Whitethorn (9 page)

Mevrou let the lie pass, her voice became clipped and businesslike. ‘At the rock? The day du Preez had the accident, that's when he pissed on you?'

‘Yes, Mevrou.'

‘Explain to me what happened.'

Pissy looked down at his knobbly knees and even from where I was in the hydrangea bush I could see he was shaking. ‘I don't like to, Mevrou,' he said, his voice trembling.

Mevrou sighed this big sigh. ‘Don't make me angry, Kobus. Tell me at once!'

‘He wanted to stand on the rock and piss down on me, like it was a nice joke.'

In my mind's eye I saw Fonnie with his big cock and a stream of golden piss cascading over the edge of the big rock on Pissy's ginger head. Splash! Trickle. Of course, that's not what happened and couldn't have happened before I got there because I would have seen if Pissy's head and his shirt were wet and I'd have smelled the extra fresh piss on him. So far Pissy was winning in the lying game and, I must say, was doing bloody well under interrogation.

Mevrou drew back in her chair. ‘A nice joke? You let someone piss on you and it's called a nice joke? You an Afrikaner from a proud people and you let a person piss on you for a joke!'

‘Not to
me
, Mevrou, to
him
it was a joke,' Pissy mumbled.

She'd got that bit wrong. An orphan can't be a proud anything even if he is an Afrikaner, which is better perhaps than being English, but if you just belong to the Government it's not much to be proud of because there's nobody who gives a shit about you. Also, the part where Mevrou said she'd treated Pissy like his own mother. He didn't have a mother so how could she know about that, hey?

‘You didn't think it was a joke but you let him do it to you? You could have run away,' Mevrou said.

Pissy shook his head sadly. ‘You can't, Mevrou, he'll jus' get you later.'

It was a good point and she let him have it. There was no hiding place in The Boys Farm. They always got you in the end. It was best to take what was coming to you, even if it was unfair, otherwise it only got worse and worse.

Mevrou sighed again. ‘So far all we've got is the pissing joke. Did he masturbate in front of you?'

We all knew the word, although I wasn't completely sure how it worked, you rubbed your cock and white stuff came out, but only if you were bigger. All I knew was that it was the worst thing you could possibly do on The Boys Farm. It got you sent to Meneer Prinsloo who would give you six of the best with his vicious, specially long bamboo
sjambok
. They said he'd stand way back and run at you, and each cut was like ten ordinary ones. God definitely didn't like masturbation and Meneer Prinsloo said, ‘God forbids it and so do I.' They put you in the tank afterwards, or if it was summer, in a small cupboard that was pitch dark. You could hardly breathe in there and you stayed for the whole day without food, just some water. Afterwards you had to kneel down and put your hand on the Bible and promise God you'd never do it again. I gasped at the very thought of Mevrou suggesting such a thing had occurred. But it was me who was in for a big surprise.

‘He sometimes did it,' Pissy said.

‘In front of you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did he make you do anything?'

‘Like what, Mevrou?'

‘Like suck his
piel
?'

‘No, nothing like that, Mevrou,' Pissy said, almost in a whisper.

What a dirty lie! I knew it was a lie because of what Fonnie made me do and Pissy saying it tasted like
boerewors.
You could just tell he did it the way he said it was
lekker
and all. I just knew that Fonnie made him do it and Pissy didn't even mind one bit.

Surprisingly Mevrou didn't make a fuss when I felt for sure Pissy was on the way to Meneer Prinsloo. She suddenly changed the subject. ‘What about the accident to Fonnie du Preez on the rock? Tell me.'

Pissy was ready for her. ‘After he'd finished he was doing up his fly and laughing a lot and he stepped back without looking and this piece of rock came loose and he slipped and fell down.'

‘Backwards? He fell backwards?'

It was a trick question. All Fonnie's injuries were on the front, his face and head, and he'd broken his arm by frantically trying to cushion his fall. What's more, the skin inside both his arms was scraped raw from the surface of the big rock. Pissy twisted the top part of his body around. ‘No, Mevrou, he sort of twisted, then suddenly lost his balance and he fell down on his face and head and broke his nose and his arm and was unconscious.' He looked up and for dramatic effect added, ‘I even heard it snap, like when you step on a twig in the bush.'

