Devil's Valley (24 page)

Outside I quickly checked that no one was watching. The place was deserted. In the far distance, from the direction of Jurg Water’s house, I could hear the voices of the women who had left with Henta. Poor girl. But for once my thoughts did not dwell on her.

How could I have known so precisely where to go? Let it not be said that only women rely on intuition. Deliberately dragging my feet so as not to raise any suspicion in whatever visible spies might be abroad, I casually sauntered round to the back of the church, stopping from time to time to pick up a twig or a small stone, study it with feigned interest, throw it away, and leisurely walk on. Following the wide curve of the churchyard wall, all the way to the heap of stones at the back.

You Too

She was waiting for me, sitting on the smaller heap of stones I’d begun to pile up that morning, and across which the shadow of the wall was beginning to lengthen. She had undone her hair and there were moist strands clinging to her forehead.

Without looking up as my shadow touched her, she said, “I’m glad you came.”

“You asked me to.”

“Did I?”

“You’ll know that better than I do.”

I gazed at her for a while, but she didn’t look up. Absently, she played with a small stone.

I asked, “What’s up with Henta?”

A brief laugh. “Nothing at all. She pretended to faint. She often does that.”

“Why?”

“Church has a way of working up her father. The only way to keep him off is to pretend that she’s ill.”

“Why would church have that effect on him?”

“You’ve heard them yourself, haven’t you? Every time they go to church to pray or study the Bible or whatever, it’s like pigs wallowing in mud. It stirs up the worst in them.”

“It certainly didn’t seem to have much effect on the weather,” I said wryly and looked up. The sky was drained of colour, an expanse of blackness. Except for a single small wisp of cloud behind the blunt church tower, no bigger than a man’s hand.

“If there really is a God He’d have destroyed them long ago.”

“You’re not much of a believer, are you?”

“Could
you
believe in a God like theirs?”

She picked up another stone, repeated the same procedure as before: weighing, reflecting, rejecting.

“Why did you come here to wait for me?”

“Because of these stones.” I couldn’t read her eyes. Without emotion she said, “They’re the only mother I know.”

“Ouma Liesbet Prune told me about your mother,” I said quietly.

“And you believed her?”

“Why should she lie?”

“Everybody here lies.”

“You too?”

She looked at me for a long time, then gave a small crooked smile. “Of course.”

“Why?”

“If you’re scared, what choice do you have? You just lie.”

“What are these people really afraid of?”

“You come in here from the outside, you start digging up everything. They can’t face it. They thought they could do without remembering. You’re making it difficult for them.”

“Still, over the last few days they’ve been only too eager to talk to me.”

“Of course. Because you listen to them. But I don’t think you can rely on that.”

“I suppose that’s why all I can show for my efforts is a handful of stories.”

“That doesn’t mean that nothing happened.”

“How can I get through to that?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps they don’t know either. All they have is their stories. The rest is up to you.”

Uncharted Territory

She was forcing me towards uncharted territory, a pool in which my feet no longer touched the bottom. I don’t think I’ve ever had this kind of conversation with a woman before. I’d always thought of women in a different way, and talking didn’t come into it. And unable to face her seriousness, I tried to sidestep it with a limp riposte: “You’re very clever, aren’t you?”

Even as I said it I knew it was the last fucking thing I should say. And the expression on her face confirmed it.

“For someone like me, you mean?” she flared up. “I know I’m not supposed to think. But when one is cornered…what else can you do?” She stood up abruptly and started dusting her dress, her back to me. “What’s the use of being clever? What’s the use of anything?”

She swung round; once again the flaring of her skirt made me conscious of her body, the sharp angles of hips and shoulders, the sinewy strength of legs. A consciousness I could have done without, just here, just now.

“Can you understand that?” she asked. “I want everything, but I have nothing. And there’s nothing I can do about it.” She looked up at the church; I could see her flinch. “We mustn’t stay here,” she said nervously. “I don’t want to be seen here.”

“But where can we go?”

