The Power of One

ELEVEN

Doc was to be kept in custody at the Barberton prison until arrangements could be made to send him to a concentration camp somewhere in the highveld. Two days after Doc had been sentenced I went to the library to take a bunch of roses from my mother to Mrs Boxall. Mr Andrews had explained to my mother how my evidence had saved Doc from a severe sentence, one that might well have killed a man of his age. He had also persuaded her that we had nothing to be ashamed of and that he only wished his two sons, now at boarding school in Johannesburg, had had the benefit of a man as remarkable as the professor. My mother decided that the Lord had guided her in the matter and that His will had been quite clearly wrought through me. The roses to Mrs Boxall were her sign that the librarian’s trespass into the hospital to see me had been forgiven.

Mrs Boxall seemed excited when she saw me come through the door. ‘I’m so fearfully glad you came, Peekay, I have a letter for you.’ I handed her the roses. ‘How very nice of your mother.’ She placed them on the book-sorting table and withdrew into her tiny office to return with a small blue envelope which she handed to me. The envelope was sealed and I opened it carefully pulling back the flap at the back, the glue giving way reluctantly. ‘Do hurry, Peekay, I can’t bear the suspense,’ Mrs Boxall said, looking over my shoulder. I withdrew a single sheet of cheap exercise paper and opened it. Doc’s neat hand covered the page. ‘Oh dear, I’m such an awful nosy parker! May I read it with you?’ Besides Hoppie’s note, it was the only letter I had ever received and the first one sealed in an envelope. I would have preferred to read it alone but of course I couldn’t possibly say so and I nodded my agreement.

Dear Peekay,

What a mess we are in. Me in this place where they tear down a man’s dignity and you with a broken jaw. But things could be worse. I could be a black man and that would be trouble and half. Absolute.

I have been placed under open arrest, it means I can go anywhere in the prison grounds and my cell is not locked. Best of all, it means I can have visitors. Will you come and see me?

Ask Mrs Boxall to telephone the people here and make arrangements. There is also good news about the Steinway. The Kommandant is going to allow me to have it in the prison hall. This is good news, ja?

I do not think of myself as a German. What is a German? To say a man is a German what is that? Does it tell you if he is a good man? Or a bad man? No, my friend, it tells you nothing about a man to say he is German. A man must think what he is inside, what he is on the outside, how can this matter?

Also, because I am German, I am well treated by the warders. This also is stupid. Have you planted the Senecio serpens? No of course not, I am getting old and think only of my own welfare. Perhaps Mrs Boxall will take the books in the cottage and put them in the library? In the meantime I am treated well and whisky is getting easier not to have. Please come soon.

Your friend, Doc

‘We will call the prison at once,’ Mrs Boxall said, inviting me into her office. The superintendent of Barberton prison, Kommandant Jaapie Van Zyl, told Mrs Boxall that Colonel de Villiers had said Professor Von Vollensteen should be allowed access to the boy within the normal rules of the prison. He added that he had heard of my bravery and wanted to meet me himself. That if Mrs Boxall cared to have me bring Doc library books this would be permitted. The professor was a musician and a scholar and Barberton prison was honoured to have him.

Mrs Boxall selected three botanical books she knew to be among Doc’s favourites and I set out with a note from her to visit Doc in prison.

I arrived at the gates of the prison which were made of wrought iron and locked with a huge chain and padlock. It was the biggest lock I had ever seen, nearly twice the size of a grown-up’s hand. I wondered how big the key would have to be to open it. The gate seemed about twelve feet high and along the top there were pipes welded every two feet or so. They were about three feet long, bent inward at a thirty-degree slant threaded with strands of barbed wire six inches apart and set into huge blocks of blue granite. Without thinking I identified the components of the rock, mainly felspar and quartz, quarried in the Barberton district so in addition it contained a fair amount of mica. After a year with Doc it had become second nature to identify almost anything that didn’t move and I was an expert at the geology of the district.

I decided that escape from inside the wall would be impossible. Set high up to the side of the gate was a church bell and from it, hanging almost to the ground, was a rope. A sign fixed onto the wall said, Ring for attention. My heart beat wildly as I tugged on the rope and the noise from the bell seemed deafening as it cracked the silence. Almost immediately, a warder carrying a rifle slung over his shoulder came out of the guard house some twenty feet from the gate and walked towards me. His highly polished black boots made a scrunching sound on the white gravel driveway. I handed my note to him through the bars of the gate and he opened it suspiciously. He looked at the note for a bit and then looked up at me.

‘Praat jy Afrikaans?’ he asked.

I nodded my head, indicating to him that I understood Afrikaans. The swelling in my tongue had subsided and while my voice had very little volume and sounded a bit gravelly I could talk quite clearly through my wired-up mouth. The young guard looked relieved and started to talk in Afrikaans. He asked me to read the note as he didn’t have much English, coming from the North Western Transvaal where only the taal is spoken. ‘It says that I am here to visit Professor Von Vollensteen and have permission from Kommandant Van Zyl,’ I told him.

‘I will get on the telephone and ask. Better wait here, you hear.’ He walked over to the guard house and I could see him talking on the phone. He was quite young and looked nervous. Finally he replaced the receiver and stuck his head out of the door. ‘Kom!’ he beckoned to me. But the gate was locked and he shook his head in exasperation and disappeared to return with a very large key on a huge ring. To my surprise the gates opened smoothly and closed with a clang as he locked them behind me.

The young warder told me to report to the office in the administration block and pointed it out to me. ‘Totsiens and thanks for reading the note, you are a good kêrel,’ he said.

The area between the gate and the administration block was completely bare. Lawn stretched from either side of the gravel driveway for about five feet and thereafter the square turned into a parade ground of sun-hardened red clay. The strip of living green on either side of the pathway was a brilliant though incongruous contrast to the baked earth of the parade ground and the dead blue-grey walls and buildings. I could see a warder’s head in the window of a little tower built onto and jutting out from the wall. There was a stretch of walkway for fifty feet on either side of the tower. Two guards with rifles slung over their shoulders paced up and down this walkway. I seemed to be the only person on the ground below them and I wondered how, on my way out, they’d know I wasn’t a prisoner trying to escape. Maybe they’d give me a white flag to carry or something.

