1998 - Devil's Valley

by Andre Brink

  “Morning, Tant Poppie, morning, Oom. Pa says it’s going bad with us too, thank you, and Ouma Liesbet Prune flew up to heaven in the night.”

  She must have been blown off the roof, was my first thought; but then I remembered how I’d seen her sitting there well after the wind had died down.

  “Where did you hear that?” I asked.

  “Everybody says so, Oom. Oom Ben Owl too.” He started choking on a gob of mucus.

  “Well, she’d been waiting long enough,” said Tant Poppie, in such a hurry to go that she didn’t even bother to remove her soiled apron.

  I followed hard on her heels, but Piet Snot plucked me back by the arm. “Oom?”

  “What’s up now?”

  “Oom forgot the chameleon.”

  Cursing under my breath, I hurried back to pick up the chameleon in my room, and then rushed out, followed by the little boy like a streak of snot.

  Jesus Christ

  A crowd had gathered in the dusty road below Ouma Liesbet’s house or what was still left of it. Only now, in the daylight, could I see the full extent of the damage. The back of the roof had blown off, and what remained looked like an old coir mattress someone had ripped open beyond repair.

  Ben Owl was addressing the people, but the voices in his head joined in so loudly that it was difficult to distinguish his words from theirs.

  Just after midnight, he said, he’d been working behind the house doing some salvaging, when he saw a white cloud approaching from the mountain opposite. It was the kind of shimmering white of a cloud when the full moon shines on it, even though last night there hadn’t been much of a moon to speak of. The cloud stopped right above the house, where it began to glow brighter and brighter, until it looked like a brazier filled with flames. As he stood there, fucked out of his mind, the ball of fire began to descend until it was hovering exactly above the chimney where Ouma Liesbet had spent so many years waiting. And when it moved up again, she was gone, except for her little trunk gleaming through the flames, like a whitehot iron in Smith-the-Smith’s furnace. For a long time he could still hear her shrill little voice calling out, “I’m coming, my Lord, I’m coming, oh Jesus Christ!” Afterwards the fire slowly died down and the little white cloud drifted back over the mountains from where it had come.

  “Come up and see,” said Ben Owl, turning his large red-rimmed eyes straight to me as if the whole report had been meant for me alone. “Where the fire picked her up the straw is burnt right through.”

  It was true all right. In small groups, to prevent the roof from falling in, we went up the crumbling attic staircase and then along the ridge of the roof to the remains of the chimney. There was a rough black circle burnt through the thatch. One could see the scant furniture in the voorhuis from above: table, chairs, Ben Owl’s crumpled bed.

  Against that overwhelming evidence there was nothing to bring in. And in the midst of the general amazement I said nothing either.

  Shocking Whiteness

  I thought it prudent to go my own way. I wanted to check on the rest of the storm damage. And it was a fucking depressing sight indeed. Almost no house had escaped unscathed. Several walls had partially collapsed, roofs had fallen in, lean-tos and sheds and chicken-runs had been torn apart and the bits and pieces were strewn all over the place. High up in the bluegum forest I could see a number of bewildered ostriches huddled in the trees. The place looked like the wreck of a fallen plane. It would take bloody weeks to clear up.

  Near Jurg Water’s shed I heard the familiar chattering of girls’ voices and stopped short. I really didn’t feel like facing them right now. But before I could get away Henta and her shock of shrikes came bursting through the blown-off door, rushing right past me in a flutter of frocks and arms and legs, like feathers in a poultry-run after a fox had broken in; one could barely distinguish one from the other. Only Henta stood out among them with her ruddy cheeks and wild red hair.

  She stopped for a moment as she came past me. Her eyes stared straight at me, frank and impertinent. She gave no sign of remembering what had happened between us before. That first morning here in the shed. The night in the wood. The shocking whiteness of her body under the dress on the Sunday afternoon.

  “And how’s the world treating you?” I asked with stilted formality, taking a cautious step back, just in case.

  “Oh fine.” An uninhibited laugh. “It’s just great.”

