1998 - Devil's Valley

by Andre Brink

  “They were like a pack of wild dogs.”

  She shook her head; perhaps it was the memory she was trying to shake off. “They’re not all like that.”

  “There aren’t many exceptions.”

  “Tant Poppie may be difficult, but she’s a good person,” she said wearily. “She already saved my life once.”

  “When was that?”

  “I had breast cancer,” she said nervously. “Without her I’d never have made it.”

  Almost reluctantly I asked, “What did she do then?”

  She avoided my eyes. “She does strange things. This time she tied up eight frogs in a cloth and pressed it to my chest. They started sucking, like leeches. But you know, the strange thing was I didn’t feel any pain. They just clung on until they got convulsions and fell off. Then she brought new frogs. And so she went on for eight days. After a hundred and twenty frogs—I kept count all the way—the cancer was sucked out.”

  “You could have died. If not from the cancer then from the remedy.”

  “It would have been better if I did,” she said in a strangled voice. “That would have spared us all a lot.”

  “You shouldn’t talk like that, Annie. You’re still young.”

  She paid no attention. “Thank you for coming with me,” she said, closing up again. “I’ll be all right now.”

  Hysterical Woman

  Outside, gusts of wind were tugging at the roof. It was getting dark. Black clouds were gathering at an alarming speed.

  “Let me help you put the children to bed.”

  “They’ll sleep now. Tant Poppie gave them something. For me too.”

  “Will you be able to sleep?”

  “No.”

  I carried the two children to the bedroom. The youngest, already limp with sleep, lay down in the double bed. As I bent over to cover the two with a blanket, something from very far away stirred inside me. Louise. Marius. In the time when, perhaps, they’d still been mine. Jesus.

  The wind was getting worse.

  “Won’t you be scared on your own?” I asked.

  “One must just get used to it.”

  “I’m not in a hurry. I could have a cup of coffee with you. If you’re sure you don’t want to lie down.”

  “No,” she said. “The moment I close my eyes Alwyn is there.”

  I pulled out a chair and sat down at the dining table. For a long time she remained standing with her back pressed to the jamb of the bedroom door, but at last she came past me to the kitchen to make the coffee.

  “Tant Poppie told me you lost your child too,” I said awkwardly.

  She kept her back to me as she worked at the hearth. Then, flaring up unexpectedly, she said, “I suppose I must thank the Lord for it. How could I bring another child up alone?” She swung round to me. “It’s my punishment for not wanting it.”

  “Don’t say such things. You’ll be sorry later.”

  “Why?” She pointed at the closed bedroom door. “There’s already three I never wanted.” She trembled. A hysterical woman, I anxiously told myself, is better not contradicted. She came to the table and leaned on her outstretched arms. “I’m not saying I don’t love them. But my God, do you think that’s what I wanted? Bringing babies into the world to the end of my fertile years? I’m not Bettie Teat.”

  “Annie, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “That’s right,” she cried through a storm of snot and tears, “that’s what they all say. How can I know? I’m mos just Annie-of-Alwyn. And before he took me I was Annie-of-Job, because my father is Job Raisin. Where was he this morning when I needed him? And where was Alwyn? Is there anybody left to help me, to be with me? Am I just a rag for others to wipe their feet on? Don’t I count for something too?” She went on blindly, without check or reason or anything. “It’s always others who take the decisions and give the orders in this place. What must be done, who must do it, why, when, where. Who must live, who must die. And all I’m expected to do is to scrape and bow and praise God, my Lord and Master!”

  She was folded double over the table in the rage of her fit of crying. And when I tried to take her by the shoulders she broke loose and swung a blow at me with such violence that she nearly lost her balance. But the action seemed to jolt her back to her senses. She stared at me in horror, her greasy hair in a tangle over her tear-streaked face.

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Let me make the coffee,” I said.

  “No. No, it’s my work.” But she was too unsteady on her legs to let go of the table. I pulled out a chair and made her sit down, then went through to the kitchen to pour the coffee into the mugs she’d already set out. Atrocious coffee. But it was hot. And we both needed it.

