Moffie (6 page)

 

T
hey're visiting us for the day at our rented holiday house in Jeffrey's Bay—in-laws of my mother's sister Fran. They're poor, so don't talk about money. They refer to their son, my distant cousin, as Blackie, or Ossie or Oscar.

He has dark skin and hair and a striking presence. I sense in him a gentle strength that I find mysterious and attractive, but because he is related to my cousin Michael I take it for granted that he feels the same about me as Michael does. So I escape on a trip around town, pushing my
draadkar
—my little wire car—with its long steering shaft.

I have constructed a fantasy around saving a man: I am the only one to make it over the final obstacle in time, and in a brave, crowd-pleasing move I rescue him. What he looks like is the best part of the fantasy—I only need to dip my mind into my barrel of handsome boys.

Early evening, deep into their visit, uncle Dirk sends Michael to pour him another brandy and Coke. Then he calls me to the balcony. He has devised a wrestling competition on a dirty mattress lying in the corner. The children have been paired off with those closest to their age, and I see my sister battling it out with the cousin a year older than she is.

The dark corner has an eerie luminosity caused by the light from the adjacent room. A shaft of light falls over the bodies like a chevron.

The boys must take off their shirts. From behind him uncle Dirk puts his arms over Blackie's shoulders and rests his hands on the boy's chest. Michael returns with his father's drink, which he tastes. Then he nods and places it on the balcony wall.

The dust from the mattress makes me sneeze. But there is something more hanging in the air—the fear of shame. Uncle Dirk is swaying, with Blackie still in front of him. His head is turned to the mattress, but his attention is on Blackie. His mouth is in a dog-on-heat smirk. He is somewhere between humiliating me and touching the boy. In the corner of his mouth white spittle stretches and shrinks as he speaks. His right hand plays over the boy's chest, and I see how his thumbnail rubs over Blackie's nipple.

Suddenly I'm angry, confused about my sudden attraction to the boy and jealousy towards my uncle. Uncle Dirk has it all his way. He pretends not to notice the boy squirming under his hand as he stands shouting instructions to the two on the mattress. When he realises that Blackie wants to break free, he puts his head down and rubs his face over the boy's hair.

The round is over. The object of the game is to pin your opponent's shoulders to the mattress. Uncle Dirk lets go of Blackie, and now it's my turn against his son. This is the main event. I find the idea of touching my cousin distasteful.

‘Riiiightio, here we have the Flop-Klaas-Kaffirrr . . . annnd Michael!' he shouts into his glass as if it were a microphone. Then, in a softer voice to his son, but still loud enough for me to hear, ‘OK, take your time, and I don't care if you hurt the sissy.'

Looking at the man with as much hate in my eyes as I feel in my heart, I know instantly that this is what he wants. He whispers instructions to Michael, holding his arm too tightly, trying to impress on him the importance of this contest. My cousin has fear in his eyes.

Suddenly the world is the size of a double-bed mattress; the fight a religion, invented by this small god of ill intent. His future is under this dim light, fed by alcohol mixed with Coke and tainted by desire. To him his son's opponent is from a different place, an unwilling participant whose future will not be affected by the outcome of this match. No way out, and for Michael there can be no prospect of losing. I am instructed to remove my shirt and get on the mattress. My first inclination is to simply lose, but the apprehension I feel in Michael is almost amusing, and suddenly the thought of winning excites me.

As we grip each other's bodies, everyone starts cheering for Michael, except Bronwyn and Blackie, who are quiet. Little Dot is confused by it all and she starts yapping.

For several minutes we strain and groan, and then uncle Dirk pulls my feet from under me. Michael plunges down on top of me. Dot jumps on the mattress, barking hysterically, and then I hear a loud yelp of pain. Michael pins my left arm down, moves over me and clasps my other arm. Somehow it doesn't bother me. My concern now is for the safety of my dog.

With unexpected strength I pull Michael upwards. He overbalances and slips off the mattress, still clutching me. In doing so, he pulls me over on top of him. I know immediately that I have him fixed.

‘One . . . two . . .' I hear Blackie counting, excitement in his voice. Then Bronwyn joins him, but uncle Dirk stops the counting as the excited audience shout each number, enjoying what they now know is a victory over this adult.

‘No, no, it's a disqualification; they're off the mat. Get up, get up.' Irritated with his son, he wrenches me off him. ‘Start again and stop cheating, Klaas.' Quite self-possessed and full of confidence I smile at Michael, not with affection or goodwill, but with a smirk of knowing the outcome. He is red-faced and flustered.

I win the next round with ease, my opponent being weak with fear and close to tears. When I have him pinned down, his head is over the side of the mattress.

