1998 - Devil's Valley

by Andre Brink

  Whales Too

  “There must have been wild animals too?”

  “What do you think?” asked Lukas Death ponderously, as if pronouncing a blessing. “Lions, crocodiles, tigers, the lot.”

  “Elephants, too,” added Isak Smous enthusiastically. “Rhinoceros, hippopotamus, everything.”

  “How on earth did they get in here?”

  “God mos made them.”

  “And whales too,” topped Jos Joseph, swallowing a gnat, which kept him out of action for a while.

  “Quite so,” confirmed Petrus Tatters. “In the old days that dry riverbed in the kloof was a proper flood. In the time of the Deluge it was all covered by the sea, of course. And when it dried up the whales remained.”

  “Lukas Lermiet’s oldest son, Lukas Nimrod, was the one who started killing off the wild beasts,” said Lukas Death with what sounded like due respect; they were his direct ancestors, after all.

  “So you see,” Jurg Water concluded, “our people have lived through hard times here. Every step was taken in blood and suffering. And it still goes on.”

  “What are we hunting tonight?” I asked as they fell quiet. We had reached the opposite slope by now, just above the fields, below the patch of prickly pear. I was conjuring up visions of elephants and lions, monsters, dragons, demons.

  “Porcupine,” they answered in a chorus. And Lukas Death explained, “The bastards are destroying the fields. In good times we don’t mind too much, but in this drought there’s not enough to eat for us and them.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t stifle my disappointment. After the impressive build-up I’d been expecting rather more.

  Boy’s Arse

  Jurg Water must have picked up my tone, because he hastened to expand, “Mind you, a porcupine can be a very dangerous creature. We’ve buried some of our greatest men with a quill in the heart or the guts. Lukas Nimrod himself was one of them. A terrible quill right through his head, from temple to temple, one night while he was asleep. In those days porcupines were much bigger, of course. Height of a buffalo.”

  “They say the one that got Lukas Nimrod was the size of a young elephant,” Petrus Tatters corrected him. “They found his tracks afterwards.”

  “Even the small ones can be dangerous,” added Jos Joseph, just in case I got the wrong idea.

  “There’s always the quills too,” added Isak Smous, in a more mercenary mood, skipping along on his short legs to keep up with us. “The women make dainty little boxes out of them and they fetch a good price in Oudtshoorn.”

  “All you can think of,” snorted Jurg Water.

  “On the last porcupine hunt Little-Lukas was still with us,” said Isak Smous, injecting a more reflective tone into the conversation.

  “His heart wasn’t in it,” sighed Lukas Death.

  “You were too soft on the boy,” snarled Jurg Water. “I don’t spare the rod with my children. They won’t dare go against my wishes. A boy’s arse is made for thrashing.”

  Pa would have agreed.

  “And a girl’s?” asked Isak Smous with a hit of mockery in his voice, but with an undertone that made me wonder.

  Jurg Water stopped in his tracks. “What do you mean?” he said.

  “Just teasing, Jurg.” Isak withdrew to a safe distance.

  A muffled rumbling came from the others. No one spoke openly, but I was aware of a kind of subterranean resentment.

  Lukas Death was the one who took things in hand. “Now come on, men. Let’s not argue in front of a stranger.”

  “I want an answer first,” insisted Jurg. He stood with half-raised arms like a wrestler. “What’s Isak trying to tell me?”

  “Ag Jurg, calm down, man,” said Lukas Death, with a quick glance in my direction. “We’re all poor sinners.”

  “You’re talking from experience,” mumbled Jurg Water. “All the way back to the first Lukas Lermiet.”

  “I won’t have anything said against Grandpa Lermiet,” warned Lukas Death as if announcing a hymn to be sung. “He’s our common ancestor, his sins are ours.”

  “Then tell that little runt to mind his own business.”

