by Andre Brink
A single black shadow with a pronounced limp came moving up the incline towards me. Only when it passed right beside me did I recognise the man. It was Ouma Liesbet Prune’s distant nephew Ben Owl. But what about the talking voices then? As I looked after him, I heard them again, now growing fainter as he went on, surprisingly agile on his club foot. It must have been the voices in his head Ouma Liesbet had spoken about.
Back
I came past the church again. No suggestion of life at all. Now the settlement was invaded by fucking irredeemable silence, even in the cemetery.
A single window shone in the dark. At the back of Isak Smous’s house. Perhaps he was still working on his book? But his store was in the front, where we’d spent the morning together.
I went closer. That single bright rectangle caught me in its bloody thrall. I had to find out who was still doing what at this ungodly hour. Taking care not to make any noise I approached to the edge of the patch of light in the backyard.
It was she. I swear to Almighty God. Emma.
It was her bedroom. She was standing in front of the window brushing her dark hair. My first impulse was to step back, but then I realised she was using the pane as a mirror to look at her reflection; beyond the window she wouldn’t see a thing. I was part of the night’s blank darkness. Even so, it felt as if she was looking straight at me, like the day I arrived. Because this time it really was her. No two ways about it. The other night outside my window might have been hallucination. Even at Nagmaal in church I could have been mistaken, what with her hair piled on top of her head. But now it was loose again, a dark flood cascading down her shoulders, pure goddamn poetry.
My first reaction was rage. So this was why that cocksucking, motherfucking bastard Isak Smous had become so cagey the moment I mentioned her name. But what was he covering up for?
Emma’s arm had stopped its long stroking movements. She put down the old·fashioned brush with its ornate handle—a gift from Isak? I could wring the little shit’s neck—on the bedside table. I crept closer to see what she was going to do next. There were two books on the table, one blue, the other brown. Behind her against the inside wall stood a narrow bed, the kaross covering it already folded back. There was a garment draped over the edge, it looked like a long white nightdress. She came back to the window. I stepped out of the patch of light.
From a distant past a memory came back. My last year at school when I’d gone on similar night walks to haunt like a poltergeist the home of the girl I was in love with, waiting for hours on end to stare through a chink in two floral curtains at the segment of the bedroom beyond, in the hope of a glimpse of Belinda. She was the magistrate’s daughter, I was I; and I’d never dared to speak a word to her. A railway line ran between us.
Only once in all my solitary vigils had I caught more than a hint of movement between the curtains. It was a month before the school-leaving dance and I’d decided, come hell or high water, I was going to ask her. I mean, Jesus, the worst she could say was no. And then, the night before I was to take the plunge, I saw Belinda. She must have come from her bath for her hair was still wet and she stood between her curtains drying it with a red-striped towel. Even if God had decided to strike me there and then with a fucking thunderbolt, I would have died singing His everlasting praises. But He has better ways to avenge Himself, mark my words. I mean, after seeing her like that I couldn’t possibly invite her to the dance, could I now? I’d missed my chance. I was only bloody seventeen, remember.
Front
Emma began to undo the buttons down the front of her dark dress. I was a Peeping Tom, lower than shark-shit on the bottom of the sea. I knew I should fuck off, I had no bloody right to stay. But it was impossible to turn away. I just had to see what there was to see. I had to know, for sure, once and for all.
Emma undid two buttons, each one took an eternity. I could see the small hollow where her collarbones met. The paleness of her skin.
On the third button her thin white fingers lingered. Then she turned away, leaned over, and blew out the candle.
If she came back to the window now she was sure to see me in the moonlight.
Like a damned sleepwalker I went home, past the night-still houses of the settlement.
Same Thing
AFTER MY WANDERINGS through the rank recesses of the night I suppose it was only to be expected, but when it overcame me in the small hours I was still caught unawares. I was struggling through a thicket of lustful dreams when like the previous night I was surprised by a woman. A sound woke me up. Two sounds: something like the hoot of a barn owl, something like the barking of a baboon. But there was no time for wondering, because by then I was already engulfed in female flesh. It was the same thing all over again. My first thought was that it must be the same woman, but it wasn’t. Even in the dark all bodies are not similar. This one was stronger, harder, tougher, the hair in which she tied us up and sometimes nearly strangled us was longer, her limbs more muscular, her smells and taste sharper on the tongue; but she was just as fucking uninhibited as her predecessor. This time, to turn on the purple stuff again, it was like a wave that dragged me into unfathomable green tides and swells and undertows. The joy of this kind of dream is that you can give free rein to everything you usually repress or contain, your most exorbitant imaginings. Also, I was better prepared for it this time, and I remember consciously groping for what I’d been looking for so long: but once again there were only two of them, not four.
What I did find out was that her feet were not webbed. But there was something else. She had a harelip. Which might have been fucking repulsive in daylight, or in anything other than a dream, but in that encounter it opened up new dimensions of caressing and sucking that left me exhausted when at last she abandoned me like a fucking kelp washed up on the moist beach of the night.
