3

 

The hum of the engine remains constant all the way from Cal­itzdorp to Oudtshoorn. Hard as I try to sleep, anxiety has taken hold of me. I know this last part of the journey so well.

Over the next rise we’ll see the lights, then pass the place where they searched us for food before Vasbyt, the road that leads to the mountains, the hill they made us run up during lectures. Then Pierre will slow down, take a left past the college, maybe stay in third gear, and turn left again into the main entrance to have our passbooks signed. We will walk up to our barracks and he will take his car to the civvy car park, where it will stay when we leave all this behind.

 

***

 

It is four days before we have to board the freight plane to the border. There is a slight relaxation in the tightly woven rank structure of the camp, like a carpet taken off the loom, to hang on its own. Malcolm and I are in the barracks, going through old copies of Scope and rating the male models in the cigarette ads out of ten. We have three categories: my taste, his taste and a combined list. We debate, and often argue playfully when there is a man we both find attractive.

Anyone wanting to know what we’re talking about would have to listen very intently for quite some time. And that is what Ger­rie does.

When he eventually breaks his cover, he calls us queers and immediately leaves to tell some of the guys in the platoon whom he still regards as his friends. Over the next few days some of them start calling us moffies, but it never goes beyond that. We ignore it, as one does with news of little interest.

Dorman is the only person in authority who encourages the name calling, which, in my case, he has been doing since Dylan’s death.

 

***

 

The target we aim at is a picture of a ‘terrorist’ storming towards us. The centre circle is around his heart. We run to the shooting range at Swartberg or shoot at the range behind the camp.

I am a good shot and soon get a skietbalkie—a little emblem of an R1 rifle—that I have to put on my step-out jacket and wear with pride. I lose mine, or it is stolen, and I never replace it.

From the shooting range, one can see down the valley all the way to the airport, from where the Hercules freight planes, called Flossies, will take us to the border. Tummy-planes, airo­planes . . . that’s how she used to say it . . . that’s what Bronwyn called them many, many years ago. Now I’ll be going in one of those tummies.

 

Of all the memories I unwittingly gather during this time, it is the second last day before our departure that stands out.

Malcolm and I are blamed for something the platoon has done, and Dorman decides that the whole group will be punish­ed. This, in army mentality, will cause the other troops to resent us and make our lives even more difficult.

‘There is a certain element in this platoon that must be eradi­cated,’ he says. Everyone knows to whom he is referring. ‘Some people here need to be sorted out. Because of this element and the slapgat attitude of certain individuals, you are all going to carry your trommels from one shed to the other. And if you think they’re going to be empty, you’re mistaken. They’re full of fuck­ing ammo.’

The other troops’ animosity towards us is tangible and further fuelled by Dorman and Gerrie. What worries me most is that these are the people who will be on the border with us, in a war, and we will be relying on them for protection.

The metal trunks are impossibly heavy. After moving the first one, I feel like crying. The handles are thin steel bars that cut into one’s hands. When you put the trommel down, your fingers remain clenched and numb.

Exhaustion and hate are reaching boiling point around us. ‘Fucking faggots! I swear you’re all going to hell! Just being near you makes me sick.’

I don’t react, for deep down I believe it is only their pain talk­ing. What does upset me though, is the fact that Oscar is also there, because to me he is better than all of them, and I want his respect. He listens, but says nothing.

We are given a short break. Most of the platoon collapse against the incline of a concrete embankment. Malcolm and I, with one or two others, sit on the level, facing the embankment.

Gerrie is the leader of the group that has been calling us names, and now they start discussing the degrees of sin. Johan, whom we call Vrugtevlermuis (the Afrikaans for fruit bat), says that sleeping with a black is tantamount to bestiality because blacks are not human. Gerrie says that, according to his domi­nee, homosexuality is the worst of all sins, much worse even than murder. Nowhere in the Bible did God ever punish as harshly as he did the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and that was because of their homosexuality. He also argues that being gay is a sin of choice, a premeditated decision, whereas murder is often a re­sult of passion, war or an accident.

