1998 - Devil's Valley Read online

  “This is Tall-Fransina’s best,” Tant Poppie said. “She always saves the heart of the heart for me. I tell you this stuff is so clear, if you put it right next to an empty bottle, you won’t see the difference.”

  In the Soup

  What followed was, if truth be told, much worse than my fucking night with Little-Lukas. At some stage I burst into song, offering my hostess a rendering of all the hymns and psalms I could recall from my green youth, before plunging into a medley of rugby songs, and then a selection of compositions I’d never heard before in my damn life. Tant Poppie lit some candles (I still remember the heavy smell of grease) and came and went between the table and the kitchen like a great ship sailing on dark waters. I can feel the purple poetry welling up again.

  She did everything herself. Here, too, there was no sign of black or brown servants. For a moment the discovery threatened to sober me up, but another gulp from the latest apostle Tant Poppie had placed before me settled the problem and inspired me to new heights of improvisation.

  Some time during the next few hours a large bowl of steaming soup was placed before me, and a chunk of bread beside it on the bare table. Tant Poppie called me to order by rapping loudly on the table with her spoon to intone a long and complicated prayer in High Dutch. After which I ate and sang, and choked, and at one stage landed with my face in the soup, but Tant Poppie promptly saved my life, wiped my face with a very dirty cloth, and after that I think I sang some more.

  We were interrupted by a knock on the front door. Tant Poppie opened it, and there was some urgent conversation in the doorway by the light of a lantern; as far as I could make out, some woman had gone into labour and Tant Poppie was urgently summoned. She bustled about for a while, fetched a bag from her room to fill it with bits of this and that from her pharmacy, then sat down opposite me again to offer a prayer of thanks, after which she went off into the night with the stranger. In her absence I topped up my mug several times as I continued my performance. In the course of the night many people turned up just to stare at me. No one came inside, but every time I raised my fucking head there were new faces at the windows, pushing and shoving as they took turns to gape and gawk. I waved at them, and sang to them, but all they did was throng and stare.

  Among them, and this I remember quite clearly because for a moment I was shocked as sober as a man who’d just survived a bloody accident, I saw a face I recognised as if in a flash of lightning, the face of a woman pressed against the panes, like a large pale moth in the night, surrounded by long black hair, the face of the young woman at the pool.

  I stumbled to my feet to take a closer look, but my legs gave way under me and by the time I woke up again the candles were flickering low in their saucers, and the windows were drained of faces.

  Small Black Window

  One way or another, presumably on all fours, I got back to my room and scrambled into bed, nearly suffocating in the fucking feather mattress. But during the night I must have woken up again, because I remember seeing the stars through the small black window, stars so large and so close that they seemed like the white flowers of some exotic bloody night cactus right against my eyes. I’d never seen such stars before. Except when I was a child, on the plains of the Free State, summer nights, winter nights, but that was a time when everything was still possible and stars like those were not only seen but heard.

  First Morning

  OVER THE NEXT few days the going was tough. I seemed to be both there and not there. Wherever I came or went, I was stared at by the inhabitants as if I’d just arrived from the bloody moon, which in their eyes may well have been the case. To get through to them was out of the question. Tant Poppie was more approachable than the others, but even she appeared to be doing no more than was imposed on her by the obligations of fucking hospitality.

  Be that as it may, on that first morning, the Thursday, she saved my life. I woke up well into the dazzling day, with the most blinding headache I’d ever had in my damn life, which is saying something. With a great effort I struggled to sit up, groped for the packet of Camels on the floor, nearly tumbling from the bed in the process, and with the fourth or fifth match managed to light one. It’s the only sure remedy, I know from bitter experience, even though more people than just Sylvia held it against me. But this morning even my Camels were useless. Thick black waves of pain and nausea kept breaking over me. If only I would die quickly and with as little mess as possible, Lukas Death could box me in a coffin, with or without a stuffing of feathers, and dispatch me straight to the other side, COD. But no such mercy was afforded me. And then Tant Poppie entered. Tant Poppie who’d had at least as many apostles as myself the previous evening, before working steadily right through the night to coax a stroppy new life into the world. She gave me one look and promptly went to fetch a concoction of her medicines. Pressing my nostrils shut with one hand as if I was a child, she emptied a large spoon down my throat. It tasted like something straight from the deepest recesses of hell. I remember shaking myself like a wet dog coming from the water. And the next moment I was healed.

  My one desire was to have a bath. But this was quickly ruled out. In this place water was a luxury. Like Lukas Death, Tant Poppie mentioned the wells drying up. The only remedy was a drop of water from my pitcher, which was my ration for a week. I could still do without shaving—whether I shave or not I always look in need of a razor, and all the men in this place have beards anyway—but how the hell was I to cope with the rest?

  Of the Lord

  Tant Poppie’s only comment was predictable: “It’s no use complaining, Neef Flip, it’s the will of the Lord.”

  I felt like taking her up on that one, but after she’d just saved my life it seemed a heathen thing to do.

