by Andre Brink
“So you know her?” I asked, more accusingly than I’d meant to.
“Everybody knows everybody in the Devil’s Valley.”
“Did she sit for you?”
“You must be mad,” he said, and burst out laughing.
I couldn’t understand his reaction; to flatter him, I commented, “You have a good eye.”
“I always paint from memory,” he said. While he was chewing pensively on the back of a brush, I kept on gazing at the painting. The figures in the deeper layers appeared to become restless. Gert Brush put out a hand and turned the canvas back to front. “I’m sorry, Neef Flip, but this wasn’t meant to be seen. It’s not finished yet, and I always feel it’s a bad sign if people look at something unfinished. Please don’t talk about it. One never knows what people will do. You see, I’ve never painted a woman from the Devil’s Valley before.”
Little Railway Track
AT LAST, IN the late afternoon, having caught up with my notes, I took the path to Isak Smous’s house on the far side of the church. He came out on the stoep when I knocked; behind him Alie-Malie-Ralie went about their energetic bustling in voorhuis and kitchen.
“I’m looking for Emma.” No need to beat about the bush.
“Why?”
“Why didn’t you tell me she lived here in your house?”
“You never asked.”
I restrained the urge to throttle him. “I’m asking now.”
“Emma isn’t here right now.”
“Where is she?”
“No idea. She comes and goes as she pleases.”
I was in no mood to argue. Why did the bloody little man annoy me so? Without saying goodbye I stomped off.
Almost by themselves my feet took me out of the settlement, in the direction from which I’d come that first day, hard on Prickhead’s fleshy heels. Everything seemed exactly like before. Only drier, if it was possible to imagine such a thing. The reeds parched as bones, the withered undergrowth, the long rock pool with a flaking black rim of old algae at the bottom where the last moisture had dried away: it was all still there.
As was the girl with the black hair. The girl who had by now acquired a name. Emma.
There was only one difference. This time she was really there. At least I think so. And properly dressed, buttoned up to her chin in a little railway track.
At the last moment I nearly turned tail, but she’d already seen me. So I had to put on a casual air.
“Am I disturbing you?”
She shrugged. “Oom can stay if Oom wants to.”
The form of address hit me between the eyes. “For heaven’s sake don’t call me ‘Oom’.”
“What else can I call you?”
“My name is Flip Lochner.”
“I know.” And then, “Oom Flip.”
“Emma, please.”
She repeated the shrug, whatever that might mean.
“I saw you in church on Sunday morning,” I persisted. “At least I think it was you.”
“And last Wednesday here at the waterhole,” she added.
I gasped like a fish on dry ground.
And then she was the one to look embarrassed. “Oh I’m sorry,” she said, “but you won’t know about it of course. I dreamed I came here for a swim and then Oom found me here.”
“You dreamed?”
“I don’t usually sleep in the day, but I wasn’t feeling too well, it was that time, so Alie-of-Isak sent me to bed. And then I dreamed.”
“But I was here. And I saw you.”
She opened her mouth. I could see she wanted to say something. But then she started to blush, a deep, old·fashioned blush which I thought no longer happened in the young. Red as a birthmark it spread from her face down her neck. I’d have given anything to be that blush. She seemed totally bewildered. Be my guest, I thought. It wasn’t as if I could make head or tail out of it.
“Oom really saw me?”
I know what goes for what in the world. And the expression in her eyes gave me no choice.
“Yes, I’m sorry.” In spite of myself I gave a crooked grin. “Or not all that sorry, to tell you the truth. I mean, I’m sorry if it embarrassed you, but not that I saw you.”
Desperate Romantic
Her eyes narrowed slightly. Contempt? Annoyance? I preferred not to know. Almost-black eyes, under thick eyebrows which met in the middle. Seeing her in close-up like this for the first time, I can honestly say that she wasn’t beautiful. But then, I mean, what is ‘beautiful’? In the eye of this beholder there was something else about her, something that spoke directly to the lower spine, which they say is the seat of the sense you use to recognise what really matters. And she looked even younger than before. More vulnerable too, if the bloody desperate romantic lurking inside the crime reporter may say so. But her eyes were dark with a kind of knowledge that came from far beyond her years, if this doesn’t sound too fucking precious.
“What is Oom doing here?” she asked.
“I thought everybody knew. I felt I owed it to Little-Lukas.”
A brief nod, as if she wanted to think about it before she answered.
“You were close to him,” I said.
“What did he tell Oom?”
“Emma, don’t call me ‘Oom’.”
“What did Little-Lukas tell you?”
“Not much.” I changed my mind. “No, that’s not quite true. We spoke for a whole night. He’d heard that I was interested in the Devil’s Valley, it’s something that goes very far back, but which I’d never followed up. And I got the impression he was just dying to talk to somebody. But I’m afraid we drank too much, and afterwards I was in something of a mess. So I set up another meeting, but on that very day he was killed.”
“I want to know everything,” she said with sudden urgency.
