Karoo Boy Read Online Free

of Africa.
    I wonder if he smells reeking kelp carried on the sea wind or the stink of snoek in the sun or the tang of bluegum or the dust snuff of a dirt road.
    The school, a private school, is shaded by stone pines and islanded by a sea of fields. Among all the white boys are a handful of Indians, blacks and coloureds. This is why Marsden and I were sent here, instead of going to the all-white government school in Muizenberg. My father wants us to grow up colour-blind. Oom Jan says the kind of fancy black boys pussyfooting across the cricket pitch at a private school are not the same as the barefoot black boys on the farm, just as he says American negroes like Muhammad Ali are not the same as your African black.
    To skip the awkwardness of hanging around amid whispers and glances, I hide behind the cricket nets till the bell goes. The Old Man and the Sea is falling apart from being carted around in my pocket. I open it at random and read for the mood and echo of Miss Forster’s voice. The school bell calls me back from the faraway sea where sharks strip the old man’s fish to the bone. I have lost track of time. The timetable I was sent in the post says I have Mister Jansen, the history teacher, known for beating the hell out of the standard sevens because the sevens are always up to all sorts of high jinks.
    I arrive breathless at Mister Jansen’s door, expecting him to yell, but he just flashes his tobacco-yellowed teeth at me.
    – You must be Douglas.
    He does not offer a word on Marsden. He just hands me my book and bids me to a desk right under his nose. His eyebrows are paintbrushes of hog hair.
    The boys cast their eyes down at pencilled textbooks but risk staring at me when he turns to chalk the blackboard again. I wish I was handlining for fish in Kalk Bay or visiting Miss Forster in Amsterdam.
    I walk down a shadowy alley in Amsterdam. In the pink light of a window I glimpse a red garter against white skin, before my father’s hand tugs at mine.
    In my dreams it is Miss Forster dangling red bait in the shadows.
    When the bell goes I am sucked into a river of schoolboys. I catch Marsden’s name, a float bobbing on the surface of a tumbling tide. Oliver weaves towards me, against the flow.
    – Hey, Douglas, there’s a cool karate flick on in town. A few of us are going Friday if you wanna come.
    I know it is his way of saying sorry about Marsden.
    – Sorry. My mother doesn’t want me railing back out to Muizenberg after dark.
    My mother does not want me to see karate flicks either. But this I do not tell him.
    – Pity, says Oliver.
    I get the feeling he is relieved.
    The next class is with Skin. Though I know him from cricket, I have not yet been taught by him. He does not even glance at me, as if I have not missed a thing. As if he has not heard. He settles the class and says we have to read The Great Gatsby , while he plays a jazz record in the background. I do not have the book yet so he says I should go with him to the book room and I follow him.
    The book room is a naked bulb and books stacked to the roof. I make out a few titles: Catcher in the Rye , The Great Gatsby , To Kill a Mockingbird , Of Mice and Men .
    He dusts a copy of The Great Gatsby against his cords, and hands it to me.
    – Douglas, I was dreadfully sorry to hear about your brother.
    I stare at the dust smear on his cords as tears well in my eyes.
    – I’ll miss Marsden on the cricket pitch. But I hope you’ll play on, in spite of everything.
    – I want to play on, I sob.
    My tears fall on to the cover of The Great Gatsby , a fiery tiger-skin pattern.
    I mop the tears away with my sleeve.
    – I am sorry about the book, I say.
    And Skin reaches his arms out and holds me and I cry. His shirt is all wet with my crying. I want to cry against his shirt forever but part of me is ashamed about the shirt.
    – Look, why don’t we take a drive down to Sea Point after cricket. We’ll see the sun go down from the Hard Rock, then I’ll