  “His ways are inscrutable,” I said smartly. Which she took as a commendable sign of resignation; and I had the impression that it somewhat improved my standing in her eyes.

  One could measure my recovery by the fact that after my paltry ablutions—up as far as possible, down ditto—I could actually face the breakfast Tant Poppie had prepared for me: wholewheat bread with lard and fig jam, eggs, a length of sausage, and the bitter brew that passes for coffee in the valley. I set upon it like a vulture, but was checked emphatically when she hammered on the table with her spoon, shut her eyes, and plunged into her customary High Dutch invocation of the blessing of the Lord upon this our meal. I realised anew that in this house I would have to step very carefully.

  Devils Dance

  After breakfast Tant Poppie instructed me to take out the bread she’d been baking since well before dawn. Large and round and risen high, the loaves came from the tins. But she hastily stepped in before I could do anything further. First, she scolded me, one never touches a fresh loaf with a cloth: you use your naked hands. And one look at her hands made me realise that I’d never be a match for her: her palms looked like the footsoles of a Brahmin after his stint on the hot coals. Secondly, she impressed upon me never to turn a loaf from the pan upside-down. “Because then the devils dance on it.”

  “Where did you pick up such superstition?” I asked in surprise.

  “It’s because I’m a Godfearing person that I watch my step,” she replied curtly. “Where the Lord is near, the Devil is never far away.”

  I thought it prudent to change the subject, and Tant Poppie needed little prodding to acquaint me with the names and daily business of all the settlers. “Just so you can be prepared, Neef Flip,” she explained.

  “Where should I go,” I asked after her lengthy introduction, “to look up the history of the place? Where are the documents kept?”

  “Documents?” asked Tant Poppie, eyeing me suspiciously.

  I explained: “Baptism certificates, letters of transport, tax papers, church registers, anything. Just as a starting point.”

  “You don’t understand.” She chuckled briefly and shook her head. “It was to get away from all those things in the Colony that our Seer first brought us here
. You won’t find anything like that in this place.”

  “But if I want to write up your history, where do I get the facts?”

  “I suppose you’ll just have to talk to the people.”

  “What about private papers, old journals, diaries, letters?”

  “We don’t hold with such things, Neef Flip,” she said very firmly. “Ever since the time of the Seer no one around here has had any need to write to the outside world, and nothing comes in either. It’ll just be asking for trouble. And what happens among us we all know anyway, so there’s no need to write it down.”

  I could feel my courage leaking like an old man’s bladder. Yet I suppose there was something exciting about the discovery too. Twinkletoes van Tonder, I said under my breath, you’ve never stumbled across a fallow field like this one where no historian has yet set a fucking foot. Every word spoken in this place is a bloody new invention. This is how the writer of Genesis must have felt. Let there be light. So here goes.

  Smudge Of

  On the stoep outside, where the glare of the sun momentarily brought back an afterthought of migraine, I stopped for a while to consider my options for the day. It was slowly getting through to me just how unprepared I was, how fucking daunting the task.

  Before I could come up with a proper plan I became aware of a small boy spying on me from behind the nearest pillar. All I could make out at first was a shock of red hair, two green eyes and a smudge of snot on the upper lip. When he realised that he’d been seen he quickly disappeared behind the pillar. But a moment later he was peeping out again.

  In general I find children, including my own, among God’s more unfortunate mistakes (which says a lot, given the general balls-up he made of the world, trying to polish off in six days what a more circumspect housewife would have spread across several millennia). But mindful of my recovery after my encounter with Tant Poppie’s witblits, I was ready to express some goodwill with a smile. Which turned out unsuccessful as the boy got such a fright that he just broke into tears and ran away. Next time, I decided, he could go and shit himself.

  Eager Whispers

  That more or less set the tone for the next few days. Wherever I went, there were people going about their usual business; but the moment I arrived, they would freeze and pretend they were stones or shrubs or something. As if I was a fart which everybody knew about but no one would admit to. Yet the moment I turned my back they would break out in eager whispers.

  On all my jaunts the little snot-bug followed me—at a safe distance, true, but unfailingly there. From time to time I would stop to threaten him with all manner of dire actions, but it made no impression. Later I tried to cajole him, I even offered him handfuls of raisins and droewors filched from Tant Poppie’s pantry, but no go. After that I simply pretended not to see him any more.

  Carpentry Shed

  When I managed to corner them singly, in shed or workplace or sheltered back garden—and by the Saturday I’d become quite adept at stalking the unwary—the people turned out to be a touch more approachable, if still far from communicative. It wasn’t that I didn’t try my best, armed with the bits of background information from Tant Poppie (and in due course from Lukas Death as well) and all the wiles and thick-skinnedness a hairy crime reporter accumulates in a lifetime: but even so I was making practically no headway. And in the process I discovered, to my alarm, that my daily ration of fags was being exceeded at an alarming rate, not only through my own smoking but by offering them as bribes.