“That’s about all I can tell you.”
“I’m not just talking about Little-Lukas. I want to hear everything Oom can tell me about the world outside. I spent three years there at school with Little-Lukas, but then I had to come back. No one ever comes here. If only Oom knew how terrible it is to be trapped in here and know there’s a world outside, a world you once saw and where you want to go back to but which you’ll never ever be allowed to see again. Can Oom understand that?”
“A bit, I think.”
“Please try to understand!” She grabbed me by the arm. Her eyes were burning. “From the first day Oom came here I tried to find an excuse to come to you. I even went to Tant Poppie’s that first night, and looked through the window, but there were too many people.”
“I’ve also been looking for you since I saw you here the first time.”
“Why?” Her voice was tense. All of a sudden, I sensed, there was a hell of a lot at stake. “To talk about Little-Lukas?”
“No. To find out more about you.”
Once again she was the one to be embarrassed. Nervously, she started playing with a piece of dry bark between her fingers. She didn’t look at me again. Yet when she spoke it was about the boy after all: “They never wanted him to go away.” An angry little muscle flickered beside her mouth.
No, I thought again: no, she isn’t pretty at all. Yet the more I tried to deny it the more of a hold she got on me.
“Were you against it too?” I asked.
“I was the one who made him go.”
“Why?”
“Because I was the one who really wanted to go. But I couldn’t.”
I reached back to what Isak Smous had said: “Because you’re a girl?”
“Of course,” she said, her voice heavy with resentment. “The old men have all the say in this place.”
“I believe they all have the hots for you.”
“I suppose they all think I’m available. And I don’t dare offend them, otherwise…”
Her voice trailed off. A heavy silence lay between us. At last I tried to jump-start the conversation again. “Tell me about Little-Lukas.”
“He wasn’t all that kee
n to go away, but I went on and on. I told him it was for both of us. I mean, he was bright enough. It wasn’t easy for him either but at least he was a boy. All the old men…”
“Why are they so dead against it?”
“They think it’ll be the end of the Valley if people start coming and going as they want to. It’s a bit easier for the men. From time to time one of them even goes out to get married, and brings his wife back here. The women never, it’s out of the question. No outsider may lay a hand on their womenfolk. They’re jealous of their possessions.” She gestured with her head in the direction of the settlement. “Can you imagine anyone being jealous in a place like this?”
“Have you never thought of running away?”
“Of course,” she said with pent-up anger. “I tried. But Hans Magic fetched me back and Tant Poppie gave me such a hiding I couldn’t sit for days. She has a heavy hand.”
I tried not to think of what lay behind her simple words.
“And then?”
The large black eyes in her pale face looked straight back at me. “I just had to accept what I never wanted to. They can’t forgive me for not really being one of them.”
“But you were born here.”
“Yes. But my mother brought me in from outside.”
“I don’t understand.”
Equally Naked
“It’s not necessary to understand.” She swung out her legs and got up. Without looking at me she began to walk away. But she didn’t go far. She bent over and broke off a dry reed, and remained standing with her back to me, stripping away the papery leaves. Then, with an angry gesture, she threw the reed into the rock pool which had been full of water once, where she’d used to swim, the pool she’d dreamed; then turned round slowly and came back to me. “Why do you want to know?”
I looked at her strong, narrow, naked feet, then up at her face, equally strong, equally naked. The too-much in her eyes.
“I don’t know why, so don’t ask me. And if you find it bloody impertinent of me, then please forgive me. But I do want to know more about you.”
“What makes you think I want to be known about?”
“Because a moment ago you wanted to leave, but then you came back.”
“I only came back because I saw you in my dream.” Her eyes looked into mine as if I was the one being tested.
“Is that reason enough?” I asked.
“It couldn’t have been an ordinary dream. Not if you saw it too. Something like that happens for a reason.”
“And that’s why you came back?”
An unexpectedly light, defiant laugh. “No. It’s because of the chameleon on your shoulder.”
“What difference could that make?”
“I can see he isn’t scared of you. So perhaps one can trust you.”
“Little Piet Snot gave him to me,” I said reflectively.
“Poor little chap.” She sounded relieved to change the subject. Our real conversation, I thought, was happening behind the words we used.
“I got the idea his father is very hard on him.”
“Not just on him. Oom Jurg Water is a pig.”
“Piet said something about a sister too.”
“What chance does a girl like Henta have?”
The name struck me like a blow from a whip. “Henta?”
“Didn’t you know?”
Twisted Her Lip
“There’s something terribly wrong with this place.” I was really too upset to talk.
“I know. It got my mother too.”
“Who was your mother? What exactly happened to her?”
She came to sit down beside me, but still looked past me, up the mountain. “My mother was Isak Smous’s sister. Half-sister, really, for she had a different father. In this place they don’t keep strictly to husband-and-wife.”
