The Power of One (31 page)

Two of the other warders came in, leaving Gert and one other warder to mind the prisoners. Together with Doc they discussed how the Steinway might safely be moved.

Klipkop went to call the prisoners in, and Doc turned to Lieutenant Smit and asked if he could go and look at his garden, as he couldn't bear to see the piano being moved. Lieutenant Smit laughed and added that it was necessary to have a warder along. “I know Gert Marais. Can he come, please?” I asked. Lieutenant Smit shrugged his shoulders and signaled for Gert to come with us.

“I can't have you two escaping into the hills now, can I?” he said jokingly. But I was to learn that Lieutenant Smit was a careful man and liked to play things by the book. Gert couldn't speak English, which meant Doc and I could talk without the danger of being understood.

We walked in the garden, following the Johnnie Walker bottles as they meandered through the tall cactus and aloe. For a long time Doc said nothing, stopping to look at plants and bending down to examine succulents that grew close to the ground. It was as though he were trying to memorize the garden, to etch it on a plate in his mind so the memory of it would sustain him in his prison cell. At last we stopped and sat on a natural outcrop of red rock with our backs to the town below, looking up into the hills. Gert stood some little way away chewing a piece of grass, his rifle slung carelessly over his shoulder. He seemed happy to be away from his superiors.

Finally Doc started to talk. “Peekay, these
dummkopfs
want I should do a recital in the town today. I have not played a concert since sixteen years, now I must play again. Peekay, I cannot do this, but I must.”

I looked up at Doc, and I could see that he was terribly distressed. “You don't have to, Doc. They can't force you!” I said defiantly but without too much conviction. My short experience with authority of any kind had shown me that they always won, they could always force you.

Doc turned to look at me. “Peekay, I love you more than my life. If I do not play today, they will not let you come to see me.” I could feel the despair in his voice as he continued softly, “I do not think I could bear that.” I hugged him and he patted my head and we sat there and looked at the hills dotted with aloes in bloom and at the blue and purple mountains beyond them. At last he spoke again. “It was in Berlin in 1925.1 had been ill for some months, and I was coming back to the concert circuit with a concert at the Berlin Opera House. I had chosen to play”—he turned to me—”the score you found in my piano stool. Beethoven's Symphony Number Five is great music, but it is kind to a good musician. The great master was a piano player himself, and it is not full of clever tricks or passages which try to be schmarty-pants with the piano player. That night I played the great master goot, better than ever until the third movement. Suddenly, who knows from where it comes, comes panic. In my fingers comes panic, in my head comes panic, and in my heart comes panic. Thirty years of discipline were not enough. The panic swallowed me, and I could not play this music I have played maybe a thousand times when I practice and forty times in concert. Nothing. It was all gone. Just the coughing in the crowd, then the murmuring, then the booing, then the concert-master leading me from the stage.” Doc sat, his head bowed, his hands loosely on his knees. “I have never played in front of an audience again, not since this time in Berlin. Every night for sixteen years I have played the music, the same music, and always in the third movement it is the same, the music in my fingers and my head and my heart will not proceed. It is then the wolves howl in my head and only whisky will make them quiet again. Today, in one hour, I must play that music again. I must face the audience, or, my friend, I lose you.”

I cannot pretend to have understood the depth of Doc's personal dilemma. I was too young, too inexperienced, to understand his pain and humiliation. But I knew he was hurting inside, and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. “I will be there with you, Doc. I will turn the pages for you.”

Doc took out his bandanna and blew his nose. “You are goot friend, Peekay.” He gave one of his old chuckles and rubbed a hand through my hair and then examined one of my hands. My kneecaps and hands were dirty from weeding between the cactus. “Better wash in the tank if you are going to be my partner, we must look our best.
Ja,
this is true, the audience has been waiting sixteen years.” He rose and took me by the hand. “Come, Peekay, we go now.”

