Embrace
Page 21
Ma’am my naime it sure is Wagonwheels and the teacher she begin to frown and she say ina stern voice no boy, you gimme and your classmates here yousa reaaaal name, and Wagonwheels say again Ma’am my naime is Wagonwheels and that Ma’am wanno teach the boy a lesson and she take the cane to’is butt and bead ol’Wagonwheels and again she ass his name and the boy againsay Wagonwheels and thata teacher she chase him outa class and say you boy you aint settin foot in here till you come an tell-us yourse a reeaall name, yourse christening in the Lord’s House name. Anna so that Wagonwheels wenna back up that blue Kentucky mountain and his little brother, well, that liddle fella heda been waiding at that gate whole day loong and when he see his big bro cumin up that blue mountain path he jump over that gate and run shoutin hey Wagonwheels big bro, tell me please Wagonwheels, whatsa school like, and, Wagonwheels he get this worried look spread on his face an he look at that liddle brother of his and he say: You ain’t gonna like it, Chicken-Shit.’
On tour from the Berg, it became my favourite joke to tell our host parents.
14
‘This is a song of praise. It’s often introduced by the ringing of bells — listen — then the glorification of the Trinity. Adulation, our God needs to be adored. Lift up your voices, boys. Listen to each other. Watch for every entry, this is difficult, once we know it you can let go, give everything. Smile, look joyful, your voices nearly ringing with laughter . . . Glory be to God on high. And on earth peace to men of good will. Jubilate. Jubilate. Ready ..
He smiled. Nodded.
The pianist bounced on the stool, hammering the keys.
Fingers, darting at us, brought us in. Tempo excruciating; on either side of me I could hear the Juniors struggle, falling in at the wrong bars, too soon, with the firsts, sometimes in the middle of nowhere. The start sounded chaotic; he didn’t stop us, let us continue, wanting us to get through the entire piece. At the diminuendo on et in terra pax, a complete absence of synchronisation; we were dragging way behind the firsts; nowhere near the altos who seemed to be singing a different movement altogether. Still he let us continue, his hands everywhere, arms flailing, trying somehow to get us into synch; face taut; a mask of concentration. First sopranos, entering Laudamus te, scattered and way off key; so too our response. I waited for him to stop us; he let us go. His eyes were all over us, not focused anywhere; his gaze paused for a split-second somewhere in the back centre. Me? No, behind me. And then he closed his eyes, his jaw suddenly jutting out; still, he continued, bringing us in with his left, thrusting, jerking the tempo with his right. He was smouldering; I wondered what was going on in his mind. All through the first section
Gloria in excelsis Deo
et in terra pax hominibus
bonae voluntatis
Lauiamus te, benedicimus te
adoramus te, glorificamus te
at the end of the bar, in sudden diminuendo, the pianist stroked the keys, and he, eyes still closed, sang the oboe over the piano, bringing the soloists into the quartet:
Gratias agimus tibi propter
magnam gloriam tuam
it was like a miracle: perfect, masterly. Dominic’s voice, legato, leading the other three. But when the sopranos took up Gratias it was again without unity, voices strewn about, the sound of s’s all over the place. Irritation in his pursed lips. Again he glanced at the back of the choir; eyes closed, he seemed ready to explode. What was he seeing there? Then, the whole choir, a cacophony throughout:
Domine Deus, rex coelestis
Deus, pater omnipotens
Dominefili unigetiite, Jesu Christe
Domine Deus, agnus Dei, filius
Patris
the long piano interlude, allowing us to breathe, relax. He kept his eyes closed, moving into the larghetto, bringing in the soloists, his expression changing, the jaw relaxing, as if he had moved out of himself, into the perfection of their harmonies:
qui tollis peccata mundi
miserere nobis
relief, tangible, when the choir repeated after the soloists and our tempo perfect, pitch right where it should have been from the beginning, yes, yes, we can do it, his face lit up and it seemed he may break into a smile. The soloists began their duets, heavenly, and he did smile, bringing more relief to us, our shoulders dropped, his head nodding:
qui tollis peccata mundi
then the soloists, perfectly:
suscipe deprecationem nostram
his face, now contorted, mirrored the choir’s struggle on qui sedes ad dexteram patris and now he opened his eyes, they flashed again at some thing behind me, the back of the choir, fingers bunched into fists; he ignored the soloists:
miserere nobis
we took up the long miserere, still he glared up, took a few hesitant steps forward; paused; rushed past the piano, right towards me, the front row of altos scattered; piano and voices instantly quiet; we ducked, into the choir; he reached up with one hand, I saw Lukas fly past me, the hairy hand behind the neck, dragged from the back row. His eyes flashed like a man possessed, clawing around, searching; couldn’t see what he was looking for; still dragging the stumbling Lukas by the hair, moved to the wall and ripped off a piece of wooden panelling. The silence broke as the panelling struck the doth of Lukas’s shorts; on the library balcony, maids in blue uniforms halted, deaning tools suspended. He held Lukas down while his arm rose above his head and the piece of wood panel was brought down, again, again, again.
