1. One For Gcina
THE LIFE OF A SEVENTY-PERCENTER
One For Gcina
I think of THE LIFE OF A SEVENTY-PERCENTER as my autobiography rather than my history. In my own definition, in addition to pure history, an autobiography must include reflection on philosophy and belief-systems, in fact everything that goes to reveal who I am beneath the skin. Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine) wrote his history/autobiography and it is published under the name of “The Confessions Of St. Augustine” which is correct because the term ‘confess’ does not only mean an owning up to one’s sins but an honest statement of everything that one is in reality. My autobiography must also then include what I did with things that happened to me, or things that I did, which later affected my thinking and the course of my life. Some of these things I have worked into short stories where the actual event is mixed in with some fictional fantasising (fantasising described in the dictionary as “indulging in dreaming about something desired”). The process, I suppose, is therapeutic in supplying a better outcome to the event than that which actually transpired, seeing oneself acting differently, acting in a more noble manner, if only the experience could be repeated.
I treated the event in which Gcina nearly drowned, while I ran away bewildered and not knowing what to do, in a short story. I called it “One For Gcina”. In the story, the facts are altered as required for the process of narrative, and Maxwell is, of course, my alter ego, the fantastical me, and the “I” is more like the real me. Here it is:
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One For Gcina.
Maxwell was standing by himself a little back from the others when I arrived at the river. He nodded ‘hello’ and the two of us stood in silence, each occupied with his own thoughts, as we watched the flooding waters. Maxwell had no close friend apart from me. We were bosom pals, and I enjoyed his company immensely even though much of our time together was spent like this, with few words passing between us. Other people saw him as ‘odd’. They thought he was aloof, even a little snooty. Even at school, he was seldom seen in any group of boys chatting in the playground. He didn’t fit in with the sporting crowd because he was not much good at any sport. Not that he wasn’t strong — he was that alright. Built like a weight-lifter, and as powerful as an ox, he could have excelled at rugby and any other sport where muscle and stamina counted, but he seemed to be hesitant, unsure of himself. With it all, Maxwell was brilliant, always top of the class, which may have accounted for any antipathy toward him.
Perhaps I understood Maxwell because I knew something about him that no one else did, or else had forgotten: when Maxwell was just five-years old he had a playmate from among the children of the farm workers outside the village. Maxwell and Gcina (the name means ‘Last One’) spent many happy hours together until tragedy struck. They were making their way across a wetland when Gcina, without warning, fell face-down in the marshy ground and lay there making no attempt to get up. Scared and not knowing what to do, Maxwell ran away. He met Gcina’s mother on the way, told her through tears and trembling lips what had happened, and continued running all the way home. When Gcina’s mother arrived at the spot, he was dead, having drowned in the shallow water. Maxwell learned later that Gcina was subject to epileptic fits, but that did not help him with his feelings of guilt, and the awareness, even in later life, that he had failed dismally in an emergency.
Maxwell finished his schooling and went on to University to study Science and Maths, after which, to everyone’s surprise, he returned to take up a teaching position in our local school. I had stayed on in the village, after matriculating with a mediocre pass-mark, to work as an assistant in a general dealer’s shop, so I was pleased to have Maxwell back in town to continue our own association and friendship.
Our village was situated at a point where two rivers converged. The rivers, no more than streams in the drier season, were the playground for the villagers who spent leisure hours swimming and paddling, meandering along hiking trails, or picnicking in favoured tree-lined stretches on the banks. Upstream towards the mountains where the rivers have their source, the anglers among us spent long hours at the weekends casting for trout. When the rains came, both streams ran strongly, and the rapids dotted along the way became white-water suitable for shooting in canoes and inflatables — or without the aid of any craft by the braver men who made the plunge clad only in their swimming trunks. That was a daring sport, diving in above the cataracts and hurtling down through the rocks, but strangely, no one was ever known to have been hurt. People remarked after the events of this day, that Maxwell, true to type, never attempted shooting the rapids, but he was usually among the onlookers, watching the dare-devil tactics of the local heroes.