  The next moment she ran off after the others. She was the only one in this place, I thought, who didn’t try to pretend things were going fucking badly. But that wasn’t what most preoccupied my thoughts. What struck me, almost like a physical blow, was that she had really not remembered. Yesterday, quite simply, had never happened. For her, nothing had yet happened. She existed outside of memory, beyond the reach of history.

  Round the corner of the house Jurg Water appeared. He stopped when he recognised me. Made no attempt to greet me, just stood there scowling. He, too, seemed to have no recollection of what we had shared one violent night. This was not the time or the place to confront him. But sooner or later it had to happen. There was a silent appointment between us which would have to be kept.

  I walked on again. Now I knew exactly where I was going.

  Smoked Ham

  IT WAS TIME to seek out a man I’d met only briefly. Without any more delay, tape recorder in my pocket, I took the footpath through the tangle of fynbos in the direction of the hut I’d first seen from Ouma Liesbet’s roof.

  Hans Magic was sitting on a rickety old paraffin case at his front door, his short legs barely touching the ground, his outlines blurred by a cloud of flies that surrounded him like an aura. A second box had already been set out for me. I could smell him from a distance. Never in my life have I seen such a filthy human being: in full daylight it was even worse than the evening he’d surprised me among Tant Poppie’s muti. But he seemed blithely unaware of it himself and welcomed me with a broad grin which revealed all three of his greenish-brown stumps of teeth. The kind of bright-and-clear ugliness Ouma Liesbet Prune had spoken about.

  “I was wondering when you were coming to see me,” he said, exhaling a fume of unnameable stenches. “I was beginning to think you’re scared.”

  “Should I be scared then?” I challenged him.

  He sidestepped me deftly. “People think all kinds of things. The question is what you think.”

  “I’m here to find out.”

  “You’ve been putting it off for a long time. But sit down.” He patted the upended box beside him.

  I cautiously shifted the box a couple of paces away, out of the worst fumes and the buzzing circle of flies.

  Hans Magic had a calabash pipe in his hand. The smell of dagga was unmistakable. He promptly held out the pipe to me. My first reaction was to refuse. My dagga-smoking days were over, and ever since the hassles with Marius I’d been virulently against any form of drugs. Also, if I do have to go to hell one day it’d better be for something really worthwhile, not piddling little sins. Instinctively, my hand moved to my shirt pocket for my packet of Camels, but of course it was empty.

  “You have no choice,” grinned Hans Magic, as if he understood my predicament, exhaling a new blue cloud. His face was as weatherbeaten as an old smoked ham.

  I hesitated for another moment before accepting the pipe. At least the dagga would camouflage the many other smells.

  “What have you got there?” he asked, pointing at my tape recorder.

  “This is my own magic,” I joked. “I catch voices with it.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “I’ll show you.” I’d pressed the Record button just before I arrived; now I wound it back and played him the bit of conversation I’d registered. His colourless eyes flickered when he heard his own voice: I was wondering when you were coming to see me. I was beginning to think you’re scared. And the rest.

  I switched it off.

  “You people think you’re very clever,” was all he said.


  “Do you mind if I use it?”

  “Do as you like.” He puffed away, closing his small eyes with pleasure. Then he offered me the pipe again. “So Ouma Liesbet has left us,” he said.

  I inhaled briefly, handed back the pipe and found a comfortable spot for the tape recorder on my lap. As a precaution I kept to the edge of my box. “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “Ben Owl says she went to heaven.”

  “Who am I to argue with that?” Another puff, before he proffered the pipe again.

  “Do you believe it?” I asked, taking care not to inhale too deeply.

  “The question is what you believe,” he said. “If you believe she went up, she’s there. If not, I suppose she isn’t.”

  “It can’t be so easy, Oom Hans.”

  “I didn’t say it was easy. Believing may be the most difficult thing of all.”

  “I just don’t know what to believe.”

  His smoke drifted between us like a ghostly presence. I added my own small puff.

