Devil's Valley (32 page)

It felt like the first time I’d taken off my clothes in front of a woman, not knowing how she was going to react to my hairy body. Fucking naked I came into the world, I thought, and fucking naked I stand before you today. Do your damnedest, you bastards. From all the faces swimming in the haze before me I picked out Emma’s eyes, large and very black below the straight dark brows in her pale face. And then the bedlam in me subsided into a strange kind of calm.

Message

“Thank you for the opportunity, Brother,” I said solemnly, as if it had all been agreed beforehand. I saw him gasping for breath in indignation, but before he could call on Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and their lesser brethren to assist him, I plunged right in: “It is an honour and a privilege to stand before you today as the guest of Grandpa Lukas Lermiet, even if the message entrusted to me is a sad one indeed.” I fell silent in what I hoped was a pregnant pause. “Three funerals in one day is a heavy blow for any community.”

If my first pause was equal to a pregnancy of, say, six months, the second one was close to full-term. I allowed the wave of surprise to run through the whole congregation.

“Let me explain,” I said in a tone of great solemnity, “my brothers and sisters.” Those were words I’d always dreamed of speaking in public. I know Ma had originally cherished ecclesiastical ambitions for me, but after the brief encounter with Maureen behind the sofa they were abandoned. Today I was finally living up to her expectations. Look, Ma, both hands.

“The late Ounia Liesbet Prune appeared to me last night,” I announced. The second wave of reaction was even stronger than the first. I was beginning to relish the kind of power a man like Brother Holy takes for granted. “I was unable to sleep. My mind was heavy inside me. I went for a walk in the night. And as I passed Ouma Liesbet’s house I heard her calling my name. She was sitting on her rooftop as always.” It was not altogether a lie. “And then she spoke to me.”

Brother Holy began to move beside me: a curious, rhythmic bending and stretching of his knees as if he was preparing to jump. But by now I had the congregation in my hand. The feeling of power was delirious.

“Ouma Liesbet asked me to convey a message to the Devil’s Valley on this sad occasion.”

And from there, if I say so myself, I launched into an inspired address about how her lifelong desire to ascend to heaven had been cut short by murder most foul. She had shown me the fatal wound on her head. I had no idea, I told them, of what had become of her, but she had promised to lead me to her grave during today’s ceremony. I could not guarantee success, I was a stranger in their midst, but with God’s mercy and Ouma Liesbet’s help I was prepared to do my best. If they would so permit me. With these words I produced my divining rod from under my windbreaker.

Emma stood staring fixedly at the ground before her as if she meant to look a hole right into it. Tant Poppie had her hands full with the young widow and her children. But the others were agog with excitement.

Brother Holy next to me had finally found his voice again, and a fine voice it was. In a fucking stentorian rage he began, “Brothers and sisters…”

But he was drowned out by the crowd.

“Thank you, Brother,” I said, looking through the assembled people. “Do I have your consent?”

Whether the clamour signified yes or no, I didn’t bother to find out. Like a weathered water-diviner, with the slow, measured steps I’d seen Jurg Water taking on his rounds every day, I started pacing through the cemetery, concentrating like hell. And the whole crowd, except for Tant Poppie and her pathetic little group on the precariously tilted stone, followed me at a safe distance. I stretched the process for as long as I could. Up one row, down the next, then up again, and down again. The white stick, stripped of its bark, pointed straight ahead. I could only hope that the sweat on my brow would be interpreted as a sign of effort, not of trepidation. Because behind all the bravado I knew only too bloody well what was at stake.

Donkey Stallion

Just before I reached the tombstone inscribed with the question mark, the stick actually began to swivel in my hands. I was concentrating so furiously that it began to feel as if the forked stick had a life of its own. Like the dong of a donkey stallion it swung up with such a force that it nearly hit me between the eyes. Then down again. And then it started whirring in circles. With this kind of show I could soon qualify as a drum majorette. The first movement of the rod had caused a collective intake of breath, the second a reverberating groan. By the time the rod was swivelling over the unknown grave the crowd went fucking bonkers.

