Whitethorn (30 page)

I now had Chinese martyr writing on my bum.

C
HAPTER
EIGHT

The Love of Two Good Women

THE
DOMINEE
DE JAGER was at it again because all of a sudden things were not going too smoothly for Adolf Hitler, who was meeting some opposition at long last. This seemed to upset the Great beard-chomping beetle because Hitler had decided to go to Russia instead of invading Britain and was now stuck in the snow. ‘I'm no general, you hear? But why is Adolf Hitler all of a sudden invading Russia? What has Russia done to us? The Afrikaner people have no quarrel with Russia!' he declared vehemently.

I could have told him it was because Hitler could get some oil for his tanks and stuff, and in England they've got no oil and in Russia they've got lots. Only his one big mistake was that he shouldn't have gone to get it in the winter. We'd read all about it in
Die Vaderland
that Gawie had saved from his shit squares only the week before. But, of course, you can't just stand up in church and explain to the congregation why Hitler had to go to Russia but should have gotten out before the winter came. One, the
Dominee
is too high up and a child can't say anything to him. Two, with me being English they would think I was a spy, knowing stuff like that. Three, nobody in the congregation had ever seen snow and ice, and they wouldn't know you could get so cold in Russia your toes and fingers fell off.

So the
Dominee
thundered on. ‘The sooner there's Germans marching all over Britain the better for the Afrikaner
volk.
Let the British see what it's like to have the enemy knocking on your door for a change. You go to the door and you open it and standing right in front of you is a German officer! Maybe he just wants a cup of coffee, but maybe also he wants to come and live in your house, and then you've got to wait on him hand and foot, and if you got a daughter, watch out!' The beetle started to munch his beard overtime. ‘I'm speaking from personal experience, you hear? When I was a small child it happened. One morning, knock, knock, knock, and my mother opens the door and there's an English captain who is a
ware rooinek
with red hair on the
stoep
. And what's worse, the English captain is really an Australian! Next to him is a man, an Afrikaner, who is holding a big fish!' The
Dominee
stretched out his hands so we could all see how big the fish was. I can tell you that fish was definitely a big one. But later I learned people always exaggerate about fish, even a
Dominee
. ‘It's a big barbel from the Vaal River that's got whiskers ten inches long! “The captain wants you to cook it!” the Afrikaner, who is his translator, explains. My mother shakes her head. “
Nee
,
Meneer Kaptein
, it will taste like mud. You can't eat that fish. That fish is a barbel and feeds on the river's bottom, it is no good.” The translator, who should be ashamed for working for the British, explains what my mother says about the barbel. “Cook it!” the English captain demands, going all red in the face and shaking his finger at my mother. Next thing he is living with my family, sleeping in my mother's bedroom in the bed I was born in, sleeping
lekker
under the goosefeather quilt my
ouma
made for her glory box, long before she died in the concentration camp!'

We never did hear if that Englishman ate the barbel. But afterwards we all agreed he couldn't have, because nobody, not even an Englishman, could eat such a stinking fish as the barbel. But now the
Dominee
was talking about fish he clean forgot about the Germans in Russia until it was too late, and then he made a very bad sermon message connection. After talking about the barbel-eating Englishman sleeping under his
ouma
's goosefeather quilt, he made the point that Jesus is the ‘Fisher of men'. If we are not caught hook, line and sinker by his precious gospel bait telling us to confess our sins and be saved, then we going to be condemned to eternal hellfire.

Still on the fish theme, the
Dominee
also told us how Jesus had done two miracles concerning fish. The first was when some of his disciples, who were fishermen before they met Jesus, were out fishing one day on the Sea of Galilee and they looked up and there is the Lord Jesus coming towards them and here he is walking on water! ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men,' Jesus says to them when he gets close enough for them to hear above the roar of the waves. Now, it's not every day that you're to hellangone out to sea and there's waves splashing about everywhere and it's deep water, and all of a sudden you look up and here's somebody coming over to you walking on the water with his bare feet. Next thing, he steps into the boat and his feet and the hem of his garment are not even wet. So, of course, they decide to follow him and become his disciples. You couldn't say no, even if you wanted to, with something like that happening.

