Moffie

by Andre Carl van der Merwe

  ‘And the other woman?’

  ‘She was young. Groomed and perfect. Designer everything. Straight black hair, thin, clearly never been so close to a pave­ment in her life. It was like worlds collided, without expensive Italian leather in between . . . I mean like shoes . . . the dirty pave­ment and her skin products. Touching, actually touching, weird that the contrast was so significant to me that day . . . but it was.’

  ‘Your uncle, is he one of them?’

  ‘Yes. It’s just that to me he is synonymous with New York. He­do­nistic bastard, just has to have fun all the time, the sick fuck.’

  Dylan shakes his head and takes out another cigarette. It is the last one. Before he lights it, he crushes the box, almost like he wants to punish it for being empty.

  Then a whistle blows. He looks at the cigarette and says, al­most to himself, ‘When you think you’ve got nothing more to lose, there is always something else.’

  ‘Are you guys coming? It’s post parade,’ someone shouts as he runs past us.

  ‘Hey, DF, cheer up, man. What’s wrong with you?’ I say as cheerfully as I can, and I get up. ‘Come on, come to post parade and afterwards I want to hear more. Sounds mighty mysterious to me. Come . . . I mean, if you want to.’

  ‘No, nothing for me there, Nick.’

  ‘There might be.’

  ‘Nick . . . En, there are times when things happen, you know, like those two guys who were put on parade in front of the whole company. Things like that—big things.’

  ‘Yes, what about them?’ I sit down again.

  ‘Well, I reckon those guys will always be affected by what has happened to them. They will always carry it with them. Things like that can change a whole life. We are just lucky if we’re not damaged too much!’

  ‘Dee, listen to me. You must look at the brighter side, man. Shit, you sound scary. Come to post parade. Come on.’

  ‘En, there is nothing I can get there that will change things.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Let me put it this way, nothing I long for.’ A pause, then, ‘No­thing that will change anything.’

  As I get up to go, I think I hear him say, ‘Nothing to save me.’ So I say, ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know. I know what I’m yearning for. Go on, En. Go!’

  ‘Fuck, you’re a complicated dude. Just come, man.’ He gets up and walks with me.

  The corporal who hands out the post is in a good mood and has allowed the group to sit on a small stretch of lawn. He sits in front of them on a cement wall, and we stand behind him, wait­ing for our names to be called. When I turn to talk to him, Dylan is gone. I start looking for Malcolm, find him and sit down next to him.

  ***

  At long last Ethan’s letters arrive.

  The instructors sniff the letters before they read the surnames of the recipients. Often the senders spray perfume on the pages to their loved ones. The conscript is taunted about it, but some­how the attention just enhances the fantasy of the woman car­ried in the pages—the stronger the perfume, the prettier the girl. My letters never smell of perfume. Anne’s letters are filled with a different scent, more complex, unique—something they can’t smell. To me her letters smell of wonder.

  ‘Another one for Van der Swart, you fuck.’ The letter is flung at me—its final journey from Ethan to me. I turn it around and beam. Malcolm smiles, because he knows.

  Then there is another one; same name but different address. This is the letter he had sent just after our parting. I hold it in my hand. He has touched this very paper, sealed it, and perhaps even licked it?

  I sit on my trunk, holding the letters. They feel more valuable than anything man has ever made on earth. Ethan is in hospital. Voortrekkerhoogte. Operation. In great pain. Where am I? Am I coping? Am I in Oudtshoorn? Would I get the letter? He misses me. Mother coming to visit. The person next to him is recovering from a spinal injury sustained on the border. Their Hippo hit a land mine. But the best part: Love, E.

  The second letter is different. He is on a medics course. Re­classified G2K1. Also Voortrekkerhoogte. So pleased that I have visited his mother. Now knows I’m still surviving Infantry School. Encourages me. So impressed. I must please write. (I have! Three letters! Why hasn’t he received them? What if he never gets my letters and stops writing? What if he thinks I don’t want to be friends or that I’ve made new friends? What if he never writes again? I must write tonight, to this address again!)

