by Ekow Duker
One of them planted herself squarely in front of André. ‘Is that your guitar?’ she asked, pointing at the violin case.
He looked up at her and instinctively drew the case in to his body. Her dark hair was cut in a sixties-style bob that made her look much older than she was.
‘It’s not a guitar, it’s a violin,’ André replied quietly.
‘Is that why it’s so small then?’
She glanced at her friends, who obliged with derisory howls of laughter. Then a girl with a painted face and a slash of dark lipstick barrelled forward. She pushed the first girl out of the way and fluttered her eyelids at André.
‘Come on, love! Play something for us!’
André looked away in embarrassment and her face turned mean and ugly.
‘You only carry that thing around to make you look posh, don’t you?’ she sneered.
‘I have no need to look posh,’ he said.
‘Where you going then, all dressed up like that?’ She put on a little girl’s voice and pouted at him. ‘Are you off to see your mummy?’
A warm, prickly tide swarmed up André’s face and the girls pounced on his discomfort. They lunged at him and tried to wrest the violin case out of his hands.
‘Give us that!’ they hissed. He hunched himself over the violin case and wouldn’t let go, even when they smacked him on the back and called him names. Luckily for André, the girls clattered off the train at Leicester Square. He would normally have changed trains there but he decided to carry on to Embankment. As the girls left the train, they extended their middle fingers towards him in a choreographed salute.
‘You fucking poof!’ they cried. ‘Pillow biter! Wanker.’
André was still shaken when he arrived at Mrs Summerscales’ house. He stood outside for a few moments, wondering whether to use the knocker or to ring the bell. In the end he decided on the knocker and struck the lion’s head three times against the door. He heard light footsteps approaching and Mrs Summerscales opened the door.
‘I’m so glad you could come,’ she said. ‘Nigel and Karabo are here already.’ She seemed relieved to see André, which made him feel a little more at ease.
‘Nigel’s girlfriend,’ she added in response to the questioning look on André’s face. ‘She’s South African.’
‘Oh yes, of course,’ André said, as if he knew Karabo already. He followed Mrs Summerscales into the house and out into the conservatory.
‘I thought we could have the recital in here,’ Mrs Summerscales said in a manner that did not invite an opinion. She pointed at the five brass chairs arranged in a semi-circle with a music stand in the middle.
‘This will be more than adequate,’ André said, looking around. It was a spacious area with a day bed upholstered in yellow damask and a low table scattered with glossy magazines. Late afternoon light crept through the glass-panelled ceiling and licked the leaves of the potted plants and made them glisten.
‘I’ll go and fetch Nigel,’ Mrs Summerscales said.
‘And the Guadagnini, of course,’ André replied.
She looked at him strangely and he thought he might have come across as too eager. Mrs Summerscales was dressed exactly as she had been the day she’d come to see him at Saint Anthony’s, with a double string of pearls around her neck. Her feet were small, like a bird’s, and she walked with precise, calibrated steps.
‘Of course,’ Mrs Summerscales said. ‘After all, that is why we are here.’
She was gone for so long that André began to feel thirsty. He should have asked for a glass of water for it was getting quite warm. He began flicking idly through a magazine when suddenly he heard someone call out his name.
‘You must be Mr Potgieter,’ the girl said. ‘Nigel’s mother said I’d find you in here.’
She spoke with the distinctly flat vowels of a South African. André, on the other hand, had taken to deliberately obscuring his South African accent to the point where it was practically indistinct. He thought she might see through his affectation and he hesitated for a moment before replying.
‘Please. You must call me André. And you must be Karabo.’
‘I am.’
She had a youthful irreverence about her that was at once attractive and out of place. She wore her hair in a frizzy halo and she looked at him with bold curiosity.
‘Nigel’s often talked about you,’ Karabo said. ‘He says you’re very good.’
A self-conscious smile tugged briefly at André’s lips. ‘Does he? And do you play the violin, Karabo?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Karabo replied. ‘I grew up in Mthatha and never had the opportunity.’
André looked up at her in surprise. ‘I know Mthatha well. I lived there for a while.’
‘Really? What were you doing there?’
André shrugged. ‘My mother and I moved there from Bloemfontein a few years ago.’ He felt as if he’d seen her somewhere before but the memory remained annoyingly out of reach.
‘I wouldn’t have thought Mthatha offered many opportunities for a professional violinist,’ Karabo said.
He was as tall as Karabo and her proximity made him apprehensive. He didn’t answer her immediately but reached for his violin instead.
‘Has Nigel taught you anything about violins?’ he asked.
Karabo rolled her eyes. ‘Nigel? He gets so serious when he plays I’m afraid to interrupt him.’
André pondered this for a moment. ‘Yes. Nigel can be very diligent.’
‘You sound unsure,’ Karabo said. ‘Isn’t diligence a good thing?’
‘It is. But diligence must not obscure the sheer joy of playing.’
He closed his eyes and began to play. It was a short piece with a triumphantly martial theme. At André’s bidding, the music rose effortlessly and fanned out across the room. His hair flipped wildly about his face as the bow dipped and darted across the strings.