It was one of the longest walks of my life. I could sense the oppression of the place, the terrible silence. Without trees, no cicadas hummed the air to life. No birds punctuated the stillness. My bare feet on the gravel made an exaggerated sound. There were tiny dark windows arranged three storeys high. Each was divided by two vertical steel bars. I imagined hundreds of eyes hungrily devouring my freedom as they watched from the prison darkness.

The door of the administration block was open, and after hesitating I put my head around it. Inside was a small hallway that had the same wax polish smell of the magistrates’ courts. Three benches, arranged like church pews, filled half the hallway and there was a window with bars set into a wall. Through the bars I could see an office. I walked into the hallway and sat on the front bench and waited.

I don’t know how long I sat there, but it seemed to be a very long time. I could see two men in uniform pass the grille window occasionally, but they never looked out. I could hear them talking on the phone. After I’d been there for ages and ages I heard the voice of a man on the phone behind the grille, he was shouting in Afrikaans and seemed very angry.

‘He hasn’t arrived, you domkop! Are you sure you directed him to this building? We can’t have a blêrrie kid walking around the prison. It’s been almost half an hour and there’s no sign of him. We’ll have to look for him now and it’s all your blêrrie fault!’ I could hear the receiver being slammed back into its cradle. ‘Kom!’ I heard the voice say to someone else and a moment later a door opened and a big man followed by another big man who looked younger than the first one came out.

The big man saw me as he entered the hallway. ‘Jesus Christ! Where have you been?’ he shouted at me.

‘I been here, I been here all the time, Meneer,’ I rasped.

‘Well, why didn’t you make yourself known then?’ he asked in a slightly mollified voice, possibly because he had noticed my wired jaw.

I pointed to the two notices on the wall behind the benches. ‘It says on that notice, Wait here, and on that other one it says, Silence,’ I replied fearfully.

The younger of the two suddenly laughed. ‘I think the kid won the first round, lieutenant,’ he said.

‘Okay, man, I admit you got me there fair and square,’ the older one chuckled. ‘Kom, we must take down your name and things.’

They led me into the office and after taking my name, address and age the older one made a phone call and asked to speak to the Kommandant. Then he put the phone down. ‘The Kommandant wants to see you but he’s doing an inspection now, we have to wait twenty minutes.’ He turned to the younger warder. ‘Klipkop, get Peekay here a cup of tea and a biscuit.’ I wondered how someone could be called ‘Klipkop’. In Afrikaans it means stone head. But when I looked at the tall, blond man, his rawboned features looked as though they could well have been carved out of stone.

Klipkop rose and held out his hand. ‘Seeing we’re going to be here for a while we might as well introduce ourselves. Oudendaal, Johannes Oudendaal,’ he said formally in the Afrikaans manner, giving his surname first then repeating it attached to his Christian name. ‘This is Lieutenant Smit.’ He indicated the older warder, who stretched out his hand without looking at me and I took it briefly, blushing with embarrassment. I wondered whether Captain Smit was related to Jackhammer Smit, maybe his brother? But I didn’t have the courage to ask. After all, Smit is a pretty common Afrikaans name. If he was, I hoped he was a better type than the miner. ‘Come, I’ll show you where we make tea,’ Klipkop said. ‘There’s a Kaffir who makes it but if we want a cup in between we make it ourselves, it’s very handy. Every week we put in a shilling for milk and sugar and biscuits, but the authorities supply tea. You got to watch the Kaffir, or the black bastard pinches everything. I’m telling you, man, this place is full of thieves.’

I followed him into a small kitchen behind the office and he put water into an electric jug and plugged it in. ‘Peekay, that’s a name I haven’t heard before.’

‘It’s just a name I gave myself. Now it’s my real name,’ I said.

‘Ja, I know man, it’s the same with me. They call me Klipkop because I box and can take any amount of head punches. Now I sometimes find it hard to remember my born name.’

For a moment I was stunned. ‘You box?’ I asked.

‘Ag ja, man. In this place if you want to get on you have to box, but I like it anyway. On the weekend we travel all over the place to fight, it’s much better than rugby, man.’ He took three mugs down from a cupboard above the small sink. ‘Lieutenant Smit is the boxing coach, he used to be a heavyweight.’ He paused as he spooned a heaped tablespoon full of tea from a much used tea caddy into the pot. ‘But all the easy stuff is over now, man. Next month I have my first professional fight. There’s good money in the fight game. I’ve got a nooi in Sabie and we’re thinking of getting married.’ He poured the water from the electric jug into the tin teapot and then stirred it with the tablespoon before placing the lid on the pot. ‘Do you box, Peekay?’ He asked the question to be polite and did not expect my reaction.

My heart was pounding as I spoke. ‘No, but can you teach me please, Meneer Oudendaal?’

He looked at me in surprise and must have seen the pleading in my eyes. ‘First your jaw has got to get better, but I think you’re a bit young anyway. Lieutenant Smit teaches also the warders’ kids but I think the youngest in the junior squad is already ten years.’

‘I can be ten. I’m ten in class already. I could be ten in boxing easily and my jaw will be better in eight weeks,’ I begged.

‘Hey, whoa! Not so fast! Ten is ten. On the form we wrote you were seven years old only.’

‘If you fight first with the head and then with the heart, you can be ten years old,’ I said.

‘Magtig, you’re a hard one to understand, Peekay. You’ll have to ask Lieutenant Smit, he’s the boss. But if you ask me, I don’t think you’ve got a snowball’s hope in hell.’

‘Will you at least ask him for me?’ I rasped. The excitement made me over-project so that my throat was strained.

