Читать книгу Pieter-Dirk Uys: The Echo of a Noise - Pieter-Dirk Uys - Страница 11

It crackled and hissed, even before the child’s high voice scooped a top C. It was called a long-playing record. Not the small seven single or 45 rpm extended play, but an LP that could cover more than an hour of magic. And that boy soprano was not from one of the Vienna Boys in their famous choir. It was me. The record sleeve lay on the table in front of us, with Pietertjie Uys’s angelic smile glowing at the world.

Pa, Ma, Tessa and I sat staring at the sound of the record spinning somewhere inside the big shiny box of the gramophone, which also hid the guts of a radio and storage space for Pa’s precious, fragile records, from eclectic classical choices to deep opera and the obligatory religious oratorios. Now it would also keep the record of Hannes Uys’s children’s choir.

May 1949: My first magic box – our big gramophone – which I was allowed to use for my personal 78 rpm record – Peter and the Wolf. The two spoons as accompaniment were optional.

Who could have guessed that in our lifetime the sacred LP would become a museum piece, an antique, a vinyl to treasure because grams wouldn’t ever come back in the digital age? Certainly no one back then in 1959 at 10 Homestead Way, Pinelands, where the Uyses lived.

We all hopefully have that special place where we grew up safely, where our dreams became ambitions and where many lessons were learnt, often the hard way. A few people might have had a Downton Abbey; many had a White House. We were in ‘Sonskyn’, a thatched-roof, double-storey cottage like those often seen in many British films. This was home for me, Pa, Ma, Tessa and our cat Boeboe, with Sannie in her outside room.

Pa bought the house in 1949 with money he borrowed from a wealthy relative. Every month he had to pay off the loan, which came with a cruel interest rate. The relative was arguably one of the wealthiest members of the Afrikaner Broederbond. Maybe subconsciously that’s when I started loathing everything the man stood for. I recall those dreaded times we as a family were obliged to go to the mansion in Cape Town for lunch in our best and behave gratefully and humbly towards the cousin and his third wife, while Pa was expected to grovel with gratitude. It was such a joy when I could take over all the debts and costs of Sonskyn. But hang on, there are still many flooded rivers to cross before we get there.

1958: Pa’s first LP – Die Heer is my Herder with the Maria Callas of the choir on the cover!

Dis Kersfees came out in 1960 and celebrated an Afrikaans Christmas in many tongues.

I don’t remember if I was nervous listening to my voice on track after track on Pa’s children’s choir LP: Hannes Uys se Kindersang-kring. It was the second record we’d made. The first one had me on the cover, smiling and looking angelic, something Pietertjie Uys did easily and too often. This new cover for Dis Kersfees showed the entire choir in the church gallery, next to the organ with its silver pipes in the background, like tall, leafless cypress trees in a deserted graveyard. Pa is posed at the organ pretending to play. We kids are all frozen for the snap, singing with mouths open like hungry sparrows because we knew God was watching. Jesus was tapping his foot. The Devil wouldn’t dare show his face.

November 1959: Rehearsing round Pa’s piano in our sitting room. Right in front next to Tessa is a young Laurika Rauch.

19 August 1961: The programme for the concert in Bellville’s NG Kerk hall.

Pa looked pleased as he listened to the results of his hard work, his discipline and his demand for perfection. Ma wore her pinned-on smile, slightly skew on one side, and I knew she wasn’t that thrilled. There were many mistakes in Pa’s organ accompaniment and often we kids hit a false note. But this was the first Afrikaans children’s choir attempting spiritual songs from Bohemia, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and England, now translated into Afrikaans by Hannes Uys. Gosh! Accompanied by Hannes Uys. And all conducted by none other than Hannes Uys. Even Mozart, and Latin, and proper German. Gosh! Who would have thought it?

September 1959: Another concert, with added orchestral instruments, for the Epworth Music Society.

Pa’s choir of ‘big people’ at the NG Kerk in Parow.