‘Come here, before your father says I am cheating again,' I say, pulling him back onto the mattress.

Drawn by the noise and Dot's whimpering, my mother comes to see what is going on and tells us to get cleaned up for dinner. As we walk down the passage to the bathroom, Blackie looks at me and winks.

 

 

H
i.'

‘Hi.'

‘I'm Ethan.'

‘Nicholas. I um, I saw you, I mean I remember you . . . the day they cut our hair.'

‘Hardly a haircut!'

‘No shit. How's your back?'

‘OK. Was a little stiff, that's all.'

‘It looked terrible. Shit, those bastards. Fuck, I hate them.'

‘Where are you from?'

‘Stellenbosch. You?'

‘Cape Town. Clifton, actually.'

‘Clifton? That's nice. Do you live near the beach?'

‘Bungalow on Third Beach.'

‘It's terrible here. I feel so trapped. Bungalow, wow what an amazing place to stay.'

‘I can't believe what's happening to us.'

‘Did you ever think it would be this bad?'

‘No way, man, I would have skipped the country.'

‘I had no idea we would be treated like this.'

‘We must get to Oudtshoorn. We must get out of here.'

‘Yes, but they say it's even worse there. Much worse!'

‘At least it's close to Cape Town.'

 

 

P
oofter, queer, moffie, sissy, homo, pansy, fairy,
trassie—
how those words scare me. I'm so terrified of being ‘discovered' that I obsess about it. Being a homo gives everybody the licence to persecute one. If I'm found out my life will be ruined. I MUST, AT ALL COST, KEEP THIS A SECRET.

 

I am gay. Gay—this word and everything it stands for—is what I am at the age of nine, although I have not even heard it yet. I know it, I feel it and, in secret, I start living it.

 

 

M
y mother, auntie Sannie, Bronwyn and I, and three servants are in the kitchen. The AGA stove exudes a stuffy heat. The room is dimly lit. The feeling in the rehearsed bustle of cooking is mustard-gloss-paint and depressing. I avoid my father. My underpants are sticking to where his belt cut into my skin. I sit down at the scrubbed table and try to keep the weight off my bottom by resting on my elbows, until that too becomes painful.

Elsewhere in the farmhouse the men are reading, drinking, talking and waiting to be waited on. Everybody is waiting for this time to pass. Fatigue has crept over and into my mother. This new road that has thrust itself on her, seems to possess her. Her one son is gone and the other is ‘different.' She feels she must protect me. I see it in her. But she would have preferred it not to be the case. If I could have slotted in, it would have been so much easier. Instead, my grain is anarchistic, and it chafes. She knows this as mothers know their children, but she will not communicate what she realises—not even to herself. Still she supports me on this knife-edge of survival and helps me balance wherever she can.

Until his death, my
wound
always seemed to be hidden by Frankie. And a hidden wound is a healing one, or maybe no wound at all. Now I have to find the strength to deal with it, or the anger to bear it.

 

From the time that Frankie goes to the angels (after somehow getting out from under all the ground they've thrown on top of him) everything starts going wrong.

 

 

W
hat is wrong with me? What did I say? Did I carry on too much? Did I try too hard? Was I too girly? What did I do or say that by the time we got to the beach for the cricket match, they already knew they didn't want me in their team?

When the Bellville Tennis Club divided us into two groups, with each captain having an alternate chance to choose a player, why then already did nobody want me in their team?

 

The heavy, red ball is whacked with a sharp crack in my direction and I know I won't be able to catch it. It flies directly at me. It is undisputedly my responsibility to catch it; clear as a huge, red finger pointing at my inability. It travels in the air for the first half of its journey, and then hits the firm beach, still damp from where the tide has pulled back from this canvas to paint my shame on.

Everybody in the two teams and all the spectators, the entire tennis club, all the people we mix with, all my parents' friends, are looking at me. The ball seems to gain speed as it charges down at me.

On this windy, Sunday-morning, sand-in-the-eyes ‘field,' the captain has placed me where he knows the ball is most unlikely to go. Now, in horror and disbelief, I watch it streak towards me on the hard sand of the receding tide, smooth but for a bump created by a shell exactly in the path of the ball, which causes it to change direction ever so slightly and bounce. In the noise of dense disappointment and amused delight from the other team, I think I can hear my mother shout, ‘Watch the ball, Nicky!'

Beyond the beach, like a huge horseshoe, the Hottentots Holland Mountains sweep all the way from Gordon's Bay to Helderberg. White Southeaster clouds are being pushed over Sir Lowry's Pass in huge, God-sized handfuls. But my world is the size of one ball.

