Devil's Valley (28 page)

“And they lived happily ever after?”

“No. After a long time Lukas Bigballs became suspicious. And one day when the little nanny escaped again he hid in the house. When he saw Soft-in-the-Head Fransie tiptoeing to the back room where Katarina was locked up, he killed his brother with a single blow of a fire-iron, and then went to her in Fransie’s place. In the dark she didn’t notice the difference before it was too late. When her baby was born it had two goat’s feet. It was Lukas Death, my husband’s father. Katarina died in childbirth.”

Arm Through His

Dalena pushed her chair back and stood up.

“Please stay,” I begged her. “That can’t be all.”

“You haven’t heard the half of it.” She picked up the box of ashes and pressed it to her. “There were many remarkable women among us,” she said. “But by listening to the men you’ll never hear of them.” She went to the door. “But thank you for bringing me Little-Lukas. It was about time he came home.”

I checked my watch. It was just after three.

“Let me walk you home,” I offered. “It is pitch-dark outside.”

“I know my way.”

“Just as far as the church then.”

She relented. Her stories told, she closed up again. When we came outside she started walking very fast, so that I had difficulty keeping up with her. There were no signs of clouds at all, the stars were shining with uninhibited brightness.

Less than half-way to the church Dalena stopped.

“This is far enough. Thank you.”

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“I have Little-Lukas with me now.” In the dark she was more forthcoming again. “I hope you don’t mind that I came to talk to you. But I just
had
to. Otherwise no one will ever know.” She touched my elbow. “Look, Lukas needn’t know about this. I told him I had to see Tant Poppie about medicine. I’ll tell him she was out and I had to wait, and then left without seeing her. You were in bed already.”

Strange, strange woman. All those hidden worlds within her I’d never suspected. But what a loss that they had to be sealed up, and for so long. I looked after her as she disappeared into the night. When she was some distance away something weird happened: I could see Little-Lukas walking beside her, somewhat unsteadily on his feet. She put her arm through his. For a while I could still hear their footsteps, then they fell silent.

It was only a short distance away from Ouma Liesbet’s house. Out of curiosity I went nearer. If there was a light on, I could at least check on how she had weathered the storm. But everything was dark. And then, when I looked up, there she was, fucking honest to God, perched on her rooftop as always, leaning back against the chimney. The pale light of the night reflected dully from her little trunk. The roof itself looked badly damaged, tufts of straw hanging from the edges; it seemed as if part of the chimney had also fallen down. But there she was, as sure as a tombstone.

“Ouma Liesbet?” I called out softly.

She didn’t answer, only made an irritable little gesture, clutching her trunk more tightly. It was incredible. All I could think was that she’d gone inside just before the storm and returned to the roof after it had blown over. There was no other way she could have survived that gale.

I realised just how exhausted I was. The day had been too long. I had to get back to my room, and barricade the door, and have an undisturbed sleep for a change.

T
HE NEXT MORNING I first had to work my way through a heavy breakfast while Tant Poppie filled me in on the events of the night. She’d gone to attend to the prisoner, Alwyn Knees, after his release from the tower. Right through the storm she had battled to revive him, trying at the same time to cope with the wife and three small children. It transpired that it was because the woman had fallen pregnant again that Alwyn Knees wanted to surprise her with a pail of stolen water, but then he got caught red-handed; and now the woman was blaming herself for it, and passed out every few minutes. In the last gusts of the storm Alwyn expired and his wife went into convulsions, which ended in a miscarriage. The outcome was that Tant Poppie only came home in the early hours; yet before seven she was already bustling in the kitchen, baking bread.

I was shaken by her news. God, I thought, if only I’d known, I could have offered them the pail of water Isak Smous had sent me with his boy on Sunday afternoon. “Why didn’t the bloody Council of Justice consider the facts?” I stormed. “Surely there were extenuating circumstances?”

She shook her massive shoulders. “I know it’s hard, Neef Flip. But what will become of us if the law starts making exceptions?”

No way of getting through to her. But what else had I expected?

