Now I stood holding Doc’s music, staring down at the bottle of Johnnie Walker. Why would he keep a bottle in his piano stool? If Klipkop hadn’t walked in at the moment he was about to tell me, everything would have been clear. I recalled the last words in the note Doc had sent me…and whisky is getting easier not to have.
I wasn’t at all sure I was doing the right thing but the bottle was directly above the musical score Doc wanted and it was the only item in the piano stool that you could pour into a water flask. When I had last interfered with Doc’s whisky, the repercussions had been enormous. I took the water flask and the bottle of Johnnie Walker into the cactus garden, where I dug a hole in the ground and planted the flask with its neck protruding. I must say it was a good plan and I spilled hardly any. After that I planted the bottle upside down in the hole.
I returned the flask to the piano stool, placing Doc’s musical score over it. Then I put the key in my pocket.
I was waiting at Doc’s cottage by nine on Monday morning. Dee and Dum had cleaned everything and the place was spotless. The Steinway shone like a mirror. The girls had spent an hour cleaning the whisky from the keys. Seated on the two piano stools, they had giggled fit to burst at the cacophony they made.
I passed the time waiting for Doc clearing weeds from the garden. After a couple of hours I heard the low whine of a truck and the less agonized sound of a light van as they made their way up the steep road to the cottage.
The black prison flattop was a Diamond T. The van, coming along behind it, waited a little way down the road while the truck turned to face downhill again. On the back were six black prisoners and two warders carrying rifles. A third warder sat in front. I recognized one of the warders as the young one who had let me into the prison on the previous Friday and I said hello. He jumped down from the back of the truck and stuck his hand out. “Gert Marais, hoe gaan dit?” I shook his hand. Just then the van drew up and I could see that Klipkop was driving and Lieutenant Smit was beside him. They stopped in front of the lorry and Klipkop jumped out. Walking to the rear of the van, he unlocked it. To my surprise Doc stepped out. He was dressed in a clean white shirt, blue tie and his white linen suit. The place where his knee had torn through the trouser leg when the sergeant’s kick brought him to the ground had been mended, the suit had been washed and pressed and his boots shone. I had never seen him looking so posh. Lieutenant Smit and Klipkop greeted me like an old friend.
I could see Doc was agitated and when Klipkop and Lieutenant Smit moved toward the house he turned to me urgently. “We must talk, Peekay. Today is a very difficult thing for me to do.” We followed the two warders into the cottage and Doc pointed to the Steinway and the stool. He was too preoccupied to notice the cleanup and I felt a little disappointed.
Two of the warders came in, and together with Doc they discussed how the Steinway might be safely moved.
Klipkop went to call the prisoners in and Doc asked if he could go and look at his garden, as he couldn’t bear to see the piano being moved. Lieutenant Smit laughed and added that it was necessary to have a warder along. “I know Gert Marais. Can he come, please?” I asked. Lieutenant Smit shrugged and signaled for Gert to come with us.
“I can’t have you two escaping into the hills, now can I?” he said jokingly. But I was to learn that Lieutenant Smit was a careful man and liked to play things by the book. Gert couldn’t speak English, which meant Doc and I could talk safely.
We walked in the garden, following the Johnnie Walker bottles as they meandered through the tall cactus and aloe, Doc stopping to look at plants and bending down to examine succulents close to the ground. It was as though he was trying to memorize the garden, so the memory would sustain him in prison. At last we stopped and sat on an outcrop of rock. Gert stood some little way off chewing a piece of grass, his rifle slung carelessly over his shoulder.
Finally Doc started to talk. “Peekay, these dummkopfs want I should do a recital in the town today. I have not played a concert since sixteen years. Peekay, I cannot do this, but I must.”
I looked up at Doc and I could see that he was terribly distressed. “You don’t have to, Doc. They can’t force you,” I said defiantly but without too much conviction. My short experience with authority of any kind had shown me that they always won, they could always force you.
