1998 - Devil's Valley

by Andre Brink

  Talons and Claws

  Where the dried-up bed curved in a wide, easy bend, she left the bag on a large flat rock where it could easily be seen. I took her hand. We went back to the dry pool, jumping from rock to rock. All around us trees blown over in the storms lay upended, large clusters of roots sticking up like hands with broken fingers. Here and there deep furrows had been gashed open as the roots were torn loose. Even their tips showed not the slightest sign of moisture. Curiously enough the ancient, half-charred wild figtree which had been split by lightning so long ago, Ouma Liesbet Prune’s Paradise Tree, still stood intact, its long sinewy roots reaching across rocks and boulders, like the goddamn talons and claws of a huge animal that had burrowed in there, never to let go again.

  “Just as pigheaded as the people in the settlement,” I said wryly.

  “You’re no different, Flip.” She took one of my hands in both of hers. “I can’t understand why you want to stay here. The rest of us have no choice. But you do.”

  “There’s nothing I’d love more than to get out of this place,” I said. “But you know I can’t bloody well leave you here.”

  “I’m not holding you here.”

  “That’s not how I mean it. It is my own choice. I don’t want to leave you here. I’m responsible for you now.”

  “No, you’re not. I’m still me, you are you.”

  “It’s no longer so simple.”

  “Then it’s you who are making it difficult. You’ve got to be sensible, Flip.”

  It isn’t easy to retrace all the meanderings of the conversation we had that afternoon. Because it wasn’t only one conversation either. Every time we met, all the old arguments were taken up again. It was like some fucking kind of undergrowth in which we’d become entangled: and in what I’m trying to recall here of what was said that afternoon several other conversations are mixed up. It’s like Gert Brush’s paintings, with the ghosts of lost faces looming up through all those layers.

  Pack of Hyenas

  Almost every time—and that afternoon too, I’m sure—I’d end up saying something like, “I can’t throw you to a pack of hyenas.”

  To which she would reply very calmly, but very firmly, “I can manage. I always have.”

  “It’s too damn dangerous, Emma. You said that yourself, the very first time we spoke.”

  “I said they wouldn’t let me go. That’s something else.”

  “But now I’ve complicated things for you. There’s nothing we can take for granted.”

  “I know them, I’ll survive. You’re the one who doesn’t know where to step. You’re in danger, Flip. They told you their stories, and that gives you power over them. They can’t allow it.”

  “If we leave together, we have a chance. And the sooner the better.”

  “No, they’re counting on it that neither of us will leave without the other. As long as they see I’m still here they won’t suspect anything. Flip, it’s the only chance you have.”

  “Then I stay here.”

  “I want you to go.” Her eyes were fixed urgently on mine.

  “Not without you.”

  She changed her angle of attack: “There’s nothing for us outside. You just lost your head because…”

  “Because I love you.”

  “Don’t ever say that. I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Once we’re outside you’ll soon see that it was a mistake. I’m too young for you, Flip, too stupid, too everything. Before we’ve been there for a month you’ll get tired of me. And that will be worse than anything that could happen here.”

  “Don’t you believe me then?” I asked, stung.

  “It makes no difference whether I believe you or not.” And with the kind of stillness which had so often surprised me in her, she said, “Perhaps it would be even worse if I believed you. I couldn’t bear the thought of waking up one day.”

  “This isn’t a dream, Emma.”

  “Are you sure?” For a moment she pressed her forehead against mine, and gave a small laugh, but a bitter one; then turned away. “Don’t you remember the day you first came here?”

  “That was different,” I said.

  She shook her head.

  Without Warmth

  Her hair had fallen forward, exposing the nape of her neck. I put my arms around her from behind.

  “Emma.”

  After a moment, with a slight but decisive movement, she freed herself. Not without warmth, but as if from far away, she said, “It would be better to forget about me, Flip.”

  “Then at least give me something to forget!” I stormed, unreasonable. “I can’t accept that my only memory of you must be the way you once looked like in a dream.”

