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the sleeves of his jacket frayed and much too short, so that his hands protruded like gnarled, brown sweet potatoes; and barefoot, carrying two heavy veldskoens over one shoulder. In this place, I was to discover, people tend to save their shoes as much as possible. A pretty seedy sight, all told, and rather peed-upon. Judging from the way he screwed up his eyes below the unkempt eyebrows as he stared at me, he was short-sighted too.
    “You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost,” he said.
    “For all I know I have,” I was still too fazed by what had just happened. “I saw a girl in that hole a moment ago. Clear as daylight.”
    “It must have been that Emma,” he said with what looked like suppressed rage. “There’s no stopping her when she gets the urge.”
    “But the hole was full of water.”
    “That one will squeeze water from a stone,” he said, his lips white with disapproval. “And I’m afraid Little-Lukas backed her up.”
    The name hit me in the guts. “I knew Little-Lukas,” I blurted out.
    He nodded as if he knew all about it.
    “Little-Lukas died,” I announced.
    “Indeed, yes.”
    “I wasn’t sure you’d heard the news.” I felt quite out of my depth. “I brought his ashes with me.”
    He shrugged, his face closed like a mussel.
    “Well, that’s that then. I wasn’t sure if he still had relatives around here.”
    “I’m his father.”
    This was getting a bit too much. I put out a shaky hand, what else could I do? “Mr Lermiet…”
    “They call me Lukas Death. We all have private handles here.”
    “I guess the old man up there on the mountain, Lukas Lermiet, is also a relation?”
    “All of us in Devil’s Valley are related. When we go abroad we’re all Lermiets, but down here it’s just the private handles. And you must be Flip Lochner. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
    Tampan-Ticks or Whatever
    Just like when I faced the old man of the mountain, only more so, I stood gawking like the chickens my mother used to dose with fat-and-pepper pills against tampan-ticks or whatever.
    “I hope I’m not putting you out in any way?” I asked. For the time being, I thought, the ashes should remain in my rucksack; they were clearly not welcome here.
    He didn’t sound very encouraging: “That is as may be. I suppose if you’ve come all this way you may as well stay.” Adding, as if it were relevant, “It’s a bad year for man and beast, what with this drought and all. Look at this riverbed. Even the wells are drying up. It must be because of Little-Lukas. God has lost patience with us.”
    “Isn’t it almost time for the winter rains?”
    “Last winter God skipped a season,” he said, making it sound like a death report. “And he’ll keep on chastising us until he’s had enough.” He sighed. “We can only hope that he had some hidden purpose sending you here. His ways are higher than ours, you know.” Like the old man up there he spoke with an antiquated Dutch accent. I interposed some apposite grunts from time to time, but he paid scant attention to me. Once again I tried to steer the conversation to Little-Lukas, finding it imbloodypossible to understand how the boy’s own father could so stubbornly avoid all discussion of his death; but he ignored it as pointedly as before. It was obvious that in some obscure fucking way they’d already learned about the event; and the gloomy man made it clear that as far as he was concerned the matter was closed. So to hell with it. If necessary, I would scatter the whisky-soaked ashes myself when the time came, in some hidden spot when no one was looking. So rest in peace, poor Little Lukas L-Lermiet.
    Lukas Death soon ran out of conversation. For a while we simply stood there; it was as if he felt I needed time to adjust, while I decided to keep my questions to myself for the moment. He waited patiently. I suppose a man who makes a living from the death of others has no need to move his arse.
    At last he said, almost