Free Devil's Valley by André Brink Page B

the top, always remaining just out of sight, showing no more than a thin luminous edge. Every time I got up to look, I’d think: just five more minutes—two—now! But it never happened. And in the end, its full fucking glory still denied me, I fell asleep.
    Woke Up
    In my sleep I had a totally screwy dream. Now I really have a shit in people who tell their dreams to others, as if these things could be of the slightest interest to anyone but the damn dreamer. But I must make an exception of this one, with good reason.
    I dreamt I woke up from the moon flooding the room like a wash of white water spilling right across my bed on the floor. Jesus, here comes the poetry again. I remember getting up in my dream, half-blinded by the light, to look through the window. Detached from the black side of the mountain, the moon was at last drifting free in the dark blue sky like a huge blister. I dreamt I opened the window to climb out—which was of course impossible as no window in the settlement can be opened. But since when is a dream inhibited by the fucking feasible? Outside it was sultry, and very quiet. The mountains naked in the night. No light anywhere, no sign of anything moving. What time it was I couldn’t tell, as I’d left my watch behind. I set off towards the bluegum wood which began a little distance above the church, a black stain in the dark, like ink spilled on the mountain slope. Below my bare feet I could feel, even in the dream, the warmth of the day still lingering in the ground.
    What lured me to the forest, I couldn’t tell. It just seemed the natural thing to do. Among the trees the moon got lost. It was bloody dark, yet I had no trouble at all finding my way through the smooth trunks and the parched underbrush, as if I knew exactly where I was going. After a long time the trees suddenly opened up ahead of me, as I seemed to know they would, and once again I could see the moon, now drifting in a haze. While I’d been in the forest a heavy white mist had come down from the mountain.
    Unmelodious Chant
    For the first time I could hear sounds. Voices, girls’ voices, like some kind of chanting, punctuated by sharper, shriller cries, and a sound of moaning, like that of the girl in Tant Poppie’s voorhuis. But the noise was muffled, either because of the mist, or because they didn’t want it to be heard. Which would make sense, for when I got to the edge of the clearing I saw a sight that would surely have turned some of the older settlers in the valley belly-up with shock. A throng of young naked girls dancing among the trees. Except that dancing is not the right word: they were simply rushing about wildly, blindly, to and fro among the trees and through the clearing, arms and legs flailing. It was like a flock of night birds flapping about, crashing into the shrubbery or flying headlong into one another. But there was nothing exuberant about it: in fact, there was a kind of mute panic in their frenzy, which made it more unsettling than erotic.
    Because of the heavy fog and the unreliable moonlight, it took some time before I could make out what they were actually doing. This was no fucking kids’ game, but more of a mass flagellation. Only then could I understand the flailing arms: the girls had an assortment of thongs and switches and canes and freshly plucked branches with clusters of leaves still attached to them, with which they lambasted one another. As some of them came thrashing past me, close enough to distinguish details in the mist, I could see dark weals and streaks of blood on their limbs. And what from a distance had sounded like some unmelodious chant, was now much closer to a bloody half-hysterical wailing.
    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