African 4 - Whitethorn by Bryce Courtenay

Author:Bryce Courtenay [Courtenay, Bryce]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781743109373
Published: 2011-05-20T04:16:38+00:00

BOOK

TWO

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Love Thine Enemy

IT SEEMS TO ME that a child’s past can be one of two things: a generally pleasant experience roughly summed up as childhood; or a graveyard of past happenings, the fatal emotional accidents that occur in the process of growing up without love. Too many emotional tombstones existed for me in Duiwelskrans, and the road to this cemetery of the psyche was paved with loneliness stones. Not only the murder of Mattress and the death of Tinker, but also the days, months and years of accumulated unhappiness. Mevrou’s acerbic voice constantly undermining my fragile confidence. Waking up to a thousand mornings of half-jack misery, and with it the greedy presence of the air-scything sjambok. Meneer Prinsloo’s windmilling arms grinding out self-righteousness, hypocrisy, hurtfulness and constant God-bothering. The incident at the big rock where Fonnie du Preez and Pissy Vermaak were involved. The prevailing presence of the Dominee’s vitriolic hatred of my kind that seemed contained in the air I breathed. The book-burning inspired by his fist-thumping-pulpit and right-wing dogma. Doctor Dyke’s disregard for our pain and the sense of worthlessness his horse pliers provoked in us as he mutilated our laughter. The endless humiliations of Rooinek and Voetsek and the constant need to lie in order to survive. Once my soul had escaped this umbrageous mountain town it couldn’t ever return.

Anyway, enough of that. I’d been a general alert on the wireless and now all the papers wanted the story of the boy and his dog. It was even printed in Die Vaderland, so maybe one of the kids at The Boys Farm would be about to wipe his bum and there we’d be, Tinker and me, being famous on a shit square.

Sergeant Van Niekerk took me up the high mountains to the waterfall, where we buried Tinker under the giant tree. The picnic had only been one day in her life but it was the best one. At first I thought about burying her under the big rock, but that held too many sad memories. If Tinker couldn’t go to heaven then she shouldn’t be buried among the whitethorn with the sad memories, or near people that were not always nice. The waterfall, white and clean and eternal, was as good a place as heaven could possibly be. If she wanted to bark, then the kloofs and kranses, the deep valleys, canyons and high buttresses, would carry the echo for miles and miles, and the herd boys would swear among themselves that it was the roar of the lioness Mattress always claimed her to be.

Anyway, when it all came out in the papers, Miss Phillips, who had a bit of Auntie in her when it came to persuading people, went to see the headmaster. He ummed and ahhhed a bit, but with a letter added from Meneer Van Niekerk, he eventually agreed I could come back. So that’s how I got my first bit of education.

The war came to an end in early May and Miss Phillips married her colonel and became Mrs Hammond.

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