The Power of One Read online

  Nanny finally sat down, heaving with sobs, knowing that such a tale had never been told before and that it might live forever, warped into a Shangaan legend.

  I can tell you, I was mighty impressed that any person, most of all me, could go through such a harrowing experience.

  Inkosi-Inkosikazi rose and yawned. With the handle of his fly switch he prodded my weeping nanny. “Get me some kaffir beer, woman,” he demanded.

  Dee and Dum, the twin kitchen maids, served me my dinner. They told me I was the bravest person they had ever known.

  By bedtime Nanny was at my side as usual. She crushed me to her bosom and told me how I had thrust greatness upon her with the coming of the greatest medicine man in all Africa. When Nanny finally left me, she said, “Tonight Inkosi-Inkosikazi will visit in your dreams to find the way of your night water.”

  The morning after the night Inkosi-Inkosikazi went walkabout in my dreams, he summoned me to sit with him again on the meeting mat. From a leather bag he produced the twelve magic shinbones from the great white ox. Squatting on his haunches as he prepared to throw the bones, he commenced a deep, rumbling incantation. The yellowed dice briefly clicked together in his hands and fell onto the ground in front of him. Inkosi-Inkosikazi flicked at them with his forefinger; then with a final grunt he tossed them back into their bag.

  Inkosi-Inkosikazi’s eyes, sharp pins of light in his wrinkled face, seemed to look right into me. “I visited you in your dreams and we came to a place of three waterfalls and ten stones across the river. The shinbones of the great white ox say I must take you back so that you can jump the three waterfalls and cross the river, stepping from stone to stone without falling into the rushing torrent. If you can do this then the unfortunate business of the night water will be over.”

  I nodded, not knowing what to say.

  “Now, listen to me carefully, boy. Watch and listen. Watch and listen,” he repeated. “When I tell you to close your eyes you will do so.”

  Anxious to please him, I shut my eyes tightly. “Not now! Only when I tell you. Not tight, but as you do when your eyes are heavy from the long day and it is time to sleep.”

  I opened my eyes to see him crouched in front of me, his beautiful fly switch suspended slightly above my normal sightline. The fall of horsehair swayed gently before my eyes.

  “Watch the tail of the horse.” My eyes followed the switch as it moved to and fro. “It is time to close your eyes but not your ears. You must listen carefully, infaan.…”

  A sudden roar of water filled my head and then I saw the three waterfalls. I was standing on an outcrop of rock directly above the highest one. Far below, the river rushed away, tumbling into a narrow gorge. Just before the water entered the gorge I noted the ten stepping-stones strung across it.

  Inkosi-Inkosikazi spoke to me, his voice soft. “It is late; the bush doves, anticipating nightfall, are already silent. You are standing on a rock above the highest waterfall, a young warrior who has killed his first lion and is worthy now to fight in the legion of Dingaan. Worthy even to fight in the Impi of Shaka, the greatest warrior king of all.

  “You are wearing the skirt of lion tail as you face into the setting sun. Now the sun has passed beyond Zululand, and now it leaves the Shangaan and the royal kraal of Modjadji, the rain queen, to be cooled in the great dark water beyond. You can see the moon rising over Africa and you are at peace with the night.”

  As I stood on the great rock waiting to jump, I could see the new moon rising above the thundering falls.

  “You must take a deep breath and say the number three to yourself as you leap. Then, when you surface, you must take another breath and say the number two as you are washed across the rim of the second waterfall, then again a deep breath as you rise and are carried over the third. Now you must swim to the first stone, counting backward from ten to one, counting each stone as you leap from it to the next to cross the rushing river.” The old medicine man paused. “You must jump now, little warrior of the king.”

  I took a deep breath and launched myself into the night. The cool air rushed past my face and then I hit the water below, sank briefly and rose to the surface. With scarcely enough time to take a second breath I was swept over the second waterfall and then again I fell down the third to be plunged into a deep pool at its base. I swam strongly to the first of the great stones glistening in the moonlight. Jumping from stone to stone, I crossed the river, counting from ten to one, then leaping to the pebbly beach on the far side.

