Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  He nodded, accepting the offer, and extended his large hand, the fingers blunt, nails broken, skin rough. ‘Odenaal, Johannes Odenaal.’

  ‘Tom Fitzsaxby.’ My hand completely disappeared into his fist.

  ‘Engelsman?’

  ‘Ja, Meneer Odenaal,’ I said, admitting to being English-speaking.

  ‘Jy praat die taal goed, Tom. You speak the language well, Tom.’

  ‘My eerste taal, Meneer. My first language, Sir.’

  ‘Ja, coffee,’ he said, and then added, ‘should a person take his hat off in a place like this?’

  I laughed. ‘It’s only a shop, Meneer.’

  He shook his head and then indicated the pianos with a sweep of his hand. ‘Tell me, how much polish do you use in the place?’

  ‘Ja, I never thought about it before, but you right, quite a lot, the Zulu is always polishing around the place, he’s even got an electric floor polisher.’

  ‘You don’t say? Electric floor polisher, hey? Why don’t you use a kaffir woman like everyone else?’

  ‘Have you ever seen an electric floor polisher, Meneer Odenaal?’

  ‘No, man, I can’t say I have, if I said so it would be a lie, you hear?’

  To kill the boredom of babysitting the pianos I would often help Union Jack with the cleaning and polishing around the place, and so I was familiar with the workings of the floor polisher, in fact I had become quite an expert. ‘Let me show you,’ I offered. I went to the broom cupboard and removed the floor polisher, plugged it in and turned it on, demonstrating it around where we were standing for a few moments before turning it off.

  ‘Wragtig! That is a contraption-and-a-half!’ Meneer Odenaal exclaimed.

  ‘You want to have a go?’ I asked.

  He seemed reluctant. ‘It’s not my line of work, Tom. Sheep I know, electric floor polishers, I’m not so sure, man.’

  ‘Ag, it’s dead easy,’ I replied, pushing the polisher towards him. ‘Just grab the handles and lead it around, you don’t even have to push, one brush goes round left and the other right, the handles are the same.’ I switched it on and the floor polisher came to life with its usual whine, its floor brushes whirring. I kicked the button that lowered the brushes to the surface of the polished wooden floor. ‘Now just push it, Meneer,’ I instructed above the noise of the machine.

  The large man placed the brown-paper shopping bag down at his feet and began to push the floor polisher tentatively, but soon got the hang of it and before you knew it, he was doing circles and zig-zags and smiling broadly in the process, even at one stage doing a neat little circle around the shopping bag. After a while I turned it off.

  ‘Let me tell you, it’s better than ten kaffir women!’ he said admiringly, patting the machine as if it were a favourite canine.

  ‘Coffee, I nearly forgot,’ I said suddenly. Mr Farquarson kept a Kona carafe of coffee constantly warming on a small hotplate in his office. It was usually remade by Union Jack in the afternoon, but with him going on one of his protracted lunch hours it probably hadn’t been replaced. But I knew that boer farmers sit an enamel pot of coffee on the kitchen stove all day and prefer it to be bitter and black. The carafe was still about a third full, sufficient for two or three mugs. ‘How many sugars?’ I called.

  ‘Ja, a lot, five!’ Meneer Odenaal called back.

  I handed him the mug of sweet black coffee and he took a sip. ‘Ja, dit is goed,’ he said, smacking his lips, congratulating me on the coffee. I motioned him towards a small lounge setting reserved for important ‘appointment only’ visitors and we sat down to drink our coffee.

  ‘A biscuit!’ I cried, leaping to my feet, remembering that in the country coffee is never served without something to eat. The Ship of State kept a packet of Marie biscuits in the bottom drawer of his desk, and I’d occasionally help myself to one.

  ‘Ja, that would be lekker, Tom. Can a person smoke in here?’

  ‘Ja, of course, go ahead,’ I invited, pointing to the ashtray on the coffee table.

  By the time I returned with the packet of biscuits, the boer had lit up a large meerschaum pipe and a miasma of sweet-smelling smoke surrounded his great balding head.

