Devil's Valley (17 page)

Ouma Liesbet was still up on her roof, but she had someone with her. Probably Ben Owl. They were chatting quietly, outlined against the stars splashed across the sky like spilt milk over which it was useless to cry. On some of the other stoeps there were also small clusters of people. Smith-the-Smith was in the lean-to behind his house working at his furnace. I greeted him in passing but he didn’t seem to hear me; perhaps he didn’t want to. He was working with such dedication that I stopped to watch.

After a while I went on my way. The valley was invaded by an almost unearthly bloody tranquillity. And yet I had the distinct feeling of not being alone, as if the whole night was filled with invisible marauders. And with sound as well, sound impossible to locate or define, but which might be the smothered cries and moans and writhings of the oldest form of human congress in the world. It was particularly noticeable near the graveyard, but only when I was walking, with the dull thudding of my footsteps and my heartbeat in my ears; because the moment I stopped to listen it would be quiet again, with not even the rustling of a leaf.

As I moved beyond the thin line of houses up the slope, the hint of sound went on all around me, but always just out of reach. In and behind sheds. On and under haystacks, among cabbages and withered pumpkin shoots, even behind the hedges of aloes and branches; and later in the bluegum wood. The moon was just coming out as I walked in among the trees, but as usual the white disc remained behind the edge of the mountain; it would be well past midnight before it drifted free. In the meantime I was alone in the forest, among the black trees and even blacker shadows. Everywhere the suggestion of a fucking murmuring, fumbling human presence persisted. Every few yards I stumbled over something, and I’d swear it must be a couple fucking, but whenever I tried to go nearer on all fours it would turn out to be only the stump of a tree, or a rock, or a heap of earth, or a bloody bag of manure.

Then back again down the decline, past the ostrich pen. There I was stopped by an unearthly muted roar. Must be the booming of a male ostrich, I tried to convince myself, but no matter how I pricked up my ears the sound was not repeated. I started to walk on, but stopped again. This time it was unmistakable, but it was a different kind of sound altogether, like a muted clamour of voices. They were heading towards me. I ducked behind a tree.

A single black shadow with a pronounced limp came moving up the incline towards me. Only when it passed right beside me did I recognise the man. It was Ouma Liesbet Prune’s distant nephew Ben Owl. But what about the talking voices then? As I looked after him, I heard them again, now growing fainter as he went on, surprisingly agile on his club foot. It must have been the voices in his head Ouma Liesbet had spoken about.

Back

I came past the church again. No suggestion of life at all. Now the settlement was invaded by fucking irredeemable silence, even in the cemetery.

A single window shone in the dark. At the back of Isak Smous’s house. Perhaps he was still working on his book? But his store was in the front, where we’d spent the morning together.

I went closer. That single bright rectangle caught me in its bloody thrall. I had to find out who was still doing what at this ungodly hour. Taking care not to make any noise I approached to the edge of the patch of light in the backyard.

It was she. I swear to Almighty God. Emma.

It was her bedroom. She was standing in front of the window brushing her dark hair. My first impulse was to step back, but then I realised she was using the pane as a mirror to look at her reflection; beyond the window she wouldn’t see a thing. I was part of the night’s blank darkness. Even so, it felt as if she was looking straight at me, like the day I arrived. Because this time it really was her. No two ways about it. The other night outside my window might have been hallucination. Even at Nagmaal in church I could have been mistaken, what with her hair piled on top of her head. But now it was loose again, a dark flood cascading down her shoulders, pure goddamn poetry.

My first reaction was rage. So this was why that cocksucking, motherfucking bastard Isak Smous had become so cagey the moment I mentioned her name. But what was he covering up for?

Emma’s arm had stopped its long stroking movements. She put down the old·fashioned brush with its ornate handle—a gift from Isak? I could wring the little shit’s neck—on the bedside table. I crept closer to see what she was going to do next. There were two books on the table, one blue, the other brown. Behind her against the inside wall stood a narrow bed, the kaross covering it already folded back. There was a garment draped over the edge, it looked like a long white nightdress. She came back to the window. I stepped out of the patch of light.

