Whitethorn (28 page)

‘More, much more, a hundred pounds at least,' Gawie said.

‘A hundred pounds!' I couldn't believe my ears.

‘
Ag
, man, to a Jew a hundred pounds is nothing if you got a goldmine.' Gawie looked at me, smiling kindly. ‘I tell you what,
Voetsek
. When you go to the concentration camp you can give me your ten shillings and I'll buy some gold for you or maybe a diamond. A diamond you can hide easily as anything, if you have to, you can stick it up your bum. That's what the Jews did when they were running away from Germany.'

‘They stick diamonds up their bum?'

‘Not always, sometimes it's gold in their teeth. That's another way you can spot a Jew, when he smiles it's all gold, every tooth is made of pure gold.'

This was certainly a better way of recognising a Jew than long curly black hair that could be anyone who hadn't got his hair cut, a golden smile you couldn't mistake. I'd never seen a Boer with gold for his teeth. I must say it did seem a bit impractical sticking diamonds up your bum. A diamond is a very small thing and can easily get lost. What's more, gold, I'd read somewhere, is very heavy. With a mouthful of gold maybe you couldn't even chew stuff because it's so heavy. I really was beginning to have serious doubts about Gawie's Madagascan theory.

‘With the diamonds, what happens when you go for a shit?'

‘
Ag
, you take it out first, man. Like I would if I had to with that ten-shilling note that turned into a pound.'

‘And gold teeth? Gold is heavy, if you've got only gold teeth how can you chew food?'

Gawie thought for a moment, then went ‘Tsk!' and shook his head from side to side. ‘You know,
Voetsek
, sometimes I think you don't listen. You starving, man! Remember? There's nothing to eat so you don't need to open your mouth because you not allowed to talk.'

The flaws in this argument were too obvious for me to pursue. Gawie was my friend and I didn't want to trap him, especially if I was going to need his help in a week or so when Hitler arrived and gave the whole country back to the Afrikaners. I couldn't resist one more question.

‘Who told you all this stuff?' I asked.

‘My uncle in Pretoria,' he replied with his usual degree of finality.

I took a deep breath. ‘I don't believe you've got an uncle in Pretoria,' I said, my heart thumping like billyo.

‘I have so!' he protested. ‘
Oom
Piet.'

‘
Oom
Piet?' I had a surge of courage. If I was headed for a concentration camp and then, after starving to death, was being sent to Madagascar, I might as well clear up my serious doubts about Gawie's uncle in Pretoria once and for all. This was the first time he'd mentioned his uncle by name, a fact that caused me to hesitate. An actual name is different to just having an anonymous ‘my uncle in Pretoria'. Stupidly I decided to press on. ‘Hens got no teeth, okay, this I understand. A man burning to death while snoring away with the fire brigade watching, this too because when you a little kid you can be told things like that, maybe by an uncle in Pretoria. But, Gawie, you now eleven, man! You've been here at The Boys Farm since you were five years old and not once have you seen your uncle in Pretoria. So where is your
Oom
Piet?'

‘He told me before I came here!' Gawie persisted, raising his voice for emphasis. ‘I got a good memory, man!' I could see he'd gone all red in the face.

‘Gawie, Jews were
not
running away all over the place with golden teeth and diamonds up their bums from Germany when you were five,' I said accusingly. ‘It's only happening now that Hitler has said, “Finish and
klaar,
no more Jews in Germany!” ' I was wrong, of course, Jews had been leaving Germany long before either of us were five, but neither of us knew this then.

‘My
Oom
Piet writes me letters,' Gawie said, digging himself in deeper. That was the trouble with Gawie, in some things he was very, very smart, the cleverest of all of us, and in others, like, for instance, him owning a goldmine from a dead Jew, he was even more dumb than me. Even I wouldn't think something like that could happen. We also both knew nobody got letters at The Boys Farm. If one should arrive a lot of fuss was made over it and it would be handed to the boy after supper, but only after Meneer Prinsloo had read it first and told us all what was in it. The parcels from Miss Phillips were always sent to the school headmaster, Meneer Van Niekerk, who then gave them to me after looking to see that the book she'd sent was alright for me to read.

