Devil's Valley (44 page)

Hanna squatted over the groaning, shivering Jurg, to pee on his burnt face where no skin was left. Henta was nowhere to be seen. I could only guess that she’d already run away as she’d threatened to; but where in that burning night could she have found shelter? I tried not to think of it, but it was—once again—like the remedy of the fucking woman’s navel.
The slight curve, the deep inverted comma, and below. Throw it in the sea
.

Brother Holy was called upon to help Jurg when his wife’s last desperate efforts failed, but he was caught in such a paroxysm of scratching that he was more of a hindrance than a help. Still, he tried.

I wasn’t particularly keen to follow the stages of Jurg Water’s painful death, but in a perverse way it fascinated me.
Crime reporter shows true colours
. Like a praying mantis Brother Holy bobbed up and down around him on his stick-legs, trying to the very last to snatch a lost soul back from death.

“Jurg, Jurg, can you hear me?” Hopping on his left leg in order to scratch under his right foot. “Jurg, it is time to go.” Scratching under the left breast. “Jurg, you must turn away from the Devil.” Scratching the old dry balls.

“This is not a time to make enemies, Brother,” groaned Jurg. And as far as I know those were his last words.

Fertile Rift

In small bewildered clusters the people huddled in the empty spaces between the houses as the last burning roofs subsided. From time to time a few hesitant flames would still spring up to flicker for a few minutes, but without much conviction. The air was heavy with soot. It was hard to keep away from Emma, but so near the end I didn’t want to stir up even a hint of suspicion anywhere. With both the Peeping Tom and the prime culprit out of the way (so God didn’t sleep after all, I thought with wry satisfaction) we could breathe somewhat more easily for a while, but it was prudent not to screw anything up unnecessarily.

Only at first light did people begin to stir again. There was a kind of morbid eagerness to see the full extent of the damage in the light of day. But there was fear too. No one knew exactly what to expect.

My own impression, as the dusty sun began to glow on the highest peaks, was that it was even worse that I’d feared. The mountains were black, the settlement a ruin. Even the heavy blunt tower of the church had collapsed. It was as if the lightning had struck from two directions simultaneously: the sky above and the earth below. And here where they met, in the once fertile rift of the Devil’s Valley, there was devastation.

Once I’d shouldered my rucksack I tried as unobtrusively as possible to edge away from the dumbfounded crowd, winding my way through the houses, away from the church, first heading in the direction opposite to the one I meant to take; in passing, as if by accident, I brushed past Emma, and whispered:

“I’ll be waiting.”

She nodded without looking at me, briefly touched my hand, and then accompanied Dalena back to the blackened remains of their house.

Feeling I Got

At the far end of the settlement, where I meant to cut through to the patch of prickly pear on the opposite slope on a roundabout route to the dried-up riverbed, I came upon Hans Magic. His unlit calabash pipe clenched between his teeth, he sat slumped on Tall-Fransina’s crumbled stoep, staring into the distance, deserted even by his cloud of flies. This was pure shit. He was just about the last person I could have wished to meet. But it was too late to turn back.

Without looking up at me he said, “So, Neef Flip.”

My stomach turned as I desperately tried to think of a way out, but my thoughts were trapped. I felt like a meerkat facing a geelslang.

“Now Fransina is dead too,” he said unexpectedly. “Brother Holy has struck me with the darkness of Egypt after all. I’ve now taken away his itch. But that won’t bring Fransina back.”

“I found her on the stoep last night,” I said diffidently. “The pillar fell on her. I don’t know what she was doing outside in the storm.”

“She came to see me, that’s what. I asked her to stay, but she wouldn’t.”

“What could have been so urgent?”

“You,” he said. For the first time he raised his head to look at me. “You and Emma.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, aware only of a blankness inside me.

“She asked me to leave you alone. We’re getting old, she said. We can’t go on trying to hold on to life through others.” A pissed-off tone crept into his voice. “I don’t know what made her think the two of you matter one bit to me.” He sucked at his pipe as if he didn’t realise it had gone out long ago. “And now you’re off?”

“I’m just checking on the damage.”

