I could see this conclusion pleased him and I grew bolder. ‘So you can’t just get ten out of ten today when yesterday you only got two sums right out of ten. Mr Stoffel will know there’s some monkey business going on.’
The Judge looked worried. ‘You mean, you’re not going to help me?’
‘Of course I am. But you will get better a little bit each week and you’ll tell Mr Stoffel that you suddenly got the hang of doing sums.’
The Judge looked relieved and then grinned slyly. ‘Jy is ’n slimmetjie, Pisskop,’ he said.
The Judge had called me clever. Me! Pisskop! Rooinek and possessor of a hatless snake! It was the greatest compliment of my life and I was beside myself with pride.
But before the Judge could notice the effect of his words on me, I quickly resumed my obsequious manner. The thrill of the compliment had almost caused me to forget my other anxiety.
‘What will happen if Adolf Hitler comes before the end of term?’ I asked, my heart beating overtime.
The Judge looked at me blankly, then suddenly grinned, understanding the reason for my question. ‘Okay, man, you got me there. I will say nothing until I’ve passed at the end of the year.’ He shook his head and gave me a look not entirely without sympathy. ‘I’m sorry, Pisskop, after that I will have to tell him about you. You must be punished for killing twenty-six thousand Boer women and children. You and your stupid Kaffir chicken are dead meat when he comes. But I’ll tell you something, I give you my word as a Boer, if I pass in sums, I swear on a stack of Bibles not to tell Adolf Hitler until next term.
The Judge, his brow furrowed as though he were doing the calculations himself, started to copy over the answers I had written in his exercise book.
I had won: my plan had worked. I could hardly believe my ears. Granpa Chook and I were safe for the remainder of the term.
The Judge had come to the end of his copying. I had never seen him quite so happy, not even when he was Heil Hitlering all over the place. I saw my opportunity and, taking a sharp inward breath, said quickly, ‘It will be difficult to march every afternoon and still do your homework, sir.’
The inside of my head filled with a zinging sound. Had I gone too far? I’d won the battle and here I was risking all on a minor skirmish. Marching around wasn’t so bad. Quite fun really. What if he realised I used the time to do his homework anyway?
The Judge sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Orright, no more marching. But you do my homework, you hear? If I catch you and that Kaffir chicken messing around, you’ll do twice as much marching as before. You are both prisoners of war and you better not forget it, man.’
Victory was mine a second time. My first conscious efforts at manipulation had been successful. It was a heady feeling as Granpa Chook and I followed the Judge to school that morning. ∗
One thing is certain in life. Just when things are going well, soon after they are certain to go wrong. It’s just the way things are meant to be.
Mrs Gerber told us that day in class that there had been an outbreak of Newcastle’s disease on the chicken farm near Merensky Dam. Her husband, the vet, had left to visit all the surrounding farms.
Even the youngest kids know what havoc a disease of any kind can cause with poultry or livestock. Of course, rinderpest and foot-and-mouth disease amongst the cattle were the worst, but every farm keeps at least fifty chickens for eggs, so Mrs Gerber’s news was met with consternation. My mother had once said that if my granpa lost all his black Orpingtons it would break his heart.
It was pretty depressing to think of my mother with her nervous breakdown in an English concentration camp knitting jumpers with funny sleeves. Knitting away with all the Boer mothers and children as she waited to starve to death or die of black water fever. Meanwhile, back on the farm, there was poor old Granpa slowly dying of a broken heart. That was, if Adolf Hitler didn’t arrive first. If he did, I knew Granpa wouldn’t even have the strength to make escape plans or drive the Model A and then what would become of me?
Maybe I could live with Nanny in Zululand? This thought cheered me up a lot. Adolf Hitler would never look for a small English person in the middle of Zululand. Inkosi-Inkosikazi would hide me with a magic spell and they wouldn’t have a hope. As for Granpa Chook, Adolf Hitler would never be able to tell an English-speaking chicken apart from all the other Kaffir chickens. I decided right there and then, when I got back to the farm I would put this excellent plan to Nanny.
From what we could gather from the Judge, who was allowed to listen to the news on Mr Stoffel’s wireless on Saturday nights, the war was going pretty badly for the English. Adolf Hitler had taken Poland, which I took to be a place somewhere in South Africa, like Zululand, but where the Po tribe lived. The Judge made it sound as though Adolf Hitler could be expected any day now in our neck of the woods.
I had no idea that South Africa was on England’s side; from where I sat the English were most definitely the local enemy. While I knew myself to be English, I regarded this as my misfortune, like being born into a poor and degenerate family.
Most of my information came from the regular war councils the Judge held behind the school shit houses. All the senior hostel boys were stormtroopers and Danie Coetzee, as head of the small kids’ dormitory, was also allowed to attend. As the official prisoners of war, Granpa Chook and I were dragged along for the purposes of interrogation and torture.
I was blindfolded and tied to the trunk of a jacaranda tree with a rope around my chest and waist, leaving my arms and legs free. This was because two of the main tortures required my hands to be free.
Most torture sessions began with the iron bar which was known as ‘Chinese torture’ after the make of the Judge’s big, cheap pocket watch, one of his most treasured possessions. I was required to hold the bar out in front of me while he timed each session, so that I would have to hold the bar up longer than the previous time before dropping it. My times were duly recorded by a kid called Boetie Van der Merwe, who was know in the Nazi Party as Stormtrooper, Timekeeper and Tallyman.
Van de Merwe was very proud of his job and would remind me at every opportunity of the minimum time allocated for the next Chinese torture session. If I failed to beat my previous time I got a severe cuff from the Judge and the six stormtroopers whose turn it was to beat me up.
The second main torture which required my hands be free was referred to as ‘shooting practice’. Every stormtrooper carried a catapult as his deadly weapon. Farm kids all have catapults for shooting birds and grow very skilled at using them. While they were not allowed to be worn openly, all the senior boys had one stashed away and they would wear these around their necks at Nazi Party meetings.
For shooting practice I was required to stretch my arms out on either side of me with my palms open and turned upwards. An empty jam tin was placed on either hand and each of the stormtroopers was allowed two shots to try to knock the tins down. The six best results for the day earned the right to beat me up on the next occasion it became necessary. As usual, Boetie Van der Merwe was the tallyman.
I must say this for those Nazis: while they hit the tins from twenty feet often enough, only once did I collect a stone which thudded into the butt of my hand. Lucky it was my left hand as I was unable to use it for several days.
Granpa Chook would fly up onto a branch of the jacaranda where he would keep a beady eye on the proceedings. He was known to the Nazi Party as Prisoner of War Kaffir Chicken Rooinek. There isn’t too much interrogation and torture you can do to a chicken. As Mevrou’s leading kitchen insect exterminator, Granpa Chook was pretty safe. Tough as the Judge was, he wasn’t willing to take Mevrou on.