Devil's Valley (34 page)

“I’m trying to write up the history of the Devil’s Valley, Annie. But all I’ve found so far is lies.”

Lies, lies, stories, I thought: and all to feed a rat in need of something more substantial.

“Do you promise you’ll write it up exactly as I tell it to you?” she asked with sudden eagerness, as if I’d offered her a long draught of cold water.

“I promise.”

“Then
somebody
will at least know about her, you see. And perhaps about me too. It’s terrible never to have been known about.”

A Dog or A Cat

“What happened to Katarina-the-Angel?” I asked.

“She never wanted to have anything to do with the seven brothers who bought her. Because she was so beautiful there were many other men who wanted her. But the Lermiets were a jealous lot. They kept her locked up. If they couldn’t have her, they said, then no one else would. So very soon she wasn’t allowed to see anybody else, except for the Smous’s servant, who was sent in every day to take her food.”

“But she did have children, didn’t she?”

“Then you know the story?”

“Not the story, only the lies.”

For a while she looked at me as if she wasn’t sure about going on.

“
Did
she have children?” I asked.

“Yes, she did. The first time it was the servant’s child.”

“How did they find out?”

“Because the child was black.”

I gaped at her.

“The servant was the only one of his kind ever to come here,” said Annie. “The people were dead against it, but the Smous needed him, and they needed the Smous, and so they put up with him for a time.”

“And the child?”

“They stoned the child,” she said. “Because to be black in the Devil’s Valley has always been the worst sin of all.”

“But why did they ever allow the servant to get to Katarina?”

She shrugged the thin shoulders. “He just took in food and brought out the peepot. I mean, he was like a dog or a cat in the household of the Smous. No one thought he’d do a thing like that.”

“And what became of him?”

“He ran off when he saw she was with child, never even waited for it to be born. And later the Smous hired another servant, but this time he was white, one of the boys from the valley.”

“And Katarina?” I asked. “Did they stone her too?”

She stretched her back and moved a tired hand across her face. “No, they didn’t stone her. They thought up something worse for her.”

“Can there be anything worse?”

“Yes, they began to hire her out. The brothers had her for free, but others had to pay. Usually with nanny goats.”

Moon Was Full

“People are still being stoned,” I said.

She nodded.

“Emma’s mother.”

“So far she was the last.”

“But children too? Throwbacks?”

She nodded again.

“But they couldn’t have been throwbacks to Katarina. Her child was killed, he had no descendants.”

“No, they must be throwbacks to someone else. But there are all kinds of stories about Katarina’s child. Some say the Smous stole him, and swapped him for another child, one he had with an unmarried girl. And then he had the servant’s child brought up in the world outside. They say when he was grown up, he started coming back to the Devil’s Valley when nobody knew. He always came when the moon was full, and then took his revenge by raping their women. Other say no, he was killed, but then he turned into a nightwalker. How can one ever be sure?”

“How can one even be sure about Katarina?”

“I have something of hers,” Annie said calmly. “It has been handed down from mother to daughter in our family. Not much, just a small diary. Fifteen or twenty pages, in High Dutch. It says very little, but at least it’s something to remember her by.”

I was so excited I had to get up. “Do you still have it?”

“Yes. But it belongs to me. It’s all I have.”

“I won’t take it away. Perhaps I could just look at it, copy some of it.”

“You won’t want to copy anything if you see it. You’ll just think it’s boring.”

Copperplate Handwriting

And in a way she was right. What was there really to glean from those cryptic entries in an old·fashioned copperplate handwriting? Except for that one passage in which something momentarily shone through, everything was wrapped in religious meditations, Bible texts, that kind of thing. The odd throwaway reference to herself was like a view from a distance, never a personal confession. There weren’t even dates (because, locked up, she’d lost track of time?), only an occasional mention of the day of the week—
Monday
, or
Wednesday
, or
The Day of the Lord
—or a reference to the phases of the moon: full, half, crescent, dark. Or was that the clue? I still don’t know. All I have is what I copied that afternoon while the storm raged outside. I was following Little-Lukas’s example, I thought wryly, who’d copied Immanuel Kant in his exercise book without ever understanding a word of it.

