Lieutenant Smit hadn’t even looked up. The African scrambled to his feet and Klipkop gave him a flying kick that sent him sprawling again. Crawling on all fours, the black prisoner fled from the room.
Klipkop examined his hand. “They got heads made of blerrie cannonballs.” He turned to me. “Always remember, when you hit a kaffir, stay away from his head. You can break your fist on their heads, just like that. Hit him in the face, that’s orright, but never on the head, man. I got a big fight coming up, I can’t afford a broken fist from a stinking kaffir’s head.”
Lieutenant Smit took another sip from his tea. “We can’t send him to the quarry, man. He’s had rheumatic fever; he’d die in a week. Besides, he is the first kaffir we’ve had who can make proper coffee and tea.” He turned to look at Klipkop, with just the hint of a smile on his face. “Next time, man, ask before you hit. I ate the blerrie Marie biscuits.”
Klipkop’s mouth fell open and then he grinned. “Okay, so I hit him because he steals the sugar. So what’s the difference?”
The phone rang and Lieutenant Smit picked it up and listened for a moment. “Right,” he said into the receiver and replaced it. He turned to me. “The Kommandant is back. Come on, son.”
Grabbing Mrs. Boxall’s books, I followed the lieutenant up a set of stairs to the second floor. We entered a small outer office where a lady sat behind a desk typing on a big black machine that said Remington Corona in gold letters on its back. “Go right in, Lieutenant Smit, the Kommandant is waiting for you,” she said, smiling at me.
We entered a large office, dark brown and filled with dead animals. A kudu head was mounted behind the Kommandant’s desk with a sable antelope head beside it. There were gemsbok and eland heads to complete the display of larger antelope and next to them, in a cluster of five heads, were the smaller variety of buck: gray duiker, klipspringer, steenbok, reebok and springbok. I turned to face the wall behind me. A large black-maned lion looked down at me, mouth in the full roar position. Next to it were a leopard and a cheetah. All the carnivores were on one side of the door, while on the other were their most common prey, a zebra and a black wildebeest. Below these, fixed to brackets on the wall, were two Boer War rifles and a long-shafted Zulu assegai.
On the polished floorboards were a zebra and a lion skin. Directly behind the Kommandant’s head hung two portraits. One was of King George VI and the other of Paul Kruger, the last president of the defeated Boer Republic.
Kommandant Van Zyl rose from his desk. “Good morning, Smit. So this is the boy, eh?” He walked out from behind his desk and stuck out a huge hand. “Good morning, Peekay.” He was even bigger than Lieutenant Smit. Like the lieutenant and Klipkop, he wore the gray military-style uniform of a prison warder. The only differences were four stars and a crown on his shoulder tabs and a small tab of blue velvet inserted into the top of his lapels. I shook his hand shyly.
“So, you want to see our professor?”
I nodded my head. “Yes, please, sir.”
“The law says he must be detained and I must follow the law, but inside this place, I am the law,” the Kommandant told me. “In here he can come and go as he pleases provided he stays within the gates. Also he can have visitors in official visiting hours.” He looked at me and smiled. “I have decided to make an exception in your case. You can come anytime you want, only not Sundays.” He paused and looked at me again. “How do you like that, hey?”
“Thank you, Meneer Van Zyl,” I said.
He looked at Lieutenant Smit as though he felt the need to explain his decision. “A friendship between a man and a boy is not a thing to be broken. This boy has no father. I know what that is like, man. My father died when I was the same age. Make out a permanent pass for the boy so he can come anytime except Sunday, you hear?”
“Ja, Kommandant.” Smit looked at the larger man. “What about the professor’s peeano?”
Kommandant Van Zyl slapped his hand on his thigh. “I clean forgot. Thank you, Smit.” He turned to me. “We are going to let the professor have his peeano here; there are already many musicians among us. Everybody thinks Boers are not cultured, but I’m telling you, man, when it comes to music we leave everyone for dead. For us it is an honor to have a man such as him in our prison community. Magtig! A real professor of music, here, in Barberton prison. Wonderlik!”
“Thank you for letting me come to see him, meneer.”
