Moffie

by Andre Carl van der Merwe

Tomorrow we start Vasbyt, an excruciating five-day route march with full kit and minimal rations.

  In the small hours of the night I dream the same dream that came to me night after night following Frankie’s death. I see my brother lying with the dark pool of blood under his head. But then it becomes Dylan’s head—my friend who I feel I betrayed in the trench. DF, my dark ghost in sharp focus.

  I can tell you, I write in my diary, as if to some alter ego, I’ve figured something out about fear. Fear has different patterns. It takes on different shapes under different circumstances. It’s like the way that every room has a different feeling, only with fear you experience it much more acutely—at the tip of every nerve; from the outside in. This is how it is with fear. If you’ve been exposed to dreadful situations, you realise that they are all different, like a living evil, with a personality and a specific intent. My feeling about Vasbyt, for example, or knowing there are people who want to kill me, is totally different from the feeling I had with the Bellville Tennis Club, where everybody was watching and I couldn’t catch the cricket ball.

  ‘Hey, Scankie, do you think he’s gay?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s really different from the rest.’

  ‘No shit, different looking too, different class. Fuck, he’s hot. Nice name as well: Oscar.’

  ‘You just like everything about him. You’re the scankie one. Stop thinking about him and pack your kit.’

  ‘No, I need something to take my mind off all this. Man, imagine lying naked next to that guy, all sweaty after a long sex session!’

  ‘Like you stand a chance! Do we really have to pack all of this? Step-outs too?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I can’t fit it in!’

  ‘Roll it real tight and just squash every layer.’

  ‘It’s so heavy, I don’t know if I’ll be able to even pick it up!’

  I finish packing, put my pack on, and the only way I can get up is to go on my hands and knees and then stand up.

  ***

  Way, way above, yet dramatically close, Lion’s Head towers. With its body stretched behind, the lion lies vigilant, protecting the life nestled close to its belly above the ocean of the Cape of Storms. Clifton at the end of day—the warm light of the setting sun reflecting orange against the blue rock faces of Lion’s Head and the magnificent Twelve Apostles with their feet in the water.

  But the true magic lies in the early mornings on the four white, sandy, rocky, bungalow-encased beaches of Clifton. When the sun rises over the distant mountains, the sea absorbs its light. Bands of colour form in the sky above the mercury horizon, turning into turquoise, then crimson and fading into silver.

  Through the haze of sun-saturated, wind-still, cold-sea days one can see ships journeying around the foot of the Dark Continent. Far on the horizon they float by, not silhouettes, but soft air, a tone darker, like smoke blown along by a gentle breath.

  It is here that I picture Ethan and myself most often. Clifton and an Ethan of my own design is what I think of lying in bed, waiting for the day that will bring the start of Vasbyt.

  ***

  When the body has given up, but the mind ignores the pleading and drives the body through the pain and the protests . . . that is Vasbyt.

  Vasbyt starts on a Sunday afternoon, after being frisked, completely nude, even up our arses. We are not allowed any cigarettes or extra food, only the sparse provisions they give us.

  On our backs we carry our grootsak—literally, big bag—filled with our kit, and below it our webbing. To the front straps we attach the heavy army radio with its face-whacking aerial, which we take turns to carry. Our epaulettes are modified to carry the weight of our rifles; the buttons are stitched with nylon gut to prevent them from sliding off our shoulders.

  Altogether we carry more than our body weight. This we will be hauling over very difficult terrain for many, many kilometres.

  We walk from Sunday evening to Tuesday morning—approximately 33 hours—and this counts as our ‘first day.’ This day is a thorn driven into my memory and stuck there, never to fester out. Most of the route is over mountains, between Oudtshoorn and Calitzdorp. There are crevices so wide that each and every one of us falls, and the weight we carry causes some to break their coccyx, others to sprain or break ankles. Alouette helicopters casevac the injured.

  Almost every man in the platoon is driven to tears, but not me.

  Our food again consists of half a ‘mystery-can.’ The only thing that is not a mystery is what we find inside—something simply and utterly awful.