It splintered into pieces. Eyes darted: us; piano; balcony — the maids began to move, halted; Lukas below him.
‘I’ve been watching you for the past five minutes, Van Rensburg!’ He held Lukas down, speaking to his back. ‘What are you doing? What’s so amusing back there? Tell me!’ He pulled Lukas erect and around; held onto the boy’s one shoulder. ‘Show me! Tell me what’s so fucking amusing, before I rip your fucking head off your shoulders. After more than two and a half years, why can’t you keep your eyes on me!’ Lukas, eyes glistening and face pink, seemed to smile.
‘Stop your grinning,’ he lifted his hand as if about to slap him across the face. ‘Now that you’re no longer a soloist you’ve lost all interest in the choir. Well, you will sing until I tell you to stop. It’s not broken yet, when it breaks I’ll tell you. Stop grinning, you bliksem.’ I wanted to yell at him to stop, that that was the way Lukas looked when he was being beaten; was not grinning, merely resisting tears. Heloosened his grip on Lukas s shoulder and dropped his arms. Cast the broken panelling onto a table. To us; glaring: ‘I’ve had it with you all,’ he shouted. ‘Do you have any idea what you sound like? The audacity you have — the stupidity — of going on singing when you sound like this! I cannot take it any more. I cannot walk onto that stage in four months’ time with a choir that sounds like this.’ His tirade floundered; he hesitated; went on: ‘That’s it. You go on, on your own. Raubenheimer, Webster, you and . . . Jesus Christ, I don’t care . . . Anyone, and someone else, work out who’s taking which voice. Split up the choir and see if you can get it into your thick fucking skulls.’ He marched off. As he went, shouting at the roof: ‘Come and call me when you’re ready. I don’t care if it takes two weeks or two months. I’m not coming back till you’ve got this into your heads.’
The pianist, too, stood to leave. The maids, witnesses to the entire spectacle, now moved off the balcony.
Raubenheimer said he’d keep the first and second sopranos. Dom and Mike van der Bijit would leave and take the altos to one of the classrooms.
Then he was on the balcony — we looked up — crossing with the bookshelves behind him. Did not look down; stared ahead and disappeared. Why hadn’t he just stopped us when he first noticed Lukas looking away? Why work himself up into this frenzy? Why so angry, I’ve done something wrong. No. Will talk later, poor Lukas, Jesus, look at wall panelling ripped off, pattern of library books, looks like man’s head with long hair, sun on piano, smell of pumpkin and custard from kitchen. Fish maybe.
‘Who came up with th
is stupid idea of letting us sing this Mass thing, anyway? It’s impossible for a boys choir,’ said one of the Standard Sevens in the row behind me.
‘Were not doing it alone,’ Raubenheimer grovelled from behind the piano.
‘So why does he want it to be perfect, then? The SABC Choir will carry it.’
