Moffie

by Andre Carl van der Merwe

  When something so valuable, so desired, is in the hands of ruthless people, it is agonisingly fragile.

  Up and down the rows the instructors look for reasons to keep us in the camp. Dylan is in the row in front of me. Sergeant Dorman walks his row, slowly, keeping each troop on a knife-edge of insecurity. As he gets to the person to Dylan’s right, he flicks gravel onto Dylan’s spotless shoes with his boot. Dylan lifts his foot slightly and surreptitiously tries to wipe the shoe on the back of his pants. Of course Dorman sees it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ A hateful delight seems to permeate the calm question.

  ‘You kicked some . . .’

  ‘SHUT UP!’ Then louder, ‘DON’T TALK SHIT TO ME! If you don’t want to go home you can fucking stay here. Do you understand, you piece of rat shit?’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Don’t you say another word, you slimeball. Look at this fucking mess. If you think you’re going home like this, forget it, you faggot cunt! You are single-handedly trying to bring down the image of the Defence Force! Is this what you want to show the people back home? You look like a maggot hobo.’ He turns and moves on. The rest of the row he handles carelessly and we are discharged, but Dylan has to stay behind.

  Dylan was meant to go North, and I am going South. I can’t help him. Around me there is a joyous scurry by like-coloured people with like-coloured excitement and they call me to the gate, out for a long weekend, out of the army for the first time. But I can’t go.

  ‘Nicholas, you can’t help him. You can do nothing for him. We are not waiting. We are going home, buddy. Are you coming? My father won’t wait. We’re leaving!’

  ‘Let me just speak to the sergeant, Pierre. Please.’

  I walk up to him, and as I reach him, I fall into step—one . . . —and come to a loud halt.

  ‘Yes, Van der Swart.’ Dylan cannot hear me; nobody can, as I whisper un-army-like, softly, pleading.

  ‘Sergeant, please let him go. Please . . .’

  Silence. He turns and looks away while I’m talking. Smoke bleeds from his nostrils and I am amazed at how much there must be inside him. His skin is young yet old; old with large pores, old from within. I can’t move until he dismisses me, but he ignores me. It feels like an eternity before he takes another long draw from the cigarette, covering his mouth and chin with his hand—his own personal ‘style’ of smoking. Behind him, Pierre is trying to catch my eye, miming ‘We must go now’ in a dramatic way, his eyes wide. Malcolm is waiting to say goodbye; he too is in a hurry.

  Sergeant Dorman still does not look at me when he grunts a firm ‘No.’ He says it so finally, not loudly, just filled with revenge and hate. ‘Absolutely not.’

  I do an about turn and stamp my foot, then burst into a run. I fetch my bag in our bungalow and there I find Dylan, just sitting, small and sad.

  ‘Dee, I’m so sorry.’ He doesn’t answer.

  Pierre has followed me, urging me on, not wanting to lose these precious moments he sees as freedom. ‘Come now, Nick, will you leave him alone now!’

  As I leave, I turn around. Dylan is looking at me. ‘Have a great time, En. It’s OK.’ His expression burns into me. There is much more than sadness—a haunting, deep need—and it stays in my head. Or is it my heart . . . or my soul?

  As we run to the car, I look for Malcolm. I need his lightness, but I cannot see him. For a brief moment I picture Malcolm getting into a car with other boys for the long journey to the Transvaal, and I pray for his safe return. He told me he would be coming back in his own car.

  As we run towards the front gate everything seems quiet, drained of souls; the empty bungalows unmasked and lifeless in their part of this silly endeavour. Dylan is in one of them. I carry that empty hopelessness with me, and something else I do not understand. I will try to fathom it on my way to Cape Town.

  ‘The moment of happiness, that very moment . . . when it’s there, you don’t really know it; you just live it because this is how things are meant to be. But when it goes . . . when it goes, and life with all that it brings has brought time in between, then you realise that moment was remarkable. They have taken that away, En. That’s all. We must have no expectations, then they can’t touch us, not even for a moment. They must not be able to touch us.’