The next fish miracle is when Jesus is preaching to the multitudes on the slopes of some mountain in the desert, and everyone's walked a long way to hear him preach and they've forgotten to bring any food. Except for this one man who's got a few loaves of bread and another, maybe a woman, who's got a few dead fish in a basket. ‘Bring them here,' Jesus instructs and waves his hand over the bread and suddenly there's loaves of fresh-baked bread piled up everywhere. He does the same to the fish and then there's more fish than the people can eat and it's already cooked with the bones taken out! But what I want to know is this. There's no water in the desert, right? So how come all of a sudden this woman's got fish in her basket?

Now, I suppose you're wondering what this has to do with Hitler going to Russia instead of England? Well, as far as I could work it out, it was God working in mysterious ways. The
Dominee
got himself on the subject of fish and he suddenly remembered about Russia, so he had to get back to that subject again. This was because he always liked to talk to a theme and have a ‘rounded message' that always ended up where he'd begun.

This is how he got back to Russia. He claimed that everyone could make a mistake, even Adolf Hitler, and being in Russia was definitely a mistake and he should have been in Britain. Now the
Dominee
had talked about two miracles and we had to pray for two more miracles. A walking-on-water miracle and a feeding-the-multitudes-bread-and-fish miracle, but it all had to happen in Russia. The
Dominee
pointed out to the congregation that it was a well-known fact that snow, that you couldn't walk on or drive tanks in it, could easily turn into ice that you
could
walk on and drive tanks over. That's what we had to pray for, snow turning into ice in Russia.

So that was how he turned the Jesus-walking-on-water miracle back into Russia. But the feeding of the multitudes wasn't so easy. First he said aeroplanes could land on the ice to bring in flour and stuff from Germany to bake bread. Then the
Dominee
made his big mistake. ‘With ice you can see where the rivers run,' he explained. ‘You look through the ice and there's a river called the Volga running underneath your feet, so you drill a hole and there's lots of fish you can catch. The Eskimos do it all the time,' he explained. He leaned back from his pulpit. ‘A person as clever and resourceful as a German soldier would soon be eating all the fish he could catch,' he concluded, happy that he'd finally pulled Russia, Britain, English captains with red hair, his
ouma
's quilt, two fish miracles and back to Russia together all in the one message.

Even to me this fishing through a hole in the ice didn't sound too practical, especially as, according to
Die Vaderland,
lots of the Germans were still wearing their summer uniforms and thousands of them were freezing to death, and everyone knows ice is even colder than snow. So, by praying for an ice miracle instead of snow we were condemning even more German soldiers to death. As for German soldiers being resourceful and catching all the fish they could eat through a hole in the river, in my opinion all the fish they would catch was none! But, like I said, you couldn't argue with someone as high up as the
Dominee
. As far as I was concerned it was a bullshit sermon and he'd just done it so he could get back to Russia and have his ‘rounded message'. Later, when Gawie and me were talking about this Gawie said, ‘
Ag
, it doesn't look as though you're going to go to Madagascar,
Voetsek
.' He added graciously, ‘I'm glad, man, because now we can grow up together and always be
maats
.'

I was naturally very pleased to hear this, but a person can't just go around showing your feelings, so I said sympathetically, ‘But now you won't get your gold and diamond mine from a dead Jew.'

‘
Ag
, it doesn't matter, man, I'll get one on my own because when I grow up I have to be rich.'

‘And have a hundred pounds,' I remembered.

‘
Ja
, maybe even more,' he said.

