A strange relationship had grown up between the captain and the little colored man. They only spoke to each other on the subject of boxing and Captain Smit would occasionally belittle a suggestion from Geel Piet to one of the boxers, but you could see that he respected Geel Piet’s judgment and it was only to show who was the boss of the squad. In the months that followed my win against Killer Kroon I continued to enter the ring against bigger, stronger and older opponents, yet had never lost a fight. Captain Smit saw in me the consummate skill Geel Piet had as a coach.
I knew this because Bokkie de Beer said Captain Smit had told his pa that I would be the South African champion one day, “… because, man, he is getting the right coaching from the very beginning.”
Under the guise of learning how to read and write, Geel Piet would stare into a schoolbook and dictate the prisoners’ letters to me. His facility for remembering names and addresses was quite remarkable.
We had the new system up and running well before VE day and while it wasn’t as foolproof or convenient as the piano stool, it worked well enough. Geel Piet was too old a lag not to maintain absolute caution and he would never let me get careless or less mindful of the risks involved. For instance, on rainy days I would bring nothing to the prison as the idea of my taking the outside path in the rain would seem both silly and, to an alert warder like Borman, suspicious. Nor would the drops be made every day or on the same days. Geel Piet created a random pattern for my drops, even allowing that on some dry days I would take the interior passage to the mess.
It was very fortunate that Doc was smart enough to initiate the new system some time before he left.
One morning, shortly after he had been promoted to lieutenant, Borman wandered into the hall while we were practicing. This was simply not done. The Kommandant’s orders were that we should not be disturbed, two geniuses at work. Lieutenant Borman walked over to us, his boots making a hollow sound on the sprung floor. I continued to play until his footsteps ceased as he came to a halt just behind me.
“Good morning, Lieutenant Borman,” we both said.
“Morning,” Borman said in a superior way. He was carrying a cane not unlike the one Mevrou had carried and with it he tapped the leg of the piano stool. “Stan’ up, man,” he said to me. I rose, and he bent down and with his index finger and thumb he measured the seat. “A bit deep, hey, maybe something lives inside this seat?” He got down on all fours and put his head under the seat. “Maybe a false bottom, hey?” He tapped the bottom of the piano stool, which gave off a hollow sound. “Very inter-res-ting.” Doc rose from his stool, inserted the key into my stool and raised the lid. Lieutenant Borman started to rise. Halfway up he could see that the seat was filled with sheets of music. Remaining in a crouched position, he stared at Doc and me for what seemed like a long time. “You think this is playing a funny joke on a person, hey?”
“No, lieutenant,” Doc said, his voice surprisingly even. “I think only you should ask before you look. Inside lives only Klavier-Meister Chopin.” He opened the lid of his own stool, “And here lives also Herr Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart and Bach and maybe are visiting also some others, perhaps Haydn, Liszt and Tchaikovsky, but not Strauss, definitely not Strauss. Like you, my dear lieutenant, Strauss is not welcome when I am teaching.”
Lieutenant Borman rose to his full height. The two men stared at each other. The lieutenant was the first to drop his eyes. He laid the cane on top of the Steinway and hitched his pants up. “You think I don’t blerrie know things is going on? I got time, I got plenty of time, you hear?” He picked up the cane, then brought it down hard against the open lid of my piano stool, knocking the lid back into place. The sound of the cane against the leather top echoed through the hall. He pointed the cane at Doc so that it touched him lightly on the breastbone as though it were a rapier. “Next time you try to be cheeky you come off secon’ bes’.” He turned and stormed out, his heavy boots crashing and echoing through the empty hall.
“Phew!” I sighed as I closed the lid of Doc’s piano stool and sat down weakly on my own. Doc also sat down, reached over to the Chopin Nocturne No. 5 in F sharp major on the Steinway music rack and commenced to fan himself with it. He was silent for a while, lost in thought, then said softly, “Soon come the hills and the mountains.”