  ***

  Dylan and I have made a bivvie—a groundsheet and roof contraption. The platoon has been arranged in groups of two in a circular defence, as if we were on the border. We have to take turns standing guard while our buddy sleeps. This is the first time that we are spending an entire week in the veld.

  It is dusk, and we have been given time to clean our kit, which we do lying facing each other on our thin, brown sleeping bags.

  His eyes are so dark I cannot discern the pupils. The shape of his eyes, his face and his dark eyebrows are striking.

  ‘What did you look like before the army? Did you have long hair?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’ He sits up and takes a black wallet out of his rucksack.

  ‘Here’s one of me and my family.’ He hands me the picture. They are standing in front of a large house. Dylan’s hair is long, almost over his eyes, and his body language is inward.

  ‘Let me see the rest,’ I say and he smiles to himself, as though in acknowledgement of something he will not share, knowing it is only a wrapped parcel he will show me.

  The picture I find most interesting is of him, a man and his mother. Dylan is well dressed and almost exotic looking. I want to tell him that I find him handsome, but don’t. Later we talk about the plight of deprived, sick and old people and he says, ‘En, there is suffering in this world we know nothing of. There is such unbelievable torment.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Deep stuff.’

  ‘But what do you know about that? You are one of the privileged ones.’

  ‘Yes, I know that’s what it looks like. But privilege doesn’t guarantee happiness. In itself it can carry its own anguish. Just looking at suffering from a position of privilege has its own corruption. No, I’m talking about mental and emotional pain. Healing a mind is much more difficult, because one’s inner feelings are so hard to verbalise. It’s almost impossible to tell someone. I mean, how can one, if you think about it. You probably think I’m crazy.’

  ‘No, Dylan, I know exactly. I’ve been there.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, and as you said, it’s so difficult to verbalise.’

  The whistle goes and we have to stop talking.

  ‘My dear En, I am very intrigued. You are a man of mystery. I like that. I want to know about your pain,’ he whispers, smiling.

  ‘OK,’ I say, grateful for the whistle, ‘but not now.’

  ‘Do you still have it?’

  ‘No,’ I whisper. ‘I’m not mad any more.’ And at that moment I feel very close to Dylan.

  I make sure he can hear the smile in my voice, for I don’t want to go into this night thinking back on that time. There is enough here to cope with. Why do those years still terrify me so? It’s like constantly being sucked back, but I know that I will never, ever go there again.

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘High school in Banhoek. We’d better keep quiet. I don’t want any more shit.’

  It is my turn to stand guard. I position myself to look out into the night. Dylan’s face is turned towards me and I glance down at him. It has become too dark to see if his eyes are open, but I feel him looking and I feel a smile, a warmth, coming from him as if he has made a decision about me.

  Later his breathing becomes deeper and rhythmic. How sweetly the air goes in and out of this complex boy. I move my feet to let the blood circulate. Three and a half hours to go. Far over the valley, a glow unfolds behind the mountains where the moon will soon rise.

  11

  My first day at Paul Roos Gymnasium. I tell my mother I’m sick from yesterday’s tetanus injection after cutting my hand on a bottle. My arm is in a sling. Truth is, I’m sick with fear, sick of tryin
g to fit in, sick of wishing for a gentler, more accepting world.

  Bronwyn goes to Rhenish Primary, so she will not be initiated. She is dropped off before me.

  The sprawling red-roofed school is built in a semicircle with a dramatic hall in the centre. Three gates are set in the hedge separating the road from the lawns. I walk through the centre gate, overwhelmed by everything around me. Where must I walk? Which gate? What should I say? Will I fit in? Will I ever cope?

  At assembly I hear nothing. I study the faces of the teachers on the stage, searching for a friendly one.

