A Sailor's Honour Read online

  ‘We have a problem,’ the major said. ‘A serious problem.’

  The seven men stood in a tight circle. In accordance with their unwritten rules, no one was to speak until invited to do so by their leader. ‘Comrades,’ their leader went on, ‘we have a serious problem and we have to reconsider our long-term strategy. Let me get to the point.’

  Below them Cape Town sat in glorious sunshine. Above their heads a blanket of mist started its descent over Table Mountain. They realised they would have to complete their business quickly or be trapped on the mountain. Table Mountain was the symbol of their resistance, an object which they considered as firmly and permanently planted in the soil as they were. An irony that would escape them was that their mortal enemy, General Jan Smuts, had identified it as the talisman of the country and all its people.

  The men of the Third Force stood in silence for a while. Their organisation had founded and shaped its plans around the long-term viability of apartheid. In 1942 the population figures had already been skewed against them. There were three Africans for every European. By 1955 the disparity had grown to four to one, and according to those who were able to advise on such matters, by the end of the century it would be ten or more to one.

  ‘We need to adjust our strategy,’ the major explained. ‘Hitherto we have been prepared to leave the matter in Verwoerd’s hands in the belief that he would pursue apartheid to its logical conclusion, but things are different now. Now we know that he views the current policy as an interim measure. We have intelligence that he has said privately that apartheid is the means to ensure that white and black should meet as equals at some point in the future, and that we will reach that point before the end of this century.’

  After discussion, they settled on a plan. They would launch Operation Population Control. The first phase involved exhorting white families to have more children. The second phase involved persuading black families to have fewer.

  Within a short time the two groups of children, white and black, would meet each other on the battlefields of Angola and in the burning townships of every city.

  That was the year they said goodbye to Bosveld.

  Oom Daan and his wife, tannie Francina, had no children of their own and had adopted Johann as their grandchild. Every second weekend, when other parents fetched their children from school, they would fetch Johann in their truck and he would sit snugly between oom Daan and his wife. During the short trips to and from the farm, he could feel Bosveld’s yellow eyes on the back of his neck. On the farm, Johann ran around with the farm foreman’s sons, Faantjie and Kisheni, and quickly learned to speak Sepedi.

  Oom Daan spoke Sepedi to him when two government men unexpectedly arrived on the farm one day. Johann stood watching with his friends when the Flora and Fauna government car drove away. ‘We have to take Bosveld to the zoo in Nylstroom,’ oom Daan said to the boys. ‘They say I don’t have a permit to keep him and they won’t give me one.’

  The next weekend Johann sat in tannie Francina’s place when oom Daan took Bosveld to the zoo. When the lion was coaxed onto the truck on the farm, he purred loudly, as usual, but when they turned away from the school towards Baltimore en route to Nylstroom, he became agitated. And he fought with them when they forced him into the cage the zookeeper had prepared for him. When Johann tried to shake his paw one last time, Bosveld retreated to the back of the cage and turned his back on them.

  Oom Daan didn’t speak a word during the two-hour drive back to the farm.

  High School 1959 16

  On Johann’s second day of Standard six in 1959, the corridor prefect lined the new boys up to explain the house rules and to allocate housekeeping duties to them. You sweep this part, and you clean the door handles. You make my bed and you bring me coffee from the canteen every afternoon at four. You clean the bathrooms and you have to make sure there is always paper in the toilets. The rest of you will wash the Standard nines’ and Matrics’ socks and handkerchiefs every Friday. Understand?

  What choice did the new boys have? To their eyes, the prefect was a grown man in size, voice and body hair. He even sported a rough moustache. To the youngsters whose voices had not yet broken, he was an intimidating creature, a fact he exploited to his advantage.

  Without warning, the prefect took Johann by the shirtsleeve and roughly pulled him out of the line. ‘You will make the beds of all the Matrics in this corridor,’ he said. ‘And let’s see if you still have that silly pendant.’

  Johann resisted but was powerless in the bigger boy’s grip. He felt the lion’s claw being lifted over his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s mine.’

