Whitethorn (10 page)

As I arrived he was pouring swill into the pig trough and at first I was unable to talk. I stooped down with my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. I hadn't even given myself time to compose a correct sequence of the events that had taken place between Mevrou and Pissy Vermaak. As I stood panting I tried to collect my thoughts, then translate them into Zulu as Mattress couldn't speak Afrikaans very well and might miss the meaning of what I was trying to tell him. I was six years old and a lot of the words I had to use I hadn't come across in Zulu.

I know I said I was six but, in fact, I had just turned seven by a few days. I only knew this because when I got to school one morning my class teacher, Miss Bronkhorst, told me it was my birthday.

‘Can I learn to read now,
Juffrou
?' I pleaded.

‘No, Tom, you have to wait until next year. You're halfway between the sixes and sevens and can't be a special case because I am much too busy to go back to the beginning again.'

I'd asked if I could sit in with the other seven-year-olds and try to catch up. But she said it was May already and that I was being a show-off if I thought I could catch up with five months of reading lessons already gone. ‘Besides,' she'd said, ‘Afrikaans isn't your first language and you're going to find it difficult.'

You can't argue with a teacher but I couldn't understand why this would be so. I had been in the orphanage since I was four and the first language I spoke was Zulu, and as far as I knew I'd never spoken English. It was just my name, Tom Fitzsaxby, that got me into all the trouble I've already told you about. Maybe, I thought, a person is born with a certain language in their head and so it's difficult to learn to read in a language that God hadn't put into your brain already before you were born.

Anyway, it was going to be much easier for me to talk to Mattress in Zulu. I just had to hope I could explain those things Fonnie du Preez had done to Pissy and the other things that Mevrou asked him about. I could do the pissing bit dead easy, that's
umchamo
, but things like arse-kissing, penetration, buggered, masturbation – how was I ever going to get those across to him when I didn't really know what the last three were or how they happened? I didn't even know if black people did those things the same as us, or whether any of those words I couldn't translate would mean anything to him. Maybe Pissy was accusing him of doing something to him he didn't even know how to do.

‘
Sawubona
,
Kleinbaas
,' Mattress called cheerily to me. ‘It is late for you to come and see me, but you are running very fast. I think, for sure, a lioness she is chasing you. With your strong heart, you have left her panting in the dust?' He laughed at his joke, then put down the milk churn and stepped over the pigsty wall, his big platform feet with the deep cracks in the sides making little puffs as they landed in the soft dust on the far side.

‘Mattress, it is terrible news!' I gasped.

‘Ten-Kaa?' He looked concerned. ‘But she was at the dairy just now, she is having some milk.'

‘No, not Tinker,
you
!'

Mattress looked puzzled. ‘
Mena?
Today I have worked very, very hard,
Kleinbaas
. There is no trouble.'

‘There
is
trouble,' I said urgently. ‘
Makhulu
trouble, big trouble.'

Mattress took a step towards me and rested on his haunches so that we could be the same size. Next door the big sow was grunting and grumbling, waiting for the rest of the swill. Mattress placed his hand on my shoulder.

‘What are you hearing? Is the Big
Baas
angry?' He looked genuinely puzzled. ‘Why it is so? All the time I am work very, very hard. That one cow, that black one, it is sick all night from the bloat, she is eating too much the wet clover. I stay by that one and run her around so she farts out the sickness, but it doesn't work so I put a knife in her stomach to let the air out, now she is coming better. Big
Baas
Botha . . . why he is not happy with me,
Kleinbaas
? If I don't put in the knife to that black cow she is going to die.'

‘Not him, it's Mevrou! She says you already a dead
kaffir
.' I hadn't meant to tell it exactly like that, it just came out in a rush and I started to cry.

Mattress squeezed my shoulder. ‘This is not the time to cry,
Kleinbaas
. You must tell me what happened in this news you have for me. I must hear it in your way.'