“The boy has nice manners. I like that,” he said to Lieutenant Smit. He hesitated for a moment. “Peekay, we need just a small favor. On Monday, about one o’clock, we will be having a nice little surprise for the townsfolk in the market square. I already telephoned the mayor but I can’t trust him to tell people. Will you inform Mrs. Boxall, who telephoned about you, and who, I understand, is also a friend of the professor? Ask her to tell everyone, you hear.” I nodded and he seemed pleased. “Dankie, Peekay. Now Lieutenant Smit is going to take you to see the professor. I see you have some books for him.” He stretched his hand out. “Show me.” I handed the books to him. He opened the top one and leafed through it for a few moments. “Plants, I don’t know much about plants. Animals, that’s my specialty.” He brought his hands up as though he were squinting down the barrel of a rifle, pulled an imaginary trigger and made a small explosive sound. “I’ve shot it.” He grinned at me. He had two gold teeth. “I love wild animals,” he said.
Lieutenant Smit cleared his throat loudly and the Kommandant turned back to us. “Well, it’s been nice to meet you, Peekay.” He patted me briefly on the shoulder. “If you want anything you just come and see me, you hear?”
It was like the time I had to decide whether to offer to do the Judge’s arithmetic. Like then, I was doing pretty well. Why risk it? If I got on the wrong side of the lieutenant, I stood to lose everything, even the chance of becoming a boxer once I turned ten.
“Please, Meneer Van Zyl. Could I learn to box here?”
“You want to box?” The Kommandant looked at me. “That’s the lieutenant’s department.”
“I already told the boy he must wait until he is ten, then maybe,” Smit said, trying not to sound terse.
“When you’re seven it’s a long time to wait till you’re ten,” the Kommandant said.
“We train at five-thirty in the morning. How could he get here?”
“I will get here, I promise. I will never miss, not even once. Please, Meneer Smit?”
Lieutenant Smit looked down at his boots for a long time. “We can try when your jaw is fixed. But I must have a note from your mother to say it’s okay to teach you.” He looked up, appealing directly to the Kommandant. “He is too small, Kommandant.”
“He will grow, Smit. As I recall you and your younger brother started very young. Is he still fighting?”
“Yes, sir, his next fight is against Oudendaal.”
“That’s right, the lowveld heavyweight title next Saturday.” Kommandant Van Zyl ushered us to the door. “All the best, Peekay.”
When we reached the bottom of the stairs Smit stopped, and getting down on his haunches, he grabbed me by the front of the shirt. He had said nothing when we left the Kommandant’s office, but I was too good at listening to silence not to know I was in real trouble. I closed my eyes, waiting for the clout across the head that must inevitably come. I hadn’t been hit for a year except for a few hidings from my mother that you couldn’t really call hidings after what I’d been through. To my surprise the blow didn’t come and I opened my eyes again to look straight into Lieutenant Smit’s angry face. “I’m telling you flat, don’t do that to me again, you hear? When I tell you something I mean it, man!” He shook me hard, expecting me to cry; instead I held his gaze. “You trying to be cheeky?” he asked.
“Please, meneer, I saw your brother fight in Gravelotte last year. That’s when I decided.”
A look of amazement crossed Smit’s face. “You were there? Wragdig? You saw that fight?”
I nodded. “He fought Hoppie Groenewald … Kid
Louis,” I corrected. Lieutenant Smit released his grip on the front of my shirt.
“I was there also. Magtig! That was a fight and a half.” He rose from his haunches and suddenly his eyes grew wide. “The kid with Hoppie Groenewald! I remember now. We thought you was his kid.”
We had reached the office again. Klipkop was on the floor doing push-ups and stood up rather foolishly as we entered. “You know the fight in Gravelotte my brother had against Groenewald the welterweight last year?” Klipkop nodded. “Peekay saw that fight; he is a personal friend of Groenewald.”
The warder laughed. “I lost a fiver on that fight.”
“You mark my words, if Groenewald comes out of this war he’s going to be South African champ,” Smit said.
Klipkop grinned. “I’m going to do the same to your brother on Saturday as he did.”
“Don’t be so blerrie sure of yourself, Oudendaal. Jackhammer Smit is no pushover. This time he’ll be fit.”
