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enough as it was, so you see he had nothing to lose by being a telltale. You could hear him coughing at night in the little kids’ dormitory and people would shout at him to shurrup , but he couldn’t. He was the only person in the showers to have no marks on his pink bum. And the guys would say, ‘Pissy’s got a girl’s bum . . . Pissy’s got a girl’s bum.’ Maybe it wasn’t easy for him being sick and having out-of-the-blue fits and not being allowed to get the sjambok like everyone else.
    And then all of a sudden I remembered about him getting a fit from physical violence, and I had punched him in the stomach. He’d staggered around coughing and I’d run away before seeing what happened. Maybe he’d had an out-of-the-blue fit. It was the first time I’d ever been brave and I might have given Pissy a fit or even killed him. I’d clean forgotten about him getting fits and, besides, I’d barely been aware of hitting him. I’d even quietly congratulated myself over the punch, which was the only good thing in the whole disaster and I intended bragging a bit to Mattress how I’d also got a strong heart like he said Tinker possessed.
    Tinker, like I said before, wouldn’t put up with any nonsense from the piglets that were miles bigger than she was. She was the smallest by far but she wasn’t afraid and Mattress said it was because she was a lioness and had a strong heart.
    â€˜Sometimes, Kleinbaas , you’ve just got to stand up for yourself even if you are the smallest,’ Mattress said. ‘The lioness doesn’t have to be told she’s brave, she just knows and so do all the other animals, even the big male lion who is supposed to be the boss of the jungle, they all know who is the real boss and who does the hunting. People can be the same, Kleinbaas. A strong heart isn’t about size.’
    That night Pissy’s bed in the dormitory was empty. Nobody said anything about this because it wasn’t unusual for him to spend the night in the sick room when his chest was bad. All the other kids were pretty pleased by his absence because it meant we’d have a quiet night for a change. I was worried and didn’t think I’d be able to sleep but I was also very tired from the long day with all the worries I had accumulated and did fall asleep soon enough. Your eyes don’t always listen to your brain worrying. Mattress said that when things went wrong they’d seem better after a good night’s sleep. ‘In the morning the memory is washed clean,’ he said, that’s the closest I could get from the Zulu, which was, ‘In the morning the river has washed over the worry stones and the water is clean.’
    The wake-up bell went at six o’clock and we had to hurry up and wash our faces, get dressed, make our beds and our towels had to be folded over the end bedrail. By six-thirty we would be standing at attention at the end of our bed for what was known by us boys as ‘half-jack inspection’. This was the daily dormitory inspection conducted by Mevrou who came round with her sjambok at the ready to inspect our beds and our folded towels and to punish the slightest untidiness. Even a button undone on your shirt could earn you a good whack.
    I should explain about the word sjambok . A real sjambok is made of a single strip of rhino hide and is usually about four feet long and about an inch thick at the handle and gradually tapers down to about an eighth of an inch or less at the tip. While it is supple it isn’t like a whip and it only really bends on contact with the flesh. It is used by prison warders and the South African Police Force and by farmers to beat kaffirs . In the right hands it can kill, but it always delivers a severe blow and causes great welts and, if it’s correctly shaped and prepared, it will cut like a knife into flesh and even expose bone. It is much feared by the