Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition (9 page)

`Every day, same day,' says Dad, pouring a large Scotch. He keeps
rubbing his hands which have developed bad arthritis and gout. `They're
changing,' he says, `look at these dents and bumps. First the right was
worse, now the left; half time all change. Growing old is like keeping a
bloody car you wish you'd got rid of years ago. Just get one bit right and
another bit goes.'

He puts on the television. Today it is Afrikaans till eight o'clock, then
it changes over to English. Tomorrow vice versa. The West Indian cricket
tour is on. He points to it gleefully. `And they were here last year also.'

`I know. And criticised for it.'

`Yet here they are again.'

`Money.'

`Money, my boy, money talks in a language that is out of this world.'

I have made a resolution not to get involved in any political discussions,
so concede the point without further comment.

I start to read Richard III properly, cover to cover. First impression: the
world of the play is a superstitious one. A man is imprisoned because his
initial is G, a corpse bleeds. The other thing that strikes me is that Richard
is funny. This is a danger area for me. In Tartuffe rehearsals I remember
saying, `I don't think it's funny at all what he does in this household. It
disturbs me.' But at the first preview, at the first whiff of the audience's
delight in this bloodsport, I was off; inventing snorts, hops, dancing
eyebrows before their very eyes. The irresistible drug of laughter. It will be
so predictable playing Richard like that. Must root his wit in self-defence.
Everything comes from his deformity, his pain.

Interesting that the first two encounters happen to him. He's just sitting
there when Clarence and Hastings pass. Almost as if he's in a wheelchair
- he's been pushed out into the sun and left there.

Play him in a wheelchair?

Coming out of the gym I stop to memorise the surroundings for future
visits. I realise with a shock that I'm a block away from Sea Point Boys'
High School. All the shops have changed over the years and nothing is
familiar. Then I round the corner and there's the parade ground and the
school, exactly the same. Lean on the fence and stare hard. A flash of me
and Tony Fagin walking during Break, talking, talking, dreaming of going
overseas and becoming famous.

The gates are open. I wonder whether to go in but the signs `Trespassers
will be Prosecuted' intimidate, particularly in Afrikaans.

Walking along the fence staring up at the windows. Those classrooms.
In one I glimpse a world globe, almost black with dust. That must be the
Library. A book of photos - Alec Guinness in all his roles and disguises
- pored over endlessly.

I have to pass through a group of Coloured women. They are very
drunk, their eyes and mouths ugly; they sway viciously. Maids off duty
still dressed absurdly in those pink uniforms. One looks at me horribly
through bloodshot eyes. She is rake thin, her bony arms flailing around
in the air; toothless, her thick lips flapping like her jaw has no hinges, shouting a stew of Afrikaans and English, swearing and spitting as she
staggers down the street. These are the people who will murder us in our
beds, we thought as children. They still frighten terribly.

Reading Richard III. For a play so famous for its mass-murders, there's
surprisingly little violence on stage, but a constant sense of danger which
I like. When the violence does erupt (the stabbing of Clarence, Hastings'
head being brought on) I think it should be done very realistically and
shock immensely.

Leafing through piles of old Time magazines that Dad has collected
over the years, on cue I come across a fascinating article on murderers
and capital punishment.

A mass-murderer called Henry Brisbon Jnr, twenty-eight, Negro, from
a family of thirteen children, his father a strict Muslim, says: `I'm no bad
dude, just an anti-social individual. I was taught to be a racist and not like
whites. As I grew up I decided I didn't like nobody.'

Different methods of capital punishment through the centuries. One
of the oddest is from nineteenth-century India, where the culprit was tied
to the hind leg of an elephant which was then forced into a fast trot,
bouncing the man along behind. He was untied, given a glass of water
and then had to put his head on a stone. The elephant was made to step
up and crush it.

Not that modern electrocution is any less bizarre; the way the jury have
to take their seats as at the theatre, the executioner invisible behind a
two-way mirror. (Lermontov's line from Maydays: `I have always thought
the condemned are blindfolded not for themselves, but for the executioner.
So he can't see their faces.') When the electricity is pumped through, the
victim's eyeballs bulge from their sockets and burst. Then his brain boils
alive. The state boiling brains, Nilsen boiling heads ...

And my current fear is making Richard too funny.

As I'm going out to sketch, Katie makes a big fuss about locking the door
behind me. She says she's scared to be in the house alone.

`It wasn't like that when I lived here.'

`Oo Master Antony, it's terrible what goes on here now.'

Sketching Lion's Head. More and more alive. Massive shoulders with a
terrible growth (hump?) on one of them. That growth, a rock formation
with great slabs and chunks, is so like animal or human muscle; the surface has a smoothness, a silkiness, the folds are very soft - there are crevices
you want to run your fingers over and into - but within there's this
enormous hard power. Feminine and masculine.

STEAK HOUSE The family has gathered in force. As the men arrive they
plonk down bottles of wine or whisky. Both will be drunk freely throughout
the meal.

Despite an agreement that there should be no political discussions,
everyone is spoiling for a fight, particularly the more liberal - my sister-inlaw Yvette and her brother Ashley. `You've diagnosed the sickness,' they
say, `now suggest a cure.'