After breakfast we spent a while over a last mug of coffee. I was dying for a cigarette, but I’d smoked the last one as I got up; what was now to become of me, I preferred not to think about just yet. Depressed about my last Camel, and by Tant Poppie’s account of the night’s events, I was still staring into the evil brew in my mug when little Piet Snot appeared in the doorway in an even sorrier state than usual.

“Morning, Tant Poppie, morning, Oom. Pa says it’s going bad with us too, thank you, and Ouma Liesbet Prune flew up to heaven in the night.”

She must have been blown off the roof, was my first thought; but then I remembered how I’d seen her sitting there well after the wind had died down.

“Where did you hear that?” I asked.

“Everybody says so, Oom. Oom Ben Owl too.” He started choking on a gob of mucus.

“Well, she’d been waiting long enough,” said Tant Poppie, in such a hurry to go that she didn’t even bother to remove her soiled apron.

I followed hard on her heels, but Piet Snot plucked me back by the arm. “Oom?”

“What’s up now?”

“Oom forgot the chameleon.”

Cursing under my breath, I hurried back to pick up the chameleon in my room, and then rushed out, followed by the little boy like a streak of snot.

Jesus Christ

A crowd had gathered in the dusty road below Ouma Liesbet’s house or what was still left of it. Only now, in the daylight, could I see the full extent of the damage. The back of the roof had blown off, and what remained looked like an old coir mattress someone had ripped open beyond repair.

Ben Owl was addressing the people, but the voices in his head joined in so loudly that it was difficult to distinguish his words from theirs.

Just after midnight, he said, he’d been working behind the house doing some salvaging, when he saw a white cloud approaching from the mountain opposite. It was the kind of shimmering white of a cloud when the full moon shines on it, even though last night there hadn’t been much of a moon to speak of. The cloud stopped right above the house, where it began to glow brighter and brighter, until it looked like a brazier filled with flames. As he stood there, fucked out of his mind, the ball of fire began to descend until it was hovering exactly above the chimney where Ouma Liesbet had spent so many years waiting. And when it moved up again, she was gone, except for her little trunk gleaming through the flames, like a whitehot iron in Smith-the-Smith’s furnace. For a long time he could still hear her shrill little voice calling out, “I’m coming, my Lord, I’m coming, oh Jesus Christ!” Afterwards the fire slowly died down and the little white cloud drifted back over the mountains from where it had come.

“Come up and see,” said Ben Owl, turning his large red-rimmed eyes straight to me as if the whole report had been meant for me alone. “Where the fire picked her up the straw is burnt right through.”

It was true all right. In small groups, to prevent the roof from falling in, we went up the crumbling attic staircase and then along the ridge of the roof to the remains of the chimney. There was a rough black circle burnt through the thatch. One could see the scant furniture in the voorhuis from above: table, chairs, Ben Owl’s crumpled bed.

Against that overwhelming evidence there was nothing to bring in. And in the midst of the general amazement I said nothing either.

Shocking Whiteness

I thought it prudent to go my own way. I wanted to check on the rest of the storm damage. And it was a fucking depressing sight indeed. Almost no house had escaped unscathed. Several walls had partially collapsed, roofs had fallen in, lean-tos and sheds and chicken-runs had been torn apart and the bits and pieces were strewn all over the place. High up in the bluegum forest I could see a number of bewildered ostriches huddled in the trees. The place looked like the wreck of a fallen plane. It would take bloody weeks to clear up.

Near Jurg Water’s shed I heard the familiar chattering of girls’ voices and stopped short. I really didn’t feel like facing them right now. But before I could get away Henta and her shock of shrikes came bursting through the blown-off door, rushing right past me in a flutter of frocks and arms and legs, like feathers in a poultry-run after a fox had broken in; one could barely distinguish one from the other. Only Henta stood out among them with her ruddy cheeks and wild red hair.

She stopped for a moment as she came past me. Her eyes stared straight at me, frank and impertinent. She gave no sign of remembering what had happened between us before. That first morning here in the shed. The night in the wood. The shocking whiteness of her body under the dress on the Sunday afternoon.

