Moffie

by Andre Carl van der Merwe

  2

  Most of us arrive with long hair, which in our platoon is shaved off on the third day.

  Rumours travel through a base camp within seconds, being systematically warped from mouth to ear, and then they jump base and spread around the country within days. This is remarkable, bearing in mind that there is but one pay phone for thousands of troops, and it is hardly ever in operation.

  Through rumour we hear about the brutality of the barber.

  In the queue to have our hair shaved, I look at the guy in front of me. I noticed him earlier on, as I always notice the attractive ones.

  As we get closer, young men with bleeding heads walk past us. The shapes of their heads are awkward, and their scalps look blue-white—stubble over sensitive, pale skin. The pain that accompanies every haircut kills the humour normally associated with such a transformation.

  Closer up we can see into the room. The barber is a civvy who has a contract to shave the new recruits’ heads. He is hideously fat, with a potbelly like uncle Dirk, only bigger. He is a mass of blubber contained by expanded skin. His hairy stomach protrudes from his shirt, and sweat pours from his unshaven face.

  At nineteen almost everybody still has hope. Later, within a few months, despair will be masked by perseverance—in the fear-fuelled recognition of the truth that lies in the hatred of one human being trained to hunt another.

  Each head he shaves he hurts in some way, either kicking the recruit as he leaves the chair or hitting him when he’s done. Sometimes he rams the tiny steel teeth into the scalp, hacking out chunks of flesh or nicking ears with the greasy razor.

  The boy in front of me is as apprehensive as I am. I wonder what he will look like without hair, for he is handsome, almost pretty. He has long, brown curls with lighter streaks where the sun has bleached them. Suddenly I have an urge to protect this hair; I don’t want it to fall on the mountain of hair under the chair.

  It’s not the first time I’ve seen Ethan, but this will always stand out as our first meeting. I stand watching him, drawn to him by the way he moves. Then it is his turn.

  The barber cuts roughly into the hair, leaving huge, hacked spikes. Then he takes the razor, hanging from a cord, and clears the spikes away. He doesn’t tell Ethan that he has finished, just hits him on the ear. The movement carries the weight of the solid razor. It’s a knock you feel just by observing it.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he says as he strikes, but Ethan doesn’t move. Instead he turns around and asks him why he hit him—something not one of the thousands of troops has done. The fat man cannot believe his ears. The skin on his face moves backwards in surprise and drops down in disbelief, and he starts cursing.

  Ethan doesn’t blink. The contrast between the two men is so sharp that it makes Ethan seem radiant, spiritual, like a monk, with his shaved head and gentle composure. I don’t want him to be hurt any more, and in my mind I urge him to go.

  When the man stops swearing, Ethan gets up, and as he reaches the door I catch his eye. In that moment I sense the tiniest spark.

  Behind him the barber has started to charge like an overfed sow. Grabbing a broom, he shoves it into the small of Ethan’s back with such force that it sends him flying forward. His back arches violently, almost curling back over the broom. He loses his footing and falls on the gravel. Then he gets up and silently joins the waiting platoon. At that point I decide: I will know this beautiful boy.

  ***

  In the following days Ethan and I grow steadily closer. I do not hurry the acquaintance—we have plenty of time.

  Optimistic thoughts flood into my diary:

  I stand on the perimeter of a calm pond, just letting my feet be touched by the stillness, savouring the expectation of submerging into the mystery.

  He is so engaging that I don’t feel I can absorb much at one time, or I sense I may miss some rare sensations of the experience. I think of him as a rediscovered ancient city, lying with its shrouded civilisations’ secrets beneath desert sand. Walking in darkness, running my fingers over the unusual textures, touching walls as slightly as I can, before I look—no sound, no sight, just something lighter than feeling. I want to get to know him slowly, and the army makes this possible, because neither of us is going anywhere . . . for some weeks at least.

  I can march or stand at attention for an eternity when he is in front of me. Gazing at his neck and the pattern of his hairline cannot be limited by time. The fine hair curls as if with joy for having been born there. I step out of myself and walk there—brushing just the top of the skin like breath; as in life drawing, where you have to concentrate intently on a line to render it so sensitively that it communicates the full structure of the person you are drawing. Only later do I add smell and touch.

  We have tea, and he dunks his rusk five times. Unhurried, he allows the tea to run from between the compacted crumbs, and then brings it to his mouth. There are veins under his brown skin that fork on his forearm where the muscles play as he twists the rusk and puts it in his mouth. A drop stays on the middle of his bottom lip. He lets it linger and sucks it in, his top lip moving over the fullness of the bottom one.

  Our surnames, both starting with V, result in us being in the same place during the week of queues. Friendships forge easily under mutual duress, but equanimity assures a more permanent meshing. Foundations of wet concrete do not know the building that will stand on them, or the souls that will occupy it.

  Ethan is my first army friend, and for the first week my only friend. Ethan is whom I want; Ethan is the drug to see me through—my medication. We are reshuffled, and by the grace of God we are put in the same tent. For the first time I believe I am going to get through it all.