  “No one here can ever survive in the world you come from.”

  “You’re different, you spent time there. You told me yourself how much you miss it.”

  “One only really misses what is impossible.” She took my face between her hands. “I’m a freak,” she said with intensity. “Like any of those poor creatures with waterheads or harelips or webbed toes that walk these streets. We’re all marked. And that is why you must go back. One day you’ll only remember me as a nightmare from which you woke up just in time.”

  I pressed my face against her to reassure myself of the lean hard presence of her body. I could smell her, a smell of life and warmth and woman and desire, everything that was real and that mattered at that moment.

  “This is the difference between dream and reality,” I said in a wave of fucking sentimentality. “I can’t go on without you.”

  “You can. You must. And I without you. You can’t allow this place to swallow you too. Don’t you understand? My life is cut off already. It’ll help me just to know you’re there, your life is going on.” Adding more softly, an afterthought. “And knowing perhaps that there’ll be something you remember.”

  “You can’t give up like this.”

  “It’s not giving up. Don’t you think I also want to live?” She moved away. “We must go back. There’s another storm brewing.”

  I looked up. The clouds were billowing overhead as before. If only the blasted rains would come, I thought. That would change everything. The people would come to rest. There would be a semblance of bloody normality again.

  Strange Contortions

  THIS TIME THE storm wasn’t quite as godawful as before, but perhaps we were becoming blunted. At any rate it didn’t last for more than an hour or so. But the problem was that the damage done in the previous storms had not been repaired yet; the roofs, especially, had been so badly weakened that it didn’t take much for several of them to cave in altogether. At least, thank God, this time round there were no casualties. And in the late afternoon, after the last fierce gusts had died down and the sky had cleared, people cautiously stepped outside again to inspect the ravages and to start, once again, clearing up the mounds of rubble that marked the passage of the hurricane.

  The most important thing to do now was to bring little Piet Snot home. After the unsuccessful trip Emma and I had made up the dry riverbed in the early afternoon I was very worried. I would never forget that last look he’d given me, and his pleading, accusing words, Isn’t Oom going to help me?

  A few of us—Lukas Death, Isak Smous, Gert Brush and I—took the footpath to Hans Magic’s hut. Incredibly, the rickety little structure had survived all the storms; even the thatch on the roof was undamaged. Perhaps the thicket surrounding it had protected it, but it didn’t seem too farfetched to guess that even the elements were taking no chances with the old devil.

  He was in no hurry to come with us. First he insisted on stuffing his calabash pipe with dagga.

  “Why are you pressing me?” he asked. “There’s more than enough time before dark.”

  “It was a bad storm for a child to be in,” I told him angrily.

  “There’s enough shelter in the kloof, he’ll be all right.”

  “He didn’t have a shred of clothing to protect him.”
r />   “Children are used to running around bare-arsed.”

  “It’s easy for you to say.”

  “Don’t aggravate the man, Neef Flip,” Lukas Death stopped me with a look of concern. “Hans knows his time.”

  I took umbrage at that, but after what had happened to Brother Holy I was anxious not to bring another of Hans Magic’s feelings over him; so I swallowed my irritation until his pipe was drawing to his satisfaction. Only then did he shut the door which hung unsteadily on leather hinges, and join us outside where we’d chosen to wait in the open air.

  At first sight the settlement appeared to be going about its normal late-afternoon business: the old ravens in the cemetery, the afflicted in the streets, Bettie Teat in the doorway of the church, people in their backyards or chicken runs or parched orchards and vegetable gardens, poultry scratching in the dry earth, goats grazing among the scraggly bushes. But after three storms the place looked chewed to the bone.

  Far in the background Brother Holy could be seen rolling about in strange contortions, blasting the valley with thundering curses from Jeremiah and Ezekiel. He aimed a hoarse shout in our direction as we passed below, but Hans Magic didn’t even look up.

