1998 - Devil's Valley

by Andre Brink

  The Fig Instead

  She waited for him to disappear before she said with a rasping chuckle. “You can’t blame poor Ben. Maria was a pretty young thing and he was head over heels in love. That’s how it goes once a man has looked up into the tree.”

  “What tree are you talking about now?”

  “Our grandparents used to say mos that after God made Eve from Adam’s rib the two of them lived together very happily in the Garden. The only problem was that Adam never knew what to do with a woman, no one had ever taught him, know what I mean? But on the day of the apple, Eve was standing with her legs wide apart on a branch high up in the tree, and as Adam looked up he saw for the first time what there was to see. And when she offered him the apple he chose the fig instead.”

  I grinned, but my thoughts were burrowing elsewhere. “I’m sure I’ve heard that story before, Ouma Liesbet. But didn’t it start with the Hottentots again?”

  “Why are you always going on about the Hottentots? It’s a story first told by our own people and they knew what they were talking about. Because Paradise was right here in the Devil’s Valley, you see. The tree the woman stood in grew at the very end of the dry riverbed that comes down from the mountains. When God chased Adam and Eve out of here, He sent an angel with a flaming sword to split the tree in two. But before that happened it must have been a sight to see. They say the branches were spread right over the rock pool where ever since Mooi-Janna’s time the girls of the valley used to swim naked. Which is why the hole is still taboo to the menfolk. I often swam there myself. If you saw me when I was young you’d have worked up an appetite for fruit too.”

  Far and Wide

  “It was forbidden fruit you and Ben buried in the graveyard, Ouma Liesbet.”

  “How could we leave that poor young woman under a heap of stones?”

  “In which grave did you put her then?”

  “It lies a bit to one side. There’s no name on the headstone, only a question mark.”

  I pricked up my ears: “Who was it first dug for?”

  “That stone stands for many people.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, you see,” she said, “many of our people couldn’t be buried here, for one reason or another. They’re far and wide in the world. So this grave is here for all of them. If they happen to visit, and it’s only natural for the dead to wander, then at least they have a place to stay over.”

  “And who would they be?”

  “Oh all kinds.” She was silent for a while. “Lukas Nimrod for one. After he was killed by that peg or quill or whatever he got in his head his old hunting friends decided to bury him far away in the mountains. Some say it was because of his wife. A nasty woman she was who never liked to have him at home. She got just what she deserved when they put him away elsewhere. A woman like that is a disgrace to all of us who keep the commandments.”

  “And who else was the grave meant for?”

  “Ag, you won’t know them.”

  “What about Little-Lukas?”

  “I wouldn’t mind that. But the people can be difficult, you know. These last few years more and more of the young ones have gone away to settle outside the Valley. You can see for yourself how few are left. There are more people living in the graveyard than in the houses. So the ones who leave are written off, and people won’t want to make an exception of Little-Lukas.”

  “I wish you’d tell me more about the place.”

  “By rights I shouldn’t share the Lord’s time with you,” she said. “But if you really want to know, all right, then I’ll tell you so you can know once and for all how it all fits together.”

  It was like a sun coming up. “I’ll bring along my tape recorder tomorrow and record it all,” I proposed enthusiastically.

  “Your what?”

  I tried to explain, but soon realised it was no use. “I’ll show you tomorrow. Then you can tell me the whole history.”

  Had I known then what I know today I’d have stayed right there and tried to memorise it all instead.

  Toothless Grimaces

  As far as I could make out, Ben Owl was fast asleep downstairs in the pigsty of a house when I came down from the roof, so I had no choice but to go home. Tant Poppie was working on her doepa. The smell was earsplitting. She stood up when I came in, pressing one hand to her lower back. Her inquisitive eyes scurried across my hairy body like ants.

  “And how are you?” I asked dutifully.

  “Terrible, thank you,” she said, and proceeded, as usual, to give me a rundown on all her aches and pains.

  I pretended to listen with great interest and then turned to my room, but stopped on the doorstep. “Why is everybody in the Devil’s Valley always telling me things are going badly?”