  “Cigarette?” to the reed-thin Jos Joseph in his carpentry shed, teeth clenched on a mouthful of wild-olive nails. He was planing a new plank for a coffin belonging to someone who, like Tant Poppie, had increased in size and girth since some long-ago day when the container in question had first served as wedding gift cum nuptial bed.

  “Ja, thank you.” Stopping briefly to light it, then resuming the relentless planing, his head and shoulders so sprinkled with wood-shavings that he looked as if he’d been shaken from a flour-bag.

  “Do you people have a good life here?”

  “What’s a good life?” Blowing out smoke, planing, planing.

  “I came to find out more about the history of the Devil’s Valley.”

  Fucking smoke, fucking plane.

  “It was Little-Lukas Lermiet who first told me about the place.”

  Smoke.

  “I came to know him reasonably well.”

  A hammer-blow to the side of the coffin. Fumes of smoke.

  “It came as a terrible shock when he died.”

  “This plank is warped,” he said.

  “What can you tell me about the first Lukas Lermiet, the Seer?”

  He spat out the nails and stalked out.

  Question Mark

  Next stop, the graveyard, where a few old dodderers were weeding and hoeing the parched flower-beds. They ignored me flat, so I returned the compliment by browsing among the graves and reading the hand-carved inscriptions. There were more High Dutch verses from the Bible than names, with no date anywhere in sight. Some of the oldest stones, judging by their weatherbeaten appearance, bore surnames like Portier, Koen, or Nel; all the others were inscribed with the Lermiet name. One stone was totally blank, except for a large question mark.

  From the size of the graves I gathered that children were in the vast majority, some stones bearing as many as five or six names. Then came something unexpected: one headstone, considerably larger and more ornate than the rest, decorated with naive carvings of angels and devils rather indecorously intertwined, was simply marked LUKAS LERMIET, with a second line proclaiming: ZIENER GODS or ‘Seer of God’. But the surprising part was that the grave looked empty, a simple rectangular hole covered with boards. I lifted one and peered inside. It was indeed empty. This sent me to a bent old man raking gravel on a grave.

  “Excuse me, but could you possibly tell me something about Seer Lermiet’s grave over there?”

  “I’m busy,” he muttered without looking up.

  Windblown Black Stork

  Frustrated, I beat a retreat. Past the little house where Ouma Liesbet Prune was perched on the roof, as always, like a windblown black stork.

  “Good morning, Tante.”

  “Satan, be gone. I’m waiting upon the Lord.”

  Lewdness of Thy Youth

  On to Brother Holy, striding stiff-legged like a secretary bird along his rows of withered cabbages, hands behind his back, perorating at the top of his voice.

  “Good morning, Brother, and how are you this fine morning?”

  “Terrible, terrible. It’s a weary life on this wretched earth.”

  “Lovely weather we’re having.”

  “We’ll pay for it, don’t worry.”

  “Big vegetable patch, this.”

  “But dry.”

  “The cabbages seem, to be doing well.”

  “A good harvest ruins the soil,” he commented morosely. Then, without warning, he intoned, “The word of the Lord came again to me saying: Thus saith the Lord God, Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shall be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.” Under the onslaught the cabbages were wilting visibly.

  “Cigarette?” I proffered.

  “A sin, Neef, a venal sin.” He glanced round quickly to make sure there was nobody near. “But if you insist.” He hastily thrust it into his inside pocket, preparing in a spray of spittle to lunge into the next passage: “Thus thou callest to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, in bruising thy teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth.” The cabbages began to look up again, but he suddenly interrupted his sermon to ask, “Did you know we had a man here who travelled through the whole world, including Egypt and the Great Karoo? And he brought back wondrous things from
far places.” I thought it was merely his way of speaking. Only much later did I discover how literally he’d meant it. At any rate he gave me no opening to put any questions, as without pausing for breath he broke into a new tirade on paramours whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses. By that time I was already out of reach both of his showers of blessings and his lecherous imprecations.

  Milk

  In the main doorway of the church, propped up against the massive doorpost, legs languidly outstretched, I found Bettie Teat with her brood, looking for all the world like a complacent pink sow with a litter of piglets. God knows how many of them there were, as they were squirming and wriggling and climbing all over her, squealing and shrilling and grunting as they jostled and elbowed their way to her ample dugs. Dishevelled hair covered her eyes, her belly looked nine months pregnant, and her face was a study of utter contentment. Intrigued, if a bit apprehensive, I stopped. If I’d heard Tant Poppie correctly, Bertie’s offspring had been fathered indiscriminately by the men of the settlement, since she couldn’t find it in her heart to say no. And apparently it didn’t take much to impregnate her. “She’s like a flower,” Tant Poppie had said with what might or might not have been disapproval. “If you ask me, she gets pollinated by the wind.”

  “What are you looking at?” asked Bettie, shifting a child from her left breast, a trickle of milk dripping from its chin.

  “I’m trying to meet the people in the settlement,” I explained. “And how are you?”

  “I’m in a bad way,” she answered with a broad smile. “They say mos everybody around here is in a bad way.” She gave a generous, inviting wink.