several more quick nudges with his boot. ‘Wake up you old cow! This compartment is the property of the South African Railways and it says in the rules, no passenger shall decamp on the floor of the carriages. Wake up! You are officially breaking the rules lying there like a dead cow.’
Snort, sigh, breath in, silence, breath out, whistle, snort, was all he got back.
‘Come, boy, I will take you to breakfast, your ticket says you get breakfast.’
Breakfast was another feast of bacon and eggs with toast, jam and coffee. It was too early for the other passengers, and a waiter called Hennie Venter served us. He was pleased as punch with himself because he had won five pounds on the fight. Forgetting what he had said to me about losing one pound ten, Pik Botha proceeded to give him a long lecture on the sin of fighting and the even greater evil of gambling. He ended by asking Hennie if he was ashamed and ready to repent.
Hennie put down a plate of fresh toast covered with a linen napkin to keep it warm. ‘No, Meneer Botha, gambling is only a sin if you lose because you didn’t back your own kind, but bet on the other side.’ He lifted the silver coffee pot and commenced to fill the conductor’s cup.
‘Hmmph! He’s only a grade two railway man and look how cheeky he is already, young people don’t know their place any more. Bring more coffee, man, can’t you see this pot is cold?’ Pik Botha cried.
We returned to the compartment to find Big Hettie still whistling and snorting away. Pik Botha, a little mellowed from breakfast, did not prod her with the toe of his shiny boot. ‘She’s not a true Afrikaner, you know. Her father was an Irishman who was too fond of the bottle, drink is a sin that is passed on. The Bible says the sins of the fathers shall be passed unto the third and fourth generation.’ Now he gave Big Hettie a nudge. ‘Here lies a good example of God’s terrible vengeance.’
‘Balls!’ Big Hettie said suddenly, opening one eye and looking backwards up at us. ‘Pig’s arse! You are a miserable Bible-bashing, two-faced bastard, Pik Botha. You probably already had a good look up my dress heh? Get me up, you self-righteous little shit. Get me up at once!’
‘I did not! How could I? A person would have to climb over you to get such a look, and you have also a blanket over you,’ Pik Botha whined.
‘Mother-of-Jesus! My head hurts. I must have water, my mouth tastes like the splashboard of an Indian lavatory in the mango season.’
‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,’ Pik Botha spluttered.
Big Hettie ignored him. ‘I must have a glass of water, Peekay, or I shall die.’
‘I will have to climb over you, Mevrou Hettie. The glass and the wash basin are on the other side.’
‘Climb over, darling. Take also the blanket off me, I am burning up.’ I climbed over Big Hettie, and when I got to the empty bunk I pulled the blanket off her. Crawling to the end of the bunk, I removed a glass from the chrome metal loop where it rested on the wall, and lifting the lid off the wash basin I half filled the glass with water. I had to sit on Hettie’s chest to give it to her and she drank greedily. She had three half-glasses before she’d had enough. ‘Thank you, darling,’ she smiled, ‘you’ve saved my life for sure.’
‘The wages of sin is death!’ Pik Botha spat out.
Half turning her head towards him, Big Hettie said, ‘Oh my God, to think I may die on the floor of a second-class compartment of the South African Railways under the incompetent management of that snivelling arsehole, Pik Botha.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Who, by the way, calls himself a man and then bets against his fellow railway man in boxing matches!’
‘It’s a free world! How was I to know that big ape had a glass jaw?’ he protested in his whining voice.
‘Glass jaw! What do you mean, glass jaw? Glass jaw my arse! Hoppie Groenewald knocked him out fair and square!’ Big Hettie’s face had turned purple with indignation and her head bobbed up and down on the pillow. ‘Oh, oh, my head, get me a wet towel, Peekay, I think it’s going to explode.’
I scrambled over to the basin, and removing the hand towel from where it was hanging at the side of the basin, I rinsed it in cold water.
‘Wring it out well, you hear,’ Pik Botha shouted. ‘I can’t have wet towels. These towels are the property of South African Railways and you are supposed to use them for drying yourself, not for wetting yourself.’
‘Ja, Meneer Botha,’ I replied. I was suddenly grateful for the Judge’s iron-bar torture because I was able to wring the small towel out quite well. I sat on Hettie’s chest, and folding the wet towel to the right size I laid it across her forehead.
‘Dankie, liefling,’ she said. She half turned her head again to Pik Botha. ‘So? Have you thought of a plan to get me up, domkop?’
‘Please do not talk to me like this, Hettie. I am a grade one conductor with seventeen years’ service in the railways. This whole train is under my command and all the people in it must do as I say. I demand more respect!’ Pik Botha seemed on the verge of tears. ‘I will have to get first inside the compartment and that is impossible without climbing over you.’