  The prefect slapped him hard, and in the time it took Johann to fall to the floor, he realised that Spokie had returned to his life. Spokie grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and lifted him to his feet. ‘Here you do as I say. Your mother isn’t here to wipe your nose for you.’

  ‘It’s mine,’ Johann said and made a grab for the lion’s claw, but Spokie held it high above his head.

  ‘Not anymore,’ Spokie said. Holding Johann at bay with one hand, he slipped the pendant over his head with the other.

  Johann made another grab for the lion’s claw. What followed could not be described as a fight, despite the older boys’ chorus of: ‘Fight, fight!’ It was a severe beating which left the younger boy half-conscious and bleeding in the corridor outside the prefects’ room. It is true that Johann had started it, trying to take the pendant back, and that he kept at it even when he was pushed away and slapped a few times. But when he accidentally head-butted Spokie on the nose, Spokie punched him until he fell down. He crawled under the bed but was dragged out by a leg. He was kicked in the ribs until he was winded and thought he was going to die. He wanted to say that he was sorry, but in his winded state he couldn’t speak. He tried to run, but as he turned, Spokie ostrich-kicked him between the shoulder blades to help him on his way. Johann landed head first against the door jamb of the room opposite. That’s when the lights went out.

  He didn’t move. A pool of blood gathered under his head.

  For a time there was no movement in the prefects’ room. The boys who had come from their rooms to watch now held their breath. One of the new boys became hysterical and ran away screaming. His screams were fading down the corridor when the footsteps of authority arrived.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ the housemaster in charge of the corridor thundered. He was new to the school and unmarried. He had a room at the opposite end of the corridor.

  Spokie pointed at Johann’s prostrate form. ‘He was running in the corridor, sir, which is not allowed. He must have slipped and fallen.’ He turned to the new boys cowering behind him. ‘Isn’t that so?’

  They nodded enthusiastically.

  When Johann opened his eyes, he was in a room with white walls and two hospital beds. The deputy matron was leaning over him. She was wiping the blood from his face with a cloth dipped in antiseptic. The smell was overpowering and burned his nostrils and stung his eyes.

  ‘He fell in the corridor, Matron,’ he heard the teacher say.

  ‘Rubbish, Mr Steynberg. Rubbish!’

  ‘Well that’s what the prefect told me,’ Mr Steynberg said. ‘He was running in the corridor and fell.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ the matron said again. ‘You look here,’ she said. ‘His left eye is swollen shut. He has a deep cut under his cheekbone and he has a cut inside his mouth. He has bitten through his tongue and he has bruises on his chest and back.’

  ‘But—’ the teacher started. She interrupted him.

  ‘I have worked with these boys long enough to recognise the signs of a severe beating. And this is worse than I have seen in years. I’m calling the district surgeon and I’m calling the police.’

  ‘Let’s leave the police out of this, Matron,’ the head housemaster said from the door. He carried a whipping cane with him. ‘We can manage this ourselves.’

  ‘He’s going to have a scar and you’re go
ing to have to explain that to his parents,’ the matron said. ‘It’s not going to be easy to sweep this one under the carpet.’

  The doctor arrived minutes later. ‘He has broken ribs and a burst eardrum,’ he added to the list of injuries. ‘I’m calling the police.’

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ the head housemaster argued. ‘We can deal with it in-house.’ He flexed the cane.

  Through his half-shut eyes, Johann saw the doctor shake his head. ‘I’m taking him to hospital and I’m going to refer the matter to the police.’

  The head housemaster put his hand on the doctor’s arm. ‘I said we can take care of it in our own way.’

  The doctor froze. ‘Take your hand off me,’ he hissed. He pointed at Johann. ‘It’s clear what your way of taking care of the boys in your custody produces.’

  The head housemaster held his ground. ‘You’re not taking him anywhere. The matron can put in the stitches and the rest will heal naturally.’

  The doctor pointed at the cane. ‘You’re a disgrace to your profession, walking around like a guard at a death camp. Don’t imagine for a moment that I haven’t heard all about you. Now get out of my way before I lay a charge of assault against you.’