Against my better judgment I say, ‘You’re talking shit. Show me where in the Bible you read this. The way I understand it, sin is sin and we are all born into it. If you read the Ten Com­mand­ments, it doesn’t say that some fall in the category of unforgiv­able! Surely Christ died for everyone, for the absolution of all sins.’

‘Ag fok, Van, man, I can’t remember the exact verses. I’m not a fucking computer. It doesn’t really matter, because my dominee says that Jesus died for sin, but not for that sin; that’s a different kind of sin. I promise you, Van, you better be warned, mixing with Bateman . . . sleeping with dogs, you know, you end up with fleas.’

‘Fuck you, Gerrie,’ Malcolm says. ‘We all break rules of the Old Testament all the time. There are even things in the New Testament that would be considered un-Christian today.’

Gerrie is outraged. ‘What did you say? How dare you blas­pheme like that? This whole country is built on Christianity. Are you saying the Bible is wrong?’

‘He’s saying there are things in the Bible that are ludicrous,’ I lend my support to Malcolm.

‘Like what?’

By now the entire platoon is watching, waiting for me to de­fend the indefensible, waiting to crucify me. If ever there were a moment that I’ve been grateful for my torturous years of spiritual searching, it is now, because I do in fact have some ammunition—passages I have memorised for exactly this kind of situation. I am also acutely aware of Oscar’s attention.

‘Well, for one, the Bible supports slavery. Check Titus 2:9, where Paul tells the people that slaves must be submissive to their masters and give them satisfaction in every respect.’

For a second there is dead silence. All eyes are on me, and I know nobody is arguing because they don’t have the knowledge to do so.

‘Bullshit,’ says Gerrie, but I ignore him and take advantage of the rest of the men’s attention.

‘And what about 1 Corinthians 14:34, where it says that wom­en should be silent in church, that they must be in submission, because it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church? You know how patronising the Bible is about women. They are not even allowed to ask a question. They must ask their husbands at home!’

‘I don’t believe it!’

‘Read it,’ I say, and then, to drive home my point but probably undoing the good I’ve done, ‘or can God or the writers of the Bi­ble change their minds any way they like?’

‘Who do you think you are, Van? Smarter than a dominee, hey? No wonder you’re defending moffies. Fucking gatgabbas, that’s what you are!’

As if from nowhere, interrupting Gerrie’s diatribe on deadly sin, Oscar pipes up, ‘Ag kak, man.’ Just like that, and Gerrie shuts up.

Oscar gets up, walks over to me, bends down and kisses me full on the lips. He looks at the group, then up at the sky, stretch­es his arms out as if being crucified, palms up, and says, ‘Strike me down, God, for I have kissed a man. Kill me now, or for heav­en’s sake, donner these people, or give them some hint of truth or a brain, because I can’t take this shit any longer.’ He drops his arms and looks at the group. ‘Fucking hell, stop talking this kak, man.’

With all eyes still on him, he slowly turns to me and says, ‘Fuck them, Nick, just fuck-em all.’

At this instant I am filled with adoration, love, hero-worship, all mixed up into one emotion. And it stays with me—a support system cherished by my subconscious.

 

***

 

The Hercules C130 is under constant threat of attack from the ground, and for this reason the pilot spirals down over Ondang­wa while two Alouette gunship helicopters search the ground for terrorists who may have Sam Seven heat-seeking missiles trained on us. The Flossie needs to land quickly. It’s during the final approach, just above stalling speed that we are in the great­est danger of being shot down. From inside the aircraft we can see nothing. We just sit in the sling seats, our backs against the fuselage.

‘It’s odd to think that some of us won’t be going back, hey, Van.’

‘Malcolm, don’t talk like that. You and I are going back, and that’s it. Besides, I’m not used to you being so negative.’

‘OK, but maybe some of these other fuckers won’t.’

‘I don’t want to think about it.’