‘Show me one of these letters,' I demanded.

‘I can't, I have to tear them up in little pieces and throw them away because they got war secrets in them.' He gave me a nervous smile. ‘It's a good thing I've got a good memory, hey?'

Sometimes things come out of your mouth that shouldn't come out of your mind. ‘That's bullshit and you know it!' I said, raising my voice.

We were sitting on top of the library rock and Gawie suddenly jumped up. ‘Are you calling me a liar,
Voetsek
?' Before I could answer, he shouted, ‘You a fucking
rooinek
, you hear! I'm not your friend any more and I'm going to tell Meneer Prinsloo about the feathers!' He turned and ran down the side of the rock and away towards the creek.

Talk about the deep shit! This time I was a goner for sure! Why had I opened my big mouth? When are you going to learn you in enemy territory,
Voetsek
? I asked myself despairingly.

Tinker, who was there all the time, could see I was upset, and she came onto my lap and licked my hand and then the tears off my face. This time nothing helped. I'd just lost the best friend I'd ever had after Mattress. As a matter of fact, the
only
friend I'd ever had who was still a boy. Now look what was going to happen to me.

I thought that hopefully Hitler might win before Meneer Prinsloo saw to it that I joined Fonnie du Preez in the Boys Reformatory or they sent me to Pretoria Prison. Then I could go to the concentration camp and starve to death and maybe eventually get to Madagascar, which would be a lot better than hanging by the neck until you were stone dead. When you're alive you've still got a chance, even without a diamond up your bum or gold teeth. But Meneer Prinsloo didn't call me up about Piet Retief's tail feathers so that was the first piece of survival-hope, that Gawie hadn't told him.

You're probably wondering how Gawie and me knew about the English Channel and Poland as well as other war things that Frikkie left out of his updates, when there weren't any newspapers and we couldn't listen to the wireless. How we learned stuff about what was going on in the war was another example of Gawie being the cleverest of all of us.

Every week from somewhere, I think from the Government, would come this big bunch of newspapers to The Boys Farm that had to be cut up into squares for the lavatories. They were old ones nobody wanted or they'd already been read. It was one of the duties you got if you were in the small boys dormitory. Then one day at half-jack, Mevrou held up this square of newspaper that was for wiping your bum.

‘See!' she exclaimed. ‘Perfect! It's just perfect!' You could see she was very pleased. She held up another and put it behind the first one. ‘See how it fits, hey?' Then four more, all fitted exactly with none of them sticking out at the edges. ‘This is the work of a very talented boy, you hear?' We all waited to hear who it was and I knew for sure it wasn't me. My squares were all over the place, some of them were even triangles, and once I'd got four of the best for the hopeless job I'd done.

‘Gawie Grobler, step out from your bed,' Mevrou said in a fond voice, which was a nice change. Gawie did as he was told. ‘If only the rest of you could do it like this, maybe we could learn some good hygiene lessons,' Mevrou scolded. ‘Now everyone give a big clap!' So we all clapped Gawie for his perfect square shit paper.

All of a sudden we stopped having to tear up newspapers for the lavatory as a regular duty. This was because Gawie went to Mevrou and asked if he could have the job on a permanent basis. Gawie later told me how Mevrou was very impressed with his offer. This was because nobody ever volunteered to do anything around the place and she agreed that he was just perfect for the job. He was a boy who liked to do things properly so that they were just so and always exact, and the pieces he made also fitted very nicely in a person's hand so you didn't need two pieces of paper.

I've already told you how clever Gawie was, but this was the perfect example. Now Gawie didn't have to collect wood or water the oranges and avocado trees or any of the other dirty jobs around the place, like cleaning out the chicken run. All he did was sit on his bum tearing up bits of newspaper as the official shit-paper maker. How clever is that, hey? Okay, now you know that part. Here at last comes a miracle.

