“Okay, Peekay, then I give you one chance more. A professor is not a mister but a mister can be a professor. Answer me that, mister Schmarty Pantz?”
I lay down on a small rock trying to work this out. My heart sank, for I knew immediately that he had the better of me. “I give up, sir,” I said, feeling foolish. “What is a professor?”
Suddenly he removed the canvas bag from his back and once again held the camera cupped in his hands. “Peekay, you are a genius, my friend! Look what we find under this rock where you are sitting. This is Aloe microsfigma!” I rose from the rock and joined him on his knees looking underneath it. A cluster of tiny spotted aloes grew in the grass at the base of the rock. The old man brushed the grass out of the way and, lying flat on his tummy, he focused the camera on the tiny succulents. Behind him the sunset bathed the plants in a red glow. “The light is perfect but I must work quick.” His hands, fumbling with the camera, were shaking with excitement. Finally he clicked the shot and got slowly back to his knees. He used a small knife to separate four of the aloes, leaving twice as many behind. He held the tiny plants in his hand for me to see. “Wunderbar, Peekay, small but so perfect, a good omen for our friendship.”
I must say I was not too impressed but I was glad that he was happy. “You haven’t said what a professor is.”
He wrapped the tiny aloes in his bandanna and placed them carefully into his canvas bag. “Ja, I like that. You have good concentration, Peekay. What is a professor?” He stood looking at the dying sun. “A professor is a person who drinks too much whisky and once plays goot Beethoven and Brahms and Mozart and even sometimes when it was not serious, Chopin. Such a person who could command respect in Vienna, Leipzig, Warsaw and Budapest and also, ja, once in London.” His shoulders sagged visibly. “A professor is also some person who cannot any more command respect from little girls who play not even ‘Schopstics’ goot.”
I could see that his previous mood of elation had changed and there was a strange conversation going on in his head. But then, just as suddenly, his eyes regained their sparkle. “A professor is a teacher, Peekay. I have the honor to be a teacher of music. You can call me Doc. You see I am also Doctor of Music, it is all the same thing. I am too old and you are too young for Mister this or Professor that. Just Peekay and Doc. I think this is a goot plan?”
I nodded, though I was too shy to say the word out loud. He seemed to sense my reluctance. “What is my name, Peekay?” he asked casually.
“Doc,” I replied shyly. Hoppie was the only other adult with whom I had been on such familiar terms.
“One hundred percent! For this I give you eleven out of ten. Absoloodle!” he said, and we both started to laugh.
The sun sets quickly in the bushveld and we hurried down the hill, racing to beat the dark. Below us the first lights were coming on.
“So it is you who live now in the English rose garden,” Doc said when we reached the line of mulberry trees. “Soon I will show you my cactus garden. We will meet again, Peekay.” I watched his tall, shambling figure with the Euphorbia grandicornis sticking up beyond his head moving into the gathering darkness.
“Goodnight, Doc,” I said, and then on a whim shouted, “Euphorbia grandicornis and Aloe microsfigma!”
The old man turned in the dark. “Magnificent, Peekay. Absoloodle!”
Euphorbia grandicornis, such a posh name for a silly old cactus. I wondered briefly how it might sound as a name for a fighter, but almost immediately rejected it. Euphorbia grandicornis was no name for the next welterweight champion of the world.
When I entered the kitchen, Dum and Dee averted their eyes and Dee said, “The missus wants to see you, Inkosikaan.” She looked at me distressed. Dum reached out and touched me.
“We have put some food under your bed in the pot for night water,” she whispered.
I knocked on the door of my mother’s sewing room. “Come in,” she said, and looked up as I entered. Then she bent over her sewing machine and put her foot down on the motor and sewed away for quite a while. If her saying nothing and carrying on with her machine was meant to unsettle me she had no hope. After Mevrou and the Judge, she wasn’t to know she was dealing with a veteran of interrogation and punishment. I could outwait her any time of the day.