  Water, cool drinks and food are thrown down in front of us, and we are not allowed to touch it. The instructors know that Vasbyt is their last and easiest opportunity to break us. If we haven’t ‘cracked’ before, this is the time that we probably will—these five days.

  One foot in front of the other. Keep your mind off the pain. I do this by thinking of Dylan. I carry him with me. I fantasise about him. In his absence I can love him freely, not sexually, but with a love of regret. And its noise is louder than my body’s pleas.

  If I had angels, they’ve deserted me. They are far away, absent, unconsoling in these days, or are they with every foot dragged in front of the other, helping just enough? But if they are helping, then why so little? No, they’ve betrayed me, for I don’t get what I so desperately need: superhuman strength and to be carried—carried away.

  On the third night we are high up in the Swartberg mountains, where the temperature drops dramatically.

  To get into your sleeping bag, you have to worm in without bending your legs. If you bend them, multiple cramps seize you in painful spasm.

  Tonight a powerful PA system plays recordings of horribly disturbing sounds—babies screaming, a sick, continuous shrieking, sounds of animals howling, dying; but merciful exhaustion prevents me from having any reaction to them.

  At around two in the morning, I am kicked in the stomach. It is an instructor who demands that we get up and line up. In front of us are two massive silver containers, one with hot soup and one with coffee. We stand, stiff with cold and exhaustion, holding our fire buckets in anticipation.

  I am aching all over. It is raw where the straps have cut into my shoulders, and my swollen feet are throbbing in my boots where blisters have burst and are rubbing against my socks. We dare not take off our boots; if we do, we will never get them on again.

  I obsess about the liquid; there is nothing I crave more. Steam gushes from the mouths of the huge containers, turning yellow in the gaslight and contrasting sharply with the desert night beyond.

  When everybody is lined up, Sergeant Dorman starts a speech. I watch the dark clouds that seem to have gathered to look at the madness going on down below. Like a group of people staring at a road kill, they crouch low, pulling the bleak moon down with them. I pray that they will go and weep about us somewhere else, for if we had to be drenched again, we’ll surely not make it. And I focus on the hot soup.

  Vaguely aware of Dorman speaking, I hear how he works himself up. Then he kicks over the containers. Within seconds the steam with all its promise of warmth has dissipated over the freezing ground.

  Only an hour to sleep—if we are lucky—then the day starts.

  Light only starts breaking faintly through the clouds much later. We are in a line again, and again we’re being shouted at. For a start to the morning, we are given human excrement to pass hand to hand, all the way through the company. Nothing smells as awful as human shit. We have to squeeze it with both hands before passing it on. With no soap and very little water, we have nothing to remove the smell, even if we could, but we are not allowed to clean our hands, so everything we touch is contaminated. I rub my hands in the sand, which helps to a certain extent, but we’ll be walking with the smell for two more days.

  From time to time I see Malcolm when our platoons pass each other. We’re not allowed to speak, but we have a sign. We hold our fingers out, as for our unique handshake, and over the distance they int
erlock and we share our secret.

  On the fourth night, high up in the mountains, we are even betrayed by the weather. It starts to rain. I believe I cannot go on. I try to stop the water running through the long grass in an attempt to keep my pack dry, for if it becomes waterlogged, it will be so much heavier to carry. The voice inside me, encouraging me to carry on, has become small and weak. My need to give up has almost become an obsession. I am wet, cold—no, not cold, bone-freezing, ice cold—stiff, hungry, sore and desperate. The half of the company that has given up is kept apart, but close enough for us to see that they have warm food and tents to sleep in.

  On the last day, those of us still holding on are merely plodding; dragging ourselves forward. Attached to every footprint you can see the drag marks, if you have the energy to look down.

  We are in a small group and Sergeant Dorman starts to speak about Dylan. He theorises about the reasons for Dylan ending his life. Because these instructors have such authority over us, they are treated with reverence, and in their ignorance and arrogance, this power soon spirals out of control.