FOURTEEN
We were reasonably safe for the month after the piano stool incident as the inspector of prisons was due to arrive and Lieutenant Borman had the job of seeing that the place was spick-and-span, with fresh whitewash everywhere you looked. Much to Doc’s annoyance, even the stones bordering his cactus garden were whitewashed. Painting stones seemed to him an insult against nature. The prison corridors smelt of polish and the cells of disinfectant. Window ledges were painted prison blue and everywhere you went smelt of new paint.
The rapidly approaching VE day was a matter of concern to the Kommandant. If it arrived before the brigadier’s visit then the cultural part of the program would disappear with the release of Doc. He had tried to elicit a promise from Doc that, should this occur, he would return to the prison and play for the inspector. But Doc had learned the rules of prison life, where everything is in return for something else. The Goldfields News had already printed a piece by the Kommandant saying that the moment Germany surrendered Doc would be released. The Kommandant couldn’t go back on his word without losing face. Doc’s price for staying over, if necessary, caused an uproar among the warders but as far as the Kommandant was concerned no price was too high for a smooth visit. Doc asked if he could give a concert for all the prisoners.
On Sundays the prisoners did not go out in work gangs. Instead they were locked in their cells and fifty at a time, tribe by tribe, were allowed in the exercise pen, a high-walled enclosure. First the Zulu, followed by the Swazi, then the Ndebele, Sotho and Shangaane. The Boers understood the antipathy each tribe has for the other, and by keeping the tribes separated they maintained the traditional tensions between them. This was thought to lessen the chances of a mass uprising or a prison strike.
Doc told me how each Sunday he would take a position in the guard tower overlooking the exercise pen to listen to them. Each tribe would use much of the ninety minutes allotted to them singing together, and he soon learned which tribal song each tribe liked best. He had written out the music for it, and then he had composed a piano concerto that represented, in melody terms, each of these songs. Doc said that he had never heard such magnificent harmony. Even though he did not understand the words, he could hear in the songs the people’s longing for their homes, their people, the comfort of their fires. He called his composition Concerto of the Great Southland. It was this that he hoped to play to all the prisoners as his tribute to them before he left the prison.
The idea was for Doc to play the concerto through first, each movement in effect being one or more of a particular tribe’s songs. Then on the second time through the tribe whose movement it was would sing the song to Doc’s accompaniment. In this way each of the tribes in the prison would participate in the concert.
Once the Kommandant had agreed the concert could go ahead, a great deal had to be done. No rehearsal was possible, of course, but through Geel Piet each of the tribes was told which song was needed and the exact time it should take to sing. At night Doc would play the various songs fortissimo with all the hall windows open so the sound carried to the cell blocks. The warders claimed you could hear the cockroaches scratching as the prisoners strained to hear the music.
Doc decided I should conduct. This I would do in the simplest sense, signaling the piano breaks and the pianissimo as well as the fortissimo to the choir. Doc and I went through the concerto during morning practice until I knew what every shake and nod of his head meant. Geel Piet had also taken basic instructions back to the prisoners so they knew what my hand signals would mean. Had Doc proposed that I assume the role of conductor in front of a white audience I could not have done so, but such was the nature of white supremacy in South Africa that I
thought little of standing up in front of three hundred and fifty black prisoners and directing them.
Geel Piet informed me of the mounting excitement among the inmates. When the news spread that the Tadpole Angel would be directing the people in the singing indaba, it was immediately assumed the concert had a mystical significance. Work time was used as practice and farmers and the people at the sawmills who hired gangs spoke of singing from dawn until dusk. Even the dreaded quarries rang with the songs of the tribal work gangs. The Concerto of the Great Southland was being wrought into being, a musical jigsaw. On the big night, all the pieces would be brought together under the magic spell cast by the Tadpole Angel.
Captain Smit seemed to have decided that the concert was a good idea, perhaps for no other reason than that it was opposed by Lieutenant Borman. The two men had never liked each other and Captain Smit was said to have been bitterly opposed to the elevation of Borman to lieutenant.
