The Power of One

“You Are More Than You Know”

Bryce Courtenay, in his autobiographical novel The Power of One, begins with a chilling and yet wonderful episode. It begins with a six year old boy. He is an English little boy. His father has been killed by a rogue elephant and his mother has gone into a sanitarium after the killing of his father.

It takes place in the late 1930s in South Africa, and that leaves the little boy to be raised by his Zulu nanny and because he is six years old and he should go to school, she ships him off to a boarding school, but the boarding school the boy finds himself in is a boarding school of all Boer boys, B-O-E-R, and the Boers and the English hate each other for very, very good reasons.

Well, when he finds out that he is the only English boy in this Boer boarding school, he begins to have a bed-wetting problem. Night after night in his anxiety and fear, he wets his bed and it is not long before the other boys find out, for they have to drag his mattress out in the morning and put it in the sun, and so the older Boer boys form a “kangaroo court”, and at night they drag him out and they tie strips of rags around his eyes, and then they have a mock trial, with a mock verdict and a mock sentencing. And since the punishment must fit the crime, they make him crouch down on the ground, where they all urinate on him. This does not happen once; it happens many times.

Finally, there is a break in the school year and the little boy goes home and falls into the arms of his Zulu nanny, and he cries and he cries and he cries and he cries and he tells her these terrible things that are happening to him at this boarding school. And she tells him to hush, that she will put the word out and the great medicine man Inkosi Inkosikazi will come and with one shake of the bleached bones of an ox, he will cure this boy of the terrible problem of this “nightwater.”

Well, the boy waits patiently, and four days later there comes down the dirt road of their farm the largest black buick the boy has ever seen. And out of it steps the oldest man the boy has ever seen, clad only in a loin-cloth and with a rug tucked under his arm. He walks over to a tree; he puts the rug down. He sits down on it. The farm hands have all gathered around in hushed silence at the great medicine man. And he looks up and he sees the boy and he says, “Boy, come here!”

And the boy comes and sits down on the rug next to the medicine man, and then the medicine man looks up at the farmhands and says, “Bring me five chickens!”

And five chickens they bring. And the medicine man takes the first chicken and he grabs it up-side the head and he tips it upside-down, and he draws a circle in the dust with the chicken. And then he sticks the beak of the chicken in the middle of the circle and the chicken falls dead asleep.

Five times the medicine man does this with five chickens. And then he goes back and he sits down on the rug next to the small boy, and leans over to him for the first time and says, “You see these people here? They think this is magic. It is not; it is a trick, and I will show you how to do it.” And then the medicine man looked up at the people and said, “Take these five chickens. Kill them, pluck them, cook them; we will eat them tonight.” And the mesmerized farmhands leave with the five chickens. And the medicine man leans down a second time to the small boy, and says, “Before I teach you the trick with the chickens, there is this unfortunate business of the night-water.”

Well, the boy’s heart began to sink, but before it could sink too fast the medicine man said, “Close your eyes,” and the boy closed his eyes. And the medicine man said, “It is night. The moon of Africa is bright. You are standing on a ledge. Beneath you there are three waterfalls. The first one plunges into a pool; it sweeps over that pool, plunges into a second pool; it sweeps over that down and plunges into a lake. And on the lake there are ten black rocks leading to a beach of white sand. Do you see it?”

The boy nodded that he did see it, and the medicine man said, “Then hear it!” And there rushed through the boy the sound of water. There was water in his mind and water in his body and water in his heart. There was water on both sides of him. There was water underneath him, water above him. And in the thunder and crash of the water that was everywhere came the voice of Inkosi Inkosikazi, the medicine man, and it said to him, “You are a young warrior. You stand on the ledge above the waterfalls of the night. You have just killed your first lion. You wear a skirt of lion-tails. You are worthy to be in the honor guard of Shaka himself. Now here’s what you must do, my little warrior. You must dive, and when you hit the first pool you will go to the bottom and you will count ’3-2-1′ on the way up and you will be swept over that pool. You will go to the second pool; you will go to the bottom. You will count ’3-2-1′ on the way up. You’ll be swept over into the lake. You will jump on the first black rock and you will count ’10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1′ to the beach of white sand. Do you understand?”

The boy nodded that he did. The medicine man said, “Then, my little warrior, dive.”

And in the imagination of his heart, the boy left the ledge. He hit the first pool, 3-2-1, swept over into the second pool, 3-2-1, swept over into the lake, 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, until he lay exhausted on the beach of white sand, with the thunder and crash of the water inside him and outside him. And once again, the voice of the medicine man returned. It said, “You have crossed the nightwater. There is nothing more to be feared. If ever you need me, come to the ledge above the waterfalls of the night, and I will be there.” Then the medicine man leaned down to the boy and said, “Open your eyes!”

The boy opened his eyes and the medicine man said, “Now, the trick with the chickens.”

The story continues in Bryce Courtenay’s own voice, only now he is a man looking back on that time: I went back to school. I never again wet my bed, but that didn’t stop them. They were Boers; I was English. Night after night they’d drag me out, but they could never make me cry. And I knew this bothered them, for I knew they had little brothers who were six years old and they knew how easy it was to make a little six year old boy cry, but they could never make me cry. For when they tied the dirty strips of rags around my eyes I would take three deep breaths, and there I was on the ledge above the waterfalls of the night, the voice of Inkosi Inkosikazi in my ears. It said, “You are a young warrior. You have just killed your first lion. You wear a skirt of lion-tails. You are worthy to be in the honor guard of Shaka himself.” And it was then I knew that the outer me was a shell to be pushed and provoked, but inside was the real me, where my tears joined the tears of all the sad peoples of all the earth, to form the three waterfalls of the night.

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