‘Well take your boots off first.’
Pik Botha crouched down in the corridor and began to untie the laces of his boots. From where I sat I could see him pull off his boots and line them up against the outside wall of the compartment, toes pointing into the corridor.
He stretched his leg over Big Hettie’s body in an attempt to reach the bunk without having to climb over her. His toes inside a well-darned black sock were wiggling like a pig’s snout, trying to find the edge of the bunk. A larger man with longer legs might have made it, but Pik Botha’s exploring big toe was well short of its mark. ‘It’s not possible, Hettie,’ he said mournfully.
‘Do it backwards, stupid! Come in backwards with your legs first.’
With his hands flat on the corridor floor, Pik Botha edged into the compartment backwards. He placed one foot on one of Big Hettie’s breasts, then he followed with the other. He inched his way over her belly until he was obliged to put both his hands on her shoulders, his head only inches from her face. Big Hettie suddenly let go an enormous burp. The blast of foul air took all the strength out of Pik Botha’s arms and he collapsed into the mountain of flesh below him.
Big Hettie let out a gasp. ‘Excuse me!’ she said, then she began to giggle, wobbling like a jelly mountain. ‘Oh Christ! Oh Jesus! Ha… ha… ha, hee hee, hee, Lord have mercy, hee, hee… ha… ha… ha, are you trying to love me… hee, hee, or help me? Tee, hee, hee… ha… ha… ha… snort, ha… hee, hee, either way you’re doing… hee… hee… a terrible job!’ Big Hettie gave two more snorts and her head fell back onto the pillow exhausted. ‘Oh, oh, I’m dying,’ she moaned, and lifting the arm that pinned Pik Botha down she wiped away her tears. Sensing freedom, Pik Botha pushed off Big Hettie’s shoulders with both hands and raised his torso. He managed to get his hands around the raised edge of the bunk on either side of Big Hettie, and inserted one foot between Big Hettie’s calves while the other foot rested on the edge of the bunk.
Panting furiously he raised himself to a standing position. ‘God will punish you for this. “He who plucks one hair from the head of a child of mine, it is as though he doeth this to me, thus sayeth the Lord”.’ Pik Botha was shaking his finger at Big Hettie and panting away like the old yellow bitch I had met the previous night.
‘Keep your preaching for the next prayer meeting at the Apostolic Faith Mission, you miserable little shit house. Here, give me your hand.’ Big Hettie stretched her arm out, offering her hand to Pik Botha. He shied away in alarm. ‘Grab it dammit, man!’
‘No damn fear, you’ll only pull me back again,’ Pik Botha said in terror.
‘Do not flatter yourself, man. Use both hands. I can’t stay like this all day unless you can cut a hole in the floor,’ she threatened.
That was enough to spur him to action. He grabbed Big Hettie around the waist with both hands while she grabbed onto his arm with her own hand. Grimacing with the effort, he started to pull. Big Hettie’s freed shoulder wobbled a little in response but no other part moved. ‘Pull, man!’ she shouted, but soon it was obvious that nothing was going to happen. ‘Give Tarzan here a hand, Peekay. Show him what a real man can do,’ she said in some despair.
There wasn’t any space to stand so I sat astride Big Hettie’s hips, my feet not quite reaching the edge of the bunk on either side. The idea was to get Big Hettie’s torso into an upright position, which might then enable us to get under her arms from the back to lift her up. I grabbed her around the wrists with both hands which failed to meet, but nevertheless gave me quite a good grip. Pik Botha was forced to bend over so that he could grab Big Hettie higher up her arm. ‘Now get your backs into it, men. I’m going to count to three, on three give it all you’ve got, you hear? One, two, three!’ We both pulled with all our might. After about five minutes of repeating such efforts she hadn’t budged an inch.
‘It’s no use,’ Pik Botha gasped. We were all beginning to realise that we were in a real pickle. The effort to co-operate had cost Big Hettie dearly and she lay there panting in a lather of sweat, her face as red as an old turkey cock’s. Pik Botha stood with one foot still balanced on the edge of the bunk and the other inserted between Big Hettie’s calves, wiping his sweaty hands on the shiny backside of his navy serge pants. He had taken off his jacket and thrown it on the top bunk. On his silver tie clip ‘Witnessing for the Lord’ was written. I wondered briefly what it meant.
‘One last try. Just one more go. This time it will work for sure,’ Big Hettie panted, her voice not sounding too hopeful. She made me clasp my hands together and she then grabbed me around both wrists, thus allowing Pik Botha to get a better two-handed grip around her wrists. He had also managed to get his bum up against the washbasin which gave him a much better pulling purchase.