The concert was to take place on the parade ground, and a platform had been built to raise the Steinway above the level of the prisoners. Each tribe would form a semicircle around the platform with ten feet separating each group. Two warders carrying sjamboks would be stationed in this corridor to stop any monkey business. A double shift issued with extra ammunition would be on guard duty on the walkways along the wall, and spotlights would be trained on the prisoners.
The concert was scheduled for Monday, May 7, 1945, and all the warders had been placed on full alert. Prisoners were never paraded at night and rumors were rife of tribal vendettas being settled in the dark, as well as an attempted prison break by the Zulus. Lieutenant Borman lost no opportunity of telling anyone who was prepared to listen that trouble was on its way.
It was difficult to get my mother to agree to my staying up late for the concert. Finally, after consulting the Lord and receiving a note from Miss Bornstein that assured her that my school career would not be affected by one late night, she gave her permission.
Doc asked me how I would dress as conductor. The choice was limited: khaki shirts and shorts and a pair of black boots with gray school socks were the entire contents of my wardrobe. Then Geel Piet suggested that I dress in my boxing uniform, wearing the boots the people had made for me. Doc thought this was a splendid idea and I must say I quite liked it myself. It would be awkward for me to wear boxing gloves as it would make it difficult to conduct. Geel Piet suggested that I should wear gloves and then just before the concert began, remove them.
Thus, on the night of the concert, all the myths Geel Piet had so carefully nurtured among the prisoners about the Tadpole Angel would harmonize in my appearance as their leader, uniting all the tribes in the great singing indaba.
In any other society Geel Piet would have been a great promoter. The Tadpole Angel would appear to the people dressed as a great fighter who would lead them in their tribal songs, crossing over the barriers of race and tribe. Was he not already a slayer of giants? Was he not the spirit of the great chief who bound Zulu with the Swazi and the Ndebele and Shangaane and Sotho so that they all sat on one mat in a great singing indaba?
As with Mrs. Boxall’s Earl of Sandwich Fund, Doc’s wonderful Concerto of the Great Southland was appropriated by the prisoners as being my work and my doing. Geel Piet had seen that it would be more appropriate if it was presented in this way.
The night of Doc’s concert arrived. The moment I passed through the gates I knew something in the prison was different. The feeling of despair was not in the air. The sad chattering that was in my mind the instant I stepped within the grounds had ceased. The thoughts of the people were calm. I felt a thrill of excitement. Tonight was going to be special.
A full moon had risen just above the dark shadow of the hills behind the prison walls, and the parade ground was flooded with moonlight. Doc’s Steinway stood sharply outlined on the platform.
As I stood looking at the Steinway, the floodlights, bright and sudden, came on. When my eyes had adjusted to the harsh, raw light I could see that around the platform in a semicircle on the ground, whitewashed lines denoted the area for each tribe. A dozen warders carrying sjamboks came out of the main building and walked toward the piano, their boots scrunching on the gravel.
I made my way to the hall. Doc was sitting at the Mignon upright, absently tapping at the keys. He looked up as I entered. “Geel Piet is late; he should be already here,” he said. Doc regarded Geel Piet as an essential part of the entire operation. Without him working with the prisoners, a concert still fraught with the potential for unrehearsed disaster would have no chance of succeeding.
“He’ll be here any minute, you’ll see,” I said to cheer him up. “I’ll go and get my gloves.” I hurried from the hall toward the gym. An old lag was coming toward me carrying a huge coffeepot; another followed him with a tray of mugs. They were taking coffee to the warders in the parade ground. “Have you seen Geel Piet?” I asked one. I spoke in Shangaan for I could see from the cicatrization on his cheeks that he was of the Tsonga tribe. “No, baas, we have not seen this one,” he said humbly. As I departed I heard him say to the lag behind him, “See how the Tadpole Angel speaks the languages of all the tribes. Is he not the chosen leader of the people?”
When I reached the gymnasium I switched on the lights. I put on my boxing singlet, shorts, socks and boots; then I loosely tied together the laces of the gloves I liked to use and slung them around my neck.