Smit turned to me suddenly. “Okay, I changed my mind, you on the squad. But no fighting for two years, you hear? Just training and learning your punches and technique, you understand me?”
I nodded, overjoyed. My eyes brimmed with tears. I had taken the first step to becoming the welterweight champion of the world.
“Klipkop, take Peekay to see the professor. I’ll make a phone call and you can meet him in the warders’ mess.”
We left the administration block and passed through another building. “This is the gymnasium for the prison officers,” Klipkop said. We walked over to the punching bag and the boxing ring set up at one end of the room. Large leather balls lay on the floor and Klipkop bent down and scooped one up. “Here, Peekay, hold on to this.” I put both my hands out and he flipped the ball lightly into them and suddenly I was sitting on the floor with Klipkop laughing over me. “It’s a medicine ball and it weighs fifteen pounds. When you can throw one of these over my head you’ll be strong enough to box.” I got up, feeling very foolish; then I bent down and tried to pick the brown leather ball up. Using all my strength, I managed to lift it but was happy to let it drop again. “Not bad, Peekay,” Klipkop said with a grin. We were standing next to the ring and I liked the smell of the canvas and the sweat. I wondered how I could possibly wait two years before I climbed into the ring to face a real opponent.
We left the gymnasium and crossed the huge indoor courtyard, an area half the size of a football field. The prison blocks rose up on every side of the square where two old lags were raking its gravel surface so all the tiny rake lines ran diagonally across the quad. “It’s Friday, diagonal lines. I like Monday best, when they make a big star in the middle,” Klipkop said. I was soon to learn that each day had a different pattern. It was how the prisoners knew what day of the week it was.
“Where are all the prisoners, Klipkop?” I asked. The two old lags doing the raking were the only humans I had seen since leaving the administration building.
“They’re all out in work gangs. Most work on farms, some at the quarries and some at the sawmills. The people who hire them call for their gangs at four in the morning and they got to be back here by six at night. What you see around here in the daytime is just old lags, too old to work hard, like that black bastard who makes our tea.”
“What about the white prisoners. Do they also work in the gangs?”
Klipkop looked surprised. “No blerrie fear! Gangs is not a white man’s work. Mostly white men are only here in transit to Pretoria.”
We had crossed the gravel quad and passed through an archway that led to the back of the prison. A corrugated-iron shed stretched from the main building and smoke rose from three chimneys along its length. “Kitchens. The warders’ mess is on the other side,” Klipkop said.
Doc was overjoyed to see me. He hugged me and his sharp blue eyes went watery. “Let me see your jaw? Tut tut tut. I wish only I could have taken the kick; then you would be okay. Can you talk?”
“My jaw is not so bad. They are going to take the wire out in six weeks, but I have learned to talk with my mouth shut.”
Doc laughed. “You and I, Peekay, even when they cement our mouths, we find a way to talk.”
I handed him the books from Mrs. Boxall and he held them briefly before putting them on the table beside him. “She is a goot woman. You and she, Peekay, eleven out of ten for brains. Absoloodle. Also Mr. Andrews. I do not think they would listen to a poor old German professor of music on his own. German measles was in the air and only you and Mrs. Boxall don’t catch a big dose, ja?” He chuckled at his sad little joke.
“I can come and visit you as much as I like,” I said happily.
Doc looked bemused. “Without the hills it will not be the same. What can I teach you here?”
“Lots of things. I could go into the mountains and find things and bring them here and then we could talk about them.”
Doc gave me one of his proper grins. “You are right, Peekay. A man is only free when he is free in his heart. We will be friends like always. Absoloodle. But also one more thing: they are going to let me have the Steinway here. You can continue your lessons. You must tell your mother this. I think she will be happy. On Monday they are letting me come with them to get it. I will see my cactus garden one last time. Maybe you can be there, Peekay?”
Dr. Simpson had said that another week’s recuperation was in order.
“I’ll be waiting for you. I’ve already planted the Senecio serpens, just like you said, facing east.”