Doc turned to look at me. “Peekay, if I don’t play today they will not let you come to see me.” I could feel the despair in his voice as he continued softly, “I do not think I could bear that.” I hugged him and we sat there and looked at the hills dotted with the aloes in bloom and at the blue and purple mountains beyond them. At last he spoke again. “It was in Berlin in 1925. The Berlin Opera House. I had been ill for some months and I was coming back to the concert circuit. I had chosen to play the score you found in my piano stool. Beethoven’s Symphony Number Five is great music but it is kind to a good musician. The great master was a piano player himself and it is not full of clever tricks or passages which try to be schmarty pantz. That night I played the great master goot, better than ever until the third movement. Suddenly, who knows from where, comes panic. In my fingers comes panic, in my head and in my heart. Thirty years of discipline were not enough. The panic swallowed me and I could not play this music I have played maybe a thousand times when I practice and forty times in concert. Nothing. It was all gone. Just the coughing in the crowd, then the murmuring, then the booing, then the concertmaster leading me from the stage.” Doc sat, his head bowed, his hands loosely on his knees. “I have never played in front of an audience again. Every night for sixteen years I have played the music, the same music and always in the third movement it is the same, the music in my fingers and my head and my heart will not proceed. It is then the wolves howl in my head and only whisky will make them quiet. Today, in one hour, I must play that music again. I must face the audience or, my friend, I lose you.”
I cannot pretend to have understood the depth of Doc’s personal dilemma. I was too inexperienced to understand his pain and humiliation. But I knew he was hurting inside. “I will be there with you, Doc. I will turn the pages for you.”
Doc took out his bandanna and blew his nose. “You are goot friend, Peekay.” He gave one of his old chuckles and rubbed a hand through my hair and then examined one of my hands, dirty from weeding between the cactus. “Better wash in the tank if you are going to be my partner. We must look our best.” He rose. “Come, Peekay, we go now.”
On the journey into town Doc and I sat in the front of the van with Lieutenant Smit while Gert sat in the back. Klipkop drove the truck. The Steinway had been loaded onto the flattop and roped. Even so, five prisoners were arranged around it to hold it firmly in place, while one sat with Doc’s piano stool between his legs.
About half a mile from the market square the Diamond T stopped and the two warders herded the six blacks off the truck. One of them climbed back on while the other started to march the prisoners out of town toward the prison. We entered the top of Crown Street about three hundred yards from the market square. The main street was deserted, as quiet as a Sunday afternoon. “God, I hope this doesn’t backfire on the Kommandant,” Lieutenant Smit said. I noticed all the shops were closed. We turned the corner into the square and my eyes almost popped out of my head.
The market square was packed with hundreds of people, who had started to cheer as they saw us. A warder signaled us to a space that had been kept clear under a large flamboyant tree. Lieutenant Smit told Gert to stay with the van but not to show his rifle. Then he jumped out and, walking in front of the Diamond T, he guided it into a roped-off section in the center of the square.
Several warders scrambled up a stepladder onto the flattop and untied the ropes securing the Steinway. One put Doc’s piano stool in place while another rigged up a microphone.
The moment we saw the crowd, Doc began to shake. “Peekay, did you do what I said about the water flask?” he asked in a tight voice.
“It is in the piano stoo
l, Doc.”
“Peekay, you must take it and when I ask, you must hand it to me, you understand?” I nodded.
When we drew to a halt under the flamboyant tree the Kommandant was waiting for us. He opened the van door and Doc got out.
Kommandant Van Zyl took him by the elbow and held him firmly. “Now then, Professor, remember you are a German, a member of a glorious fighting race. We of the South African Prison Service are on your side. You must show these Rooineks what is real culture, man!”
Doc looked round fearfully to see if I was by his side. “Do not forget the flask, Peekay,” he said. We walked to the center of the square.