  Dangerous Beast

  For the time being an uneasy peace was restored, and the Christian soldiers could resume their march against the evils lurking in the night. But in the brief flare-up I’d become aware of a darker undercurrent which might have been there all the time, but never quite so clear: something menacing that had to be kept in check like some dangerous beast.

  And then the dangerous beast we’d been stalking suddenly appeared in our midst: a half-grown porcupine trying to escape from the lantern light on a trot, then swinging round to face us, cowering, quills up.

  There are many stories about our Boer ancestors who were such masters of the battle and the hunt: one bullet, one antelope (or lion, or Englishman, or kaffir, delete whatever is not applicable). But in the Devil’s Valley, in spite of the scarcity of ammunition, this rule clearly did not apply. The five men with me immediately started firing at the scared little creature; and I unashamedly joined in. A reckless turmoil of men in the dark, after Jurg Water had dropped the lantern to cock his ancient gun.

  It was pure luck that Jos Joseph was the only victim. When he fell down in his tracks with a bellowing sound, surrounded by a startled cloud of gnats, I thought it was the end. But for the moment the battle was too hectic to attend to him. He had to scuttle off on all fours, out of the whirlwind of hunters and hunted, while the rest of us pounced on the spiky creature that had suddenly become a deadly enemy responsible for the death of a true-blooded man. At least, that was what it looked like in the matt light of the moon, for Jos Joseph had collapsed in a heap just beyond the fringe of our cavorting.

  Kieries and Clubs

  Until that moment the porcupine had not been harmed, even though the shooting was reverberating among the mountains with duller and duller rumbling echoes from a distance, like a thunderstorm raging across the valley. When Jos Joseph fell, the hunters became like men possessed. Throwing away their guns, they moved in with kieries and clubs. Petrus Tatters sank to his knees from a blow to the head. I also received my share of blows, but nothing serious; in fact, it was only much later, back in my bed, that I became conscious of the pains I’d never felt in the frenzy of the battle. I simply grabbed my Mauser by the barrel and began to hit out in all directions—striking here a shoulder, there a shin, and occasionally the porcupine. Until at last, with a curious thin wail, the small animal crumpled into a lifeless lump.

  Exhausted, I stumbled to one side. The others were still furiously at it. They kept on hitting the dead animal as if they were in serious danger. The adrenalin was so strong one could smell it. It was the kind of scene I’d witnessed only once or twice before in the course of my work. Once in ‘86, when the police and their Witdoeke allies attacked the Comrades at Crossroads. Two years later when a funeral in Kayelitsha degenerated into a necklacing. But then I’d been only a bystander. This time I was part of it.

  The others were still venting their heroic rage. One or two attacked the carcass with their heavy boots, only to jump back bellowing with pain caused by quills in the shins. It took a long time before silence returned to the Devil’s Valley. After the great uproar it was quite unearthly. All that could be heard was the panting, and a sudden outcry from Jos Joseph when someone plucked the quill from his calf—which, as it turned out, was the only damage the poor turd had suffered.

  No one spoke on the long way back. Two of the men carried the meagre remains of the porcupine by the legs, triumphantly, like a trophy. We were all smeared with blood, together with the filth and dust of the battle.

  Little-Lukas’s heart hadn’t been in it, I thought. Neither, by God, was mine.

  Wet Dream

  Some time during the night they dropped me off at Tant Poppie’s front door, and I stood in the dark looking after them: the men with blood on their hands and clothes, and porcupine quills stuck triumphantly in their hats; carryi
ng among them the little bundle which had come to the fields in search of food.

  In my room I took off all my clothes and half-filled the ewer with some of the precious water the boy had brought. It was cold, I had goose-pimples all over, but I scrubbed myself like a slaughtered pig.

