1998 - Devil's Valley

by Andre Brink

  I didn’t know for how long we had been sitting there. I’d closed the flap of the blanket again, it was not an appetising sight; but we hadn’t moved since then. The moon was sliding downhill to the west, the stars were no longer where they’d been when we found her. Orion had begun to move in behind the mountains, the Southern Cross lay suspended upside down above the, farthest peak. The other constellations escaped me. I’m a dud with stars, as I suppose with most things. I’m the product of a difficult birth, my mother always complained. It was as if I refused to let go, and who can bloody well blame me? In the end I was pulled out with fucking forceps. And as he laid me in my mother’s arms the doctor, who must have been something of a seer himself, said in a commiserating tone of voice, “Mrs Lochner, you shouldn’t expect too much of this one.” Whenever I disappointed her, which was most of the time, she would repeat the story to me. In the end we grow into the stories laid out for us like clothes for a new day.

  “What are we going to do with her?” asked Emma, not for the first time.

  We’d already considered everything. Tant Poppie? Even she couldn’t raise the dead. Hans Magic? That might be jumping from the frying pan into the live coals. Or should we call on Lukas Death? In matters of life and death he was the obvious man to make the decisions. Perhaps we should simply carry the body to the church and wait for the reaction when the people gathered in the morning to bury Alwyn Knees and old Bart Biltong. This had been Emma’s idea, and there was much going for it. The less we had to do with it the better. But there would be questions asked, I’d argued, and sooner or later, in one way or another, they’d get to us, and then the shit would truly hit the fan.

  Nakedness of Her

  “We can’t leave her here all night, Flip.”

  It wasn’t cold, but I could feel her shivering lightly against me. I looked at the dark bundle on the ground beside us. For the first time I began to understand something more about the way in which the dead in this place continued to haunt the living. In a sense they are more real than the living, because the living merely pursue their own lives, but we assume the dead. It is only through us they can work through the unfinished business they left behind.

  “Why don’t we simply fill up the grave and leave her here for someone else to find?” I suggested.

  “Then they can get Jurg Water to point out the murderer with his rod,” she said flippantly.

  And that gave me an idea. “Emma, let’s bury her again. I’ll do the pointing out myself in the morning.”

  “But how? And why? It’s just asking for trouble.”

  “On the contrary. I think it’s going to give me just the kind of hold on them I need.”

  I briefly explained what I had in mind. She remained sceptical for a while, and even when she understood she still seemed fearful.

  “I think it’s too dangerous, Flip.”

  “I’ll protect you,” I assured her. “No one need ever know that you were here with me.”

  “I’m not worried about myself, it’s you.”

  The nakedness of her words was so disarming that for a moment I couldn’t speak. Then I said, “I promise you I’ll be careful.”

  “Do you honestly think it will work?”

  “It’s a chance I just have to take.”

  She helped me to slide the roll of blankets back into the shallow grave, then to fill it up again and restore as best we could the little patch of succulents and papery septennials on top.

  We had to go, yet we still tried to put it off for as long as possible. It wasn’t the shock as such that paralysed us, but something more difficult to explain. A sense, perhaps, of complicity. With death, and with the dead. Even if nothing else had happened between us before, there was now a kind of fatality that bound us. It was frightening, yet curiously and darkly comforting too. Whatever might yet happen, we were in it together. And maybe, in our circumstances, this was already more than we could have hoped for. For a hungry man even a quince that constricts the throat is succulent luxury.

  Pestering Her

  It was a wrench to turn away from her at Isak Smous’s dark house, but we had no choice. She was still frightened, but I made her promise to barricade her door.

  Tired as I was, I just couldn’t sleep. Everything that had happened continued to haunt me. God knows, we were still no closer to a solution of the goddamn riddle about Emma’s mother. The discovery of Ouma Liesbet’s death only compounded it. Who could have decided so treacherously to use the old woman’s hope of going up to heaven to get rid of her? Why would anybody have wished to do away with such a harmless old soul anyway? She’d never threatened anyone. All she’d done was to perch on her roof like a fucking old cat. And yet it would seem that that had been offence enough for someone to bash in her frail little skull.

