1998 - Devil's Valley Read online

  “What are their names?” I asked, gesturing at her litter.

  “I get all mixed up,” she confessed with disarming frankness. “So now I’ve started calling all of them Brother. He talks to me so beautifully about sin.”

  Involuntarily I cast mine eyes up to the mountain where the preacher was standing, staring fixedly at us with an expression that seemed disconcertingly possessive to me. And indeed, after a minute or two he began to amble down in our direction.

  “Oh my God,” said Bettie in a fluster, beginning to collect her brood and tuck away her breasts. “Here he comes. It was only yesterday he told me it was time I got more careful and here I’m sitting in the sun again.”

  Before I could reply she scrambled round the corner, followed by a squeal of little pigs. In the background, I noticed, Brother Holy had resumed his sermon among the vegetable beds.

  Just As Well

  I’d noticed Jurg Water from a distance, strutting as always behind his weathered forked stick. Usually he moved out of sight the moment he noticed me, a thunderstorm brewing on his large face; but this time I came upon him from behind.

  “Any hope of finding water?” I asked, feigning interest.

  “There’s no hope for nothing or nobody,” he snarled, glaring at me. “This stick is no bloody use. I might as well have used my dong.”

  “You may still find something where you least expect it.”

  “What do you know about water?” he grumbled. “What do you know about anything?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “You can shove your saying up your arse.”

  And he stalked off after his fruitless rod.

  Raisins and Figs

  For a while I wasn’t sure what to do next. But just as I started off again, I became aware of sounds from the shed behind his house and decided to investigate. The moment I appeared in the doorway the giggling and whispering and scurrying among the wheat-bags and the piles of dried quinces and raisins and figs abruptly stopped like a gust of wind suddenly dying down. Once my eyes had grown accustomed to the fragrant darkness inside I could see dishevelled girls’ heads popping up from everywhere, with blushing cheeks and hay-stalks in their hair.

  “What are you doing here?” I enquired expansively.

  “Nothing, Oom.”

  Embarrassingly unconcerned about the much too tight dark frock that clung to the precocious curves of her buxom body, a redhead appeared from behind a pile of tobacco leaves.

  “And what’s your name?”

  “Henta, Oom.”

  A chorus chanted, “Henta Peach, Oom.”

  “Why aren’t you in school?”

  A wave of giggles and whispers from which I couldn’t glean anything.

  “What do you think I’ve come here for?”

  With shocking directness, Henta said, “Cunt, Oom?”

  It came so fucking unexpectedly, it must have been the first time in thirty years that I’d blushed. Then, in a stern teacher’s tone, I said, “I’ve come to find out about your history.”

  They stared at me blankly.

  On the spur of the moment I asked the question that had been prickling on my tongue ever since Lukas Death had spoken the name: “Does anybody here know a girl called Emma?”

  An urgent whisper did the rounds, but they gave no answer.

  “I believe she used to swim down there in the river, when there was still water in the rock-pool.”

  This time one of them ventured, “Ma told us to tell you nothing.” And ten others took up the refrain. “Tell you nothing…tell you nothing…tell you nothing.”

  “I’ve heard that she and Little-Lukas were close friends.” This provoked some giggling, followed by, “nothing…nothing…nothing.”

  End of conversation. Outside, my little private pest was waiting again, at a safe distance, the usual green patina on his upper lip. I said something, but he pretended not to hear. Pissed off, I moved on to try my luck elsewhere. Petrus Tatters, large and angular, with flapping jacket, the shoemaker who wouldn’t stay home at night. Job Raisin like a dried fruit among his trays. Tall-Fransina in a man’s shirt and trousers beside her still, her hair chopped short. But nowhere could I find an opening. And my supply of smokes was dwindling fast.

