Moffie

by Andre Carl van der Merwe

  I try to tell him about the fear of evil and evil spirits and of sin. I finish by telling him that I know now I had a private kind of nervous breakdown. And then the words start to become thick in my throat.

  When I stop talking, I don’t regret telling him. He knows this and says nothing, for he knows that I know he understands. Af­ter this we are even closer.

  ‘Give me a name,’ he says quietly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, give me a name.’

  ‘I like your name, Dylan.’

  ‘My parents gave it to me, so it’s someone else’s. I want one from you, En, one to make my own.’

  ‘I already call you Dee. Does anybody else?’

  ‘No, but it stands for Dylan. I want something from you.’

  ‘OK, I’ll think of one. Shit knows, we’ve got nothing else to do.’ I tell him I think he is weird, but in truth, I’d like to give him a name.

  We are quiet for a while. In my mind I trace our conversation back to his question and ask him, ‘Dee, what was yours?’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your worst time.’

  ‘It was in New York actually . . . by far.’

  ‘New York? Why there?’

  ‘I often went there on holiday . . .’ A whistle sounds, calling us to roll call. In the platoons formation I am not directly next to Dylan.

  We shower and then it’s lights-out. He never finishes the story.

  ***

  For us, winter starts in a trench—a trench Dylan and I have dug for ourselves, hacked out of rock and shale, where even the soil is as hard as granite. At night we sleep in this trench for the few hours we are allowed between training sessions.

  Until now, I have thought I knew what cold is, but what I feel in this trench should then be given another name. We live in this wet trench through a desert night—then another one, then another, until three weeks have passed—in cotton clothing, with no thermal underwear and sleeping bags so thin you can see through them.

  At five in the morning I break the ice in my fire bucket. There is a layer of ice on my R1 rifle that sleeps next to me. I shave with the ice water. It is so cold that my skeleton feels a deep and cut­ting pain, and I vow I will never in my life feel like this again if I can help it.

  Our food comes in tins without labels. For three weeks our meals consist of half a tin of beetroot or beans.

  By day we leopard crawl over rocks and thorns. Our arms are scarred for life when the wounds on our elbows don’t heal for weeks on end. Our clothes are worn through, and then the skin and then the muscle. With our rifles cradled on our forearms we crawl like geckoes, on the sides of our knees and elbows. Flat, like limbless dogs, we drag ourselves day after day on raw sores.

  At night, during live ammo training, the ghostly artificial light bathes everything in grey, distorting shapes, warping nature with light-producing mortars.

  Alternate lines of men move forward, kneel and fire, while the other troops move between them and repeat the drill. In this way the whole company moves ever forward while thousands and thousands of bullets are being fired.

  It is during this kind of training that accidents happen. As the troops move past larger bushes and trees, they lose their forma­tion, while shots are being fired on either side of them.

  What are we learning to do? Spending a year to learn to kill. My R1 rifle is designed for the sole purpose of destroying other humans. Our chaplain—the Dutch Reformed dominee—reminds us during church parades that we are fighting in the name of Christ. Not a gentle Christ, not a Christ of forgiveness, but a Christ of the assault rifle, a Christ of killing.

  77529220BG Rifleman N. van der Swart, blood type O+, train­ing to kill others of his kind, is told about his rifle, ‘Memorise the number, this is your new wife, girlfriend, mother. It is your life, for without it you have no life.’

  The most significant night in the trench is triggered by rain.

  The bleak day gives way to deep-grey clouds that hide the sun and its warmth, drawing the night in prematurely. At five in the afternoon the clouds start relinquishing their contents.

  ‘I don’t care if you drown, but if you as much as move from your trench, I will fucking shoot you. Do you understand?’ Ser­geant Dorman shouts above the rain.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant! But, Sarge.’

  ‘No buts! Are you fucking junior leaders or fucking moffies? This will be a test. We’ll see who survives, and if you don’t, you are RTU scum! Listen to me carefully: if you crack, you can fuck off. Do you understand, you rotten cunts?’ The rain is lashed from side to side by an icy wind, sending it through clothing and any aperture in our flimsy army raincoats.