  “It’s because the Devil is watching day and night,” she answered like she was giving me an ordinary, practical piece of information. “If he finds out that things are going well he turns on you in a flash, because he can’t stand that.” She wiped her hands on her filthy apron. “Let’s say I’m going to give a hand with a birth, then I mos always take a dirty rag with me, just in case it turns out to be a good-looking baby. If it is, I tie the rag round the child’s arm there and then, so that if anybody happens to say what a lovely baby it is, the parents can answer, “Ah but look at that filthy old rag.” That keeps the Evil One away.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you’re feeling fine?”

  “I’m not saying anything.” She turned back to her medicines and I went to my room.

  There, a hopeless task, I tried to dab the worst smell of sweat from my body with a cupful of water and pulled my crumpled shirt on again. The two skulls, one whole and one half, I placed on the wash-stand beside the almost empty pitcher. With small toothless grimaces they stared at me while I dutifully fed the fucking chameleon a few more of the maimed flies Piet Snot had brought and which I’d been keeping in a jar.

  Only after that, as I settled on the bed to catch up with my notes, did I discover that something was missing. The fucking black dress I’d hidden under my pillow when I’d made the bed. I got up to investigate. The ribbon my first visitor had left behind and which I’d stowed inside my rucksack was also gone.

  I was the hell in. Not so much about the loss, I’d never set much store by collecting sexual trophies, but about the mere fact that someone had mucked about in my private stuff behind my back.

  Fornicating

  I went to the door again. Tant Poppie was still busily at work, her huge posterior turned to me. “Tant Poppie.”

  She straightened up with a groan, her face red and streaked with sweat.

  “Was there somebody in my room this morning?”

  “Didn’t see anyone.” Her squinting eyes were moving in such a way that I couldn’t pin either of them down. “Is something wrong then?”

  “There’s some of my stuff missing.”

  “Ja?” She wobbled across the floor to the dining table to fill a calabash pipe with dagga. It took an unconscionable time.

  “From under my pillow.” I was beginning to wonder whether it was wise to have broached the subject at all. What would she do if she found out that I’d been fornicating under her roof—even if it had been more or less forced on me?

  Tant Poppie clearly was in no mind to make things easier for me. “What exactly is it you’re missing?”

  I hesitated. “Some clothing.”

  “Now who on earth would want to take your clothes?”

  All right, I thought: if that was how she wanted to play it, two could tango. “A black dress.”

  The shiny full moon of her face remained blank. “How did a black dress land under your pillow?”

  “Tant Poppie, you were here on Sunday when those women came visiting and brought me gifts.” I made a deliberate pause. “And presented their daughters to me.”

  “What about it?”

  “These last few nights there were women coming to my room.”

  �
��I’m a light sleeper and I didn’t hear anything.”

  “That’s too bad. All I’m saying is that they were here. One of them left her dress behind, another a ribbon. Now they’re gone.”

  “I suppose they just came to fetch them back. The people who live here don’t have clothes to spare. This morning I was out for a long time with Sarie Cucumber.”

  “Will you recognise the women if I describe them to you?”

  “What did they look like?”

  “Well, I didn’t see any of them very clearly. But the first one had webbed toes and the second a harelip. The third was covered in hair, all over her body.”

  For once her eyes were staring very straight, but whether she was focusing on me or on something behind me was still difficult to make out.

  “The hairy one could have been Magda. Her father is old Petrus Tatters. But there’s no telling, because her late mother was just the same.” She folded her arms and said with some amusement, “Birds of a feather, hey?” Then she tugged at her dirty apron and took another pull from her pipe. “As for the others, I’m not so sure. We’ve always had lots of harelips around here, so it’s hard to say. And Jos Joseph had a daughter with webbed feet, Truida Duck, but she died years ago.”

  “You’re not suggesting…?”

  Nightwalkers

  “Neef Flip.” She came to stand right in front of me, one hand on a hip, talking through a cloud of smoke. “Who says your visitors were real women?” She knew exactly how to stretch a pause. “They could have been nightwalkers.”

  “What’s nightwalkers?”

  “That’s what the old people called them. There are males and females, and they usually come out in times of trouble. If a male finds a woman on her own he jumps her. And the females go for men. They suck you dry leaving only a husk behind.”

  “You can say that again,” I said wryly. “But that still doesn’t mean that my visitors were nightwalkers. I know a woman’s body.”

  “Nightwalkers have bodies too, and very lusty ones besides.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “One knows a nightwalker by the company it keeps. It’s usually an owl and a baboon.”