“And how’s the world treating you?” I asked with stilted formality, taking a cautious step back, just in case.

“Oh fine.” An uninhibited laugh. “It’s just great.”

The next moment she ran off after the others. She was the only one in this place, I thought, who didn’t try to pretend things were going fucking badly. But that wasn’t what most preoccupied my thoughts. What struck me, almost like a physical blow, was that she had really not remembered. Yesterday, quite simply, had never happened. For her,
nothing
had yet happened. She existed outside of memory, beyond the reach of history.

Round the corner of the house Jurg Water appeared. He stopped when he recognised me. Made no attempt to greet me, just stood there scowling. He, too, seemed to have no recollection of what we had shared one violent night. This was not the time or the place to confront him. But sooner or later it had to happen. There was a silent appointment between us which would have to be kept.

I walked on again. Now I knew exactly where I was going.

I
T WAS TIME to seek out a man I’d met only briefly. Without any more delay, tape recorder in my pocket, I took the footpath through the tangle of fynbos in the direction of the hut I’d first seen from Ouma Liesbet’s roof.

Hans Magic was sitting on a rickety old paraffin case at his front door, his short legs barely touching the ground, his outlines blurred by a cloud of flies that surrounded him like an aura. A second box had already been set out for me. I could smell him from a distance. Never in my life have I seen such a filthy human being: in full daylight it was even worse than the evening he’d surprised me among Tant Poppie’s muti. But he seemed blithely unaware of it himself and welcomed me with a broad grin which revealed all three of his greenish-brown stumps of teeth. The kind of bright-and-clear ugliness Ouma Liesbet Prune had spoken about.

“I was wondering when you were coming to see me,” he said, exhaling a fume of unnameable stenches. “I was beginning to think you’re scared.”

“Should I be scared then?” I challenged him.

He sidestepped me deftly. “People think all kinds of things. The question is what
you
think.”

“I’m here to find out.”

“You’ve been putting it off for a long time. But sit down.” He patted the upended box beside him.

I cautiously shifted the box a couple of paces away, out of the worst fumes and the buzzing circle of flies.

Hans Magic had a calabash pipe in his hand. The smell of dagga was unmistakable. He promptly held out the pipe to me. My first reaction was to refuse. My dagga-smoking days were over, and ever since the hassles with Marius I’d been virulently against any form of drugs. Also, if I do have to go to hell one day it’d better be for something really worthwhile, not piddling little sins. Instinctively, my hand moved to my shirt pocket for my packet of Camels, but of course it was empty.

“You have no choice,” grinned Hans Magic, as if he understood my predicament, exhaling a new blue cloud. His face was as weatherbeaten as an old smoked ham.

I hesitated for another moment before accepting the pipe. At least the dagga would camouflage the many other smells.

“What have you got there?” he asked, pointing at my tape recorder.

“This is my own magic,” I joked. “I catch voices with it.”

“How do you do that?”

“I’ll show you.” I’d pressed the Record button just before I arrived; now I wound it back and played him the bit of conversation I’d registered. His colourless eyes flickered when he heard his own voice:
I was wondering when you were coming to see me. I was beginning to think you’re scared
. And the rest.

I switched it off.

“You people think you’re very clever,” was all he said.

“Do you mind if I use it?”

“Do as you like.” He puffed away, closing his small eyes with pleasure. Then he offered me the pipe again. “So Ouma Liesbet has left us,” he said.

I inhaled briefly, handed back the pipe and found a comfortable spot for the tape recorder on my lap. As a precaution I kept to the edge of my box. “How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“Ben Owl says she went to heaven.”

“Who am I to argue with that?” Another puff, before he proffered the pipe again.

“Do you believe it?” I asked, taking care not to inhale too deeply.

“The question is what
you
believe,” he said. “If you believe she went up, she’s there. If not, I suppose she isn’t.”

“It can’t be so easy, Oom Hans.”

“I didn’t say it was easy. Believing may be the most difficult thing of all.”

“I just don’t know what to believe.”

His smoke drifted between us like a ghostly presence. I added my own small puff.