‘One, two, three. Pull!’ Big Hettie commanded. We both pulled like mad, Pik Botha grunting with effort behind me. Big Hettie’s way of holding me wasn’t such a good idea, her hands were wet with perspiration and I could feel my own hands beginning to slip from her grasp. Suddenly they squeezed out like a wet pumpkin pip and I was catapulted violently backwards, the back of my head slamming hard into Pik Botha’s crotch. He gave a loud scream and both his hands shot down between his legs.
Despite her discomfort, Big Hettie let out a scream of delight. ‘You’ve knackered him, boy! she roared. ‘You’ve taken what was left of his manhood!’ Her laughter filled the compartment, causing her great body to shake up and down.
‘Coffee! Coffee! Early morning coffee!’ It was Hennie Venter, the waiter from breakfast, doing the morning wake-up call. He paused at the open door of our compartment. ‘Coffee?’ he asked, starting to bring the tray down from his shoulder. His eyes widened in disbelief as he observed Big Hettie pumping up and down with laughter and Pik Botha moaning and clutching his genitals. He only just managed to lower the tray to the corridor floor before he burst into laughter. ‘Pik Botha! You dirty old bastard! Sis, man! The door is not even closed.’
The sudden appearance of the waiter seemed to bring Big Hettie around. ‘Hennie Venter, not a moment too soon !’ she declared.
Hennie, convulsed with laughter, appeared not to hear her. ‘A cup of coffee, Mevrou?’ he asked and then burst into renewed laughter.
They calmed down and with some difficulty Hennie Venter managed to pull the still groaning Pik Botha over Big Hettie’s body and through the compartment door. He stood in the corridor almost doubled up, his face as white as a ghost. He winced, sucking the air through his brown teeth, as he bent down further to recover his boots.
I bundled up his coat and threw it over to Hennie Venter who draped it over the hapless Pik Botha’s shoulder. With one hand carrying his boots and the other clutching his waterworks, he hobbled away down the corridor towards the guard’s van.
Hennie Venter turned out to be the practical sort. He made me fetch a second pillow which he added to the first one to prop Big Hettie’s head up as far as she could go. He even managed to get her to drink a cup of coffee by herself. He inspected the situation carefully and then announced that there was no way of lifting Big Hettie without first removing the lower bunks.
‘Sorry, Hettie,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘we’re going to have to wait until we get to Kaapmuiden.’ He started to pour Hettie another cup of coffee.
‘No damn fear!’ she said quickly. ‘Unless you want to cut a blêrrie hole in the floor.’
Hennie Venter scratched his head, giving Big Hettie a quizzical look. ‘What the hell are you doing on this train anyway?’
Big Hettie half turned to look backwards and up at him, her mouth in a pout of annoyance. ‘Do you think for one moment that I would let this poor child travel all the way to Kaapmuiden on his own?’ she asked.
Hennie Venter persisted. ‘You were also a little drunk, maybe?’
‘Pissed as a newt, drunk as a skunk,’ she giggled. ‘What a fight it was eh, Hennie?’
‘You can say that again, Hettie,’ Hennie said happily. ‘I won two weeks’ wages with a ten bob bet. Magtig! What a fighter that Hoppie Groenewald is. A real white man!’
Big Hettie looked up at me sheepishly. ‘I came to look after you, Peekay.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘Anyway, man, let’s make the most of a bad situation, heh? I always say, if you can’t change things then you have to make sure you’re riding on the front elephant and not walking with the poor people at the back. It’s time for breakfast and I must say I’m starving.’ She looked back at Hennie Venter. ‘Off you go, you skelm, six sausages, six rashers of bacon, nice ’n’ crisp mind, five hard-boiled eggs to constipate me and half a loaf of toast cut thick with lots of butter. No more coffee, you know what coffee does to a person, I’m going to have to cross my legs as it is. For Peekay, the same only half.’
‘Nee, nee, Mevrou Hettie, I have already had breakfast,’ I protested.
‘Nonsense, child, you are no bigger than a sparrow. What will your mama say if I hand you over like this? We must feed you up and that’s all there is to it.’
Hennie Venter left us to fetch breakfast and I imagined Big Hettie feeding me up in the next eight hours so that I arrived in Barberton as big, if not bigger than the Judge. There my granpa would be, looking around for a real skinny kid to get off the train, and there I’d be, big as the Judge. What a nasty shock he would get! ‘I already ate a whole plate of things, Mevrou Hettie,’ I said again.
