When we drew to a halt under the large flamboyant 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 round fearfully to see if I was by his side. ‘Do not forget the flask, Peekay,’ he said. We walked to the centre 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 was declared. We reached the flat-top 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 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 flat-top without assistance.
The Kommandant, helped up by Klipkop, climbed the stepladder onto the flat-top. 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.
‘
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 blerrie 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 flat-top I could see about a dozen men making their way through the crowd towards 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 flat-top, pulled up the ladder and placed the microphone next to the Steinway so that the bottom half of the flat-top 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 flat-top. 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 flat-top 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 realised, 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 and 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 flat-top cleared and the men around the apron slipped back into the crowd. The mayor squeezed out from under the Steinway, 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 with 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.
I had never seen him as happy. He played all the way back to the prison, not stopping when he got to the gates and reaching the final bars as we drew up outside the administration building. Then he took a long swig from the flask and rose from the piano and looked out over the prison walls to his beloved hills.
I quickly opened the piano stool and put the flask into it together with the score. I locked it and slipped the key into my pocket.
Doc rubbed his hand through my hair. ‘No more wolves. Absoloodle,’ he said quietly, and then he looked up at the hills again.
TWELVE
Dee or Dum woke me up at a quarter to five every morning with coffee and a rusk. Shortly after five I strapped my leather book bag to my shoulders and was off at a trot to the prison some three miles down the road.
I was let in the gates without equivocation, as regular as the milkman and just as harmless. The guards, with an hour and a half to go before the nightshift ended, waved from the walkway on the wall. They were weary from the boredom of guard duty, and I was the first tangible sign after the grey dawn that the long night was almost over.
I learned that the greatest camouflage of all is consistency. If you do something often enough and at the same time in the same way, you become invisible. One of the shadows. Every recidivist knows this. In prison, to be successful, plans have to be laid long term. Habits have to be established little by little, each day or week or month or even year, a minute progression towards the ultimate goal. When a routine is finally set, authorities no longer
