see it for what it is, a deception; but accept it for what it isn’t: an authorised routine. The prisoner enjoys the advantage over his keeper of continuity. Warders change, get promoted, move elsewhere. But old lags, those prisoners who remain inside with long sentences, have the advantage of time to plan. In prison, the old lag is the real authority. The warder unwittingly depends on the old lags to run the prison system, for it is they who restrain the younger prisoners who lack the patience to go along with the system or who see violence as the only solution to getting what they want. A prison without this secondary system of authority can be a dangerous and unpredictable place.
I found myself a part of this shadow world, brought into it with great patience over a long period by an old, toothless lag known as Geel Piet. Translated from Afrikaans, his name simply meant Yellow Peter. In fact, it was more than simply a name. Geel Piet was a half-caste, or a Cape Coloured, neither black nor white, treated as a black man but aspiring in his soul to be a white one. Geel Piet was the limbo man of Africa, despised by both sides. He was also a recidivist, an incorrigible criminal who freely admitted that it was hopeless for him on the outside. Geel Piet was the old lag who exerted the most influence in the shadow world of the prison.
My prison day began in the gymnasium at five-thirty a.m. where the boxing squad, under the direction of Lieutenant Smit, assembled for callisthenics. There were twenty of us altogether and this included four other kids between eleven and fifteen. Seniority went by weight, with Klipkop, who had defeated Jackhammer Smit on points over ten rounds and was now the lowveld heavyweight champion, the most senior, down to myself at the very bottom of the ladder.
Lieutenant Smit stood in the boxing ring with a whistle in his mouth and to a series of whistles we would perform a routine of exercises familiar to everyone. These were interspersed with push-ups and sit-ups at any interval Lieutenant Smit wanted them. Each session of push-ups and sit-ups was of longer duration than the previous one. Lieutenant Smit was a big believer in push-ups to strengthen the arms and the shoulders and sit-ups to strengthen the gut muscles. He also liked fighters, and contended that the Boer made a better fighter than boxer and that most prison warders were naturally aggressive and better equipped to be fighters. He said toughness and determination overcame skill in the ring. The boxers from Barberton prison were known throughout the lowveld and as far as Pietersburg and Pretoria as tough men to take on.
Lieutenant Smit was true to his word and for the first two years he would not allow me to step into the ring. ‘When you can throw a medicine ball over Klipkop’s head, then you will be ready,’ he said. The first of my goals was set, and for the fifteen minutes after callisthenics, when all the other boxers were paired off with sparring partners, I worked until I could no longer lift my arms.
After a five-minute shower I reported to the prison hall for my piano lesson with Doc, and at seven-thirty we would both go into breakfast at the warders’ mess.
Doc had a special status in the prison. While he lived in a cell, he could come and go as he pleased, he ate in the warders’ mess, and wasn’t required to do any special work. ‘You just play the peeano, professor,’ Kommandant Van Zyl had said, ‘that’s your job, you hear?’
Doc often wandered into the gymnasium to watch the squad going through its paces. He knew that I yearned to box, to stand up against another person in the ring. While he made it clear that he didn’t understand why I should have such a need, he respected my ambition and soothed my impatience with musical analogies. ‘In music you must first do the exercises, always first the exercises. If you do the exercises goot then you have the foundations. You cannot build a good musician on a bad foundation. I think with this boxing business it is the same. Ja, I think this is true.’
And so I did all the things required of a boxer and practised on the punching bag until the whole armoury of punches was as familiar to me as the piano scales. That old punching bag took a terrible hiding on a daily basis over those first two years. I would imagine it cowering as it saw me approach, sometimes even whimpering. ‘Not too many of those deadly uppercuts today, Peekay!’ Or, ‘Oh no! Not the right cross. I can’t take any more right crosses.’ I’m telling you, man, that big old punching bag learned to respect me all right.
But it was the speedball which I grew to love. Gert, the young warder who spoke no English, was also on the boxing squad and we’d become firm friends. He’d modified an old punching ball in the prison workshop so that it stood low enough for me to reach.