‘I’ll ask him, man, but I already told you what he’ll say.’ He picked up the pot and poured tea into the three enamel mugs, added milk, three teaspoons of sugar and stirred them all. He went to the cupboard and took out a tin and prised it open. ‘That blêrrie Kaffir! We had nearly a quarter of a packet of Marie biscuits in here, now they all gone. It’s time that black bastard went back into a work gang. Take your cup and bring the milk, Peekay. If you come again, next time we’ll have biscuits.’

‘Please, Meneer Oudendaal, you won’t forget to ask the lieutenant? You see, I’ve got to start boxing because I have to become the welterweight champion of the world.’

I said it without thinking. It was more a thought expressed aloud than a statement. Klipkop whistled. ‘Well you’re right, man, with an ambition like that you’ve got to get started early.’ He paused, two steaming cups in one hand, the teapot with the sugar bowl balanced where the teapot lid would normally have been in the other. ‘Me, I’ll be happy if I can beat the lieutenant’s brother in Nelspruit next month.’ He turned and looked over his shoulder at me. ‘You can call me Klipkop if you like, I won’t mind, man.’

I followed him back into the office where Lieutenant Smit was working on some papers. Klipkop put a mug of tea down in front of him. ‘Peekay wants to ask you something, lieutenant,’ he said and turned to me. ‘Ask him, man.’

Lieutenant Smit hadn’t looked up from his papers but he gave a short grunt. ‘Please, sir, will you teach me how to box?’ I asked, my voice down to a tiny squeak.

He still didn’t look at me but instead lifted the tea to his lips, and first blowing the steam from the surface took a sip from the mug. ‘You are too young, Peekay. In three years come back, then we will see.’ He was taller than me even when he was sitting down and now he looked down at me. ‘We read about you in the paper. You have lots of guts, that’s a good start, but you are not even big for seven like a Boer kid.’ He ruffled my hair. ‘Soon you will be ten, just you watch.’

At that moment an African came into the room. He was quite old and looked very thin, wearing the coarse knee-length grey canvas pants and shirt of a prisoner. In his hand he held the teapot lid. ‘I have come to make tea, baas, but the pot she is not here,’ he said slowly in Afrikaans. He stood with his head bowed. In two bounds Klipkop had reached him, and grabbing him by the front of his canvas shirt he lifted the African off his feet and gave him a tremendous swipe across the face. The blow landed with a loud, flat sound and the black man’s face seemed to squash in slow motion as Klipkop’s huge hand landed on the side of his nose and mouth. Klipkop released his grip and the man fell at his feet, whimpering.

‘You black bastard! You stole the Marie biscuits. Not just one, you piece of dog shit, you stole them all!’ He gave him a kick in the rump.

‘No, baas! Please, baas! I not stole biscuit. I good boy, baas,’ the old man pleaded and still holding the teapot lid he locked his free arm around Klipkop’s ankles.

The warder turned to Lieutenant Smit. ‘Please, Lieutenant, can’t we transfer this black bastard to the stone quarry? First he steals sugar, now the Marie biscuits.’ He looked down at the whimpering African at his feet. Blood from the prisoner’s nose had dripped onto the shiny toe of his boot. Klipkop kicked him loose, sending the black man flying against the wall where he hit the back of his head with a thud, the teapot lid clattering to the floor at his side. ‘He’s bleeding on me, the filthy black shit house is bleeding all over my boots!’ He thrust one foot towards the dazed African slumped against the wall. ‘Lick it off, Kaffir, make quick!’ The stunned man bent over the proffered boot and licked the blood from the toe cap, then, without being told, did the same with the other boot, at the same time holding his hand up to his nose to prevent further blood spilling on the warder’s boots. ‘Now wipe your filthy black spit off my boots, you black bastard, I don’t want foot and mouth disease!’ Lieutenant Smit, who hadn’t even looked up, grinned at the joke. The African removed his canvas shirt, and trying to sniff back the blood commenced to wipe Klipkop’s boots with it. ‘On the floor also,’ the warder said, pointing to several scarlet drops of blood on the floor. The black man wiped the drops of blood from the green linoleum floor. ‘Now get up and clear out, you bastard!’ The African scrambled to his feet and Klipkop gave him a flying kick which sent him sprawling again. Crawling on all fours, his shirt clutched in one hand, the black prisoner fled from the room.

Klipkop examined his hand. ‘They got heads made of blêrrie cannon balls.’ He grinned. ‘I’m learning, man, notice I didn’t hit him this time with my fist.’ He turned to me. ‘Always remember, when you hit a Kaffir stay away from his head. You can break your fist on their heads, just like that. Hit him in the face, that’s orright, but never on the head, man.’ He made a fist and rubbed it into the palm of his hand. ‘I got a big fight coming up, I can’t afford a broken fist from a stinking Kaffir’s head.’

Lieutenant Smit hadn’t said a word. He took another sip from his tea. ‘We can’t send him to the quarry, man. He’s had rheumatic fever, he’d die in a week. Besides he is the first Kaffir we’ve had who can make proper coffee and tea.’ He pointed at the cup in front of him. ‘Not like this shit. I told you not to stir it and to warm the pot first.’ He turned to look at Klipkop, with just the hint of a smile on his face. ‘Next time, man, ask before you hit. I ate the blêrrie Marie biscuits, I never had breakfast this morning so I ate them.’

Klipkop’s mouth fell open and then he grinned. ‘Okay, so I hit him because he steals the sugar, what’s the difference?’

The phone rang and Lieutenant Smit picked it up and listened for a moment. ‘Right,’ he said into the receiver and replaced it. He turned to me. ‘The Kommandant is back, come on, son.’

Grabbing Mrs Boxall’s books I followed the lieutenant up a set of stairs to the second floor. We entered a small outer office where a lady sat behind a desk typing on a big black machine which had Remington Corona in gold letters on its back. ‘Go right in, Lieutenant Smit, the Kommandant is waiting for you,’ she said, smiling at me.

