The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay Read Free Book Online Page A

under the rattan seat of the chair and realized in alarm that Mevrou had pissed in her pants. I think she must have been too upset to notice it herself. I wondered how many strokes pissing in your pants would earn in her book. When she had recovered somewhat, she pointed a trembling finger at Granpa Chook.
    â€œYou are right, Pisskop. That is a good chicken. He can stay. But he has to earn his keep,” she gasped. Then she seemed to become aware of what had happened beneath the chair. “Go now,” she said. Grabbing the cloth from my hand, she pointed to the door.
    And that’s how Granpa Chook came to do kitchen duty. Every day after breakfast he checked every last corner in the hostel kitchen for creepy-crawlies of every description. The toughest damn chicken in the world had survived. He had beaten the executor by adapting perfectly, and we were safely together again.
    The weeks and then a couple of months went by. I had become slave to the Judge. In return for being at his constant beck and call, I was more or less left to my own devices. The odd cuff behind the head or a rude push from an older kid was about all I had to endure. Things were pretty good, really. If the Judge needed me he would simply put two fingers to his mouth and give one of his piercing whistles, and Granpa Chook and I would come running.
    Granpa Chook was now under the protection of Mevrou, although he still needed to be constantly on the alert. Farm kids just can’t help chucking stones at kaffir chickens. He would cluck around the playground during lessons, hunting for grubs. The moment the recess bell went he would come charging over to my classroom, skidding to a halt in the dust and cackling his anxiety to be with me again.
    No class existed for my age, and so I had been placed with the seven-year-old kids, all of whom were still learning to read. I had been reading in English for at least a year so that the switch to reading Afrikaans wasn’t difficult, and I was soon the best in the class. Yet I quickly realized that survival means never being best at anything except being best at nothing, and I soon learned to minimize my reading skills, appearing to pause and stumble over words that were perfectly clear to me.
    Mediocrity is the best camouflage known to man. Our teacher, Miss du Plessis, wasn’t anxious for a five-year-old rooinek to shine in a class of knot-headed Boers. She was happy enough to put my poor results down to my inability to grasp the subtlety of the Afrikaans language as well as to my being the youngest in the class, whereas I already spoke Zulu and Shangaan and, like most small kids, I found learning a new language simple enough.
    It became increasingly hard for the other kids to think of me as being different when no visible or audible differences separated us. Except, of course, for my hatless snake; but even this, like a kid with a birthmark or a little finger missing, started to go unnoticed. I was becoming the perfect stick insect.
    And then, on September 3, 1939, Neville Chamberlain finally and sadly concluded that Herr Hitler was not a gentleman, not to be trusted, and not open to negotiation. That Britain, having let Czechoslovakia down thoroughly, couldn’t face the embarrassment of doing the same thing to Poland and so found it necessary to declare war on Germany. The new headmaster had arrived.
    At lunch in the hostel dining hall, the old headmaster with the drinking problem addressed us. He stood, swaying slightly, both hands holding the edge of the table. Then, picking up a knife, he thumped it on the table with the handle. “Silence!” he roared. Whereupon Miss du Plessis, lips pursed, rose quickly, and left through the swinging doors. The old headmaster seemed not to notice. Dropping the knife onto the table, he started to talk in a very loud voice, as though he were addressing hundreds of people. “Today England has declared war on Germany!” He paused to gauge the