The excitement of the crowd could be felt around us. Nothing like this had happened on a dull Monday since war was declared. We reached the flattop to find that some twenty rows of chairs had been placed behind the ropes on either side of it. They formed a ringside audience of the posh people in town. Mrs. Boxall was in the front row. She was dressed in her best hat and gloves, as were the other town matrons of social rank. At the back end of the lorry sat the prison warders and their wives, the men in uniform and the women wearing their Sunday best. It was obvious they were very pleased with themselves.
Doc had pulled himself together a little by the time we reached the truck and he and I climbed the stepladder onto the flattop.
The Kommandant stood in front of the microphone.
“Dames en Heere, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. But from then on he spoke in English. “As you all know from reading the newspaper, there has been a very big fuss made about one of our most distinguished citizens, Professor Karl Von Vollensteen, a professor of music from across the seas. The good professor, who has lived in this town for fifteen years and has taught many of your young daughters to play the peeano, was born in Germany. It is for this alone that he is being put under my custody.” Several pockets of people in the crowd had started to boo and someone shouted, “Once a Jerry, always a Jerry!” which brought about a little spasmodic laughter and clapping. The Kommandant held up his hand. “I am a Boer, not a Britisher. We Boers know what it is like to be robbed of our rights!”
Considerably more booing started and the same voice in the crowd shouted, “Put a sock in it!”
The Kommandant, as though replying to the heckler, continued. “No, it is true, I must say it, you took our freedom and now you are taking the professor’s!”
This time the booing started in earnest and suddenly Mr. O’Grady-Smith, the mayor, stood up and shouted: “Get on with it, man, or we’ll have a riot.”
The booing continued, for Mr. O’Grady-Smith was no more popular than the Kommandant. He strode from his seat, mounted the stepladder and walked over to the microphone and waited until the booing stopped. “It’s high time we moved the jail and the nest of Nazis who run it out of Barberton,” he shouted. “This town is loyal to King George and the British Empire. God save the King!”
Most of the crowd clapped and cheered and whistled and Mr. O’Grady-Smith turned and looked at the Kommandant, a smug, self-righteous expression on his face.
From where I stood on the flattop I could see about a dozen men making their way through the crowd toward us. “Some men are coming,” I said to Lieutenant Smit, who was now standing beside the stepladder with Klipkop to discourage any further townsfolk from emulating the mayor. They quickly mounted the flattop, pulled up the ladder and placed the microphone next to the Steinway so that the bottom half of the flattop was clear. The mayor and the Kommandant were hastily pushed to the top end to stand beside the seated Doc and me.
There was a good ten feet between the truck and the first row of seats. The attackers crossed this strip and swarmed onto the back of the flattop. Lieutenant Smit and Klipkop held the high ground while the other warders took the clearing between the lorry and the seats. The flattop and the apron around it were filled with fighting men and the screams of the ladies as they tried to back away from the brawl. The Kommandant ventured out from behind the Steinway and received a punch on the nose. Fat Mr. O’Grady-Smith was crouched on all fours halfway under the piano.
Just then Doc tugged me on the sleeve. “The flask, Peekay.” His hand was outstretched. I handed the flask of whisky to him and he unscrewed the cap and took a slug and handed it back to me. “When I make my head like so, you must turn the page.” He turned to the score in front of him and paged quickly to the beginning of the fortissimo movement, which in Beethoven’s Fifth occurs at the end of the second movement. Then he started to play. The microphone had been knocked down and its head now rested over the piano. It picked up the music, which thundered across the square.
Almost immediately the crowd grew quiet, and the fighting stopped. The flattop cleared and the men around the apron slipped back into the crowd. The mayor squeezed out from under the Steinway; he and the Kommandant were helped down the replaced stepladder. Even the sobbing ladies grew quiet.
On and on Doc played, through the second into the third movement and, hardly pausing, into the fourth, his head nodding every time he wanted the page turned. It was a faultless performance as he brought the recital to a thunderous close.