  ‘Sorry, I couldn’t find a plate, the Zulu must have taken them to wash up,’ I apologised. I referred to Union Jack as ‘the Zulu’ not so that he would appear to be inferior but because his name might have upset the boer. Union Jack is about the dirtiest word you can use in front of a regte boer. Besides, we were soon to get down to the nitty-gritty and I was becoming nervous, not wanting to put a foot wrong. If I could sell him the cheapest piano on the floor the commission alone would be at least twice what I would earn for the Christmas and January holiday period. I’d be able to go to university at the end of Febuary with money in my pocket. In the meantime, Meneer Odenaal was scoffing four Marie biscuits to every sip of coffee, his mouth too full to talk.

  ‘Another cup?’ I asked, seeing him drain the last of the mug.

  ‘Ja, dankie, Tom,’ he thanked me, placing the pipe, which seemed to have gone out, in the ashtray.

  I drained the Kona, added sugar, stirred the bittersweet concoction and returned it to him, by which time he’d consumed almost the entire packet of biscuits. I only hoped I could replace them in time before the Ship of State returned from his claret-and-conductor luncheon.

  ‘Ah, lekker jong! You make good coffee,’ he said, smacking his lips. ‘The coffee you get in the Transvaal, it’s not like the Cape, it tastes like shit!’

  ‘You’re not from the Transvaal, then?’ I asked.

  ‘No, man, never! The Karoo.’

  ‘I’ve never been to the Cape,’ I replied.

  ‘Really? You must come soon, you hear? It’s a very civilised place, people greet you, not like here in Johannesburg.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Over here, jong, if a man takes his hat off for a lady in the street they think you mad and they want to call a policeman!’ He looked at me seriously. ‘When you come to the Cape you must visit us, you hear? I got a nice little daughter, my little skattebol, only fifteen, she’ll suit you down to the ground, Tom.’

  I thanked him for his invitation, smiled at his generous and gratuitous matchmaking with his skattebol, which means ‘little treasure’, and tried to imagine what his fifteen-year-old daughter might look like. ‘What brings you up to the Transvaal?’ I asked.

  The big boer leaned back, crossed his legs, removed his wide-brimmed hat and placed it over his knee, folded his arms across his chest and, reaching out, picked up his pipe, and relighting it, he started to tell me the story of his recent travels.

  ‘First you got to understand, Tom, I got four daughters. Hester and me we haven’t been blessed by the Good Lord with sons, only daughters. But we can’t complain, the first two, they married well, Karoo sheep farmers like us, they doing well. We all doing well for a change. They only live next door, down the road from us, forty miles maybe. Already the first one, Hanka, has got twins, both boys, and the next, Gertie, she’s got a little girl and is now pregnant again. But never mind what she has, we got the two boys already. But the next again, Anna, she’s always the wild one, you hear? This young kêrel from the Transvaal, he’s going to Agricultural College in Potchefstroom and he comes to stay on the farm to learn practical stuff about sheep. Next thing you know Anna is pregnant and he is the guilty one. It’s a shotgun wedding, I admit, but not so bad, maybe two months, nothing’s showing already and the Dominee doesn’t make trouble.

  Now they living on his parents’ farm near Rustenburg in the Western Transvaal. It’s a long way from home and it makes the ouvrou sad, a woman doesn’t like to lose her daughters. Now they want one hundred sheep and a good ram for a wedding present. I’m not so sure, man. “Since when is Rustenburg good sheep country?” I ask him. But he’s now gone to farm school, so he knows everything, you hear? “I’ve studied the conditions, Oom Jannie. It’s not too wet, you hear?” So, what can a man do? I can put the sheep on the train, but it’s ten days and you c
an never tell what will happen, someone will maybe forget to give them water and that’s the end, finish and klaar. So I tell Hester to come with me and she says, no, Gertie is the most pregnant of the two daughters and expecting any day now, so she’s not going with me. It’s a long way on your own, but I put the sheep in the big trailer and I take the Rio up myself, it’s a good old lorry, but it’s still five days on the road. I’ve put in five extra sheep and my fourth-best ram, because with sheep some always die, they can’t help themselves, a sheep is a stupid animal and they die and don’t give you a reason. But I only lose one on the last day, so the dogs on my son-in-law’s parents’ farm have got some nice meat.’

  The meerschaum had gone out again and Meneer Odenaal placed it back in the ashtray and reached forward and took the last two Marie biscuits, popped both into his mouth and, chewing, said, ‘Now I’m going home and coming through Krugersdorp and there is this whine in the differential.’ He swallows the last of the biscuit. ‘I stop at a garage and the mechanic says he hasn’t worked on a Rio, the diff is different. So he looks in the telephone book and says in Johannesburg is the Rio people, in Braamfontein.’