  Inkosi-Inkosikazi’s voice cut through the roar of the falls. “We have crossed the night water to the other side and it is done. You must open your eyes now, little warrior.” Inkosi-Inkosikazi brought me back from the dreamtime and I looked around, a little surprised to see the familiar farmyard about me. “When you need me you may come to the night country. I will always be there in the place of the three waterfalls and the ten stones across the river.” Pointing to what appeared to be an empty sack, he said: “Bring me that chicken and I will show you the trick of the chicken sleep.”

  I walked over to the sack. Inside, the beady red eye of the chicken that looked like Granpa blinked up at me. The old man rose and called over to me to draw a circle in the dirt. He showed me how to hold the rooster, by securing its body under your right armpit like a set of bagpipes and grabbing it high up its neck with your left hand so that its head is held between forefinger and thumb. Getting a good hold of its feet with your free hand, you dip the chicken toward the ground at an angle, with its beak not quite touching the rim of the circle. The beak is then traced around the perimeter three times and the bird laid inside the circle.

  The old man made me practice it three times. The old rooster lay within the circle docile as a sow in warm mud. To bring the chicken back from wherever chickens go in such circumstances, all I needed to do was touch it and say, “Chicken sleep, chicken wake, if chicken not wake then chicken be ate!” A pretty grim warning, if you ask me.

  I did not ask Inkosi-Inkosikazi how a Shangaan chicken could understand Zulu because you simply do not ask such questions of the greatest medicine man in all of Africa.

  “The chicken trick is our bond. We are now brothers bound in this common knowledge and the knowledge of the place in the dreamtime.”

  I’m telling you, it was pretty solemn stuff. With a yell the old man called for his driver, who was asleep in the back of the Buick. Together we walked toward the big black car.

  “You may keep this chicken to practice on,” Inkosi-Inkosikazi said as he climbed into the backseat.

  As if from nowhere, the car was surrounded by field women who loaded the boot with tributes. Nanny handed the old man a square of brightly colored cloth with several coins knotted into one corner. Inkosi-Inkosikazi declined the offer of what was, for Nanny, two months’ salary.

  “It is a matter between me and the boy. I am on my way to the Molototsi River, where I go to see Modjadji, the rain queen.” He stuck his head out of the window and gazed into the sky. “The rains have not come to Zululand, and in this matter her magic is greater than mine.”

  With a roar from its mighty V8 engine, the Buick shot down the road, raising a cloud of dust behind it.

  By the time the holidays were over Granpa Chook, for that was what I called my chicken, and I were practically inseparable. Calling a chicken a chook was a private joke my mother and I had shared. We had received some photos from a cousin in Australia, one of which had shown a small boy feeding the chickens. On the back was written: “Young Lennie, feeding the chooks on the farm in Wagga Wagga.” We had called the two old drakes who quacked around the farmyard Wagga Wagga, and started referring to Granpa’s black Orpingtons as the chooks.

  Granpa Chook came running the moment I appeared at the kitchen door. There was no doubt about it, that chicken had fallen for me. I felt pretty powerfully attracted to him as well.

  We practiced the chicken trick, but he got so smart that the moment I drew a circle in the dust he stepped into
it and settled down politely. I think he was trying to be cooperative, but it meant that I had lost all my power. Granpa Chook was the first living creature over which I held power and now this not-so-dumb cluck had found a way of getting back on even terms.

  TWO

  The holidays came to an end. My bed-wetting had been cured but my apprehension at returning to boarding school remained. Nanny and I had a good weep on the last evening at home. She packed my khaki shorts and shirts, pajamas and a bright red jumper my mother had sent. We all went barefoot at school.

  Next day we set out after breakfast in Granpa’s old Model A Ford truck. I was in the back with Nanny, and Granpa Chook concealed in a mealie sack.

  We stopped at the school gates and Nanny handed me the suitcase and the sack.

  “What have you got in the bag, son?” Granpa asked.

  Before I could reply Nanny called from the back, “It is only sweet potatoes, baas.”

  The tears were running down her cheeks and I wanted to rush back into her big safe arms. With a puff of blue exhaust smoke the truck lurched away and I was left standing at the gates. Ahead of me lay Mevrou, the Judge and jury and the beginning of the power of one, where I would learn that in each of us there is a flame that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it burns within us, we cannot be destroyed.