We entered a large office, dark brown and filled with dead animals. A kudu head was mounted directly behind the Kommandant’s desk with a sable antelope head beside it, the elegant curved horns touching the wall. There were gemsbok and eland heads to complete the display of larger antelope and next to them, in a cluster of five heads, were the smaller variety of buck: grey duiker, klipspringer, steenbok, reebok and springbok. I turned to face the wall behind me, for it too was covered in trophies. This time a large black-maned lion looked down at me, mouth in the full roar position. Next to it were a leopard and a cheetah. All the carnivores were on one side of the door while on the other were their most common prey, a zebra and a black wildebeest. Below these, fixed to brackets on the wall, were a Boer Mauser and a British Lee-Metford. Immediately below these two Boer War rifles was a long-shafted Zulu throwing assegai. The rest of the wall space was taken up with small framed pictures, mostly of hunting parties standing over dead animals.

The room was furnished with two heavy leather club chairs and a large matching sofa and on the polished floorboards were a zebra and a lion skin. Directly behind the Kommandant’s head and below the kudu and sable antelope hung two large portraits. One was of King George and the other of President Paul Kruger, the last president of the defeated Boer Republic. The picture of the Boer president was in an elegant oval walnut frame. King George looked to be the sort of official photograph in a cheap gilt frame issued to public institutions and requiring mandatory display.

Kommandant Van Zyl rose from behind his desk, which was really a large ball and claw dining room table with a sheet of glass covering its surface. There was nothing on the table except the pad on which he appeared to be writing, his fountain pen and an ashtray.

‘Good morning, Smit. Sit down, please.’ He turned to look down at me. ‘So this is the boy, eh?’ He walked out from behind his desk and stuck out a huge hand. ‘Good morning, Peekay.’ He was even bigger than Lieutenant Smit and his tummy stuck out in front of him even more than Harry Crown’s. Like the Lieutenant and Klipkop, he wore the grey military-style uniform of a prison warder. The only differences were four stars and a crown on his shoulder tabs and a small tab of blue velvet inserted into the top of his lapels. I shook his hand shyly, not quite knowing what to say.

‘Sit, son.’ He pointed to the remaining leather chair. I pushed myself up into the large chair. By sitting on the edge I could make my feet almost reach the ground. Kommandant Van Zyl sat down heavily on the sofa.

‘So, you want to see our professor?’

I nodded my head, ‘Yes please, sir.’

The Kommandant adjusted himself on the sofa, his body soaking up most of it. ‘The law says he must be detained and I must follow the law, but inside this place, I am the law. In here he can come and go as he pleases provided he stays within the gates. Also he can have visitors in official visiting hours.’ He looked at me and smiled. ‘I have decided to make an exception in your case. You can come any time you want, only not Sundays,’ he paused and looked at me again, ‘how do you like that, hey? Two old maats together again.’

‘Thank you, Meneer Van Zyl,’ I said.

‘Ag man, it’s nothing.’ He looked at Lieutenant Smit as though he felt the need to explain his decision. ‘A friendship between a man and a boy is not a thing to be broken. This boy has no father, I know what that is like, man. My father died with the Carolina burghers at Spion Kop when I was the same age.’

‘Yessir,’ Lieutenant Smit said, looking down at his hands which were crossed in his lap.

‘Make out a permanent pass for the boy so he can come any time except Sunday, you hear?’

‘Ja, Kommandant.’ Smit looked at the larger man. ‘What about the professor’s peeano?’

Kommandant Van Zyl slapped his hand on his thigh. ‘I clean forgot. Thank you, Smit.’ He turned to me. ‘We are going to let the professor have his peeano here, there are already many musicians amongst us. Everybody thinks Boere are not cultured, but I’m telling you, man, when it comes to music we leave everyone for dead. For us it is an honour to have a man such as him in our prison community. Magtig! A real professor of music, here, in Barberton prison. Wonderlik!’

‘Thank you for letting me come to see him, Meneer.’

‘The boy has nice manners. I like that,’ he said to Lieutenant Smit. ‘It’s nothing. You can come any time, you hear.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘Peekay, we need just a small favour. On Monday, about one o’clock, we will be having a nice little surprise for the town folk in the market square. I already telephoned the mayor but I can’t trust him to tell people. Will you inform Mrs Boxall who telephoned about you and who, I understand, is also a friend of the professor? Ask her to tell everyone, you hear?’ I nodded and he seemed pleased. ‘Dankie, Peekay, I think we will like each other a lot. Now Lieutenant Smit is going to take you to see the professor. I see you have some books for him.’ He stretched his hand out. ‘Show me.’ I jumped down from the big chair and handed the books to him. He opened the top one and leafed through it for a few moments. ‘Plants, I don’t know much about plants. Animals, that’s my speciality, you can ask me anything about animals, you name it,’ he brought his hands up as though he were squinting down the barrel of a rifle, pulled an imaginary trigger and made a small explosive sound, ‘I’ve shot it.’ He lowered the imaginary rifle and grinned at me. He had two gold teeth. ‘I love wild animals,’ he said. His hands returned to the books which he handed back to me, and his face wore a look of benign satisfaction as he scanned the trophies around the walls.

Lieutenant Smit cleared his throat loudly and the Kommandant turned back to us. ‘Well it’s been nice to meet you, Peekay.’ He patted me briefly on the shoulder. ‘If you want anything you just come and see me, you hear?’

It was like the time I had to decide whether to offer to do the Judge’s arithmetic. Like then, I was doing pretty well. Why risk it? If I got on the wrong side of the lieutenant, I stood to lose everything, even the chance of becoming a boxer once I turned ten.

‘Please, Meneer Van Zyl. Could I learn to box here?’

The Kommandant had already risen from the sofa, preparing to dismiss us. ‘You want to box?’ he looked at me. ‘That’s the lieutenant’s department.’

‘I already told the boy he must wait until he is ten, then maybe,’ Smit said, trying not to sound terse.

‘When you’re seven it’s a long time to wait till you’re ten. That’s nearly half your life,’ the Kommandant said.

‘We train at five-thirty in the morning. Unless he lived here, how could he get here?’

‘I will get here, I promise. I will never miss, not even once. Please, Meneer Smit?’