  ‘That’s just the other side of Park Station,’ I say, getting a word in at last.

  ‘Ja, not so far, but it’s going to take all day to fix the diff so I might as well take a look, hey?’

  ‘So you found yourself here?’

  ‘Ja, you walk and you thinking and jumping out of the way of people and then I get an idea. I’m not a man who makes up his mind in a hurry, you understand? But this idea it just comes, like a bit of rain you not expecting. You look up and there it is, clouds coming over the Komsberge, and the next thing I’ve made up my mind.’

  Just then Union Jack comes into the piano department and looks disapprovingly at the empty Marie biscuit packet and at the crumbs scattered on the coffee-table and the floor at the feet of my visitor, and then quizzically at the floor polisher standing nearby. He knows very well where the Marie biscuits come from. He also knows the pecking order around the place. While we’ve become good friends, he is aware that the big coarse-looking man in working clothes sitting with me isn’t the usual sort of Polliack ‘by appointment only’ piano customer. He knows I’m probably out of order and using influence I haven’t got by sitting him down and serving him the Ship of State’s coffee and Marie biscuits.

  ‘Can you make some coffee, please?’ I ask him in Zulu, careful again not to use his name.

  ‘Yes, Baas Fitzy, I am also taking the floor polisher?’ Union Jack asks in English, giving me a questioning look. He is very particular about the piano department and takes great pride in the gleaming pianos and the immaculate setting. To see him using a chamois to polish a piano is to observe a master at work. I nod and he moves off with the polisher, and hopefully also to make coffee.

  ‘Man, that electric floor polisher! It’s modern times, hey? You never know what they going to think of next,’ the boer says.

  ‘So, Meneer Odenaal, you find yourself in the middle of town and all of a sudden you’ve made up your mind.’ Even though I was enjoying his story I was anxious to cut to the chase and get back to the subject of pianos.

  ‘Ag, Tom, just call me Oom Jannie, we old friends already. Ja, well, you see it’s different times now. A Karoo sheep farmer is naturally a poor man, we a proud people, you understand? But my oupa was poor, my papa was poor and Hester and me we also poor. The Karoo is a hard country to make a living, but we there six generations already, you understand? We all buried there, six generations! Thank God there is always a bit of food on the table, but sometimes it’s very hard and you have to go to the bank again. Now last year and the year before the rains are good and we have the best lambing seasons I can remember since I’m a small boy. Then comes this war that’s coming in Korea, and then comes the wool boom and now, all of a sudden, we rich.’ He said it quite simply and not in the least ingenuously, almost as if the whole thing had come as a surprise.

  ‘That’s good, Oom Jannie, it’s nice when that happens to good people,’ I said, genuinely pleased for him.

  ‘Thank you, Tom, but that’s not why I’m telling you all this. You see, Hanka and Gertie and even Anna, they never had anything when they growing up, it was always skimp and scrape, dresses handed down, even shoes. But we were a happy family, see, very musical also, except me, all the girls got nice voices, and Gertie would play the old piano accordion and Hanka the guitar.’ Oom Jannie smiled, remembering. ‘It was nice times, Tom, but poor, and always you wanted them to have better.’

  Sensing that he was growing over-sentimental, Oom Jannie suddenly straightened and clapped his hands. ‘Genoeg! Enough!’ he said. ‘Here comes the idea. The Rio is empty and we going back home tonight when that differential is fixed. For Hester, my wife, who stuck with me through thick and thin, all the hard times and now the good, I want to buy a peeano. Also for Gertie and Hanka who never complained and worked hard. Anna has the sheep and my fourth-best ram and they all going to die in that new place that’s not sheep country and that’s enough spent already on her.’ He sat back, clasping his hands together. ‘So, now you show me some peeanos please, Tom?’

  I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘You want three pianos and you want to take them away with you tonight?’ I asked, incredulous.

  ‘Ja, I’ll pay cash,’ he added.

  ‘Oom Jannie, do you know what a piano costs?’ I asked.

  ‘Ag, Tom, they waited a long time, maybe next year there’s no rain or that war goes away again, a man must do the right thing by his woman.’