She looked round anxiously. Then said, “Let’s go up to the bluegum wood. There’s a clearing among the trees.”

Yes, I remembered. Henta; her dress pulled up to her chin. Suddenly it all came back to me. But why now, after I’d kept it in check for so long? It was like the infallible recipe to have whatever woman in the world you want, as long as for one hour you don’t think of her navel. And I suppose that was how I came to think of Henta at this wholly inopportune moment. The extraordinary paleness of her skin, the bluish whiteness of skimmed milk. Her little nipples like the pink snouts of rabbits. The curve of her belly with the deep inverted comma of her navel, and below it the small patch of reddish curls, too sparse to camouflage the cleft of her pussy. The mere act of dwelling so fondly on these details shamed me: the need for it, the hangups behind it. If there was any difference between myself and Jurg Water, I thought, full of sudden disgust, it was only in degree, not in kind. There was something in the Bible about this. Whosoever shall offend these little ones, it is better for him that something something. If any of thy limbs offend thee, cut it off and cast it into the sea. The sea must be pretty well clogged up with cast-off limbs by now.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Emma.

“You,” I lied, and yet in a way I knew it was, unnervingly, the truth.

“I’ll take the path past the ostrich camp,” she said. “You go round the other side.”

On a Naked

She waited for me among the trees, at the edge of the clearing in the wood, exactly where Henta had appeared the last time. Her sudden eyes as she looked at me. “I thought you weren’t coming any more.”

“I wouldn’t stay away for all the world.”

“It can’t mean anything to you. I’m just bad news.”

“Emma.” All the urgency in me surged up. “There’s only one thing that has made it worth my while to come to this place and that is you.”

She sat down on a naked fallen trunk with most of the bark peeled off, and plucked a leaf from a branch overhead. She started chewing it. I could smell the eucalyptus. All the time she looked at me. “How come?” she asked at last.

“You’re different from the other people here.”

“Does that mean anything?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that it means a lot to me.” She spat out a small green wad of chewed leaf. “To me too,” she said in her frank, intense, unsettling way. “And it scares me. Because I know you’ll be going away soon. What will become of us then? What will become of me? You know, ever since I came back from school you’re the only person who has ever listened to me. I wish we could just stay here and talk and talk and talk for ever. It doesn’t even matter what we say. As long as it doesn’t ever stop. Because I don’t know what is going to happen after.” Without looking up she asked, “When are you leaving?”

“Saturday.”

“So it’s only tomorrow and Friday. Then you’ll shake our dust from your feet again.”

“There’s still so much to be done.”

She looked up unexpectedly. “I suppose you want to fuck me before you go,” she said with brutal directness, her voice shallow, almost harsh.

“I won’t lay a hand on you.”

“Am I so awful then?”

“Now you’re twisting my words. That’s not fair.”

“Do you
want
to fuck me?”

I looked down at my hands. My nails were dirty. Everything about me was dirty.

Then I looked up. “Yes,” I said. “Right now there’s nothing I could think of that I want more.” I swallowed deeply. “But I promise you I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know how to put it. I suppose I don’t want to take the easy way out.”

She didn’t react. Perhaps she was waiting for something else, something to hold on to, to give her hope…but of what? The fuck knows, we were beyond hope as it was.

Probably a Bird

From under her dark eyebrows she gazed at me. Without any obvious connection she said, “I never thought you’d really go looking for my mother this morning.”

“I said I would. We’ve got to make sure.” Did I dare go on? I had no choice. “But then Ouma Liesbet told me she was buried in the graveyard.”

To my surprise it didn’t seem to upset her. “I could have told you,” she said.

“So you knew?”

She gave a little smile.

“Why did you lie to me then?”

“I wanted to see if you believed me.”

“I promise to believe all your lies.”

“You know nothing about me yet.”

“I know enough to want to know more.”

“There’s nothing more to know.”

“What do you
do
?”