  Our crime reporter in the role of detective.

  One by one I worked through all the inhabitants of the Devil’s Valley I’d met. Lukas Death and his wife Dalena. Tant Poppie Fullmoon, Hans Magic, Jurg Water, Petrus Tatters, Tall-Fransina, Brother Holy, Gert Brush, Smith-the-Smith, Jos Joseph, Job Raisin, the whole bloody caboodle.

  As far as I knew no one had ever paid much attention to her. They’d hardly mentioned her in all the conversations I’d had with them. I knew everybody seemed to be constantly bad-mouthing everybody else, but in a way Ouma Liesbet had long ago drifted out of the muddy whirlpool of their gossip. And I couldn’t remember anything from her own past which could still stir up resentment against her. The only person she saw regularly was Ben Owl who brought her food and drink and spent a few minutes in conversation with her on the roof every night. And I, of course.

  Could that have been the reason? But who could possibly have been so upset about my visits as to murder her?

  I shook the gravel of our few conversations through the sieve of my memory, but no diamond was left behind; not even a bantom. Except perhaps her promise to tell me ‘everything’ the next time I came? But surely that had been only between the two of us? The memory made me sit up. I saw once again Ben Owl’s head popping up from the edge of the roof as we spoke. Wasn’t there something suspicious about that? He was supposed to sleep all day and only come out in the dark.

  But even if he had overheard part of our conversation, what was so unusual about it? What were we talking about when he appeared?

  I got up and started walking about the room to exercise my thoughts as I tried to edge back, step by step, into our conversation. She’d called me up to the roof, right. I was on my way home with the two little skulls. Right again. It was coming back to me now. It was Maria we’d been talking about. Her death, the headstone with the question mark on it. I’d asked Ouma Liesbet why, if Maria was indeed her relative, she’d been brought up by Tant Poppie rather than by her own family. And then? Then she’d said something like, “Because Ben Owl was pestering her.” Spurred on by the fucking voices in his head? Yes, that was it. And it must have been at that very moment he’d popped up to ask what we’d been slandering about him.

  Afterwards, she’d told me her version of the Hottentot story about the first man who’d looked up from under the tree at his wife. The story Ouma Liesbet had so effortlessly transposed to Adam and Eve. That was when she’d promised to tell me everything the next time she saw me. But in the evening the storm came up and this morning Ben Owl, well past his bedtime, was telling everybody about how she’d gone up to heaven in the night. Ben Owl, you’re my man.

  Fork In It

  I was tempted to go out there and then and confront Ben Owl. But I checked myself. My tape recorder was still screwed up and even if I managed to force a confession out of the old nightwalker, who would believe me? It had to be done in public, if at all. And for that I had to wait for the funeral.

  But by now I felt bloody claustrophobic. My thoughts needed fresh air.

  Deceptively peaceful, the large hand of the night cupped over me. There was no sound, but I knew well enough that there were all sorts of things happening beyond the l
imits of my hearing, a whole wilderness of life and death that could surely drive one mad if ever it invaded the conscious mind. In spite of my good intentions, I set off towards Ouma Liesbet’s house. I mean, how could I stay away?

  And there I saw her perched on the roof again, as always.

  Clear as daylight. With the fucking little tin trunk on her drawn-up knees, her back leaned against the chimney. Just for a moment. When I looked up again she was gone. Down below, behind one of the black windows, I thought I saw movement.

  I hurried away much faster than was necessary, but thank heavens there was no one to see me. At least not as far as I could make out; but the feeling of being observed by invisible eyes everywhere in the night was very strong.

  Nowhere in the whole settlement was there any light. Even the back of Isak Smous’s house was dark.