Lieutenant Smit looked down at his boots for a long time. ‘We can try when your jaw is fixed. But I must have a note from your mother to say it’s okay to teach you.’ He looked up, appealing directly to the Kommandant. ‘He is too small, Kommandant.’

‘He will grow, Smit. As I recall, you and your younger brother started very young. Is he still fighting?’

‘Yes, sir, his next fight is against Oudendaal.’

‘That’s right, the Lowveld heavyweight title next Saturday, you must get me tickets, lieutenant.’

‘Yessir, your secretary has them, sir.’

Kommandant Van Zyl ushered us to the door. ‘All the best, Peekay.’

When we reached the bottom of the stairs Smit stopped, and getting down on his haunches he grabbed me by the front of the shirt. He had said nothing when we left the Kommandant’s office, but I was too good at listening to silence not to know I was in real trouble. I closed my eyes, waiting for the clout across the head that must inevitably come. I hadn’t been hit for a year except for a few hidings from my mother which you couldn’t really call hidings after what I’d been through. But the memory of a skull-stunning blow across the head was still very much a part of my experience. To my surprise the blow didn’t come and I opened my eyes again to look straight into Lieutenant Smit’s angry face. ‘I’m telling you flat, don’t do that to me again, you hear? When I tell you something I mean it, man!’ He shook me hard, expecting me to cry; instead I held his gaze. ‘Who are you looking at? You trying to be cheeky?’

‘Please, Meneer, I saw your brother fight in Gravelotte last year. That’s when I decided.’

A look of amazement crossed Smit’s face. ‘You were there? Wragdig? You saw that fight?’

I nodded. ‘He fought Hoppie Groenewald… Kid Louis,’ I corrected. Lieutenant Smit released his grip on the front of my shirt.

‘I was there also. Magtig! That was a fight and a half. You saw it? Honest?’ He rose from his haunches and suddenly his eyes grew wide. ‘The kid with Hoppie Groenewald! I remember now. We thought you was his kid.’

We had reached the office again. Klipkop was on the floor doing push-ups and broke his sequence and stood up rather foolishly as we entered. ‘You know the fight in Gravelotte my brother had against Groenewald the welterweight last year?’ Klipkop nodded. ‘Peekay saw that fight, he is a personal friend of Groenewald.’

The warder laughed. ‘I lost a fiver on that fight. Who would have expected a welter to beat a light-heavy?’

‘I’m telling you, Groenewald isn’t just an ordinary welter. You mark my words, if he comes out of this war he’s going to be South African champ, you can put money on it,’ Smit said. ‘He’d take you with one arm behind his back, man.’

Klipkop grinned, ‘That’ll be the frosty Friday. No way, man! I’m going to do the same to your brother on Saturday as he did.’

‘Don’t be so blêrrie sure of yourself, Oudendaal. Jackhammer Smit is no pushover, this time he’ll be fit. Don’t count your blêrrie chickens before they hatch!’

Smit turned to me suddenly. ‘Okay, I changed my mind, you on the squad. But no fighting for two years, you hear? Just training and learning your punches and technique, you understand me?’

I nodded, overjoyed. My eyes brimmed with tears. I had taken the first step to becoming the welterweight champion of the world.

‘Klipkop, take Peekay to see the professor. I’ll make a phone call and you can meet him in the warders’ mess.’ He turned to me. ‘Come back when you’re finished and I’ll have your permanent pass ready for you.’

We left the administration block and passed through another building. ‘This is the gymnasium for the prison officers,’ Klipkop said. We walked over to the punching bag and the boxing ring set up at one end of the large room. Large leather balls lay on the floor and Klipkop bent down and scooped one up in his hand. ‘Here, Peekay, hold on to this.’ I put both my hands out and he flipped the ball lightly into them and suddenly I was sitting on the floor with Klipkop laughing over me. ‘It’s a medicine ball and it weighs fifteen pounds. When you can throw one of these over my head you’ll be strong enough to begin to box.’ I got up, feeling very foolish, then I bent down and tried to pick the large brown leather ball up. Using all my strength I managed to lift it but was happy to let it drop again. ‘Not bad, Peekay,’ Klipkop said with a grin. We were standing next to the ring and I liked the smell of the canvas and the sweat. I wondered how I could possibly wait two years before I climbed into the ring to face a real opponent.

We left the gymnasium and crossed the huge indoor courtyard, an area half the size of a football field which I had seen from the top of the hill in my first morning in Barberton. The prison blocks rose up on every side of the square where two old lags were raking its neat gravel surface so all the tiny rake lines ran diagonally across the quad. ‘It’s Friday, diagonal lines. I like Monday best when they make a big star in the middle,’ Klipkop said. I wasn’t sure what he meant but I was soon to learn that each day had a different rake pattern. It was how the prisoners knew what day of the week it was.

‘Where are all the prisoners, Klipkop?’ I asked. The two old lags doing the raking were the only humans I had seen since leaving the administration building.

‘Ag man, they’re all out in work gangs. Most work on farms, some at the quarries and some at the saw mills at Francinos Rust. The people who hire them must call for their gangs at four o’clock in the morning and they got to be back here by six o’clock at night. What you see around here in the day time is just old lags, too old to work hard like that black bastard who makes our tea. Also the murderers, they not allowed to come out of their cells, even to eat. But we don’t keep them long, man. It’s not good to have murderers around, the other Kaffir prisoners get very restless.’ He grinned, ‘The warders don’t like them around also, so we hang them jolly quick smart, I’m telling you.’

‘What about the white prisoners, do they also work in the gangs?’

Klipkop looked surprised. ‘No blêrrie fear! Gangs is not a white man’s work. Mostly white men are only here in transit to Pretoria. They don’t have to work so hard, because they are not here for long. If they real hard cases, like that guy who murdered his wife and three children in Noordkaap, we just locked him up till the district judge sentenced him, then we put him on the train to Pretoria. If you lucky you get sent along as a guard, you get a day off in Pretoria and ten and sixpence expenses.’

