English for Life Grade 12 Learner’s Book Home Language. Lynne Southey

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СКАЧАТЬ would be able to recall his ‘punishments’ and ‘lessons’ in a light-hearted, positive spirit, instead of with the bitterness of victims. Ripeness had surely endowed them with the same genial balance that Felix now felt he enjoyed.

      In those days, however, his outlook had been as distorted and narrow as any. It was as though, somehow, he had remained fixed for months and years in the after-effects of his first fright from Willem. As a new boy, he’d been jerked awake one night by the suffocating pressure of a heavy hand clapped over his nose and mouth while the dark simmered with giggling. While he kicked and squirmed, Willem muttered in his ear, as though giving some kindly advice, ‘Suffocation … You shouldn’t of told anybody this is what you scared of.’

      He had led a gang of pyjamaed raiders from upstairs to give the smaller boys’ dormitory a little skrik, just for fun, just to remind everyone who was boss. But the shock had left Felix unnerved and bitter. In the shallow soil of his inexperience he had, after that, rooted an unrealistic tree of heroic righteousness. He conscientiously hated Willem with the abhorrence of a Round Table knight for villainy. He cherished dreams of revenge; and meanwhile, whenever it seemed possible to do so, he regarded it as an honour to foil the bully.

      That was why, when he had seen him swinging that pigeon-chested boy by his ankles and heard the thump that came each time his skull bounced on the floor, he had burst noisily into tears and created so much surprise – and perhaps it had never before happened that one boy cried because of something that was being done to another – that Willem had stopped what he was doing and turned to growl, ‘What the blerry hell’s the matter with you …? Shut your bek or I’ll donner you,’ before stomping out the common-room.

      And then there was Basil the Catholic boy with the good singing voice who slept in the bed next to Felix’s in the downstairs dormitory. When Willem had wanted to push Basil in his wheel-chair around the building to the quiet, hidden part of the lawn, and then to undo the hank of rope he always had hanging from his Scout belt and fold it into a thick lash, and then to have one of his henchmen take Basil out of the wheelchair and place him on all fours on the grass, and then to … When Willem announced that intention to his justice committee, Felix found that he had to intervene. He came out with, ‘No, Willem, don’t give him lashes. He’s weak, and you might damage him seriously.’

      ‘What the hell you talking about? You shut up. He’s got to be punished.’

      ‘Yes, sure. But Willem, listen, I know what … Just let us tell him that on Wednesday after supper you are going to take him there and do that …’

      ‘What you mean?’ Willem demanded. ‘He’s got to have his punishment. There’s got to be no stealing from lockers.’

      Yes I know. But he will be punished.’ And then Felix explained how they would let Basil wait three days in suspense, and how at the end of that time, on Wednesday after supper, they would have him wheeled out to that hidden part of the lawn as though that were the time for it, and how only then Willem would tell him that he had been punished enough.

      ‘That won’t teach him not to steal.’

      ‘Oh yes, it will,’ Felix pointed out. ‘It will be even worse than the other.’

      Willem looked at him suspiciously. ‘But listen here,’ he growled, ‘I’ll break your blerry neck if you tell him we not really going to punish him. Hoor jy?’ Then he told someone to go and fetch Basil into his presence.

      The reason for Felix’s sudden promotion to Willem’s counsels was that it was his locker that had been robbed. It was his purse with his one-and tenpence in it that had disappeared. He had hunted for it and told the boys of his dormitory. The word had got to Willem, their policeman, judge and executioner, and he had summoned all the boys into the common room and commanded them to own up, and in the usual way had been met with a sheepish silence. Then he had ordered a search of all downstairs lockers. It was fruitless, but afterwards the purse had been found under Basil’s mattress.

      The recovery of the purse satisfied Felix, but of course it also meant the finding of a culprit, and that demanded Willem’s judicial attention. ‘There’s got to be no stealing from lockers,’ he proclaimed. ‘Anyone who steals form lockers has got to be severely punished.’

      Basil, the dormitory’s songbird, omitted his usual ritual of singing softly to his roommates after lights-out that night. In fact he remained very quiet during the whole of those three days leading to Wednesday evening. He sat drooping in his wheelchair, bothering to drive himself only when and where he was compelled to. His eyes avoided every face, and his answers to anyone who addressed him were short and absent.

      When Felix saw that no one else was nearby he came close and said, ‘Listen, Basil, don’t be anxious about what is going to happen on Wednesday. Believe me, you don’t have to worry about it. I …’ Basil gave a start, thrust out his trembling lower lip, glared for a moment, then turned his head aside, without answering a word, and began to propel himself away. It was the same the other two or three times that Felix tried to pass him a hint about the real state of affairs. ‘Look, about old Willem and Wednesday after supper, you don’t have to …’ But each time a surge of blind fear and anger made it impossible for Basil to take in the comforting news.

      On Wednesday at sunset when he was wheeled round the building to the hidden part of the lawn his face was very pale. And it became even paler when Willem said to him, ‘Nou ja, boykie, you in for your punishment now,’ and lifted him out of his wheelchair and set him down on all fours on the grass, then ordered a hanger-on to hold Basil steady while he got ready. He undid the hank of cord on his belt, folded it to the right length for the lash, and tested it noisily two or three times on his hand. But Basil’s features retained that greenish shade even after he had been lifted back into his wheelchair and Willem had announced to him that he had been punished enough, and explained, ‘But, hoor jy, Basiltjie, next time you won’t get off like this if I ever hear you been stealing again. I know you always praying, but that’s not gonna help you. There’s got to be no stealing from lockers.’

      While he was giving each of the little justice committee a smile of gratitude and relief Basil’s cheeks remained pale, and immediately he was done he hung his head. As soon as he could suppose that no one was watching, Felix saw him cross himself and mutter something with shaking lips. That night again there were no songs in the dormitory after lights out. Basil had climbed into bed and gone to sleep very early.

      Looking back on it all from the vantage of his perspective on Willem Prinsloo, Felix saw how a similarly broader vision might have opened Basil to happier possibilities. Instead of being so shocked and angry, so damaged because he had let himself be terrified, Basil might at least have relished the relief of his reprieve. And he might have taken a little comfort from the realisation that after all Willem was not absolutely and uncontrollably dangerous. He might even have appreciated a kind of joke in the charade he had been through. The lesson Willem had intended might have been the least of what he had learnt about life that evening in the hidden corner of the lawn. And he would have given that half-hour after lights out to singing, to more exuberant singing than usual. And might, out of something between mockery and gratitude, have sent someone upstairs with a note to Willem inviting him to come down in his pyjamas and listen to the recital.

      At that time nothing would have been stranger to Felix than the idea of Basil reacting in any such way. The victim’s restricted vision was equally his own. Indeed, his perspective on Willem was even narrower and gloomier than Basil’s and everyone else’s. He was on their side and against Willem. He even felt, as perhaps the favourite subject of his attentions, that he was secretly their leader against the tyrant. In some way it was left to him to exact retribution for all his crimes. He dreamed of a distant day when they would be men and Willem СКАЧАТЬ