  Rare Gift

  “You didn’t come here to talk about Ouma Liesbet, did you?” asked Hans Magic, at peace with the world.

  “Did you kill Little-Lukas?” I asked him straight out.

  He placed his elbows on his knees, staring into the distance. “When I was still a little pisser,” he said, “I discovered a curious thing. I’d be sitting in my ma’s kitchen, on the foot-stove, when suddenly a strange feeling would come over me and I’d see somebody’s face before me. Then, without knowing what got into me, I’d start to cry and say that person’s name. And before nightfall someone would bring news that such and such a one had died.”

  “And it still happens?”

  “It happens. You see, it’s a rare gift. And if you ask me, it comes all the way from old Seer Lermiet himself. But he misused it, and that’s a bad thing.” He fell silent for so long that I began to think he’d lost track of his thoughts, but then he resumed. “At first it scared me. I didn’t want to know about it. It’s not a pleasant thing to have in you, people start giving you dirty looks, no one wants to have anything to do with you. You can see how far apart I live from them.”

  “Were you never married?”

  He chuckled. “Why should I? In my father’s family he was the only man who got married and he died young. It doesn’t agree with us.”

  “It must be a very lonely life.”

  “It’s really because of my mother,” he said, sucking pensively on the calabash pipe. “It hit her hard when my father died. She was scared of getting old on her own. And when I was four years old she took me to the church and made me swear an oath on the Bible that I’d never marry but look after her till she died.” A resigned sigh. “She didn’t die before she was in her eighties, and by then my time was over.”

  “Did you never regret that oath?”

  “Ag.” He cleared his throat. “When I was younger and before I knew any better, yes, I suppose I did. Once the urge became so great it got as far as the church. But when we stood before the pulpit, my mother got up from her pew and told everybody I took an oath before the Lord, I couldn’t break it. And so I came back without my bride.”

  “Who was the bride?” I asked.

  “It was so long ago it doesn’t matter any more.” He began to puff furiously and the flies rose up in a buzzing cloud before coming to rest again.

  “Was it Tall-Fransina?” I guessed out loud.

  “Leave Fransina out of this.” He narrowed his eyes. “What did she tell you?”

  “I was just asking.”

  He sat mumbling to himself for a while. Unsavoury as he was, I couldn’t help feeling a tinge of pity for the old fucker. I remembered Tall-Fransina’s words, There was a time when he was very different. Before he became so bitter and so filthy.

  “This loneliness must kill you,” I commiserated.

  But his moment of vulnerability had passed. “I’m well looked after,” he said. “The women take turns to send me food and things.” He exhaled another godawful whiff over me. “In the past, when my blood was still warm, they used to send me some tail too, in the evenings. Their way of staying in my good books. Now I’m done with such things. Life gets easier as you grow older.”

  He handed me the pipe again. I was beginning to feel more relaxed.

  “And the gift has remained with you?”

  “All these years, yes.” His eyes gleamed with malicious glee.

  “I’d like to know more about it. Little-Lukas told me about a thief you once trapped.”

  “Ja. I caught his shoe in Jos Joseph’s vice.” He laughed deep in his throat. “And if you must know, it was Ben Owl who came crawling to me with his shattered foot to claim his shoe and beg for mercy. To this very day he walks with a limp. And I promise you he never tried to steal again. Of course he can’t stand the sight of me, but he’s shit-scared all the same.”

  “Useful gift to have,” I commented. “You can strike anyone you take a dislike to.”

  Heap of Goosefeathers

  “It’s not for me to decide, man. It either comes over me or it doesn’t. That’s where Grandpa Lermiet went wrong. You see, he lost interest in his first wife when she became sickly and turned his eye to someone else. So he told everybody he’d seen a vision that Bilhah was to be his wife and he promptly took her into his bed. No wonder Mina gave up and died. That kind of thing just leads to trouble.” Once again his briny little laugh. But he chose to puff away for a while before he spoke again. “Now take the widow of old Giel Eyes. She’s another one that picked up problems with me. Drieka. One day when old Giel was still alive, she was sitting there on her stoep tearing up an old sheet for cloths. I came down from the mountain where I went to have a chat to the old Seer, and I was so thirsty my tongue was like shoe-leather. So I asked her for a drink of water. Now can you imagine, she lost her temper. “Can’t you see I’m busy? You bloody old good-for-nothing, you can wait, can’t you see I’m tearing cloths?” And right there the feeling came over me. I couldn’t help myself. And I said, “All right then, to hell with you, go on tearing cloths, tearing cloths.” And off I went.”