I still had enough sense to jump up and flick on my lighter as she left. But the draught caused by her dash to the door instantly blew out the flame. All I could make out in the brief flare was a whirl of long limbs, the pale gleam of a body half-covered in a tangle of hair, a bundle of clothes under her arm. And that kept me awake, because a succubus is not supposed to be visible in the light.
Erotic Dreams
IT WAS HELL to get going in the morning, but no matter how stiff and exhausted I felt, I was anxious not to waste another bloody minute before returning to Isak Smous’s house to speak to Emma personally. But on the way I had to pass Tall-Fransina’s shed again and how could I refuse when she called me to give her a hand with the firing once more? Half-amused, she stood watching me from the snake, her man’s hat pushed back on her short-cropped hair which hardly showed any sign of grey. Her skin was surprisingly fine for someone working outside so much of the time. Leathery, okay, but fine-tanned leather. The fucking cats were all over the place again.
“I was wondering if you’d be coming back,” she said with a knowing laugh.
“I can give you a hand if you need one.”
“Did you come to help or to ask more questions?”
“You’re very suspicious.”
“I’m not a child, Neef Flip. And I know you’ve been asking around.” Without warning, she said. “Old Hans Magic came round early this morning to find out what you were here for yesterday.”
“What’s it to him?”
“He wanted to know if you’d seen Emma yet.” Busy as she was, shifting the large stone jugs in which she captured her spirit, I could see she was watching me intently.
“He can come to me if he wants to find out,” I said, annoyed.
“I think he wants you to come to him.”
“He can wait,” I said. But actually I felt quite smug; it allowed me some space to manoeuvre in. I squatted down to caress one of the cats, a beautiful ginger tabby. I’m not particularly partial to cats but somehow they always seek me out. Must be my smell, my hairiness, whatever. And Tall-Fransina’s collection fascinated me; they were like erotic dreams emerging from some secret dark place
. Their eyes, amber or jade, suggested a kind of arch-female wisdom.
So Filthy
“You have a way with cats,” she said approvingly.
“They’re less suspicious than their madam.”
“I have reason,” she said. “Not because of you, but people in general. If you lived here you’d have known. How one is always being watched, by everyone. How each one of them is always on the lookout for a chance to get at the others. You can’t take anyone at their word. Cats are different. Once they decide to let you into their lives it’s for ever.”
“What’s Hans Magic got on me?”
“He doesn’t know what to make of you. He’s always had some hold on everybody here, because they’re so scared of him. Now you’re moving in between them and him.”
“What’s he trying to hide?”
“It’s not a matter of secrets. It’s the way everybody here stands together. You must remember, we lot all know one another, but you came in from outside. People are curious, you’re a mystery to them, and now that Grandpa Lukas has opened the gate they want to talk to you. But of course they’re scared too. They don’t know what you’re going to do with what they tell you.” Unexpectedly, she said, “You mustn’t be too hard on poor old Hans. He doesn’t mean bad.”
“There’s no need for you to defend him.”
“He’s a terribly lonely man,” she said. “And there was a time when he was very different. Before he became so bitter and filthy.”
“What happened?”
“Ag, let bygones maar be bygones.”
“Why did he want to know about Emma?”
“Have you spoken to her?”
“I’m on my way to her right now.”
“You’ll have to wait for the afternoon. In the mornings she helps Lukas Death in the schoolroom.” She must have noticed how the news upset me. “What is it you want from her?”
“I can’t tell before I’ve seen her. It’s just that one way or another every single conversation in this place seems to point to her.”
“It’s because they’re all feeling guilty about Little-Lukas.”
“I rather got the impression that they’re blaming him. Yesterday you said something like that yourself.”
“It’s not that I’m blaming him. It just makes me sad. He spent so much time here with me, you know. Playing with the cats, like you. I was the only person he could really open his heart to. When he was small his mother was too sickly to look after him, so I more or less brought him up.”
“And then he left you for Emma?”
“You mustn’t take literally what I said yesterday. It wasn’t like that at all.” Fucking formidable in her silence, her dignity, her loneliness, she stood opposite me.
“It’s over now,” I said, with a kind of sympathy that caught myself by surprise.
“One still tries to hold on. Especially after it’s all slipped through your fingers. Like sand. Like water.”
“Little-Lukas is dead,” I said, “and it doesn’t seem right to me that the Devil’s Valley should begrudge Emma the fact that she’s still alive.”
“Is that what it looks like to you?”
“Isn’t it true?”
She turned back to her work. “Better ask her yourself.”
On His Easel
The school was still on, so Emma wouldn’t be home yet. But as I came past Gert Brush’s house he appeared in the doorway and called me to bum a cigarette.
There was a painting on his easel in the voorhuis, but when I came in he hastily put another in front of it. In spite of the wooden, naive style, I immediately recognised the features of Lukas Death. But like most of Gert Brush’s work it had been overpainted many times: on the top layer was Lukas Death as one saw him today, thin and righteous, with his hang-dog face. But clearly visible underneath was another portrait of the same face, only much younger. More shadowy in the background, in deeper half-obscured layers, loomed the ghost of yet another, a quite frightening face with two red glowing eyes. And behind this one still more shadows.