  ‘Etch ‘Ou

  Along the way a few women joined our little procession: Hanna-of-Jurg, Annie-of-Alwyn, Dalena-of-Lukas, three or four others, and Emma. Hans Magic clearly resented their presence, but he said nothing openly, contenting himself with unsavoury remarks muttered under his stinking breath.

  Some distance beyond the rock pool, high up along the course of the dried-up river, he stopped. “He’ll be somewhere here,” he announced.

  That was just where Emma and I had earlier left the little bag of food on the flat rock. I was rather relieved, even touched, to see that the bag had disappeared. But of course, it could have blown away: the wind had torn a trench along the full length of the kloof as it came funnelling down from above. And how could we be sure that the child would have found a safe spot to shelter?

  The women started calling, followed by the rest of us, first in single voices, then all in chorus.

  “Piet! Piet, come out! We’ve come to fetch you!” we trumpeted among the cliffs, hearing our own voices echoing back from the distance: ‘etch ‘ou!…‘ou!…‘ou!

  “The little shit is hiding from us,” grumbled Hans Magic. “He’s a stroppy one.”

  We didn’t bother to answer. Farther and farther we spread out, hollering his name.

  Only the echoes replied.

  “He could have fallen to his death,” said Hanna-of-Jurg, in a surprisingly high whining tone for such a voluminous person. She turned her vulnerable cow’s eyes to Hans Magic: “If anything happened to him, you’ll be to blame.”

  “I’m telling you he’s just hiding away.”

  “Then how come you can’t find him? You always know everything.”

  “He’ll come out.”

  Half an hour later we were back in the settlement, with empty hands. A small knot of people were awaiting us at the church. Children were dispatched with the tidings. Within minutes a large search party set out again along the dry riverbed. But when night fell they were forced to turn back.

  “The dark will bring him home all right,” said Hans Magic, but his eyes were avoiding ours. “He’ll be back before morning.”

  “And all for nothing,” Hanna-of-Jurg reminded him.

  “I told you the clouds had to be right. They came from the wrong side again.”

  “It’s my child’s life you’re playing with.”

  “You can always have another,” he said, and walked away.

  Swollen Thick

  It was Henta who brought the news in the morning. I was at home alone, Tant Poppie having been called out to help when a few people were injured by a wall that had collapsed in one of the stricken houses during the night. The moment I saw the girl I knew. I stood up very quickly from the breakfast table.

  “Has something happened?”

  “Yes, Oom.” She didn’t cry, but her eyes were swollen thick. The normally blooming face looked very pale. There was a bloody weal across one cheek, and on the dusty legs under her dress. The dress itself was in shreds, the hem of it undone, one sleeve torn off, exposing the shoulder. Through the fresh smell of peaches she usually exuded wafted darker, more worrisome odours of the night, alluding to a kind of space she should not yet have knowledge of.

  “Who did this to you?” I demanded.

  She just shook her head, her knotted dark-red hair falling over her face.

  “Henta, what happened?”

  The she began to cry. “It’s Piet, Oom. Pa killed him.”

  Shocking State

  There are professions in which personal involvement in what happens around you is a sure recipe for a fuck-up. Objectivity is the golden rule. Any lawyer will tell you that. Any psychologist too, I’m sure. Be that as it may. But what I do know is that no crime reporter can afford to get emotionally involved in a case he’s required to cover.

  Ever since that day when little Piet Snot mistook me for God, he’d somehow become my damn responsibility, whether I’d wanted to or not; and even more so after he’d brought me the wretched chameleon. To bring me luck! To compound it all, there was Henta. From the first time in Jurg’s shed (What do you think I’ve come for?), she’d been stirring up totally unbloodymanageable feelings in me. Her perverse innocence. And now, this morning, she turned up in that shocking state.

  All of which spelled out quite clearly that I’d better stay out of it. But how could I? If she asked me? And if little Piet Snot was dead?

  I couldn’t believe it. In a way perhaps it was the worst that could have happened. Up to that moment, even when I’d become drawn into events like Ouma Liesbet’s death or Hans Magic’s rainmaking rituals or Ben Owl’s suicide, it had been possible to keep to the sideline. But this time there was no fucking way I could stay out of it.