My admiration for Pissy was growing by the minute. I mean, for his slyness and his ability to lie like a dog. He was proving far and away the best liar among the ten-year-old boys. I was observing a world champion liar in the making. If I hadn't been there at the big rock myself I would have been convinced that every word he said was God's honest truth.

But Mevrou wasn't finished by a long shot. ‘Now, listen carefully before you answer and just understand that I will protect you, Kobus,' she said in a soft and kind voice I had never before heard from her. It was a voice you'd like to hear before you go to sleep at night. ‘How many times did he piss on you? How often, Kobus? Once? Twice? Ten times, more than ten times?' It was clear she wasn't going to accept the ‘just the one time' story.

Pissy swung his right leg up and down in agitation and looked in his lap for what seemed a long time. ‘More than ten times,' he finally replied.

Mevrou's voice rang out like a shot. ‘Then after, did he get an erection?'

Pissy jumped. ‘
Ja
, Mevrou!'

‘Did he bugger you, Kobus? Did he stick it in you, in your bottom?'

Pissy remained silent.

‘Did he penetrate you, Kobus? Answer me, damn you!'

Pissy started to howl, I mean really blub, so that Mevrou was forced to wait, but she didn't get up and comfort him or anything like that. She just waited while his shoulders quaked and quaked, and the snot ran out his nose. He didn't even wipe it away with the back of his hand, he just let it run down his top lip and some went in his mouth and some over his chin together with the tears that were falling, splashing down nineteen to the dozen. He sobbed and sobbed and began to cough violently, but she still waited and didn't even slap his back.

‘Speak, child!' Mevrou said at last and stood up suddenly and pointed her finger at Pissy. ‘Fonnie du Preez buggered you! He fucked you, didn't he? Frikkie Botha's favourite little boxer fucked you up the arse! You were his dirty little whore!' she was screaming and her breasts were wobbling like mad.

I was shocked but also ready to applaud. In this place it was every boy for himself and the survival of the fittest was the only rule, and I can tell you for certain Fonnie du Preez was headed for Pretoria. Pissy only had to say yes and he'd made himself a victim. Although I personally doubted his innocence, he really enjoyed being under Fonnie du Preez's patronage and I hadn't forgotten ‘Tastes
lekker
,
Voetsek
. . . jus' like
boerewors
.' Pissy, if he was a victim, was a willing one. That was easy enough for anyone to see, which, when all is said and done, was very clever of him, if you ask me. Though, if he'd escaped the reformatory, what they'd do with him I couldn't say. If Fonnie went to Pretoria then Pissy wouldn't survive for long here. Fonnie was a boxing hero and Pissy was the worst kind of a nobody, even if he was a Boer. There was another Boys Home in Pietersburg, they'd probably send him up there.

With Mevrou standing there screaming at him my whole world exploded into smithereens.

‘No! No, it wasn't him, I swear it!' Pissy cried out. ‘It wasn't Fonnie du Preez who done it to me. It was the
kaffir
. The pig boy!'

‘The pig boy? The
kaffir
? The
kaffir
did it?' she said incredulously. ‘When, for God's sake! Tell me, man.'

‘When I had my epileptic fit he saved my life, and then after I came out the sick room I went to see him at his hut by the pigsty to thank him for putting the stick in my mouth, like you said I should.'

‘
Here
, man! He did it to you then?' she asked. ‘In his dirty
kaffir
hut where you went to say thank you?'

‘
Ja
, he threw me on his bed and did it to me!' Pissy howled and looked up despairingly at Mevrou. ‘It hurt a lot.'

Mevrou was nearly beside herself. ‘In his stinking bed! In his dirty blankets?'

Pissy nodded and sniffed some snot and looked miserable.

‘
Sis
, man . . . Why didn't you report it, child?'

‘I couldn't, Mevrou, I . . . I was too ashamed. I only told Fonnie du Preez.'

‘You told him what the
kaffir
did to you, everything?'