We had crossed the gravel quad and passed through a narrow archway which led to the back of the prison. A long corrugated-iron shed stretched from the main building and smoke rose from three chimneys along its length. ‘Kitchens. The warders’ mess is on the other side,’ Klipkop said.

Doc was overjoyed to see me and he hugged me and patted me on the head and his sharp blue eyes went watery. ‘Now I see you I can sleep again. Let me see your jaw? Tut-tut-tut, I wish only I could have taken the kick, then you would be okay. Yes, I think so? Peekay, why are the peace lovers always the first to suffer in the war? Can you talk?’ I had never seen him so worked up and his words tumbled out so that I had no chance of getting a word in.

‘My jaw is not so bad. They are going to take the wire out in six weeks, maybe even four, but I have learned to talk with my mouth shut.’

Doc laughed. ‘You and I, Peekay, even when they cement our mouths, we find a way to talk.’ He was still patting me on the head as though to reassure himself that it was really me.

I handed him the books from Mrs Boxall and he held them briefly before putting them on the table beside him. ‘She is a goot woman, not so stupid either. You and she, Peekay, eleven out of ten for brains. Absolute. Also Mr Andrews. I do not think they would listen to a poor old German professor of music on his own. German measles was in the air and only you and Mrs Boxall don’t catch a big dose, ja?’ He chuckled at his sad little joke.

‘I can come and visit you as much as I like,’ I said happily.

Doc looked bemused. ‘Without the hills it will not be the same, what can I teach you here, my friend?’

‘Lots of things, like out of books and things. And I could go into the mountains and find things and bring them here and then we could talk about them.’

Doc gave me one of his proper grins. ‘You are right, Peekay. A man is only free when he is free in his heart. We will be friends like always. Absoloodle. But also one more thing, they are going to let me have the Steinway here. You can continue your lessons. You must tell your mother this, I think she will be happy. On Monday they are letting me come with them to get it. If they move it wrong it can be damaged. I will see my cactus garden one last time. Maybe also you can be there, Peekay?’

Dr Simpson had said that another week’s recuperation was in order. My granpa had given me a big wink and said, ‘Who are we to argue?’

‘I’ll be waiting for you, I’ve already planted the Senecio serpens, just like you said, facing east.’

Doc looked pleased, but then a worried expression crossed his face. ‘Peekay, on Monday is happening a stupid thing. It is not my decision, but please you must trust me, that is why I want you to be there. I think Kommandant Van Zyl wants to be a schmarty pantz with some people in this town. I am too old for such silly games, you will help me, please?’

‘Kommandant Van Zyl said I was to tell Mrs Boxall everyone has to be in the market square at one o’clock, but he didn’t say what it was all about.’

Just then Klipkop emerged from the door leading to the kitchen carrying a small plate of roast potatoes. ‘Here, have some,’ he said offering me the plate. I pointed to my wired mouth and he laughed, ‘Sorry, man, I clean forgot.’ He offered the plate to Doc who shook his head.

‘Monday, Peekay. Be so kind as to be at the cactus garden at twelve o’clock, then I will explain. Also, tomorrow maybe find for me Beethoven Symphony Number Five, you will see on the cover is printed my name and Berlin 1925. Inside I have marked the score. That is the one I want.’ I knew where to look, for the music Doc played only to himself was kept under the seat of his own piano stool. I found it strange that he would ask me to find it. After all he knew perfectly well where it was. ‘Peekay, put what’s above the score in my water flask, the key for the piano stool lid you will find under the pot on the stoep where grows the Aloe saponarie.’ He said all this in a perfectly straight voice in English. Klipkop appeared either not to understand or to be disinterested. I looked quizzically at Doc but he put his forefinger to his lips and indicated the warder with his eyes.

A hooter sounded somewhere in the prison. ‘Lunchtime, Peekay, we must get back to the lieutenant and the professor must go to lunch.’ Klipkop pushed the last potato into his mouth. ‘You can stay if you want and have lunch with the prison warders.’

‘I have to get home for lunch, thank you, Mr Oudendaal. What is the time, please?’

‘That was the twelve o’clock hooter. Just call me Klipkop, okay?’ I nodded, I was becoming accustomed to calling adults by their Christian names. I would have to run all the way home as my mother would expect me back from the library by now. I wasn’t at all sure how she would take the news of my potential comings and goings to the Barberton prison, nor how I would break the news to her. This more immediate preoccupation made me forget Doc’s curious instructions.

After Sunday school the next day I went to the cactus garden. Dum and Dee had the afternoon off on Sundays and had excitedly agreed to come with me to clean things up a bit for Doc’s return the following day. They took brooms and feather dusters and other cleaning things in two galvanised iron buckets which they carried on their heads, chatting away happily about how they would clean my friend’s house like it had never been cleaned before. There wasn’t much they could do on their half-day off as they hadn’t yet learned to speak Swazi. While I didn’t think of it at the time, they must have felt isolated from their own kind. On the farm they had been at the centre of things. Quite important really, by comparison with the farm workers, certainly a notch up the social ladder. Here they were two lonely little girls who, outside our home, could make no contact and who knew no other people. We were their family and they were as cloistered as nuns in a convent.

When we arrived at the cactus garden they set to, delighted that they owned every inch of the task without supervision from anyone. I went straight to the large terracotta pot on the stoep of Doc’s cottage where Aloe saponarie, also known as Soap Aloe, was growing. It has spots of lighter green and rust on its thick leaves.

It was with some difficulty that I pushed the large terracotta pot aside to reveal the key to Doc’s piano stool. I hurried to the stool and opened it. The recess was almost a foot deep and it was packed with sheets of music and handwritten music manuscript. There was also a bunch of programmes tied with tape, though at the time I didn’t know what they were. The top one had Doc’s name on it and the rest was written in German. I dug down quite deeply into the manuscripts and sheet music without finding Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Then, lifting another batch of paper, I revealed a bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch. I lifted the bottle and directly under it was the piece of music for which Doc had asked.