Pa’s stories fed my imagination and I saw them in blazing colour, even though most films I saw as a child were in black and white. Detailed tales of how he and his two sisters Hannie and Anna would club together their pocket money and treat their stern mother, who loudly disapproved of the bioscope – ‘die voorportaal van die hel’ – so that they could go to see an afternoon film at the local cinema in Paarl. Ouma Uys, hoping that no one saw her enter the place, visibly bristled and sighed deeply throughout the action of a Western, but the serial that preceded it was another story. She was hooked. So she sent the children back every week with firm instructions to find out how that ungodly weekly serial was developing. Clever kids; clever mum.

Pa’s 1920s jazz combo.

Pa played jazz easily on the piano. He had his own jazz band while studying at the University of Cape Town. Did he finish his degree? We never found out. He travelled by ship to England in the early 1930s and, as he told it many times, was offered a film contract by none other than Ivor Novello. Or was it Noël Coward? Maybe both. What did it matter?

The tragedy was that his mother wouldn’t hear of it and ordered him back home, so allowing him to constantly remind me before an opening night that he had sacrificed his film and acting career to start a family. His flair for storytelling and keeping those stories fresh showed what a good actor he would have been.

The Uys family of Paarl in 1912: Tielman Marais Uys and Gertie Malan Uys with Johanna (Hannie) leaning against her father, little Anna in the chair, and son Hannes on the rocking horse.

Our family still has timeshare in Paarl. It’s in the graveyard next to the Berg River. Most of the family is already there. A headstone for Hannes Uys and Helga Bassel. Pa’s parents Tielman and Gertie. His sister Anna. Me and Tessa there one day too? Who knows.

Pa’s father was an engineer in Paarl during the First World War, probably one of the first of his kind, a Steve Jobs of the Boland. He had a motorbike and would put his little son on the back seat and they would drive off on the gravel roads to the various farms in the district so that Tielman Uys could fix the dorsmasjiene.

The Uys family also owned what Pa proudly called the first motor car in Paarl, a Maxwell. They lived next to the Toringkerk, the Dutch Reformed Church where Pa started playing the organ at the age of twelve. He soon became the official organist, but his teenage legs couldn’t reach the pedals. So his youngest sister, Anna, would be down there pressing the correct ones at the right time with both hands.

These stories were told over and over again, each recital including a diversion of ever greater drama and detail. One had all three of them playing in the dry riverbed down the road when they were nearly killed. The rest of the story was always an unexpected variation on the theme – a flash flood would swoop down like a tsunami, making a noise like thunder, or sometimes it was like an exploding Vesuvius, or the end of the world. They barely escaped with their lives. We’d ask Pa to tell that story to our friends and he would embroider a little bit each time. I think I got that from him, and I’m glad. Embroidery in storytelling can lead to a War and Peace, or even the legacy of William Shakespeare.

From an early age I was aware of Uncle Jack. Pa would often mention his best friend who had shared a flat with him. Pa said it was the happiest time of his life. They did such exciting things together, travelling and laughing and being happy. Together. Ma would just knit and maintain an interested smile, as she did whenever the stories of Uncle Jack came up. Pa’s memory of their friendship and how wonderful it was, and how devastating it was when his best friend died suddenly, made Uncle Jack the fifth person in our family. Discussion never went further than that.

Clever old Pa. Passionate about teaching me to play the piano but I just didn’t get up to scratch. He gave up eventually, but always said, ‘You’ll be sorry one day.’ I am.

Hannie, Anna and Jack Louw – and a dog.

Now I see the long-forgotten pictures in his album of a young Hannes together with an older Jack and it all makes sense to me. Could we ever have spoken about that part of his life without pretence? Disguising without even embroidering? A love that was not allowed to make a noise, and so there were few echoes.

I look back now with deep admiration for the intense commitment Pa put into his choirs for children and adults, arranging music never before heard in the dour Dutch Reformed Church, where enjoying music was never a priority. Hannes Uys would bless the believers with beautifully layered choral works in words they could understand, celebrating the Afrikaner God and his heavenly white legacy. Only much later did I realise that Pa had taken music from forbidden Catholic composers and adapted it, translating the propaganda of the Roomse Gevaar into gentle Afrikaans lullabies of faith. If only they had known it was the Antichrist’s music that was being enjoyed in this stern Calvinist environment. It helped having the songs on a record so that parents could show off their talented children and Pa could brag. Hannes Uys was very good at reminding everyone about the successes in his life. Ma just smiled that skew smile.