  Any Cop

  “Aren’t you coming?” asked Henta. She looked like one of those cheap paintings of Spanish gypsy children who stare at you with their huge eyes and tear-stained cheeks, pure schmaltz. I didn’t want to see it. Why couldn’t she have gone to Lukas Death for help? He was the fucking judge. It had nothing to do with me.

  Is Oom not going to help me?

  “What can I do?” I asked helplessly, more to myself than to her.

  “You want me to go back to that place alone?” she asked.

  I took her by the shoulders. She winced, and I quickly let go again. “What’s wrong?”

  She half-turned her back and pulled the dress down from her shoulder to show me the bloody weals. Jesus Christ.

  “Do you want to see more?”

  “I’ve seen enough,” I said quickly. “Why did he do that to you?”

  “I tried to stop him.”

  Filled with bloody guilt and self-loathing I said, “All right, I’m coming.”

  Distraught, I looked round. I didn’t like the idea of taking on Jurg Water with my bare hands, especially in the mood he would undoubtedly be in right now. But there was nothing in the voorhuis I could use as a weapon. I went to the kitchen and grabbed a long fire-iron from the hearth.

  “Come.”

  She cast a scared look at the fire-iron, but offered no protest. Shrugging her bare shoulder back into the torn dress she followed me. A few people on the road stopped when they saw us pass. They must have drawn their own conclusions, for they soon fell in behind us. By the time we reached Jurg Water’s house there were a dozen or more on my heels.

  The front door was closed. Like any cop in a film I kicked it open.

  Foul Play

  Confusion continues to surround events in the Devil’s Valley where a young boy known as Piet Snot (9) was found dead on Monday morning after apparently getting lost in the mountains over the weekend. It is suspected that he lost his way in a violent windstorm. Although a search party was sent out on Sunday afternoon, its members were forced to suspend the search when nig
ht fell without any sign of the boy. However, it was reported that his father, Mr Jurg (Water) Lermiet continued on his own to scour the mountains for his son until he found the child’s body in a deep ravine in the early hours of Monday morning. Judging by the injuries to the body it would seem as if he had been attacked by a wild animal. According to a spokesman, Mr Lukas (Death) Lermiet, foul play is not suspected and rumours about dissension in the family are devoid of all foundation. The sister of the dead boy, Miss Henta Lermiet, was unwell and had been advised by her father not to speak to the press. Final funeral arrangements have not yet been made.

  Wounded Buffalo

  Everything suddenly got out of hand the moment I stepped into Jurg Water’s house. The fire-iron had been meant only as a precaution, for self-defence. But when I saw the small broken body on the narrow bed in the corner, with a still-shocked Hanna beside it like a bundle of unwashed laundry and Jurg walking up and down in the background brandishing a sjambok, something in me gave way.

  The moment he recognised me he came charging round the dining table, kicking a chair out of the way so violently that I heard the wood splinter.

  “Get out of my house!” he shouted, his face looking more like a malignant tumour than ever.

  “Pa,” said Henta behind me.

  Jurg Water stared past me in disbelief. “What are you doing with that bastard?” he demanded.

  I glanced round at her. “Henta, go and call Lukas Death. And Hans Magic.”

  Like a frightened rabbit Henta just stood there. But some of the other people on the stoep scurried off. A handful of men came bundling through the doorway to stop us. But Jurg Water was like a fucking wounded buffalo. He shoved two or three of them out of the way and aimed a blow with the sjambok at me. I sidestepped and it only struck my shoulder, but I could feel it cutting through the skin under my shirt. Then I let rip with the fire-iron. Your Worship, it was he or I.

  Jurg dropped to the floor on all fours, shaking his head as if he didn’t know what had hit him. There was blood everywhere. The blow had struck him over the nose and forehead. It seemed as if the nose was broken. I hoped it was.