  They went to the hospital in the doctor’s car, a black Mercedes with red leather seats. A policeman with three stripes on his sleeve came the next day to take a statement from Johann.

  ‘What are you going to do with him?’ Johann asked. His tongue was swollen. He could feel stitches inside his mouth.

  ‘I’m going to arrest him and lock him up for two days. After that I have to take him before a magistrate,’ the sergeant explained. ‘But he is going to sleep in the cells tonight.’

  The sergeant’s second visit coincided with a visit from his mother. Anna Weber was still saving money for her own car. Oom Daan brought her to town to see her son in hospital and to take him home if the doctor would allow it.

  ‘She gave them hell at the school, from the headmaster down to Mr Steynberg,’ the sergeant said with a smile. ‘I don’t think they’ve ever seen a woman as angry as your mother. And I have something for you,’ he added.

  He gave Johann a brown envelope. When Johann opened it, he saw his lion’s claw. It was intact.

  ‘Don’t tell me you are still carrying Bosveld’s claw around with you,’ oom Daan said.

  ‘What do you say?’ Anna Weber asked.

  ‘Thank you, thir,’ Johann said. It would be a while before his speech would return to normal.

  The sergeant laughed and said goodbye.

  ‘I have a surprise for you,’ Anna Weber said.

  ‘What?’ Johann asked.

  ‘Not what. Who.’

  Oom Daan went to the door and called someone in. It was a handsome man in his late thirties. He had light brown hair and blue eyes. There was a scar under his eye in the same place where Johann now sported a row of stitches.

  ‘Johann, this is Werner von Schauroth, an old friend and an officer with your father on the U-boat that brought us here.’

  Von Schauroth took the boy’s hand. ‘Guten Tag,’ he said. The four of them squeezed into the cab of oom Daan’s truck, and on the two-hour drive to Swartwater, Von Schauroth told Johan the story of U-891’s last mission. Johann knew enough German, but oom Daan kept his eyes on the road and said nothing.

  ‘We were all taken off the boat while they did some alterations to the mess where the officers used to sleep in bunks stacked two or three high. When we came back on board, we found a whole section that had been isolated behind a watertight door. We were to sail without any torpedoes or the weapons crew. And we had a new commander, your father. Kapitänleutnant Karl-Heinz Weber.’

  They stopped at the farmers’ cooperative at Baltimore. Oom Daan needed seed and had ordered spares for a broken pump and the windmill which drove it. Von Schauroth was quick to help carry and load the heavy shaft for the pump. Johann followed with two new blades for the windmill.

  Von Schauroth continued his account as they rejoined the main road. ‘After that Laconia affair, it was a close thing or your father would have been executed on Hitler’s orders. But Admiral Dönitz would hear nothing of it and kept postponing the execution date until Hitler had forgotten about it.’

  ‘The Laconia?’

  Von Schauroth glanced in Anna Weber’s direction. There was a question in his eyes but she avoided them. ‘Your father was sentenced to death by Hitler after he and other U-boat commanders went to the rescue of the passengers and crew of a ship. This was against our orders, but it was a passenger ship and she had been sunk by another U-boat by mistake. There were more than a thousand Italian soldiers in the water, and women and children. We couldn’t leave them there. That was the deciding factor, the women and children. In the U-boats we didn’t make war on women and children.’

  ‘Were you there?’ Johann asked.

  Von Schauroth nodded. ‘I was the second officer.’

  ‘But what happened to my father after that?’ Johann asked.

  ‘Some bad things, and some good things,’ Von Schauroth said.

  They travelled in silence for many miles. The truck kicked up a plume of dust behind them.

  ‘What bad things?’ Johann asked.

  ‘He was taken off the boat and confined to the U-boat training academy.’

  ‘And the good things?’

  The truck rattled across a rough section of corrugations on the dirt road. Von Schauroth put his hand on the dashboard to steady himself. ‘Well, he was one of the few U-boat commanders who survived the war, and he met your mother at the Kriegsmarine’s U-boat academy.’

  Anna Weber squeezed Johann’s leg.