This World

Friday. O what is this world but a place of unrest & sorrow how much do those who love Jesus Christ have to struggle for this reason the Dear Lord says struggle to go in, some Days have passed during which, waiting for the full moon in a Depressed state of Mind, I have been unable to write. My Lord saw Jit to cover his comforting face as if with a Cloud so that my prayers recoiled as if from clouds through which they could not penetrate
.

Weak Body

Monday. Full moon. Once again with a Weak Body
 & 
Tortured Brain I have to perform all the Labour in the domestic Circle and receive at night like Aholah the Seed of my Lords and Masters like a grateful Servant unworthy to remain in this Life. And this I have to do to give Satisfaction to others, while I would rather hide myself in the lonely Mountain cave behind the Devil’s Hole, where no eye except that of God alone could see me. O be still my Soul let it be as it is, try to hold on to your belief that God will also be your Redeemer the world roars, get up, prepare the Meal O where can I escape to?

Intestines

The Day of the Lord. I am a Poor Woman confined & Constricted in the intestines of my meagre Home, & the sorrows of life especially at Night oppress the faculties of my Soul I do write on Sheets of Paper ponder the wonders of your Mercy & suppose hereby to provide my Soul with some Solace and thus to Praise you, you my Soul forget not all this Benefits read & reread what the Lord has done to your Soul & ignore what is being done to my body, and praise Him in secret He shall reward thee openly
.

Bastard

Dark Moon. Would I call my child a Bastard! I jumped up & called out loudly O no my Father! Chastise me by Flogging me like the others or even by Stoning me but call not my child O Lord! a Bastard! I started screaming &. implored the Lord Jesus to intercede for me with God it was as if my Spirit held the Redeemer by His clothes, & I hid my face behind Him, hiding from the Eye of God but soon I was rescued from this Dismay, by the same question (shall I call my child thus) then I thought at least I now shall have a Child that belongs to me for the rest of my Life even if I cannot take it to my Breast, & even though I have to deprive myself for all this time of the Mercy of the Father, for I should rather go to Hell with my child than to Heaven without it, O Lord no rather the dregs, the Scourings, despised & rejected, expelled from the people here on Earth
.

O
UTSIDE THE STORM still howled. I couldn’t tell whether the wind was worse than the first time. If the daylight made it slightly less terrifying the black clouds were darker than any eclipse. We were caught in the primitive rage of a fairytale; and it was a miracle that in all that huffing and puffing from some cosmic wolf the bloody house wasn’t blown down. Even more so that the children slept through it all. This time not only poultry and goats, pigs, ostriches, wheelbarrows, haystacks and trees came tumbling past, but also Jurg Water’s whole shed, as well as a number of few roofs, several longdrop outhouses, and two people: the ever-forging-and-unforging Smith-the-Smith, and another man, Sias Highstep, whom I knew only from sight. Neither of them was ever seen again.

Annie just sat staring ahead of her while the frenzy continued; after I’d copied a few brief passages from her great-grandmother’s diary she pressed the much-thumbed little book against her thin chest without speaking another word. And later the clouds were blown away, once again without a drop of rain; and slowly, gustily, with a few furious last flurries, like a child raked by sporadic sobs after a bout of crying, the wind also died down.

At the door, when I left, Annie said, “Thank you for coming. I’d have been scared in the storm.”

“Thank you for what you told me.” There was something solemn, a strange formality, between us. Like two people, I thought, who’d had sex too soon and now were embarrassed about getting dressed in front of each other.

For an instant her eyes filled with fear again. “You mustn’t tell the people here what I said. Or about the diary. They don’t know about it. Not even Alwyn knew. Once you’re gone from here it will be all right. But please, not while you’re here.”

“I promise.”