‘We will be doing extracts alone, without the adult voices, during the European concerts and for a record, you know that. It has to be perfect.’
‘Maniac. A damn lunatic; that’s what he is.’
‘Okay. Let’s get going,’ Raubenheimer said, ejecting air from his open mouth. He scratched his head: ‘Our biggest problem is the changes in tempo.’ He leant forward and pressed a few notes; marked something on his score. ‘I think we’ve got the Gloria entries — they’re tough, but just need practice and repetition. The real trouble starts at bar 43 — the el in terra pax. Take your pencils and mark the changes, so that you can anticipate. Look at the opening bars — after the Gloria at the beginning, at 43 — there is no change of tempo, we keep trying to drag there, it’s not a new tempo — on et in terra there’s only a new theme, quieter but the same tempo — have you got that? Just because were singing softly doesn’t mean we change tempo. It’s particularly clear from the seconds, guys you’re dragging there. Keep time, count it out in the same time as the Gloria repetitions, pianissimo but not slower! And then on Lauiamus te we go back to the Gloria motif but still same tempo, same key, and then, suddenly, the Glorificamus at 84 is fugato — a new idea, but still continuing same key and then at 104 — mark this . . . this is where we all keep making a mess, we go into G, there’s that B sharp to E sharp. Everything, everything changes here, also tempo. At 84. Draw a huge circle around it. Okay? Juniors, Secondaries? Let’s do that section first up to 104. Have you all got it?’
‘Jubilaaaate’, in a dramatic, over-articulated whisper from behind me, sending us spluttering and laughing as we started 84.
15
Chaka and Suz chased the baboons up trees where they were darted with anaesthetic and put in cages to be taken to cities for medical research. My fists full of big coloured wala-wala sweets, I stood beside the cages. The baboons stuck their little black hands through for me to feed. Their eyes were like tiny black and white beads; like Nkosasaan’s piccanin when she woke from sleep. Some mothers had babies clinging to their bellies. I bit pieces off the yellow and orange balls for them to take and pop into their cheeks. With a whole sweet they couldn’t get their hands back through the bars. Bernice warned me not to get too close to the cages; one bite and you’re infested with rabies. They looked perplexed; frowns on their brows, as if contemplation of some riddle occupied their minds. Suddenly a black hand shot out and grabbed me by the hair. I tried to pull away but it held; a tight fist around the blond clump. I screamed that I was being dragged into the cage. Bernice tugged me free. I held onto her, still screaming. Around us the rangers and the game guards thought it a joke. I hid my face in Bernice’s neck until Bok came and took me from her. He held me as I sobbed; then he whispered: ‘Stop crying, Philistine. Look, the kaffirs are laughing at you.’
16
To enhance our learning and make History classes on the French Revolution more interesting, Ma’am Sanders rented the film of A Tale of Two Cities. She had given me the book, which I rushed through, reading sections up in the library and others at night by torchlight beneath the covers. The movie was in black and white. Just before the white horses come galloping onto the screen in front of the carriage, the film begins with the same words as the novel: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Having read the novel, I already knew that many of the conspirators called themselves Jacques. There’s Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three. I couldn’t but think of the other one and smile. My beloved co-conspirator. Only, he and I — and Dominic — were somehow on the other side. On the side of the bourgeoisie. And I knew that Sydney Carton would sacrifice himself and go to the guillotine in Paris so that Evremonde could live and return to London for the woman he loved. The film offered a more vivid picture of most of the characters than my hasty reading had allowed. In particular of Madame Defarge. Even more witch-like in the film than I imagined her from the novel. How terrifying to see her knitting while people were taken to the guillotine. And her sidekick in the movie — a character I didn’t recall from the novel — the one who laughed like a crazed hyena: the ugliest, most evil-sounding creature in the world. When the film showed the guillotine’s blade from the top, suspended while the drums rolled before it dropped, I felt it was a million times more terrifying than looking at the dull-coloured illustrations in the book. The sharp blade up there; the pale white neck of the aristocrat waiting in the block; the sound of the drums; one held one’s breath; and then the plebeians cheer! Seeing that, I could no longer believe Sydney Carton would offer himself so that the woman he loved may be happy. I’d never be able to do it. Not for anyone. How sad, the entire story.
