The Power of One: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

After supper, while Mevrou is treating the narrator’s wound (which he says he got from tripping on a rock), he receives another shock. She tells him that an outbreak of livestock disease forced Granpa to slaughter his beloved flock of chickens and sell the farm. Peekay’s family has moved to a place called Barberton. It’s so far away that it will take him two days to get there by train.

On the narrator’s last day at the school, Mevrou takes him into town to buy him a new pair of shoes. They go to a clothing shop run by a Jewish man named Harry Crown. He’s at lunch when they arrive, so they wait outside on the verandah. The narrator notices that there are two doors, one labeled “Blacks Only.” He wonders White people can’t use that door. Harry Crown drives a shiny black car, leading the narrator to conclude that “being a Jew [is] a profitable business.” He wonders if he can be one when he grows up.

Mevrou grows irritated when Harry Crown says he doesn’t have shoes in the narrator’s size. She insists on buying the smallest pair available, stuffing them with newspaper until they fit. The narrator can barely walk. Noticing how harshly Mevrou treats the boy, whom she calls a rooinek, Harry Crown speaks kindly to him in English. When he asks the narrator’s name and the boy says “Pisskop”—which is what everyone, including Mevrou, calls him—Harry Cown is horrified. He gives the boy six suckers, two that the narrator enjoys in the store and four hidden in the shoes for later.

That evening, Mevrou brings the narrator to the train station. She puts him in the care of Hoppie Groenewald, a South African Railroad employee on the route and an amateur boxer. The narrator’s few belongings, plus the new shoes, the four suckers, and three sandwiches that Mevrou made for him to eat on the train are all safely stowed in his suitcase. Mevrou pins his ticket to his jacket and ties a shilling (for emergencies only) into a handkerchief in his pocket.

The narrator thinks it’s very funny to watch all the Black passengers who’ve disembarked from the train scramble to get back aboard after Hoppie blows the whistle and the train starts moving. When they’re underway, Hoppie shows the boy into the second-class White carriage, which he will have all to himself, at least until Gravelotte. Remembering how Harry Crown reacted when he said he was called Pisskop, the boy introduces himself as Peekay.

Hoppie immediately likes Peekay, whom he starts referring to as boetie (little brother). As soon as he’s done taking tickets, Hoppie settles down in the carriage with Peekay and starts to discuss his passion in life: boxing. The terminology of the sport is unfamiliar to Peekay, but he’s immediately fascinated. When Hoppie invites Peekay to do a little sparring, Peekay lands a punch on his second try, causing Hoppie to declare him a natural. Hoppie lets him try on his boxing gloves, which feel like they belong on Peekay’s hands even though they’re too large. Hoppie has a match the next evening while the train stops at Gravelotte, which he invites Peekay to attend. Hoppie spoils Peekay that evening, treating him to a mixed grill dinner at a diner near the train station during a stopover. Peekay is fascinated by the luxury of the modern sleeper car.