On Friday afternoon after lunch I had gone to see Mrs Boxall in the library to give her the Kommandant’s message.

‘Whatever do you think they’re up to, Peekay?’ she had said, a worried look on her face. ‘Do you think it has anything to do with the professor?’

‘I don’t think so. At twelve o’clock they are going to fetch the Steinway and take it to the prison. Doc asked me to be there to help him.’

‘My God!’ He’s going to give a concert! The professor is going to give a concert in the market square. How thrilling, how perfectly thrilling!’ I had never seen her so excited.

It was suddenly also clear to me. ‘I don’t think he’s very happy about it. He said Mr Van Zyl was trying to be a smarty pants with the people of the town. That he would need my help.’

Mrs Boxall, in her excitement, appeared not to have heard me. ‘I once checked up on our professor, he turned out to be terribly famous.’ Her eyes shone. ‘There’s something dark and very mysterious about it all, if you ask me. Why would a famous European pianist give it all up and bury himself in a tiny dorp in Africa where he lives on the smell of an oil rag giving lessons to little girls?’

‘I think he just likes collecting things like cactus and aloes and climbing in the mountains,’ I said, though she didn’t appear to be listening. She had her elbow on the desk, chin cupped in her hand, and was obviously deep in thought.

‘Peekay, did he ask you to do anything? I mean when he said he needed your help?’

‘He asked me to get out Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with his name on it and Berlin on the cover.’

‘Hip hip hooray! Jolly good show! Beethoven, eh? What a treat we’re in for. I heard the Fifth for the first time when I was a gal and we’d travelled up to London to hear the brilliant young Artur Rubinstein play at the Albert Hall.’ Mrs Boxall clasped her hands and looked up at the ceiling fan turning fitfully above her head. ‘Oh bliss! Oh blissful bliss!’

‘He also said I must put what is above the sheet music into his water flask.’

‘Whatever can he mean?’ she said absently. It was obvious her mind was on Doc’s concert in the market square and her duty as the town’s cultural representative was clear. This was no time to attempt to solve one of Doc’s conundrums. ‘Peekay, you’ll have to excuse me, my dear. I think we’re going to have to close early today. I have such a lot of phoning to do. One o’clock, are you sure that’s the time Mr Van Zyl said?’ I nodded and prepared to leave. ‘You will thank your dear mother for my lovely roses. I shall write her a nice note next week.’ She had already started her telephoning and as I went out of the door of the library I heard her say, ‘Barbara, you’ll never guess!’

Now I stood holding Doc’s music, staring down at the bottle of Johnnie Walker. Doc only ever drank in his room, why would he keep a bottle in his piano stool? If Klipkop hadn’t walked in at the moment he was about to tell me, everything would have been clear. I reached into my pocket for Doc’s note and read it again, maybe there was a clue I’d missed. I kept coming back to the last words… and whisky is getting easier not to have. Had I been older it wouldn’t have been a puzzle at all, but seven-year-olds are not very good at puzzles and usually know nothing about the drinking habits of grown-ups.

I wasn’t at all sure I was doing the right thing but the bottle was directly above the musical score Doc wanted and it was the only item in the piano stool which you could pour into a water flask. I was more than a little conscious that when I had last interfered with Doc’s whisky, the repercussions had been enormous. I took the water flask and the bottle of Johnnie Walker into the cactus garden where I dug a hole in the ground and planted the flask with its neck protruding. I must say it was a good plan and I spilled hardly any. After that I planted the bottle upside down. It was to be the last Johnnie Walker bottle planted in Doc’s cactus garden.

I returned the flask to the piano stool, placing Doc’s musical score over it. Then I locked the seat and put the key in my pocket.

I was waiting at Doc’s cottage by nine a.m. on Monday morning. Dee and Dum had cleaned everything and the place was spotless. The Steinway shone like a mirror, from a fresh coat of beeswax. The girls had spent an hour cleaning the whisky from the keys. Seated on the two piano stools, they had giggled fit to burst at the cacophony they made. I don’t believe they’d ever had a more enjoyable afternoon. They continued to clean Doc’s cottage every Sunday afternoon for the next four years, until I’m sure they believed it was their sabbatical home.

I passed the time waiting for Doc separating succulents and generally clearing weeds from a small part of the garden. After a couple of hours I heard the low whine of a truck and the less agonised sound of a light van as they made their way up the steep road to the cottage.

The black prison flat-top was a Diamond T. The van, coming along behind it, waited a little way down the road while the truck turned to face downhill again. On the back were six black prisoners and two warders carrying rifles. The driver and third warder sat in front. I recognised one of the warders as the young one who had let me into the prison on the previous Friday and I said hello. He jumped down from the back of the truck and stuck his hand out. ‘Gert Marais, hoe gaan dit?’ I shook his hand and replied that I was well and, in the Afrikaans manner, enquired formally about his health. Just then the van drew up and I could see that Klipkop was driving and Lieutenant Smit was beside him. They stopped in front of the lorry and Klipkop jumped out. Walking to the rear of the van he unlocked it. To my surprise Doc stepped out. He was dressed in a clean white shirt, blue tie and his white linen suit. The place where his knee had torn through the trouser leg when the sergeant’s kick brought him to the ground had been mended, the suit had been washed and pressed and his boots shone. I had never seen him looking so posh. Lieutenant Smit and Klipkop both greeted me like an old friend.

I could see Doc was agitated and when Klipkop and Lieutenant Smit moved towards the house he turned to me urgently. ‘We must talk, Peekay, today is a very difficult thing for me to do.’ We followed the two warders into the cottage and Doc pointed to the Steinway and the stool. He was too preoccupied to notice the clean up and while I felt a little disappointed I said nothing.

Cleanliness wasn’t something I regarded too highly myself. Two of the other warders came in, leaving Gert and one other warder to mind the prisoners. Together with Doc they discussed how the Steinway might be safely moved.

