Embrace (55 page)

Lena and I, Glenn and Thea took turns at stealing small things from various shops at the new Pahla Station shopping centre. Sweets from the cafe, and from Pahla Hardware Dinky cars, penknives, hammers and nails, pins for fishing, candles, pieces of perspex, ropes, pliers — all of which went into the fort we had started under the overhanging fronds of a datepalm at the bottom of 21 Dan Pienaar. Here we stockpiled in case the kaffirs took over the country. The four of us in a secret gang from which everyone else was excluded. When the kaffirs came we would be able to live for weeks on the loot we had amassed beneath the palm.

For months I had my eye on one of Pahla Hardware’s miniature

Primus stoves, an accessory we all wanted for the fort. As the sizeable Primus was too bulky to fit beneath our shirts, we were all too afraid to attempt the theft. On a day when the shopkeeper was somewhere along the back shelves, I picked up the Primus, held it confidently to my chest, and glided out into the street. When the others came out and found me in the bush behind the shopping centre, they could scarcely believe their eyes. Now we needed fuel! We at once sent back Thea to steal a bottle of methylated spirits and Lena went off to relieve the cafe of a packet of marshmallows. Beneath the palm, we melted marshmallows over the Primus and I lit all the candles, saying we needed flames to create a more festive atmo.

Again perusing the shelves of Pahla Hardware a while later, I slipped a leather pencil bag down the front of my shorts. Just as I was leaving the shopkeeper stepped in front of me, blocking my way. She asked what I had hidden in my pants. I said nothing, that she had a dirty mind and she’d better let me out. She said she was going to call the police unless I removed whatever was in there. Pushing past her and making a run for it seemed stupid, as the whole neighbourhood would know who we were. Red-faced I extracted the pencil bag and handed it to her. She said that she’d had her eyes on us for quite a while and warned that not one of us was to set foot again in her store. If we came near there she’d call in the police and make sure our parents were informed of what common thieves they had for children.

I strutted out in shame, enraged that I’d been caught, but relieved at the escape. Furious that I had spoilt the central source of our raids, Glenn smacked me behind the head and demanded to know why I had stolen a pencil bag in the first place. Lena warned him not to lay another hand on me. Then she slapped me against the head, commanding that henceforth I steal only things that could reasonably be shared by the whole gang.

‘One needs a pencil bag,’ I began to explain, but was cut short by

Lena who snapped: ‘Don’t say
one,
like its all of uS. Stop talking like a ladeda! You may need a stupid pencil bag but the gang doesn’t.’

Something happened in the Kingsway Bird Sanctuary with its lake and its sprawling acres. A few times during afternoons when I sat there reading, my eyes began to water and I’d move from the sun into the shade. But even in the shade they watered. Without feeling as though I were crying, I knew that I indeed was. Might my eyes be watery because of the spitting bugs in the feather trees; was I developing another form of hay fever? Did I need glasses? Then, one day when James accompanied Lena and me to fish, there was a moment in which I almost began to weep when I heard a peacock call. Sure enough, the’ next time I was alone and their call ran through the trees, my eyes watered and tears brimmed over and ran down my cheeks. When the tears disappeared, a cloud hovered over me — even when the sun was shining. And then, afterwards, I developed headaches and had to take two Disprin. I knew that Aunt Lena’s headaches often landed her in hospital where she had to be injected with Voltarin. When I told Bernice and Stephanie, they said it was nothing to worry about, I was merely into the blues. For the blues — I discovered — it helped if I took antihistamine. The tablets did not make me feel drowsy as the prescription warned. Instead, like small miracles, they made me feel as if I was in complete control of my world, as if nothing around me really much mattered.

Agnus, second declension masculine, an endless word over ninety-five bars. Dei, second declension genitive, possessive. I named them while his hands brought us in. Qui — has to correlate with lamb of God, masculine — all the while scratching the mosquito bites that itched and now felt like many more than three, as though they stretched all the way up the side of my thigh. Tollis, second person, Pecata, second declension, neuter, and Mundi, second or third declension genitive of second Deus, Deum, Dei, something nominative plural. Miserere — what the hell does it take, genitive, take pity on me, passive, indicative, imperative, subjunctive, is it active or passive? Must be an odd word, nobis, dative, donna nobis, give to us peace. The last movement. Here we re bringing everything to a head. This is the body of Christ, broken for you. Communion is taken. Again I scratched at the bites, trying not to move my shoulder or arm, to seem concentrated, while wanting badly to drop my pants and look. Could it have been a hairy caterpillar or a poisonous leaf rather than a mosquito?

Ma’am had brought a message to class saying I was to go with Mr Cilliers to have my stitches out in Estcourt. He — she said — had an appointment in Pietermaritzburg to see someone from the SABC orchestra to discuss the December performance. He — I at once wanted to believe — must have invented an excuse so he could be the one to take me to hospital. I would be out-and-out surprised if we went anywhere near Maritzburg! We drove off in his Mazda 323 and yes, he said, the meeting in Maritzburg was real. Disappointed that I was not indeed the ordering point of his life, it was none the less satisfying to know I’d be missing half my classes and that I’d be having the full day with him. Our first since Paternoster.

The mountains stood in a blue haze. The veld an unrestrained verdant, almost neon, where but a month before across the yellow and red of winter, black residues of fire had scabbed the horizons. Off the gravel road near Estcourt was a sign pointing to the Gerrit Maritz Memorial. I said I wondered what it would have been like for us to have been part of the Great Trek, to have come over these awesome mountains to face the Zulus. If only the Boers had come twenty years earlier we would have dealt with the regal Chaka, not the evil Dingaan. Chaka was the greatest Zulu King. The first adult book I read when I was ten, I boasted, called
The Washing of the Spears,
spoke of Chaka as one of the greatest leaders the world had ever seen. This,exactly here where we were now travelling, was where the first Boers had settled after leaving the Cape Colony under British rule. The Napoleonic Wars. How crazy that what Napoleon did in France determined what happened here on the southern tip of Africa. From near here, right here somewhere, Retief had ridden out to meet Dingaan who murdered him. Then, the Boer commando to face the Zulu hordes at the Battle of Bloodriver. We were driving through the blood, sweat and tears of Boer history. ‘Don’t you think that’s incredible?’ I asked. ‘That all of this, and right where the school is, and all the hotels, and even where our forts are, each of these roads, are all places where blood has been spilt?’

‘No, my boy,’ Jacques snorted, and placed his hand on my leg, ‘I’m a Cilliers. That’s why I’m here and not dead like Retief. We Cilliers men already stayed at home with the women and children over a century ago.’We laughed. I said I thought I may have wanted to go on commando, especially with the horses and being out in the wild. He said commando constituted more than horses, cowboys and crooks, and the great outdoors. That I had a far too romantic idea of war.

In Estcourt we stopped to have my knee inspected and the stitches removed. I could see the scar wasn’t at all bad but kept up the limp. He asked whether I was hungry and when I said no bought us icecream cones with Flakes in the centre before we went on towards Maritzburg. How’s the wound, he asked and I put my foot on the dashboard, lifting my knee so he could see. Sore? Resting his hand on my thigh, pushing the shorts higher. Not any more, I said. I’m sure it will get better if you keep your hand there.

The campus was crawling with students dressed in jeans and shorts and leather sandals. I felt like I could be somewhere in America, in a movie. The buildings were lovely, like relics of an era gone by, and I imagined being a student there, scurrying into the entrance beneath the red-brick clock tower on my way to write a Roman Dutch law exam. When I told Jacques how attractive I foundthe buildings he asked whether I had ever seen Hilton College, the private boys’ school just up the hill. I said I hadn’t, and he suggested we stop there on the way back to the Berg.

At the College of Music he collected annotated sheet music from a secretary and then took me into an office where I met the SABC orchestra’s chief violinist, a man whose name I can no longer recall. He shook my hand and said he had enormous respect for us doing this complex piece of music. Then he and Jacques spoke about the strengths and weaknesses of the orchestra and the alterations Jacques had made in orchestration. They drew up a tentative agenda for the three-day rehearsal and the recordings due to take place in Jo’burg end of November. A timetable and meal plans were discussed. I sat listening, taking in the office and the two men intensely engaged across the desk from each other. As we left, the violinist said he’d see me in Jo’burg and that I was to wish the choir well. He and the other members of the orchestra and adult choir were on tenterhooks to meet us all, to hear us sing.

Back in the car, Jacques again asked after my knee and I said it was fine. We spoke about the concert, barely two months away. It would be the biggest he’d ever conducted. He wasn’t sure whether he was excited or afraid. No, he said in response to a question, he wasn’t really concerned at the live TV broadcast, more about the arrangement he had done of Beethoven’s work. ‘The Mass is something of a sacred cow,’ he said, ‘and I’m not sure how the audience or the press will respond to a boy quartet and to the sections without the adult voices.’We were good, he said, but perhaps it was just as well the SABC choir was with us. It was, he had admitted to himself already when doing the arrangement, too much for boys to do alone. I asked whether he was happy with how things were going. He said yes, we were outdoing ourselves. Sometimes he couldn’t believe how we — and specially the Juniors — had managed to get our heads and voices around sections of the Mass any adult choir would find a challenge. ‘But don’t tell them I said that!’ he laughed. ‘I don’t want any of youresting on your laurels. Better to keep you all guessing. That’s my “experience with any performer. The director, the conductor, the maestro, should not give affirmation too soon. That keeps the performer on his toes. Here’s the Hilton turn-off. What’s the time? Want to go have a quick squiz?’

‘It doesn’t matter, if were late, we can miss it,’ I said, but he took the off ramp. Left, then crossed the bridge over the highway. Following the narrow tarmac road we passed through green rolling hills. The neat white buildings of Hilton College sat like an extended English Tudor complex on perfecdy tended lawns amidst rose gardens and enormous trees. It looked centuries old, like how I imagined Oxford or Europe where we would be performing over Christmas. The entrance, from which ran a winding road up into the buildings, was marked by an ornate metal gate.

‘It’s like a hotel complex,’ I said.

‘Hilton Cpllege is money being educated to make money,’ he said and smiled. ‘Wouldn’t you like to come to school here?’

‘Yes, but it must cost a fortune! If our school looks like it does with all the money our parents pay, this must be ten times more. Look .. .’Two or three teams were doing warm-up exercises, running, falling onto their stomachs, doing push-ups, kicking a soccer ball, sprinting to where two trainers waited.

‘I’m not sure what the school fees are, though I doubt they’re much more than ours. Ours is an arts school, Karl, you know there’s no money in music. And the people who come to this place and Michaelhouse and Kearsney have been sending boys here for generations. It’s a family business. Enormous endowments by grandfathers who want the place kept up. They leave half the money to their sons and the other half to the school. That’s why it looks like this. And were only twenty years old. Maybe with time things will develop in our part of the woods.’

He had gone to Pretoria Boys High, he said. Not a bad school, but nothing like Hilton. And he spoke briefly about growing up in Sabiein the Eastern Transvaal, where his parents were carpenters. That’s near the Kruger Park, isn’t it, I asked. Yes. Both his father and mother made furniture. Yellow-wood, stinkwood and teak. All cut from the forests in the region. He told me to take a look at his dressing table when I next came to his room. It was stinkwood. A gift from his parents. I asked whether he had siblings and he said he had a younger brother with whom he was very close. His brother and his wife, he said, had recently joined the family business. ‘Were a very close family,’ he said. ‘I admire my mother and father. And they think my brother and I the best things since sliced bread. Like all parents, I suppose.’ His father had bought him a piano when he was six. While his mother remained in the workshop on a Saturday, his father had driven him all the way to Pretoria once a week for lessons with the best tutor in the Transvaal. Late afternoon, driving back to Sabie, he would practise what he’d learnt on the dashboard of the car, humming or singing the score while his father behind the wheel kept time, like a metronome, tick-tick-tick-tick. His being the Berg’s senior conductor made his parents very proud. They were coming to the Durban performance, as were his brother and sister-in-law. And they’d be at Jan Smuts to see us off when we left for Europe. ‘Take a look on my dressing table,’ he said, ‘there are photographs of them all stuck to the mirror.’ I responded that we never had the light on in his room and that I was never there for long enough to go around inspecting the furniture or the pictures, a plaintive chord stringing my voice.