By Phakamisa Mayaba
Wednesday, 5 November. On a crunching gravel road somewhere in the Karoo, the Toyota hybrid we are in cruises unhurriedly along. Well on time, we resist showing up too early, preoccupied as we are with the sort of cat David Muller might turn out to be. In the papers, he is dubbed the ‘Merry Scholar’, further compounding our curiosity. A cheerful academic? Uhm, none of us have ever met such a man.
Might he be like the ever grinning law scholar Pierre de Vos, or more in the style of the white-haired nut job Doc Brown from the Back to the Future movies? Mr Alto*, Janco and this writer are left to conjecture and to some last-minute Linkedin espionage. But, pulling into the historic homestead at Hanglip Farm – still well-kept, the lawn still resembling an English club — we’ll soon find out.
This restless one-person storyteller is in town – or rather, on the farm – and we’re here to experience the performance which the reviewers have written about so favourably, while quietly wondering whether a scholar can really manage to keep a motley audience entertained for long enough not to get lost in translation.
One imagines that he has gigged in lahnee theatres with plush carpets and velvety curtains. Probably rubbed shoulders with high society, and on a first-name basis with some of the country’s most esteemed thespians. Now here he is on a lawn in front of an old Karoo farmhouse, his audience seated expectantly on the verandah.
And the audience? Well, imagine lumping together a gaggle of octogenarians, sprightly farm school teachers, learners, a taxi load of people from the nearby town, some farmers, and a businessman with a silver tongue. Such is the gathering that Muller must appeal to, every last one of them following and understanding, or else what’s the point of it all? Oh yes, one of our hosts, Marnus Terblanche, is tiptoeing about ensuring that throats are hydrated.
David Muller regales his audience. Image: Janco Piek.
Suddenly the cordial chatter is pierced by a commanding voice. Something from the 1970s; a sort of hippie with white hair yelling loudly before he’s even taken his position. Like some madman absentmindedly talking to himself in public. ‘A man must be circumcised,’ he shouts. Silence. All eyes are turned to him.
The bill said he’d be performing Blood and Silver: A True Story of Survival and a Son’s Search for His Family Treasure, based on a memoir by Jan Glazewski. But the intimate style, peppered with bouts of shrieking exhilaration when things are going good for our protagonist, and drawn-out silences when he’s encountered yet another hurdle in his life, and you are soon not sure about whether or not the narrator is in fact telling his own story.
Muller takes us from despair to enthusiasm to uncertainty and personal accomplishments that remain altogether meaningless to the South African-born scion of Polish immigrants. That’s because he is yet to honour his father’s dying wish of finding a long-lost family treasure buried in Poland some 80 years ago.
David Muller in the zone. Image: Janco Piek.
The story itself is well-documented in Glazewski’s memoir, but the deeper leitmotifs of survival, resilience and family are beautifully brought to life in Muller’s sighs, shrugs and intentional stutters when our subject finds himself unsure about his next move.
Muller is deeply invested in the arts. To him, art is the very pulse of a town, community and society. When the arts flourish, the town is alive. Also, don’t forget his determinist philosophical streaks, which leave no room for genuine coincidence, but rather are the sum total of a person‘s every action, faith and dreams put into action.
By the time the final line was spoken, after all the aahs and mmmhs, the man still firmly had the audience’s attention.
Before we left, I went up to offer him an apology.
‘Sorry for constantly moving my phone around,’ I said. ‘I had to show my buddies on TikTok glimpses of the play.’
‘Really? Is that what you were doing?’
‘Yes, let me go online right now so they can finally see that I too hang out with cool people.’
‘Ha-ha-ha,’ roared the actor.
As a huge full moon rose on the cusp of a saddle-shaped koppie forming the distant horizon, the former trombonist of the African Jazz Pioneers sat telling wonderful stories about Bra Ntemi Piliso and the guys. About how he first hooked up with the old-school guys before the youngsters came, and it no longer quite felt the same again.
Moonrise on Hanglip Farm. Image: Janco Piek.
The photographer’s shutter clicked. The crickets chirped. Get-to-know-each-other-better introductions hummed, and the small-time writer and one-person maestro sat waving at faces with made-up names on a phone screen. The show was over, but for Muller it was just another wonderful day at the office and for his audience a memory worth treasuring.
Featured image: The fabled stoep on Hanglip Farm, setting for many memorable converesations and events over the years. (Riaan de Villiers)