  Large Animal

  “How was it between you and Alwyn?” I asked. Perhaps it was ill-advised of me; but I got the impression that there was a hell of a lot she just had to get out of her system first.

  “Not good, not bad. Do you think the life of a chair is good or bad? As long as someone sits on it, it does what it’s supposed to do. That’s all.”

  “No, Annie.”

  “In the beginning one tries to resist,” she said, her eyes in a fixed stare. Outside the wind was like a large animal lowing and straining at its tether; but I doubt whether she was even aware of it. “You keep thinking it won’t go on like this forever, one day something will happen, this can’t be all there is.” She slurped at her coffee and gulped it down. “But then you find out that’s just how it is. It’s never going to be any different. The few who tried…” She closed her eyes as if the memory was too much for her.

  “Who were they?” I asked.

  “The last one was the girl Emma,” she said. The name made me sit up, but I tried not to let her notice. “She wanted to go and study. They said no. Dalena-of-Lukas and I and a few others tried to speak up for her. We knew what it’s like to want to get out of here. But we missed our chance, so all we could hope for was for Emma to go. Like on our behalf, you might say. The men told us to mind our own business, and when I came home Alwyn beat me up.” She moved her hands up to her bony shoulders. “He could never understand what was up with me. He said if my father couldn’t beat it out of me he would.”

  We were silent for a long time.

  Then I asked, “So that was that for Emma?”

  Annie nodded. “She tried to run away, but she was given a terrible hiding. Tant Poppie called in some of the men to help her. Ben Owl. Hans Magic. Lukas Death. She was left for dead. It was a miracle that she survived.” She sighed. “But that broke her.”

  “You think she’s broken?”

  “She won’t ever try again, if that is what you mean. Not ever.”

  I sat listening to the raging wind. What hadn’t been blown away two days ago, I thought, would be off to fucking hell and gone this time. If only it would bring some rain too, but so far there was no sign of it.

  Grew a Moustache

  “You said something about ‘the few who tried’,” I said quietly. “So there were others too?”

  She looked past me. “I suppose they were all mad, one way or another. But at least they tried. Someone like Talita Lightfoot. They said that when she danced it was like she wasn’t a woman, she turned into wind, or water, or clouds or something. A wild one. When there was a feast, and in the old days I think there were more feasts than nowadays, she would dance everybody from their feet. But in the end all she was good for was to catch the fancy of the two rebels that came to hide here in the Devil’s Valley during some war or other. She had to make sure they stayed. Shame, the poor girl thought they’d take her away with them. But the menfolk who planned it had other ideas. They wanted to keep the rebels here, we needed new blood. No one even remembers what became of her afterwards. I suppose she just did her duty and that was that. She probably had twelve children and became as fat as Tant Poppie, perhaps she grew a moustache.” She made a brief pause.
“Only when the moon is full she still gathers all the ghost girls of the valley to dance naked in the bluegum wood.”

  A small bunch of leaves brushed lightly down my spine.

  But without paying attention to me she went on, “My great grandmother also tried to get out. For her it must have been even worse, because she was used to a better life, she came from outside, she had no idea of what was waiting for her here. The men called her Katarina Sweetmeat. In our family she was Katarina-the-Angel. One of Isak Smous’s forefathers brought her in and sold her to the Lermiets. They’d sent him to find them a woman, and he got a good price for her.”

  I could feel myself breathing faster. “What was her story?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m trying to write up the history of the Devil’s Valley, Annie. But all I’ve found so far is lies.”

  Lies, lies, stories, I thought: and all to feed a rat in need of something more substantial.

  “Do you promise you’ll write it up exactly as I tell it to you?” she asked with sudden eagerness, as if I’d offered her a long draught of cold water.

  “I promise.”

  “Then somebody will at least know about her, you see. And perhaps about me too. It’s terrible never to have been known about.”

  A Dog or A Cat

  “What happened to Katarina-the-Angel?” I asked.