  He seems to like the course. Helping people. Possibly saving a life. Doing something positive in this place. Bored. Frustrated. Missing home. Surfing. When will I be on pass again? Perhaps the same time as him? He has made a friend. He has made a friend! But he misses me and signs it again: Love, E.

  Somewhere in the background I hear a rifle shot. So engrossed am I in this fragile connection with Ethan that it passes by my conscious mind. Only when I hear the screams—no, not screams, more like shouting, raw and anguished—am I shocked back to reality. And I realise that the equilibrium has been disturbed permanently.

  Someone is crying, like a child, but the sounds are those of an adult. Someone else is repeating the word ‘NO’ over and over again. I get up, drawn to the noise.

  In the short distance to the ablution block, I begin to realise. The words haven’t been formulated, but I know. In my legs I feel the downward pull of a superior gravity, a gravity of another planet, a planet I now occupy, with an awful largeness of load. I don’t see Malcolm, who is running straight towards me. Grab­bing my shoulders, he says, ‘It’s Dylan, Nicholas, he’s dead! Don’t go in there, please, don’t go there!’

  But I break free and run.

  Someone is holding his head, another is vomiting. Lots and lots of noise. People running. More people shouting. One bare bulb lights Dylan’s body. There is an expression on my friend’s face that burns into me, never to leave me again. It is a horror that can only be achieved when half of one’s head is missing. I stand there, breathing and seeing, but I am a crucible about to explode from the thermal shock of molten metal.

  There is too much of everything—too much blood, too much of him against the ceiling and the wall, too many people.

  Next to him lies his R1 rifle. In the dimly lit room is a smell, partly of the rifle, and another smell for which I have no refer­ence. If I should ever smell it again, I would recognise it in­stantly, for it too crawls up next to the image that has become imprinted in me forever and now huddles in a dark corner of my head. The concrete floor has cracks in it, and part of Dylan has flowed into them like blood trying to find a vein. This is my last observation before everything in my head switches off.

  A doctor at the sickbay gives me an injection when Malcolm takes me there after finding me, shivering, behind the furthest bungalow.

  The doctor, an army captain, seems compassionate and kind. I salute him and conform perfectly to my army programming. Within moments the drug’s numbing effect takes over and I’m in a dull stupor.

  Shock, anger, confusion, hate, emptiness, love and a blunt sense of self-control—this is what I feel. Strangely, the over­whelming emotion I experience immediately after Dylan’s death is a sense of survival. If I allow myself to give in to my feelings, everything will spiral out of control. In an environment where there is no mercy or understanding for the expression of love between two men, I need to keep absolute control. So I suppress what is boiling up inside me.

  It was entirely my choice, and I hate myself for it. I hate myself for not cracking, for not disintegrating, for not allowing myself to unravel in the face of the army, the other troops and my parents. I despise myself for not breaking down for my friend, as a last token of my love and admiration. Some days later they give the company a talk on the matter of Dylan firing a round through the roof of his mouth. But the talk is about Dylan’s weakness, and threats if they should find out that anybody is even contemplating something similar.

  ‘We will not tolerate this kind of weakness h
ere. People like Stassen must go and kill themselves some place else. It’s bad for the name of Infantry School.’

  At that moment a substantial chunk of respect for mankind is torn out of me, and my soul is scarred. This talk is one of the most difficult things I have ever endured, listening quietly while containing an explosion inside me.

  But I do find a tiny degree of pleasure in realising that this event has in fact rattled those higher up in the ranks. And when they rattle, everyone below quivers.

  The captain keeps quiet and peers at us as if we have thorough­ly inconvenienced him. His cheeks, red from burst veins, are puffed out in anger and revulsion.

  ‘We know everything.’ Again the pause to make sure every serviceman’s attention is on what he is about to tell us. ‘It has come to my attention that Stassen had, how shall I put it, a sick­ness . . . uhm, a perversion, actually.’

  I start praying silently, my eyes fixed on the man. No, no, no, please, dear God, no.