The audience would remember Doc’s performance for the rest of their lives. Mrs. Boxall was weeping and clutching her hands to her breast.
Lieutenant Smit shouted at several of the warders, who began to clear a way for the truck. He shouted for Klipkop to get into the truck and drive away; then he jumped into the passenger side of the cabin as the big Diamond T started to move. Doc, who had been bowing to the crowd, fell back onto his seat. With a flourish of the keyboard he began to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
I had never seen him as happy. He played all the way back to the prison, not stopping when we got to the gates and reaching the final bars as we drew up outside the administration building. Then he took a long swig from the flask and rose from the piano and looked out over the prison walls to his beloved hills.
I quickly opened the piano stool and put the flask into it together with the score. I locked it and slipped the key into my pocket.
Doc rubbed his hand through my hair. “No more wolves. Absoloodle,” he said quietly.
ELEVEN
Dee or Dum woke me up at a quarter to five every morning with coffee and a rusk. Shortly after five I strapped my leather book bag to my shoulders and was off at a trot to the prison.
I was let in the gates without equivocation. The guards, with an hour and a half to go before the night shift ended, waved from the walkway on the wall. I was the first tangible sign after the gray dawn that the long night was almost over.
I learned that the greatest camouflage of all is consistency. If you do something often enough and at the same time in the same way, you become invisible. One of the shadows. The prisoner enjoys the advantage over his keeper of continuity. Warders change, get promoted, move elsewhere. But old lags, those prisoners with long sentences, have the advantage of time to plan. The warder unwittingly depends on the old lags to run the prison system, for it is they who restrain the younger prisoners who lack the patience to go along with the system or who see violence as the only solution to getting what they want. A prison without this secondary system of authority can be a dangerous and unpredictable place.
I found myself a part of this shadow world, brought into it with great patience over a long period by an old lag known as Geel Piet. Translated from Afrikaans, his name simply meant “Yellow Peter.” Geel Piet was a half-caste, or a Cape Colored, neither black nor white, treated as a black man but aspiring in his soul to be a white one. He was also an incorrigible criminal who freely admitted that it was hopeless for him on the outside. Geel Piet was the old lag who exerted the most influence in the shadow world of the prison.
My prison day began in the gymnasium at five-thirty where the boxing squad assembled. There were twenty of us and this included four other kids between eleven and fifteen. Seniority went by weight, with Klipkop, who had defeated Jackhammer Smit on points over ten rounds a
nd was now the lowveld heavyweight champion, the most senior, down to myself, the utter nobody of the boxing squad.
Lieutenant Smit stood in the boxing ring with a whistle in his mouth and we would perform a routine of exercises interspersed with push-ups and sit-ups. Lieutenant Smit was a big believer in push-ups to strengthen the arms and the shoulders and sit-ups to strengthen the gut muscles. The boxers from Barberton prison were known throughout the lowveld and as far as Pietersburg and Pretoria as tough men to take on.
Lieutenant Smit was true to his word and for the first two years he would not allow me to step into the ring. “When you can throw a medicine ball over Klipkop’s head, then you will be ready,” he said. The first of my goals was set, and for the fifteen minutes after exercises, when all the other boxers were paired off with sparring partners, I worked until I could no longer lift my arms.
After a five-minute shower I reported to the prison hall for my piano lesson with Doc, and at seven-thirty we would both go in to breakfast at the warders’ mess.
Doc had a special status in the prison. While he lived in a cell, he could come and go as he pleased. He ate in the warders’ mess, and wasn’t required to do any special work. “You just play the peeano, Professor,” Kommandant Van Zyl had said, “that’s your job, you hear?”
Doc often wandered into the gymnasium to watch the squad going through its paces. He knew that I yearned to box against another person in the ring. While he made it clear that he didn’t understand why I should have such a need, he respected my ambition and soothed my impatience. “In music you must first do the exercises. If you do the exercises goot then you have the foundations. I think with this boxing business it is the same.”
The Power of One Page 17
