Moffie by Andre Carl van der Merwe

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.
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    M ost of us arrive with long hair, which in our platoon is shaved off on the third day.
    Rumours travel through a base camp within seconds, being systematically warped from mouth to ear, and then they jump base and spread around the country within days. This is remarkable, bearing in mind that there is but one pay phone for thousands of troops, and it is hardly ever in operation.
    Through rumour we hear about the brutality of the barber.
    In the queue to have our hair shaved, I look at the guy in front of me. I noticed him earlier on, as I always notice the attractive ones.
    As we get closer, young men with bleeding heads walk past us. The shapes of their heads are awkward, and their scalps look blue-white—stubble over sensitive, pale skin. The pain that accompanies every haircut kills the humour normally associated with such a transformation.
    Closer up we can see into the room. The barber is a civvy who has a contract to shave the new recruits’ heads. He is hideously fat, with a potbelly like uncle Dirk, only bigger. He is a mass of blubber contained by expanded skin. His hairy stomach protrudes from his shirt, and sweat pours from his unshaven face.
    At nineteen almost everybody still has hope. Later, within a few months, despair will be masked by perseverance—in the fear-fuelled recognition of the truth that lies in the hatred of one human being trained to hunt another.
    Each head he shaves he hurts in some way, either kicking the recruit as he leaves the chair or hitting him when he’s done. Sometimes he rams the tiny steel teeth into the scalp, hacking out chunks of flesh or nicking ears with the greasy razor.
    The boy in front of me is as apprehensive as I am. I wonder what he will look like without hair, for he is handsome, almost pretty. He has long, brown curls with lighter streaks where the sun has bleached them. Suddenly I have an urge to protect this hair; I don’t want it to fall on the mountain of hair under the chair.
    It’s not the first time I’ve seen Ethan, but this will always stand out as our first meeting. I stand watching him, drawn to him by the way he moves. Then it is his turn.
    The barber cuts roughly into the hair, leaving huge, hacked spikes. Then he takes the razor, hanging from a cord, and clears the spikes away. He doesn’t tell Ethan that he has finished, just hits him on the ear. The movement carries the weight of the solid razor. It’s a knock you feel just by observing it.
    â€˜Fuck off,’ he says as he strikes, but Ethan doesn’t move. Instead he turns around and asks him why he hit him—something not one of the thousands of troops has done. The fat man cannot believe his ears. The skin on his face moves backwards in surprise and drops down in disbelief, and he starts cursing.
    Ethan doesn’t blink. The contrast between the two men is so sharp that it makes Ethan seem radiant, spiritual, like a monk, with his shaved head and gentle composure. I don’t want him to be hurt any more, and in my mind I urge him to go.
    When the man stops swearing, Ethan gets up, and as he reaches the door I catch his eye. In that moment I sense the tiniest spark.
    Behind him the barber has started to charge like an overfed sow. Grabbing a broom, he shoves it into the small of Ethan’s back with such force that it sends him flying forward. His back arches violently, almost curling back over the broom. He loses his footing and falls on the gravel. Then he gets up and silently joins the waiting