  ‘Let me show you,’ I stammered, my voice suddenly squeaky. Just then Union Jack arrived with a silver tray, the Kona pot filled to the brim and steaming, Wedgwood cups and saucers and side plates with four pieces of fruitcake on a small silver cake stand with a white paper doily and two white linen serviettes. He placed the tray down in front of us with a smug look on his face.

  ‘Umbulelo, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Injabulo, Baas. A pleasure, Boss.’ I could sense his amusement, the bugger was sending me up.

  ‘More coffee, hey?’ Oom Jannie said, then looked about. ‘Tom, where can I take a quick piss, man?’

  Fortunately there was a toilet in the piano department, more at the insistence of the Ship of State, who had a dodgy bladder, than because it was in frequent use by the public or staff. I pointed out the toilet and when Oom Jannie had entered I called urgently to Union Jack in Zulu. ‘He’s going to buy three pianos!’ I exclaimed. Union Jack’s mouth fell open. ‘For cash!’ I added excitedly.

  ‘Ahee!’ the big Zulu exclaimed, bringing his hands up to his mouth.

  ‘Do they all have removal covers?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘Can we get them down to the loading dock by five o’clock?’ He nodded again, still not having found his voice. ‘Quick, show me the cheapest ones and then the next cheapest, in case he wants something a bit better.’

  Union Jack led me over to the cheapest uprights, and then pointed out the next up in price. He lifted the lid and showed me where the price tag for each piano was located. Even if he bought the cheapest, Oom Jannie was up for six hundred pounds! You could buy a brand-new small car for that sort of money.

  Oom Jannie returned back from the toilet, his hat planted back on his head. ‘First we look, then coffee, hey, Tom?’ He stooped down and picked up a piece of fruitcake as I escorted him towards the rows of pianos.

  ‘These are the most reasonably priced,’ I said, showing him a small upright.

  ‘Ja, it’s nice, Tom, can you play it, please?’

  I know it’s stupid, even obvious, why would someone buy a piano without hearing it, it was like buying a car without first driving it, but the thought hadn’t occurred to me. ‘Oom Jannie, I can’t play the piano,’ I confessed.

  ‘Here, man, Tom, I can’t take it home and tell Hester I didn’t even hear a tune on it. Anything? Can’t you play maybe a small tune?’

  Then I remembered that Mr Farquarson, in what w
as a private joke, had taught Union Jack to play ‘God Save the King’ with a fanfare of chords at the front and the back. Union Jack was terribly proud of this accomplishment, but the Ship of State would snigger, ‘Small minds. Primitives. It doesn’t take much to train them, old boy. You can teach a chimpanzee as much.’

  I swallowed hard, I had to take a chance. I knew Bobby Black could play the piano, but if I called him up it would become his sale, he’d take over. ‘Union Jack!’ I called out.

  ‘Yes, Baas!’ he said, standing just within earshot with a cloth, pretending to polish a nearby upright.

  ‘Come and play for the big Baas,’ I said to him, making it sound like an order.

  The big Zulu in his blue overalls with ‘Polliack’s’ embroidered on the back needed no second invitation. Union Jack opened the keyboard and with a flourish of the keys banged out ‘God Save the King’.

  ‘That’s nice, you hear,’ Oom Jannie said to my surprise, not reacting at all adversely to the dreaded anthem. ‘Now we going to try them all.’

  ‘It will have to be the same tune, Oom Jannie, it’s the only way you can compare them,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Ja, I know, that’s a nice tune.’

  And so Union Jack went from one piano to the next until we had tried all sixteen uprights on the floor.

  ‘I like the second-last one,’ he said pointing at an upright, ‘have you got three?’

  I looked at Union Jack who shook his head. ‘Nye,’ he said, raising his forefinger.

  ‘Only the one, I’m afraid, maybe you can pick two others, Oom Jannie?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Those ones, there’s three of them, we haven’t played them.’ He was pointing at the three Steinway Baby Grands on the raised platform.

  I had difficulty finding my voice. ‘Oom Jannie, that’s a Steinway Baby Grand, the best piano made in the world.’

  ‘Why is it such a funny shape, hey, Tom?’

  I couldn’t think why. ‘To get perfect sound, they make it like that so the inside is bigger and the sound is better,’ I invented hastily. ‘It’s all about acoustics, the Germans are the best at it.’