On this occasion the flood was much more severe than usual, described by the weather-people as a ‘once every twenty year’ event. The storms raging in the Drakensberg mountains sent mighty walls of water down both streams, overflowing banks in the level reaches, roaring over falls and rapids, sweeping away anything and everything in it’s path. The villagers were out en masse, gathered in groups along the river above the final cascade where the two streams came together to plunge into a great pool.
Maxwell and I watched the antics of people further up stream pointing out floating objects of all sorts swirling along in the flood. Many of the items were recognisable because of our general familiarity with the areas upstream — trees which had once stood at the river’s edge; fruit trees from Edgar Preese’s flooded orchard; a dry tree-trunk which we knew to be the ‘bridge’ over the stream on a hiking trail near the foothills. There were shouts of amazement when a boat belonging to the Blue Mountain Guest Lodge floated swiftly by, trailing it’s mooring rope and pole behind it. There were gasps at the sight of an old bath-tub, which served as a feed-trough at the Midlands Stud Farm, careening against obstacles and spinning around as it bobbed past. There was a sombre silence as Mr Chadwick’s bull-terrier appeared, struggling furiously to gain a foothold at the bank. Many hands stretched out to help it, but the waters were too swift, sweeping the dog out of reach again and again until all attempts were abandoned with the thought that a dog was more likely than was a man to survive the rapids and find a way to the side in the pool below.
We had turned to look downstream, watching the course of the dog over the edge of the rapids, when we heard the clamour from further up. People were running along beside the flood, pointing and shouting. There was a body in the water! Then someone called out: “Oh, God! It’s alive!” We turned to see the figure of a child, buoyed up by air trapped in it’s clothing, swirling helplessly to certain death in the cataract, or to drowning in the pool. While most onlookers were too stunned to take any action, some men and women did take position in the water lapping the bank, hoping that the flood, in an act of mercy, would drive the little thing near enough to be pulled out, but it was not to be. They ended up standing with hand to mouth as they watched the boy twirling swiftly to the cataract.
I turned to Maxwell, wondering if there was any chance that he and I could reach the child as it approached the lip where we stood. Maxwell was trembling visibly, and then, without even a glance towards me, he muttered through clenched teeth: “This one’s for Gcina!” and plunged into the water. In one motion he grabbed a fistful of clothing and pulled the bundle close to his chest as the two of them plunged down the rapids. I and the crowd who had run down after the little mite, stood with hearts thumping as we watched Maxwell with his precious load being tossed about and bumped down the rocky incline. We saw them go under where the angry waters crashed into the pool in a back-swirl, and then to everyone’s relief Maxwell bobbed up again, still clutching the child tightly to himself. Our relief faded again as swiftly as it came when they began swirling around and around in the pool, banging against outcrops of rock until it seemed they both would be bashed to death even if they did not drown. With a final swish around, man and child arrived at the point where the gathered waters dropped over a low fall to the plain below where it overflowed both banks to flood the cultivated fields for a kilometre on either side. If they were washed that far, the chances that they would reach dry land and escape drowning were even less than in the pool.
Oh, how glad we were, and what a shout went up when we saw Maxwell reach out with one hand and grab hold of a tree which had become firmly wedged in the rocks at the brink of the fall. He held on grimly until rescuers on the bank were able to take the youngster from his arm, and then pull him out as well. The joy of the people overflowed, even as the flood waters themselves, and the clapping and cheering was heard far away in the village by the few who had not ventured down to the river.
The little boy had swallowed a lot of water, but was otherwise unharmed. His mother, Josephine, who worked for the Harper’s on a farm up-river, had not seen her son fall in, but when she missed him she had guessed with alarm that he had been swept away by the raging water. She arrived at the moment when Maxwell and her child were being pulled out, and she hugged her little one with tears and laughter, and saying over and over again “O Gcina, Gcina!! My son, Gcina” and then she grabbed Maxwell’s hand and said ‘Thank you, thank you! Oh my son Gcina.
I watched Maxwell swallow hard a couple of times as he gently stroked the little boys wet hair. “That really was one for Gcina,” he said, and turned away so that no one would see the tears in his eyes.
The End