What struck me, like on the other paintings by Gert Brush I’d glimpsed before, was the weird use of colour: everything was done in whites and pinks, like fucking marshmallows, so that all the portraits looked seriously sick to the point of unworldliness. I didn’t want to offend the artist, but I was curious to know more.
Gert came up with a very practical explanation: “Well, you see, I never had any lessons, it was just my father who taught me. And he also had trouble with the colours. I tried everything, man, once I even went to the Little Karoo with Isak Smous to see if I could find better colours there, but they don’t seem to make skin-colour.” He placed his hand on the canvas next to Lukas Death’s face. “See? It’s just not the same.”
I bent over the messy table on which his brushes and paints and oil and turps were spread. “This is not really my line, Gert,” I said, “but I’m sure with only white and red you’re never going to get it right. Shouldn’t you mix in something darker? Brown, perhaps?”
“Brown?” he asked, shocked. “But I’m painting white people, Neef Flip.”
“Why don’t you give it a try?”
“They’ll skin me alive, man.”
He was so upset that I decided not to meddle with his aesthetics any further. I returned to the painting on the easel to study the pink images.
“Why are there two portraits of Lukas Death?”
Gert turned his head to the side. “The earlier one I did at least twenty years ago. It was time to bring him up to date.”
“The younger face looks like Little-Lukas.”
“Could be.”
“Are you going to paint over the first one now?”
“Ag man, the more I try to paint out the old ones the more they come back. Yesterday, for example, you couldn’t see young Lukas Death at all. Nor his father, old Lukas Devil, looking over his shoulder there. But you can see for yourself, today they’re back.” He stroked a finger lightly across the ghostly face; a smear of paint came off.
Golden Billy Goat
“How did Lukas Devil get his name?”
“He must have been the most unruly of all the Lermiets. He was born with two goat’s feet, you know,” said Gert Brush, touching again with a possessive gesture the vague image lurking behind the layers of paint on his canvas. “No one dared to cross him. About forty years ago, they say, he took on a couple of census officials sent to get the particulars of all the people in the Devil’s Valley. We didn’t want them here, but they stood their ground and of course they had the government behind them. But Lukas Devil said the hell with that thing they call the government. He found a way to get the two of them into the church, told them he wanted to introduce them to some of the oldest inhabitants, and when they got to the tower he closed the door behind them, and there they stayed until they were skeletons.”
“The man sounds like a real terror.”
“You can say that again,” said Gert Brush, picking up steam. “And there was something else he did which caused quite a stir. The way I heard it, Isak Smous’s father, old Jeremiah Smous, cheated Lukas Devil out of a billy goat. The Smouses have always been a crooked lot. Well, Lukas Devil wasn’t a man to trifle with. So one day when Jeremiah Smous was over the mountains on a trip, Lukas Devil took a tin trunk full of coins from under the old swindler’s bed and then he and Smith-the-Smith’s father smelted the whole lot and made a golden billy goat out of it. Anyway, just before church the following Sunday they put the goat on the pulpit to shame the Smous family in front of God and the whole congregation.”
“What happened?”
“One thing I can tell you, and that is that Jeremiah Smous never tried to swindle anyone again. He’d learned his lesson. But he bore a grudge to the day of his death, and he got old Hans Magic’s father to cast a spell on Lukas Devil and Smith-the-Smith’s father to plague the two of them with nightmares for the rest of their lives. It didn’t work with Lukas Devil, they say his goat’s feet made h
im immune to spells. But Smith-the-Smith’s father never had a proper night’s sleep again. He died with his eyes open. And Smith himself is so scared of nightmares that every evening he makes four new golden horseshoes to shoe that mare if it shows up. They say it’s the only cure for a nightmare, to corner it and put a new golden shoe on each of its hooves.”
“And the gold comes from that billy goat they made out of Jeremiah Smous’s coins?”
“That’s right. And every morning Smith-the-Smith smelts the shoes again, because they have to be fresh every night, or else they won’t work.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I’m not saying it’s true. I’m just telling you what the people say. Not all of them either, because you’ll hear so many stories in this place you can never be sure what really happened.”
“I was beginning to wonder whether they’re trying to pull a fast one on me.”
“They’re dead serious about it,” he ticked me off. “And you’ll be making the mistake of your life if you don’t believe them.”
I shook my head. “If you’re here for only a few days like me, it’s enough to make your head turn.”
“It just depends on how long you can go on.”
“You think I’ll get to the truth in the end?”
He grinned. “I suppose it just depends on what you call the truth, Neef Flip.”
Perhaps Both
Leaning over to inspect the painting more closely I accidentally pushed against it. I managed to catch it, but in the process I couldn’t help noticing the painting behind it, the one he’d been working on when I came in. And once again I found myself looking at the face of the girl at the rock pool. No doubt about the likeness, even though it had only been blocked in large, preliminary strokes. The face showed some detail, but the rest of the figure was little more than a smear, as if he hadn’t decided yet whether it should be a nude or a woman in a full-length dress. Perhaps both. Once again there was a hint of earlier figures lurking in the layers of paint.