From a distant past a memory came back. My last year at school when I’d gone on similar night walks to haunt like a poltergeist the home of the girl I was in love with, waiting for hours on end to stare through a chink in two floral curtains at the segment of the bedroom beyond, in the hope of a glimpse of Belinda. She was the magistrate’s daughter, I was I; and I’d never dared to speak a word to her. A railway line ran between us.

Only once in all my solitary vigils had I caught more than a hint of movement between the curtains. It was a month before the school-leaving dance and I’d decided, come hell or high water, I was going to ask her. I mean, Jesus, the worst she could say was no. And then, the night before I was to take the plunge, I saw Belinda. She must have come from her bath for her hair was still wet and she stood between her curtains drying it with a red-striped towel. Even if God had decided to strike me there and then with a fucking thunderbolt, I would have died singing His everlasting praises. But He has better ways to avenge Himself, mark my words. I mean, after seeing her like that I couldn’t possibly invite her to the dance, could I now? I’d missed my chance. I was only bloody seventeen, remember.

Front

Emma began to undo the buttons down the front of her dark dress. I was a Peeping Tom, lower than shark-shit on the bottom of the sea. I knew I should fuck off, I had no bloody right to stay. But it was impossible to turn away. I just had to see what there was to see. I had to know, for sure, once and for all.

Emma undid two buttons, each one took an eternity. I could see the small hollow where her collarbones met. The paleness of her skin.

On the third button her thin white fingers lingered. Then she turned away, leaned over, and blew out the candle.

If she came back to the window now she was sure to see me in the moonlight.

Like a damned sleepwalker I went home, past the night-still houses of the settlement.

A
FTER MY WANDERINGS through the rank recesses of the night I suppose it was only to be expected, but when it overcame me in the small hours I was still caught unawares. I was struggling through a thicket of lustful dreams when like the previous night I was surprised by a woman. A sound woke me up. Two sounds: something like the hoot of a barn owl, something like the barking of a baboon. But there was no time for wondering, because by then I was already engulfed in female flesh. It was the same thing all over again. My first thought was that it must be the same woman, but it wasn’t. Even in the dark all bodies are not similar. This one was stronger, harder, tougher, the hair in which she tied us up and sometimes nearly strangled us was longer, her limbs more muscular, her smells and taste sharper on the tongue; but she was just as fucking uninhibited as her predecessor. This time, to turn on the purple stuff again, it was like a wave that dragged me into unfathomable green tides and swells and undertows. The joy of this kind of dream is that you can give free rein to everything you usually repress or contain, your most exorbitant imaginings. Also, I was better prepared for it this time, and I remember consciously groping for what I’d been looking for so long: but once again there were only two of them, not four.

What I did find out was that her feet were not webbed. But there was something else. She had a harelip. Which might have been fucking repulsive in daylight, or in anything other than a dream, but in that encounter it opened up new dimensions of caressing and sucking that left me exhausted when at last she abandoned me like a fucking kelp washed up on the moist beach of the night.

I still had enough sense to jump up and flick on my lighter as she left. But the draught caused by her dash to the door instantly blew out the flame. All I could make out in the brief flare was a whirl of long limbs, the pale gleam of a body half-covered in a tangle of hair, a bundle of clothes under her arm. And that kept me awake, because a succubus is not supposed to be visible in the light.

I
T WAS HELL to get going in the morning, but no matter how stiff and exhausted I felt, I was anxious not to waste another bloody minute before returning to Isak Smous’s house to speak to Emma personally. But on the way I had to pass Tall-Fransina’s shed again and how could I refuse when she called me to give her a hand with the firing once more? Half-amused, she stood watching me from the snake, her man’s hat pushed back on her short-cropped hair which hardly showed any sign of grey. Her skin was surprisingly fine for someone working outside so much of the time. Leathery, okay, but fine-tanned leather. The fucking cats were all over the place again.

“I was wondering if you’d be coming back,” she said with a knowing laugh.

“I can give you a hand if you need one.”

“Did you come to help or to ask more questions?”

“You’re very suspicious.”

