‘Why, you have a perfectly good name, my dear.’ She gave me a funny look, then turned to Doc. ‘Of course he may stay, but I’m afraid our family never had much of an ear for music and lessons would be much too expensive.’
Without looking at Dee and Dum, who had re-entered the room and now stood beside her, she held her hand out for the knife and strainer and dismissed them with an impatient flick of her head.
‘I am most grateful, madame.’ My mother lifted the coffee pot. ‘Black only, no sugar,’ Doc said, leaning forward in anticipation.
My mother poured his coffee. ‘A nice piece of cake, professor?’ Doc put his hand up in refusal. ‘Thank you,’ he said. It was a speech habit I was going to find hard to get used to, saying, ‘Thank you,’ when he meant, ‘No thank you,’ and clearly my mother misunderstood him for she placed a piece of the canary cake on a sideplate and handed it to him with his coffee. He accepted the cake without further protest.
Doc put the coffee and cake on the zebra hide between his legs and picked up the manila envelope. ‘And so now we have the second thing.’ His eyes sparkled as he handed the envelope to my mother.
‘Goodness, what can it be?’ she said, pulling out the tucked-in flap of the large brown envelope. She withdrew the largest photograph I had ever seen which, to my amazement, turned out to be me sitting on the rock on top of the hill. ‘Goodness gracious!’ My mother stared at it, momentarily lost for words. The photograph showed every detail, even the lichen on the rock, more clearly than any I had seen before. Shafts of sunlight shining through a silver-edged cloud seemed to be directed straight at the rock on which I sat. My body, half in shadow, appeared to be as one with the rock. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was an extraordinary picture. At last my mother spoke. ‘Wherever did you take this? It is so sad! Why did you take a picture of him when he was looking sad?’
Doc rubbed his chin, it was plainly not the comment he expected and he needed a moment to think about the answer. Ignoring the first question he leaned forward as he answered the second. ‘Ja, this is so. Only one great picture shows a man when he smiles. Frans Hals, Laughing Cavalier, early seventeenth century.’ He pointed at the grandfather clock. ‘Around that time they make this clock also. The smile, madame, is used by humans to hide the truth, the artist is only interested to reveal the truth.’ He leaned back, clearly satisfied with his reply.
‘Goodness, professor, all that is much too deep for simple country people like us. He’s only a very little boy, you know? I prefer him to smile.’
‘Of course! But sadness, like understanding, comes early in life for some. It is part of intelligence.’
My mother’s back stiffened. ‘You seem to know a lot about my son, professor. I can’t imagine how, he has only been home from boarding school for three days.’
Doc clapped his hands gleefully. ‘Boarding school! Ha, that explains I think everything. For a boy like this boarding school is a prison, ja?’
My mother was beginning to show her impatience, her fingers tapped steadily on the arms of the chair, a sure sign that things were not going well. ‘We had no choice in the matter, professor. I was ill. One does the best one can under the circumstances.’ She looked into her lap, her coffee untouched.
Doc suddenly seemed to realise that he had gone too far. ‘Forgive me, madame’. He leaned forward. ‘It is not said to make you angry. Your son is a gifted child. I don’t know where, I don’t know how. I only pray it is music. Today I have come to ask you, please madame, let me teach him?’ He had spoken to my mother softly and with great charm and I could feel her relax as his voice stroked her ego.
‘Humpf! I must say you seem to know more about him than his mother. I can’t see how he is any different to any other child of his age,’ she said huffily, though I could tell this was just a pretence and that she was secretly pleased by the compliment. My mother was a proud woman and didn’t expect charity from anyone. ‘It is out of the question. Piano lessons don’t grow on trees, professor.’
‘Ja, that is true. But, I think, maybe on cactus plants.’ Doc’s deep blue eyes showed his amusement. ‘For two years I have searched for the Aloe microsfigma, from here, zere, everywhere. Then, poof! Just by sitting on a rock. Aloe microsfigma comes. The boy is a genius. Absoloodle!’
‘What ever can you be talking about, professor? What have you two been up to?’ Whereas before she had been angry, now she was plainly charmed by him.
‘Madame, we met on the mountain top with only the face of God above us, the picture will capture the moment forever,’ he shrugged his scrawny shoulders. ‘It was destiny, the new cactus man has come.’
My mother seemed unsure how to take this. ‘I am a born-again Christian, professor, God’s name is only used in praise in this house,’ she said, mostly to cover her confusion but also as a caution to Doc not to assume an over-familiar manner with the Almighty.
‘God and I have no quarrels, madame. The Almighty conceived the cactus plant. If God would choose a plant to represent him, I think he would choose of all plants the cactus. The cactus has all the blessings he tried, but mostly failed, to give to man. Let me tell you how. It has humility but it is not submissive. It grows where no other plant will grow. It does not complain when the sun bakes its back, or the wind tears it from the cliff or drowns it in the dry sand of the desert or when it is thirsty. When the rains come it stores water for the hard times to come. In good times and in bad it will still flower. It protects itself against danger, but it harms no other plant. It adapts perfectly to almost any environment. It has patience and enjoys solitude. In Mexico there is a cactus that flowers only once every hundred years and at night. This is saintliness of an extraordinary kind, would you not agree? The cactus has properties that heal the wounds of men and from it come potions that can make man touch the face of God or stare into the mouth of hell. It is the plant of patience and solitude, love and madness, ugliness and beauty, toughness and gentleness. Of all plants surely God made the cactus in his own image? It has my enduring respect and is my passion.’ He paused and pointed to the little green plant in the jam tin. ‘Kalanchoe thyrsiflora, such a shy little lady. Two years I search to find her, now she grows happily in my cactus garden where her big ears listen to all the gossip.’
‘I’m sure that’s all very nice, professor, but what does it all mean?’ my mother said. I could see she was confused, not knowing whether, in the end, Doc had praised or blasphemed God.
‘My eyes are not so goot. If the boy will come with me to collect cactus specimens, I will teach him music. It is a fine plan, ja? Cactus for Mozart!’
My mother looked pleased, as though a new thought had come into her head. ‘His grandmother was very creative, an artist you know. But I don’t know if there were any musicians in the family, perhaps Dad will know.’ She pointed to the two rose pictures on either side of the bookcase. ‘Her work,’ she said modestly, ‘she only ever painted roses.’
Doc did not turn to look at the pictures. ‘When I came in I saw them already, very goot.’
The idea of a musician in the family was clearly to my mother’s liking. The Boers are a naturally musical people and any excuse for a gathering brought out the concertinas and guitars and even an occasional violin. In my mother’s eyes it was their sole redeeming feature. The idea of a son who played the piano, let alone classical music, was a social triumph of the sort she had never expected to come her way. Even in this largely English-speaking town, a classical piano player in the family was a social equaliser almost as good as money.