  I was still conscious of blowing out the candle, but after that I blacked out. In my sleep a woman came to me. She drew the kaross from me and set to work with the kind of clean, absolute lust a man only dreams about. By the time I became aware of her, I was already far gone. She was as naked as a prick. And she was bloody well everywhere, against me, on me, below me, beside me, all over me. It felt as if I’d got caught in a fucking storm, high above the earth, in masses of black clouds through which lightning streaked and hurricanes swept, tossing me about, this way and that, one moment flinging me down into a vacuum, then hurling me up into space. Inbloody-describable. It was too dark to make out anything—except now and then, in the midst of our contortions, the fleeting silhouette of a head or a shoulder or a breast against the square of the window. Right through it all, not a single goddamn word was spoken. There were only the sounds of our struggle, heavy breathing and deep meanings, and in the end the long high scream of her orgasm. Only then did her prehensile cunt let go of me. She relaxed for a few moments to lie wet and panting against me.

  I was totally fucked. In my dazed state I kept moving my hands over her body, blindly, without really knowing why; and it was only much later that I realised what I’d been trying to find: four tits. But there were only two of them. Too slippery to catch, she broke from me and escaped in the dark. In a last wild grab I got hold of a foot, and she fell to the floor, and I tumbled from the bed and landed with my face in the moist hairy thickets of her crotch, but with a laugh she kicked herself free and got away, back into the night from which she’d come. I stumbled back into my bed, and only much later sat up to light the candle. Strangely shaped shadows, like hairy baboons or owls with ruffled feathers, scattered across the walls and huddled in the corners. The hair on my body was knotted with the sticky substance of our secretions. A wet dream like I’d never had in my fucking life.

  All I could remember was the foot I’d clutched, a foot with long toes and fleshy webs between them. And, more mundane, a long blue ribbon knotted loosely around my prick.

  Ancient Grace

  I smoked two cigarettes and blew out the candle again. Dark and heavy like a flood sleep came washing over me. In the swell I saw once again the hunters dancing like madmen round their quarry. But slowly a female figure became visible through the whirl of arms and legs and distorted faces. Once again I saw Henta bend over and stretch up. Her sinful eyes.

  The sort of ancient grace of that movement. But above the hem of her raised dress her face seemed to dissolve, as if seen through running water, changing into that other, elusive, imagined, young woman’s face; and instead of Henta’s inconsequential nipples I saw four tits, two grapefruit-sized and two smaller, staring at me like the eyes of a chameleon. And from far away I heard a raspy old voice say, “I been sitting here waiting for you.”

  TWO

  Everything Except Death

  FACTS. FACTS were now my passion. When I was young, at the time I was still teaching history, I believed in the possibility of truth. Historical truth, so help me God. Gradually I was shocked out of this certainty, as out of most others. All that remained was my faith—tempered by cynicism, okay, but even so—in facts. I’d dig among the rubble in search of a handful of irreducible facts. I mean, this was what had brought me to the Devil’s Valley. But until that Nagmaal Sunday things hadn’t gone well for me. Now at last it seemed the tide was turning. About fucking time too, if I still meant to leave on the Saturday. I couldn’t just sit back waiting for something to happen. It was time to pull finger, get down to facts.

  The obvious place to start was Tant Poppie’s breakfast table, the Monday morning. She’d given me bits of information before, but this morning she was suddenly much more co-operative, perhaps because I’d tried to softsoap her by asking about her medicines. She certainly didn’t need much coaxing.

  “Yes, Neef Flip, even if I say so myself, this place would have gone to maggots without me. What I know I got from my mother, and she from hers, all the way back, past the Great Flu, back to the very first people who came into the Devil’s Valley.”

  “Do you really have a cure for everything?”