‘Never mind, Peekay, a little more never hurt. You’ve got to be like the Bushmen in the Kalahari desert, they eat as much as they can get in the good times till their bottoms stick out like their stomachs. Then when the bad times come they live off their own fat.’ She chuckled softly, ‘I reckon a person like me could go a whole year, or even more, living off their own fat, but you, my poor little blossom, I doubt if you’ll get to Kaapmuiden.’
Hennie Venter returned with a large tray of food which he carefully balanced on Big Hettie’s stomach. He left us to serve breakfast to the other passengers in the dining car, closing the door behind him and promising to return later.
The tray went up and down as Big Hettie breathed. She could only see what to take from a plate on a down breath, for on an up breath the tray raised above her eye level. I managed to eat one more sausage. Big Hettie didn’t seem to notice and polished off my breakfast as well. Though when she finished she said, ‘You’ll never get to play rugby for the Springboks if you eat like a bird, Peekay.’
‘That’s okay, Mevrou Hettie,’ I answered, ‘I’m going to be a welterweight, which is not so big.’
She seemed amused. ‘Just like that good for nothing, Hoppie Groenewald, huh? Well you could do worse, I suppose. Not a bad bone in his body that one. He could have made it big time but he doesn’t hate. Not even Kaffirs, which isn’t natural.’
I was shocked. Hoppie hadn’t said anything to me about the necessity of hate. Was this something he had neglected to tell me?
‘How do you learn to hate, Mevrou Hettie?’ I was fearful that it might prove to be something beyond the ability of a five-, really six-year-old. Perhaps that’s why Hoppie hadn’t mentioned this hate business. But hadn’t he said I was a natural? If I was a natural, then I would be able to learn it for sure.
‘The killer instinct, he hasn’t got the killer instinct. You can tell when a fighter’s got it. It’s proper hate, like the Boere hate the Rooineks. It has to be blind hate like that, them or us, him or me, nothing less. Hoppie Groenewald just never learned to hate.’
‘Then I will learn to hate also,’ I said with conviction.
Big Hettie rocked with laughter. ‘Plenty of time for that, Peekay. Better still to concentrate on love, there is already too much hate in this land of ours. This country has been starved of love too long.’
I wasn’t listening, my mind was busy with the need to learn to hate. ‘Didn’t Hoppie hate Jackhammer Smit?’
‘That was pride, Hoppie has plenty of that. And courage and even brains.’ Big Hettie suddenly sensed my anxiety. ‘Look here, man, maybe that’s enough.’ She chuckled softly, ‘He sure out-foxed that big ape, Smit!’
I cast my mind back to when I had done the Judge’s homework, just like that! I had no doubt I had brains. But during the torture sessions I hadn’t shown any pride and precious little courage, although I had to admit to myself I wasn’t at all sure what pride meant. Maybe I was fatally flawed? Only brains and nothing to go with them?
‘How do you learn to have pride and courage, Mevrou Hettie?’
‘My goodness me, we are full of questions, Peekay. Now let me see.’ She thought for a few moments and then replied, ‘Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it.’ She looked up to see the confusion in my face. ‘Never mind, Peekay, the understanding will come suddenly when you need it.’
I wasn’t at all sure about that. Big Hettie’s advice seemed downright stupid to me. I knew already that camouflage was the only way, that bowing your head with the rest was the best way to survive. Take the incident with Miss du Plessis, hadn’t I raised my head then and she damn near cut it off? And Granpa Chook, if he hadn’t shat in the Judge’s mouth, we’d still be together. There were no two ways about it, when you stood out in the crowd, trouble was sure to follow.
Maybe there was something more to understand, the world of grown-ups seemed very complicated. I was good at remembering things, so I tucked big Hettie’s words away. Someday they might make sense.
Nanny was the only grown-up I knew who answered questions properly and she wasn’t really a grown-up because she was a nanny. When you asked her a thing she would answer with a story or a song and when she hadn’t an answer she would say, ‘That is a matter for later finding out.’ She was always right, sooner or later the answer would come from somewhere. It seemed to me that white people grown-ups always had to have an answer on the spot. Like Pik Botha, they lived most of their lives being miserable and asking, ‘Why me?’ all the time. Nanny would say, ‘Sadness has a season and will pass.’ Then she would laugh and hug me and say, ‘But it isn’t the season for sadness yet.’
I kept wetting the towel for Big Hettie and got her two Aspro from her handbag. She told me to scrounge around because she might have some peppermints in there. I found half a packet, and she said, ‘Give me a couple and try one yourself, Peekay.’