  ‘Yes, Sarge.’

  There is rain in my eyes, water trickling down my neck, under my clothing.

  ‘Yes, WHO?’

  ‘YES, SERGEANT!’

  ‘ARE THERE ANY OF YOU WHO ARE CRACKING?’

  ‘NO, SERGEANT!’

  ‘ARE THERE ANY OF YOU WHO WANT TO GIVE UP, NOW?’

  ‘NO, SERGEANT!’

  Through the rain and wind he shouts that the day’s training is over and that we can go back to our trench homes.

  When Dylan and I get to ours, my bag with all my clothing has fallen over and is lying in a puddle of water. Everything, includ­ing my sleeping bag, is drenched.

  All attempts to construct a bivvie and a gully to divert the driv­ing rain, fail. In the dying light of day I watch in misery as the torrent outside causes water to gush in, soaking my sleeping bag even further. I try frantically to bail the water with my fire buck­et, but it is not big enough. I unclip the dixie—a bigger, square aluminium container we use for food—fold the handles over, and start bailing again.

  I am frozen; frozen with the knowledge that I am cracking—cracking like ice.

  Dylan gets me through this night by keeping me warm. He tells me to take my wet bush jacket, shirt and vest off and gives me a dry vest for the night. He unzips his bag and tells me to get in next to him. Shaking, I slide into the heat of his stomach as he turns towards me. He puts his arm around me and tucks his legs in behind mine. I shake in large, jerking movements.

  I try to talk, but my clenched jaw makes the words shake and rattle, so I stop and I listen. We pull the sleeping bag over our heads. Eventually my body temperature rises and he says I can sleep if I want to, he will watch the time.

  If we are caught like this, a far worse hell awaits us, far worse than an RTU or any other shame—DB.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ he says. ‘Don’t think about the army, don’t think about the cold, think only about what I tell you, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I stammer.

  He speaks as if to someone very dear to him, in the way a parent would talk to a deadly sick child, stroking the child’s hair and dabbing his forehead. And Dylan’s voice is free of its usual tension.

  ‘I’ll tell you about love,’ he says, and I expect to hear a poem. ‘The love I dream about. Just listen and sometime you can tell me if you believe such a love is possible.’ At that moment he squeezes me slightly and hesitates. ‘I want the person I choose to love one day, and to spend my life with, to know unequivocal­ly that what I give is pure. That person must realise that we are together because I want to be there and not because of a piece of paper or society. I want this person to know that there will only ever be one person for me, forever.’

  He keeps quiet and I wait. ‘No contracts. The love must live amongst us as a living, tangi­ble thing, even if we are in different countries. I want excellence . . . that unbelievable magic we know is possible . . . that some­thing that comes from here,’ his hand moves to my chest and he knocks gently against it like a priest does as part of a ritual in the litany. ‘What you get when two people surrender completely to each other. A whole, a completed entity. Think about that. Half of yourself does not cheat or hurt the other half.’

  He sighs and I wait.

  ‘I . . .’ he waits for a long time and then he says, ‘I wonder if
it’s possible. No, I know it is. What I wonder is if I will be blessed with such a love.’

  I understand completely what he says and feel a myriad of questions, almost all of them involving Ethan. He is quiet for a while and I think I should change the subject because I’m afraid he might be talking about me.

  ‘I know,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have your name. Remember, my name for you?’

  ‘Yes. I knew you would come up with one. What is it?’

  ‘Well, it’s not a regular name. It’s more like a description.’

  ‘I prefer that.’

  ‘Dark Flame.’ Then I giggle nervously, because suddenly it sounds so pathetic and stupid. ‘Sorry, I know it sounds a lit­tle melodramatic, but it fits. Guess it would have been better if I could have given it to you in Greek or something. I’m sure it would have sounded more poetic.’