  Bloody Glass Darkly

  Gert Brush, too, was happy to accept a cigarette. With his sloping head, hair over his eyes, a loner by nature, and blessed with a perpetual grin, his appearance seemed to have been fixed by a clock striking six at the wrong moment. In his long tunic which looked more like an outsized shift, one could find him sweeping the street with a broom of branches every morning. But in the afternoons he withdrew into his voorhuis to work on the paintings which I was told were his real passion. His paints and brushes and oil, I’d heard from Lukas Death, were brought in by Isak Smous when he came back from his bartering trips; and like all the other men in the settlement he’d taken over the job from his father. On the floor, with their faces to the wall, stood a dozen or so canvases on which, Lukas Death had told me, Gert Brush had painted, over the years, the portraits of all the inhabitants of the Devil’s Valley. As soon as he’d completed a round of canvases he would start again at the beginning, overpainting the previous portraits. It was his habit, as it had been his father’s and grandfather’s, to dilute his paint quite excessively with linseed oil, for reasons of parsimony rather than aesthetics, as a result of which all the earlier faces remained vaguely and disconcertingly visible, staring up at one as if through a bloody glass darkly. The first time I met Gert Brush, Lukas Death had brought me round, if somewhat reluctantly and only at the price of an extra cigarette. The potential historical importance of the collection excited me, but I soon discovered that in spite of his chronic grin Gert Brush was as pigheaded as the rest.

  “Who’s this one, Gert?” I asked in front of a man with an unusually ruddy face.

  “It’s Little-Lukas’s grandfather, Lukas Devil. He was mos born with two goat feet.”

  “And the face looking over his left shoulder?”

  “Our first predikant, Doep Dropsy.”

  “Tell me more about the Lermiet family.”

  “The people wouldn’t like it.”

  “They needn’t know about it.”

  “They’ll know.”

  “Another cigarette?”

  He had no qualms about accepting, but he stuck to his guns. And the mere thought of all those images with their faces to the wall, beyond my reach, stuck in my gullet.

  No Shortage

  The only person I found more or less approachable was Lukas Death, yet by no stretch of the bloody imagination could even he be called forthcoming; and like Tant Poppie Fullmoon he gave the impression of tolerating my presence only because for some reason he had to. I could, however, exploit his weakness for cigarettes. There were few questions he gave straight answers to, but at least he was prepared to give me an idea of how the settlement functioned. How occupations were handed down from father to son, or mother to daughter; how he conducted his lessons, which were more or less restricted to the three Rs, a smattering of geography and whatever passed for history in this place; how Brother Holy ruled his congregation through the fear of God; how Isak Smous left for the outside world every three or four months, accompanied by a safari of helpers, with the products of the valley to be exchanged in the Little Karoo for whatever the Devil’s Valley needed in return.

  Most of our conversations were rather patchy, and they never lasted long; sometimes it would be very awkward indeed, as on the Saturday morning when we had to talk over a small child’s body he was preparing for burial—a waterhead with shrivelled limbs. It was while working in his morgue that Lukas Death gave me the lowdown on the formal organisation of the settlement: the Council of Justice, the Council of Policy, the Church Council, the Burial Committee, the Water Management, the Missionary Action Committee, the Chamber of Commerce. Each of these bodies was composed around Lukas Death himself, and the same members served on each, with
some provision for co-option; and although in theory it was possible to call elections it never happened in practice since whenever anything of importance happened all the inhabitants would automatically flock to the church to discuss it and take action.

  What got my goat was the bloody Missionary Action Committee, but Lukas Death was unable to shed much light, apart from conceding that in the absence of heathens to convert this particular committee had never met in living memory. “But it has to be there,” he insisted, “just in case, you see.”

  He placed old brass pennies on the bulging eyes of the deformed child. Not an appetising sight. And as Lukas Death pointed out, after a century and a half of inbreeding there was no shortage of such as these.

  Hit My Father

  It was on the same Saturday morning, on my way home from Lukas Death’s morgue that my snotty shadow risked for the first time coming a few steps closer. He’d needed several days to rake up the courage. I only realised he was creeping up on me when he was a mere five yards or so behind me. Then, staring far into the distance as if talking to himself, he asked:

  “Does Oom come from far away?”

  I looked round. “You talking to me?”

