THE GRAND PIANO

Apartment living in ‘70s Hillbrow was a rich mixture of smells, sounds and tastes that permeated the communal areas and wafted into the flats of those who shared them. In the elevators and on the landings flat dwellers briefly touched sides, shared pleasantries and observations and then resumed the anonymity that the apartments provided. 

The residents were an eclectic bunch who shared little in both background and viewpoint, yet had been summoned to the urban chaos which was Johannesburg largely by economics. Millionaire types cheekily benefiting from the savings afforded by rent-controlled accommodation originally intended as a leg-up for returning soldiers after the Second World War, middle-class entrepreneurs, civil servants, young students at Wits and elderly widows living solitary lives, were equally at ease in these rented dwelling places. 

Dusk brought the smells of cooking that reflected a peculiar mixture of dietary complexity and European cultural diversity which mocked the state’s notion that pitted sallow skin against that of melanin rich compatriots. The hue of skin does as little to paper over the cultural textures of a complexion as it does to define the multiplicity of individual traits that constitute the nature of humanity. Food smells swirl in this environment under a more pervasive and overwhelming odour that makes stomachs churn in these shared spaces. Cooking oil, reused until it assumes the viscosity of motor oil, before being sent on its merry way down the kitchen sinks and into the intricate plumbing of flatland. Like treacle it forges ahead towards the sewers of the city where it obstinately clogs drains in its slothful progress through the urban underground maze of pipes. 

As the elevators plod along and belch a cohort of returning blue and white-collar working men and women on each landing, the shrill utterances of Mrs Tomasz slice neighbours as neatly as they do her intrepid and long suffering (or is it just suffering?) husband, the demure interior designer in flat 64.  Another robust domestic dispute shifts the attention from the ghastly smells in the passages for a brief moment.

Mr and Mrs Levy, the stocky millionaire couple in flat 36 and their neighbour, Cohen, the Jewish undertaker, forge along to their respective apartments ignoring the rambunctiousness of the altercation playing itself out on the sixth floor. Cohen’s expressionless features, cultivated over decades of devotion to his solemn profession, gives no hint of the thoughts he harbours – perhaps a slight tinge of pain as he reflects on the plight of Mr Tomasz, who knows? The Levys exchange a knowing glance. 

In flat 51 reside Marti, the magistrate, and Oliver in their one-bedroom flat. Marti had the firm handshake and Oliver did the cooking – a fine chef he could have been, too. Many an evening this couple hosted dinner and a music concert in their apartment  - spilling out onto the fifth floor landing and balcony. The lounge of their tastefully decorated abode was the epicentre of the most delightful piano renditions by both chaps. Whereas Marti’s touch of the keyboard was well-defined and determined, Oliver would caress the notes, both black and white in unison, to produce the most delightfully entertaining tunes. In the centre of their lounge was a grand piano – not a baby grand mind you, the real thing! It is out of this instrument that the two would coax the most harmonious music that stood in stark paradoxical contrast to the cacophony of shrill disharmony that had earlier filled the night from the sixth floor. Clearly it was also the piano and their love of music that had brought these Bohemian fellows together. Long will they be remembered for the joy and happiness they brought to a Hillbrow block of flats that represented such concrete dullness on a hill opposite the Johannesburg General Hospital.

The Grand Piano was the star of the show and a rare source of pleasure in a dreary concrete jungle.

Paul Haupt

©