Devil's Valley (9 page)

By now I’d had enough, right? I started closing up everything I’d been prying in. By this time I was much the worse for wear. And I had no way of telling how long the little number had been standing in the door watching me before I became aware of his presence. Perhaps he wasn’t even there.

Black Shadow

But at last I did notice him, a black shadow in the blue-black rectangle of the open door. Perhaps I’d smelled him rather than seen him, for even among the heavy odours of the voorhuis the stench he gave off was something else: a smell of woodfire and rancid sweat and tobacco and vomit and piss and shit, you name it. Reeling like a headless chicken I steadied myself with a hand against the frame of the kitchen door and muttered, “Good evening. Can I help you?”

“No,” he said. “I thought
you
might be needing
me
.”

A small man, as thin as a kierie, with a wild bush of hair and beard in which eyes, nose and mouth seemed to be stuck on at random. No teeth to talk of: when he opened his mouth it was simply a red hole gaping in the underbrush.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“They call me Hans Magic.”

Something came back to me through the mist. “Are you the man Little-Lukas spoke about?”

“What did he say?”

“I’m afraid I can’t remember.”

“Just as well.” He gestured with a hand so shrivelled and knobbly that it wouldn’t have been out of place among Tant Poppie’s muti. “I think you’d better leave that stuff alone.”

“I was just curious.”

“Curiosity filled the graveyard.”

“Would you like some coffee?” I asked to change the topic.

“No.”

“There’s a pot on the stove.” I staggered to the kitchen. Even if he didn’t want any, I needed the antidote. I poured two mugs. When I looked up he was gone. Only the pungent reminder of his smell still lingered among Tant Poppie’s many odours.

I gulped down the black liquid that goes by the name of coffee in this place, but it made no difference to the state my head was in. At a loss for something else to do I helped myself to another drink and went to bed. The next morning it took another dose of Tant Poppie’s herbs (Jesus, if only I could be sure that’s what they were) to pluck me out of purgatory. By that time I’d already missed the early morning service which had begun at bloody sunrise.

When Tant Poppie started preparing for the mid-morning service, I was feeling like an orphan at a church bazaar.

Someone Similar

But God or someone similar had something different in store for me.

Seated on the biggest of the three coffins in the voorhuis, Tant Poppie was huffing and puffing to wiggle her two tiny round feet into her tie-up boots when the front door darkened. I looked up from where I’d been watching Tant Poppie’s preparations and saw something like a large harvester cricket appearing on the stoep. It was a very thin, very angular, very bearded, very dirty old man, propelling himself on two home-made crutches. Old Lukas Lermiet, the man who had welcomed me, if that’s the word, on the day of my arrival in the mountains.

“Grandpa Lukas,” said Tant Poppie, struggling to her feet with one boot still in her hand. Had she been a Catholic I have no doubt she’d have crossed herself.

He steadied himself between his crutches. Only now did I notice what I’d missed the first day: one of his legs was missing. From the hip the empty leg of his skin trousers dangled down floppily like a windbag on a still day.

“Poppie,” he said, brown tobacco juice dribbling down his beard. “I’ve come to take the two of you to church.”

“The two of us, Grandpa Lukas?” she asked in a shrill voice, sounding almost coquettish, like one of Henta Peach’s precocious Lolitas.

“You and the stranger within our gates.”

She gave me an accusing look and started hobbling about on one foot as she tried to put on the other boot; after a while she was forced to sit down and catch her breath before she could do up the laces. Bared up to her round white knees, her legs were planted wide apart like the two columns in the temple of Dagon between which Samson had taken up his stance. The sight from where Grandpa Lukas was standing in the front door must have been enough to strike a strong man blind.

I hurried to put on my windbreaker, which was the closest thing to a jacket I’d brought with me, and joined them on the stoep. Tant Poppie’s black eyes, busy as fleas, darted over me and I didn’t miss the prune-like pursing of her mouth, but she made no comment. Together the three of us set out, Grandpa Lukas swinging like a bloody bell between us.