  One way or another I got to the bluegum forest. I fell over a branch and grazed my palms. I didn’t even feel like fucking cursing. As I stumbled to my feet again, dusting my clothes, I had an idea. I retrieved the branch in the dark and held it up against the moonlight. There was a fork in it I could use. My wanderings in the dark had not been fruitless after all.

  After stripping the branch of all its twigs and dry leaves, I went home. In my room, by candlelight, I must have spent about an hour trying to carve it into a proper shape: a fork with two short handles and a long tail. Not a very professional job, I’ve never been a handyman (as Sylvia used to remind me at least once a week for thirty years); but it would do for my purpose. The activity helped me to get my thoughts under some kind of control. There was something familiar about it, which at first I couldn’t place. But then I remembered: weekday evenings at home, when I was a child, sitting at a corner of the kitchen table doing my homework, Ma paging through a magazine or laying out patterns on the table to cut out material for the dressmaking she did for a meagre income of her own; while Pa sat whittling away at little bits of wood for catapults, or stakes for his beans and tomatoes, or the occasional whip-handle for which his bywoner father had once been renowned; but as time passed the whittling became an end in itself. He would start by cutting a stick to the right length, then peel away the bark, and simply go on whittling and whittling away until there was fuck-all left; and then he would get up without even looking at the scattered shavings on the floor, and wind up the clock in the passage and go to bed.

  Somewhere in the course of my own whittling that night I must have fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, because when the church bell started tolling on the Friday morning, I woke up on my bed, still fully clothed, beside the white divining rod; and on the chair next to the bed the candle had burnt out in its pool of congealed wax.

  Cheer Up the Men

  “I CAN DIE FOR a good funeral,” said Tant Poppie over the breakfast table. “We mustn’t be late.” The ‘we’ made things easier for me.

  The church was full to capacity. In a community where this is the most important, if not the only, form of recreation, it came as no surprise. But it took bloody stamina to resist the heat and the heavy smell of armpits, crotches and feet. Fortunately it was still quite early in the morning, so there were no faintings. Under my windbreaker the forked stick was rather uncomfortable, but I had no choice and surely the cause deserved some kind of sacrifice.

  My eyes very soon found Emma among the women, but she didn’t once look in my direction.

  Brother Holy was his eloquent self again. A ringmaster in a fucking circus. And with consummate skill he fused the themes of drought and death.

  “Neither of the two brethren who are to be laid to rest today,” he intoned, “would have been here had it not pleased the Lord to visit us with drought.”

  Fucking old hypocrite. Only five days ago he’d joined in, with the same wild relish as the others, in the savage flogging of the very man he was burying today; yet all could be neatly fitted into the Great Plan of God. And without any transition he opened the floor.

  This time the prayers were shorter, and the tempers more frayed. Jos Joseph warned God that if things didn’t improve they’d be running out of souls soon. And out of wood too, as he couldn’t be expected to provide decent coffins at this rate. Which was a gross exaggeration, since Alwyn Knee’s coffin was a slap-up job made of off-cuts and boards for which there was no other use, a bloody disgrace. Lukas Death was concerned that the children’s education was buggered up by all the interruptions caused by prayer-meetings and the preparation of bodies for burial. Most of the other jobs in the Devil’s Valley, God was told in no uncertain terms, were also under threat: Tall-Fransina needed water to cool her witblits as it came from the still; Smith-the-Smith had to have a bucket ready for the irons from his furnace; Gert Brush complained about sweeping the roads without water to sprinkle for the dust to settle; Tant Poppie needed boiling water for births and her concoctions; Jurg Water felt that his authority at home was undermined if his daughter couldn’t wash the family’s feet before supper at night, and people were beginning to snigger because he could no longer divine the tracery of subterranean courses. And so it went on. Bettie Teat seemed to be the only person who still had some moisture on offer to cheer up the men in the settlement.