  “What happened?”

  “Drieka has been tearing cloths ever since, I can tell you. She tore up that sheet until it looked like a heap of goose-feathers. And then she started on the curtains. When all her windows were stripped she went on to the next house. That’s why you won’t see a single curtain in the Devil’s Valley. Old Giel got so angry, he was a short-tempered old bastard, he got a stroke and within a week he was dead.”

  “And then it stopped?”

  “Not a damn. They had to start tying Drieka up in her chair, out of reach of all kinds of cloth. Because if she breaks loose she starts tearing whatever she can lay her hands on. There isn’t a single table-cloth or sheet or blanket left in her house. These last few years old Petrus Tatters started calling on her, at first because he felt sorry for the poor thing, so he took her old sheets and stuff to tear up. But one day she got so carried away she tore the clothes from his body and that set them off on new adventures. These days he goes over with or without cloths to tear. Every night, when they think no one sees. That’s where he got his name. Petrus Tatters. If he visits Drieka he has to leave all his clothes outside on the stoep, otherwise he goes home bare-arsed.” Through a deeply pleasurable puff he started choking with laughter; I no longer tried to keep up. “Not that that stops him.”

  “Don’t you think the poor woman has suffered enough?”

  “I told you it’s out of my hands. If I get the feeling, I’ll make it stop. Otherwise there’s nothing I can do. People don’t understand, and then they get mad at me. Not that it takes all that much to make them mad.”

  “I noticed at yesterday’s prayer-meeting,” I said. “They all had some pretty nasty things to say about the others.”

  “That’s just the way we are,” he said. “Everybody knows everything about everybody else, so they can get their teeth into the
juiciest bits. At least it keeps life interesting.”

  But as he spoke I was wondering: perhaps there was something even worse in the Devil’s Valley—the suspicion that nobody really knew anything. Because when you know that others are watching all the time, you make sure that they only see what you want to be seen. In the end you reveal nothing at all, and all remain huddled over their own riddles. It’s like a pond covered with leaves. Where everything seems so open and exposed, it’s easy to miss what lurks below.

  Quite Forward

  “Are you sure you never misuse your gift, Oom Hans?”

  “How do you mean?” He was too far gone from the dagga to become angry, but I did pick up an edge to his voice; and his fumes seemed to give off a more pungent smell than before.

  “What have you got against Emma?” I asked him point-blank.

  “Is that what she told you?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.” I pointed at the tape recorder and reminded him, “Remember this thing hears everything, and it never forgets.”

  He sat staring at the little black gadget for a minute. “It’s Emma who hates me,” he said at last, like a wizened old child trying to pass the buck. “I never did anything to her. She got a grudge against me because I’m the only man in the Devil’s Valley who never fell for her. Not that she hasn’t tried. Emma can be quite forward. It was she who kept on asking Poppie to send her over here with food or this and that, a jug of witblits, a jersey or a scarf or a pair of gloves.” He grunted. “But I don’t fall for that.”

  I nearly blew a gasket, but the old swine looked so pathetic with indignation that I felt more pity than rage. Also, I knew I should try not to antagonise him, as it could boomerang on Emma. “All I’m asking, Oom Hans, is that you try to understand. She’s been through a rough time.”

  “You mustn’t believe everything she says.”

  His eyes looked at me, a greyish dullness in them, and it took a while for me to remember what they reminded me of: Little-Lukas’s ashes in their box, sodden with White Horse. Not a particularly inspiring association.