The trouble was where to start. I decided to go right back to me having to kiss Pissy's arse. Mattress shook his head. ‘
Ahee
, that is before I am coming to you, that Fonnie he is very bad man.'

I told him about the conversation that went on in the sick room. While I had some trouble with those words I spoke about, Mattress seemed to understand and supplied the Zulu words I needed. When I got to the last part where Pissy had accused Mattress of doing it to him, Mattress slapped his knee with the palm of his hand. ‘
Ahee
, that one of the goat fit is very, very bad also. That one is a coward and a liar and a
skelm.'

‘You must run away at once, Mattress, go into the mountains, they will never find you there.' I pointed to his feet. ‘You can go over the sharp rocks, they will not be able to follow.' In my mind I could see him scrambling like a goat much too quick for anyone to follow.

‘
Ahee
,
Kleinbaas
, they will catch me, they have the dogs, they will follow my scent.'

I'd seen the three big Alsatian dogs the police sergeant kept when he came around to visit Meneer Prinsloo, but I had simply thought he kept them as pets. I had to admit it would be pretty hard to outrun a dog, even in the mountains.

‘But what will you do?' I asked in a panic.

Mattress thought for a moment and seemed to be weighing up his options. ‘I am
AmaZulu,
I am not running away. If I run away they will think I have done this bad thing. This Boer boy he is lying and he is bad.'

‘Yes, I know, but it's your word against his,' I protested.

Even if we, the boys in the orphanage, belonged to the Government and so were a nobody, we were a better class of nobody than the blacks. The word of a white boy would almost always be taken more seriously than that of a black man who was a pig boy. Even at seven I knew this to be true. What's more, Pissy Vermaak had proved he was a consummate liar and if he could convince Mevrou, who was a world champion lie detector, then he could do the same with the police sergeant.

Sergeant Jan van Niekerk was famous in this part of the world, and was known to be a ‘
regte
Boer' who had the reputation for treating
kaffirs
harshly and carried a
sjambok
, a proper rhino-hide one, wherever he went. We'd sometimes see him on the way back from school. Black people would step off the pavement if they saw him coming, even if there remained lots of room for him and for what I had thought, until moments ago, were his three pet Alsatian dogs. The black people would step into the road and stand with their eyes averted, not daring to look at him. They could get a severe slash from his
sjambok
if they looked directly at him, because then he thought you were ‘a cheeky
blêrrie kaffir'.

Mattress looked at me. ‘I am a Zulu, the grandson of a great warrior of the Paramount Chief, Dingaan, I will not run away like a village dog.
Baas
Botha, he must tell me I have done this bad thing and I will tell him this boy who had the goat fit is lying. I am not lying before to
Baas
Botha and he will believe me, he will know the truth in his heart.' Mattress said it with such conviction that I almost believed him.

Meneer Botha knew the truth, alright, but he'd warned us never to tell it so why would he come clean all of a sudden? But worse still, we were dealing with Mevrou, who was a different kettle of fish. On the other hand, Mattress was a grown-up and I was just a small kid and he had rescued Pissy when he'd had his epileptic fit. It was certainly something they'd have to take into account. Him putting the stick in his mouth and all that. ‘
Wragtig
! How a
kaffir
would know to do a thing like that, I just don't know, you can only thank God,' was what Mevrou had said.

I suddenly realised I had to run back because the washing-hands bell would have rung by now as only a deep orange glow showed behind the dark silhouette of the high mountains. If I was late for supper then I'd go without, and also get three of the best or six if my hands were dirty as well.

‘
Sala kahle
, stay well,' I said to Mattress. ‘I hope it will be all right.'

Mattress looked sad but did not reply as we shook hands in the proper African way, first like white people do and then switching by grasping hold of each other's thumb, two movements instead of one.

‘
Hamba kahle
, go well,' he replied. My parting memory was of his large dark hand and my small white one, and how the black hand completely swallowed the white one.

