Moffie Read Online Free Page B

by others? I’m looking for bridges that go back—no . . . no, ladders that move higher. That’s what’s calling me . . . to an entirely different plane.
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    Poupan, Kraankuil, Witput, Modderrivier. Later that night more conscripts board the train at Kimberley. I feel their frightened energy . . . and then I try to sleep.
    Bloemhof, Orkney, and early in the morning at Potchef­stroom more people board the filthy train—they don’t have the luxury of experiencing the process of decline.
    Slowly we crawl through the outskirts of Johannesburg. The pollution over the graffiti-scarred homes, factories and grime demoralises me even more. Old caravans are dying in backyards; mangy animals, filth, futility and crumbling structures line our route.
    I will the engine driver to go faster, but he seems to slow down even more, savouring the hangover of the humanity outside. The dirt of being close to a railroad lies on all the surfaces, but even cruder are the marks people make in despair.
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    We leave Johannesburg station, our last stop, and the people of this train become more subdued. The nervous laughter turns to giggling, and by late afternoon it is quiet. We sit staring blankly ahead, consumed by what we have heard is waiting for us. It settles on us like a damp bandage.
    As the quiet train moves into rural stretches between towns, massive thunderclouds start building up and casting shadows on the dark land. There are small settlements in the shallow valleys, small white dots in partial shade. The marks of man seem frail on the plains beneath the billowing vapour.
    Gerrie is sitting opposite me. Behind him the backrest of the seat that becomes a bunk bed at night forms a blue background to his anxiety. He cradles his guitar and strums softly; stops and starts until a song emerges. When we round a corner, the sun comes out and lights up his face.
    He repeats certain chords over and over until they are linked together and become recognisable. In the previous days, when he sang, volume was important. Now I only hear emotions lying gently in the chords—deep emotions. He looks at the floor but sees the clouds. He plays a very deliberate, unhurried interpretation of Joni Mitchell’s
Both Sides Now.
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    Rows and flows of angel hair.
    And ice cream castles in the air.
    And feather canyons ev’rywhere,
    I’ve looked at clouds that way.
    And . . .
    If you care, don’t let them know,
    Don’t give yourself away . . .
    It’s life’s illusions I recall
    I really don’t know life at all.
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    Someone who knows the area, or has memorised the stops, says quietly,
    â€˜One more station then we’re there.’
    Every moment becomes a large door slamming irrevocably shut behind me. In carefully selected steps, down, down from where already there is no return, the closer we get, the more solid they become, the more heavily they shut, the more thoroughly they seal.
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    It is almost dark. We sit in concentrated twilight in the unlit compartment. As the train creeps into Middelburg station, we see them on the platform: the instructors. Their stance is menacing, army-aged; a worn-turned-hardened army threat.
    Metal screeching, painful-sounding; then a jerk, heavy with friction. Shouting. The men burst onto the train, hitting and kicking the sides of the passages and compartments, flinging doors open and swearing. The words are mostly fuck,
poes
or cunt . . . and move, move, move!
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    Shit you will shit! You are going to vomit blood, troops! You are going to vomit blood for a long, long time.
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    We are given a ‘rofie-ride’ to the camp in the back of Bedford trucks, under dark canvas, on raw, splinter-emitting benches. We can only see out the back, unable to brace ourselves against the turns and sudden stops. So we fall about, which is the driver’s intention. Everything is immediately childish, spiteful and senseless—I have no wavelength of logic to