had stopped to eat in silence at lay-by stations along the way. Although he felt physically better afterwards, he was not yet ready to go back to the car and join the silence of his parents. Thankfully, he heard voices in the distance and walked towards them until he saw an African homestead. A celebration. Women cooking on open fires. Men drinking from shared calabashes. Children chasing a tyre. Much conversation and lots of laughter. For a brief, mad moment, Emil contemplated joining them and partaking in their joy and happiness. But of course he could not.
He was about to turn back when he saw them – a hen and a chick straying dangerously far away from the homestead and towards the unknown environs around it. The chick seemed to apprehend the danger better than its mother, for it showed every sign of being anxious; it stayed close to her and wove itself between her legs even though on more than one occasion it had been pushed aside by her scratching feet. Frantic, the chick flew and landed on its mother’s back. It could not stay there for long, though, and soon fell down, only to play at her feet again.
Emil could not save himself from the fate that lay in wait for him but he could definitely save the chick, and so he moved abruptly in the elephant grass, making a sound that the chicken sensibly ran away from. The chick ran gratefully after its mother and away from danger, but, sadly, not away from its mother’s indifference.
Emil could not help but cry and, as he cried, he vowed to himself that this would be the last time that he would ever cry because, in that moment, he realised that tears did not change the workings of the world.
The Selous School for Boys, founded in the Midlands in 1918, was not the Gothic castle of Emil’s dreams but a series of red-roofed, white colonial-style buildings of varying size and stature that stood immaculately in a tranquil, lush and verdant valley. The school’s proud motto, ‘It is here that boys become the men of history’, was the banner that one drove under as one entered the school’s premises. Emil read the school’s motto and was glad and relieved that it was not written in Latin. The school had the appearance of being welcoming enough, but Emil was not fooled; he had recently learnt that things were not always what they appeared to be on the surface.
Besides, Emil was only nine years old. What business did he have becoming a man?
Johan parked Scott Fitzgerald’s car in the parking berth, where there was much ado as various families lumbered out of cars, struggled with trunks and made both gregarious and polite conversation. There were boys as young as six who seemed to have been swallowed whole by their uniforms, there were boys of about Emil’s age who were all knobby knees and wide eyes, there were boys of about thirteen and fourteen who were determined to help their fathers carry their trunks, there were boys of sixteen and seventeen whose malicious eyes searched the crowd for newcomers. All these boys were to spend the next years of their lives together, becoming men. Emil felt sick to his stomach and was rather glad that he had already expelled its contents, otherwise this would have been a very unfortunate beginning indeed.
Once in the dormitory, Johan found Emil’s bed and put his trunk, which he had laboured with up the staircase, next to it. Gemma made up the bed with the linen they found folded at the foot of the bed. Emil removed select things (there was a list provided on his headboard) from his trunk and put them in the bedside cabinet. The Coetzees did these things in silence and afterwards sat awkwardly on the bed until the matron came in and smiled before telling the parents that they needed to leave.
Emil, with a heavy heart and wishing that he had the courage to break the silence, walked his parents back to Scott Fitzgerald’s car. His mother kissed him on both cheeks as she smiled back tears. Someone, unseen, made a whistling sound as Emil’s mother hugged him briefly before quickly getting in the back seat of the car. His father, gazing at the space above Emil’s head, offered him his hand, which Emil shook, hoping for so much more.
Emil stood on the tarred road as he watched the car drive away. He thought of the quiet that existed in that car and could not bring himself to wave goodbye to it because, even though it was new, he understood that it would be with them for some time.
Long after Scott Fitzgerald’s car had disappeared from sight, Emil found his way back to the dormitory that contained what was now his bed. He sat at the very edge of the bed and tried to stop his knees from knocking as he scanned the bare white walls, fluorescent strips of light affixed to the ceiling, rows of iron-rail beds with chipped and peeling cream-coloured paint, and made a failed attempt to feel welcomed by the room. When a bell finally rang, Emil made his way, as did all the boys, to the dining hall where Sunday Lunch, as the menu on the long table heralded, consisted of roast beef, boiled potatoes with parsley and mushy peas for the main course and Black Forest trifle for dessert. Emil ate but did not taste any of the meal that he was sure he would have enjoyed under different circumstances.
As leaden feet carried him up the stairs that led back to his dormitory, a group of older boys passed him and said that they could still smell his mother’s milk on him. Emil, understanding full well what they meant by that, regretted having promised himself, only earlier that day, never to cry again.
The silver lining was that at no point in all his imaginings had he thought that his first day at the school would be anything but a misery, so at least his first day at the Selous School for Boys was meeting, if not exceeding, his expectations.
As he made his way up the stairs, the weight of the day suddenly exhausted Emil and when he arrived at his dormitory, he collapsed on his bed and, briefly comforted by his mother’s rosewater scent on the bed linen, fell fast and deeply asleep and dreamt that the chick he had seen earlier that day had flown onto his shoulder and walked along the veld with him.
Emil awoke to hands rudely and roughly pulling him off the bed and shoving his face towards grey and grimy unpolished boots.
‘Lick my boots!’ a pompous voice instructed.
Emil was too shocked and scared to cry.
‘Lick my boots, I say!’ the pompous voice repeated and this time the words were followed by a thump in the small of Emil’s back, flattening him to the ground.
An unpolished boot pushed itself against Emil’s lips.
‘What? Too high and mighty to lick my boots, are you?’
There was another thump on Emil’s back.
Emil knew that this torture would only end when he licked the boot. So he closed his eyes, stuck out his tongue and licked the boot.
‘You’re a bootlicker,’ the pompous voice said triumphantly.
There were guffaws and snickers.
Emil, expecting that the worst was over, chose to lie there with his eyes tightly shut until they were all gone.
But, of course, the worst was not over.
‘What are you?’ another voice asked, clearly second in command.
Someone grabbed him by the hair and lifted his head. ‘Not only a bootlicker, but you also still smell of your mother’s milk.’
‘What are you?’ the pompous voice asked.
It would have been the easiest thing for Emil to say the words ‘I am a bootlicker,’ but something within him railed against the idea. He knew, deep within himself, that he would never say those words and that gave him the courage to do what he did next. He collected a gob of saliva in his mouth and blindly spat it out, not caring much where it landed as long as it made contact with someone’s skin.
Everything happened quickly after that. There were several hands all over his body stripping his clothes off, leaving him only in his underdrawers, carrying him away from the dormitory ward, down the stairs, out the door, and throwing him onto the ground. Emil was certain that the worst was yet to come and prepared himself for it, but all he heard was the sound of feet moving away … and then a sniffle. The sniffle did not belong to him and so he opened his eyes to see who it belonged to.
He was surprised to find that night had fallen. He had slept through supper and no one had bothered to wake him up. This was the best school in the country?
Emil heard