I'm busy sitting on the toilet having a you-know-what and I reach out for the paper hanging on the wire hook and there right in front of my very eyes is this:

POLITIEK KOMENTEER
VAN OOM PIET
Die Jude Krisis

Political Commentary from Oom Piet. The Jewish Crisis.

Dr T.E. Donges, Minister for Finance, declared in Parliament on 4 November 1936 that ‘The Jew is an insoluble element in every national life.' Well said, Doctor, I couldn't agree more. I can remember how after the First World War the Palestine question arose over a homeland for the Jews and there was a proposal put forward to give them Madagascar as their Promised Land. While this big island off the East Coast is alarmingly close to South Africa, at least it would have been some sort of a solution to the Jewish problem.

But as usual the British bowed to the demands of Jewish imperialism and American Jews who said they would only settle for Palestine and then only as a token. The Jews have no intention of moving out of the cosy countries they live in and where they have a privileged existence and control the financial markets. For example, the great Wall Street crash of 1929 was manipulated by the American Jews causing the Great Depression and as a consequence millions of non-Jewish people around the globe suffered terrible hardship.

It is to our everlasting shame that since 1933 and up until 1936, when Jewish migration was finally restricted in South Africa by a government that had at last come to its senses, we accepted a total of 3605 Jews into the Union. While this is close to being a national tragedy, there is a small funny side. Not so very funny, more like amusing. I have it on good authority that many of the Jews who came here before they left Germany first had their teeth heavily capped with gold and they are said to have concealed diamonds in a certain bodily orifice that I leave to your imagination.
Magtig
! Here, where most of the world's gold comes from, and also diamonds! And people say they are clever! It is my personal opin—

There was more, but Gawie had torn off the rest to make his perfect square and I couldn't find the rest of
Oom
Piet's commentary in the bunch of paper hanging beside me on the wall. So I would never know what his personal opinion was going to be, but I don't think it would have been very nice. Now I understood how Gawie knew everything and how he had invented his uncle in Pretoria. He'd read it all in
Die
Vaderland
, which was the name of the newspaper we mostly got for shit paper. So I wiped my arse on another piece and carefully folded the one I'd just read and put it in my trouser pocket.

The next morning I confronted Gawie on the way to school and said I was sorry about saying what he'd said was a load of bullshit. At first he didn't want to know me. ‘
Voetsek
,
Voetsek
!' he said, giving me a push. I persisted and told him I knew something that as far as I was concerned made him even cleverer than I already thought. So he brightened a bit and when we'd walked a few steps further he asked, ‘What?'

I showed him the newspaper square and told him how inventing his uncle in Pretoria was a stroke of genius. He laughed and we were friends again and he said, ‘You didn't really think I'd tell Meneer Prinsloo about the chicken feathers, did you,
Voetsek
?'

‘
Ja
,' I laughed, ‘I thought I was in the deep shit, man! Already on my way to Pretoria.'

‘A
regte
Boer doesn't betray his friends like the British do,' he said piously.

Gawie and me were friends again. What's more, from then on he'd keep articles about the war and other stuff going on when he was tearing up squares, and we'd read them and talk about them. That's how we knew about the English Channel and where Poland was and lots of other things. We could also carry on having our discussions at the library rock and read books of which we now had a big collection that formed the library Miss Phillips had promised I would one day own. By the way, Miss Phillips didn't win the Easter Bonnet competition again because she didn't have any proper feathers from a champion rooster. Adolf Hitler, Meneer Prinsloo's new rooster, hadn't won a single competition. Meneer Prinsloo said it was early times and he was coming along nicely and next year his tail feathers would be ready for action. Perhaps next year, which would be more than a year since I visited the scene of the crime, Miss Phillips would get a nice surprise slipped into her self-addressed envelope.