  “Almost everything, except death,” A heavy sigh. “Because I must say, death is hard on us. Particularly the young ones. You’ll see many olive plants around every table, but only a few of them grow up. And nowadays you can’t mos even depend on those that grow up. Barely ripe, they want to get out into the world. There is fewer and fewer of us living here.” The heavy chair creaked as she shifted her mighty posterior. And then she took the plunge: “But for all those who stay behind I try to do what I can.” A sweeping gesture across her collection of bags and boxes. “You can ask me anything, Neef Flip. Try me. Suppose you have a thorn you can’t get out. Right, then I catch some flies and fold them in a muslin cloth and mash them, and the mush goes straight on to the thorn. Otherwise I use a paste of dried pig’s gall. For snakebite I make a cut in the breast of a black rooster and press the bird against the bite until it stops kicking. After about eight chickens all the poison is out. For spiderbite there’s a different cure again. By far the best is burnt pumpkin and calabash seeds. But if it’s something more serious, say heart disease, I draw wild thyme or naartjie peels or bitter-leaves or rue on water, dagga is very good too. It also helps for fever, drawing three of the green tips on boiling water.” Now she was unstoppable. “A tortoise is ideal for a child with croup, it often happens in winter. I chop up the whole thing and press the pulp through a cloth and give it to the sick child. For inflammation I skin a live black cat and press the skin to the place; if it goes on, I give the patient a goat’s stomach water to drink while it’s still warm. For asthma the best cure is the burnt shell of a scaly anteater, but that’s quite scarce, so I maar use the gall of a goat, drawn for three days on linseed oil in the sun. The oil I get from Gert Brush, he gets a regular supply from Isak Smous for his painting. Buchu is wonderful for bile and anything that’s to do with the kidneys, from burning piss to old man’s gland, and rue for the squitters, while for migraine I draw bluegum leaves and salt on Tall-Fransina’s witblits. Mother’s milk is a good cure for many complaints too, and luckily Bettie Teat is always available. If a man is going blind, one squirts the milk straight from the teat into the eye, then it’s as good as new again. They say it started with old Lukas Seer, not a day went by without a woman milking in his eyes. And I can tell you, it’s good for insomnia too, especially if the milking woman can lie right next to you. But the best cure for insomnia is to kill a speckled rooster, and while it’s still jumping about you catch its blood and mix it with witblits and stir in some ground goat’s bones and bake it in chicken fat. It never fails.”

  “Sounds like a long story?” I asked.

  Tant Poppie nodded gravely. “The best cures take time, you see. But there’s quick ones too. For heartburn I give them gum from the sweet-thorn tree, or plain raw earth, and for almost any ache under the sun a mixture of goat’s droppings and vinegar helps on the spot. You can apply it to the skin or you can drink it. Those droppings are really wonderful stuff. But for some complaints you need more patience. For instance, for gout you have to rub some snake poison into a cut on your skin every Sunday just before church, right through the winter months. Or otherwise you wear a thin riempie cut from the skin of a leguan. Now take something like epilepsy. To cure that I have to cut the person’s nails for three Fridays in a row, toes and fingers; then I mix these with a few hairs cut from his crown, and I feed the lot to the runt of a pig litter. The piglet is then buried alive, and by the time he starts rotting the patient is cured.” She shifted on her chair again. Her folded hands could barely reach over her stomach. “So any time you have a problem, Neef Flip
, you know who to come to.”

  “I will,” I promised, keeping a straight face, then leaned forward with my elbows on the table. “But my real problem is not one of health, Tant Poppie. There are so many things in the Devil’s Valley I simply don’t understand yet, and I wondered whether you could help. You have such a way with people.”

  If she was a cat, I’m sure she would have purred. “What is it you don’t understand?”

  Small and Precise

  In this kind of situation, my job has taught me, one starts with something small and precise, not with the larger issues. I placed my little tape recorder on the table between us and pressed Start.

  “What’s that thing?” Tant Poppie asked with heavy suspicion in her voice.

  “It helps me to remember,” I said cryptically, anxious to avoid details which might put her off.

  She kept a wary eye on the recorder as she asked, “Well, what is it you want to know?”

  “Can we start with Little-Lukas?”

  “What about him?”

  “Why is everybody so set against him? No one seems to care about his death. And if he really was a direct descendant of Grandpa Lermiet’s then surely he should have had some standing here.”

  “He did. But you must understand that in this place we want to keep our lives to ourselves. He spoke too much.”