Home-made

In front of the church the brethren and sisters were assembled in righteous conversation as they waited for the final bell, all of them in fucking solemn black from head to toe, and all of them shod for a change. When they saw us coming they parted to either side, and like the Israelites trekking through the Red Sea we passed on dry feet. A murmur rippled through the crowd. Grandpa Lukas’s appearance was clearly making an impression. He bloody well deserved it too, coming all the way down those goddamn mountains on two crutches to attend the Nagmaal.

They filed in after us. Grandpa Lukas steered me to one side, as Tant Poppie went to the other: men and women were seated separately, primly divided by the centre aisle. Soon the pews were crammed to capacity, like loaves and buns and things in a bloody bakery. There was something home-made about the scene: the pews were home-made, the shoes, the jackets and trousers and dresses, even the children had a fucking home-made look.

As unobtrusively as possible, while they sat waiting in decorous silence I allowed my eyes to wander across the congregation. A lugubrious spectacle if ever there was one, like a crowd gathered at the scene of a crime. There seemed in all of them a kind of grim dedication. Not for the first time, and not by any means the last, I struggled to equate this great show of piety with the excesses I’d witnessed in the dark. Perhaps, I thought, the way they flocked to church was fired by the expectation of learning about new sins to be committed, new limits to transgress.

I tried to pick out from the crowd the handful of more familiar faces. But most were strangers to me. There was one face to which I kept returning: a young woman, in black like all the rest, but curiously striking, perhaps because of the whiteness of her face, the large dark eyes staring straight ahead, the black hair plaited and piled on her head. She seemed disturbingly familiar, but at first I couldn’t place her. She must have become conscious of my stare, because she suddenly turned her head to look at me. And now I recognised her, or thought I did: the kitsch girl from the rock pool. A gaze which hit me in the scrotum. Then she turned her eyes away again. Confused as hell, I tried to contain my thoughts. If she was here, then she was real after all, and then the scene at the pool must have happened. But why had I not seen any footprints? One moment the pool had been filled with water, the next it was dry. This was all too bloody much. Again I looked at her, my eyes unashamedly fixed on the swelling of her chest contained in the black chintz, or whatever material it was. Underneath, I sculpted the four tits I’d seen with my own two eyes. But below that severely sober dress no one would suspect such a thing.

I started up when Grandpa Lukas poked me in the ribs. The others were already rising. I scrambled to my feet. A thundering male voice gave up the note, and all the others joined in, off-key but with great gusto.

Body and Blood

The rest of the service passed in something of a daze, which I’d have liked to ascribe to the previous night’s apostles if I hadn’t suspected other reasons. Song, prayer, song, prayer, song. Passion and conviction had to make up for a piteous lack of musicality. Then came the sermon for which Brother Holy had been practising all week. His voice moved up and down precipitous Jacob’s ladders, up to the heavens and down to earth again, then into the lowest depths of hell where it dwelled with relish. Followed by more singing, more praying. Jesus Christ, we’d been at it for almost two hours now. These people had stamina.

Only when it was time for communion to be served did I catch up again. And with good reason, because when it came to the part about this is my body, this is my blood, there was a startling deviation from what I remembered from my youth and my early times with Sylvia. At the critical moment Lukas Death and Jos Joseph came from the vestry behind the pulpit, carrying a newborn white goat. It was placed, bleating loudly, on the sturdy communion table covered with a starched white cloth. Then, while Jurg Water held the kid in position, Jos Joseph stretched back the thin neck as far as it would go, produced a ferocious-looking knife, and with a single stroke cut the little creature’s throat. Blood spurted across the tablecloth. The congregation murmured approval. In a few deft movements the white skin was stripped from the carcass and small chunks of flesh were cut from leg and shoulder. Brother Holy was already waiting with a platter the size of a ploughshare.

“Take, eat, this is my body.”

The pale pink flesh was still lukewarm when it landed on my tongue. It was practically still pulsating, and I felt my throat contract. But I’d be damned if I was going to disgrace myself. The effort sent tears into my eyes, but I swallowed the lump down.