I took two large round white peppermints out of the pack and put them in her hand and popped a third into my mouth. At first nothing. Then, pow! I lasted about two good sucks and then spat the peppermint into my hand, it was like swallowing fire! I watched Big Hettie suck away happily. Talk about courage! But I must say those peppermints cleaned up her breath a treat.
Big Hettie and I just lay there, she on the floor and me on the bunk. She talked about her life, which seemed to have been quite a good one, but with some sadness also. Mostly she talked about men.
‘Men, Peekay, are a good woman’s downfall. Most of them are rotten but you’ve got to have them anyway. Without a man a woman’s life is more rotten than with one. It’s no use pretending you don’t care, that you’re stronger than a man. Because even it if is true, it means nothing except loneliness. Men are pigs who sleep with Kaffir women and get drunk and beat you up. But a good beating never hurt and sometimes it’s the only way those stupid men can show you they love you. It’s stupid, heh?’
I tried to imagine a man beating up Big Hettie. ‘My granpa couldn’t beat up a flea,’ I said, trying to comfort her. Big Hettie stood six foot seven inches and weighed nobody knows how much. Even the Judge with all his stormtroopers couldn’t get the better of her.
‘Once I loved this little flyweight,’ she continued. ‘That’s how I learned about boxing, Peekay. It was during the great depression and you couldn’t find work nowhere, man. Me and that little flyweight, we used to travel all over the Transvaal and once to the Orange Free State to fight. There was never another flyweight to fight, the Boere like to see the bigger men and so he always had to fight way out of his division. A middleweight usually. If he was lucky he’d get a welterweight, but it didn’t happen very often.
‘That little flyweight of mine was game and he loved to fight, but you can’t give away that much weight and he used to take some terrible poundings and nearly always lost. Afterwards I’d patch him up and he’d make me talk to him about the fight. Blow by blow, where he was good and where he went wrong. I’d tell him how he was always winning, which was true, he’d be a mile ahead on points and then the big ape he was fighting would catch him a lucky shot and put him away. And he used to look at me and say, “Next time, Hettie, you’ll see. I’ll win for sure.”
‘And then we would buy a bottle of cheap brandy and drive out of the town we were in and sit in the back of the Model T and get drunk. When he was drunk it was his turn to replay the fight, only he’d get it all mixed up in his head and he’d think he was still in the fight and I was his opponent and he’d beat the shit out of me. And I always let him, because he had to have some wins for his pride.
‘Then when I had taken a beating and he had counted me out, we would drink some more and replay the fight again, which this time he won fair and square. We would then find some nice place behind some bushes and take our blankets and make love. I’m telling you, Peekay, most men can’t get it up when they’re drunk, but not my flyweight, he could go all night. What a man he was. They were good times. Oh, oh, such good times.’
Big Hettie’s story worried me no end. Here it seemed big always beat small, except in a set-up. ‘Hoppie was smaller than Jackhammer Smit and he beat him fair and square,’ I said, somewhat defensively.
‘Ja, that is true, Hoppie has brains. My flyweight had mashed potato for brains. But I loved that little fleabite until the day he died from taking on one big ape too many.’ Big Hettie’s eyes welled with tears. ‘He was coming out for the sixth round when he staggered and fell, the crowd booed and booed, but he never faked anything in his life and I knew something terrible had happened. He had a brain haemorrhage, just like that. I carried him out of the hall in my arms and we sat on the grass outside in the fresh air with lots of stupid people in a circle looking down at us. But I didn’t see any of them, just my darling little flyweight. And then he died right there in my arms.’ Big Hettie was sobbing softly.
‘Don’t cry, Mevrou Hettie, please don’t cry.’ I quoted Nanny, ‘Sadness has a season and will pass.’
She stopped sobbing after a while and dabbed at her eyes with the damp towel. ‘He was the best. The very best of men.’ She said it so softly I knew she was speaking to herself.
We talked about this and that deep into the hot morning. Big Hettie did most of the chatting as I had developed into a listener. Once I had been a regular chatterbox but school had changed all that. A person of my status was not expected to talk much, and besides, listening is a good camouflage. I soon discovered that it is also an art. You learn not simply to listen to what people say. It’s what people don’t say that is important. If you listen hard enough you can hear the most amazing things going on behind the speaker’s voice. Quite often there is a regular conniption going on. It takes years to make a good translation of this secondary soundtrack and as a small child I could only define it as friendly or otherwise. For camouflage reasons this is often sufficient.