  ‘No, I like it. I like it a lot.’ He pulls me towards him as if to say thank you, but the movement is sexual.

  Dylan’s arm is over my chest; my wrist has fallen into his hand. I hang on to the closeness, the warmth, the giving. I snug­gle deeper, pushing into his heat. There is hardness, or is there? Is it his web belt? Can we lie like this and stay like this? We are lying like lovers, and it is too big for me.

  Surprisingly I have never fantasised about Dylan, but with this closeness I feel a stirring in me. And so we lie with the enor­mity of the situation ringing in my ears.

  The rain has stopped. Around us the soaked earth gets colder. In front of me I feel the cold trench wall staring at me, and be­hind me is Dylan’s warmth.

  ‘I want to tell you something,’ he says and hesitates. There is a tension in him as he says it, the slightest quiver, and he keeps quiet. This is it! He is going to tell me. I don’t want to hear it. No, we are too . . . in each other, too close.

  If the circumstances had been different, I could have made love to Dylan. A part of me is yearning for it, but my mind wants out. I don’t know how to answer any major revelation. Not here, not now. I don’t want to talk about it. Talking will put an edge to it. Maybe it’s nothing, but I know, I can hear in his tone, he wants to tell me something important.

  I do not answer him, and he remains quiet. It feels as if he wants to be encouraged to go on talking, but I wait.

  Still he says nothing. Thoughts move into the space and they grow; too many thoughts, quiet for too long.

  ‘What is it?’ I eventually ask, and wait, but he doesn’t answer.

  Does he feel what I’m thinking? Does he know that I don’t want complications in this hell, here in the lap of the devil?

  Sometimes we live through events that impact on our lives forever, but while they are taking place we don’t realise their significance—pivotal events that end up haunting us.

  ***

  On the last Sunday night in the trenches, the platoon is allowed to make a fire. In the excited warmth of the crowd I hear, ‘So I’ve got her in the Volksie and I’m fucking her silly, her feet against the windscreen, and next thing I know she’s kicked the whole windscreen out!’

  They all have stories like these, trying to outperform each other, out-penis each other. Hardly listening, I think about the dreams I had last night. I don’t know the man in my first dream, but the feeling I have for him is something I recognise and know intimately. The next dream was about my unborn nephews—Bronwyn’s children—and I feel a strange affection for her, who will one day carry these souls waiting for bodies.

  Then I see him sitting outside the circle, outside the warmth of the fire.

  Dylan is holding his cigarette differently. Not delicately with the tips of his index and middle finger, but between his thumb and index finger, sucking hard, flicking the ash and then suck­ing again. Unaware of my attention.

  The following day he has two round sores that look incredibly painful: one on his arm, and one on the side of his hand. It is strange, and I am aware of the fact that I have stumbled upon something secret and intimate. I am not sure that I want to know about it, afraid of what I might find.

  It is late the following Sunday afternoon that I ask him why he burns himself.

  ‘It was an accident. No . . . no, it wasn’t. I never want to lie to you. That will make me too much like them.’

  ‘Well then, why? Shit, it’s weird man.’

  ‘Not really. I will tell you—it’s no big deal—just not now. Just believe me, when I tell you, you will understand, but there is so much you need to know about me first. Just be patient, will you?’

  ***

  After the weekend Dylan says. ‘I know a bit more about the mu­sic you like.’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘Bob Dylan. Not just Blowin’ in the Wind and Mr. Tam­bourine Man. Really great, En.’

  ‘Did you listen to It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleedin’)?’

  ‘Yes, you were right. I do like it. It appeals to my sense of . . . how did you put it? Uhm . . . of what lies below.’

  ‘So you’ve been listening, hey?’

  ‘Yes, all I did this weekend. Do you have Blood on the Tracks?’

  ‘Yep. Great, hey?’

  ‘Just couldn’t stop. Listened to it over and over. How was your pass?’

  ‘OK, but the strange thing is that as much as I long for them, somehow they always leave me dissatisfied. Yours?’