I could only pray, for what it was worth, that the blood wouldn’t be fucking goat’s blood too. But praise the Lord, the dark red stuff on the pewter cup passed from row to row, from one beard to the next, turned out to be wine after all; presumably the produce of the Devil’s Valley, judging by the fierce acidity and the potent kick, although it was nothing compared to Tall-Fransina’s witblits. I took a small, polite sip, only to discover too late that most of the other members of the congregation gulped down several large mouthfuls before passing on the cup; and afterwards the men spent a considerable time sucking the moisture from their well-soaked beards and moustaches.

Kidney Stones

More prayer, more song, more song, more prayer. And at long last we could return to God’s own good sun outside. Tant Poppie joined up with us again, and together we shuffled from group to group to exchange comments on the sermon and enquire about our joint and several states of health. This took an unconscionable time, as I soon discovered that no short answer could do the job, particularly if Tant Poppie was in the offing. What was expected was a fucking catalogue of one’s entire medical history, from corns to gout to water on the knee to rheumatism to stiff joints to haemorrhoids to kink-in-the-gut to kidney stones to dislodged vertebrae to flatulence to toothache to earache to headache to blocked nose and postnasal dripping to God-knows-what; and when finally one thought the inventory was complete, there would be an afterthought like, “And then my lower back is also giving me hell.”

In the course of the next hour, before we could return to Tant Poppie’s house, I began to conjure up aches and diseases in my body which I’d never suspected before. Because I, too, was asked penetratingly about my health. This was the most surprising, and in many respects the most revealing, experience of that Nagmaal day: that instead of ignoring me as before, everybody began to show an almost indecent interest in me. Where I came from, who my parents were, what work I did, what I was doing here…and those were only the preliminaries.

Among the people Grandpa Lukas introduced me to was Isak Smous with his shiny bald head. I’d wanted to meet him for some time now, as his connection with Little-Lukas and his regular trips to the outside world made him a key witness. But there was little time for conversation on this hectic day. Also, he looked rather sat-upon among the members of his family: his wife Alie, with a face like a meat-grinder, and her two identical sisters, Ralie and Malie, a threesome whom even that fucking old Greek, Perseus or Theseus or whatever, would not have dared to tackle without gloves; and a clamour of kids in tow. But before we had time to go beyond an exchange of greetings, Grandpa Lukas brought on somebody else for me to meet.

Proper Meal

In between I tried to keep my eyes open for another glimpse of the young woman with the dark hair. But she was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps, I began to think with a sort of resignation, she hadn’t been in the church after all; or otherwise she was just making a bloody habit of disappearing before she could be pinned down in any spot—at the pool, at my night window, wherever.

Another person I lost in the throng was Grandpa Lukas himself. One moment he was still beside me, talking, introducing me, waving new people in our direction; the next he was gone. And in the end Tant Poppie and I went home alone, where a massive meal was waiting: she had hung everything over the fire in the hearth before church, obviously knowing from a lifetime of experience exactly how to go about it. Goat’s head baked in its skin, yellow rice with raisins from the Devil’s Valley, stewed quinces, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, a fucking gargantuan meal for just the two of us.

“Pity Grandpa Lukas couldn’t join us for dinner,” I said when we were half-way through.

She looked surprised. “What makes you think he would?”

“He’s so thin,” I said. “One can almost see right through him. I’m sure he could do with a proper meal.”

“Grandpa Lukas stopped eating a long time ago.” She wiped her mouth with a large serviette. There was finality in the gesture.

“But why?” I asked.

“Because the man is dead,” she said. “More than a hundred years ago already.”

A
FTER THAT MEAL I succumbed to a sleep of death. What Tant Poppie had said about Grandpa Lukas should have been enough to keep me awake for the rest of my goddamn life, but in retrospect I think the shock was simply too much to handle. Perhaps I didn’t
want
to believe it. And when my head hit the pillow I was gone. It was four o’clock before I came round again, dumb and thick with sleep. Tant Poppie wasn’t there, presumably out on a ‘case’ or visiting. Unable to stomach the heavy smell of the house I stumbled outside, although I didn’t quite know where to go.

That was when the change in the settlement’s attitude towards me really started coming home to me. It began with the children.