“I teach the children when Lukas Death needs help. One or two of them I help with extra-reading lessons. There are a few bright ones. Poor little bastards, what’ll become of them? Otherwise I help Isak Smous with his books. Or his women with their housework. I help with sewing. Always just helping here, helping there. Other people. But what about me?” She got up, her whole body taut as a string. “Can you imagine how it is?”

“You’ve got to get out of this place, Emma.”

“Show me how,” she said softly, with no hint of cynicism. Then sat down again.

Something rustled among the leaves. Probably a bird.

“Surely,” I said, “if they don’t need you here it would suit them if you left.”

“They’re scared of what I could tell.”

“About your mother?”

“About her, about them, about everything.”

“And yet they’re helping me with my history,” I reminded her.

“For the moment.” She looked straight at me. “They let you come in, Flip. That doesn’t mean they’ll let you out again.”

Improbable Story

It was cool in the wood, where the fierceness of the sun didn’t penetrate. Something rustled again. And suddenly I remembered that there were no bloody birds in the Devil’s Valley. I jumped up. She was watching me. It was quiet again. I picked up a stone and flung it to where the sound had come from. There was a smothered cry and something began to scamper off through the underbrush. I ran after it. In a small opening among the trees I saw a stunted figure scurrying away. With a mixture of irritation and relief I recognised him. It was Prickhead.

Just to made sure he got the message I threw another stone after him. It hit him between the shoulderblades and he uttered a long whimpering cry, stumbled to the ground, scrambled to his feet again and ran off. The blundering sounds of his flight continued for some time.

Emma was still waiting at the edge of the clearing when I came back, a fist pressed to her mouth.

“Don’t worry,” I tried to comfort her. “It’s just that poor idiot, Peet Flatfoot.”

“They’re everywhere,” she said. She dropped her arm to her side again. “There’s only one place no one ever goes to. If you want to, I’ll take you there.”

Surprised and curious, I followed her. She led me out of the wood and up a gentle slope towards a kloof overgrown with virgin forest, reaching in deeply among the knuckles of the mountain. It looked greener than the rest of the valley. I’d never been so far before. Without talking, Emma forced a way through the underbrush, and I followed close on her heels. There was a hint of a footpath, but barely visible. Between her shoulders I saw sweat staining her dress an even blacker black.

After a long time she stopped to wipe her face. I was panting, but her breath still sounded calm and even. She pushed a branch out of the way and stood back to let me pass. Against a wall of rock, among dry driftwood, I saw a badly weathered white skeleton, enormous in size, like an ancient ship stuck on a reef.

Amazed, I went to have a closer look. “What on eardi is this, Emma?”

“Look.”

I touched what looked like a rib. It crumbled under my fingers. I inspected the whole length of the skeleton. My first wild guess was that it must be a dinosaur, but of course that was preposterous. Though no more preposterous than what it turned out to be. A fucking whale. I couldn’t believe it, but the baleen plates, and the shape of head and body, were unmistakable.

She came up from behind and put her hand on my arm. “Seeing is believing?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I can see it all right, but it’s bloody hard to believe.”

Like an improbable story in a world of facts it sat there.

“How did you find it?” I asked.

“Everybody knows about it, but most of the others are afraid to come close. When I was small they used to scare us with it. They said if you see that thing you die.”

“It didn’t put you off.”

“I thought it was just a scary story. But you can see for yourself.”

I touched another bony protuberance and studied the powdery deposit it left on my finger.

“This isn’t all,” she said, curiously lighthearted.

“Nothing can be stranger than this.”

“Come and see.”

Uneven Oval

A short distance beyond the skeleton she went down on her haunches against the rock face, scraped away some old branches and beckoned me to follow her. It looked like a cave, but really was no more than a narrow passage between two cliffs. Here were more of the drawings and engravings I’d noticed on my way down into the valley: stick-men, eland, even a figure resembling a woman in a long dress and a bonnet, which must have been painted after the first settlers moved in here. High above us I could see a narrow segment of sky. About fifty or a hundred metres further the back wall broke away and in the opening, like a natural arena, lay the uneven oval of a rock pool. The water was so black it seemed bottomless.