Doc looked pleased, but then a worried expression crossed his face. “Peekay, on Monday is happening a stupid thing. It is not my decision, but please you must trust me. That is why I want you to be there. I think Kommandant Van Zyl wants to be a schmarty pantz with some people in this town. I am too old for such silly games. You will help me, please?”
“Kommandant Van Zyl said I was to tell Mrs. Boxall everyone has to be in the market square at one o’clock, but he didn’t say what it was all about.”
Just then Klipkop emerged from the door leading to the kitchen.
Doc went on talking. “Monday, Peekay. Be so kind as to be at the cactus garden at twelve o’clock; then I will explain. Also, tomorrow maybe find for me Beethoven Symphony Number Five, you will see on the cover is printed my name and Berlin 1925. That is the one I want.” I knew where to look, for the music Doc played only to himself was kept under the seat of his piano stool. I found it strange that he would ask me to find it. After all, he knew perfectly well where it was. “Peekay, put what’s above the score in my water flask, the key for the piano stool lid you will find under the pot on the stoep where grows the Aloe saponara.” He said all this in a perfectly straight voice in English. Klipkop appeared to be uninterested. I looked quizzically at Doc but he put his forefinger to his lips and indicated the warder with his eyes.
A hooter sounded somewhere in the prison. “Twelve o’clock, lunchtime, Peekay. We must get back to the lieutenant and the professor must go to lunch,” Klipkop said.
I would have to run all the way home as my mother would expect me back from the library by now. I wasn’t at all sure how she would take the news of my potential comings and goings to the Barberton prison.
After Sunday school the next day I went to the cactus garden. Dum and Dee had the afternoon off on Sundays and had excitedly agreed to come with me to clean things up a bit. They took brooms and feather dusters and other cleaning things in two buckets, which they carried on their heads, chatting away happily. There wasn’t much they could do on their half-day off as they hadn’t yet learned to speak Swazi. They must have felt isolated from their own kind. On the farm they had been at the center of things. Here they were two lonely girls who, outside our home, could make no contact and knew no people other than our family.
When we arrived at the cactus garden they set to, delighted to be without supervision from anyone. I went straight to the terracotta pot on the stoep where Aloe saponara was growing. With some difficulty I pushed the large pot aside to
reveal the key to Doc’s own piano stool.
I always used to sit at the piano on a second stool. I hurried to the stool and opened it. The recess was packed with sheets of music and handwritten music manuscripts. I dug down quite deeply into the manuscripts and sheet music without finding Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Then, lifting another batch of paper, I revealed a bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch. I lifted the bottle and directly under it was the piece of music for which Doc had asked.
On Friday afternoon after lunch I had gone to see Mrs. Boxall in the library to give her the Kommandant’s message.
“Whatever do you think they’re up to, Peekay?” she had said.
“At twelve o’clock they are going to fetch the Steinway and take it to the prison. Doc asked me to be there to help him.”
“My God! He’s going to give a concert! The professor is going to give a concert in the market square. How perfectly thrilling!” I had never seen her so excited.
It was suddenly also clear to me. “I don’t think he’s very happy about it. He said Mr. Van Zyl was trying to be a smarty pants with the people of the town.”
Mrs. Boxall, in her excitement, appeared not to have heard me. “I once checked up on our professor. He turned out to be terribly famous.” Her eyes shone. “There’s something dark and mysterious about it all, if you ask me. Why would a famous European pianist give it all up and bury himself in a tiny dorp in Africa giving lessons to little girls?”
“I think he just likes collecting things like cactus and aloes and climbing in the mountains,” I said.
“Peekay, did he ask you to do anything when he said he needed your help?”
“He asked me to get out Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”
“Jolly good show! Beethoven, eh? What a treat we’re in for.” Mrs. Boxall clasped her hands and looked up at the ceiling fan. “Oh bliss!”
“He also said I must put what is above the sheet music into his water flask.”
“Whatever can he mean?” she said absently. It was obvious her mind was on Doc’s concert in the market square. This was no time to attempt to solve one of Doc’s conundrums. “Peekay, you’ll have to excuse me, I think we’re going to have to close early today. I have such a lot of phoning to do. One o’clock, are you sure that’s the time Mr. Van Zyl said?” I nodded.
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