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 gathers a
team to play touch rugby. 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 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 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment