Embrace Page 9

  We were allowed at the huts of Jonas and Boy’s compound until late afternoon. Then, before sunset, one of the men would tell us it was time to go home. Suz at our side, we set off through the bush along the half-mile walk to Mbanyana. Bokkie did not mind our spending time at the strooise, though she made it clear that once Lena went to school and like Bernice brought back homework for the weekends, there would be no sitting around kaffirhutte. The same held for when I one day went to school.

  ‘It’s fine while you’re kids but when you get bigger it’s not a good influence. Anyway, I don’t want you turning out like Groot-Oom Klaas, niksnut, good for nothing tramp.’ Groot-Oom Klaas was the brother of my Oupa Liebenberg on Bokkie’s side. Groot-Oom Klaas, the cleverest man in the family, so we were told, was once a law professor at Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education before he suddenly went crazy and became a tramp. Ever since, he just turned up at the Liebenberg family in Klerksdorp whenever he needed money. When the frost bit the Transvaal veld, Uncle Klaas took off for Durban where it never really got cold. Then, with summer’s return, Uncle Klaas headed inland, back to Johannesburg and Klerksdorp where the family whispered that sometimes he slept on park benches and in train stations. No one seemed to know exactly what had made Groot-Oom Klaas go mad, but we’d all heard Oupa and Ouma Liebenberg say it was a woman. A dark-haired girlhe loved, had been engaged to, who left him for another man. Groot-Oom Klaas couldn’t take it and went off his trolley. Others said the madness runs in the family; that it strikes the cleverest Liebenbergs in every generation; just look at Aunt Lena. She had to drop out of school after getting seven distinctions in Standard Nine and could never finish matric. If she hadn’t eventually married rich Uncle Joe Mackenzie, what would have become of her? But Bokkie maintained that her sister wasn’t mad; she only had mood swings and suffered from anxiety because of epilepsy when she was younger. No, others said: there’s madness in the Liebenberg family and it strikes once every generation. They said that Great-Great-Grandfather Liebenberg, whom we kids never knew, used to sit on an anthill in Kroonstad barking like a baboon at the full moon. Then there was Great-Grandfather Liebenbergs brother Serphaas: used to get so angry he beat his wife and eight children half dead till eventually a vein burst in his head and they locked him up in the madhouse. And then there was Great-Uncle Klaas. Bokkie told a story of how when she and her brother Gert went to boarding school in Brei in the Molopo, Uncle Klaas arrived there and stood calling them from outside: ‘Katie and Gert Liebenberg! Katie and Gert Liebenberg! Are you in there? Come out and speak to your Uncle Klaas.’ Then Bokkie laughed and told us how ashamed she and Uncle Gert were when the teacher told them to go outside and get rid of the old poor white. And then there was Aunt Lena: in and out of Tara in Johannesburg where she had shock treatments that made her better for a while. Once we could all understand the meaning of generational madness, the idea that I carried our generation’s mad gene was immediately brought into play, if I recall correctly, by Lena.

  Walking back from Jim and Boy’s compound, I thought of Lena and I as Hansel and Gretel moving through the bush, escaping from the wicked witch. I ran my closed fist up the thick yellow stalk of grass and then, from my palm filled with golden kernels, dropped markers along the route from the kraal to our house. Noticing what I was up to, Lena said:

  ‘It’s the wrong direction, stupid. The birds are anyway going to pick them up and you’ll be lost, so we! And we know the path home and we’ve got Suz. So stop being stupid.’

  I despised her when she was like that. I knew full well she was right; could say nothing other than possibly: ‘I’m just playing a game, stupid yourself? And then add: ‘I can’t wait for Bernice to come home. She’s clever. I like her more than you.’

  ‘And you’ve got the mad gene,’ she said. ‘Watch out or you’ll burst open your brain.’

  I pictured my head bursting like a ripe monkey-apple on a rock, bits of my bloody skull and fragments of brain clinging to the red-grass. ‘Then you’ll be sorry,’ I said to Lena, ‘when I’m dead. For teasing me and calling me stupid.’

  19

  They had dressed up to drop me off for my first term at boarding school in the Berg. Bok wore his long beige safari suit and Bokkie the smock-and-hot-pants of floral cotton; only that day she decided to not wear the hot-pants beneath the smock. ‘Don’t want to create the wrong impression . . . that were common or something. Those are smart people.’

  Ag, Bokkie, they won’t see anything except your legs, anyway. Don’t worry,’ Bok said.

  The night before they left me we spent with the Therons, who farmed near Winterton. The Therons were friends of ours in East Africa who also came out in the middle sixties. Their sons and daughters attended boarding school in Estcourt and we usually saw them over Parents’Weekends when Bok and Bokkie and the girls stayed over on the farm.

  The excitement of the months leading to my arrival at the school now barely overshadowed the dread I felt at the prospect of leaving home. There had been first Bok’s decision to allow me to audition; then the weeks of preparatory voice training and a brief furthering of my paupers knowledge of music theory by Juffrou Sang; ‘This white note is middle C next to the white D with the black donkeys ears.’ She too was the one who told me that musicality and a good voice alone would not secure my acceptance to the school — and even on that score I wasn’t in the top league; I needed to perform academically with straight As on my school report. I would have to answer in full sentences when questioned by the panel; to smile and look them in the eye, to exude confidence: ‘Use that charm, those blue eyes’; to say that I had always wanted to play the piano and to sing in a choir of international renown: ‘It won’t hurt if you say that you’re a little frustrated at singing in a school choir that doesn’t sing Bach or Beethoven or Brahms.’ Having never heard the names or the music, I copied down the Three B’s along with the titles of a piece by each; committed them to memory, practised in front of the bathroom mirror to say the names as though I had grown up with them in my ears and spilling from my lips.

  There had been the drive up from Toti with me dressed in the new green Terylene trousers and the brown corduroy jacket Bok brought me from America when he went to see how things were going with the three rhino he had taken to Texas. Then, the horrible waiting where we sat amongst other boys and their parents for my name to be called. Into the auditorium drifted the occasional song from the room where the auditions where taking place. Voices like nothing I had ever heard: heavenly. I knew already I could never make it. And when at last I stood at the black grand piano in the room adjacent to the principals office, I felt raw terror. All I knew was that my six-month training in the Three B’s, to answer questions, to control my breathing and open my mouth aa, ee, oo, uuu, iii, oeee — everything Juffrou Sang had taught me — was wiped from memory as I faced the two men in the room.

  One behind the piano, the other behind the desk. Later, in the Peugeot back en route to theTheron farm, I would be unable to describe either of my auditioners to my parents. One, I thought, had been the conductor at the concert Juffirou Sang had taken me to in the Durban City Hall. But during the audition, concentrating, trying only to remember what I was meant to do and say, I took in little but the two mens words that seemed a ready ambush for each of my insecurities.

  The man at the piano asked me what I was going to sing and I said, ‘“BlessThis House in D”.’

  ‘You mean, “Bless This House”.’

  ‘Yes, Sir. I must start it in D. That’s the song that was sung in church when my parents got married.’

  ‘How interesting. D . . . and what if you started it in F? Could you manage?’

  A, B, C, D, E, F ran through my mind. I was certain he could see me calculating. F was higher than D and I knew there was no way I could reach there without sounding like a squealing warthog: ‘I learnt it in D, Sir. D with the donkey’s ears.’

  The pianist smiled and began improvising an introduction, nod
ding for me to start when I was ready. Horror, for I had no idea of how to begin without Juffirou Sang’s head nodding one, two, three. I just began, not listening to the piano, singing and looking into the corner of the room above their heads. I heard my voice, hoarse and breathy, threatening to crack on the high notes. I dropped my jaw as Juffirou Sang had taught me, pushing out my chest and taking deep breaths at the exact moments I had been coached. But the voice — even to my own untrained ears — was not as good as it had been in Juffirou Sang’s living room or when I played the Pied Piper in Kuswag Primary’s operetta. I knew, even as I sang, that I sounded ghastly. The song was coming to an end without a semblance of synchronisation between voice and piano. I wanted to weep with despondency and for a moment considered breaking off and asking them for a glass of water and another chance. Then the scales, still in the strained voice, andwhile doing these I decided I didn’t want to be at the school, anyway. Between knowing I wasn’t good enough and telling myself I didn’t belong there, I wanted to get out of the audition and back to Kuswag Primary as soon as possible. Briefly wished I might be accepted only to decline and say I’d rather stay at home.

  Then the two men asked more questions. And here, at last, the rehearsed answers scrambled back to the front of my mind.

  ‘You say you’ve always wanted to play the piano. You’re eleven. Does that mean you don’t read music?’

  Could I take a chance, disregard Juffirou Sang’s advice; lie? What if they asked me to show them? No. Just tell them the truth, ‘I play the recorder and I’ve just started learning to read music. We don’t have a piano at home, Sir. But we re getting one because my Dad’s business is growing. I’ll learn to read music before the end of the year.’

  ‘What does your father do?’

  ‘He’s a white hunter but he’s starting a curio dealership.’

  ‘And you lived in a game reserve?’

  ‘We did, Sir, until I was nine and a half. My dad was a game ranger in Mkuzi, and Umfolozi and at Lake St Lucia. But now were living in Amanzimtoti, just south of Durban.’

  ‘Did you enjoy living in the game reserves?’

  ‘Yes, Sir. Very much. It would be almost like being there if I could come here — on the farm with the horses and everything and to sing good music, like Bach and Beethoven and Brahms’

  ‘You have a good school report. All As.’

  ‘I am very fond of school, Sir. And music also.’

  ‘You go to an Afrikaans school, but you sound English. Where did you learn to speak English so well?’

  ‘We were born in Tanzania, Sir. There we spoke mostly English, but when we came to South Africa we went to Afrikaans schools. My mother is Afrikaans. And my cousins — on my father’s side — their mother is Irish so we speak English to them. And Amanzimtoti, where we live, is very English. Were all perfectly bilingual.’

  ‘Do you really want to be in this school?’

  ‘More than anything in the world, Sir.’

  That had been it. They said I could go. I walked back to Bok and Bokkie hiding the shameful knowledge that I had not succeeded. I myself was unaware that the ambivalence about leaving home had now again been swept away in the current of desire to succeed at what had been begun. At Kuswag Primary, teachers and children kept asking when we’d hear. It felt as though the entire school and neighbourhood wanted only for me to succeed. The thought of not getting in haunted me into my sleep.

  A month later and against every dreadful anticipation the telegram arrived. Lena, Bernice and I took the sealed envelope up Dan Pienaar to open at Juffrou Sang’s house. We knocked at the door. Alette opened. She jumped up and down when she saw what I was holding. We went into the lounge, lined with shelves of Prof’s books and Juffrou Sang’s records. Juffrou Sang came out and smiled as I handed her the envelope. I said I wanted her to open it. The telegram cryptically congratulated Mr and Mrs Ralph De Man on their son Karl being one of thirty new boys chosen over hundreds of auditioned applicants. I would be expected to start in January, the first quarter of 1974. Further documentation would be forthcoming. We jumped around, hugged and kissed before the girls and I ran down the street to tell Bokkie.

  ‘Frank Sinatra!’ Bokkie beamed jokingly. ‘You’re going to be the next Sinatra.’ My sporadic fantasies of being a star had not included Sinatra, even though I knew ‘Love and Marriage’, ‘Under My Skin’ and ‘My Way’ off by heart. By then I had wanted to be Rudolf Nureyev. Robert Redford or Rudolf Nureyev. No one I had seen could hold a candle to Redford’s smile, good looks and horsemanship in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which we saw at theToti Drive-In. Redford as Sundance was charm, looks, adventure, seductiveness and recklessness wrapped into one face. For hours I was in front of the mirror, practising his dry smile, trying to get his lines around my eyes, wishingwe didn’t have to have such short hair for school, sure that if my hair were just an inch longer I would look like Sundance, blond hair blowing as I galloped through the desert.

  At school I was a hero. Kuswag was on the map.

  Everything purchased for me — neatly ticked off the school’s long list by Bokkie — was in the two cardboard suitcases Bok lifted from the Peugeot’s boot.

  ‘Just look at the cars,’ Bokkie said softly. ‘I mean, where do they get all the money for the school fees?’ And later, once we were alone in the dormitory: ‘I’m disappointed in these rooms; look at these little lockers and the narrow beds. Where’s all the money going?’

  ‘The classes are small; tours cost a lot of money, Bokkie.’

  I moved from bed to bed, reading to myself the names pinned to the pillows. Lukas Van Rensburg. Dominic Webster. Bennie Oberholzer. Mervyn Clemence-Gordon.

  ‘But they must make money, Bok, from the concerts and the records and everything. Surely they can do a bit more with the boys’ rooms?’ ‘Bokkie, they’re boys. That’s part of it. Treat them like boys; prepare them for the army.’

  ‘Ja, but why charge such exorbitant school fees, Bok?’

  ‘Look,’ I said, pointing, ‘we have a view of the mountains’

  Bokkie continued unpacking things into the small wooden locker with the calico curtain, complaining that everything couldn’t possibly fit into the restricted space. Bok came to stand beside me at the window. The flat-topped mountain set against a deep blue sky loomed spectacularly large before us. Clouds hung motionless like mounds of cotton over the foothills and forests. Green. Brown. Blue. White.

  ‘That’s Champagne Castle. The view alone’s worth the price.’ ‘Mommy’s putting your socks on the bottom shelf for now, and your toothpaste and plasters and so on up here, on the top, okay, my boy? You must keep it neat, Karl. Neatness will score you points. Look after your things. Everything is marked with your name; nothing has to get lost in the wash.’

  ‘Yes, thanks, Bokkie.’

  We heard voices approach up the stairs. The new arrivals introduced themselves as Harold and Janet Webster, their son was Dominic. I shook hands with Dominic, the first of my four roommates. He was shorter and skinnier than me, with huge scared eyes.

  ‘Oh, you shouldn’t unpack the boys’ things,’ Mrs Webster said to Bokkie at the locker. ‘Just leave them in the suitcases; most of the clothing has to go to the cupboards downstairs. I’ve just spoken to Uncle Charlie, the house-master. Lovely bloke. They’ll tell the boys what to do after the parents have left.’

  ‘Oh,’ Bokkie smiled and started repacking things into my suitcases. The Websters placed Dominic’s leather bags in the passage beside his bed.

  ‘You can leave the toiletries and so on.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Bokkie answered, glancing at Mrs Webster, who was unzipping a small leather pouch from which she lifted Dominic’s things. He and I smiled at each other.

  ‘Were over at the El Mirador, how about you?’ Dominic’s father asked.

  ‘No, we need to get back to Durban — were just down the road — so were not staying over.’

  ‘We’ll stay the night and check in
in the morning to see everything’s okay. But you’ll be fine, Dominic. And you too, Karl. You have the best dorm. Look, it’s right up here, and it’s the smallest. Much better than one of those long halls. You’re going to make such good friends. And look at this view of Cathkin Peak.’ Mr Webster said that he needed to have a word with the principal and asked Bok whether he’d like to come along. They agreed to meet us later at the parking lot.

  ‘What’s your instrument, Karl?’ Mrs Webster asked, smiling at me where I sat at the foot-end of my bed. I looked at her, not understanding the question. Bokkie looked up from the suitcase.

  Mrs Webster smiled and said, ‘What instrument does he play? Dominic plays the piano.’

  ‘Karl plays the recorder, but he’s going to learn to play the piano, too.’ Bokkie smiled affirmation at me.

  ‘Dominic is quite the pianist. Last year he played with the SABC orchestra, Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. Youngest person ever in this country. Maybe you can give Karl some guidance, Dominic, what do you say?’

  ‘Of course, Mum. And stop showing off?

  From my bed, Bokkie stared at Dominic. I could not believe I’d heard right. Mrs Webster pulled her face at us and smiled, ‘He’s right, I am.’

  ‘That would be nice of you, Dominic,’ Bokkie smiled at the skinny boy. I quickly nodded, happy and excited at the prospect of sharing a room with an accomplished pianist, moreover, someone who would help me master my instrument. How grown up it sounded; how matter-of-factly grown up: try instrument is the piano. This room, I thought, Dominic, everything, is going to be wonderful. Just wonderful.