The day lasts another thousand hours. I don’t know how I got home. I have a star on my forehead and a drawing in my hand.
Oh, that’s pretty, says my mother. What is it?
It’s a ship, I say.
I only see blue, says my mother.
It sank, I say.
My mother puts down the drawing.
How was Day One? she asks.
What is Day One? I ask.
Your first day at school! Tomorrow is Day Two!
Do I have to go again?
My mother laughs.
Oh, she says, You’re such a comic!
The World Screen Headquarters
My first school case was a little rectangular brown chest, inside was a lunchbox, a bottle for cooldrink, a pencil case with coloured pencils and now and then examples of the monstrous art produced by children in Sub A. There was also a thin book with light-blue lines. In this little book Miss Van Wyk pasted notices or wrote short messages to parents. One day after school when my mother and I were in the lounge, I took the book from my school case and gave it to her. Inside was a message: if any new pupils were interested in taking piano lessons, parents should please contact the school office.
Did I read it myself, or did my mother? I have no idea, but let me first tell you about the lounge: my school years took place in the period when this planet’s interior decorating reached a low point, when brown and old gold were regarded as beautiful, when thick, sand-coloured carpets and thick brown pottery plates were a middle-class household’s pride and joy. This plague hit our homes within two years of the piano message appearing in my school case, but on that day we were still safe, the windows were hung with long white curtains on which a forest of thin black bamboo had been painted, quick brushstrokes like Japanese calligraphy. The furniture had dark-grey seats with light-grey backs, upholstered in a woven fabric with a knobbly texture, underneath were skinny, round, splayed feet made of a light wood. Our lounge looked like a room in which James Bond could listen to a long-playing record and girls with long necks would hold wine glasses, it was sunny, modern and dramatic and I spent as much time there as possible. With our move to the next house this furniture and these curtains vanished; it took me forty years to track down bamboo-patterned fabric again. (Which is now often used as a tablecloth when I entertain with my pitch-black dinner service.)
No discussion of piano lessons was necessary: even when I was little I would swallow hard if I found myself near a thing with keys. In every church, church hall, school hall, dining hall, living room, any place my parents’ religion or social circles took us, there would be a musical instrument, battered, out of tune, shabby or beloved. Even the horrible electric home organs that were high fashion in those years tempted me as though they were edible. In Wellington I often went along when Grandfather dropped in on Mr Byleveld, there in the centre of town was the workshop where pianos were rebuilt or repaired, in rows and rows they stood like guards before the vault of melodies; already I’d decided that heaven would one day be filled with pianos, not the harps my mother had read to me about.
An hour after the message had been delivered, my mother crossed the street: three houses down was The World Screen Headquarters. Here lived Mrs Joubert. She was the town organist, the creator of that vast sound that Sunday after Sunday made my young soul jump for joy, higher and further than any sermon could. In her gloomy dining room an upright piano stood against the wall, crowded with decorative cloths, family members in small frames, glass bowls, porcelain figurines and a few fans from faraway countries. To the left of the piano was a sliding door to the lounge and still further left the arch that led to the big kitchen. The whole house was full of odds and ends, mementos, gifts, cookbooks, reading books, phone books, writing pads, packets of envelopes, pen holders, little bowls with paper clips, postcards, serving platters, glass jars, hard biscuits, fruit, paintings, lamps, crochet work and lace curtains. And screens. Except for the screen door on Uncle Attie and Aunt Miems’s back porch, this place surely housed every other screen on earth – there was a screen in front of every window and a screen in front of every door. Screens that could push up, shift, slide out, screens that couldn’t move, rolled-up screens that lay underneath the kitchen table and waited for an opening. Here something had to be kept in or out.
Like Mrs Joubert, her piano and all her possessions, The World Screen Headquarters didn’t attract me or repel me, it didn’t welcome me or make me want to flee, it was darker than day and lighter than night, and for some reason I spent a lot of time here, was given food, played outside and explored everything. (Was I by myself? If so, why? Or did my mother visit here that often?) Even today I can close my eyes and remember the whole back garden. The trees – fig trees, lemon trees, mulberry trees, trees without fruit, trees with thin creepers hanging down, trees from which birdcages swung with open doors, with wild branches like creatures dancing too close to one another with arms held high – grew all the way up to the outbuilding with the laundry room, storeroom and garage. Only the garage door didn’t have a screen. Rows of neatly laid bricks formed a track to the wide gate. And there was a vine-covered trellis, abundant with grapes that never ripened, beneath which it was always cool and dark, but always also beautiful. Green curls draped themselves lazily over the thin tarred poles.
Here my mother mentioned to Mrs Joubert that we didn’t have a piano, but that I was definitely going to take music lessons and that I would have to practise somewhere. Mrs Joubert explained that she had a bit of a lie-down in the back room every afternoon at three on the dot, and that I was welcome to use her piano, it wouldn’t disturb her: a dining-room door, a hallway door and a bedroom door lay between her sleep and my talent.
I practised with stupid fingers, three afternoons a week, from three o’clock to four o’clock. Curious and driven, I discovered and memorised my simple phrases, alone in the dusk, thankful for the piano and the biscuits that now and then were left for me, but each time, as in most other places I would visit later in life, completely uncomfortable. Both productive and ill at ease. DIE ONGEMAKLIKE LEWE. THE UNCOMFORTABLE LIFE. The book and song that I always wanted to write, but never would, got its name here.
Then, on a perfectly normal day, I walk into our house, I may have been at school or with The Stoepsusters or with people with food, but I have been away for a few hours. As usual I run to the kitchen. My mother is sitting at the table, my brother is in his high chair. My father stands at the sink. They look different.
What now? I say.
Nothing, says my father.
The newspaper is on the couch, go get it quickly, I want to show you something, my mother says.
I turn around. Something is wrong. I walk to the lounge and look at the couch.
Where is the newspaper? I yell.
Behind you! my father yells.
I turn around. Against the wall is a piano. Dead quiet, bolt upright, brand new, made of matt wood in the latest fashion, a gallant stool with four curly feet, all here in James Bond’s room. I lift the lid and stroke the keys. I don’t say thank you, I don’t play a note, I don’t sit on the stool. I stare. My family stand in the door.
Whose is it? I ask, my voice hoarse.
Yours, you silly child, says my mother.
From Byleveld’s store, says my father.
In no other place where we would live as a family would I ever be as happy as in that house with the room with the piano and the bamboo and the sun and the grey jazz furniture. I cannot remember Mrs Joubert’s face any more, but every time I think back to The World Screen Headquarters there is another window without a screen, another door standing wide open, even more light. Maybe there never was a single screen, who knows?
It might be different now, but in those days a child definitely did not know what his parents’ income was, how much they had to sacrifice for a big moment. And even today a child seldom knows when headquarters appear nearby, when the opportunity to