I was unaware of anyone entering the room until a huge hand lifted me and hurled me across the classroom where I landed against the wall. I was too stunned to hurt and sat there propped up by the wall like a discarded rag doll. Mr Stoffel, the master who taught the Judge’s class, was on his knees bending over Miss du Plessis and shaking her by the shoulder. His eyes grew wide as he observed the blood on her blouse. ‘Shit, he’s killed her!’ I heard him say.
Just then Miss du Plessis opened her eyes and sat up like Lazarus. Then she looked down and saw her bloodstained blouse and with a soft sigh she passed out again. Mr Stoffel slapped her cheeks and she opened her eyes and sat up. ‘Oh, oh, what have I done!’ she sobbed.
Quite suddenly the classroom grew very still and dark, like a cloud passing over the sun. I could dimly see Mr Stoffel coming towards me, his long, hairy arms flapping at his sides as though in slow motion, his shape wavy at the edges. I tried to cover my face but my arms refused to lift from my lap.
‘Look what happens when you forget your camouflage, Pisskop,’ I observed to myself. Then I must have passed out.
I awoke in my bed in the small kids’ dormitory, but before I’d opened my eyes I could smell Mevrou at my side. She must have seen the flicker of my eyelids. ‘Are you awake, Pisskop?’ she said, not unkindly.
‘Ja, Mevrou.’ I was back in the real world and I quickly gathered my mental camouflage about me. My head was swathed in a thick crêpe bandage and I was wearing my pyjamas. My head didn’t hurt a bit but my shoulder ached where I’d landed against the wall.
‘Now listen to me, Pisskop.’ There was a note of urgency in Mevrou’s voice. ‘When the doctor comes you must tell him you fell out of a tree, you hear?’
‘Ja, Mevrou.’
‘What tree did you fall out of, Pisskop?’ she asked.
‘There was no tree, Mevrou.’ I had fallen at once for the trick.
‘Domkop!’ she shouted. ‘Wash out your ears. What did I just tell you, man?’
‘It was the mango tree, the big one next to the playground,’ I corrected.
‘Ja, that’s good, the mango tree.’ She rose from the chair beside my bed. ‘You have a good memory when you try, Pisskop. Remember to tell the doctor when he comes.’
No sooner had she left than I leapt from the bed and ran to the window where I whistled for Granpa Chook. In a few moments he appeared, clucking and beady-eyed as ever as he came to rest on the window sill beside me.
‘Granpa Chook, we’re in a lot of trouble,’ I told him and explained about the arrival any day now of Adolf Hitler who was coming to march us into the sea. ‘Can you swim?’ I asked him. Granpa Chook was so amazing that it wouldn’t have surprised me if he turned out to be the only chicken in the world who could swim.
‘Squawk!’ he replied, which could have meant he could or he couldn’t, who’s to say? Granpa Chook wasn’t always easy to understand.
We could hear voices coming towards the dormitory so I quickly pushed Granpa Chook back into the orchard and jumped into bed.
To my joy Mevrou entered with Dr Henny. He sat on my bed and unwound the bandage around my head. ‘What’s the matter, son? You look pretty done in.’
Even if Dr Henny wasn’t a Rooinek I knew he was on my side, and I longed to burst into tears and tell him all my troubles. But I had already blown my camouflage once that day with near disastrous results. A bandaged ear and a sore shoulder weren’t too bad a result for having been unforgivably stupid. Next time I might not be so lucky. Choking back the tears I told him how I had fallen from the big old mango tree next to the playground.
I must have laid it on a bit thick because he turned to Mevrou and in Afrikaans he said: ‘Hmmm, except for the cut between the ear and the skull there are no contusions or abrasions, are you quite sure this child fell from a tree?
‘The other children saw it happen, Doctor. There is no doubt.’ Mevrou said this with such conviction that I began to wonder myself. I realised that Dr Henny’s line of questioning could only mean trouble for me.
‘It’s true, sir. That’s what happened, I fell out of the tree and hurt my shoulder against the wall.’
Dr Henny didn’t seem to notice that I’d replied in Afrikaans. ‘The wall? What wall?’
Fear showed for a moment in Mevrou’s eyes but she quickly recovered. ‘The child doesn’t speak Afrikaans very well, he means the ground.’
‘Ja, the ground,’ I added, my camouflage damn nearly blown sky high.
Dr Henny looked puzzled. ‘Okay, let’s look at your shoulder, then.’ He rotated my shoulder clockwise. ‘That hurt? Tell me when it hurts.’ I shook my head. He moved it the opposite way with the same result. Then he lifted it upwards and I winced. ‘That’s sore, hey?’ I nodded. ‘Well it’s not dislocated anyway.’ He checked my heart and chest and my back with his stethoscope which was cold against my skin. ‘Seems fine. We’ll just put in a couple of little stitches and you’ll be right as rain,’ he said in English.
‘Can I go home please?’
‘No need for that, old son. You’ll be brand new tomorrow.’ He dug into his bag and produced a yellow sucker. ‘Here, this will make you feel better, you get stuck into that while I fix up these stitches.’
He must have seen the look on my face. ‘Ja, it’s going to hurt a bit, but you’re not going to cry on me now, are you?’
‘He’s a brave boy, Doctor,’ Mevrou said, relaxed now that the truth had remained concealed.
‘Well done,’ Henny said, dabbing my stitches with mercurochrome, ‘No need for a bandage, we’ll be back in a week to remove the stitches.’ He turned to Mevrou, ‘Let me know if he complains of backache.’ He took a second sucker from his bag and handed it to me. ‘That’s for being extra brave.’
‘Thank you sir. Doctor Henny, are you English?’ I asked taking the second sucker.
His expression changed and I could see that he was upset. ‘We are all South Africans, son. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’ He spoke with a quiet vehemence, then repeated: ‘Don’t let anyone ever tell you anything else!’
I had certainly had better days, but a two-sucker day doesn’t come along very often so it wasn’t all bad.
Despite my prisoner of war status, the kids were pretty good for the next few days. My stitches made me a hero in the small kids’ dormitory and even Maatie de Jaager kept his loose mouth buttoned for a change.
We had a new teacher, Mrs Gerber, who turned out to be the wife of the Government vet who had once come out to the farm to check Granpa’s black Orpingtons for Newcastle’s disease. Mrs Gerber wasn’t tetchy and I don’t think she even knew I was a Rooinek. She wasn’t a real teacher so she was quite nice.
There was a rumour going around that Miss du Plessis had suffered a nervous breakdown. I knew of course that I was to blame and it struck me with dismay that I had probably been the direct cause of my mother’s nervous breakdown as well. I must be a nervous breakdown type of person. First my mother, now Miss du Plessis and, while I hadn’t given Mevrou one yet, I had caused her to piss in her pants, which was probably the next best thing.
Granpa Chook and I discussed our predicament at some length but were unable to reach a useful conclusion. After all, Granpa Chook was a Kaffir chicken and they don’t have such a good life. One minute you’re walking along scratching about and the next you’re dinner for a jackal or a python, or bubbling away in a three-legged cast-iron cooking pot. Granpa Chook, a proven survivor, worked on the principle that if anything bad could happen it would. A five-year-old isn’t much of a pessimist, though we agreed that one thing was for sure, something pretty bad was bound to happen.