  “She never wanted to have anything to do with the seven brothers who bought her. Because she was so beautiful there were many other men who wanted her. But the Lermiets were a jealous lot. They kept her locked up. If they couldn’t have her, they said, then no one else would. So very soon she wasn’t allowed to see anybody else, except for the Smous’s servant, who was sent in every day to take her food.”

  “But she did have children, didn’t she?”

  “Then you know the story?”

  “Not the story, only the lies.”

  For a while she looked at me as if she wasn’t sure about going on.

  “Did she have children?” I asked.

  “Yes, she did. The first time it was the servant’s child.”

  “How did they find out?”

  “Because the child was black.”

  I gaped at her.

  “The servant was the only one of his kind ever to come here,” said Annie. “The people were dead against it, but the Smous needed him, and they needed the Smous, and so they put up with him for a time.”

  “And the child?”

  “They stoned the child,” she said. “Because to be black in the Devil’s Valley has always been the worst sin of all.”

  “But why did they ever allow the servant to get to Katarina?”

  She shrugged the thin shoulders. “He just took in food and brought out the peepot. I mean, he was like a dog or a cat in the household of the Smous. No one thought he’d do a thing like that.”

  “And what became of him?”

  “He ran off when he saw she was with child, never even waited for it to be born. And later the Smous hired another servant, but this time he was white, one of the boys from the valley.”

  “And Katarina?” I asked. “Did they stone her too?”

  She stretched her back and moved a tired hand across her face. “No, they didn’t stone her. They thought up something worse for her.”

  “Can there be anything worse?”

  “Yes, they began to hire her out. The brothers had her for free, but others had to pay. Usually with nanny goats.”

  Moon Was Full

  “People are still being stoned,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Emma’s mother.”

  “So far she was the last.”

  “But children too? Throwbacks?”

  She nodded again.

  “But they couldn’t have been throwbacks to Katarina. Her child was killed, he had no descendants.”

  “No, they must be throwbacks to someone else. But there are all kinds of stories about Katarina’s child. Some say the Smous stole him, and swapped him for another child, one he had with an unmarried girl. And then he had the servant’s child brought up in the world outside. They say when he was grown up, he started coming back to the Devil’s Valley when nobody knew. He always came when the moon was full, and then took his revenge by raping their women. Other say no, he was killed, but then he turned into a nightwalker. How can one ever be sure?”

  “How can one even be sure about Katarina?”

  “I have something of hers,” Annie said calmly. “It has been handed down from mother to daughter in our family. Not much, just a small diary. Fifteen or twenty pages, in High Dutch. It says very little, but at least it’s something to remember her by.”

  I was so excited I had to get up. “Do you still have it?”

  “Yes. But it belongs to me. It’s all I have.”

  “I won’t take it away. Perhaps I could just look at it, copy some of it.”

  “You won’t want to copy anything if you see it. You’ll just think it’s boring.”

  Copperplate Handwriting

  And in a way she was right. What was there really to glean from those cryptic entries in an old·fashioned copperplate handwriting? Except for that one passage in which something momentarily shone through, everything was wrapped in religious meditations, Bible texts, that kind of thing. The odd throwaway reference to herself was like a view from a distance, never a personal confession. There weren’t even dates (because, locked up, she’d lost track of time?), only an occasional mention of the day of the week—Monday, or Wednesday, or The Day of the Lord —or a reference to the phases of the moon: full, half, crescent, dark. Or was that the clue? I still don’t know. All I have is what I copied that afternoon while the storm raged outside. I was following Little-Lukas’s example, I thought wryly, who’d copied Immanuel Kant in his exercise book without ever understanding a word of it.

  This World

  Friday. O what is this world but a place of unrest & sorrow how much do those who love Jesus Christ have to struggle for this reason the Dear Lord says struggle to go in, some Days have passed during which, waiting for the full moon in a Depressed state of Mind, I have been unable to write. My Lord saw Jit to cover his comforting face as if with a Cloud so that my prayers recoiled as if from clouds through which they could not penetrate.