  I released Granpa Chook from the sack and gave him a bit of a pat on his bald head. Pisskop the Rooinek, possessor of a hatless snake, was back in town. But this time, for damn sure, he was not alone. Now that my bed-wetting days were over my camouflage was almost perfect, except for my you-know-what, which the kids could only see when we took a shower and sometimes they’d even forget to remember about it.

  Skirting the edge of the playground, we made our way to the hostel that contained the small kids’ dormitory. It looked out onto a run-down citrus orchard. No one ever came here. It was the ideal place for Granpa Chook to stay while I reported to Mevrou.

  I set about making a small clearing among the weeds, then drew a circle on the ground, and Granpa Chook settled politely into it. It still annoyed me a bit that he refused to go through the whole magic rigmarole, but you can’t go arguing with a chicken.

  I found Mevrou in the washhouse folding blankets. She looked at me with distaste and pointed to a bucket beside the mangle. “Your rubber sheet is in that bucket. Take it,” she said.

  “I … I am cured, Mevrou,” I stammered.

  “Ha! Your oupa’s beatings are better than mine then, ja?”

  “No, Mevrou, your beatings are the best … better than my granpa’s. I just stopped doing it.”

  “My sjambok will be lonely.” Mevrou called the bamboo cane she carried her sjambok. “You are too early. The other children will not be here till this afternoon.”

  I returned to Granpa Chook. Nanny had packed two large sweet potatoes in my suitcase and I planned to share one of these with Granpa Chook.

  As I approached the orchard I could hear a fearful squawking. Suddenly Granpa Chook rose from above the weeds, then plunged back into the undergrowth. I stumbled toward the clearing. Granpa Chook stood inside the circle; held firmly in his beak was a three-foot grass snake. With a vigorous shake of his head and a snip of his powerful beak he removed the head from the snake and, to my astonishment, swallowed it.

  The toughest damn chicken in the world tossed his head and gave me a beady wink. I could see he was pretty pleased with himself. I don’t blame him. How can you go wrong with a friend like him at your side?

  The afternoon gradually filled with the cacophony of returning kids. The supper bell went and I left Granpa Chook scratching happily away in his new home. I had spent the afternoon making his shelter from bits of corrugated iron I found among the weeds. I waited until the last moment before slipping into the dining hall to take my place at the table where the little kids sat.

  Shortly after lights-out that night I was summoned to appear before the Judge and the jury. It was a full moon again, just like the first time. But also a moon like the one that rose above the waterfalls in the dreamtime when, as a young warrior, I had conquered my fears.

  The Judge was even bigger than I remembered. He now sported a crude tattoo on his left arm. African women tattoo their faces, but I had not seen a tattoo on white skin before. Crude blue lines crossed at the center like two snakes wriggling across each other.

  “You have marks like a kaffir woman on your arm,” I heard myself saying.

  The Judge’s eyes seemed to pop out of his head. I felt an explosion in my head as I was knocked to the floor.

  I got to my feet. Stars, just like in the comic books, were dancing in a red sky in front of my eyes and there was a ringing noise in my ears. But I wasn’t crying. I cursed my stupidity: the holidays had blunted my sense of survival; adapt, develop a camouflage, try in every way to be an Afrikaner. A trickle of blood ran from my nose.

  The Judge pulled me up to his face, lifting me so that I stood on the tips of my toes. “This is a swastika, man! It means death and destruction to all Rooineks. And you, Pisskop, are going to be the first.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, my voice barely audible.

  “God has sent us this sign from Adolf Hitler, who will deliver the Afrikaner people from the hated English!” The Judge turned to address the jury. “We must all swear a blood oath to Adolf Hitler,” he said solemnly. The jury crowded around, their eyes shining with excitement.

  “I will swear too,” I said hopefully. Blood was still running from my nose; some had dripped to the floor.

  “Don’t be stupid! Pisskop, you are the English.” The Judge stood upright on the bed and held his arm aloft at an angle. “In the name of Adolf Hitler we will march every Rooinek bastard into the sea.”