“I’ve noticed. And I’d like to find out more about that too. All these bloody righteous people, and yet…”
A brief gesture. “That’s not important now.” She went on, “I was told that my own grandfather came in from outside, he and my grandmother got to know each other”—she twisted her lip—“and then he left. But on the way out he fell to his death. The sort of thing that often happens here. Perhaps he was the one who planted the bug in my mother’s blood, because when she was just eighteen she left with Isak Smous on one of his trips and stayed there for a year. Then Lukas Death fetched her back. Not many of our people survive out there.”
“And was there trouble when she came back?”
“What do you think? She was pregnant.”
I nodded slowly. “I think I’m beginning to understand.”
“You don’t understand anything!” she stormed. “If a girl in the Valley falls pregnant it needn’t be the end of the world. Tant Poppie gets rid of just as many babies as she brings into the world. As long as it happens in the dark and no one sees, that is the only rule. But my mother wanted to keep me, and so here I am.”
Curse On It
“And your mother?”
“After she died Tant Poppie brought me up. Deep down she has a soft heart, and she never had children of her own.”
“What about your mother?” I asked again.
“Tant Poppie was like a mother to me.”
“What I want to know is…”
“What happened to my mother.”
“Yes.”
“Why do you want to know?”
The directness of the question, and her quiet way of asking it, unsettled me. “I’m sorry. I know I had no right to ask. In my work…”
“What do you do?”
“I work for a newspaper.”
“Tell me about it.”
“There isn’t much to tell.”
“Tell me anyway, tell me everything.”
I was hesitant at first. I didn’t want her to sidestep the question so easily. Also, I had no wish to talk about myself. What was there in my life that could possibly interest her? Sylvia never listened, it bored her to death; and the children got irritated, I’d never been much of a role model, as Marius made only too fucking clear. But Emma seemed set on it, so I started raking up randomly whatever I could. Small episodes, anecdotes, things I didn’t even realise I had remembered, began to come back to me. She listened intently, a few times she even laughed. A laugh so dark and so bloody beautiful that I went out of my way to dramatise incidents and invent new ones, just to hear it again. Jesus, I hadn’t spoken about my work to anyone in this way for years. But in the end that was also what made me stop.
“You can’t possibly want to hear more,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. “How can it mean anything to you?”
“Do you know what it’s like to live in the Devil’s Valley?” she asked as before.
“There’s nothing special about my life, Emma. It all turned out so different from the dreams I had when I was young. In those days I still had ambition, there was nothing too big to attempt. Most of all I wanted to be a writer, a historian.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Never had the chance.” I reconsidered. “Perhaps I simply wasn’t good enough.”
“Don’t say that!”
“One sheds one’s illusions. Then it becomes easier.”
“I also thought I wasn’t good enough to go out and study,” Emma said tensely. “But that’s not true, you know. One mustn’t believe what others try to tell you.”
In different circumstances her seriousness might have amused me, but the restrained passion with which she spoke scorched each separate word into my mind.
“It’s too late for me now,” I said, as evenly as I could. “But not for you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll never get out of this place alive.”
“Now please don’t turn on the drama.”
“You won’t ever understand. You’re a stranger.”
I could feel something momentous building up in her. I’d give anything to help her open up, but I didn’t know how to.
I’ve never been able to handle that kind of situation. Out of sheer bloody clumsiness I put an arm round her shoulders. “Emma,” I heard myself say, “don’t you want to tell me?”
She just shook her head. No, no, no. After a long time she said almost inaudibly, “There is a curse on me.”
To Her Throat
From way back something returned to me. At first I hesitated to say it out loud, but then decided to risk it. “Tant Poppie says you have the mark of the Devil on you.”
Once again the unsettling straight gaze of her eyes below the thick straight eyebrows.
“What kind of mark is it?”
It was an improbable moment, a moment outside of time, with something that tautened and pulled between us, a moment that could bloody well decide everything for us.
With a small, slow gesture, as if she was barely conscious of it herself—and yet she was, I could see it—she raised her hands to her throat, to the top button of the long, long row, just like the night before: but then she hadn’t been aware of me, and now she was.
Would she really—dared she—undo those buttons? I still don’t know, here where I’m crouching at the rock pool waiting; nor did I know then, as I sat on this same spot opposite her. All I could do was to place my hand on hers to restrain her.
“There’s no need,” I said. “I’ve seen it already.”
I could see the question rising in her eyes, like a moon or something.
“I saw you when you came to swim here in your dream, remember?”
“Are you sure of what you saw?”
“Absolutely sure.” My hand remained on hers for an unbearably long time, on the spot where her collarbones formed their little hollow and where I would have been able to see her heart throbbing if I hadn’t stopped her.
“If they find out about the mark, if Tant Poppie ever says anything, it will be the end,” she said. “Because she’s the only one who has ever seen it.”
“Except Little-Lukas.”
“He never saw it.”
“But I thought the two of you…”
“That’s what they all think,” she said calmly. “But that doesn’t mean it’s so.”