Around noon Hettie dozed off; this time her breathing was much better. Outside the compartment window the bushveld baked in the hot sun. The sunlight flattened the country in the foreground and smudged the horizon in a haze of heat. It is a time when the cicadas become so active that they fill the flat, hot space with a sound so constant it sings like silence in the brain. While I couldn’t hear them for the clickity-clack of the carriage wheels I knew they were out there, brushing the heat into their green membraned wings, energising after the long sleep when their pupae lay buried in the dark earth, sometimes for years, until a conjunction of the moon and the right soil temperature creates the moment to emerge and once again fill the noon space.
In the heat the compartment seemed to float, lifting off the silver rails and moving through time and space. Through hours and days and weeks and years, off the blue planet, past the moon and the sun, into centuries and millenniums and aeons. Skirting planets, weaving through the stars. Coming finally to a black hole in space, further even than the mind can think, beyond even the curve of infinity and the silver cord which rings the cosmos. There I would remain safely hidden until I could grow up to be welterweight champion of the world.
‘Are you asleep, Peekay?’ I opened my eyes to see Big Hettie looking at me. ‘A glass of water if you please.’ She ran her tongue over her dry lips and removed the towel from her forehead. She handed me the towel and I gave her the glass of water which she gulped greedily. She handed the glass back and I refilled it. ‘You’re one in a thousand, Peekay,’ she said gratefully.
I wet the towel, folded it and placed it over her head. ‘One in maybe even a million,’ she sighed. I could see she was restless and kept licking her lips. ‘What’s for lunch, do you think?’
‘Meneer Venter hasn’t been yet, Mevrou Hettie,’ I answered.
‘Ag man, I didn’t mean that lunch. A person can’t eat a train lunch. Breakfast is tolerable, lunch unbearable and dinner unthinkable. Open up my hamper, Peekay, and let a person hear what is inside.’ She laughed. ‘I’ll tell you something, I wasn’t concentrating too well when I packed it last night.’
I withdrew the slim bamboo rod threaded through the wicker and opened the large basket. Inside was enough food to feed an army. ‘Tell me what we got in there, darling,’ Big Hettie said anxiously.
‘Two roasted chickens, nearly a full leg of mutton, some corned beef, three mangoes, lots of cold potatoes and sweet potatoes too, two oranges and there is also a big tin.’
‘Thank the Lord I brought the tin,’ Big Hettie said with obvious relief. ‘Open it, Peekay. Quick, man, open the tin!’ I was surprised at the urgency in her voice. I lifted the large round tin out of the hamper and, clamping it between my knees, struggled to remove the lid. It came away suddenly, sending me sprawling backwards on the bunk, and the tin slid over the edge of the bunk, spilling half of a large chocolate cake onto Big Hettie’s stomach. In two swift movements her arm rose and fell, the edge of her hand sliced through the thick layer of deep brown chocolate icing rending the cake into two large pieces. She had started to pant and her eyes were glazed as she crammed her mouth full of cake. She grunted and snorted and even moaned as she demolished the first hunk and then reached greedily for the second. Her face was covered with chocolate icing. Stuffing the last bits into her mouth she sucked at her fingers as a small child might, two at a time. Then she plopped her thumb in and out of her mouth several times and ran her hand across her bosom, her fingers moving like a fat spider hunting for any cake she might have missed. She looked up at me and I dropped my gaze, ashamed and frightened, though at the same time I instinctively knew I was watching a sickness or a sadness or even both.
When she had finished Big Hettie was in a lather of sweat, the front of her dress soaked in perspiration, covered with cake crumbs and stained with chocolate icing. She used the damp towel to wipe her face and then lay there panting heavily, her eyes closed. I watched as tears ran down the side of her face, but she said nothing for a long while.
When she had recovered her breath she opened her eyes, which were red and looked puffy. ‘I am sorry, Peekay. I am very, very sorry,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper.
‘It is nothing, Mevrou Hettie, it was only that you were hungry. Chocolate cake makes me feel like that all the time.’
‘I’m sorry I ate all the cake, Peekay. But now you get first pick of everything!’
It had been a long time since I had been given first pick of anything and I laughed. ‘There is enough for the whole train in here, Mevrou Hettie. I will have cold roast potatoes, after that sweet potatoes, they are my two favourites.’
‘And maybe a nice piece of chicken, heh?’
Granpa Chook’s death was still much too close to me. The prospect of eating one of his distant relatives, even if this chicken hadn’t been a proper chicken person or even a Kaffir chicken like Granpa Chook, was impossible to contemplate. Biting into a delicious golden potato, I shook my head.
‘To be a welterweight you must eat properly, Peekay. Meat will make you strong. Some mutton perhaps?’ she said coaxingly.
When pressed by my mother to have a second helping, my granpa used to say: ‘A cow has eight stomachs but I, alas, have one. A cow must keep on chewing but I, my dear, am done.’ I swallowed the potato and recited this to Big Hettie. It was bound, I felt, to cheer her up.