  Taken Off My Clothes

  After Brother Holy had once more reminded the Lord of the trouble they’d had digging two graves in the bone-dry earth, the congregation was invited to proceed to the cemetery. I’d have to make my move quite soon now, but I still didn’t know how to find an opening. In this mood there was rather less hope of success than I’d expected. But I didn’t have much choice. This place had become to me the threshold between the familiar and the impossible.

  On the way out I glanced at Emma again. This time my eyes fleetingly caught hers. But she gave no sign of recognition. She only looked frightened.

  In solemn procession the whole settlement filed out through the stained front door of the church, and from there round the building to the cemetery. Near the front, right behind Brother Holy, Lukas Death and the pall-bearers with the two coffins, was the pale, drawn widow of Alwyn Knees, her eyes hollow and feverish. With three wretched little kids clinging to her, she was conspicuously isolated from the rest of the congregation. As we entered through the wide whitewashed gate the woman faltered and had to lean against one of the blunt white pillars to stay on her feet. She seemed on the verge of collapse, yet no one came forward to help her. The little ones clutched her legs and started whimpering.

  Even if it turned the mood against me, I couldn’t leave the poor woman to her fucking fate like that. Stepping out of my place in the procession, I hurried towards her and put my arm around her. It was shocking to discover how thin she was. Her deadly white face looked up at me in fright, but I refused to let go.

  “Let me help you,” I said through my teeth. “Come on.”

  With the three children still holding on to her dress for dear life, we went on. The people kept a safe distance between us and them. We progressed to the two new graves dug side by side against the farthest wall. By this time the woman was hanging so heavily on my arm that I made her sit down on the nearest tombstone. A few people were muttering under their breath. There was trouble brewing. But then, to my surprise and relief, Tant Poppie broke from the crowd and seated herself beside the widow. The stone tilted into a slightly lopsided position, but it held. She scooped up all three children in one large arm and held them on her broad lap, where they sat too petrified to utter a sound.

  Brother Holy was getting ready to practise his scales, but he had to wait until the crowd had calmed down again after the brief disturbance. I’m not sure that was the most opportune moment, but it was bloody well now or never. Leaving the widow to Tant Poppie’s care I stepped forward to the preacher’s side.

  It felt like the first time I’d taken off my clothes in front of a woman, not knowing how she was going to react to my hairy body. Fucking naked I came into the world, I thought, and fucking naked I stand before you today. Do your damnedest, you bastards.
From all the faces swimming in the haze before me I picked out Emma’s eyes, large and very black below the straight dark brows in her pale face. And then the bedlam in me subsided into a strange kind of calm.

  Message

  “Thank you for the opportunity, Brother,” I said solemnly, as if it had all been agreed beforehand. I saw him gasping for breath in indignation, but before he could call on Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and their lesser brethren to assist him, I plunged right in: “It is an honour and a privilege to stand before you today as the guest of Grandpa Lukas Lermiet, even if the message entrusted to me is a sad one indeed.” I fell silent in what I hoped was a pregnant pause. “Three funerals in one day is a heavy blow for any community.”

  If my first pause was equal to a pregnancy of, say, six months, the second one was close to full-term. I allowed the wave of surprise to run through the whole congregation.

  “Let me explain,” I said in a tone of great solemnity, “my brothers and sisters.” Those were words I’d always dreamed of speaking in public. I know Ma had originally cherished ecclesiastical ambitions for me, but after the brief encounter with Maureen behind the sofa they were abandoned. Today I was finally living up to her expectations. Look, Ma, both hands.

  “The late Ounia Liesbet Prune appeared to me last night,” I announced. The second wave of reaction was even stronger than the first. I was beginning to relish the kind of power a man like Brother Holy takes for granted. “I was unable to sleep. My mind was heavy inside me. I went for a walk in the night. And as I passed Ouma Liesbet’s house I heard her calling my name. She was sitting on her rooftop as always.” It was not altogether a lie. “And then she spoke to me.”