  Weak Body

  Monday. Full moon. Once again with a Weak Body & Tortured Brain I have to perform all the Labour in the domestic Circle and receive at night like Aholah the Seed of my Lords and Masters like a grateful Servant unworthy to remain in this Life. And this I have to do to give Satisfaction to others, while I would rather hide myself in the lonely Mountain cave behind the Devil’s Hole, where no eye except that of God alone could see me. O be still my Soul let it be as it is, try to hold on to your belief that God will also be your Redeemer the world roars, get up, prepare the Meal O where can I escape to?

  Intestines

  The Day of the Lord. I am a Poor Woman confined & Constricted in the intestines of my meagre Home, & the sorrows of life especially at Night oppress the faculties of my Soul I do write on Sheets of Paper ponder the wonders of your Mercy & suppose hereby to provide my Soul with some Solace and thus to Praise you, you my Soul forget not all this Benefits read & reread what the Lord has done to your Soul & ignore what is being done to my body, and praise Him in secret He shall reward thee openly.

  Bastard

  Dark Moon. Would I call my child a Bastard! I jumped up & called out loudly O no my Father! Chastise me by Flogging me like the others or even by Stoning me but call not my child O Lord! a Bastard! I started screaming &. implored the Lord Jesus to intercede for me with God it was as if my Spirit held the Redeemer by His clothes, & I hid my face behind Him, hiding from the Eye of God but soon I was rescued from this Dismay, by the same question (shall I call my child thus) then I thought at least I now shall have a Child that belongs to me for the rest of my Life even if I cannot take it to my Breast, & even though I have to deprive myself for a
ll this time of the Mercy of the Father, for I should rather go to Hell with my child than to Heaven without it, O Lord no rather the dregs, the Scourings, despised & rejected, expelled from the people here on Earth.

  Destruction

  OUTSIDE THE STORM still howled. I couldn’t tell whether the wind was worse than the first time. If the daylight made it slightly less terrifying the black clouds were darker than any eclipse. We were caught in the primitive rage of a fairytale; and it was a miracle that in all that huffing and puffing from some cosmic wolf the bloody house wasn’t blown down. Even more so that the children slept through it all. This time not only poultry and goats, pigs, ostriches, wheelbarrows, haystacks and trees came tumbling past, but also Jurg Water’s whole shed, as well as a number of few roofs, several longdrop outhouses, and two people: the ever-forging-and-unforging Smith-the-Smith, and another man, Sias Highstep, whom I knew only from sight. Neither of them was ever seen again.

  Annie just sat staring ahead of her while the frenzy continued; after I’d copied a few brief passages from her great-grandmother’s diary she pressed the much-thumbed little book against her thin chest without speaking another word. And later the clouds were blown away, once again without a drop of rain; and slowly, gustily, with a few furious last flurries, like a child raked by sporadic sobs after a bout of crying, the wind also died down.

  At the door, when I left, Annie said, “Thank you for coming. I’d have been scared in the storm.”

  “Thank you for what you told me.” There was something solemn, a strange formality, between us. Like two people, I thought, who’d had sex too soon and now were embarrassed about getting dressed in front of each other.

  For an instant her eyes filled with fear again. “You mustn’t tell the people here what I said. Or about the diary. They don’t know about it. Not even Alwyn knew. Once you’re gone from here it will be all right. But please, not while you’re here.”

  “I promise.”

  With a kind of detached amazement I picked my way back through the storm-wracked settlement to Tant Poppie’s house. Outside Tall-Fransina’s place a number of cats were wandering about, mewing desolately. There were few people about: a cluster in front of a ruined house, a family beside a heap of thatch that might once have been a roof, a woman carrying a bundle of dead chickens by the legs like a bunch of carrots, Jurg Water on the vacant spot where his shed used to stand. Most of them, I realised, were still too scared to face the destruction. And so most of the doors remained tightly shut, to keep knowledge at bay.