Valley of Weeping

happening.

Chapter 1

It had been a grey day, in a grey year, when he received the letter. It was registered, and it sat in his postbox at the Post Office for weeks, until the manager told the messenger boy to deliver it, since clearly no one was coming to collect it.

He remembered the event clearly. He had taken off his glasses to rub his eyes to ease the eyestrain. The adding-up of page after page of numbers was nauseating him. White papers surrounded him on the untidy desk. He knew his blood sugar was low because his vision was poor. Sitting in the same chair all day was doing him no good. The fat lady had tossed the heavy package over the divider as she ambled past and it had come to rest in front of him as though it held something of great import.

His first thought was that he was in trouble again, because the letter bore the company stamp of a firm of attorneys. He cursed under his breath. He had just got to the point where he could cope with his debt commitments, but only if he lived like a saint.

He took the paper knife and sliced open the end. A fat wad of legal papers slid onto the desk. He sighed, and started leafing through them. His eye caught his aunt’s name; Final Arbitration in the Winding up of the Estate of Gwendolyn Ambershand.

She was dead? Just showed how little contact they had had lately, in spite of her being his only close relative. That’s what happens when your life gets in a mess, he thought. It was weird to think that the only close relative in his life was now apparently no more. He was aware of a strange lack of any real emotion.

Why were they sending him this? Had she left him money? Surely, he desperately needed some. He tried to calm his fluttering nerves, leant back and drew a deep breath. He went back to the beginning and worked more carefully through the papers.

His aunt Gwendolyn had played a central role in his childhood days. When both his parents were killed in a car crash she had become his guardian. He had moved into her mansion and started at a nearby school. It had been an exciting new adventure, like a new lease on life. It had dulled that persistent pain of loss; that feeling of being all alone and adrift in the wide world.

Gwendolyn was a flamboyant high flyer and socialite. She often featured in the back pages of the newspapers and in magazines presenting some function, or on some outing promoting her social work. For him her attention had come like warm syrup on a dry waffle, and finding himself surrounded by a wealth of fancy things in a comfy house had seemed like entering paradise. His parents had loved him well, and he still sorely missed them, but they had lived in spartan conditions with very little money to go round.

However, Gwendolyn had soon moved on as far as his needs were concerned. She was hardly ever at home, and when she was, she was usually too busy to have much time to spend with him. He remembered once overhearing an adult saying like ships passing in the night, and thinking wryly to himself that he could understand that.

Johanna was Aunt Gwendolyn’s housekeeper. She was an old lady with a lined ebony face, a round figure and grey peppercorn hair, which she kept wrapped under bright silk scarves. She became his de facto parent. Johanna ran all Gwendolyn’s home affairs, in spite of appearing insufficiently competent with her slow amble and heavy sighs. He was just another addition to her chores.

But in Johanna, at last, he found someone who was there for him and that cared. Someone he could bounce things off, some kind of emotional base in a very uncaring world. Beneath Johanna’s maidservant exterior, he came to learn, was a keen intellect and a heart of gold.

He was scanning all the legalese to get the gist of it. At the back he found a press clipping with a photo of his aunt and an article on how she had died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-two, immediately after holding the stage at a charity function in Sandton, Johannesburg. As he had suspected, he found a statement saying that her wealth would stay in her Trust, the Gwendolyn Ambershand Children and Women’s Support Fund Trust. Then he discovered that she had in fact left him something, and it appeared to be the title to a farm.

He felt a rush of excitement, and the blood in his face. There was a surveyor’s map of a farm and a title deed. The farm was called ‘De Drie Vonteinen’[1] and was two thousand hectares in extent. He had no idea how big a hectare was.

From the map he could make out a river, some dams, the mountains, and what must be the farmhouse, but not much else. What would he do with a farm? He had no interest in farming and knew nothing about it, save that the weather and various diseases played havoc with crops. He was a city boy. Even though he detested the city, he knew nothing else.

He found a letter instructing him to meet with the Attorneys to ‘proceed in this matter’. He noticed that the date set for the meeting had already passed.

1 The Three Springs

Chapter 2

Once they were seated in the drab office with rows of framed certificates hanging on the walls, Mr. Louw, the attorney dealing with Gwendolyn’s estate, explained to him that his aunt had bequeathed the farm to him in order to set him up in life.

"How come she owned a farm? She never mentioned farming."

Son, it was donated to the Trust more than ten years back by the widow after the farmer had died. I have been told that no one from the Trust has ever gone there, and I don’t think that they have known what to do with it. I myself have been there, and we did try to sell it for her, but she never got her price.

