by Andre Brink
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.
The Goddamn Dead
ON 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.
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.”
“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.”