  ‘Stassen was a trassie . . . a homosexual.’ It is as if the word leaves his mouth and drives straight into me. ‘He was expelled from high school, I am told, for the deviant act of . . . of fiddling with another boy.’ Another sigh and mumbling as the captain looks out over his company, allowing his words to sink in. ‘You see, it wasn’t something the army did. He probably couldn’t live with himself any longer, being—how should I say?—sick . . . per­verted. According to the experts these people are mentally ill. It’s a sickness, and I’m told they hate themselves so much for their evil lusts that they simply can’t live with themselves.’

  He has everybody’s attention, allows them to murmur for a moment, then strains his red face on the sun-beaten neck, twists and waits again. When he resumes, the troops are quiet.

  ‘You know what pisses me off? It’s that I must sit with all these homos in my fucking company. What have I done? First those disgusting fuckers, those . . . what d’you call them?’

  ‘Boksom Boys,’ the troops chorus.

  ‘Yes, them. First they’re caught fucking smooching each other, and now this. Well, I’ve had enough. I can tell you I don’t deserve this. If there are any more moffies here, get the fuck out of my company NOW! That some boys don’t know if they’re men or women . . . sis . . . sis! And now I sit with the bloody mess. It shouldn’t be our job, but what choice do we have? We’re given a bunch of sissies and we have to make men out of you before we can hope to beat the shit out of Swapo! What gets me . . .’ he waits for everyone to realise that this is even worse, ‘is that we, yes, WE, get the bad name. The papers and the people in civvy street think it’s OUR fault.’ Our officer commanding is so angry he needs time to calm down.

  ‘Yes, it’s become so bad that there is a special ward for people like Stassen. Did you know that? Who knows about this ward?’ He looks around. ‘Come on, don’t you know anything?’ A hand goes up. ‘Yes, yes, Pretorius.’ The boy jumps up, stands at atten­tion and shouts, ‘Ward 22, Captain!’

  The captain thanks him in little more than a whisper, and in a quiet, acid-laden tone he says, ‘Ward 22 . . . where all the drug addicts, madmen and deviants are sent. At great cost to the mili­tary. We, WE, have to fix them up. With very little thanks, I can tell you. To think that you . . .’ and he points at us, ‘you risk your lives for people like that, you and I, but that’s just how I am. I’ve sacrificed my life for this country so that my children and family, and your families at home, can sleep safe. And that, yes that, is why I joined the Permanent Force.’ Changing his tone, he shouts, ‘It burns my arse that I’m creating a safe country for people like that too.’ In an unusually brave move, someone takes advantage of the captain’s inclusion of us as the country’s saviours and asks what happens in Ward 22.

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been there.’ When they see him grin, everybody laughs, too loudly, for too long. But he does seem to know. He is the captain and he knows everything. ‘They treat them with sophisticated techniques, I am told, and eventually they give society a perfectly balanced individual who can inte­grate, get married and have children. What they should fucking do is shoot the fucks! So if there is anybody here who has even the slightest doubt whether he’s a moffie or not, talk to your cor­poral and we’ll help you. But God help you if later on this year I find more moffies here. I swear to God I will personally see to it that you’re sent to DB if you as much as touch another man, so help me God. So now is your chance.’ He pulls his nose up by puckering his mouth, and his bushy moustache exaggerates the movement.

  ‘Remember, it’s against army rules to take your life. You’re not allowed to harm yourself, because you have no right over your­self. Touch army property and I’ll see to it that you go to DB. That’s a promise on the lives of my children. I swear I’ll see you go to DB.’

  The army chaplain is a Dutch Reformed minister and he talks to our platoon in one of the instruction rooms. His tone is pseudo ­kind and he talks about the sin ‘this boy’ has committed, the pain he has caused his parents and his loved ones, and the cost of this selfish deed to the army.

  He looks at me and says that I, as he is told, was the boy’s best friend and I should be angry for what he has done to me. I say that I’m not. My anger is so patent that he doesn’t address me again. Besides, on my records it states that I’m Catholic, which means that I’m beyond redemption.