  ‘Stassen was a moffie, a weak moffie, a fucking fudge-packer. If he stood in front of me, I would tramp his balls off.’ He brings the heel of his right foot down violently and grinds it into the dirt. ‘The world doesn’t need shit like that!’ The words hack into me, each blow fuelling a hate in me, so pure and so strong that in that moment I understand clearly how it is possible to take a life. I feel like beating him so thoroughly that what drives such words is completely destroyed.

  ‘He wasted our food and air. Do you know how much it cost the army to train him, hey? Now it’s all wasted. They should sue his parents for damage to state property, but his parents are probably just as weak and pathetic. Fuck, I hate those spoilt poeses. They should just have shot the doos on the first day.’

  Wanting to get out of earshot, I fall back, but he sees me.

  ‘Hey, Van der Swart, get back here! Are you giving up, you little cunt?’

  ‘No, Sergeant, I will never give up,’ I hiss dramatically, showing him how badly he is affecting me. As I increase my pace to catch up, I decide to channel this anger to drive me to complete Vasbyt . . . for Dylan . . . today.

  ‘Van der Swart, you were his little arse-fucker, weren’t you? Did you two have a lovers’ quarrel? Yes, that’s probably why he couldn’t take the punch, hey? Hey! I’m talking to you. Answer me, you little shit.’ I don’t answer.

  ‘So it was you!’ He draws out the you, making it slither like a worm from his mouth. ‘You murdered that little fuck!’ His head is nodding affirmation, as if choreographed for effect.

  How much can one take? Much, much more than one would ever believe, and still I don’t react at all. Because I know that the best way by far to honour my friend, is to beat this man and get through this hell.

  My brain blanks out. Black blurs of fury shut my mind down, like a short circuit. Only one tiny clip of logic holds me back, for I know that the man wants me to attack him.

  He can see that he is getting to me. The energy I am using to fight my emotions comes from a place unknown to me. Dorman waves down a garry, which I didn’t even hear approach. ‘Get in, you fuck!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Get in or I’ll fucking break you. I swear you’ll wish you were never born. Van der Swart, GET IN!’ But I know, for as long as I carry on, I’m winning.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, who, you shit-licking fuck?’

  ‘No, Sergeant.’ I say firmly.

  We are standing still. Everybody has stopped, looking at us, but mainly using this time to rest.

  His face contorts, sick with frustration and loathing. In my eyes he sees only revulsion and abhorrence; that much I know.

  ‘Your friend,’ he says and I look straight into his eyes, his mouth deformed as he spit-whispers, ‘was a fucking fag, fairy, moffie, queer poes! And I hate his type.’ He knows that there are some troops in the group who enjoy this kind of talk. ‘He deserved to die. If he hadn’t, I would have killed him myself.’

  Against every bit of better judgment, my resistance crumbles, my hate overflows and I whisper, ‘You did.’ As the words leave me, I know I have crossed a boundary.

  ‘What did you say? WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU SAY?’ Then softly, ‘You have started something here that you will live to regret. You have fucked with me and I guarantee you, you will be pleading for mercy. I will see you beg!’ But now it is about me and no longer about Dylan, and I have regained control.

  Realising that I have not answered him, knowing he will need a witness, he demands again that I repeat what I’d said. Centimetres from my face he screams, ‘What the fuck did you say? You answer me now, or as God is my witness I will fucking kill you. I swear I will fucking kill you, troop . . . if it’s the last thing I do!’ At that moment a Bedford truck stops next to us and a sergeant on the back asks if anybody wants to get on, wants to give up. Now the audience is too large. The moment is broken, and he waves them on. Then he whispers to me, ‘I will get you, mark my words, not now, but one day. We still have the border ahead and you, Van der Swart, will not see the end of this year. If you had any sense, you’d give up now . . . give up now, take RTU and get away from me; save yourself.’

  He takes me by my backpack, whips me around and uses the momentum to run me off the track, into a tree. I fall. Dorman spits on me, kicks me and walks on.

  Someone tries to help me up. I look up, straight at Oscar’s dark eyebrows. He pulls at my webbing and I roll over to my knees, from where I somehow lever myself up.

  Dorman makes us run the last few kilometres. It is more like shuffling, but it gets us back to base.