After a while she stopped and, taking off her glasses, she gave a deep sigh. “You have hurt me and you have hurt the Lord very deeply,” she said at last. “Don’t you know the Lord loves you?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “When I had my quiet time with the Lord this afternoon,” my mother continued, “He spoke to me. You will not get a beating, but you will go to your room at once without your supper.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said, and turned to go.
“Just a moment! You have not apologized to me for your behavior.”
I hung my head just like I used to do with Mevrou. “I’m sorry, Mother.”
“Not sorry enough, if you ask me. Do you think it’s easy for me trying to make ends meet? I’m not supposed to get tired. I’m only your mother, the dogsbody about the place. All you care about is that black woman, that stinking black Zulu woman!” She suddenly lost her anger and her eyes filled with tears. Grabbing the dress she had been sewing, she held it up to her eyes, her thin shoulders shaking, and began to sob.
I felt enormously relieved. This was much more like my old mother. She was having one of her turns, and I knew exactly what to do. “I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and an Aspro and then you must have a good lie-down,” I said, and left the room.
Dum and Dee were delighted that I hadn’t received a beating and hurriedly made a pot of tea. Dee handed me two Aspro, from a big bottle kept in a cupboard above the sink, and I put them in my pocket, for I was afraid that if I put them on the saucer I’d slop tea over them.
My mother was sitting at the machine unpicking stitches as I entered the sewing room. Her eyes were red from crying but otherwise she seemed quite composed. I put the cup of tea down carefully on the table next to the machine and fished in my pocket for the Aspro, which I placed next to the cup. “Thank you,” she said in a tight voice, not looking up at me. “Now go straight to your room. You may not come out until morning.”
It was light punishment. I had expected far worse. In the chamberpot Dum and Dee had left three cold sausages, two big roast potatoes and a couple of mandarins, a proper feast. There wasn’t much else to do but go to sleep after that. It had been a long day and a very good one. I had made a new friend called Doc and had learned several new things. Euphorbia grandicornis was an ugly green cactus with long, dangerous-looking thorns, Aloe microsfigma was a tiny, spotted aloe that liked to hide under rocks, and a professor was a teacher of music. Also, there was a rose called Mrs. Butt and another called Imperial Sunset.
I fell asleep thinking about Hoppie fighting Adolf Hitler, which would probably be an easier fight than the one against Jackhammer Smit, and how I was going to become welterweight champion of the world.
Two days later I was sitting on the front stoep watching army trucks passing the front door. An army camp was being set up in the valley about three miles out of town. The big khaki Bedford, Chevrolet and Ford trucks, their backs covered with canvas tarpaulin canopies, had been passing for two days. Some contained soldiers who sat in the back carrying .303 rifles. But mostly they carried tents and timber and other things needed for building an army camp.
My granpa said it was typical of the army bigwigs, putting a military camp at the end of a branch line, which couldn’t move troops out fast enough to anywhere, least of all to Lourenço Marques, where the Portuguese couldn’t be relied on to maintain their neutrality for a moment. I had learned that Portugal was one of a handful of European countries that had remained neutral in the war, and its neutrality extended to its possessions in Africa.
My Adolf Hitler fears returned immediately. Lourenço Marques, I discovered, was no more than eighty miles away if he came through Swaziland. I was glad that my granpa had Nanny’s address in Zulul
and and that I had sent her a postal order for my ten shillings, my love in a letter and a photograph taken much earlier showing her holding me. If she couldn’t get somebody to read the letter, she’d know it was from me and my original escape plan would still be intact.
I was also glad the army was so close at hand. Lourenço Marques, the nearest seaport, was obviously where Adolf Hitler planned to march all the Rooineks from these parts into the sea. Even an army at the end of a branch line was better than no army at all.
My mother added that Lourenço Marques was probably seething with German spies at this very moment, and they were probably using code words on Radio Lourenço Marques to relay messages to the Boer Nazis who were plotting to tear down the country from within.
I thought about the Judge and Mr. Stoffel and how they always listened to the wireless. When my granpa said that was a lot of poppycock, I was not so sure.