The ball streaks past me. Angry and ashamed I fly up and run after it. By the time I stop it, the ball has exhausted all its mocking energy. And all the while the two batsmen are running back and forth between the wickets. Those who aren't shouting are counting, and I can feel my parents' shame.

 

***

 

There is that fragment of a moment when I know I've pushed him too far, that tiniest of a split second when it's too late. He loses control and I am going to get a hiding. My hands go limp and the spoon drops onto the plate. It overbalances because I haven't placed it deep enough, and it falls, spilling ice cream and chocolate sauce on the tablecloth.

Some part of my brain probably notices this, but it is now occupied with protecting my body. My father flies off his seat and grabs me in a terrible fury.

I have refused to eat my dessert with a spoon and a fork. He said it's good manners and I said it made no sense. He said it's not for me to have an opinion; I have to obey him without question. I picked up the spoon and brought it to my mouth without touching the fork.

Now nothing else, it seems to me, exists in this man I call father, but to hurt me. Gripping a handful of shoulder and shirt and then neck and hair, he drags me to the bathroom, like a dog picked up by the surplus skin on its neck. I am pleading, begging and crying, gripped by fear, not only of the pain, but also of his anger that seems to have no bounds.

It doesn't really relate to the fork and spoon; it is his frustration that drives him.

Like when I wouldn't jump off that rock. All the other boys, the sons of his tennis-playing friends, did. And then, to make matters worse, even my younger sister climbed up and not only did she jump, but she dived into the cold, root-dyed mountain water.

 

Behind the bathroom door hangs a thick plaited rope and below it the birthday calendar, but whenever I sit on the toilet it is not the calendar I look at. I see only the instrument of punishment that is mainly used on me.

The bathroom smells of Handy Andy and the sick-sweet artificial blossoms of the air-freshener. Were it not for the picture on the can, one would never guess that it's intended to wrap and package the smell of farts into bouquets of spring meadows.

He unhooks the rope. The blows start. It's a whole big thing, the noise of my screaming and the sharp cracks of the rope catching my bare legs. He lashes out at me with large figure of eight swoops, until I am lying in a foetal position with my hands over my ears and face.

My mother is pleading and shouting at him. ‘Why don't you just shoot him, Peet, if you want to murder your own child!'

I am hoping the neighbours will hear and come running.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
t is too late to hand out our kit. We are marched to the tents, neatly erected on the side of a hill. There are no beds inside.

Finding a place on the canvas ground sheet, I am so apprehensive that I become consumed by the thought of escaping—all the way home, to understanding parents who are prepared to send me overseas to avoid all this. But like neon writing on a dark wall, I know it won't happen.

And AWOL equals DB.

In a corrugated-iron structure I find the showers and toilets. Sitting on the black plastic seat, I stare at the green partitions on either side, the concrete floor and the crudely constructed door. For a fleeting moment it feels safe to be on my own—secure in this small, hidden space, realising my need for solitude.

Beyond the door I hear the hundreds of strangers I now have to live with, jostling for position, friendship, survival, opinion, showers and toilets. The sounds are somewhere between excitement and foreboding.

At the top of the partition wall I see a series of holes in the shape of a cross. This is a sign, I decide. That I should have chosen this one is a good omen. This space will be my private ‘chapel,'
my
toilet. I memorise its position in the row—seventh from the right, my lucky number. Then I summon up the courage to step back into army life.

A whistle sounds and the corporals shout: ‘Lights-out in five minutes. Lights-out, you fucking
rowe
! Lights-out!' With it there is frantic scurrying and nervous chatter.

A single bulb dangles from the centre of the tent, its tepid light sucked from it by the canvas. Then it is switched off.

Dark . . . dark inside and out, dark the future, dark my life.

From under the ground sheet the stones of Middelburg press against my shins as I kneel and pray for deliverance.

During the night I am woken by a thunderstorm. I focus on the grey letters of my digital watch—02:28. Muddy water starts flooding through the tent, and we huddle together on the dry side. Shivering and miserable, we wait for daybreak. I remember the clouds I admired as we rolled into Middelburg. Now even that one thing of beauty has betrayed me, as if nothing has respect for us.

Tired, frightened and wet, I fight hard not to allow panic to whip me out of my precarious control. If that should happen, I know I would not be able to claw my way back.

 

One week for issuing kit, assessing our physical fitness and health, and then we start basics. If you are classified G1K1, the army regards you as physically and mentally fit. If you have passed matric, you will do the basic training in six weeks instead of three months. Then you are sent to Oudtshoorn Infantry School.

We are repeatedly told that the nine months training at Infantry School, to become junior leaders, is much harder than basics—only a few, they say, ever complete that course.

