Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur - Страница 78

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Yet by the end of the first week Manfred had subtly rearranged the pecking order amongst the perman younger members of the household. He had quelled the Bierman girls first furtive but concerted attempts at mockery with a steady implacable stare from his yellow eyes, and they retreated in twittering consternation.

Over the school books it was different. His cousins were all dedicated scholars, with the benefit of a lifetime of enforced study. As Manfred grimly applied himself to the tome of German grammar and Melckes Mathematics for Secondary Schools, their smug self-satisfied smiles at his floundering replies to Aunt Trudi's catechism were all the incentive he needed.

I'll show them, he promised himself, and he was so committed to the task of catching and overhauling his cousins that it was days before he became aware of how the Bierman girls were victimizing little Sarah. Their cruelty was refined and secretive; a jibe, a name, a mocking face; calculated exclusion from their games and laughter; sabotage of her domestic chores, a soot stain on garments Sarah had just ironed, rumpled linen on a bed she had just made, grease marks on dishes she had washed; and vicious grins when Sarah was chastised for laziness and negligence by Aunt Trudy who was only too pleased to perform this godly duty, with the back of a hairbrush.

Manfred caught each of the Bierman girls alone. Held them by the pigtails and looked into their eyes from a range of a few inches while he spoke in a soft measured voice that hissed with passion and ended - and don't run and tell tales to your mother, either. Their deliberate cruelty ended with dramatic suddenness, and under Manfred's protection Sarah was left severely alone.

At the end of that first week, after the fifth church service of a long, tedious Sunday, one of the cousins appeared in the doorway of the tool-shed where Manfred was stretched on his bed with his German grammar.

My pa wants to see you in his study. And the messenger wrung one hand in a parody of looming disaster.

Manfred soused his short-cropped hair under the tap and tried to brush it flat in the splinter of mirror wedged above his bed. It immediately sprang up again in damp spikes and he gave up the effort and hurried to answer the summons.

He had never been allowed into the front rooms of the pastory. They were sacrosanct, and of these the dominie's

study was the holy of holies. He knew from warnings, repeated by his cousins with morbid relish, that a summons to this room was always associated with punishment and pain. He trembled on the threshold, knowing that Sarah's nightly visits to the tool-shed had been discovered, and he started wildly at the bellow that answered his timid knock, then pushed the door open slowly and stepped inside.

Uncle Tromp stood behind the sombre stinkwood desk, leaning on clenched fists that were placed in the centre of the blotter. Come in, Jong. Shut the door. Don't just stand there! he roared and dropped heavily into his chair.

Manfred stood before him, trying to form the words of repentance and atonement, but before he could utter them, Uncle Tromp spoke again.

Well, Jong, I have had reports of you from your aunt. His tone was at odds with his ferocious expression. She tells me that your education has been sadly neglected, but that You are willing and seem to be applying yourself. Manfred sagged with relief so intense that he had difficulty following the long exhortation that followed. We are the underdogs, long. We are the victims of oppression and Milnerism. Manfred knew about Lord Milner from his father; the notorious English governor and opponent of Afrikanderdom under whose decree all children who spoke the Afrikaans language in school were forced to wear a dunce's cap with the legend I am a donkey, I spoke Dutch inscribed upon it. There is Only one way that we can overcome our enemies, Jong. We have to become cleverer and stronger and more ruthless than they are. The Trumpet of God became so absorbed by his own words, that he lifted his gaze to the elaborate patterns of the fancy plastered ceiling and his eyes glazed over with a mixture of religious and political fanaticism, leaving Manfred free to glance around him furtively at the over-furnished room.

Bookshelves covered three walls, all of them stacked with religious and serious tomes. John Calvin and the authors of the Presbyterian form of church government predominated, though there were works of history and philosophy, law and biography, dictionaries and encyclopaedia and shelves of hymns and collected sermons in High Dutch, German and English.

The fourth wall, directly behind Uncle Tromp's desk, carried a gallery of photographs, stern ancestors in Sunday finery in the top row and then, below them, devout congregations or learned members of synod, all featuring amongst them the unmistakable likeness of Tromp Bierman - a gradually maturing and ageing succession of Tromps, from cleanshaven and bright-eyed youth to bearded leonine maturity in the front row.

Then, quite incongruously and startlingly, a framed and yellowing photograph, the largest of them all and situated in the most prominent position, depicting a young man stripped to the waist, wearing full-length tights, and about his middle a magnificent belt, gleaming with engraved silver buckles and medallions.

The man in the photograph was Tromp Bierman aged no more than twenty-five, cleanshaven, his hair parted in the middle and plastered flat with brilliantine, his powerful body marvellously muscled, his clenched fists held before him, crouching in the classic stance of the pugilist. A small table in front of him held a treasure of glittering cups and sporting trophies. The young man smiled out of the photograph, strikingly handsome, and in Manfred's eyes, impossibly dashing and romantic.

You are a boxer, he blurted out, unable to contain his wonder and admiration, and the Trumpet of God was cut off in mid-blast. The great shaggy head lowered, the eyes blinking as they readjusted to reality and then swivelling to follow Manfred's gaze.

Not just a boxer, said Uncle Tromp. But a champion.

Light heavyweight champion of the Union of South Africa. He looked back and saw the expression on Manfred's face, and his own expression warmed and melted with remembrance and gratification.

Did you win all those cups, and that belt? I surely did, Jong.

I smote the Philistines hip and thigh. I struck them down in their multitudes. Did you only fight Philistines, Uncle Tromp? They were all Philistines, Jong. As soon as they stepped into the ring with me they became Philistines and I fell upon them without mercy, like the hammer and the sword of the Almighty. Tromp Bierman lifted his clenched fists in front of him and shot out a swift tattoo of punches, firing them across the desk, stopping each blow only inches from Manfred's nose.

I made my living with these fists, jong. All corners at ten pounds a time. I fought Mike Williams and put him down in the sixth, the great Mike Williams himself. He grunted as he weaved and boxed in his chair Ha! Ha! Left! Right!

Left! I even thrashed the black Jephta, and I took the title from Jack Lalor in 1916. I can still hear the cheers now as Lalor hit the canvas. Sweet, my Jong, so very sweet, he broke off, and replaced his hands in his lap, his expression becoming dignified and stern once again. Then your Aunt Trudi and the Lord God of Israel called me from the ring to more important work. And the gleam of battle lust faded regretfully from Uncle Tromp's eyes.

Boxing and being champion, that would be the most important thing for me, Manfred breathed, and Tromp's gaze focused thoughtfully upon him. He looked him over carefully from the top of his cropped head to his large but well-proportioned feet in battered velskoen.

YOU want to learn to fight? He dropped his voice, and glanced at the door, a conspiratorial gesture.

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