1918: The Bassel children in Charlottenburg, Berlin: Maria, Helga and Gerhard.

Ma’s father, Bertolt Bassel.

The greatest denials in my history are the truths about my mother. I say truths because there were many versions to each story. I will never find out which one is the closest to reality. Helga Bassel’s life remains shrouded in mystery. I have managed to piece together bits of the puzzle, but have only my imagination to fill in the blank spaces. Her youth in Germany is anchored for us around the death of her older sister, Maria, at twenty. From flu? Measles? Meningitis was a word used. Where is she buried? I found Marlene Dietrich’s grave in Berlin, but didn’t know where to start to look for my Tante Maria Bassel.

Ma falling in the snow of Germany.

Ma with her fiancé Dr Franz Michels.

There were few hints of their history from Oma Bassel, besides the smell, the magic, the excitement of her home-cooked food, from Wienerschnitzel to Apfelstrudel, and the folk songs she taught us. She would sit with Ma in front of our fireplace at 10 Homestead Way, knitting; once it was a yellow pullover for my birthday. Then Oma Bassel would softly start a poem by Rilke. A few words. Then a pause. Neither looked up from their knitting. Then she would repeat the words and Ma would join her, still not looking at one another, but breathing the sacred German words that anchored their minds back to a place so far away, Berlin, a home that had vanished in flames and fear in their lifetime. I started my teenage years hoping to share that love of poetry with them, but it was brutally suffocated in school and later at university.

1952: The music room at home: Helga Bassel and Hannes Uys make music. By then Pietertjie (7) and Tessatjie (4) were upstairs in their rooms blissfully asleep, lulled into dreamland by their guardian angels.

Helga Bassel was by far a better pianist than Hannes Uys, patiently sharing her musicianship with her temperamental husband and encouraging him to bravely attempt two-piano concertos that he would practise in a sweat of nervous energy, often muttering words that, if used by us, would end in a taai klap.

One Sunday evening, we clustered around the gramophone. Our record was to be featured on SABC radio. Again we sat: me, Ma, Pa and Tessa – but added to the circle were the two grannies, Oma Bassel and Ouma Uys.

The focus of all attention was on the gramophone’s square speaker inset, covered by maroon embroidered cloth, behind which the heavenly sounds resided. We and the world waited for the SABC chimes of eight to end. Sannie had washed up the dinner plates and was at the open door of her kitchen, wiping her hands with a cloth and also waiting to enjoy Master’s choir music. Maybe that’s the way to start this great trek. With music. Pa’s music. Me singing Pa’s music. Me, thirteen years old with a voice that still hadn’t broken, with a world outside that was still flat, in a country fifty shades of monochrome, with fear as the accepted perfume of daily life.

The announcer’s voice was calming and familiar, a nice friendly oom who assured us that the Afrikaans service of the SABC would spread comfort and joy: En nou luister ons na die oulike stemmetjie van Pietertjie Uys. Hy is van Pinelands in Kaapstad en word hier op die klavier begelei deur sy vader, Hannes Uys. Pietertjie Uys sing nou ‘Maria se Wiegelied’ deur Max Reger.

Then the crackle and hiss of needle on vinyl, allowing the child’s voice to fill the airwaves. I was that perfect Pietertjie Uys, with short blond hair, short grey pants, long grey socks up to my knees, white shirt and blue tie, even though I was now a man past middle age sitting onstage on my high stool and mouthing with the boy singing soprano. Pa’s Afrikaans translation made the meaning clear. Mary sits among the roses and holds her Jesus child. Through the trees the soft wind blows. And from a branch a small bird sings. That’s where the boy’s voice goes up and up, and most audiences would applaud the magic of this miracle. I stopped mouthing. Could never get to that note again. But it takes me right back to being nearly fourteen, and being on a stage allows you to conjure up worlds without flashbacks, smoke, mirrors, computers, apps or make-up. It’s what I also did as a child. Acting the part of a boy soprano, which I hated so much, and because of that high note everyone said my voice was purer than any boy had ever sung, certainly in Pinelands. I was still stuck in those short grey pants. I’d asked Pa more than a few times: when could I have long pants? He ignored me.