I got back just in time to join the end of the supper queue. I didn't have time to wash my hands before the cook, Mevrou Pienaar, who always wore this greasy apron that she wiped her hands on, rang the bell for us to enter. Fonnie du Preez was with the big boys at the front of the queue, he had a plaster of Paris arm and people had written their names on it for luck. Obviously Mevrou hadn't taken any action as yet. There was no sign of Pissy Vermaak, which wasn't a good sign, although not entirely unexplainable, he'd been in a pretty overwrought state and she'd probably kept him in the sick room. We didn't have a hands inspection because Mevrou didn't appear, which was lucky.

When we'd all sat down my heart
really
sank. Meneer Prinsloo and Mevrou were not at the staff table. When supper was over there was still no Meneer Prinsloo and Mevrou. Meneer Botha took over the job of reading from the Bible and saying prayers thanking God for our food and for looking after us. In both cases I wasn't at all sure God was doing a good job and, in my opinion, was getting a bit too much praise. No Mevrou announcements followed, which meant there'd be no
sjambok
for the little kids that night. Instead, old Mevrou Pienaar said that if anyone needed to go to the clinic and it couldn't wait until the morning, they should see her afterwards on the
stoep
and she'd do the best she could. As we went to the hall where we had to do our homework, through the big window at the end, I saw the lights of a car pull up. It was Doctor Van Heerden's new Chev with a dicky-seat at the back. The outside light went on and Meneer Prinsloo and Mevrou came out to greet him and took him inside. You didn't need to think too hard to know what that was all about. Doctor Van Heerden was here to examine the bruises on Pissy's arse.

As I lay in bed that night my mind started to work things out. Not that a seven-year-old is much good at solving complex problems, as he can't really understand possible outcomes. But what I knew made me very worried. Firstly, I already knew that Fonnie and Pissy had conspired with Meneer Botha to concoct the story of Fonnie falling down the big rock. But all that had changed and there was the new Pissy confession to Mevrou version of what happened. This was all lies but she believed him and when she believed something, watch out, man! In this second version I still wasn't there, but Mattress was. Secondly, Mattress was now supposed to have penetrated Pissy in his hut before the rock incident took place and of course this was also a pack of lies.

I started blubbing because I knew if I went and told Meneer Prinsloo the real truth then Tinker would be dead. You couldn't go around accusing someone like Meneer Frikkie Botha of lying and concocting stories and expect him not to get his own back. I was also certain that the superintendent wouldn't believe me, wouldn't take my word against two important grown-ups like Frikkie Botha and Mevrou. Besides, he knew already that everyone in The Boys Farm lied to the staff all the time, so how would he know I was telling God's honest truth? So if I talked I was going to lose the two people I loved the most in the world, Mattress and Tinker. It was the saddest moment in my life because I didn't know what to do to save them. I've told you before how it was survival of the fittest in that place and now look what was going to happen, even if they didn't believe me. Tinker would be dead and Mattress would be taken away by the police and sent to Pretoria where they would hang him by his neck until he was stone dead.

It hit me all of a sudden, if I said nothing, stayed
stom,
Tinker would stay alive and only Mattress would be killed. There was nothing I could do to save Mattress. Or, if there was, I wasn't capable of thinking what it might be. The forces ranged against us were just too powerful. But I knew that somehow, whatever happened, it was my fault and that's why I was blubbing. Then someone shouted, ‘Shurrup,
Voetsek
, and go to sleep!' Until then I hadn't realised I'd been crying so loud.

What I'm about to tell you is what happened next. But, of course, I wasn't present for most of the grown-ups' conversations. I only found these out some years later and in a rather sad way when I met up with Fonnie du Preez and Pissy Vermaak again. But I'll tell you about that later. So there has to be some speculation involved. Pissy and Fonnie were present for a lot of what took place and Pissy, like all good liars, had an excellent memory and seemed to recall the conversations just the way they happened.