  Never once do I lose control. I am well trained in such matters—Frankie, failing at school, my religious conflict and my sexual wiring, to name but a few.

  Numb perseverance, experience, genetic make-up? I wade through the un-wadable. Unlike in mutual suffering such as my brother’s death, I don’t have the luxury of being cradled by the sorrow of others, of being inside shared pain.

  In the small mirror in the shower complex I look at my own im­age. Dylan and I showered here . . . just the other day. If I look closely, I can feel him here, in the dark distance of my peripheral vision. He is here in a strange, unfilled way. His words push and strain inside me; all the things he told me, closed, continuous echoes.

  I cup my hands under the tap and splash my face. Then I do it again and again, but it doesn’t help. I lean on the basin and stare into the small square mirror until it frames my face and I can see nothing else. Just my wet face. Everything else is cut off. But it is not. What I want to remove, I can’t. I’m breathing . . . in and out, in and out . . . for how much longer, I wonder?

  I look at my eyes as though for the first time. They startle me, for I see inside them something ethereal. Yet all they really are, are round shapes in different browns with small black holes in the centre, from where little flecks dart as if on fire. They are just shapes, that’s all, just shapes, but they have the ability to disturb me.

  What would they still see? I wonder. Behind my eyes, that’s where it all is. In there are the images.

  The mirror starts clouding up and I write on it Dylan, Forever Young. As I write the words, they evaporate.

  Around the building the wind is groaning, cold and agonising. It breathes in and bemoans its fate, incessantly, like a colic child. But this is no sound from a child—it’s a beast with an unending ability to express its wretchedness.

  ***

  Malcolm becomes a patient comforter. He stands by me, next to my emptiness . . . no, my fullness, overfull of emptiness.

  The comfort of this closeness and understanding is what makes me decide to join Mal on a pass to Johannesburg. It would be easier not to have to face my folks now. Or is the real reason that Johannesburg is so close to Pretoria, so close to Voortrek­kerhoogte . . . so close to Ethan?

  Instead of giving two more guys a lift to Johannesburg to help pay for the petrol, Malcolm decides that we should travel alone and make it part of our holiday.

  He has planned a weekend jam-packed with activities, all de­signed to help me forget. If Mal doesn’t succeed in healing me, he definitely starts the process with this dizzy weekend, filled with so much excitement that I have no time to dwell on any­thi
ng else.

  We scamper from movies to restaurants, sometimes three in one night for different courses, even on different sides of the city. We play and sing a selection of songs over and over, so loudly that the speakers distort.

  He calls me Scank and later puts our songs on a tape that he calls Scank Tape One. Every new day starts with, ‘I must show you this,’ and we burst forth into the next adventure. For this weekend Johannesburg becomes the most exciting city in the world to me.

  ***

  ‘Nick, are you awake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit, aren’t you tired?’

  ‘Exhausted.’

  ‘Well? You must get your beauty sleep, boy, so we can scank it up tomorrow. I’ve got lots planned!’

  ‘I know. I wish I could.’

  ‘Is it . . .’ I don’t answer, ‘you know . . . Dylan?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Try to think about something else.’

  ‘I do, but I haven’t been able to sleep since the . . . Sometimes I sleep a little, but it’s a restless sleep. I have nightmares and it’s like I’m not asleep or awake, you know . . . terrible, half-asleep nightmares.’

  ‘What kind of nightmares?’

  ‘The sight of him lying there, dead. I can’t get it out of my mind, Mal. And then all the things he said to me whirl around in my head. It’s like I can hear him, I know exactly what he’s saying, what he thinks, everything.’

  ‘Maybe you should go for therapy.’

  ‘No, that would be the end of Infantry School, I tell you. They don’t want a malletjie as a junior leader. Remember, we’re sup­posed to be able to kill. We can’t be freaked out by death.’

  ‘Yes, but this is different.’

  ‘I’m not sure they’ll see it that way.’

  ‘What is worrying you the most?’

  ‘Well, that I could have prevented it. Shit, Mal, I really think I could have. I really do.’