I thought about these things as I watched a convoy of one hundred and five army trucks go by, the biggest yet by far, so I didn’t notice Doc coming up the hill until he almost reached the gate.
“Goot morning, Peekay.” He was dressed in a white linen suit and wore a panama hat, so that I hardly recognized him. He carried a string bag and a fancy walking stick and under one arm was a large manila envelope.
“Good morning, Doc,” I said, jumping to my feet.
“I can come in, ja?” I hurried down the steps to open the gate. “This is an official visit, Peekay. I have come to see your mother.”
I felt stupidly disappointed. I hadn’t known he knew my mother. I followed him up the steps. “You will introduce us, please,” he said as we reached the verandah.
Unreasonably pleased that I was his first friend, I led him into the parlor. Visitors to the farm had been infrequent but the routine was unerring. First you sat people down and then you gave them coffee and cake. I asked Doc to sit down and he did so, but not before he had stood in the center of the zebra skin and slowly turned around, taking the room in. When he reached the grandfather clock he paused and said, “English, London, about 1680, a very good piece.” He took a gold Hunter from his fob pocket, and snapping it open, examined it briefly. “Four minutes a month,” he said. I was amazed he should know how much our grandfather clock lost, for he was right. I thought perhaps my granpa had told him.
“Do you know my granpa?” I asked.
“I have not yet had this pleasure but it will be okay. We are both men of thorns, with me the cactus, with him the rose. The English and the Germans are not so far apart. It will be all right, you will see.” He said this just as I was about to leave the room to get Dum and Dee to bring coffee and cake.
I was dumbfounded. Professor Von Vollensteen was a German! What should I do? My grandfather had gone to the library in town, that was one good thing anyway. You never knew what he might do coming face to face with a German. I decided to say nothing to my mother. She might have a conniption on the spot.
Dum and Dee had somehow known we had a guest and were putting out the tea things and half a canary cake on a plate. I could hear the sewing machine zizzing away as I went to tell my mother she had a guest.
“There is someone to see you, Mother,” I shouted over the sound of the whirring machine.
“Tell her to come in, darling, it must be Mrs. Cameron about her skirt.”
“It is Professor Von Vollensteen. He wants to see you.”
“Professor who?” she asked, removing her glasses.
“He is a teacher of music,” I said urgently in an attempt to hide my confusion. She rose to her feet and patted her hair.
“Well, he can’t teach music here. We haven’t got that sort of money,” she said. I followed behind her, not at all sure of the reception Doc would get.
But my mother was countrybred and all visitors were treated courteously. Doc rose from the lounge as she entered. “Madame,” he said, bowing slightly, “Professor Karl Von Vollensteen.”
My mother extended her hand and Doc took it lightly and bowed over it, bringing his heels together. “Please sit down, professor. Will you take coffee with us?”
Dum and Dee entered, Dee carrying a tray with cups and cake and Dum carrying the china coffeepot we used for visitors. Dee set the tray on the traymobile and carefully wheeled it over to my mother, who sent her back to fetch a knife for the cake. Dum too was sent back to the kitchen, for the coffee strainer.
“You can tell them a hundred times over, it’s useless. I don’t know what goes on inside their heads,” my mother sighed. I had been standing beside her chair and now she turned to me. “Run along now.”
Doc looked up. “With your permission, madame, I would like for Peekay to stay, please?”
“Who?” my mother said.
“Your son, madame, I would much like him to stay.”
My mother turned to me. “What on earth have you been telling the professor?”
“It’s my new name. I, I haven’t told you about it yet,” I said, flustered. My mother laughed, but I knew she was annoyed.
“Why, you have a perfectly good name, my dear.” She turned to Doc. “Of course he may stay, but I’m afraid our family never had much of an ear for music and lessons would be too expensive.”
Without looking at Dee and Dum, who had reentered the room, she held her hand out for the knife and strainer and dismissed them with an impatient flick of her head. She lifted the coffeepot.
“Black only, no sugar,” Doc said, leaning forward.
My mother poured his coffee. “A nice piece of cake, professor?”