I can remember the first day when, after many weeks of practice on the speedball, I achieved a continuity of rhythm, the ball a blur in front of my boxing gloves. I imagine Fred Astaire or Bojangles must have felt the same way when they got their first complete tapdance sequence from their taps.
After several weeks Lieutenant Smit walked over to watch me. My heart pounded as I concentrated on keeping the speedball flurried, a blurred, rhythmic tat-tat-tat-tat of leather on leather. ‘You’re fast, Peekay. That’s good,’ he said and then walked away. Two years later when I mastered a difficult passage in a Chopin prelude, the thrill was minor compared to Lieutenant Smit’s praise. They had been the first words he had specifically directed at me in the six months I had been on his squad.
Doc’s Steinway was kept in the prison hall, a fairly large room with a sprung wooden floor used mostly for tiekiedraai dancing and other events in the lives of prison officers and their families. There was also an upright French Mignon piano, for Doc’s Steinway was not to be used except to play classical music. This was an express order from Kommandant Van Zyl, who pointed out that a peeano of such superior qualities should not be expected to play tiekiedraai or to accompany the banjo or accordion. Naturally his wishes were respected and the Steinway became a symbol of something very superior which, in the eyes of the prison officers and their families, elevated them and gave them a special social status. Doc and I, the only two people who played on the Steinway, were included in this status. While my own playing was elementary and far from competent, it was respected as proper music and was referred to as my gift. The fact that the great German professor of music gave me lessons was the only confirmation needed that I must be a budding genius. Doc was kind enough never to contradict this opinion. While being the most honest person I have ever known, he was not a fool. He quickly learned that every small advantage in the prison system was mental capital in the bank, but it was a shame that his brilliance as a teacher was wasted on such inferior clay.
I visited the cactus garden most days on my return from school and every Sunday after church I went with Dee and Dum to clean Doc’s cottage and work in the garden. Doc and I discussed the progress of the cactus garden in detail from a chart prepared by him of every succulent and cactus species in the garden. Considering there were several thousand, it was an intellectual task of some brilliance. In correcting the chart, which took me some weeks, I found that he had only made eleven errors. Taking a small patch of garden at a time from the chart, I reported on its progress. Doc made notes on the comings and going of blossoms and instructed me when to thin or separate plants. The separated plants I put in a hessian bag and brought it to the prison where Doc had started a second cactus garden. Sometimes insects ate a cactus bloom and I’d capture a specimen in a matchbox and bring it to Doc for identification. If it was within my capacity to do anything about them, he instructed me in their elimination. This was rare. Doc believed all creatures had a place in the system and, in the end, everything sorted itself out. It was only when an insect appeared in such numbers that it was likely to disrupt the ecology of the garden that he instructed me to act. He would liken this to a locust plague which, though a natural thing, was a riotous act of nature which should be contained. In these cases he supplied the know-how, Mrs Boxall or my granpa supplied the materials and Dee and Dum supplied the labour. Usually the enemy was overcome. The girls saw this as part of their Sunday outing and took great pride in their work. They enjoyed the business of working with the soil, though I dare say so much effort on something as silly as a cactus must have left them bemused.
Marie, the little nurse from the hospital, had been invited home soon after my jaw incident and had become firm friends with my mother. She loved needlework and would sit for hours chatting away to my mother and doing buttonholes and making shoulder pads and bits and pieces. It seemed certain she would soon fall into the clutches of the Lord.
Being a farm girl she understood Dee and Dum and to my surprise only bossed them about a little. She taught them to cook a number of new dishes, including pumpkin scones and cornbread and they soon became my favourites. I took her to see Doc’s cottage one Sunday afternoon; the two black girls were silent for most of the way. When we arrived at the cottage, Marie started to tell them what to do; their faces grew longer and longer as the afternoon progressed. At last even I saw the mistake I had made, and Marie, much to the delight of Dee and Dum, wasn’t invited again. I think they both liked Marie a lot, but there are certain things between women that mustn’t be tampered with. Doc’s house wasn’t his any more, it belonged to Dum and Dee, and Marie’s imperious instructions were those of an intruder, or even a guest who had forgotten her manners.
Marie brought sweet potatoes for me from her farm, and fresh eggs, sometimes even a leg of pork, a churn of
