Are we in or outside of the Asylum?

 A CHAPTER FROM MARK ROPER'S NOVELLA, TWO FEET.

The Eastern Cape Government School is situated alongside the Eastern Cape Government Lunatic Asylum.

I have only just realised this because, now that I walk with bare feet, I am left alone to enjoy my break-time. I am, momentarily, ignored by the over-aged for their class farm boys.

The smell of the long-drop will no longer bring tears to my eyes and my under-teenage backside will no longer be booted, and I will not be forced to travel in the spinning innards of a garbage can.

I walk the earth as they do.

I am a fledgling member of the barefoot club.

I now walk with bare feet upon the same, drought stricken Kikuyu grass that the over-age for his class farm boy they call Pisskop does. I can see Pisskop now on the playing field as he selects a team to play touch rugby with. Pisskop is fourteen and is the hairiest bastard in the school. Pisskop has shown everyone his pubic hairs. That is why he is called Pisskop. He also owns a .22 rifle, and they say he can shoot a hovering Kestrel out of the sky three-times-out-of-three. That’s a lot of hovering Kestrels to die in one day I wanted to say, but I did not for fear of having my head forced into the long drop.

Pisskop’s feet are ingrained with the colour of the earth; red. He does not wash. When he gets on the school bus every morning, he is always scratching his groin or picking at his feet. I look out of the window of the bus trying not to look at Pisskop because he gets angry if I look at him.

But I am happy to walk the same earth as Pisskop because I am left alone to my own devices.

Around me the game of touch rugby is being played. Dust is being raised off the barren field by the players' naked feet and there is a lot of shouting and the occasional sound of a wet thump as the leather clad ball is kicked high up and over.

On the other side of the high, wire fence that separates the school, is the lunatic asylum. This, it seems, is common knowledge. I can see an inmate sitting on a fallen, blue gum branch. Behind him is the shape of the Government built asylum. It has a corrugated tin roof that is painted red and has a long veranda. There are iron bars across the windows behind which I can see the faint glimmer of mosquito mesh. I can see other pyjama clad inmates roaming about on the veranda. Some are not roaming at all. They are simply standing as if they are waiting for something or somebody.

There is a bed on the veranda but no-one lies on its black striped, piss stained mattress.

There is a smell of boiled cabbage and human shit wafting in the breeze; a smell that not even the scent of the nearby blue gum trees can defeat.

The inmate sitting on the fallen branch is pretending to be a tea-pot.

The game of touch rugby has turned into a brawl, and I watch Meneer Gerber, who teaches Judo, Hygiene, Mathematics, English, Geography, Science and Divinity, weigh in with his cane and the boys, including Pisskop, scatter leaving the main culprit at the mercy of Meneer Gerber. The Culprit tries to get to his feet. Already his nose is bloody. Meneer Gerber gives the Culprit two quick strokes with his cane across the back of his legs and the third somewhere across his spine because he’s trying to turn away and run.

“Are you blerry stupid, man, or what!?” Meneer Gerber shouts at the bloody nosed, now goose-stepping Culprit. “Answer me! Hey!?”

“Nee, Meneer!” (No, Sir)

“You are blerry stupid!”

“Ja, Meneer!” (Yes, Sir)

Meneer Gerber walks away, already reaching for his pipe that he always carries in the pocket of his khaki coloured safari-suit along with a copy of a Superman comic that he reads to himself when he’s meant to be teaching us.

The Culprit wipes his bloody nose and stands alone on the barren playing field. He is rubbing his legs and wincing against the pain of Meneer Gerber’s bamboo cane. Pisskop and the other children have wandered away.

“What the blerry Hell you looking at, Rooinek!?”The Culprit shouts at me.

I look away.

I am a Rooinek, a red neck, because I speak English and during the Boer War all the English were called Rooineks. This is because the African sun burnt their pale skin which was from England, where there is not much sun at all, a rose red.

The inmate has his arms pointed over his head. Slowly he bends from the waist, dips, and pours. In a semi-circle, one cup, then two, then a third and a fourth. Then back to the first cup.

I wonder what blend of tea he thinks he is pouring.

Meneer Gerber is the only teacher that speaks English. That is why he teaches only the Rooineks of which I am one. I think there are less than thirty in the school. The Rooinek class consists of students of all ages: eight to twelve years old. Most are the children of farmers whose forefathers came on the ships in the 1820’s, but I think Max’s parents own the cafe where you can buy bread already sliced, so he is not the son of a farmer. Meneer Gerber is a knowledgeable teacher. During every lesson he makes us read a chapter from a textbook whilst he smokes his pipe and reads a Marvel Comic book which is usually a story about Superman.

I wonder if the inmate at the Eastern Cape Lunatic Asylum also serves sugar and milk with the tea that he is pouring.

Near the end of the class, Meneer Gerber will occasionally ask us questions on the chapter we have just read. There are usually twenty questions, sometimes less. If we get less than sixty-percent right, Meneer Gerber calls you to the front of the class, and he canes you. Usually it is three or four strokes across the backside, or he gestures for you to put out your hands, palms up and touching, and canes you there. This is the most painful. Especially if you need to continue writing with your pencil a few minutes later.

I wonder for whom the inmate is pouring tea.

Meneer Gerber does not allow any questions to be asked about any subject, especially Divinity. This is the only subject we do not have a text book about because Meneer Gerber can pretty much recite anything he wants from memory when it comes to stories about Jesus and God and Mary and Joseph and Moses. That is why I wrote earlier that he was a clever teacher.

I wonder why the inmate smiles the way he does as he pours his tea. It is a slight smile, almost soft as if he is being tickled by a feather. It is the smile I think, of a sleeping child. It is the same smile the Herd boy wears on his face when he is smoking that tobacco that has a seriously sweet smell.

Meneer Gerber has told us eight to thirteen year old Rooineks that we are all no better than Judas because of what we did to the Boer children and women during the Boer war. Meneer Gerber says it was we Rooineks that tied the women and children to the front of the trains so the brave Boers would not use dynamite to blow up the train line. Meneer Gerber says it was we Rooineks who built the first concentration camp and not the Germans. He insists that we Rooineks will always walk with guilty souls under the eyes of God and that because it is God’s Will, most of us will be cast out to sea before we become men and that we will spend eternity questioning our guilt.

I wish I can, but I am afraid to, ask Meneer Gerber the question about who created God and who was God’s father, but we are not allowed to ask questions, especially in Divinity class.

The inmate has stopped pouring his tea as I hear the school bell ring. He now sits with his hands folded in his lap. He looks calm. As if he is waiting for something or somebody.

Or maybe he is simply waiting for the kettle to boil.

 I wonder, dying father, as you rest on that thin bed with the rusty springs, listening to the creaking of the tin roof above and the distant cry of a child, if you would have had the answers to my questions.

I wonder how you would have answered those questions.

Would you have sat me on your lap and smiled as I asked my question?

Would you have felt proud even if my question was a stupid one?

Would you have been impatient with my youthful curiosity?

I wonder what questions you ask yourself now as you await the afternoon visit from the Indian doctor from Calcutta and the nurse from Abuja, Nigeria.

I think, as the flickering flame of the paraffin lamp beside your bed attracts a disorientated moth, you are asking the same question that I feared to ask Meneer Gerber.