  I had never been to the sea but I knew it would be a long march, all right. “The blood oath!” the jury chanted.

  “Come here, Pisskop.” I looked up at the Judge as he wiped his forefinger under my nose, then pushed me to the floor. He held up his finger.

  “We will swear this oath with the blood of a Rooinek!” he announced. Two members of the jury lifted me to my feet while the others stuck their fingers into the blood running from my nose. One boy tweaked my nose to increase the flow and the last two members had to dab their fingers into the drops of blood on the floor.

  The Judge, wiping the blood on his finger across the swastika tattoo, instructed the jury to do the same. “Death to all Englishmen in South Africa, the fatherland!” he cried.

  “Death to all Englishmen in South Africa, the fatherland!” the jury chorused.

  The Judge looked down at me. “We won’t kill you tonight, Pisskop. But when Hitler comes your days are numbered, you hear?”

  “When will that be, sir?” I asked.

  “Soon!” He turned me toward the dormitory door and gave me a swift kick that sent me sprawling headlong across the polished floor. I got to my feet and ran.

  Back in my own dormitory the little kids leapt out of bed, demanding to know what had happened. I sniffed out the story of the swastika and the blood oath and Hitler.

  Eight-year-old Danie Coetzee shook his head.

  “Pisskop, you are in deep shit.”

  “Who is this Adolf Hitler who is coming to get Pisskop?” a fellow we called Flap-lips de Jaager asked.

  It was apparent nobody knew the answer.

  I waited until everyone was asleep and then crept to the window. The full moon brought a soft sheen to the leaves of the orchard trees. “I didn’t cry. They’ll never make me cry again!” I said to the moon. Then I returned to my bed.

  Granpa Chook’s cover was blown the following morning. Before the wake-up bell went, the whole dormitory awoke to his raucous crowing. Startled out of a deep sleep, I saw him perched on the windowsill nearest my bed, his long scrawny neck stretched in a mighty rendition of cock-a-doodle-doooo! Then he cocked his head to one side and flew onto my bedhead. Stretching his long neck toward me, he gave my ear a gentle peck.

&nbs
p; The kids surrounded me. “It’s an old kaffir chicken come to visit Pisskop,” Flap-lips de Jaager yelled.

  Granpa Chook, imperious on the bedhead, fixed them with a beady stare. “He is my friend,” I said defiantly. “He can do tricks and everything.”

  “No he can’t! He’s a dumb kaffir chicken. Wait till the Judge hears about Pisskop’s new friend,” Danie Coetzee said, and everyone laughed.

  The wake-up bell went, which meant Mevrou would arrive in a minute, so we all scrambled back into bed to await her permission to get up. I barely had time to push Granpa Chook out of the window before her huge form loomed through the door.

  Mevrou paced the length of the dormitory, her sjambok hanging from a loop on the leather belt of her blue uniform. She stopped as she reached my bed, whipped off the blanket and examined the dry mattress. Suddenly her eyes seemed almost to pop out of her head: “Pisskop! There is chicken shit on your pillow!”

  I looked down at my pillow in horror: Granpa Chook had neatly deposited his green and white calling card.

  “Explain, man!” Mevrou roared.

  Shaking with terror, I told her about Granpa Chook.

  Mevrou slipped the cane from her leather belt. “Pisskop, I think you are sick in the head, like your poor mother. First you come here and piss in your bed every night. Then you come back and fill it with chicken shit!” She pointed to the end of the bed. “Bend over,” she commanded.

  She blasted me four strokes of the sjambok. Biting back tears, I forced myself not to grab my bum.

  “Clean up your pillow and bring this devil’s chicken to the kitchen after breakfast, you hear?”

  Granpa Chook and I were in a terrible jam, all right. After breakfast I slipped out to find him. He was scratching around the orchard looking for worms. I explained the latest disaster to him. So much for my resolution not to cry, I could feel the tears running down my cheeks. I picked him up and took him to a low fence that marked the hostel boundary. I looked over the fence and my heart gave a leap; in the distance I could see three kaffir huts. For sure they’d keep chickens and Granpa Chook could board with them.