The Power of One (44 page)

“No, Lieutenant,” Doc said, his voice surprisingly even. “I think only you should ask before you look. Inside lives only Klaviermeister 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. He was a big man with a roll of gut just beginning to spill over his belt and was used to looking down at people, but Doc's six foot seven left him five inches short as the two men stared at each other. The lieutenant was the first to drop his eyes from the gaze of Doc's incredibly steady blue eyes. He laid the cane on top of the Steinway and hitched his pants up. “You think I don't blery know things is going on? You think I'm a blery fool or something, hey? I got time. I got plenty of time, you hear?” He picked up the cane then brought it up fast and down hard against the open lid of my piano stool, the blow knocking the lid back into place. The sound of the cane against the leather top echoed through the hall. He turned slowly to face Doc again and 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'. I'm telling you now, you kraut bastard, I'm finish' an'
klaar
with you both!” He turned and stormed out, his heavy military boots crashing and echoing through the empty hall.

“Phew!” I sighed as I closed the lid of Doc's piano stool and sat weakly on my own. Doc also sat down, reached over to the Chopin Nocturne Number 5 in F-sharp major on the Steinway music rack, and commenced to fan himself with it. He was silent for a while, seemingly lost in thought. Then he said softly, “Soon come the hills and the mountains and the deep cool
kloofs.”

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 spic and span, with fresh whitewash everywhere you looked. Much to Doc's annoyance, even the rocks bordering his cactus garden were whitewashed. He was prepared to accept whisky bottles outlining his paths, but that was because he didn't want to disrupt the stones any more than he felt it was necessary. He hadn't bordered his prison garden with stones, it had simply been done as a matter of course. In a prison everything has to be contained, confined to its allotted space. Lining the stones up nose to nose was bad enough, but painting them white was an insult against nature. Fresh gravel was brought into the inner courtyard together with several truck loads of finely crushed iron pyrites and mica with which a letter “B” was formed in the center. The dark sheen from the mica and pyrites mix made the large letter shimmer against the almost white gravel. The “B,” of course, stood for “Barberton.” This was the lieutenant's idea, and he spent hours supervising the old lags sweeping and raking until it was perfect. I must hand it to him, it did look very nice. Gert said the kommandant was particularly pleased and Borman was up to his eyeballs in his good books.

The prison corridors smelled of polish and the cells of Jeyes Fluid disinfectant. Window ledges were painted prison blue and everywhere you went smelled of new paint. But it was done early so the smell would have gone by the time the brigadier arrived.

New canvas uniforms were issued to the old lags, to be worn only during the visit. This was because they were doing all the painting and cleaning and their old patched and worn uniforms had paint on them and would give the game away. The kommandant wanted the brigadier to think that everything was normal and that he could have popped in any old time and found things just the same. After the inspection, the lags handed back their new uniforms and wore their old patched and worn clothes until they finally fell apart.

Captain Smit had arranged the usual boxing exhibition and for weeks the kommandant spent most of his mornings, as he did before every inspection, practicing his pistol shooting on the pistol range behind the warders' mess.

The rapidly approaching VE day was a matter of concern to the kommandant. If it arrived before the brigadier's visit, the truly 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 not spent over four years in prison for nothing, and he had learned the rules of prison life where everything is in return for something else.
The Goldfields News
had already printed a picture of the kommandant above a piece by him saying that Doc was in prison because he was a German and that the moment Germany surrendered Doc would be released. The kommandant couldn't go back on his word without losing face. This he would not allow to happen.

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 Sunday concert for all the prisoners.

On Sundays, being God's day, the prisoners did not go out in work gangs. Instead they were locked in their cells and fifty at a time were allowed in the exercise pen, a high-walled enclosure of brick and cement about the size of two tennis courts. This was done tribe by tribe, each tribal group allotted ninety minutes, first the Zulus, followed by the Swazis, then the Ndebele, Sotho, and Shangaans. The Boers had long understood the antipathy each tribe has for the other, and by keeping the tribes separated in prison 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 which represented, in melody terms, each of these songs. Doc said that he had never heard such magnificent harmony. Most of the songs were very beautiful, and even though he did not understand the words, he could hear in them the people's longing for their homes, their people, the comfort of their fires, and the lowing of the cattle in the evening. He would sigh and say that his concerto could never capture the beauty of the original voices. He called it “Concerto of the Great Southland.” It was this 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 on the Steinway. In this way each of the tribes represented in the prison would participate in the concert.

Once the kommandant had agreed that 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.