‘Did you, like, say goodbye differently . . . I mean, to your folks . . . sort of this could be the last time?’

‘Stop it! No, not to them. But I did spend the last Saturday with my friend Anne. You know, the one who always writes the long letters. I told you about her. We went to art classes together.’

‘Oh yes, the one who sent you the letter with the butterfly wing in it.’

‘Yes, we went to the Botanical Gardens in Stellenbosch and decided that we would visit a certain tree when I get back and have a picnic there. Silly, I suppose.’

The pilot lands and taxis. When we stop, the roar of the en­gines is replaced by a whining sound. Then the rear door opens and the border air rushes in—dusty, hot and dry . . . in mid-win­ter.

 

The camp in Oshivelo is like all other camps, the same depres­sing feeling, except that the buildings are mainly tents—fatigue green army tents on red sand.

It is here, with the great expanse around us and the closeness between us, that Malcolm and I really get to know each other; bit by bit, like turning a precious stone over and over and studying its every facet. When you can tell someone absolutely anything, it’s like therapy. For the first time I totally share those parts of my life that I have kept secret for so long. I invite him into my now empty ‘closet’—going back and peeking at the cramped interior that I had occupied for so long, never thinking I would be able to leave it.

Oshivelo is a training base for the war we will step into in just a few weeks’ time. We are taught to put in drips, which we must practise on ourselves and our friends, digging for veins with but­terfly needles.

Our toilets are long drops, with seats we call go-carts—row upon row of them, all under one roof. We pee into plastic fun­nels, called pislelies (piss lilies), dotted around the camp, and we shower in trailers, queuing naked outside in our platoon groups.

‘Hey, Van der Swart, why are you here? You just want to see dick, hey! Bateman, you homo, don’t perv here or get a hard-on, oke!’

‘Not for your small pin-prick dick, you tor­naaier.’

We cut down trees to build a structure to hang our kit on. We have inspections, stand on parade and have longer quiet times. We train day and night in what they call ‘modern-day guerrilla warfare,’ using vehicles protected against land mines, V-forma­tion patrols, roadblocks and ambushes.

 

Almost every night before lights-out, except Sunday nights, we are given propaganda briefings, clipped onto us like weights. I am instinctively sceptical of everything they tell us, but when something is unavoidable, it is better not to dissect it.

One troop is chosen from each platoon to sit in on the briefing by the company commander. In our platoon it’s Gerrie. He takes notes, which he then has to convey to us.

He walks into the tent flushed with his own importance. He says he isn’t allowed to tell us everything he has heard—only a select group is allowed that. It’s clear that he has swallowed their propaganda in huge gulps.

He tells us about the spoor that has been spotted close to the camp and the large numbers of terrs that have crossed the bor­der in the past few days. ‘This is highly confidential,’ he says and waits before delivering the next bit of information. ‘Not the newspapers or the people in the States know this; you have to keep it absolutely secret. Do you understand?’

I am beside myself with irritation. He uses the language of the border: terrs, States, gooks, PB’s, kuka shops and clicks. I can’t keep quiet any longer and let out a loud sigh—so charged with irritation, it might as well have been a sentence.

‘What’s wrong with you, Van? If you don’t take this seriously . . .’

‘Oh, Gerrie, for fuck sake. It’s propaganda, man, and what’s this States shit, we’re not in America or Vietnam. Don’t get so fucking carried away by the drama. They want to scare us and get us all worked up. You know how the army is. Let’s keep some balance here. Besides, who the fuck can we tell? We can’t phone home, our letters are censored, so what’s your story, man?’

Malcolm follows, ‘Fok, Gerrie, don’t ruk the hol outta the hoen­der,’ and someone else says, ‘Hy ruk sommer die hele fokken hoender van die stellasie af, ou!’ Everyone laughs, except Gerrie. He moves awkwardly on the chair, crossing and uncrossing his legs.

‘You can believe what you want, Van. If you have a problem with the information, tell the captain.’

When he leaves, he looks at me with undisguised hatred.