I returned to find Doc still alone in the hall, concern showing clearly on his face as he absentmindedly gloved me up. “It is too late to wait longer; we must go now. I will tell Geel Piet I am very cross because this happens.”
The door I’d used to enter the building couldn’t be opened from the inside, so we walked into the main administration building, which led out to the parade ground. We passed through the small hallway where I had first entered the prison four years earlier. The lights were out in what was then Lieutenant Smit’s office but which was now occupied by Lieutenant Borman. I moved over and peered for a moment into the darkened office. In the half-light my eyes wandered around the room and rested on a thin strip of light showing under the door of the interrogation room off the main office. The door must have been slightly ajar, because I heard the unmistakable thud of a blow and a sudden sharp groan such as men make when they receive a hard punch to the solar plexus. It was not an unusual occurrence but it seemed inappropriate on this full moon night of the playing of the Concerto of the Great Southland.
The prisoners were already seated in their marked-off sections when we arrived, the warders walking up and down striking their sjamboks against the sides of their legs. The prisoners avoided looking at them, almost as though they were not there. Talking was not allowed, but as we passed I could see the people smiling as Doc and I stepped onto the platform.
The Kommandant arrived shortly after us and stood on the platform to address the prisoners. Lieutenant Borman was to have done the translation into Fanagalo, a made-up language rather like Pidgin English, which was understood by all the tribes, but he seemed not to have arrived. The Kommandant, clearly annoyed by this, started to speak in Afrikaans.
“Listen to me, you hear,” he said, and I quickly translated into Zulu. He looked surprised. “Can you translate, Peekay?” I nodded. “Okay, then I will speak and you can translate when I have finished. Stop after every sentence.”
The Kommandant spoke too loudly and too harshly. “This concert is a gift to you all from the professor, who is not a dirty criminal like all of you, you hear! I don’t know why an important person like him wants to make a concert for kaffirs, not only kaffirs, but criminals as well. I just want you to know it won’t happen again and I don’t want any trouble, you hear. You just listen to the peeano and you sing, then we march you back to your cells.” He turned to me. “That’s all. You tell them what I said now.”
I said the Kommandant welcomed them and that the professor welcomed them and thanked them for coming to his great singing indaba. He hoped th
at they would sing each tribe better than the other so they would be proud. They should watch my hands, and I took my boxing gloves off to demonstrate the hand movements. When I had finished, the sea of faces in front of me were smiling fit to burst and then spontaneously they started to clap. “You done a good job, Peekay,” the Kommandant said, pleased at this response to his speech.
Doc played the Concerto for the Great Southland through entirely and the prisoners listened quietly with nods of approval as they heard the melodies of their own tribal songs. At the end they all clapped furiously.
I then stood up and showed them how I would bring each tribe into their part and stop them by fading their voices out or simply ending a song with a downward stroke of the hands.
Doc played the prelude, which was a musical medley of each of the melodies, and then I brought in the Sotho singers. Their voices melded into the night as though they had caused the air to vibrate with a deep harmony before they broke into song. They seemed instinctively to understand what was required of them and followed every gesture as though anticipating it. They were followed by the Ndebele, who carried a more strident melody and whose voices rose deep and true. The Swazis followed as beautiful as any, then the Shangaane. Each tribe sounded different, separated by a common refrain that was hauntingly African and seemed somehow to be a mixture of all. The Zulus took the last part, which rose in power and majesty as they sang the victory song of the great Shaka, using the flats of their hands to bang on the ground as the mighty Zulu Impi had done with their feet, until the parade ground appeared to shake. The concerto lasted for half an hour, the last part being the by now familiar refrain, which all the tribes hummed in a glorious finale. Never had a composer’s work had a stranger début and never a greater one. Eventually the composition would be played by philharmonic and symphony orchestras around the world, accompanied by famous choirs, but it would never sound better than it did under the African moon in the prison yard when three hundred and fifty black inmates lost themselves in their pride and love for their tribal lands.
The Power of One Page 23