“With your rucksack on your back.” A dry snort. “Do what you wish,” he said in a weary voice. “Fransina is dead. I really can’t care less about you. Just leave me alone with the feeling I got in me.”

For a moment I still lingered. Then I went on my way, unsure of whether I should feel relieved or concerned. Once before he’d asked me,
Do you believe me?
But this time I really had no idea what I believed any more.

More Gone

And here I am, waiting at the rock pool. Something must have happened, for there is still no sign of her. Without her I cannot even think of going on; but dare I go back to look for her?

I walk round the pool set deep in the barren rocks. How many times have I done so during the past few hours? Over there, right there, she was standing that first day, shaking the water from her hair. This was where I first saw her, as I’ve never seen her since, naked, with the light on her collarbones and her shoulders, and the four tips of her breasts. The way a painter would have seen her, someone like Gert Brush. Like a painter I recall the particulars of her body, as real and sure as these rocks. And yet she left no wet footprints, not a trace. She was and wasn’t there. I still cannot explain it. All I know is that today she is even more gone than on that first day.

But she must come, for God’s sake, she promised. That is, if I can believe her. I remember all her lies, her changing stories. But surely that was only in the beginning, wasn’t it, when she was still unsure about me. It’s different now. It must be different. I think I—

You Two

It’s she, it’s Emma. I can see her making her way very fast up the dry riverbed. It’s one of the few thickets not touched by the fire. She is in such a hurry that she keeps on stumbling, even after she has stooped to lift the hem of her dress high above her knees. From a distance I can hear her panting.

“Emma, you’ve come!”

The long rectangle of the dried-up pool lies between us.

She breaks into a run, along the left edge of the deep hole in the rocks. Watch out, I think, Jesus, watch your step, don’t slip! And at last she falls into my arms. I feel her body shaking against mine.

“Emma, what’s the matter? What happened?”

“They saw me. They’re coming after us.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll never catch up with us.” She keeps clinging to me. Is it my imagination or can I hear a crashing and breaking of branches approaching from a distance, rocks clattering, a sound of shouting voices? I press her hard against me. Over her shoulder I can see something moving. As he breaks through the brittle reeds I recognise Lukas Death. The crumpled black suit is in a fucking state. In his hands he has one of his two ancient, unwieldy guns. The moment he sees us he stops to raise the bloody thing to his shoulder.

“Lukas, wait!” I shout. “What the hell are you doing?” She tears herself away from me. “Oom Lukas, don’t!” I can see him shaking with rage. “You two…!” he stammers. “You two, let loose among us by the Devil himself. If it hadn’t been for you, Little-Lukas would still have been with us.”

Emma starts running back towards the man in black, her hands outstretched to stop him. Lukas Death drops down on one knee.

I can hear my own voice shouting, “Emma, come back!” And hers: “Oom Lukas, don’t!”

Then I hear the sound of the shot. She stumbles as she runs, and falls down. There is a great tangle of old dry branches and roots and underbrush at the farthest corner of the pool. She falls right through it all, down to the rock-floor below. It can’t be true, it isn’t possible. Someone must be dreaming again. Jesus Christ, when will I get into a dream of my own for a fucking change? I cannot move. “Lukas, for God’s sake, man…!” Then comes the second shot. For a moment I don’t understand what the hell is going on, I haven’t seen Lukas reload. Only when he topples forward from his kneeling position and rolls over on his side do I realise that it wasn’t he who fired.

Like a sleepwalker I begin to shuffle along the side of the hole, past the spot where Emma crashed through the branches, trying to get to Lukas Death. A pool of bright blood is spreading across the flat surface of the rock under him. Unbelievable how much blood there is in a person. It will never cease to amaze me.

Dalena appears among the withered trees and fynbos in the dry bed. She stops when she sees me. Her hair is plastered all over her sweaty face. She also carries a gun.

I
’m still sitting down here on the floor of the pool, on my knees at Emma’s side. The dress which in her fall was practically torn from her body, I have folded back to cover her. The left leg, which landed at an unnatural angle half folden in under her, I’ve straightened out. One could almost think that she’s only sleeping, dreaming, except if you look at what’s left of her face.

