Читать книгу Pieter-Dirk Uys: The Echo of a Noise - Pieter-Dirk Uys - Страница 8

The sandcastle you’re looking at started with a title that popped into my head: The Echo of a Noise. What did it mean? Was I the echo of a noise from the past? A has-been clinging to the wreckage of a political ship that disintegrated in 1994? Possibly. Or the echo of a noise from the past that is reinventing itself for the future? Not impossible. The Echo of a Noise is a title that could mean all of those things and even more. Was it for a play? A satirical revue? Could a novel give real meaning to those words? Or another autobiographical venture into the known unknown?

I had already published two memoirs. The first, in 2002, was Elections and Erections: A Memoir of Fear and Fun, where the elections part was a collection of experiences growing up in the white paradise of Suid-Afrika then, and the erections section about confronting the reality of an epidemic that had no cure. Apartheid was the first virus I had to confront, HIV the second.

Then in 2005 came Between the Devil and the Deep: A Memoir of Acting and Reacting. The focus was on my life in theatre. Writing plays, producing them, and performing them within the two worlds that make up my life: the separate developments of yesteryear and the disconnected freedoms of today.

My musical family featured in both, as they should. My father, Hannes Uys, and my mother, Helga Bassel, hand in hand with my guardian angels, Mozart, Schumann and Chopin. Two grandmothers, one an Afrikaans matriarch, the other a gemütliche deutsche Oma. One grandfather alive in vague memory. A sister, Tessa, who became the Yin to my Yang, the accompaniment to my song, sharing my fears and fun, with battles and braais, enriched by the plaited multi-cultured linguistic koeksister of Afrikaans, English and German. So, there was really no need to venture back into that minefield of memory and musing.

As is so often the case with what one plans, the opposite happens. After explorations through photographs, albums, letters and intentions, I found myself writing about two people who without invitation elbowed their way into my narrative. A vibrant, complex, mysterious man who was not me, but my father. Pa and I had a relationship entangled and confused. Loving and loathing in equal extremes. And a woman, brash, gentle and wise, who was not my mother. Sannie Abader lived with us as the Uyses’ maid for most of her life, but she had a profound influence on my development as a small person, as Pietertjie Uys, and as a South African. These two people stepped out of the chorus line of my heritage and helped me sort out the noises that became my life.

I have consciously decided to quarantine Evita Bezuidenhout. She’s been around as what some call my ‘alter ego’ for a long time. Many think she’s all I can do. I don’t argue. I respect the goose that lays the golden eggs and hope she will never end up on my dining room table. But surely there are other noises in my life that have varying echoes. Music, never noise, a constant buzz-track to my existence, is the first inspiration. Once I have a soundtrack in my head, leading me into whatever mood I need, anything is possible. I recognise most classical music I hear, but seldom can place the composer or the name of the piece. Story of my life, I suppose, and further proof that a little knowledge can go quite a long way.

But this sandcastle, the one you’re reading, will not have the ‘most famous woman in South Africa’ up in the tower flashing her diamonds to attract the attention of the knights in shining armour below. This will be PDU, unpowdered. No props, no false eyelashes, no high heels, no security blankets. Whatever echo I expose here will be heard for the first time. So let me carefully get Mrs Bezuidenhout out of the way.

1981: An early glimpse of the wife of the National Party MP for Laagerfontein.