  ***

  On Sunday we choose the small Catholic Church in Middelburg for compulsory Church Parade. The old Irish priest sweats underneath his heavy cassock and robes. Beside me, high up, the fourteen Stations of the Cross line each wall. I search for the three where Christ falls with the cross. That is where I somehow find a gentle Jesus, as opposed to a God of wrath. The Christ in these low-relief tableaux shows a distorted body in bitter agony. My mind drifts . . .

  We stand up to say the creed.

  ‘We believe in one God the Father . . .’ I say the words without thinking of the meaning of any of it. The small stained-glass windows seem unusually bright from the African sun blazing through them. I wonder if they were imported from Europe, made for a darker, cloudier climate? Imagine if Ethan and I were in a small chapel somewhere, all alone high up in the Drakensberg. Would that appeal to him? What does he think of God? What are the chances . . . what are my chances with him? Like all the others? Just when I’m completely in love, will he turn out to be straight? Forget that, you can’t think about that now; just enjoy the fantasy. I know so little about him. Have I ever seen anybody quite as good-looking? No! We will be friends. I need this friendship. I need this beauty!

  ‘Are you going forward for Communion?’

  ‘Yes, you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, you’re Catholic? I thought you only came ’cos the Catholic aunties make such nice cakes!’

  ‘Shh,’ and he smiles. But I tell myself he has come because I did.

  I bless myself and cup one hand under the other, holding them forward as the priest makes his way towards me.

  ‘The Body of Christ.’

  ‘Amen.’

  Free on a Sunday is free from training, not free to come and go as you please. We lie on our stomachs on our beds, facing each other and chatting, while others spend hours in queues for one phone call, wash their kit or write letters home.

  Just before roll call one of our tent companions, Frikkie, walks in and demands that we clean his boots. We ignore him. Ethan is lying closest to him. Frikkie flings the boots at Ethan. They are tied together and come to rest on either side of his body, with the laces stretched over his naked back. He lifts his body and allows the boots to roll to the floor.

  Frikkie walks over and jum
ps on Ethan, grabs him around the neck and digs his knees into his back. This arouses excited interest from the rest of the guys. I get up protesting, to defend my friend, but it’s not necessary. In an instant Ethan has released himself and flung Frikkie off him, over the side of the bed, where he connects with the ground sheet with a thud, Ethan on top of him. Frikkie’s face is red with surprise, embarrassment and the discomfort of the fall. Ethan holds him down for a second, asks him if he is all right and quietly tells him to clean his own boots. The whistle for roll call sounds . . . somehow less shrill than before.

  ‘Hell, Ethan, you sure are full of surprises.’

  ‘I did judo; never really used it. But this is one of the last nights we’re sleeping in the same tent as those guys. I don’t think Frikkie has matric, so he won’t be chosen for Infantry School. I reckon he’ll be moved out within the next few days.’

  We line up for roll call, Ethan next to me. However long it takes tonight for Van der Swart and Vickerman to be called, I don’t care. Just standing next to him is enough. Ethan can ask me to leave the army tonight, to risk everything, and I will question nothing; I will obey. In heightened melodrama I fantasise about it.

  3

  Don’t be a sissy, man.’

  ‘Peet, let him learn in his own time.’

  ‘No, he’s going to learn now. I don’t have time to teach him in his time, our lordship. How difficult can it be? Nicholas, do you want me to sell the bicycle, hey?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can’t hear you. What did you say?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Peet, the child is four years old.’

  ‘NO!’ I beg.

  ‘Well then, come. I’m taking the bicycle to the corner and then you cycle back.’

  ‘No, it’s too high!’

  ‘I’ll hold you.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I promise. Come now. Are you ready?’

  ‘Dad, promise you will hold me.’

  ‘Yes, I promise, just pedal.’

  ‘Not so fast . . . you aren’t holding!’

  ‘Peet, what are you doing? The child can’t ride yet, are you mad? HELP, FRANK, CATCH YOUR BROTHER!’

  ‘MOM, PLEASE, PLEASE CATCH ME!’

  At the bottom of the rise in the garden is the sandpit where Frank and I play. We have collected bricks to build with. It is in the direction of these bricks that my momentum takes me. By the time the front wheel snags in the sand I have gathered such speed that I summersault over the handlebars, into the bricks. A moment later Frankie and my mother are there. Every­body is shouting. Frank and I are crying. My face is bleeding and there is a deep gash in my knee.

  My mother is furious. Some of the wounds are treated at home, but for the others she has to take me for stitches. My father tells me that when he was my age he was not ‘so scared of everything,’ and his parents could not even afford to give him a bicycle. If I want to grow up to be a man, I must stop being such a sissy. When we leave for the doctor, we hear the commotion in the house as my father sends Frankie to the bathroom. There he will get a hiding for calling him a bastard when he saw him giving the bicycle a shove instead of holding it.

  4

  I wake up around two in the morning and feel something is wrong. The sounds crawl into my sleep—muffled giggling on the one side and shock and disgust on the other.

  I reach for my torch and shine it in Ethan’s direction. There is something dark on his face, and he is trying to get it off. I get out of bed to help, not thinking, simply drawn to him. When I reach him, the odour of excrement jolts me. I take some toilet paper and lift the faeces that have dropped off his face onto the bed.

