by Andre Brink
The Late Mr Giel (Eyes) Lermiet
“God Almighty, I won’t be long, but I’ve got to tell You something. You have heard what the (expletive deleted) Isak Smous just said. Now if he was the only one, You could have treated it with the contempt it deserves. But as it happens, over the past few weeks we have heard that a number of other people in the valley are also beginning to talk about trekking away to get out of this dry place. Now on behalf of all the dead I just want to say this: they know (expletive deleted) well that they can’t go away without taking us with them, because no self-respecting, godfearing person can leave the dead behind to decay among the weeds of the wilderness. But there are so many of us that it is simply impossible to dig us all up, and furthermore we don’t want to have our bones disturbed. If Petrus Tatters thinks he can move away just to (expletive deleted) my wife at night when no one sees he’s got another thing coming. So the sooner they forget about trying to slink away and dishonour the dead, the better. And the easiest way to put an end to all this nonsense is just to bring some rain. If You did Your duty in the first place, none of this would have happened. Thank You and Amen.”
Mr Jurg (Water) Lermiet
“Lord, this bunch of (expletive deleted) have been talking so much (expletive deleted) that Your ears must be burning. I’d rather greet a puff-adder by hand than have to put up with their (expletive deleted). But by this time I’m sure You know them for the (expletive deleted) they are, so all I can say is (several expletives deleted). You know I’ve always said it’s no (expletive deleted) use to keep the (expletive deleted) kaffirs and the (expletive deleted) English out of the valley while among ourselves we are worse than (expletive deleted). So I’m asking You today to look into their (expletive deleted) hearts, otherwise they’ll (expletive deleted) You round every corner. I mean, take Tall-Fransina. Last Tuesday she sold me a jar of witblits for a basket of dried apricots and a basket of raisins, and half of it was heads and tails. If that (expletive deleted) can’t tell where heads end and hearts begin, it’s time she shoved her (expletive deleted) still into her (expletive deleted) and started (expletive deleted) her cats. And don’t forget about Grandpa Lermiet. Just because he’s dead and unable to (expletive deleted) he begrudges the rest of us a bit of (expletive deleted). These are the people who have a lot to say about another man’s (expletive deleted). Meantime this place is going to (expletive deleted). There is no drop of water left in this valley or I would have found it, trust me. I know this place better than You do and I’ve been scouring the kloofs without a twitch in my rod, the thing is as useless as a (two expletives deleted). If You don’t start raining on us You shouldn’t blame us if we (several expletives deleted). Amen.”
Mrs Poppie (Fullmoon) Lermiet
“Father, You’ve heard enough from the menfolk for a while, so let me tell You a few home truths as a woman. They’re quick when it comes to talking, but when action is needed there isn’t much (expletive deleted) in their (expletive deleted), You can take my word for it. I’ve known most of them since the time they first (expletive deleted), and I can tell You they’re useless. It takes a woman like me to get things done. I’m used to fetching and carrying and keeping body and soul together from dawn to dusk, and You better believe me there isn’t much gratitude around. But all I’m asking, Father, is that You should do unto us as you did to Sodom and Gomorrah. I mean, if there are two or three women in this place who are worth their salt, like Lot’s wife, then please save the place for our sakes. And don’t just save it, Father, because too much saving can lead to (expletive deleted). What we need is for You to start doing Your bit. You created heaven and earth, as You keep telling us in Genesis, and You brought Your chosen people here, but then You just abandoned us. That’s not the way to do it. If You’ll forgive my saying so, it’s just like a man, never cleans up after himself and always expects others to do his dirty work for him. But we can’t make it rain, so now it’s up to You. It is fast becoming an embarrassment and a disgrace. There are some people around here, I’ve seen it with my own eyes, I visit all the houses, who have taken to washing their faces in their own (expletive deleted). And I’m afraid You have to take the blame for it. In the early days our people could still say, Whatever happens is the will of God; and if it is no longer his will, then let us trek. But here we are stuck, on account of Grandpa Lukas’s (expletive deleted) leg, and on account of what old Giel Eyes told You, so we can’t get out and we can’t trek away, we’re caught in this narrow place, and You are the one who must now save us. So please start doing something about it and don’t let us have to tell You again. Amen.”
Mr Hans (Magic) Lermiet
“Lord, I have no wish to add my little stream of (expletive deleted) to the flood of (expletive deleted) You have already heard. I told them to keep their mouths clear of the weather, that way it stays whole. But they won’t listen. And all this praying won’t help either, because it won’t rain unless the wind is right. But this is another bucket of coals, and since they refuse to listen and keep on sowing suspicion, I just want to ask You: please take that wind and turn it right and let it rain. I thank You in anticipation. Amen.”
Dragged Her Out
IF ALL THE words wasted in prayer that afternoon had been water, the Devil’s Valley would have been flooded by nightfall. And as it was, I didn’t hear half of it, because I left long before it was over.
Just as Hans Magic was winding up his prayer someone in one of the front benches in the women’s block fainted. It came as no surprise, what with all the doors and windows being closed and the late-summer sun blazing outside; and with the heavy odour of a crowd of bodies that hadn’t seen water for some time, Hans Magic’s worst of all, it was hard to breathe. I was beginning to feel dizzy myself. And the depressing memories of my childhood stirred up by the service didn’t help either.
The commotion in the women’s block put a spoke in the fucking wheel. It took several minutes before one could make out what was happening in that throng of bustling bodies. As it turned out, it was Henta. Tant Poppie and a few of the other women dragged her out from under the pew where she’d fallen, and surrounded by rather more helpers than were called for she was carried to the vestry behind the pulpit.
Among them I recognised Dalena, Lukas Death’s wife, efficient and no-nonsense; but it was someone else who really made me shake off the heavy drowsiness that was paralysing me. Emma. Her narrow body in the long dark dress that flared around her legs; the attitude of her head, the dark hair once again piled high. By this time the next person to offer prayers was already on his feet. All the eyes dutifully turned to him. Except mine. That was why I noticed Emma hesitating just below the pulpit stairs, so briefly that no one not alert to it would have noticed. Her eyes moved quickly along the pews. It could have been my imagination, but I was sure she was looking for me. And the moment she found me among the potatoes and cabbages in the male block she made just the slightest gesture with her head before she walked on. A last swing of her dress, like a curtain moving in front of a window, and then she was gone.
Rely on Intuition
I was tempted to follow immediately. But I wasn’t born yesterday, so I stayed on for a while. The new speaker was already swept away by the tide of his communion with Our Lord and Heavenly Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth, who will come to judge the quick and the dead; but my attention soon wandered while I waited for the best moment to leave. As it happened, the speaker was just beginning to rev up the old engine for the inevitable descent into hell when Prickhead in front of me developed a nosebleed and stumbled from the overcrowded pew in search of fresh air. I gave him a handicap of two paragraphs and three expletives deleted before an uncontrollable cough sent me off after him.
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.