“I’m not a child, Neef Flip. And I know you’ve been asking around.” Without warning, she said. “Old Hans Magic came round early this morning to find out what you were here for yesterday.”

“What’s it to him?”

“He wanted to know if you’d seen Emma yet.” Busy as she was, shifting the large stone jugs in which she captured her spirit, I could see she was watching me intently.

“He can come to me if he wants to find out,” I said, annoyed.

“I think he wants you to come to him.”

“He can wait,” I said. But actually I felt quite smug; it allowed me some space to manoeuvre in. I squatted down to caress one of the cats, a beautiful ginger tabby. I’m not particularly partial to cats but somehow they always seek me out. Must be my smell, my hairiness, whatever. And Tall-Fransina’s collection fascinated me; they were like erotic dreams emerging from some secret dark place. Their eyes, amber or jade, suggested a kind of arch-female wisdom.

So Filthy

“You have a way with cats,” she said approvingly.

“They’re less suspicious than their madam.”

“I have reason,” she said. “Not because of you, but people in general. If you lived here you’d have known. How one is always being watched, by everyone. How each one of them is always on the lookout for a chance to get at the others. You can’t take anyone at their word. Cats are different. Once they decide to let you into their lives it’s for ever.”

“What’s Hans Magic got on me?”

“He doesn’t know what to make of you. He’s always had some hold on everybody here, because they’re so scared of him. Now you’re moving in between them and him.”

“What’s he trying to hide?”

“It’s not a matter of secrets. It’s the way everybody here stands together. You must remember, we lot all know one another, but you came in from outside. People are curious, you’re a mystery to them, and now that Grandpa Lukas has opened the gate they want to talk to you. But of course they’re scared too. They don’t know what you’re going to do with what they tell you.” Unexpectedly, she said, “You mustn’t be too hard on poor old Hans. He doesn’t mean bad.”

“There’s no need for you to defend him.”

“He’s a terribly lonely man,” she said. “And there was a time when he was very different. Before he became so bitter and filthy.”

“What happened?”

“Ag, let bygones maar be bygones.”

“Why did he want to know about Emma?”

“Have you spoken to her?”

“I’m on my way to her right now.”

“You’ll have to wait for the afternoon. In the mornings she helps Lukas Death in the schoolroom.” She must have noticed how the news upset me. “What is it you want from her?”

“I can’t tell before I’ve seen her. It’s just that one way or another every single conversation in this place seems to point to her.”

“It’s because they’re all feeling guilty about Little-Lukas.”

“I rather got the impression that they’re blaming him. Yesterday you said something like that yourself.”

“It’s not that I’m blaming him. It just makes me sad. He spent so much time here with me, you know. Playing with the cats, like you. I was the only person he could really open his heart to. When he was small his mother was too sickly to look after him, so I more or less brought him up.”

“And then he left you for Emma?”

“You mustn’t take literally what I said yesterday. It wasn’t like that at all.” Fucking formidable in her silence, her dignity, her loneliness, she stood opposite me.

“It’s over now,” I said, with a kind of sympathy that caught myself by surprise.

“One still tries to hold on. Especially after it’s all slipped through your fingers. Like sand. Like water.”

“Little-Lukas is dead,” I said, “and it doesn’t seem right to me that the Devil’s Valley should begrudge Emma the fact that she’s still alive.”

“Is that what it looks like to you?”

“Isn’t it true?”

She turned back to her work. “Better ask her yourself.”

On His Easel

The school was still on, so Emma wouldn’t be home yet. But as I came past Gert Brush’s house he appeared in the doorway and called me to bum a cigarette.

There was a painting on his easel in the voorhuis, but when I came in he hastily put another in front of it. In spite of the wooden, naive style, I immediately recognised the features of Lukas Death. But like most of Gert Brush’s work it had been overpainted many times: on the top layer was Lukas Death as one saw him today, thin and righteous, with his hang-dog face. But clearly visible underneath was another portrait of the same face, only much younger. More shadowy in the background, in deeper half-obscured layers, loomed the ghost of yet another, a quite frightening face with two red glowing eyes. And behind this one still more shadows.