But what use is a farm to me if I have no money to farm with?

Well, there you are fortunate, sonny, because your dear aunt has further granted you a monthly allowance from the Trust of R30, 000.00.[2] Kiam’s eyes widened. That was about six times his present salary.

However ... said Mr. Louw, pausing for emphasis, there are stringent conditions. The allowance is only payable to you if you live on the property, and only if you farm it, and transfer of ownership of the property into your name will only be put into effect after you have been resident thereon for a continuous period of three years, and then only if the Trustees are satisfied with your efforts in farming it. It seems that your Aunt did not really trust you?

"She never did. Where is the place anyway?

Well, it is in the District of Weeping in northern Zembaland. As I said, I travelled there when we put the place on the market. The surrounding area is dry thornveld, but the farm itself is in the fertile valley of the Bloodbath River.

Wow! That’s virtually on the other side of the country. From what I have heard, the Zemba are a somewhat barbaric people! Where do the depressing names come from?

"Well, sonny, if you knew your history you would know that the Zemba attacked a poorly defended Boer lager of mostly women and children camped at the river while the men were meeting with the Zemba King at his kraal. All of those in the lager were slaughtered, and the event marked the beginning of the First Zemba War.

But, back to the business in hand. I need to know if you will be taking up the option or not, because if you decline the offer, my instructions are to pass the title of the farm and the allowance to the Zemba Aids Orphans Foundation to use as they deem fit.

Ok, I don’t have much truck with some old farm. Or a tribal backwater. What do I get in that case?

Well. Actually ... there is no provision for anything else. All of the assets and income streams of the Trust naturally remain with the Trust to be administered by the Trustees, apart from, as we have discussed, the farm.

Am I perhaps considered as a Trustee?

No, son. The Trustees have all been in place for at least ten years, and each one has nominated their replacement in the event of their death, and I can tell you that they are all of the older generation, and stalwarts in charity circles. Nor are you a beneficiary.

So that’s it? The farm or nothing?

Son, I am afraid that, in any event, you have come to light rather late. The letter that I sent to you was registered, and you did not respond timeously. Nor were you at your good Aunt’s funeral, nor were you involved in the subsequent affairs of her estate. Right here on my desk are the transfer papers to move the farm over to the Zemba Aids Foundation. If you had come in next week it would have been too late.

So do they also have to farm it for three years to the Trustees’ satisfaction before they get it?

No Son, there are no conditions on that transfer. But if you want the place you are entitled to get it in terms of the Will, under the terms and conditions that apply, but you must decide now. You have the first option to take it, and no more. We are busy finalizing the Estate for presentation to the Supreme Court next week. Once that is done no changes can be made.

How long do I have to think about it?

Until close of business today. Tomorrow morning early I must draw up the documentation, either way.

‘What the hell! I’ll take it. I have nothing going for me here, and nothing to lose going there. Anything is better than being stuck in this shitty rut. To be sure, it is slowly killing me. Besides, I’m ready for a spot of adventure. The place can’t be that bad!"

2 About $5 000 at an exchange rate of about R6 to $1

Chapter 3

The glossy bus blew like the wind down the highway, eating up the asphalt. The highway was featureless and endless. It was dark outside the gently swaying glass cocoon. The landscape slid past in the faint moonlight. It didn’t vary; flat, dry, and empty. Little mountain ridges hunched dark on the horizon. Some passengers read under their cabin lights, but most tried to doze in their upright seats. The steady hum of road noise had a lulling effect, but his emotions were too unsettled for reading or sleep.

He felt excited to be venturing off into the unknown. Looking back, he could see that his recent life had been devoid any adventure. It had been wrapped up in work and paying the bills, and cleaning his threadbare little flat because he couldn’t afford a maid. There had been no room for him to develop as a person in all that.

He had been happy with his marriage for the first six months, but the smallness of his salary had meant that his wife, Lisa, was stuck in the rented flat with little to do. She soon began to complain of boredom. She had had no desire to go out and find work, and had flatly refused to consider having children under the circumstances. It had greatly annoyed him at the time, but he was relieved about that now, now that the divorce had been finalized.

He had obtained no formal qualifications, largely because his aunt had taken no interest in his studies or his career, and he had never quite decided what he wanted to become. He had now resigned from his job, and clearly his company had been exploiting him. The money usually ran dry half way through the month, and he knew that that was where the unhappiness in their marriage had started. His mistake had been to never see their relationship in financial terms, this myopia stemming probably from the fact that his parents had been very happy and devoted to each other in spite of their financial hardships. He had failed to