 

Swearing and shouting start our day as the lights are all switched on at the same time.

Dripping canvas, unwashed men—sour and pungent—and outside the relentless profanity.

It feels as if yet another door is slammed shut, irrevocably, like a cell door. I am giving up, each step taking me deeper and deeper down.

‘Quiet time, quiet time, get in and read your fucking Bibles you . . . you snail-shit, you! Where the fuck is your Bible? What are you? A fucking atheist
poes
, non-believer cunt? Ten minutes and you'd better be on that parade ground, ready. This is a day you'll never forget, so you'd better fucking pray . . .'

I read Psalm 17 from verse 9:

 

. . . from the wicked who assail me, from my mortal enemies who surround me. They close up their callous hearts, and their mouths speak with arrogance. They have tracked me down; they now surround me, with eyes alert, to throw me to the ground. They are like a lion hungry for prey, like a great lion crouching in cover. Rise up, O Lord, confront them, bring them down; rescue me from the wicked by your sword.

 

I stop reading and turn to Psalm 23. Yes, I want comfort; I want a table prepared ‘
in the presence of my enemies
.'

 

***

 

‘You see,' he says. He is puffed up like a bullfrog, not only in attitude, but his body also seems too big for his small legs. His actions have a cultivated air that is still new and awkward. ‘You are all
rowe
. Do you wanna know what a
roof
is? It's a fucking filthy scab on a septic cyst in a dying pig's arse. That's what a
roof
is and that's what you are.' Dispensing his dishwater-wisdom, he says, ‘Don't worry, I was one too, hey. But now I'm an
ouman
, I've been here for more than a year . . . but, troops, shit you will shit!'

Nothing they make us do seems possible. Too many people have to shower in too few facilities in too short a time. We wait in lines for food and we have too little time to eat it. We have to clean our fatty ‘pig pans'—partitioned stainless-steel plates—in drums of cold, soapless water with thousands of other troops' uneaten food floating in it.

Everything is designed to induce panic, and panic causes insecurity. Insecurity creates in all of us a desperate desire for survival, and this desire is dangerous and ugly.

In the breakfast queue I look for Gerrie, whom I haven't seen since we arrived at the camp. In front of me a corporal seems to self-destruct on discovering that a conscript doesn't possess the skill to tie his own laces. I wish I could self-destruct, for how does one relate to, share a room with and fight next to a man of nineteen who can't fasten his own laces?

The huge mess looks more like a hangar, and behind the mess is the parade ground. Everything is neat but desperately ugly. Every shape and colour is purely functional. The buildings seem to stand at attention, permanently disciplined. Tiny patches of garden look like brooches on fatigue overalls.

 

***

 

Each one receives an orange booklet. On the front it has a sun in the top right corner, with seven rays extending from it. It is called
Daily Strength
. It comes from the Bible Society of the Army, Navy and Air Force, to be read during quiet time. Inside my Gideon's New Testament are lists of passages titled ‘Where to find help.' I look under ‘Anxious' and am referred to Psalm 46:

 

God is for us a refuge and a fortress; found to be a mighty help in trouble.

Therefore we do not fear though the earth is displaced, though the mountains reel into the midst of the sea,

Though its waters roar and foam; though the mountains shake at its swelling . . .

 

This gives me courage, because my world is displaced, reeling somewhere in space, tumbling towards some baleful abyss.

Then I become still. I make way for Frankie's spirit to visit and console me. He is my angel whose existence I never doubt. I curl up and I pray. With eyes shut tight, I pray from a deep place and I feel God's listening face inside me.

 

***

 

We're standing at attention, not allowed to move. My feet feel as if they are not getting enough blood; I cannot feel my little toes. The instructor is shouting, insulting us. Our eyes must not follow him as he moves through the ranks.

‘What the fuck are you looking at, troop? I'll suck out your eye and spit it back so deep that you'll look at the world through your arsehole for the rest of your life!' he shouts in Afrikaans.

He stands in front of me, directly in my line of sight. He is telling us how useless we are. He is not much older than I am—last year's intake—but he has the markings of that year. His halitosis comes to me in waves; it smells like shit, as though his vulgarity has an odour. This is the smell of dirty, empty words. The reek is so bad that I have to cast my mind elsewhere. So I study him: His skin is burnt brown-red. In his left nostril is dry snot. It is perched there, like a bird in a nest, looking out, safe in its hairy home above the noise. It nauseates me, but I like seeing him compromised. I picture his fellow instructors laughing at him in the NCO mess at lunchtime, and him knowing that we lowly troops must have seen the muck inside.