  He took a step back, his eyes still avoided me.

  Catching on, I continued on my way, but walking more slowly now to give him time to keep up. I said, “I come from very far away.”

  A pause. “Does Oom come from heaven?”

  I made a vague gesture towards the distant peaks. “From very high up.”

  “Is Oom the Lord God?”

  I knew I had to play it skilfully. “Why do you ask, boetie?”

  “If Oom is the Lord God, won’t Oom please hit my father with a thunderbolt?”

  “Why?”

  “He’s too hard on us, Oom.”

  “What does he do then?”

  “Is Oom really the Lord God?”

  “Not actually.” I stopped to light a cigarette. “But I’m a close friend. I can always put in a word for you.”

  “No, jus’ give me then a smoke-stick.” He pointed to my packet of Camels.

  “You’re too small to smoke.”

  “It’s not to smoke,” he mumbled, on his face an I-didn’t-ask-to-be-here kind of expression.

  For the hell of it I took out a cigarette and held it out to him, meaning to snatch it away if he made a grab for it. But he was much too fast for me. Swift as a vervet monkey he zapped it from my hand and scuttled off. At a safe distance he sat down on a rock and, keeping a furtive eye on me, tore the paper from the cigarette, shook the tobacco into a cupped hand and greedily gobbled it up. When he’d finished the last bit, he got up again, chucked his bubble of snot in reverse, and darted off. Another dead end. Yet this time I felt that some kind of progress had been made.

  Bloody Nerves

  ONLY OVER THE weekend did things begin to change. It was on the Sunday, to be exact, which was devoted to their version of Holy Communion. Nagmaal. As early as Friday I became aware of a barely repressed excitement building up like some sort of bloody fever in the settlement. Tant Poppie started baking like mad, and from what I could discover on my regular walks the same thing happened in all the other kitchens. Tall-Fransina was getting so fucking agitated beside her pot-still one could swear she had turps under her tail. The old folk in the cemetery were throwing up clouds of dust as they dug and weeded like fucking ants, especially around old Lukas Lermiet’s empty grave. At ever shorter intervals Henta Peach and her gang came charging through the streets and into the bluegum forest or up the dry riverbed, chattering like a fucking swarm of weaverbirds that had seen a snake. Jurg Water broke into a near-gallop as he moved about from bloody dawn to dusk in search of unseen waters.

  The most visible sign of something unusual was the increase in the numbers of mentally and physically handicapped breaking out from the dark hideouts in the houses where they were usually kept out of sight: the dim-witted and the maimed and the retarded, the waterheads, the mongols, the spastic, the blind, the cross-eyed, the crippled, the dribblers and babblers, the eaters of earth and grass and shit, some of them on foot if not on all fours, others pushed on wooden carts and wheelbarrows. They’d been around in the settlement every day, here and there, usually tended by a mother or an older sister or an aunt; but since the Friday morning they were coming out in fucking droves, like flying ants before a storm. It was getting on my bloody nerves, an all-too blatant exhibition of sins better kept secret.

  Smothered Cry

  Towards nightfall on the Friday I was beginning to feel like a fucking bee in a bottle. I’m sure Tant Poppie’s customary series of toasts to Father, Son and Holy Ghost made it worse, but even without them I just had to get out, especially as it was such a fucking beautiful night, with a kind of late-summer balminess in the air; and full moon too. But as it happened, I wasn’t allowed out, because over supper Tant Poppie announced that she was expecting a ‘patient’ and wanted me to stay in my room.

  “Something serious?” I asked, not just from curiosity but to show some goodwill.

  She pursed her lips in a chicken-arse kind of pout, and her two quick eyes looked past me on either side. “It’s just something that’s got to be done before Nagmaal.”

