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mind I fit them into their usual places, the way things were before the bloody catastrophes began. Grandpa Lukas, as they call him here, among his mottled goats on the mountainside, chewing or sniffing his strong tobacco. Brother Holy pacing up and down his rows of vegetables, hands behind his back, preparing his sermon of fire and brimstone for next Sunday, while Smith-the-Smith furiously hammers a white-hot horseshoe of pure gold into shape on his anvil for a horse he’ll never see. The sprinkling of old people in the cemetery, sweeping the aisles and dusting the headstones and cleaning the little beds of succulents on the graves as they chat to the dead and pass on all the news from the living in exchange for tidings from the other side. Tant Poppie Fullmoon with her bag of herbs, waddling on her small round feet to bring a new baby into the world or strangle another. Jos Joseph planing boards for coffin or bed or doorpost, his mouth bristling with wild-olive nails, one of which he occasionally swallows when he becomes excited. Jurg Water loping behind the forked stick he uses as a divining rod, up and down the dried-up slopes where no drop of subterranean water remains to set the stick twirling in his huge paws. Henta Peach and her gaggle of barely nubile furies twittering among bright shafts of light in some dark shed, ample warning that at moonrise tonight they will be cavorting naked among the bluegum trees again. Hans Magic accompanied by his perennial cloud of flies like a fucking halo around his filthy head. The randy old shoemaker Petrus Tatters pretending to be hard at work while everybody knows his thoughts are with Criel Eyes’s widow who he’s planning to screw tonight. Gert Brush among the paintings never finished because he keeps on adding new faces to the ones hovering in the layers of paint below. Isak Smous counting the money he’ll never spend. Job Raisin at his stands of drying tobacco and raisins, branch in one hand to chase away the birds that disappeared from the Devil’s Valley a century ago. Tall-Fransina bent over the tip of the coil from her still, surrounded by her innumerable cats as she awaits the blessed moment when the heart of the run can be cut from the heads. Peet Flatfoot, the dwarf I’d christened Prickhead on my arrival, hiding in the thickets beside the dried-up water-holes to spy on the naked girls who have long stopped swimming there. Ouma Liesbet Prune huddled with her small tin trunk on the roof of her little house, waiting for the skies to open so that the Lord can sweep her up to heaven, while her distant nephew Ben Owl lies snoring down below until nightfall when he will get up to prowl in the dark on his club-foot. Bettie Teat and her brood in the sun on the doorstep of the church, a child at each bare breast, waiting for Brother Holy to descend from the cabbage patch to castigate her for the sins of her voluptuous flesh. Also Lukas Death, somehow appointed as my guide and mentor during this stay which is now over and not yet over: he occupies the biblical position of Judge in the Devil’s Valley, a combination of justice of the peace, and mayor, and field cornet, besides doing his job as teacher and undertaker.
    And then Emma, Emma in church, Emma here in the dried-up riverbed, Emma at the Devil’s Hole, Emma in the cemetery at night, Emma’s laughter and her silences. Emma bearing the mark of the Devil on her breast, Emma.
    She is the one I’m waiting for now. But the one who showed up that late afternoon, among the tangled bushes beside the dried-up pool, was Lukas Death, saying “So there you are.”
    Screwed Up
    I swung round quickly: one can only take so much on any given day. In front of me stood a thin man in a quaint black linen suit, with a wispy ringbeard resembling old photographs of Paul Kruger. Undertaker, was my first thought, which turned out to be not so wrong after all. But on closer inspection he appeared too scruffy for the job: collarless shirt,