Doc put the coffee and cake on the zebra hide between his legs and picked up the manila envelope. His eyes sparkled as he handed the envelope to my mother.
“Goodness, what can it be?” she said. She withdrew the largest photograph I had ever seen, which, to my amazement, turned out to be me sitting on the rock on top of the hill. “Goodness gracious!” My mother stared at it, momentarily lost for words. The photograph showed every detail, even the lichen on the rock. Shafts of sunlight seemed to be directed straight at the rock on which I sat. My body, half in shadow, appeared to be as one with the rock. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was an extraordinary picture. At last my mother spoke. “Wherever did you take this? Why did you take a picture of him when he was looking so sad?”
Doc rubbed his chin. It was plainly not the comment he expected. Ignoring the first question, he leaned forward as he answered the second. “Ja, this is so. The smile, madame, is used by humans to hide the truth; the artist is only interested to reveal the truth.” He leaned back, clearly satisfied with his reply.
“Goodness, professor, all that is much too deep for simple country people like us. He’s only a very little boy, you know. I prefer him to smile.”
“Of course! But sadness, like understanding, comes early in life for some. It is part of intelligence.”
My mother’s back stiffened. “You seem to know a lot about my son, professor. I can’t imagine how. He has only been home from boarding school for three days.”
Doc clapped his hands gleefully. “Boarding school! Ha, that explains I think everything. For a boy like this, boarding school is a prison, ja?”
My mother was beginning to show her impatience. Her fingers tapped steadily on the arms of the chair, a sure sign that things were not going well. “We had no choice in the matter, professor. I was ill. One does the best one can under the circumstances.”
Doc suddenly seemed to realize that he had gone too far. “Forgive me, madame. It is not said to make you angry. Your son is a gifted child. I don’t know how. I only pray it is music. Today I have come to ask you, please let me teach him?” He had spoken to my mother softly and with great charm and I could feel her relax.
“Humpf! I can’t see how he is any different to any other child of his age,” she said, though I could tell that she was secretly pleased by the compliment. My mother was a proud woman and didn’t expect charity from anyone. “It is out of the question. Piano lessons
don’t grow on trees, professor.”
“Ja, that is true. But, I think, maybe on cactus plants.” Doc’s blue eyes showed his amusement. “For two years I have searched everywhere for the Aloe microsfigma. Then, poof! Just by sitting on a rock, Aloe microsfigma comes. The boy is a genius. Absoloodle!”
“Whatever can you be talking about, professor? What have you two been up to?” Whereas before she had been angry, now she was plainly charmed by him.
“Madame, we met on the mountaintop. The picture will capture the moment forever. It was destiny: the new cactus man has come.” He paused. “My eyes are not so goot. If the boy will come with me to collect cactus specimens, I will teach him music. It is a fine plan, ja? Cactus for Mozart!”
My mother looked pleased. “His grandmother was an artist. But I don’t know if there were any musicians in the family.”
The idea of a musician in the family was clearly to my mother’s liking. The idea of a son who played the piano, let alone classical music, was a social triumph of the sort she had never expected to come her way. In this largely English-speaking town, a classical piano player was a social equalizer almost as good as money.
I was to learn that the Apostolic Faith Mission was deemed pretty low on the social scale in Barberton. My mother was constantly fighting the need to remain loyal to the Lord and his congregation while at the same time aspiring to the ranks of “nice people.”
Old Pisskop at the piano promised to be the major instrument in balancing the family social scales. The bargain was struck just as Mrs. Cameron arrived for her fitting. In return for trekking around the hills as Doc’s companion, I would receive free piano lessons. While I had no concept of what it meant to be musical, from the very beginning pitch and harmony had been a part of my life with Nanny.
The long summer months were spent mostly with Doc, climbing the hills around Barberton. Often we would venture into the dark kloofs where the hills formed the deep creases at the start of the true mountains. These green, moist gullies of treefern and tall old yellowwood trees, the branches draped with lichen and the vines of wild grape, made a cool, dark contrast to the barren, sunbaked hills of aloe, thorn scrub, rock and coarse grass.
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