  It was too early to go to bed, so I tried to get on with one of the porn paperbacks I’d brought along in my rucksack, even if the candlelight made reading heavy going. Soon after dark—a sliver of the full moon was just showing above the slope at the back of the house—I heard Tant Poppie’s visitor arrive. Two, as far as I could gather when I went to listen at the door: an older woman and a girl. They spoke in whispers, which made it impossible to discover more; but from time to time a voice broke through, allowing me to draw my own conclusions. A journalist with my experience needs little more than a wink and a nudge. For about an hour there was a bustle of activity in the voorhuis: the shuffle of bare feet, a rustling and fidgeting about, once or twice the sound of a pitcher put down heavily on table or floor, sometimes a more audible cryptic word from Tant Poppie: “Hold her tight”—“Open up”—“Come on, it’s not so bad”—“Just press my arm”…And once there was a smothered cry from the girl, followed by Tant Poppie’s contented voice. “Good. Now just lie quietly for a while.” But the girl kept on whimpering softly.

  If it was what I thought was happening under this damn godfearing roof, the Devil’s Valley was an even tougher nut to crack than I’d believed before.

  I drifted into sleep while the girl was still moaning away in the voorhuis; and so I never saw the bloody full moon rise—as, with frustrating pigheadedness it followed the curve of the mountain slope all the way to the top, always remaining just out of sight, showing no more than a thin luminous edge. Every time I got up to look, I’d think: just five more minutes—two—now! But it never happened. And in the end, its full fucking glory still denied me, I fell asleep.

  Woke Up

  In my sleep I had a totally screwy dream. Now I really have a shit in people who tell their dreams to others, as if these things could be of the slightest interest to anyone but the damn dreamer. But I must make an exception of this one, with good reason.

  I dreamt I woke up from the moon flooding the room like a wash of white water spilling right across my bed on the floor. Jesus, here comes the poetry again. I remember getting up in my dream, half-blinded by the light, to look through the window. Detached from the black side of the mountain, the moon was at last drifting free in the dark blue sky like a huge blister. I dreamt I opened the window to climb out—which was of course impossible as no window in the settlement can be opened. But since when is a dream inhibited by the fucking feasible? Outside it was sultry, and very quiet. The mountains naked in the night. No light anywhere, no sign of anything moving. What time it was I couldn’t tell, as I’d left my watch behind. I set off towards the bluegum wood which began a little distance above the church, a black stain in the dark, like ink spilled on the mountain slope. Below my bare feet I could feel, even in the dre
am, the warmth of the day still lingering in the ground.

  What lured me to the forest, I couldn’t tell. It just seemed the natural thing to do. Among the trees the moon got lost. It was bloody dark, yet I had no trouble at all finding my way through the smooth trunks and the parched underbrush, as if I knew exactly where I was going. After a long time the trees suddenly opened up ahead of me, as I seemed to know they would, and once again I could see the moon, now drifting in a haze. While I’d been in the forest a heavy white mist had come down from the mountain.

  Unmelodious Chant

  For the first time I could hear sounds. Voices, girls’ voices, like some kind of chanting, punctuated by sharper, shriller cries, and a sound of moaning, like that of the girl in Tant Poppie’s voorhuis. But the noise was muffled, either because of the mist, or because they didn’t want it to be heard. Which would make sense, for when I got to the edge of the clearing I saw a sight that would surely have turned some of the older settlers in the valley belly-up with shock. A throng of young naked girls dancing among the trees. Except that dancing is not the right word: they were simply rushing about wildly, blindly, to and fro among the trees and through the clearing, arms and legs flailing. It was like a flock of night birds flapping about, crashing into the shrubbery or flying headlong into one another. But there was nothing exuberant about it: in fact, there was a kind of mute panic in their frenzy, which made it more unsettling than erotic.

  Because of the heavy fog and the unreliable moonlight, it took some time before I could make out what they were actually doing. This was no fucking kids’ game, but more of a mass flagellation. Only then could I understand the flailing arms: the girls had an assortment of thongs and switches and canes and freshly plucked branches with clusters of leaves still attached to them, with which they lambasted one another. As some of them came thrashing past me, close enough to distinguish details in the mist, I could see dark weals and streaks of blood on their limbs. And what from a distance had sounded like some unmelodious chant, was now much closer to a bloody half-hysterical wailing.