Klipkop went to call the prisoners in and Doc turned to Lieutenant Smit and asked if he could go and look at his garden, as he couldn’t bear to see the piano being moved. Smit laughed and added that it was necessary to have a warder along. ‘I know Gert Marais. Can he come please?’ I asked. Lieutenant Smit shrugged his shoulders and signalled for Gert to come with us.

‘I can’t have you two escaping into the hills, now can I?’ he said jokingly. But I was to learn that Lieutenant Smit was a careful man and liked to play things by the book. Gert couldn’t speak English which meant Doc and I could talk without the danger of being overheard.

We walked in the garden, following the Johnnie Walker bottles as they meandered through the tall cactus and aloe. For a long time Doc said nothing, stopping to look at plants and bending down to examine succulents which grew close to the ground. It was as though he was trying to memorise the garden, to etch it on a plate in his mind so the memory of it would sustain him in his prison cell. At last we stopped and sat on a natural outcrop of red rock with our backs to the town below and looking up into the hills. Gert stood some little way away chewing a piece of grass, his rifle slung carelessly over his shoulder. He seemed happy to be away from his superiors.

Finally Doc started to talk. ‘Peekay, these domkopfs want I should do a recital in the town today. I have not played a concert since sixteen years, now I must play again. Peekay, I cannot do this, but I must.’

I looked up at Doc and I could see that he was terribly distressed. ‘You don’t have to, Doc. They can’t force you!’ I said defiantly but without too much conviction. My short experience with authority of any kind had shown me that they always won, they could always force you.

Doc turned to look at me. ‘Peekay, I love you more than my life. If I don’t play today they will not let you come to see me.’ I could feel the despair in his voice as he continued softly, ‘I do not think I could bear that.’ I hugged him and he patted my head and we sat there and looked at the hills dotted with the aloes in bloom and at the blue and purple mountains beyond them. At last he spoke again. ‘It was in Berlin in 1925. I had been ill for some months and I was coming back to the concert circuit with a concert at the Berlin Opera House. I had chosen to play –’ he turned to me – ‘the score you found in my piano stool. Beethoven’s Symphony Number Five is great music but it is kind to a good musician, the great master was a piano player himself and it is not full of clever tricks or passages which try to be schmarty pantz with the piano player. That night I played the great master goot, better than ever until the third movement. Suddenly, who knows from where it comes, comes panic. In my fingers comes panic, in my head comes panic and in my heart comes panic. Thirty years of discipline were not enough. The panic swallowed me and I could not play this music I have played maybe a thousand times when I practise and forty times in concert. Nothing. It was all gone. Just the coughing in the crowd, then the murmuring, then the booing, then the concert master leading me from the stage.’ Doc sat, his head bowed, his hands loosely on his knees. ‘I have never played in front of an audience again, not since this time in Berlin. Every night for sixteen years I have played the music, the same music and always in the third movement it is the same, the music in my fingers and my head and my heart will not proceed. It is then the wolves howl in my head and only whisky will make them quiet again. Today, in one hour, I must play that music again. I must face the audience or, my friend, I lose you.’

I cannot pretend to have understood the depth of Doc’s personal dilemma. I was too young, too inexperienced to understand his pain and humiliation. But I knew he was hurting inside and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. ‘I will be there with you, Doc. I will turn the pages for you.’

Doc took out his bandanna and blew his nose. ‘You are goot friend, Peekay.’ He gave one of his old chuckles and rubbed a hand through my hair and then examined one of my hands. My kneecaps and hands were dirty from weeding between the cactus. ‘Better wash in the tank if you are going to be my partner, we must look our best. Ja, this is true, the audience has been waiting sixteen years.’ He rose and took me by the hand. ‘Come, Peekay, we go now.’

On the journey into town Doc and I sat in the front of the van with Lieutenant Smit. Klipkop drove the truck while Gert sat in the back of the van. The Steinway had been loaded onto the flat-top and roped. Even so, five prisoners were arranged around it to hold it firmly in place on pain of death, while one sat with Doc’s piano stool between his legs.

About half a mile from the market square the Diamond T stopped and the two warders herded the six blacks off the truck. One of them climbed back on while the other started to march the prisoners out of town towards the prison. We entered the top of Crown Street about three hundred yards from the market square. The main street was deserted, as quiet as a Sunday afternoon. ‘Jesus Christ, I hope this doesn’t backfire on the Kommandant,’ Lieutenant Smit said, almost as though speaking to himself. We had been travelling behind the truck and now we moved ahead of it. I noticed all the shops were closed, even Goodhead’s Bottle Store and the Savoy Café which never closed for lunch. We turned the corner into the square and my mouth dropped open.

The market square was packed with hundreds of people who had started to cheer as they saw us. A warder signalled us to a space which had been kept clear under a large flamboyant tree. Lieutenant Smit told Gert to stay with the van but not to show his rifle. Then he jumped out, and walking in front of the Diamond T he guided it into a roped-off section in the centre of the square.

Several warders scrambled up a stepladder onto the flat-top and untied the ropes securing the Steinway. One placed Doc’s piano stool in place while another, an electrician from the prison, rigged up a microphone.

The moment we saw the crowd, Doc began to shake. I was half sitting on his knee and I could feel him quivering. ‘Peekay, did you do what I said about the water flask?’ he asked in a tight voice.

‘It is in the piano stool, Doc.’

‘Peekay, you must take it and when I ask, you must hand it to me, you understand?’ I nodded.

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.

‘Dames en Here, ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. But from then on he spoke in English. ‘As you all know from reading the newspaper, there has been a very big fuss made about one of our most distinguished citizens, Professor Karl Von Vollensteen, a professor of music from across the seas. The good professor, who has lived in this town for fifteen years and has taught many of your young daughters to play the peeano, was born in Germany. It is for this alone that he is being put under my custody.’ Several pockets of people in the crowd had started to boo and someone shouted, ‘Once a Jerry, always a Jerry!’ which brought about a little spasmodic laughter and clapping. The Kommandant held up his hand. ‘I am a Boer, not a Britisher. We Boers know what it is like to be robbed of our rights!’

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 blêrrie 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.