  ‘I’m not going back, I will not go back,’ I tell my mother after school. ‘You and Dad can do what you want; I will not go back. The seniors made this one boy eat his own puke. They beat us up. I hate that school, I hate it!’ My words are brushed aside and the next day I go back, taking the bus from Banhoek, over Helshoogte.

  It feels as if my entire first year at Paul Roos consists of initiation and a series of hidings from the teachers. There is only one positive note: Mr. Davids, our Biology teacher.

  His class is laid out differently. The desks face the centre of the room and everything about the man is refreshingly unusual. Mr. Davids’s effect on my life is like an embankment slowly giving in to the flow of a stream. He seems to look at everything in a different way, and I understand it intuitively. It’s not only that we discuss different subjects; the attraction lies rather in his unique understanding. It is as if I have had a language coded into me for many years but never used it, and now suddenly I’m having conversations in it.

  Only a small group of Paul Roos boys relate to Mr. Davids. During breaks, we congregate in his classroom, irrespective of age or level of education. We are in pursuit of what cannot be seen or worn; we are too caught up in awareness to allow any limitations. The ‘others’ don’t want to rock the boat. Bored and complacent, they sink back into their chairs and think only what has been thought before.

  12

  There is a slight irregularity to Dylan’s breathing; almost like a change to a tighter, double rhythm, and I wonder what he is dreaming. He may not even remember it himself, and I imagine we are poorer for it. I remove my journal from my shirt pocket and use the light of my digital watch to find the place to start the entry, and I write:

  They want to be in the drift of continents, seeking movement that is not noticed.

  The moon is blazing white and climbs rapidly from behind the distant mountains. Suddenly the valley becomes clear to my adjusted sight and the introduction of light. The night appears bigger with discernable distance. I miss the closed-in intimacy of the black darkness.

  The moonlight catches just a part of Dylan’s ear and his cheekbone. He coughs and moves down, sinking into the darkness as if he can feel the moonlight on him.

  Go to a story, I tell myself. Why dwell on the bad Banhoek years? It was in Banhoek that I started creating my evening stories into the serial that threaded all the way through high school and arrived here with me, occupying the slot just after lights-out, just before falling asleep.

  After Frankie’s death I created a world to escape to, but only in high school did it become structured—an alternative existence, a world of my own design, the fibre of which, in the freedom of unobserved thought, took on a new colour as I entered my teens. Ah, the faces of the men I undressed, seeing them so compromised! And the sex . . . the sex with the straight boys!

  I learnt from my friends in the valley: the quiet ones and the wild ones. We experimented with sex and alcohol, listening to heavy metal. Everything new or pleasurable was a sin: pop music, fashionable clothing, drinking, sex, movies . . . everything I seemed to like.

  I fell in love with a quiet one and in lust with a wild one. At the rock pools fed by clear mountain streams, we masturbated and touched each other.

  After the weekends of experimenting under cover of darkness and alcohol, we never spoke about our explorations, but we planned the next trip, knowing what would happen.

  For this narrow window of sexual release, I paid very dearly.

  Shit, how I hate that word. I remember how I feared being called it, being discovered. And then it happened—moffie . . . moffie . . . you moffie!

  13

  In high school, with this unwelcome lust whirling inside me, I don’t pray for the life my nature asks for. I pray for the life that everybody calls normal and correct. I am disgusted by my own desires, confused and bewildered.

  How I pray! Over and over, night after night, the same prayer.

  The revulsion I feel for myself, the fear of burning in hell, the fear of being ridiculed, the desire for ‘normality’ and the sadness of not having anybody to share my uncertainties with—this is what causes the greatest suffering.

  I am taught that it is a fight between good and evil, and of course evil is that which I want. I start reading religious books and become obsessed by matters for which there are no clear answers; not only my ‘Sodom-and-Gomorrah’ homosexuality, but also complex issues of worship.