All of a sudden, the music changed and became strident and André grimaced. Then it slowed and he smiled gently to himself as the last notes died away.
‘You see, I could never do that,’ Karabo said with an admiring sigh.
André laid the violin down on the table.
‘Of course you can. It’s important to start off with a decent instrument. Unfortunately, too many students overlook that basic requirement. I’ve seen violins where the angle and placement of the strings is terribly off. Or the fingerboard might be made from some cheap wood instead of ebony. In reality, those are violin-shaped objects and not violins at all. They are almost impossible to play.’
‘Surely, not at Saint Anthony’s?’
André nodded. ‘Especially at Saint Anthony’s. Parents come in with a factory-made violin in one hand and the most absurd aspirations in the other. They claim they’re doing it for their children when it’s actually for themselves.’
He stopped and gave a small, rueful shake of his head. ‘I assume you’re studying in London.’
‘Architecture.’
‘I see. Your parents must be well-to-do.’
‘Far from it. My father teaches maths in high school, and my mother … well, she’s my mother.’
André touched the strings of the violin lightly with the bow and released a plaintive, questioning note.
‘If you must know,’ Karabo replied, ‘I’m here on a scholarship.’
‘Of course,’ he said and she bridled at his knowing look.
‘It’s not a government scholarship, if that’s what you’re thinking. I got it through the Mthatha Women’s Club.’
‘The Mthatha Women’s Club? I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Neither had I until Mrs Harrison asked me to apply.’
André stared at her in astonishment. ‘Claire Harrison from Langswood Farm? She was my pupil!’
Slowly, recognition dawned on Karabo and she pointed at André.
‘You’re Mrs Harrison’s violin teacher! The one who ran away!’
André glanced around quickly, making s
ure that there was no one around to overhear them, then turned back to Karabo. Sudden irritation swept over him.
‘I didn’t run away. It wasn’t even a regular job.’
‘It still wasn’t a very nice thing you did,’ Karabo insisted, ‘leaving Mrs Harrison in the lurch like that. She was very cross with you, you know.’
He backed away and she followed him across the conservatory, needling him playfully as she went. But he was remembering his run-in with Father Majola – the final blow that sent him packing – and his hands were starting to shake.
‘Does Nigel’s mother know about this? That you abandoned your duties?’
‘I didn’t abandon anyone.’
‘But you disappeared, didn’t you?’ She wagged a finger at André. ‘I’ll tell Mrs Harrison I’ve found you.’
‘You can tell her what you like.’
‘In fact I’ll call her right now.’ She made a show of taking out her phone and began tapping on the screen. ‘I’ll tell her I’ve tracked down her runaway violinist. And in London of all places.’
‘I didn’t run away,’ André said heatedly.
Karabo began to taunt him in the sing-song manner of the playground.
‘Oh yes you did! Yes you did!’
Karabo was clearly enjoying herself and didn’t notice André’s distress. He stood with his back pressed against a wooden trellis, panting like a cornered animal. The explosion when it came took them both by surprise.
‘Voetsek!’
CHAPTER 27
What a very strange man, Karabo thought. One moment he was playing the most wonderful music and the next he was spewing profanities like they were back in South Africa and she’d cut him off in traffic. She didn’t know what to say to him anymore. They stared at each other in a quintessentially South African stand-off.
‘Can you swim, Karabo?’ André asked her suddenly. His chin was thrust forward, his eyes a very light blue.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You look like your parents paid for private lessons back in South Africa.’
Karabo stiffened at the tone of barely disguised mocking in his voice.
‘I’m afraid they didn’t,’ she said coldly.
‘But you’ve been in a pool at least once, neh?’ He had reverted to a coarse Afrikaans accent. The more he spoke in this manner, the more Karabo spoke like Mrs Summerscales.
‘So what if I have?’
He held the violin out towards her but not so close that she could reach out and touch it. His hands were surprisingly delicate for his bulk and were laced with the outline of fine, almost feminine bones.
‘Let me give you a lesson,’ André said. He used the bow to point to the end of the fingerboard where the tuning pegs were. ‘This is your point of reference.’
‘I’m not interested in learning from you,’ Karabo said but he carried on anyway.
‘Think back to when you first learned to swim. You’re holding onto the edge of the pool and you dare not let go.’
How did he know? There was a picture of Karabo in the house in Mthatha where she was doing exactly that. She was clinging to the edge of the municipal pool and looking up at the camera with her eyes wide open in terror. Her arms were much thinner than they were now and the expanse of water that stretched out behind her looked as wide as the Indian Ocean.
‘If you were to ask a drunk off the street to play a given key on a piano,’ André said, ‘it would sound no different than if you asked Mozart to play the same key. A violin is not like that. Oh, no, it’s not like that at all. A violin is very different from, say, a guitar. It has no frets or markers. The intonation, the correct pitch of the note, all that depends as much on the violinist as the instrument itself.’
He tapped the fingerboard lightly with the bow. ‘That’s why playing a violin can be so excruciatingly difficult. It’s like that child who lets go of the side of the swimming pool. To play the violin properly, one has to let go.’