The next day I am summoned to the tent that Lieutenant Engel, Sergeant Dorman, Corporal Smith and Gerrie share. Corporal Smith marches me in. The manoeuvre is awkward: the doorway is lower than my head and I walk crouched, but at the same time try to be as upright as possible. It feels ridiculous, and I wonder if they also see the humour, but as I enter the tent, I feel their self-importance and know that they do not see the absurdity of this sideshow. The tent is too small to allow for the halt, which is a three-step manoeuvre, and I collide with the centre pole and then Lieutenant Engel’s bed.

But they are the ones with the power, and that is what they use in this kangaroo court. My ‘sentence’ is sandbag PT with full kit in deep sand. During the sentencing, it is my anger that gives me the strength to face the fear—courage I know will be tested during the night that lies ahead.

The tent appears to breathe around me as I process the sen­tence.

Gerrie sits on his fold-up bed. This strikes me, because the rest of us sleep on the sand. He is cleaning his boots soundlessly, but his whole body is leaning towards what is taking place in this tent he has made his Judas home.

Dorman sits crouched over, legs crossed, his elbows resting on his knees. His right hand cups his chin while his fingers are stroking his nicotine-stained moustache. He says nothing but his eyes scar the space between us.

On his own bed sits Lieutenant Engel, bent forward, his legs open and firmly planted, his short torso awkward, too dumpy for the legs clawing over the side, like a vulture with exaggerated talons.

But it is next to me in the corner, the silent boot-cleaner that I feel most. Our history fills the space between us like smoke.

Corporal Smith, standing at attention next to me, marches me out, calls me to a halt and dismisses me. Before we separate, he looks at me for a brief moment, says nothing and turns. ‘So much over so little’ is what I like to believe I read in that expression, or ‘Fuck Gerrie, the little squealer.’

 

It’s the waiting I hate. The terror that prevents me from eating or drinking anything sits inside my stomach like a hard rubber ball. Some of the troops revel in reminding me how often people die from an opfok.

‘Hey, Van, you’re going to kak this afternoon. You got gyppo guts? Suffer, baby, suffer.’

I have a full day of training, then PT, after which I have to meet Dorman at the sandy road, dressed in my browns and boots, with rifle, webbing and grootsak.

I adjust and readjust my laces and the straps of my bag. I wor­ry about the lack of fuel in my empty constitution. Malcolm mix­es some Game and pours it into my water bottles. With all my kit on, I am very hot. Just the walk to the road is exhausting.

 

Dorman shouts at me to run. When I do, the weight displaces itself through my frame, and my feet sink deep into the sand. He shouts a constant flow of insults, and I hear Dylan’s name too, but today I can’t allow aggression into the space where I carry love. I have to use my all to get through the next few hours.

Nobody is allowed to watch, but they all do. A medic is placed on stand-by. I am allowed one bottle filled with tepid, plastic tasting water. Dorman pours out the Game Mal has mixed.

First I have to run to a pislelie and back. I know I must pace myself to last long enough for Dorman to feel that he has execut­ed the sentence and that I have suffered enough.

Up and down I run, up and down . . . then push-ups, dips, more exercises and more running through the sand with my rifle and sandbags, not thinking of what I’m doing, only running the pre­rehearsed fantasies of revenge through my mind.

 

He lies under a bridge on a piece of disintegrating foam rubber, in vomit, faeces and urine. He has descended to this point on a stepladder of loss, and I have relished the collapse of each rung beneath him, the final tread having been the artificial support of the dark soul of drugs.

 

My visions are now just snippets of disjointed images. The pain of mind and body is too loud and consuming to allow me to be creative as I run back and forth over the same route.

‘If I fucking . . . for one fucking moment, see that you don’t give everything, Van der Swart, you will be on the first RTU when we get back, I swear it. But before we get back you first have to survive the border with me. I’m going to rip your balls off, you cunt-faced fuck.’

