Moffie Read Online Free Page A

on a gravel road and you realise for the first time its size and power.
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    At De Aar, in the heat of day two, the train is delayed for thirteen hours outside the town. The toilets are a mess and the passages filthy. The railway staff have been hiding in the guard coach since yesterday. In a matter of twenty-four hours the train degenerates to a septic, sick serpent moving towards some disgusting hole.
    Fights break out, people vomit and defecate in the passages. One guy gains instant fame by managing to puke at will—his nickname is Skomgat.
    Drunken men from different social standing, language and culture, made equal by a mutual fate, open our compartment door and demand alcohol. The five travelling with me are part of the decay that is setting in. Gerrie hovers in-between, on a fence of fear, leaving me alone to defend my Kiwi shoe polish and Robin starch, products I didn’t even know existed until a week ago.
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    By the afternoon of the second day of my two years I start longing for the discipline of the organisation awaiting me at the end of this journey. It is, after all, run by adults—the government elected by people like my father, people who are staunchly religious and regulated. Not people I relate to, but people who stand for discipline and order. And anything must be better than this anarchy.
    Deep into the day we stop again, this time at a station called Potfontein. Through my window I notice an elderly black man dressed in an ill-fitting but clean suit, its life extended by need and poverty. He carries the signs of this harsh climate, but there is gentleness and calm in his weathered face.
    Window down, my arms resting on the frame, I analyse the scene as if composing it for a painting. There is fortitude in the man’s posture, a humble tolerance of life and circumstance. He seems to have moved beyond struggling, to have arrived at acceptance.
    I draw a small sketch of him. Next to it I write:
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    I’ve met such a man; in an intolerable corridor—neither of us wanted to be there—me trapped by youth and he by colour. We became friends . . . No, he took me between the scars to his trust where I had a glimpse of a different wisdom. A man like this has cried and sung for my loss. He doesn’t know the alignment of the planets, but he knows their touch on a cold, crisp Karoo night, away from the lights that react obediently to the white man’s control.
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    From another coach someone starts swearing at him. He looks up and then down. For some reason, what happens next stays with me as my real introduction to the Defence Force. The old man suddenly appears to embody everything that is simple and tender in the world of which I am no longer a part. I wish the train would start moving.
    With a dull thud a beer bottle hits the platform next to the bench where he is sitting. A white triangle of glass and froth explodes and he gets up, but then decides to stay when he hears the conductor’s whistle and the train starts moving.
    I hear cheering as someone running beside the train hurls a full plastic bag at the elderly man and it bursts against the side of his head. A cold fury lodges in my stomach. The perpetrator jumps onto the step between two coaches, as if onto a podium, holding on to the handles on either side. Why do the rivets and screws retain their hold? Why don’t they drop him under the wheels?
    As the vomit-smeared man bends to pick up his stained hat, I see the sign on the back of the bench: Non-Whites Only.
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    The sun is low over the vast space and the colours are deepening, the light softening. The sounds around me become rounder, less sharp than in the middle of the day. I change seats to feel the air on my face. When I feel the panic clamp around me, I will search for this balm, try to capture it, to remember what ‘can be,’ I write:
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    What do the bridges consist of that I’m traversing from my old world to this one; bridges built