Devil's Valley (8 page)

O
NLY 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 dream, 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.

It was Henta and her gaggle once again. Of course I couldn’t be entirely sure in that screwed-up light, what with the frantic nature of their goings-on, but from time to time I thought I recognised some of the faces from the shed; and Henta herself was unmistakable, with her wild red mane, her body smeared with blood or filth.

For how long it went on, I couldn’t tell. But gradually the pace began to wind down, and I realised that fewer and fewer of the naked bodies were coming past me, until at last the clearing lay all empty and abandoned in front of me; and slowly the mist began to lift, and everything slipped into silence once again.

Wilted Little Bunch

I remember that in my dream I spent some time just wandering about the clearing, dazed, trying to find signs of what had just happened. But all that remained was broken switches and branches and clusters of bluegum leaves that had come off in the frenzy. I stopped to pick up one of the bunches, pressed it to my nose and inhaled the sharp tang of bruised eucalyptus. With the smell still stinging in my nostrils I became aware of another presence and looked round. Prickhead was hovering among the trees, a lecherous leer on his boneless face, both hands furiously burrowing between his bandy legs. Only for a moment, then he was gone again.

Still carrying the bunch of leaves, I returned to Tant Poppie’s house in a dwaal, climbed back through the window, undressed, and lay down. Only now, retroactively, the memory began to stir up sexual feelings in me. In my dream I tried to wank off, but gave up before I came, and dropped off into a restless sleep.

The following morning the turbid memories of the dream remained with me. I felt like another drop of Tant Poppie’s terrible herbs, only this time I wasn’t sure it would do the trick. This struck home in full force when at last I stumbled to my feet with heavy limbs, and put on my clothes, and discovered as I half-heartedly straightened the bed a wilted little bunch of bluegum leaves under the pillow.

O
N SATURDAY IT felt as if the tempo of life in the settlement was moved up another gear: the baking in the kitchens, the slaughtering of goats at the slaughter-tree, the processions of the variously afflicted in the streets, the bustling in the churchyard; and from early morning a team of women invaded the church to sweep and dust, to polish pews and pulpit and windowsills with beeswax. I came as far as the threshold before their pointed glances drove me off. More passionately than ever Brother Holy marched up and down the vegetable patch to call down fire and brimstone on the long-suffering cabbages. At regular intervals the bell rang out across the valley from the scaffolding that topped the blunt tower. ‘Bell’, I suppose, is too fancy a word for the heavy sheet of iron suspended like a gong from a crossbeam and struck, in the manner of J. Arthur Rank, by Smith-the-Smith; but the sound that came from it was enough to wake the goddamn dead.

The Nagmaal weekend was clearly not taken lightly. I was beginning to look forward to the event, kicking off with the preparatory service on Saturday night. Not out of any residual piety, but as part of my research project (I could see Twinkletoes van Tonder’s twat-face in the background, the turd). But when I broached the subject between the second and third apostles that evening, Tant Poppie firmly put down a small round foot, and I realised that she spoke with the voice of Medes and Persians.

I must have worn my disappointment on my sleeve, for she tried to explain in a soothing tone of voice, “Look, it’s not that the people won’t want you there, Neef Flip. But they haven’t had time to get used to you yet and it may upset them to see a stranger at Nagmaal. They need time.”

God and Man

I had no choice. From the front door I watched her go into the deep dusk. In a weird way there was something quite touching about all the people coming from their homes with lanterns in their hands, and the groups merging as they went, clusters of lights growing larger and larger as they converged on the louring hull of the church. Then darkness took over and I was left alone, forsaken by God and man. After a while I heard the mournful sounds of their evensong. It made me feel so fucking melancholy my heart went out to people I didn’t even know.

I never thought the day would come when I’d envy a bunch of churchgoers. Even as a child I’d found church a shit place. Pa used to insist that Ma and I attend two services every damn Sunday. He rarely went himself, except for Nagmaal, but I guess that was his prerogative as head of the house. For me, no excuse would do, and it didn’t take much for his brass-studded belt to tear strips from my bare arse. Church and thrashings went hand in hand, like yellow rice and raisins, or pumpkin bredie and beetroot salad. The only time in my life I can remember when Sunday church was not a chore but some sort of adventure was in the early days with Sylvia. But that was because Twinkletoes van Tonder was a deacon, which spurred me on to accompany her so I could keep an eye on the claim I’d staked out for myself. From time to time she hinted that it mightn’t be a bad idea for me to aspire to a deaconship too, but the very thought made my arse-hairs stand on end. To begin with, I was too hairy, I sweated, and that is totally fucking unacceptable among the washed and brushed and dusted brigade of the Lord, enveloped in a cloud of cologne and pink-smelling powder and aftershave. It took some time before I realised she was just using religion to further her own designs on social climbing, and since then I’ve been to church only for one wedding, two christenings, and perhaps four funerals, including those of Pa and Ma.

Rummage Through

In the distance the hymn died away in a final heart-rending melodic sob. I turned back into the house, now even stuffier than before, to feed my frustration by refilling my mug once more from Tant Poppie’s bottomless stone jug; and inspired by the fire-water I began to look through the bags and bundles and boxes of doepa and muti in the voorhuis. Most of the stuff was herbs and roots, some of which I could identify through appearance, taste or smell—buchu, wild wormwood, rue, dried aloe, cat’s tail, dog-piss weed, khaki bush, bluegum, ginger, and two large bags of dagga—but there were less savoury items which called for another top-up of my mug. The skins of meerkats and dassies, the horns of small antelope (steenbok? duiker? oribi? klipspringer?), tufts of hair tied together with thongs, the talons and teeth of predators like lynxes or servals and possibly even the odd leopard, the paws of monkeys and baboons, strips of snakeskin, empty tortoise shells. And also, tied up separately in filthy rags or skin-bags a collection of shrivelled black objects which seemed like dried organs: hearts or kidneys, bladders, tendons; even a few small skulls with bits of smelly skin or flesh still attached to them (mouse, rat, otter, leguan, skunk?). What curled the hair on my scrotum, even after bracing myself with another dose of witblits, was the suspicion that not all those dried organs were of animal origin. A crumpled ear, something resembling a dried and shrunken child’s foot, one badly decayed and blackened object like a span of rolled tobacco or dried sausage which my dirty mind took to be a mummified prick. Some of these objects were not even quite dried out yet. One, in particular, nearly made me puke: a long sinewy slither which still felt damp to the touch. I pulled back as if a mother-fucking snake had bitten me, but my fingers were already stained with a dark and oozing substance. Something like an umbilical cord.