 

A dirty needle forces into a wasted arm full of welts and puss. He is searching among collapsed veins to inject the poison. Sick­blue, under a transparent skin and seething with filth. Begging with craving . . . like my body is now begging for relief.

 

My rifle keeps on hitting my face where it swings clumsily on my shoulder. It’s impossible to push the strap higher up, because both arms are carrying sandbags. Then it falls from my shoulder, into the fold of my elbow, and hits my knees, swinging and snag­ging between my legs.

My lungs rasp, chafing as I suck in bits of air, and I taste blood. There is a noise in my head that drones at a monotonous pitch. Time has taken on a different dimension. Long, long seconds are delayed through sandpaper lungs, and then the next one strains into place.

My dragging foot falters. I try to move it, but it doesn’t obey. Dorman is shouting millimetres away from my face, spit flying at me. I don’t flinch. He hits me and I fall.

I get up, but my kit rides up over my head and overbalances me. I leave the sandbag at my feet. Dorman kicks my leg, it buck­les, and I fall again. He is shouting, completely out of control, but the sound is blocked outside the coating of my exhaustion and the noise in my mind. I manage to get up on my haunches and pick the sandbag up. The rifle pivots and hits my face, but I’m on my feet and manage another run past the pislelies.

Dorman walks next to me, shouting, ‘Beg me to stop, beg me.’ Then, whispering, ‘I’ve got all night. Beg me, you poes!’

Two laps later, I fall again, and this time I know I will not get up. He knows it too. He puts his boot on my head and drives my face into the sand.

Then he stands back and kicks me in the stomach. There is a sharp pain, my stomach contracts, and I start vomiting. Bile burns my throat and into the back of my nose, and I gasp for air. Pain fights for recognition, but I can only compute some of it. I try to spit, but I can’t release the shiny gum from my lips. The vomit pools on the sand, too thick to drain away, frothing along the edges. I spit and spit, then vomit again.

I move into a kneeling position, with the kit on my back hang­ing to one side. As Dorman knocks me on the shoulder with the inside of his hand, the weight of the ill-fitting pack shifts forward and rides over my head again, but I manage to get up and stay on my feet. I am aware of the medic trying to give me water. Driven now by a kind of madness, I shuffle forward. Noth­ing works—my vision is obscured by sweat, sand and tears from the vomiting; my face is caked with puke and sand. Everything starts swimming before my eyes. I hear voices, but I can’t move. There is water running over my face, but I can’t react.

I spend the night in sickbay.

 

Dot is at the side of my bed in Jeffrey’s Bay. I motion to her and she jumps up and crawls in under the sheets. It’s our secret; she knows we are sharing disobedience. In her coat is captured the smell of the sea with the collected dog smell. When she gets too hot, she moves out from under the sheet.

 

I feel a deep ache of longing cutting through the headache and the throbbing in my bruised knee. I miss her so much—her sim­ple, unconditional love. I think of how she waits for me when I’m swimming, and her relief when she sees me in the shallow wa­ter while she was still searching for me beyond the waves. The simple, uncomplicated honesty of it all . . . that is so much more important than this . . .

 

***

 

I lift up the canvas sheet that is hung at the door to stop the flies from getting into the toilet tent, and find the place empty, except for Gerrie sitting on a toilet in the corner. He is the last person I wanted to see here, but there is no way out now.

At first, we don’t talk, but the space becomes loud with what we’re not saying. I run through sentences in my mind, and by the time I start speaking, it is as if I am some way into a conver­sation already.

‘What has happened to you, Gerrie? You’re not the same per­son I knew in high school. Shit, man, you were my friend, re­member?’

‘One has to do what one has to do to survive.’

‘But betray your friends?’

‘You were asking for it, Nick, and besides, you stopped being my friend when you got so friendly with that Malcolm moffie.’

‘Fuck you, Gerrie. Malcolm is an amazing guy. I’m lucky to be his friend. You’ve betrayed me, and you will always carry that with you.’