  Once again the feeling of my body hair standing up. But I tried to suppress it. “That’s pure superstition,” I said, irritable.

  “Don’t talk about things you know nothing about.” In splendid indignation she returned to her work. But after a moment she looked over her shoulder. “Look, if you expect another visitor like that, you just take a jug of Tall-Fransina’s witblits to the room with you and put it next to your bed, with a candle. When that nightwalker comes you quietly take a big mouthful and light the candle, and then blow your loaded breath right through the flame. I can assure you that’ll be the end of the nightwalker.”

  “Will it really work?”

  “If it doesn’t work,” she said without batting an eyelid, “then you take five more mouthfuls and close your eyes tight. After five minutes you will have forgotten all about her.”

  She turned back to her bags and boxes, making it clear that the conversation was over.

  But I couldn’t put it out of my mind. The dress and the ribbon, Tant Poppie’s hints about dead women, the nightwalkers clearly appropriated from some old Khoisan belief, just like Ouma Liesbet Prune’s stories. How many times had I come across these traces in the Devil’s Valley? Below these quiet waters ran fucking dark currents indeed.

  Prayer-Meeting in the Devil’s Valley

  From Our Crime Reporter

  THE COMMUNITY OF the Devil’s Valley gathered this Wednesday afternoon in the stone church erected generations ago by their ancestors to confirm their dedication to the cause of the Lord. According to the spokesman of the settlement, Mr Lukas (Death) Lermiet, there has seldom been such a demonstration of unity in the valley, a place which in the past was often characterised by strong divisions.

  The occasion was a prayer-meeting for rain, first called a considerable time ago but apparently postponed several times as it was felt that such measures should be resorted to only in the most dire circumstances. In the words of one of the most respected inhabitants of the Devil’s Valley, Mrs Poppie (Fullmoon) Lermiet, “God is a busy man, He can’t be bothered with trifles.”

  The pews were crammed to capacity, not only by the living but, as far as we could establish, by all the dead of the community as well. Conspicuous among these was the patriarch and founder of the settlement, Mr Lukas (Seer) Lermiet, generally known as Grandpa. Asked whether he had a special message for the occasion, Mr Lermiet said, “What I have to say I shall discuss man·to·man with God, not with the newspapers. Ever since the Commercial Advertiser in the time of the Great Trek we have lost faith in the press. It is all a plot of the English to take us over.”

  The meeting, which lasted for several hours, was led by the unofficial preacher of the congregation, Mr Brother (Holy) Lermiet, who opened the prayers. It was noteworthy that the entire service was conducted in High Dutch, and that even the members of the congregation not fluent in it tried their best to express themselves in that tongue. “One must have the decency to address the Lord in his own language,” declared Mr Petrus (Tatters) Lermiet. Another member of the congregation, who preferred to remain anonymous, explained, “It is to make sure that God can’t say afterwards, as he usually does, that he misunderstood.”

  Following the opening prayer, Mr Brother (Holy) Lermiet gave an extensive account of the critical circumstances in which the settlement found itself. “It pleased God our Almighty Father more than a century and a half ago to lead a handful of whites from the wilderness of the outside world to this haven,” he said. “Under his guidance we have laboured to maintain the purity of Christianity and civilisation in the face of all onslaughts. Today we find ourselves before an ordeal which may bring about our end. Because where can we turn to? We have taken root in this place, we have bought this small tract of earth with the sweat of our brow and the blood of our bodies, and here we shall die if we must. For it is better to perish in the land the Lord has granted us than to live abroad among the fleshpots of Egypt. Therefore, if God should summon us to die, then let us say Thy will be done. But if there is mercy and forgiveness of sins still to be found, so that we may survive and thrive in the blessings of His rain, let us avail ourselves of the opportunity to set things right between us and him.”

  After that the prayer-meeting was opened to the floor. Here follow extracts from some of the more striking prayers. Out of respect for the sensitivity of our readers expletives have been deleted where necessary.