That night, as I lay in bed in the dark, I hugged myself. This was because Britain was beginning to look like they were going to win the war because the Americans were coming in to help, which was very disappointing for a lot of people around the place. But for me, at least two good things would happen. I wasn't going to starve to death and then get sent to Madagascar, and I now had Gawie who I could grow up with, and who would always be my friend. Maybe if I gave him my ten shillings we could have the gold and diamond mine together.

You see I still hadn't spent my ten shillings because every time I did something with the money things would go badly wrong. So I kept it between the pages of the red book because of all the books I now owned nobody would ever look inside that one, not even Gawie. Not that I didn't trust him. By now I was able to memorise whole chapters and knew all about how, under English colonial jurisprudence, which is another name for law, magistrates had to deal with disputes between the indigenous natives and
Boer
burghers in the courts in Natal and the Cape of Good Hope in 1812. Most of it had to do with cattle, grazing rights and punishment because
Boere
could no longer have slaves, so black people, who could now only be servants and farm workers, had some rights for a change. But I don't know if they still have them here in the Transvaal. Only Sergeant Van Niekerk, or someone like him, would know for sure.

Now, I'm afraid I have to take you back to church. Because if you think of all the other things the British did that upset the
Dominee
, this thing was the worst ever. The funny thing was that it didn't even have anything to do with the Boer War or what the British did to the Afrikaners or his grandmother's goosefeather quilt or even about the war that was going on. It was all about a book. The book that got him
really, really
angry was called
The Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin.
Dominee
De Jager didn't say how he got hold of it or even if he'd ever read it, but judging by what he said about it, a preacher wouldn't be allowed by God to read a book like this. I would later find out that this particular book had been around longer than my red book. The way the
Dominee
talked in church, he made it sound like it was the latest wicked thing done by an Englishman.

‘This morning we going to talk about wicked books,' he said, opening his sermon. ‘Ungodly books that serve the Antichrist and are written with a pen that's been dipped in the devil's scarlet ink. Before I tell you about this particular devil-written book I want you to know that Adolf Hitler himself knows about the existence of wicked books, and has done his best to stamp them out in Germany. This is yet another sign showing that deep underneath he is a God-fearing man and a good Lutheran.' He stopped and opened the large Bible resting on the pulpit. ‘Here in the Bible it is clear as daylight, God tells us about words,
good
words. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was
good
!” ' he read. ‘You can't get plainer than that, only
good
words can be tolerated, you hear?' He slammed the Bible closed and the sound of the covers coming together echoed through the church, then he patted the gold-embossed front cover. ‘Never a truer word has been said,' he declared. ‘In this book, the Good Book, are all the words we need to lead a fulfilling and God-fearing life. But Satan knows how powerful and everlasting God's word is and that he can never write the book of evil that can begin to match this book of good. Make no mistake, the devil is very clever. He has a satanic plan. If he can't write one big book of evil that's the opposite to God's good book, then he puts a little evil here, a few poisoned words there, until the world is filled with evil books. Everywhere you look it's evil books. A person has to think before they read a book and ask themself, “Is this the work of the devil or not?” Maybe you are halfway through a book and it's going along nicely when all of a sudden buried there in the middle is the devil's work. An act of fornication is suddenly planted in the pages in front of your very eyes! A blasphemy against the teachings of God appears. That's why the Führer is so clever. In Germany he got Herr Joseph Goebbels to read all the books.
Magtig
! What a clever man is this Joseph Goebbels. He can smell a degenerate book, even if it's hidden in a whole library! When he discovers the evil in them Adolf Hitler takes that book and puts it on a big pile of books and burns them in the city square, where everyone can see it happening. In one burning they burnt 20 000 books! Can you imagine that? Twenty thousand bits of evil and filth that the devil has planted in those pages, and that's only the beginning. They had to do it again a bit later because the evil books started piling up again. The books were by Jews and Bolsheviks, Anarchists and Roman Catholics – all the terrible filth cleansed by the fire of truth and the smoke of righteousness!'