  ‘What were you doing in the Kriegsmarine, Mutti?’ Johann asked.

  Anna Weber turned her face to the window. The bush was lush after the summer rains and the screeching of thousands of cicadas tracked the truck’s progress through the green.

  ‘She was a medical officer,’ Von Schauroth said. ‘The most beautiful girl on the base.’

  Johann looked at his mother’s hands. They were soft and white and her nails were painted red.

  ‘There was another good thing,’ Von Schauroth said. ‘He brought your mother here, in a submarine. U-891.’

  Anna Weber kept her face turned towards the window.

  Von Schauroth continued. ‘We were supposed to take Bormann to Deutsch-West, but he disappeared somewhere in Berlin and instead we brought your mother here. The Bormann mission was ready to go and, when he didn’t arrive, your father gave the order to sail and we left. We were hunted by our own people, but by then the war had depleted our strike force so much, we never saw anyone. We set her ashore at Lüderitzbucht and my cousins fetched her from there. Didn’t you know?’

  Johann shook his head.

  ‘It’s taken me more than ten years to find her,’ Von Schauroth added. ‘She went to Cape Town and came up here and no one had her address.’

  ‘What happened to my father?’

  Von Schauroth sighed. ‘When we returned to our base, a drunken sentry shot him by mistake.’

  ‘Dead?’ Johann asked.

  Von Schauroth nodded.

  Elsewhere at this time, the Third Force suffered its first truly serious setback. Its men in parliament had ensured that the Communist Party of South Africa had been declared illegal and that its leadership – together with its allies in the African and Indian communities – had been put on trial for treason. The most direct threat to the Third Force’s vision of racial supremacy had come from the 156 men and women in the dock. But after five years on trial, the court found all the accused not guilty.

  High School 1959 17

  Six weeks after the assault, Sergeant Claassens came to fetch Johann from school and took him to the Magistrate’s Court. It was a street behind Bank Tearoom. The policeman led Johann into a large office with a red carpet and a polished wooden desk. The chief magistrate sat behind the desk. He had a leather chair that ran on castors. Behind him w
ere rows and rows of leather-bound books on shelves behind glass doors.

  There were two stinkwood riempie chairs in front of the desk. Spokie occupied one of them.

  ‘Sit down, boy,’ the magistrate said, pointing to the second chair. The nameplate on the desk read: Chief Magistrate Piet Fourie.

  Johann sat next to Spokie. He had not seen him since the incident. Johann looked around and saw two rows of seating at the back of the room. The people at the back had taken sides. In the front row immediately behind him, Johann saw his mother, oom Daan, the district surgeon and the sergeant. In the row behind them was Von Schauroth. On the other side of the room, in the front row, Johann saw an elderly couple he recognised from the days years earlier when they had brought Spokie to school. A man in a dark suit sat next to them. He held a briefcase in his lap. In the row behind Spokie’s parents Johann recognised Mr Steynberg, the head housemaster and the school principal.

  Magistrate Fourie spoke first. ‘We are here to see if we can resolve this matter without a court case. You,’ he pointed at Spokie, ‘have assaulted and robbed this boy.’ He pointed at Johann. ‘You can go to jail for that,’ he said to Spokie. ‘You have put your whole future in jeopardy. With a criminal conviction, you won’t be able to get a job in the civil service, you won’t be admitted to any university and you won’t even be able to travel overseas.’

  There was a brown file on the magistrate’s desk. He opened it and pulled a sheet from it. ‘You have been charged with assault with intent and robbery. What do you have to say?’

  Spokie turned to Johann. ‘I am very sorry and I won’t do it again.’ Spokie’s voice was trembling but the words sounded rehearsed.

  Mr Fourie looked at Johann. ‘It’s up to you now. What do you say?’

  Johann was caught by surprise and was completely overwhelmed. He wanted Spokie to be sent to jail or at least kicked out of school, but he didn’t want to be the one taking the decision. He started to cry.

  ‘I’ll speak for him, Your Worship. If you will allow me,’ Johann heard the district surgeon say.