  When your rifle dangling from your shoulder hits you on the side of your leg and the muzzle hits your face like a bruise being beaten for days on end, when your shoulders are cut by the weight on your back, when your feet are raw and blistered and every part of your body is pleading for you to stop, when your skin is boiling with sores . . . it eats into you like acid.

  But the body doesn’t really remember the suffering. We know it was awful, horrific, but the way we felt in that moment is not remembered—all the minuscule stimuli, the smells and sounds are imbedded like garlic cloves stuck into a leg of lamb. Everything retains the flavour, but we never actually taste the garlic again, and this is good.

  They don’t send us home until most of the outward damage has healed. For some weeks we can’t wear shoes. The black-blue bruise where Dorman kicked me takes almost two weeks to heal. Our feet start festering. But it is a relatively easy time, because we have made it and we know we’ll be going home.

  Inside me I have started a war; or is it a war that was started in me?

  PART FOUR

  1

  Things change more in the way one perceives them than in themselves. This I realise more acutely when I come out of the closet.

  ***

  ‘It’s all your bloody fault that I’m sitting here.’

  ‘Shoo-er it is.’ Malcolm bounces the words like a ping-pong ball.

  ‘All this Infantry School shit . . . it’s all because of you.’ I might as well be hugging him, for the amount of blame in my voice.

  ‘Would you rather be with what’s his name, the head-shitter?’

  I laugh. ‘Frikkie. I wonder what’s happened to him. Shucks, no way, Mal. I wonder where he is? Just imagine . . .’

  ‘No,’ he says melodramatically, ‘no gratitude, no, no, no grati­tude!’ and he feigns hurt for a lack of appreciation. ‘You go to head-shitter, your neeeeew best friend.’ He digs his fingers into my side below the ribs. My body doubles up with pleasure, and we start wrestling. I am aware that we are too close, too deep in­side each other’s space for the army, but I don’t care.

  Then he rolls right over me and lies still next to me. High above me is a cloud that looks like a rabbit, and I think that clouds of­ten do . . . rabbits and dragons, shapes with liberal boundaries, one gentle, and one mystical.

/>   With a small shock I realise that I am happy, happy in that moment.

  ‘It’s amazing . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mal, it’s amazing, you know. We’re sort of coping, aren’t we? I mean, we’re still here, and so many have dropped out.’

  We sit up on the lawn across the way from the wash troughs and both notice Oscar at the same time. He is doing his wash­ing, shirt off, muscles flexing as he twists a browns shirt, and I know we are both thinking what a magnificent creature he is.

  ***

  After the RTU’s of the boys who did not make Vasbyt, the shrink­ing company is reshuffled at random for the departure to the border.

  I am allocated to Platoon Two. Mercifully, Malcolm is too. We have a new lieutenant, corporal and platoon sergeant. We are free of Dorman!

  Just before everything is finalised, I see Sergeant Dorman talk­ing to my new platoon sergeant. Then he walks over to me, pulls me out of the ranks and places me in his new platoon, Platoon One.

  The three platoons that now form what is left of Golf Com­pany are in relaxed formation as the corporals walk down the lines, tak­ing down names. Somehow Malcolm manages to change places with someone in Platoon One without being detected. This seals his fate, for Dorman’s hatred of me will surely spill over to him as well.

  Gerrie is also in Platoon One, in our bungalow, and I notice how much he has changed since we stepped over from our pre­vious world to this one. His choice of survival has been to attach himself to the instructors, even at the cost of being ridiculed by the rest of us. In my war with Dorman, Gerrie is not on my side.

  There is one more important person in Platoon One: Oscar.

  A man with a similar disdain for others as Dorman leads the platoon. His name is Maurice Engel. ‘Engel’ is the Afrikaans for ‘angel,’ but this man is a fiend. If one cannot understand why Dorman carries such a deep hate of life and people, with Engel it’s clear. Not even his fellow officers like him. In the world beyond these petty rules strung on rank, he is nothing. Engel is simply one of those unfortunate people who will never be popu­lar.