On the journey into town Doc and I sat in the front of the van with Lieutenant Smit. Klipkop drove the truck while Gert sat in the back of the van. The Steinway had been loaded onto the flattop and roped. Even so, five prisoners were arranged around it to hold it firmly in place on pain of death, while one sat with Doc's piano stool between his legs.

About half a mile from the market square the Diamond T stopped and the two warders herded the six blacks off the truck. One of them climbed back on while the other started to march the prisoners out of town toward the prison. We entered the top of Crown Street about three hundred yards from the market square. The main street was deserted, as quiet as a Sunday afternoon. “Jesus Christ, I hope this doesn't backfire on the kommandant,” Lieutenant Smit said, almost as though speaking to himself. We had been traveling behind the truck, and now we moved ahead of it. I noticed all the shops were closed, even Goodhead's Bottle Store and the Savoy Cafe, which never closed for lunch. We turned the corner into the square, and my mouth dropped open.

The market square was packed with hundreds of people, who started to cheer as they saw us. A warder signaled us to a space that had been kept clear under a large flamboyant tree. Lieutenant Smit told Gert to stay with the van but not to show his rifle. Then he jumped out, and, walking in front of the Diamond T, he guided it into a roped-off section in the center of the square.

Several warders scrambled up a stepladder onto the flattop and untied the ropes securing the Steinway. One placed Doc's piano stool while another, an electrician from the prison, rigged up a microphone.

The moment we saw the crowd, Doc began to shake. I was half sitting on his knee, and I could feel him quivering. “Peekay, did you do what I said about the water flask?” he asked in a tight voice.

“It is in the piano stool, Doc.”

“Peekay, you must take it, and when I ask, you must hand it to me, you understand?” I nodded.

When we drew to a halt under the tree the kommandant was waiting for us. He opened the van door and Doc got out, very unsteady on his feet.

Kommandant van Zyl took him by the elbow and held him firmly. “Now then, Professor, remember you are a German, a member of a glorious fighting race. We of the South African Prison Service are on your side, you must show these
rooineks
what is real culture, man!”

Doc looked around fearfully to see if I was by his side. “Do not forget the flask, Peekay,” he said. We walked to the center of the square, Doc holding tightly onto my hand and being steadied by the kommandant.

The excitement of the crowd could be felt around us. Nothing like this had happened on a dull Monday since war had been declared. We reached the flattop to find that some twenty rows of chairs had been placed behind the ropes on either side of it. The chairs must have come out of the shops and offices, for no two matched, but they formed a ringside audience of the best people in town. Mrs. Boxall was in the front row. She was dressed in her best hat and gloves, as were most of the other town matrons considered of high social rank. At the back end of the lorry, in three rows of identical chairs, sat the prison warders and their wives, the men in uniform and the women wearing their Sunday best. It was obvious they were very pleased with themselves.

Doc had pulled himself together a little by the time we reached the truck, and he and I climbed the stepladder onto the flattop without assistance.

The kommandant, helped up by Klipkop, climbed the stepladder onto the flattop. Klipkop then walked over to the microphone. “Testing, one, two, three, four,” his voice boomed from the four corners of the market square. Satisfied, he climbed down again to join Lieutenant Smit on the ground. The kommandant moved over and stood in front of the microphone.

“Dames en here,
ladies and gentlemen,” he began. But from then on he spoke in English. “As you all know from reading the newspaper, there has been a very big fuss made about one of our most distinguished citizens, Professor Karl von Vollensteen, a professor of music from across the seas. The good professor, who has lived in this town for fifteen years and has taught many of your young daughters to play the peeano, was born in Germany. It is for thifc alone that he is being put under my custody.” Several pockets of people in the crowd had started to boo and someone shouted, “Once a Jerry, always a Jerry!” which brought about a little spasmodic laughter and clapping. The kommandant held up his hand. “I am a Boer, not a Britisher. We Boers know what it is like to be robbed of our rights!”

Considerably more booing started, and the same voice in the crowd shouted, “Put a sock in it, Jaapie!”