Instead she started to cry again.
‘I’m sorry, Mevrou Hettie, I’m very sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry again, it is only a silly thing my granpa says to my ma just to tease her.’
Big Hettie sniffed, blew her nose and wiped her eyes. A piece of chocolate icing from the cloth smeared on the bridge of her nose. ‘It is not you, liefling. It’s old Hettie. She’s the one I’m crying for.’ She smiled weakly through the tears. ‘What the hell, Peekay, what do you say?’ she sniffed. ‘Might as well die eating as starving, pass me the leg of mutton, my good man!’
I handed her the leg of mutton, one half of which had been sliced away almost to the bone. Resting the big end on her chest, she commenced to happily tear away at the meat on the bone while I demolished a large sweet potato and a mango.
When she had finished, the bone had been picked almost clean. To my surprise, she asked me to tear up one of the chickens and place the pieces on her stomach, also to put the slices of corned beef with it. She tore at the chicken as though she were starving, even crunching some of the softer bones. The chicken and the corned beef were soon demolished and with a soft sigh she wiped the grease and sweat from her face. Using the cake tin, I gathered up the chicken bones scattered over the area of her stomach and tipped them out of the window.
I then washed the mango from my face and hands, and set to work, soaking and squeezing out the only remaining towel. This I handed to Big Hettie and retrieved the old one which I washed with a bit of soap, rinsed and hung over the compartment window sill to dry. I had seen Dum and Dee, our kitchen maids, do the same thing with the wiping up cloths at home after dinner, so I knew I was doing it right. Only they used to hang the cloths from a small line at the side of the big black wood stove so the dry cloths always smelt a little of soup.
Big Hettie put the new cloth, wet as it was, over the front of her dress. ‘It’s so nice and cool and the heat of my body will soon dry it,’ she said, but I knew it was an attempt to hide the chocolate and grease stains. I thought about having to wash Big Hettie’s dress. It would take all day and would need a basin as big as a small dam.
There was a sudden rattle as the compartment door slid open and Hennie Venter appeared. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so long, Hettie, but Pik Botha says he can’t walk and is sulking in the guard van and I have had to do conductor duty because Van Leemin the guard is drunk again. But also I have had to serve lunch,’ he finished in an apologetic voice.
‘What’s for lunch?’ Big Hettie asked.
Hennie seemed surprised by the question. ‘Beef stew with mashed potato and peas like always.’
‘Keep it! The boy and me would rather starve than eat that pig’s swill,’ she said haughtily.
‘Banana custard for pudding today,’ Hennie said enticingly.
‘Ummph, and tastes like what comes out of a baby’s bum,’ Big Hettie said scornfully.
‘Well, if you don’t want any help I’ll kick the dust,’ Hennie looked over at the open hamper and winked at me. ‘I’m sorry you two decided to starve, are you sure there is nothing I can do for you?’
‘You can get me off this blêrrie floor, man.’ Hettie said in a forlorn voice.
The waiter clucked his tongue sympathetically. ‘Soon, Hettie. We get to Kaapmuiden in two hours. There they will know what to do.’
Hoppie had explained to me that from Kaapmuiden I would have to take the branch line to Barberton, a further three hours journey ‘in a real little coffee pot’, he had said. He had told me the story of a washerwoman with a huge pile of freshly ironed washing on her head who was walking along the railway line when the Barberton train drew up beside her. The driver had leaned out of the train and invited her to jump board into the Kaffir carriage. ‘No thank you, baas,’ she had replied, ‘today I am in a terrible big hurry.’ It was a funny story when Hoppie told it, but I knew it wasn’t true because no white train driver would ever think to offer a Kaffir woman a ride in his train.
The afternoon was still and hot and it was nearly four o’clock when we arrived in Kaapmuiden. The train pulled slowly, shyly into the busy junction, the way trains do when they arrive in places where there are other trains. Kaapmuiden served as the rail link between the Northern and Southern Transvaal and the Mozambique seaport of Lourenço Marques and so was full of its own self-importance.
The station was all huff and puff, busier even than Gravelotte, with engines shunting, trucks banging, clanging and coupling on lines criss-crossing everywhere like neatly arranged spaghetti. Our train drew slowly into the main platform and with a final screech of metal on metal, drew to a standstill.