  The Late Mr Lukas (Seer) Lermiet

  “God, yes, look, we didn’t mean to bother You today, but these are bad times and a man can’t just lie smelling his own (expletive deleted). I don’t know how well You know Jurg Water, but we kept on hoping he would find something with his divining rod. But now any tick can see he’s (expletive deleted) useless, which is why we’re talking to You under four eyes today. You know me as a man who doesn’t beat about the bush. I’m not like that great-great-great-greatgrandchild of mine, Lukas Death, who shies away when you corner him. Nor like Petrus Tatters who’s such a liar one never knows what to believe, especially when he starts tearing up cloths with the widow of old Giel Eyes. Nor like Brother Holy who picks his words from the Tree of Knowledge when they’re still green, while everybody knows all he really thinks about is (expletive deleted). I go straight to the fountain’s eye. So You’d better listen if I tell You about the (expletive deleted) this drought has already caused us. If You would take the trouble to walk from where I usually sit up there at the Gateway with the goats, and You follow the route I staked out when I first came down here with my family, along the Bird Krans and below the Honey Krans, past the Bushman pictures where Strong-Lukas’s name was written to honour his memory, You can go and look for Yourself if You don’t believe me, and then You cut down past Accident Bend, across Breakneck Heights and Hard-Times Hollow and Breakyoke, then down Jacob’
s Ladder to Griet’s Hole, past Snow Neck and Give-up, through the straits of So-help-me-God and Crynot and Tightballs, and then right past Great-Sorrow to Nebo’s Point, and from there to Breathless towards Mina’s Pisshole, all along the riverbed to the Tree-of-Knowledge and Mooi-Janna’s Pool, I hope You’re still with me: I’m saying that if You follow that road, right through our valley from Rotgut to Hans Magic’s hut, which he should really start cleaning up, the place smells like (expletive deleted), then all You see is just drought and desolation. If I were You, God, I’d be (expletive deleted) ashamed of myself. No one among us would let his house go to ruin like that, excepting Ouma Liesbet Prune who is past the age of accountability and Ben Owl who is too (expletive deleted) hopeless to do anything about it, then he’d have had his (expletive deleted) kicked well and proper. Have You no pride in Your handiwork any more? No father I know of, apart from that (expletive deleted) Jurg Water, treats his children so badly, but he’s only second-generation so he doesn’t know any better and there’s no excuse for Yourself. You think You can get away with murder. You’re very quick to claim the honour if things go well, but now that the world is (expletive deleted) You think You can wipe Your (expletive deleted) on us. So all I want to say, God, is that it’s time to pull finger. And we don’t want a little (expletive deleted) rain that’s like an old woman’s (expletive deleted). It’s life and death now, and what we need is a flood of blessings. You remember what old Ezekiel said about their issue like the issue of horses, well, that’s the kind of rain we need today. Anything less than that You can turn sideways and push up Your (expletive deleted). Amen.”

  Mr Isak (Smous) Lermiet a.k.a. Koen

  “Well, God, You have heard what Grandpa Lukas had to say, and I hope You know how to separate the wheat from the chaff, because the devil in him has never come to rest and for a man of his age he still talks a lot of (expletive deleted). Please forgive him for talking about himself all the time, You will remember that my late father always said pride comes before a fall, but I suppose he can’t help it, it runs in the Lermiet blood, and I thank You that in Your wisdom You allowed a trickle of Koen blood to be mixed into it, otherwise You alone would know where we’d be today, as it is we already have our hands full with all Your mistakes running around in the streets, it’s because this lot can’t stop (expletive deleted), but like Your servant Joshua said, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Now where was I? We all know it is the sin of the Lermiets that is still visited upon us, but if You can find it in Your heart to show this (expletive deleted) lot some mercy, I beseech You to let it rain, otherwise we shall have to consider packing up our belongings and trekking away. Don’t You have eyes in Your head, Lord, to see the wretched state we’re in? If our hearts must be cleansed first, then I propose You start with Petrus Tatters and Job Raisin and Smith-the-Smith and Peet Flatfoot and all those who are so (expletive deleted) in sin, and eradicate it from them. And for those of us who know the weakness of the flesh, please preserve us from Bettie Teat and Henta Peach and all the other (expletive deleted) who cavort among us and cause our (expletive deleted) to plague us by day and by night. And please tell the members of this congregation that I still have a few pounds of sugar and some Mauser bullets at the old price, and enough chintz for three women’s dresses and one for a girl, provided she’s not too big in the (expletive deleted). I thank you humbly, God, and you can take that as Amen too.”