The kommandant, as though replying to the heckler, continued. “No, it is true, I must say it, you took our freedom and now you are taking the professor's!”

This time the booing started in earnest, and suddenly Mr. O'Grady-Smith, the mayor, stood up and shouted up at the kommandant, “Get on with it, man, or we'll have a riot.”

The kommandant turned angrily on the mayor, oblivious of the microphone in front of him. “Don't you blery tell me to get on with it! Jes' because you the mayor of this
dorp
you think you can boss people around, hey?”

The booing stopped, for Mr. O'Grady-Smith was no more popular than the kommandant. He was also a very fat man and at least ten inches shorter than the kommandant. He strode from his seat and with the help of a couple of town councillors mounted the stepladder and walked over to the microphone. Standing on tiptoes, he shouted into the loudspeaker, “It's high time we moved the jail and the nest of Nazis who run it out of Barberton. This town is loyal to King George and the British Empire. God save the King!”

Most of the crowd clapped and cheered and whistled and Mr. O'Grady-Smith turned and looked up at the kommandant, a smug, self-righteous expression on his face.

From where I stood next to Doc on the flattop, I could see about a dozen men making their way through the crowd toward us. “Some men are coming,” I said to Lieutenant Smit, who was now standing beside the stepladder with Klipkop to discourage any further townsfolk from emulating the mayor. They quickly mounted the flattop, pulled up the ladder, and placed the microphone next to the Steinway so that the bottom half of the flattop was clear. Without any ceremony, the mayor and the kommandant were hastily pushed to the top end to stand beside the seated Doc and me.

There was a good ten feet between the truck and the first row of seats behind the ropes. This was to allow the more important citizens a clear view of Doc at the piano. The attackers crossed this strip of no-man's-land and swarmed onto the back of the flattop. Lieutenant Smit and Klipkop held the high ground, which evened things out considerably, while the other warders took the clearing between the lorry and the seats. The flattop and the apron around it were filled with fighting men and the screams of the ladies as they tried to back away from the brawl. The kommandant ventured out from behind the Steinway and received a punch on the nose. Fat Mr. O'Grady-Smith was crouched on all fours halfway under the piano, trying to look invisible.

Only Mrs. Boxall stood her ground and was waving desperately in our direction and, I suddenly realized, at me. “Jump down, Peekay, run for it, jump, jump!” she screamed.

Just then Doc tugged me on the sleeve. “The flask, Peekay.” His hand was outstretched. I handed the flask of whisky to him and he unscrewed the cap, took a slug, and handed it back to me. “When I make my head like so, you must turn the page.” He turned to the score in front of him and paged quickly to the beginning of the fortissimo movement, which in Beethoven's Fifth occurs at the end of the second movement. Then he started to play. The microphone had been knocked down, and its head now rested over the upright section of the piano. It picked up the music, which now thundered across the square.

Almost immediately the crowd grew quiet and the fighting stopped. The flattop cleared, and the men around the apron slipped back into the crowd. The mayor squeezed out from under the Steinway, and he and the kommandant were helped down the replaced stepladder. Even the sobbing ladies soon grew quiet.

On and on Doc played, through the second into the third movement and, hardly pausing, into the fourth, his head nodding every time he wanted the page turned. It was a faultless performance as he brought the recital to a thunderous close.

Intellectually the audience had probably understood very little of it. It was not, after all, their kind of music. But emotionally they would remember Doc's performance for the rest of their lives. Mrs. Boxall was weeping and clutching her hands to her breast and the other ladies also pretended to be swept away by it all.

Lieutenant Smit shouted at several of the warders, who began to clear a way for the truck. Lifting the microphone off the back, he shouted for Klipkop to get into the truck and drive away. Then he jumped into the passenger side of the cabin as the big Diamond T started to move. Doc, who had been bowing to the crowd, fell back onto his seat. With a flourish of the keyboard, he began to play Beethoven's “Moonlight Sonata.”