  ‘Yeah, OK, I guess. My father and I had our usual run-ins. Besides that, as I said, I pretty much listened to Bob Dylan all weekend. Long drive, I was so surprised when Dorman let me go this time. I sort of prepared myself to stay, so the whole weekend was a bonus. Disappointed, why?’ he doesn’t wait for me to an­swer. ‘Let’s go outside, I feel like a fag.’ I follow him, and I know there is something bothering him.

  As we walk past the TV, which hangs from a bracket in the corner of the room, he hesitates. I follow his gaze to the screen, where long black cars are driving down a wide street in New York. The camera pulls back and over the city. I recognise the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. The sound is turned down.

  Dylan has stopped and is staring intently at the screen. I look to see what is drawing him. He has an expression as though he is watching injustice to vulnerable people or cruelty to animals, and I recall him saying New York is where he had the worst time of his life. Making a mental note to ask him about it, I turn back to the screen.

  ‘Hey, Van, change the channel to number two, man,’ someone says.

  Dylan leaves the room. Before following him, I change the channel.

  ‘And turn up the volume. Thanks, man.’

  When I get outside, he has chosen a seat on the cement wall between our bungalow and the washing line. His legs are crossed and he is taking a cigarette from a pack of Lucky Strikes. He is bent over, frowning and serious.

  ‘What happened in New York?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, man . . . bad shit!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll tell you some time.’

  I can see that I need to be patient. Approaching the subject carefully I ask how often he went to New York.

  ‘A couple of times; got family there. Great art, you’ll love it.’

  ‘Lucky you. I’d dig to go, love to study there, seems so full of energy . . . vibrant.’

  ‘Yes, filled with good and bad. Very good and very, very bad. You have no idea.’ He taps the back of the cigarette against the pack, making a ‘tock, tock’ sound, after which he brings it to his mouth.

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Just decadence, brought on by boredom, I reckon. People who have so much are always looking for entertainment, for a thrill, a fix of sorts. I have an uncle there.’ He waits a while. ‘My fa­ther’s youngest brother, very good-looking guy. Very, very differ­ent from my father; doesn’t work, lives in this great apartment, just parties all the time. I’ve stayed there a few times. Interesting holidays.’ He turns to me and looks at me as though he is wait­ing for an answer to a question I did not hear.

  ‘Interest
ing in what way?’

  I know he is not going to answer my question, for he has been quiet for too long and his expression has shifted.

  ‘Something that has stayed with me is the . . . evolution, I guess; the travel of man’s development—a course set by circumstance and the environment.’

  His sentences are crammed with the possibility of so many di­rections that I feel ignorant and uninformed. It irritates me and yet keeps me fascinated.

  ‘Everything is “done”: nails, body, hair . . . body hair. If it hasn’t been altered, or doesn’t cost money, it doesn’t seem to have val­ue.’

  ‘You can get damaged people who are not wealthy, Dee, like emotionally or because of circumstance.’

  ‘Yes, but what I’m talking about is different—dark. I must try and explain this properly.’ He looks at what he wants to tell me as though he sees it again to record it accurately.

  ‘It was as though she fell harder because she was already so far removed, and the woman helping her was the same, bend­ing down . . . it sort of didn’t fit: the stockings on the asphalt, the long, perfect hair constantly in the way, the skirt not designed for the manoeuvre.’

  ‘Deeee . . . you’re losing me.’

  ‘When she bent over to give the woman CPR, the bright-red lips and made-up faces were so artificial, I just wanted to say, “Leave her alone, she’s been dead for a long time!” It’s like she can’t be dying; she is not real. And the woman trying to give her CPR was so uncomfortable and awkward, so low to the ground. Like she had stooped to another world.’

  ‘Dylan!’

  ‘Sorry, Just . . . this woman . . . had a heart attack outside Berg­dorf Goodman, the side entrance, like between the doorman and her stretch limousine in that small space that ordinary people use . . .’