Lukas took the final spool off the projector. I could see a few boys wipe their faces, hastily brush tears from their cheeks. No one spoke.
Ma’am stood to turn on the fluorescent light.
From in front of me, the sound of Madame Defarge’s sidekick cackling, suddenly sliced the silence. It was Dominic. In a moment we were all laughing. Ma’am, after giving Dom a stern look, also chuckled and moved over to the blackboard. She said it was time we got back to the curriculum. We were to read Causes, Developmentsand Outcomes of the French Revolution for next History period. That section was bound to appear in the test.
Dominic put up his arm. Ma’am nodded for him to go ahead. ‘Do you think we’ll have a revolution in South Africa, Ma’am?’ Ma’am’s eyes settled briefly on the back wall as she pondered the question. In her usual measured, confident tone she answered: ‘No, I think not, Dominic. We shouldn’t draw parallels between South Africa and France. The French Revolution was about justice amongst equals in the same country. The plebeians had been exploited for hundreds of years by the aristocracy and they wanted a slice of the cake, as it were. Black people in South Africa know that South Africa does not belong to them, they are not citizens of this country. They have full citizenship in the native homelands. No, the situation is not comparable.’
‘They must just try, here,’ Bennie said, half lifting himself from his desk. ‘I’ll kill those kaffirs before they’ve even got out of the locations.’ ‘Don’t use that word in my class, Benjamin! I’ve told you before: it is a vile and cruel word. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, Ma’am. Sorry, Ma’am.’
‘Ma’am, they almost killed our host mother in Jo’burg. Kids were all around her car and they’d have done it if the police hadn’t arrived.’ ‘And, Ma’am,’ I spoke up, ‘look at what they’re doing to their schools. Burning their own schools to the ground. It’s horrible, Ma’am.’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ said Mervyn. ‘They say they want to learn but then they go and burn down their schools. And stone white people’s cars.’ ‘They’re protesting because they’re being forced to learn in Afrikaans,’ Dominic interrupted, indignation in his tone. ‘How would you feel if you suddenly had to learn Science and Maths in Zulu?’
‘I agree with Dominic,’ Niklaas Bruin said, a nervous edge to his voice, as he turned, his gaze fastening to mine.
‘Aag, Niklaas,’ I said. ‘You’ll be the first to run when they come to take over your house.’ I glared at him and he looked down at his desk.
Bennie said there were two official languages, not just one: ‘English and Afrikaans, and why should they not learn both like the rest of us, Ma’am?’
‘Because people have a right,’ Dominic responded as though the question were directed at him, ‘to choose the language they wish to be taught in. That’s why!’ Annoyance in his expression as he shook his head at Bennie.
From the back of the class someone said: ‘We don’t even have a choice, what are you talking about, Webster! It’s one week English, one week Afrikaans. Now you want to give the . . . the plurals a choice!’
‘Okay, that will suffice,’ Ma’am interrupted. ‘No politics in class. That’s it.’
‘But, Ma’am,’ Dominic said, ‘these issues are relevant to the French Revolution.’
‘Well, then we can have an organised debate outside of class time. How does that sound?’
Some said it was a waste of time, but most agreed it was a good idea. Ma’am asked us to formulate a topic.
Bennie said we should address the question of how to get rid of all blacks. Ma’am ignored him and suggested we discuss: The French Revolution and its Relevance to the Republic of South Africa in 1916.
‘Okay, that’s our topic. Now we must elect two speakers. One in favour of positive relevance and another arguing negative relevance.’ Her eyes slid over the class, stopped on Dom in front of me. ‘Dominic, what about you to speak for the positive side, seeing as you introduced the question?’