‘This is the army and I’m going to survive at any cost, that you must know. In civvy street all this will be forgotten, but here it’s the survival of the fittest.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. This is who you really are, here and in civvy street.’

He bends forward on the plastic go-cart. ‘I don’t care a shit what you think,’ he sneers and clicks his fingers when he hisses the word ‘shit.’

At this, a fly takes the opportunity to disappear into the hole behind him. I pray that it will stay inside and not come and sit on me after being on Gerrie’s arse.

‘You think you can walk away from this, but it will always stay with you, Gerrie, always. That’s the type of person you are, and you know it. You know it, and you will never get away from it.’

My words have struck a chord. He leans forward again, this time to take some toilet paper, and pushes his hand between his legs to wipe himself. He drops the paper into the hole without checking to see if he needs another wipe, gets up and pulls up his pants. As he gets up, I notice his cock—small and shaped like a little missile, with a long, taut foreskin sitting in a bush of dark hair. The ugliness of it gives me a delicious sense of victory.

At the tent flap he turns around and says, ‘It was me. I’m the one who split on you. And I’m glad I did it. I have more power than you think. Engel likes me. You will never be an officer, Van, I’ll see to it. NEVER. You will be a corporal at the end of this course; that is if you survive! I will see to it that you’re placed at the border for your next year, doing patrols and fucking getting killed. You mark my words, you fucking faggot.’

Then he is gone.

Fear and anger creep up inside me. He could really bad-mouth me sufficiently with Engel and Dorman and succeed in all his threats.

 

***

 

After the weeks of training at Oshivelo, we leave in open Magi­rus trucks, sitting on our kit. The first stop is Ondangwa. Here we sleep propped up against our kit in a demarcated area, be­fore we are transported North in landmine-protected vehicles. Now we are soldiers; soldiers in the operational area.

 

In a twist of fate, of all the Infantry School companies, Golf Com­­pany is deployed with Koevoet.

Koevoet means crowbar. There are few South Africans who haven’t heard of Koevoet and its activities on the border. It is known as the most ruthless killing machine in the world.

‘They have by far the most successful kill rate,’ our captain says with a grimace. ‘They are a division of the South African Police and seem to have developed the most successful anti-insur­gent tactics. Most of the members are Ovambos. We are going to work with them, to study their strategy. They have just started this technique of hunting terrs . . .’

 

We leave at first light. As we get into the Buffels, I feel as if I’m carrying some slender remnant of the dream I had the night be­fore. All day I feel this presence; like dust I can’t shake off.

A Buffel is a smallish landmine-protected vehicle that sits high on its Mercedes Unimog chassis. It feels as if it wants to pounce—far more agile than the heavy Hippo. The driver sits in an armoured capsule next to the exposed engine. Behind him, two rows of troops sit back to back. In front of each one, a half circle is cut into the armoured sides for our rifles to rest in. Dur­ing a contact or an ambush the sides can be let down, allowing the occupants to get off quickly.

We sit strapped into firmly moulded seats. If the vehicle det­onates a land mine, this is what gives us our only chance of survival. We are told that the terrorists have started stacking multiple land mines on top of each other. When triggered, the explosion is fierce enough to somersault the vehicle and rip its chassis to threads.

In our row, Malcolm is first, then I, and to my right Oscar sits reading during most of the day’s journey. When we stop, he draws or writes.

I rub my index finger on the side of my nose to make it oily and draw an ‘E’ on the matt paint of the armoured wall in front of me. Malcolm sees it, whispers, ‘Ethan, Ethan, Ethan,’ and I smile. He does the same, but draws an ‘O’.

Above the steel side of the vehicle the immediate foreground blurs past—from time to time small settlements of huts can be seen, with bored people in makeshift doorways. A little girl, watching other children playing soccer, leans on a homemade crutch on the side where her leg was ripped off by a land mine. They don’t even glance up as our convoy passes.

Other pockets of existence float past, each little kraal pitted by war, with emaciated cattle scattered around the huts behind which the bush moves forebodingly past—further, slower, dark­er.