  On a camp with Mr. Davids, I become a ‘reborn’ Christian, but I can’t get rid of the lust I feel for men. And I don’t find the answer in the velvet groove of charismatic Christianity either. I don’t discuss my problem with anybody, but I soon understand the doctrine, which confuses me even more:

  If I am a true Christian, I will be ‘cured.’ An evil spirit has possessed me, or I am just a slave to the pleasures of the flesh.

  Eventually the conflict between my wish for spiritual growth and my physical cravings starts to trigger questions that uncover a myriad of other issues. I find more to worry about, more to question. Eventually I start questioning every question and lose all sense of peace.

  I search for my Creator with exaggerated fervour. I read books on religion and spirituality in every spare moment and establish even stronger ties with the one man I trust—a mentor whose patience I test with my delirious perplexities. I don’t tell him about the root of my problems, for fear that even he won’t understand, so I only pose masked questions to Mr. Davids.

  I stop sleeping. In the darkness, I am haunted even more, and by the time morning comes, I am more confused than ever. Eventually my schoolwork starts suffering. My parents have no idea why their son is so introverted and spends all his time behind locked doors.

  On two occasions I sink into a delirium and start hallucinating, which makes me terrified to go to sleep. I withdraw totally to this tumultuous inner world, sharing it with nobody, not even with Mr. Davids, who remains my only pillar in life.

  Then he is taken away.

  14

  I take a deep breath, fill my lungs, and when I release the air it sounds like an immense sigh. The soup of self-pity is too thick for me to listen to the voice warning me not to go back to that time.

  I watch Dylan for a long time and fight the temptation to touch him. I want to get into a car and escape. I want to get into a well-designed car seat and sit beside a man who loves me. A man who loves me; yes me! Could this be possible? I want to drive off on a road with no link to anything I know.

  I sigh again at the realisation of how large my need is for that love; for a life that is not a constant battle.

  15

  When you think things can’t get worse, it might only be the start of the way down. When you truly believe things cannot get worse, you may only be on the cusp of the spiral that is ready to swallow you.

  One day a rumour starts circulating at school that Mr. Davids is gay. He is not at school and I can’t get to see him at home. The story goes that three boys went to his house and got into a fight with him when he tried to seduce them.

  After three days, I see his green Peugeot parked in its usual place. I hear that he has visible scars from the scuffle. When I get to see him, he is wrapped in a camouflage of grim earnestness—a man soaked in disappointment.

  A senior student tells me, ‘He has been asked to resign and those bastards will go free. I have known Lance, I mean Mr. Davids, for five years
and there is absolutely no way that he would have made a move on those boys. Shit, apparently they really hammered him.’

  ‘How did it end?’

  ‘His friend arrived and broke it up.’

  ‘I don’t understand how this could have happened. Do you know what happened?’

  ‘They were calling him names, and when he told them to leave, they started beating him up. Neither the school nor the police are taking his side. Can you believe that?’

  ‘But can nobody defend him?’

  ‘His friend was there, you know, François, but no . . . no, they . . . he will not be . . . it won’t work.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Nicholas, there is so much you don’t understand. He . . .’ the senior sighs, ‘he is in bigger trouble.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They are laying a charge against him, and besides . . . well, they’re saying that he, François, is the proof that Lance is gay.’

  I want to ask, ‘Is he?’

  I can see the senior is expecting the question, but I can’t utter it.

  My parents have also heard about the incident.

  ‘He should be fired . . . no, castrated on the spot! The pervert! I have a good mind to phone the principal and make sure he gets sacked.’

  ‘Mom, how can you talk like that? You don’t even know the man. Why do you just accept their version? I can’t believe you. He’s my friend.’

  ‘Friend? Under NO circumstances!’ says my father. ‘No son of mine will be friends with a faggot, do you understand? Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand, but I know this man and you don’t. I will be his friend. I can tell you he did not molest those boys.’

  ‘How do you know, Nicholas? You are a child, a naive child, you know nothing about the type of man he is. I don’t want to hear another word from you. I’m warning you, Nick, you go near him and they’ll call you a faggot too. Is that what you want?’