I stopped dead. “Here,” I announced, quite unnecessarily. “Ouma Liesbet wants us to dig right here.”

“But,” interposed Brother Holy.

No one paid any attention to him. The people were totally carried away. They swarmed around the grave, trampling one another for the best view. Right at the back, pale and unmoving, stood Emma.

“Are there any volunteers to do the digging…?” I asked respectfully.

The spades with which the men had been slaving away the day before still stood against the wall near the two graves. There was a stampede in that direction. Four or five men started digging furiously, nearly severing whatever feet got in the way. Thank God they were all wearing shoes today.

“Slowly, slowly,” I warned them. “We can strike something at any moment.”

“Perhaps it’s water,” suggested Lukas Death in a hopeful voice.

“This man knows nothing about finding water,” growled Jurg Water. I didn’t like the look he gave me.

Dull Thud

In spite of my warnings the digging proceeded furiously. Until, suddenly, there was the sound of a dull thud as the first spade struck the roll of blankets. Everybody fell quiet. The diggers dropped to their knees and began to scrape away the soil with their hands. I remained standing with the forked stick in my hands. As they exposed the blanket, the rod swung up for the last time. The crowd fell back in awe.

I don’t know whether he’d been in the throng all along, but I hadn’t noticed him before the men raised the dusty bundle from the hole and laid it beside the fresh mound where they folded back the flap. Only now did I see him among them, blinking his weak, watery eyes in the daylight. Ben Owl.

In the stunned silence I said, “Ben?”

“Why are you talking to me?” he asked aggressively, his voice breaking into falsetto.

“What do you think happened here?” I asked.

“Perhaps the Good Lord dropped her,” he said.

“It doesn’t look like a fall to me,” I replied. “It looks more like a blow to the head.”

“Perhaps she tried to resist when the Lord came to fetch her,” he stammered. “So he had to whack her with a spade.”

The crowd did not seem impressed. But now they were turning to me for an answer, and I had no wish to be drawn too deeply into it.

“Ouma Liesbet only asked me to find her body,” I said. “I’m sure we can safely leave the rest to Lukas Death’s capable hands.”

He approached hesitantly, looking quite unprepared for the task that lay ahead.

“Don’t you think the body should be taken to your place?” I suggested.

He made a helpless gesture. “Let us not be too hasty,” he said. “We must first find out what the people think.”

But nobody could come up with a practical suggestion; they were still too stunned.

In my hands the divining rod made another twisting movement. There was an outcry from the front row. I knew I was taking a hell of a risk, but it might be my last chance before I left in the morning.

“I’m not sure at all,” I announced, “but the rod is still pulling down. Perhaps we should dig deeper.”

There was no shortage of volunteers. And within seconds the digging was resumed.

Delicate Carving

From here the soil was much harder, and it was bloody heavy going. But the men took turns. No one wanted to miss out. Whenever they appeared to slack down I gave another jerk to the stick. It did wonders. The only one to stare at me unflinchingly, his eyes blazing, was Jurg Water. I doubted whether he’d ever forgive me this intrusion on his professional territory. But there was only one more day; after that I needn’t worry about him again.

I had no idea myself of what to expect next. At least it was a relief to see someone else do the dirty work.

In the background Emma still stood like a kind of caryatid, both her fists pressed to her mouth, chewing her knuckles. I knew what was at stake for her. If only I could go to her, put an arm around her. But of course that was out of the question.

“Do you really think there’s something here?” asked one of the diggers. Their faces were coated with a crust of grime. The hole was about man-deep.

“Ouma Liesbet wasn’t very clear on this point,” I said. “You must remember she was very weak. All I could make out was, “You must dig deep, boetie, you must dig deep.””

At that very moment, as if fucking destiny itself had taken things in hand, one of the spades struck wood. The rod in my hands turned several somersaults.

A coffin became visible through dust and gravel and dry lumps of earth. A very old, very decayed coffin. Even so, the delicate carving on the lid was still visible.

Immediately after the men had lifted the coffin from the hole, Jos Joseph kneeled beside it to trace the pattern with skilled fingers.

“This is my grandfather’s handiwork,” he said. “I’d recognise it anywhere.”