  ‘Go to the showers, I’ll bring towels and soap. Shit, these people are disgusting. You go, I’ll be down now.’ Then, into the darkness and ignoring an inner warning, I say, ‘Whoever did this, you are fucking disgusting.’

  There is no light in the ablution block. I pass a row of basins and balance the clothing and towels on one of them. I roll up my towel with the back of the torch in it and jam it between two supports to point where he is showering. He is the only colour in the dark and empty surroundings. Warm skin-colour, as though I am looking at him through tissue paper. I pour shampoo into his cupped hand and take my PT shorts off. When I turn, he is standing with his back to me, lathering his hair. Some of the foam runs down his neck, hesitates on his shoulders, and then continues down his back to between his white buttocks.

  Elongated and pale in the light, he looks magnificently fragile. When he turns, I see the dark hair above his penis and the soap running over his chest and down his stomach. Then I turn on the shower next to him and step under the water. I close my eyes and face the spray, hiding my desire under the waterfall.

  Over and over we wash what we know we cannot rid ourselves of.

  I almost embrace this debasing incident, for the closeness I’ve been granted with Ethan tonight has a warm beauty and vague sorrow as I hold back its drive. I will resist it, for nothing must jeopardise my friendship with this boy. I cling to it like a mother would if the devil should try to tear her child from her.

  Later I would torment myself as I recreate the chimera of this night, eventually warping every glance, every movement of the opportunity so cowardly passed up.

  We are re-shuffled for the six-week basic training with the other conscripts deemed physically and mentally fit, for a chance to be chosen for Oudtshoorn Infantry School. We manage against impossible odds to be allocated to the same tent again. These are the buoys that keep me adrift.

  The rumours, hearsay and accounts of Infantry School are rife. But nothing draws me to the place other than that he may be there.

  ***

  Early on I realise that the only way to survive is not to stand out—not in front, not at the back—but to merge into the middle smudge of brown army rabble. It’s not the physical aspect of this situation that is disquieting, but the senseless ‘breaking down and rebuilding’ that is so devoid of reason.

  Bonds start forming within this look-alike cast. I notice that the army has domain over only our flesh, for it is what we carry within that draws us to our own kind, sorting us by language, experience, education and intrigue—the things that make us different, those hidden elements that the eye doesn’t see.

  After lunch we sit waiting in groups in the sun for the whistle that will summon us to the afternoon’s training. Ethan and I and two other English boys slouch against a fence that has bowed in concave submission to years of lazy-on-greasy-lunch troops. Frikkie and a mate are having an argument with Malcolm, one of the English boys.

  ‘I bet you you fucking Englishmen won’t make Infantry School,’ Frikkie says.

  ‘Fuck you,’ says Malcolm, but remains completely calm.

  ‘You English are a bunch of moffies, man. You will not make it in Oudtshoorn; they are wasting the government’s money on you okes.’

  ‘Listen, Frikkie, you cunt, you can’t even pass a simple army test. What do you know? Tell me, why aren’t you going, hey? Are you not physically up to it or are you just uneducated?’

  ‘Fuck education. I know what I must know. You point a rifle at a kaffir terr and shoot. You don’t need schooling for that. This is our country. Us Afrikaners will fight until the end, you’s just a soutpiel, man. They should only allow Afrikaners into Infantry School. They choosing wrong, hey. It’s a blerrie fuck-up. What you know of war, you traitor English cunt?’

  ‘Wake up, you little closet queen, the South African Defence Force is based on the British system. I bet you didn’t know that! Besides, how the fuck will you lead anybody? You can’t even read. Most of the people who are chosen are Afrikaans in any case, but you are an insult to them, you thick rock spider.’

  ‘What you call me, hey? Hey?’

  ‘Rock spider. Closet queen. Butt-plug. Nora. And there’s more!’

  ‘A what? Queen what? I’ll fuck you up, hey!’

  Ethan and I turn away, suppressing our laughter.
Through one diamond of the mesh fence I frame a picture in the distance, instinctively closing one eye to neaten the composition. I see an instructor who has been drilling a conscript throughout our lunch break. It’s called an opfok—fucking someone up by drilling him to the point of exhaustion and beyond. At that moment the troop bends over and vomits, but I turn back to the rare bit of entertainment we have been granted, forgetting what could so easily happen to me.

  Malcolm sees us enjoying his rally with Frikkie and he carries on. By this time we are so full of suppressed laughter that everything Malcolm or Frikkie says is funny.

  ‘So where are you from?’

  ‘Ellisras.’

  ‘Ellisras . . . wow, that’s nice.’ There is a hint of a smile when he continues. ‘I hear the women there are so tough they snort Drano to clear their sinuses after muff-diving the pigs.’

  ‘Fuck you. Don’t you fucking insult our chicks, ek sê.’

  ‘No, I hear the women are tough in Ellisras.’

  ‘Ja, better than those Joburg snob bitches.’

  ‘So, if you want to pork your chick in the back of the Valiant bakkie, how do you do it?’

  ‘Don’t you know anything, you stupid Engelsman?’