‘What do I do now please, Mevrou Hettie?’ I enquired nervously. I had put on my tackies, even though I knew I was to change trains and wouldn’t arrive in Barberton until well into the evening. At the beginning of my journey the original over-sized tackies had been a banal signal of the end of the Judge, his stormtroopers, the hostel and Mevrou: a grotesque chapter in my life. Equally this second pair, fitted to my feet so perfectly by the beautiful Indian lady, seemed to symbolise the unknown. Sometimes we live a lifetime in two days. The two days between the first tackies and the snugly fitting ones I now wore were the beginning of the end of my small childhood, a bridge of time that would shape my life to come.
‘We must wait here, Peekay. Hennie Venter will bring some men to help me and then I will put you on the train to Barberton. There is plenty of time, your train leaves at six o’clock.’ Big Hettie was obviously in great discomfort and now that relief from her ordeal was at hand her great body had started to tremble with shock.
I watched from our compartment window as our carriage was uncoupled and, with much fuss, shunted into a small siding where a gang of men were waiting. Among them was Hennie Venter. As we came to a halt, he stuck his head through the open window.
‘Nearly over, Hettie, we’ll soon have you back on your feet,’ he said cheerfully.
I passed all our stuff through the window and then, rather than clamber over Big Hettie again, I came through the window myself, jumping the short distance onto the siding. It was nice to be standing in the sun again. Two of the men climbed through the window onto one of the bunks. Using monkey wrenches, they managed to loosen the bolts attaching the bunk to the compartment wall. Then they slung ropes around both ends of the bunk, secured them to the one above and removed the bolts so the bunk was held suspended away from Big Hettie. Climbing onto the top bunk, they were able to lift the suspended one sufficiently for two men, crouching in the doorway of the compartment, to lift Big Hettie into a sitting position. The four men then tried to raise her to a standing position, but her weight was too much for them and she seemed unable to use her legs. Big Hettie was plainly in some distress and her face was very red. After a while it became plain that the whole ordeal was too much for her and she was too exhausted and too weak to stand up. She simply sat on the floor of the compartment, flushed and panting, her back propped up by a mound of pillows. A huge, sadly battered rag doll.
The men left to fetch a block and tackle. I returned to the compartment and sat on the bunk next to Big Hettie. Hennie Venter remained outside looking into the compartment, his arms resting on the window sill.
Big Hettie’s breathing was becoming more laboured as she asked Hennie Venter to go to her hamper which now rested on the platform outside and take the remaining chicken and potatoes and fruit from it, pack them into the cake tin and put it into my suitcase. He nodded and left the window.
‘It will be late before you get to Barberton, liefling. What will your oupa think of me if you have had no supper?’ she panted, her hand clutching at her left breast.
I was too polite to tell Big Hettie that eating chicken was no longer my speciality. Instead I thanked her and then asked, ‘Will you not be coming to the train like you said, Mevrou Hettie?’
She said nothing for a long while as though she were trying to gather up enough strength to speak without gasping. ‘I think it is the final round coming up for me, Peekay. I have a terrible pain.’ The colour had drained from her face and her lips had turned blue. Her left hand was kneading her left breast.
I scrambled over to the window. Hennie Venter had opened my suitcase and was putting the big cake tin into it. ‘Meneer Venter! Come quick, Mevrou Hettie is sick!’ I yelled.
I turned back to look at Big Hettie. Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. ‘Hold my hand, Peekay,’ she gasped. I moved back along the bunk and she took my hand into her own. Her grasp was weak, as though no strength remained in her.
‘I don’t think I can come out for the next round, liefling.’ The words were sandwiched between sighs, quite different from the windy breathing of the morning.
Hennie Venter stuck his head through the window. ‘Oh my God! I’ll fetch the doctor.’ I could hear his boots scrunching on the gravel as he started to run.
‘Please don’t die, Mevrou Hettie,’ I begged, suddenly very afraid.
‘Ag, Peekay, it has not been much of a life since my flyweight left me, it’s not so much to give up.’ She turned to look at me and a tear squeezed out of the corner of her eye and rolled in slow motion down her cheek. ‘Peekay, you will be a great welterweight, I know it. You have pride and courage. Remember I told you about pride and courage?’
‘Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it,’ I repeated, my lips trembling.
‘You will be a great fighter, I know it,’ she whispered. Big Hettie gave a little jerk and the pressure on my hand increased momentarily. Then her huge hand opened and she slid back into the pillows. For such a big, loud woman it was such a small, quiet death.
I started to cry. It wasn’t a pain like Granpa Chook, it was a sadness. Even then I instinctively understood that the blithe spirit is rare among humans and that, for the period of an evening and a day, I had been with a part of the human condition at its best.
After a while I could hear the men returning with the block and tackle. They were laughing and chatting as men do when they are having a bit of a holiday from routine. Big Hettie could be moved now.