A few of the older men nodded in agreement. Tant Poppie also made her appearance, having temporarily left the widow and her children in Dalena’s care.

“Ja, this is Ouma Liesbet’s coffin,” she announced without a moment’s hesitation. “It used to stand in her voorhuis. I remember it well. But one night it disappeared, we all thought it was stolen. The whole of the Devil’s Valley spoke about it. Nobody ever saw it again, and Ouma Liesbet refused to have a new one made. It was from that moment that she started talking about going up to heaven. Now, is that true, Ben Owl, or isn’t it?”

He shrivelled under the stare from her darting black eyes. “It’s true, Poppie,” he mumbled, and tried to back away, but fell over the mound of earth piled up behind him.

“Ouma Liesbet told me she’d given her coffin to a woman called Maria,” I said sternly.

The name made waves through the crowd. I couldn’t look directly at Emma, but from the corner of my eye I could see her coming towards us like a sleepwalker.

“Perhaps we should open it,” I said. My jaws were tight.

The men beside the coffin hesitated.

“This is sacrilege,” exclaimed Brother Holy.

Then Lukas Death spoke up behind me, “No, open it up.”

Took Some Doing

But the mystery had to remain a mystery for a while longer, because before anything could be done about Lukas Death’s order there was an interruption: Tant Poppie jostled the people surrounding the coffin out of her way to demand that Bart Biltong and Alwyn Knees be laid to rest without more ado so that the suffering widow could be taken home.

That gave Brother Holy an opportunity to salvage some of his lost dignity, although Tant Poppie’s threatening presence prevented him from opening the taps of his eloquence too widely. Also, his congregation had become so restless in the presence of all the riddles waiting to be solved, that he deemed it wise to cut the rest of the ceremony down to more manageable proportions. From the way he punctuated his oratory with smouldering glances in my direction it was very clear that he held me personally responsible for the disturbance of his sacred duties; but to hell with him.

The last amen still hovered overhead like a cloud of dust when Tant Poppie and Dalena-of-Lukas helped the widow and her wretched family from the half-capsized headstone and escorted them away through the cemetery. Seldom, I was convinced, had two graves in the Devil’s Valley been filled up so quickly. Everybody was in a hurry to get back to the third hole. The stone with the question mark on it lay to one side, in silent reproach, next to the insignificant human bundle under the dirty grey blanket. But even Ouma Liesbet Prune was temporarily forgotten in the general excitement to see what was hidden in the half-decayed old coffin.

There was yet another delay when Jos Joseph insisted on first fetching the proper tools from his shed before getting on with the delicate task of removing the lid without damaging his grandfather’s carvings. There was something like pride in one’s handiwork, he argued.

But in only a few minutes he was back, carrying a long box filled with chisels and wedges and hammers and screwdrivers of various shapes and sizes, and the rest of us stood back in due respect to watch a dedicated artisan go about his business. The man had poetry in his rough hands. The way in which he dislodged those rusty screws and severed the perfect joints that held the mouldering boards together, took some doing.

But in the end it was a bloody wasted effort, because when at last, with endless patience and precision, he removed the lid, the coffin was empty.

Moth and Rust

It said something for the quality of the work done by Jos Joseph’s grandfather that the upholstery inside showed almost no sign of decay. Moth and rust had been kept at bay with a dedication that apparently caused even death to think twice. Several of us squatted down for a closer look. The white silk upholstery was stained here and there with faded brownish marks of a kind that made a crime reporter suspect the fucking worst. But I said nothing.

After a long time Lukas Death rose to his feet again, wiping his hands on his sides as if to rid them of invisible stains.

“The coffin,” he announced solemnly, “is empty.”

It took a while for his finding to sink in.

“But how can this be?” he asked. “We’ve dug up graves more than once in the past, and there’s always something left behind. Not pleasant to look at, but
something
. And in this coffin there is nothing.”

“But who would bother to bury an empty coffin?” asked Brother Holy.

“There are marks,” I said, pointing at the stains.

“What exactly did Ouma Liesbet tell you?” asked Lukas Death.