He peered at Karabo down the length of the bow, searching for signs of comprehension. He looked like he wanted to humiliate her but she was determined not to give him that satisfaction. She wasn’t in the mood for a violin lesson, no matter how good Nigel said André Potgieter was. She stared back at him with a deliberately vacant expression which he mistook for admiration.
‘It’s beautiful, neh?’
His frequent use of the South African colloquialism irked Karabo but his violin really looked quite smart. He drew the bow lightly across the strings and they moaned melodiously in response. Without thinking, she stretched her hand out to touch the instrument, only for him to step back quickly like a petulant child who refuses to share.
‘Ah, ah. No touching.’ Then he relented and held the bow out to her like it was some sort of peace offering.
‘Feel it. It’s made from the very finest horse hair. From the tail of a Mongolian stallion no less. Not a mare, you understand, but a stallion.’
He waited for Karabo to ask why it had to be a stallion and when she didn’t, he went on to tell her anyway.
‘Mares piss all over their tails, you see. As a result, a mare’s tail hair is of much lesser quality, much less.’
He glanced at Karabo, apparently to see if the barb had struck home. She turned away and went over to sit on the day bed.
André was tall and fair, but he looked like he’d been put together in the dark. His back was curved and doughy, like a loaf of bread with a black jacket stretched over it. Twin creases ran up his trouser legs before disappearing in a stretch of flabby buttock. She wasn’t sure she liked André Potgieter after all.
Karabo picked up a society magazine and flicked idly through the pages. The pictures inside could have been shot right there in Mrs Summerscales’ house. She was about to toss it aside when she heard footsteps at the door.
She looked up to see Nigel enter, carrying something in his hands. He held it a little way in front of him as if he were bearing a precious gift. It was the violin Karabo had seen displayed in the glass cabinet. His mother was a few steps behind him and together they made a solemn retinue of two.
André Potgieter stood to attention and Karabo did the same. There was something pagan about their small procession. Her thoughts flickered to Jabu Molefe chattering away in his darkened room. André was clearly awestruck. He looked like he might prostrate himself on the floor at any moment.
‘May I?’ André said. He stepped forward with both arms outstretched. Nigel looked at his mother as if asking for her permission and she acquiesced with a small inclination of her head.
When André lifted the violin out of the open case, his lips began to move in seeming prayer. His eyes were bright with lust.
Nigel had said very little to Karabo on the way here, but she could tell this violin was much more remarkable than she’d thought. When she’d asked Nigel why there was a violin displayed in his mother’s house, he’d answered carelessly, as if there was nothing particularly special about it.
‘The Guadagnini?’ he said. ‘It’s just something my mother’s had in the family for a while.’
But to look at how reverently he carried the violin, Karabo realised he’d been less than honest with her. The Guadagnini was more than some nondescript thing. It was as vital to him as the pumping of his heart.
‘Nigel will play first and then you, Mr Potgieter,’ Mrs Summerscales declared. ‘Karabo, you sit here, next to me.’
Mrs Summerscales placed herself in the centre of the semi-circle. André Potgieter was to her right and Karabo took the opposite seat. She felt as though Nigel’s mother wanted her somewhere she could keep an eye on her.
‘It seems rather rushed, Mrs Summerscales,’ André murmured. There was an obsequious side to him that was most unattractive.
‘I’m not one for speeches, if that’s what you’re after,’ Mrs Summerscales replied tersely. She nodded at her son to begin.
Nigel had made an uncharacteristic effort to dress smartly today. He wore a black turtleneck and
a matching pair of slim-fitting trousers. And he’d polished his shoes so brightly the toes winked when they caught the light from the stable lamps hanging from the ceiling.
They watched quietly as Nigel tuned the violin. Mrs Summerscales and Karabo, that is. André Potgieter was beside himself and sat quivering in his chair. If it were not for Mrs Summerscales, Karabo was sure he’d have run up to Nigel and done the tuning himself.
‘Not too much now,’ he called out to Nigel. ‘Remember to tune from below the note, up. Start with the A string, and then the D.’
‘I’ve done this before, Mr Potgieter,’ Nigel replied with some irritation. He played a note continuously with the bow and cocked his head to the side while listening carefully to the string. Then he adjusted a small knob at the end of the string, close to the chin rest. He had never looked so studious and at that moment, Karabo felt inexplicably proud of him.
‘Whenever you’re ready, Nigel,’ his mother said. Her tone was rather sharp and implied he should be ready by now. Nigel gave her a slight nod and took up his position behind the music stand. He stood stock-still for a moment and then, with a slight tremor, roused himself and began to play.
Nigel’s head snapped to attention and he squeezed his eyes shut as he launched himself into the piece. Karabo noticed how André mimicked Nigel’s actions but with much less desperation. The two of them were communing through the music and she couldn’t help but feel left out. For Nigel played beautifully. At first.
He’d chosen Spring by Vivaldi and got through the first part quite easily. He played with authority, as if he’d done this several times before. It was in that brief interlude where the music slows and becomes whimsical and elegiac, just before the signature tune bursts forth, that he stumbled. Karabo had closed her eyes too and when the music stopped, she opened them to see Nigel standing there, looking utterly miserable and with the Guadagnini hanging limply by his side.