‘
Ja
, Mevrou, I told him and Fonnie said he would kill the fucking
kaffir
, that's why we were – Fonnie didn't piss on me that time.'

‘Say again, it wasn't about Fonnie du Preez pissing on you?'

‘No, Mevrou, I jus' made that up,' Pissy said, looking sort of half ashamed. ‘He was going to
donder
the pig boy, that's why we were there.'

Mevrou drew back. ‘Made it up?' She looked at him sternly. ‘What else are you making up, Kobus?'

‘No, it's God's truth, Mevrou,' he sniffed.

‘Stoppit!' Mevrou yelled. ‘Calm down, no more crying, you hear?
Genoeg
! Now you going to tell everything that happened, from the beginning.'

Pissy sniffed and sobbed down to quite a quick calmness. Mevrou leaned forward and said, ‘The big rock. Now I want the truth, you hear? What were you
really
doing there – first it's bush doves, then it's pissing all over a person's head, now it's . . . what?'

‘Fonnie sent me to tell the pig boy one of the cows was caught in a whitethorn bush at the big rock and he must come there. The pig boy came and when he got there Fonnie hit him and knocked him down. It was a good punch,' Pissy elaborated. ‘The
kaffir
got angry and he jumped up on his feet and Fonnie hit him again, a left and a right, but it was no use, the pig boy jus' kept coming at him and lifted Fonnie in the air and threw him against the big rock. I ran to tell Meneer Botha.'

I had to admit Pissy's lying was a genuine world championship performance and he'd even got Fonnie du Preez off the hook. Pissing on somebody wasn't a very nice thing to do to a person, but it could be seen as just boys' pranks, and while masturbation was a definite sin, it wasn't Pretoria material. Fonnie would get the long cane, six or maybe even ten of Meneer Prinsloo's special running-at-you cuts and then the tank. When he came out he'd be a hero, because he had the guts to take on and pick a fight with the stinking
kaffir
who, what can you expect, fought dirty and not like a white man. He'd also gone to avenge Pissy. Even if they were related, it was a most honourable thing to do. The
kaffir
was much bigger and stronger but Fonnie didn't care, he took him on all the same. That's how it would go. What's more, when it was over Pissy Vermaak's reputation wouldn't be much worse, because, like me, he was a complete nobody already and what's more, he might even get people to be sorry for him because of what the
kaffir
went and did to him.

Don't think I worked all this out on the spot because I didn't. It took a lot of thinking about it later and, at the time I was listening from in the bushes, my heart was pounding like billyo for Mattress who was in the deepest of deep shit.

Amazingly, Mevrou seemed to believe this third version of events which was still not the truth. ‘It accounts for his injuries,' she exclaimed. ‘I always knew he couldn't get them just falling down a rock like Frikkie Botha and you said it happened. A nurse like me doesn't get easily fooled, you understand. We trained so we know what's going on,' she said smugly.

Pissy did his masterstroke. He all of a sudden started to shake all over and to weep uncontrollably, you've never seen such a performance, it pissed on the one before with the snot and tears running over his chin.

‘What am I going to do now everybody knows?' he wailed. He wailed even louder and choked and sobbed and sobbed and wailed again and threw himself down on the leather examination couch and beat his fists against it, as if he was suddenly heartbroken. I saw the surprise, then the sympathy on Mevrou's face and she went over to him and took him in her arms.

‘Be still, Kobus, don't cry
,'
she said, brushing her hand through his cropped hair and drawing his snotty face into her large bosom
. ‘Shhhsh, skattebol
. . . that
kaffir
is already dead, you hear.'

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

Until Death We Do Part

I DON'T KNOW HOW long I sat there under the hydrangea bushes shaking from the shock of what I had just heard. Like a bolt of electricity through my body I suddenly realised that I had no time to waste. The days were closing in and the mountains were starting to get in the way of the sun. It would shortly become dark and the washing-hands bell would be going and then it was supper. Because it was late autumn you couldn't guess the time like you could in summer, but nevertheless I had to take a chance and get to Mattress to warn him. I crawled out from under the bushes and ran like hell down to the pigsty, hoping to find him there.