THREE
The night after I had my stitches out I was summoned to appear before the Judge and jury.
The Judge had been quite nice to me over the past week and, because of my sore shoulder, hadn’t required that I carry his books to school each day. In fact, because Miss du Plessis was generally disliked, I’d become a bit of a hero.
But Rooineks in this part of the world are not designed to be permanent heroes. I knew it would soon come to an end: when the stitches were out, my temporary reprieve would be over. So, here I was again, being marched straight into another calamity.
‘Stand to attention, prisoner Pisskop,’ the Judge snarled.
I drew myself up, my arms ramrods at my side. ‘Bring your stupid legs together, man!’ one of the jury shouted.
‘Name?’
I looked confused, everyone knew my name?
‘What is your name, Pisskop?’ the Judge asked again.
‘Pisskop?’ I ventured, still not certain what he meant.
‘What does your name mean?’
Again I looked querulous. ‘That I piss my bed?’
‘Ja, and chickens shit in it as well! What is a Rooinek?’
‘I am English.’
‘Yes I know, man! But how do you know you’re a Rooinek?’
‘I… I just know, sir.’
The Judge shook his head and gave a deep sigh. ‘Come here. Come closer, man.’
I stepped forward to stand directly in front of where he sat cross-legged on his bed. The Judge’s arm came up and my hand flew up to protect my face, but instead of hitting me he pulled at the cord of my pyjama pants which collapsed round my ankles.
‘Your blêrrie snake has no hat on its head, domkop! That’s how you know you’re English! Understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’ I bent down to pull my pyjama pants back up.
‘Don’t!’ I jumped back to attention. ‘What am I, Pisskop?’ the Judge demanded.
‘A Boer, sir?’
‘Yes, and what is a Boer?’
‘An Afrikaner, sir.’
‘Yes, of course… but what else?’
‘A Boer has a hat on his snake.’ Why, when He has made all white people look alike, had God given the English snakes without a hat? It seemed terribly unfair. My camouflage was perfect except for this one little thing.
‘Tonight you will learn to march. We must get you ready for your march into the sea.’ The Judge pointed to the corridor between the beds and gave me a push. I tripped over my pyjama pants and fell to the floor. One of the jury reached down and pulled the pants away from my ankles. I rose bare-arsed and looked uncertainly at the Judge. ‘March!’ he commanded pointing down the corridor between the beds once more. I started to march, swinging my arms high. ‘Links, regs, links, regs, halt!’ he bawled. Then again: ‘Left, right, left, right, halt! Which is your left foot, prisoner Pisskop?’ I had no idea but pointed to a foot. ‘Domkop! Don’t you even know your left from your right?’
‘No, sir,’ I said, feeling stupid. But I did now, the left side was where my shoulder hurt.
‘Every day after school you will march around the playground for five thousand steps, you hear?’ I nodded. ‘You will count backwards from five thousand until you get to number one.’
I couldn’t believe my luck, no one had laid a hand on me. I retrieved my pyjama pants and scurried back along the dark passage to my dormitory.
Being a prisoner of war and learning how to march wasn’t such a bad thing. I had nothing to do after school anyway. But I must admit, counting backwards from five thousand isn’t much of a way to pass the time. It’s impossible anyway, your thoughts wander and before you know it you’re all jumbled up and have to start all over again. I learned to mumble a number if anyone came close, but mostly I did the Judge’s homework in my head. Carrying his books from school, I would memorise his arithmetic lesson and then I would work the equations out in my head as I marched along. If things got a bit complicated, I’d make sure nobody was looking and I’d work out a more complex sum using a stick in the dirt. It got so I couldn’t wait to see what he’d done in class each day.
The Judge was an awful domkop. In the mornings carrying his books to school I’d check his homework. It was always a mess and mostly all wrong. I began to despair for him and for myself as well, you see, he could only leave the school if the work he did during the year gave him a pass mark. So far, he didn’t have a hope. If he failed I’d have him for another year. That is, if Hitler hadn’t come by then to march me away.
Escape seemed impossible, so I’d have to think of something else. Over a period of several marching afternoons a plan began to form. The something else, when it finally emerged, was breathtakingly simple though fraught with danger. For the next two days I thought of little else. If I blew my camouflage and helped the Judge with his homework so that he would pass, would he not be forced to spare Granpa Chook and me if Adolf Hitler arrived before the end of term?
I must say I was worried. Every time I had blown my camouflage disaster had followed. Finally, after a long talk with Granpa Chook, we agreed it was a chance worth taking.
After breakfast the following morning, when I was folding the Judge’s blanket and arranging his towel over his bed rail, I broached the subject. He was sitting on a bed licking his pencil and trying to do some last-minute arithmetic.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ My heart thumped like a donkey engine, though I was surprised how steady my voice sounded.
‘Push off, Pisskop. Can’t you see I’m busy, man.’ The Judge was doing the fractions I’d done in my head the previous afternoon and getting them hopelessly wrong.
Gulping down my fear I said, ‘What happens if you don’t pass at the end of the year?’ The Judge looked at me, I could see the thought wasn’t new to him. He reached out and grabbed me by the shirtfront.
‘If I don’t pass, I’ll kill you first and then I’ll run away!’
I took my courage in both hands. ‘I… I can help you, sir,’ I stammered.
The Judge released me and went back to chewing his pencil, his brow furrowed as he squinted at the page of equations. He appeared not to have heard me. I pointed to the equation he’d just completed. ‘That’s wrong. The answer is seven-ninths.’ I moved my finger quickly. ‘Four-fifths, six-eighths, nine-tenths, five-sevenths…’ I paused as he grabbed my hand and looked up at me, open-mouthed.
‘Where did you learn to do this, man?’
I shrugged, ‘It’s just easy for me, that’s all.’ I hoped he couldn’t sense how scared I was.
A look of cunning came into his eyes. He released my hand and handed me the book and the pencil. ‘Just write the answers very softly and I’ll copy them, you hear?’
The camouflage was intact and I’d moved up into the next evolutionary stage. From knowing to hide my brains I had now learned to use them. Granpa Chook and I were one step further away from the sea.
But I had already experienced the consequences of revealing too much too soon. I knew if a domkop like the Judge went from bottom to the top of his class overnight, Mr Stoffel would soon smell a rat. Telling the Judge he was a duffer was more than my life was worth. Besides, I was beginning to understand how manipulation can be an important weapon in the armoury of the small and weak.
‘We have a problem,’ I said to the Judge.
‘What problem, man? I don’t see a problem. You just write in the answers very soft, that’s all.’
‘Judge, you’re a very clever fellow.’
‘Ja, that’s right. So?’
‘So arithmetic doesn’t interest you, does it? I mean, if it did you could do it,’ I snapped my fingers, ‘just like that!’
‘Ja, if I wanted to I could. Only little kids like you are interested in all that shit!’