The body I loved, no longer moves. It was the events of this body, I think, which at long last turned me into the only historian I’ll ever be, when my body wrote the chronicle of hers, and hers of mine. Now she is dead.

Was this, I wonder in a wave of nausea, what the motherfucking old Hans Magic meant when he said, ‘Leave me alone with this feeling in me’?

Just leave me alone now. For fuck’s sake, just leave me alone.

Above me, on the edge of the dry pool, stands Dalena. I’m trying very hard to follow what she says. Her breath, which came in deep gasps when I first saw her, is back to normal. She actually appears unnaturally calm.

Over and over again I hear myself asking the same questions. Why she? And why Lukas Death? And why Emma?

Dalena talks to me as if she’s trying to soothe a child. I try to follow. It had to be done, she says, because Emma was Lukas Death’s child. With the girl Maria, all those years ago. It happened when he went to fetch her back after she’d run away. His best friend, Ben Owl, had asked him to. But he cheated on Ben Owl. High up in the mountains he fell on Maria when she was half-asleep and didn’t know before it was too late what was going on. After that she refused to have anything more to do with him. And when she found out that she was pregnant she agreed to marry Ben Owl, to spite Lukas. And Lukas married Dalena. Little-Lukas was born only a few months after Emma.

Now you’ll understand, says Dalena, why Lukas Death’s life became a living hell when the two children fell in love. He couldn’t tell anybody why he was so dead against it. She herself had always had it wrong. Only last night he finally told her.

“Now it doesn’t matter any more, I don’t care if they all know,” she says, “I have found peace in my mind. I have done what I had to do. But you must hurry up now, Neef Flip. The people down there will have heard the shots, they’ll be coming up here any minute now. They mustn’t find you here.”

“But Emma…”

“There’s nothing more you or anyone else can do for Emma. She’d have wanted you to get out of this place. For her sake too.” A very brief pause, then she adds under her breath, “And perhaps for mine, who knows?”

Dark Mole

I walk along the edge of the hole alone, over to the far side. Here is the spot where she stood that day. I stop. I go down on my haunches. I touch the rock with one numb finger. For here are her footprints, clear as anything, pressed deep into the rock. Slowly I get up again. I stare across the empty pool. Dalena has gone back into the tangled underbrush. I can’t see Emma’s body from here either; but perhaps it is because I’m crying.

From down below, behind me, I can now clearly hear voices coming this way. Maybe Dalena will delay them, maybe not.

As if stoned out of my mind, my guts like a millstone weighing me down, I crouch down low and duck into the underbrush along the dry bed. God knows if I’ll ever find my way again. But even if I don’t find all the shortcuts Prickhead followed that first afternoon—and for all I know they may not have been shortcuts at all—I swear to God I’ll get out of the valley sooner or later. How long did it take Mooi-Janna’s pursuers to get to the top? At least they had her there waiting for them, with her dark hair undone, her straight eyebrows, her four nipples.

Today was the first time I’ve seen Emma’s body, when I kneeled beside her down there in the dried-up pool to fold the torn flaps of her dress over her. My hands were trembling, and I tried not to look. But there was time enough to see, and I know now that there were only two, not four. With a small dark mole like the footprint of a goat just below her left nipple, exactly as Tant Poppie had described it.

Memorise this, I thought, remember, hold on to it, against all the nights and days and delusions to come, when I might be tempted to distort and betray it, to lie about it. My body will not forget.

Nothing Happened

Once, when I have to stop to catch my breath—there is no sign of my pursuers any more—I look out over the long narrow valley stretching out far below, tranquil in the can’t-care-less glare of the sun. There is an ungodly quiet over the mountains.

I have made unexpectedly good progress. Already it is difficult to believe what has happened down there. All I have, I the historian, I the crime reporter, in search of facts, facts, facts, is an impossible tangle of contradictory stories.

And yet she said,
It doesn’t mean that nothing happened
. Don’t ever forget that.

At the time I still thought that perhaps one day I could manage to put all the bits and pieces together and make sense of them. Now I’m no longer so sure. Not because there are so many stories I’ve not yet heard, but because I suspect that even if I were to know them all there would still not be a whole, just an endless gliding from one to another.