Because Doc would be at the piano, he decided I should conduct. This I would do in the simplest possible sense, signaling the piano breaks and the pianissimo as well as the fortissimo to the choir. After some weeks I was quite good at taking my directions from Doc, and we 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 supposedly 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 is 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. For several weeks the warders had an easy time. They simply had to threaten an inmate with nonattendance at the concert to get him to comply with any instruction. 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 and I had chosen this time to meet all of the people. Work time was used as practice time, 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. “Concerto of the Great Southland” was being wrought into being, a musical jigsaw where, on the big night, all the pieces would be brought together under the magic spell cast by the Tadpole Angel.

Lieutenant Borman had tried his best to prevent the concert from taking place, but Captain Smit seemed to have decided that it was a good idea, perhaps for no other reason than that the concert was opposed by Lieutenant Borman. The two men had never liked each other, and Captain Smit, who was not a member of the Oxwagon Guard, 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 special platform had been built in the carpentry shop to raise the Steinway above the level of the prisoners. It was proposed that 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 throughout the concert, spotlights would be trained on the prisoners.

The concert was scheduled for Wednesday, May 9, 1945, and all the warders had been placed on full alert. Prisoners were never paraded at night, and rumors were rife of tribal fights and vendettas being settled in the dark, as well as of an attempted prison break by the Zulus. The warders, whipped up by Lieutenant Borman, grew increasingly edgy as the concert night drew closer.

Lieutenant Borman had taken to wearing a Sam Browne belt across his shoulder with a revolver with its holster undipped on his hip, and he lost no opportunity of telling anyone who was prepared to listen that trouble, more trouble than any of the warders could handle, was on its way. “Give a black prisoner a pinkie and he eats your whole arm off at the shoulder, I'm telling you, man.” He said it so often that it became a joke around the prison and some of the warders started to refer to him behind his back as Pinkie Borman. He even tried to have the concert aborted at the last minute, claiming that it was against prison regulations to assemble more than fifty prisoners in one place at the same time. Captain Smit had demanded that he show him the standing instructions, but he couldn't find them, claiming he knew them from Pretoria.

It was difficult to get my mother to agree to me staying up late for the concert. 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 during the week, she gave her permission.

Doc asked me how I would be dressed as conductor. The choice was limited: khaki shirts and shorts and a pair of black boots with plain gray school socks were the entire contents of my wardrobe. Then Geel Piet suggested that I should be dressed 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. Doc decided it would be awkward for me to wear boxing gloves as it would make it difficult for me to conduct. Geel Piet seemed disappointed and later came back with the suggestion that I should wear gloves and then, just before the concert proper began, remove them. He seemed awfully keen on the idea and assured me that it wouldn't be showing off one little bit.

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. He knew how to set the warp so as to weave a complex pattern that appealed to the imagination of the people. 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 the Zulu with the Swazi and the Ndebele and the Tsonga and the Sotho so that they all sat on one mat in a great singing
indaba
? The one who touched the pencil and letters went out to the families of the people and returned with news of loved ones, who caused children to be warm in winter and wives to have dresses and hungry infants to have food? Did he not bring tobacco and sugar and salt into the prison, making it disappear when he entered and reappear when there was no risk? How otherwise could he do this thing for four years without being caught by the Boers?

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's clever entrepreneurial mind had seen that it would be more appropriate if it were presented in this way.

The night of Doc's concert, Wednesday, May 9,1945, arrived. The moment I passed through the prison 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 into the prison 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 with its top already propped up. The scene had a silence of its own, like looking into a Dali painting. I stood for a moment, for even at my age, with my limited grasp of logistics and the law of human probability, this concert seemed a remarkable thing.

As I stood looking at the Steinway etched in the moonlight, the floodlights, bright and sudden as a burst from a welding gun, came on. When my eyes had adjusted to the harsh, raw light I could see that around the platform in a semicircle on the hard 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 making a scrunching sound on the gravel footpath.

I crossed the parade ground, entered a side door, and made my way to the hall where Doc would be waiting for me. He 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 now,” he said, his voice tetchy. Doc had grown very reliant on Geel Piet, and he regarded him 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 had no chance of succeeding.

“He'll be here any minute, you'll see,” I said to cheer him up.

“I'll save time and go and get my gloves.” I hurried from the hall and walked down the passageway toward the gym. An old lag was coming toward me, carrying a two-gallon coffee pot. Another followed him with a tray of mugs and a tin of brown sugar. They were taking coffee to the warders on duty 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?”