With a kind of detached amazement I picked my way back through the storm-wracked settlement to Tant Poppie’s house. Outside Tall-Fransina’s place a number of cats were wandering about, mewing desolately. There were few people about: a cluster in front of a ruined house, a family beside a heap of thatch that might once have been a roof, a woman carrying a bundle of dead chickens by the legs like a bunch of carrots, Jurg Water on the vacant spot where his shed used to stand. Most of them, I realised, were still too scared to face the destruction. And so most of the doors remained tightly shut, to keep knowledge at bay.

Handful of Feathers

Tant Poppie was indoors too, working at her hearth.

“No rain this time either,” I said as I sat down at the table.

She placed the soup plates before us, poured the apostles with such energy that half of the liquid was spilled, and sat down opposite me.

Her prayer sounded more like a prolonged curse than anything else.

“Did Annie-of-Alwyn calm down a bit?” she asked after slurping down the first spoonful of thick broth.

“It’s tough on her,” I said. “But she’s a strong woman.”

She blew into her soup, sending a vigorous spray across the table. “There’s something let loose amongst us,” she said. “And it’s time we got a grip on it. This business you stirred up about Ouma Liesbet isn’t going to lie down soon.”

“I only did what she ordered me to do.”

She blew like a hippopotamus again. And I sensed that only her nose and ears were visible above the water: the rest was churning up mud below.

“You reckon it was Ben Owl who killed her?”

“It’s in Lukas Death’s hands now.”

“No, Neef Flip,” she said. “It’s not so easily said and done. You can’t just come in here from outside and stir up things and think you can leave it to us to clear up the mess after you.”

“I have to go back at dawn tomorrow morning, Tant Poppie,” I said. “What happened to Ouma Liesbet is indeed for the people here to solve.”

“That old bastard Pilate also tried to wash his hands,” she said, draining her apostle and filling up her mug again. After a few moments she asked, “And did you find what you came for?”

“No,” I said frankly. “I gathered as much as I could, but it’s only a handful of feathers.”

“What else did you expect?”

“I don’t know. Facts. History.”

“And don’t you think Ouma Liesbet’s death is history?”

“It goes further than Ouma Liesbet. It’s about the whole Devil’s Valley, over more than a hundred and fifty years. I know now it’s not so easy.”

“I had visitors this afternoon. They told me that after I brought Annie home you accused Ben Owl about Maria’s death too.” Her eyes scuttled across my face.

“I didn’t accuse him,” I said emphatically. “We opened the coffin in which Ouma Liesbet said Maria had been buried. It was empty. From there Lukas Death did the questioning.”

“And did Emma have anything to say?” she asked out of the blue.

“Why should she?” I asked; she must have noticed that she’d upset me.

“She never stopped asking about her mother.”

“It’s only to be expected, isn’t it? Especially if nobody wants to give a straight answer.”

“You shouldn’t have dragged Ben Owl into it.”

“Why not?” I asked. My fuse was getting short.

“Because Ben Owl is Emma’s father.”

Off Her Head

I shook my head briskly as if she’d thrown an apostle in my face. “Come again?”

“I know about the story that her mother ran away from here and came back pregnant. But her mother wasn’t that kind of girl. It was just that she didn’t want to come back. Lukas Death was the one who went to fetch her. And when she came back all the wildness was gone. She married Ben Owl and settled down with him. He always had a soft spot for her, she grew up before his eyes. But then as she started swelling she went off her head. Some women just get like that, you know. And as soon as the child was born she ran off and drowned herself in the Devil’s Hole. They never found her body. From that time no one goes there any more.”

“Why did you bring her up and not Ouma Liesbet who was a blood relative?”

“Because from the time Maria died Ben Owl got funny in the head. It got so bad no one could talk to him any more. And he seemed to blame the child for her mother’s death. That’s why I brought her up. It was my Christian duty.”

I sat staring at the table, no longer in any mood to eat.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked.

“One doesn’t serve one’s burnt bread to guests.”

“Then what makes it different tonight?”

“Because you’re going away tomorrow, you can’t do any more harm.” She got up and cleared away the dishes. “And I know you can’t keep your eyes off Emma.”

“How can you say such a thing?”

“I’m not blind.”

I tried to get up, but sank back on my chair. I wasn’t prepared for this.