My younger brother Joel (a giant walking wall of muscle, but gentlenatured - Hercules in specs) says with a kind of regret, `I am selfish. This
is my country. I've nowhere else to go. So I must stay in power. And live
with my guilt.' He runs an off-licence (or `bottle store' as they call it). I
ask him why I've seen so many Coloureds pissed out of their brains. He
says it's Government policy to keep the price of cheap wine as low as
possible. `To anaesthetise the population.'

Discussion rages about the recent referendum granting the vote to
Coloureds and Indians, but not to blacks.

Back at the house, Joel and I stay up drinking - another bottle of Scotch
plonked down between us. We talk about school days and teachers; several
have died including my mentor, the art master McCabe. God, when did
I last have a conversation like this? Joel talks about how I dominated his
childhood (because of the fuss made over me as a child artist), cramped
his style, left him no space. But this is said without any bitterness. He's
the most centred of us all.

Behind his head the black window panes turn navy blue, start to lighten.

At about five o'clock in the morning, Dad staggers downstairs blinking,
his hair a little storm around his ears. `Hell's bells!' he says seeing us,
`I'm going to the lav.'

Lunch with Esther. She still lives at No. 303, Shoreham Flats, where I
used to come week after week for classes. Who would have thought
Elocution could be so thrilling?

Her skin is tanned, turquoise splashed around those jet-black eagle
eyes, her hair a sculpture in vanilla ice. She is flamboyantly theatrical - a
cross between Ethel Merman and Sybil Thorndike - but this is deceptive. In this modest living room with its sunny balcony overlooking the beach
front, Esther was a pioneer in the experimental and the avant-garde. At
that time, the mid-Sixties, South African theatre had just caught up with
The Chalk Garden by Enid Bagnold, but we were poring over Beckett,
Osborne, Wesker and above all Pinter. We even did improvisations. In
most of these I would play either Oscar Werner in Ship of Fools or
Harry Andrews in The Hill, both favourite performances at the time.
My inventiveness was endless: whatever the subject or setting of the
improvisation, I would contrive to turn up as either a sadistic British
R S M or a bleary Viennese ship's doctor spouting gems like, `Life is a
zhip and ve are merely foolz.'

Today we wallow. Remembering events that happened and some that
didn't.

It's a cold night; the wind is wild and buffets the car as we drive to
Randall's home in Camps Bay. From this side of the coast Lion's Head
looks even more like a Richard shape viewed slightly from behind -
hunched on his tray as he's carried from the coronation. The mountain
is a terrifying silhouette against midnight blue.

Watch a video (the national pastime because the telly is so bad) of
Fitzcaraldo with Klaus Kinski, not at his best: he tells us he's bonkers from
the first shot. Mad eyes roving, crooked smile. Nowhere to go. That face
though - like something melted by Dali.

Lose interest and find myself thinking of Lion's Head and lions.
Remembering images from a trip long ago to the Etosha Pan Game
Reserve - lions lying in the sun breathing heavily, short heavy pants,
mouths slightly open. Great strength resting. I try it out discreetly as
Kinski goes interminably up the Amazon. You also see severely deformed
people do this - breathing with heavy little gasps.

Another family day. A barbecue (or `braai') and then a steady stream of
relations popping in for drinks and to have a look at the prodigal son.

Granny has turned eighty-seven and has been very ill; she looks half
the size I remember, but still maintains her legendary independence.
Great difficulty walking but refuses to use her metal walking stick, carries
it instead under her arm like a brigadier. She has a problem climbing the
few steps to the patio and I'm about to help her when Joel restrains me
and whispers that her elbow jabs are lethal. She sits in the shade of a tree. `I can't run around like I used to, but you learn to accept it.' Her greatest
regret is that she's no longer fit enough to work in the Old Aged Home
where she used to help the really aged. She tells me about one old woman
whom she used to look after. They discovered they were both from the
same town in Russia, Plumyan. They'd not seen it for over eighty years
but by putting their heads together they could build up images of streets
and shops and a water pump on a corner. She looks at me very steadily
and says, `To think I should see you again.'

Rona and Jack, a favourite aunt and uncle. Puzzling over Northern
Ireland, she wonders why the British don't just pull out. He says it's
because Britain doesn't want an enemy on her doorstep. `Be overrun with
Communists in no time, man.' The world through South African eyes.

Dad's sister Rosie is a wonderful eccentric. Deep throaty chuckle,
oriental eyes, and a single grey streak in her hair like Diaghilev. She's
seventy-five, loves travelling, but is increasingly scared to go overseas in
case she dies there: `I'd he so embarrassed. Nobody would know what to
do with me.' As she leaves she says to me, `Well so long, probably won't
see you again, don't have much longer to go. Anyway, nice knowing you
and keep up the good work.' She goes out with a rasping chuckle.

BOSCHENDAL WINE ESTATE Cecil Rhodes started these fruit farms
about an hour's drive away from Cape Town. Now they're a beauty spot
with shops and a restaurant.

`Feel the air,' Mum says and we all put our hands out of the car to
weigh the thick heat in our palms. The light is blinding, then you walk
under a tree and suddenly it's black and cool. The smell of newly mown
grass being watered. Pink hydrangeas in wooden tubs. The landscape
ringing gently with insects and birds.