Moffie Read Online Free PDF Page A

tune into.
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    At the camp there is some comfort in the darkness, the chaos and the fact that we all face the same fate. We are allocated tents in groups of six. Nobody knows what to expect; some say we will be woken up in the night, beaten and drilled and exercised until we pass out. Others say the instructors are going to attack us with
balsakke
(tog bags) filled with rocks and iron. I think of ways to protect myself and go to sleep curled up with my arm over my face.
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4
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    T he shapes in the house have started to change. Furniture has been moved to one side and there are large boxes everywhere. When the carpets are rolled up, Frank and I skate on the woodblock floors that Sophie has polished. The rooms sound hollow and our voices louder than usual.
    We are excited, but Sophie has a private sorrow about her. She holds me close and there is a tautness in her body. I look up and see tears on her round cheeks, which she wipes away with the back of her hand, but they stay shiny. To me it feels as if she is overflowing with tears, so I avoid her and play in the maze of boxes with Frank.
    Whenever I have supper with Sophie in the kitchen, I eat by candlelight. My father says it’s not allowed, because I’m not black, but I only want to eat when it’s dark and peaceful. What I really crave for is the dark night and a fire with people huddled in blankets in front of their round homes called huts—the first English word I learn.
    A big truck with a compartment above the driver’s cabin comes to take away all our furniture and the boxes. Frankie and I sleep on the floor, on a blanket-bed. We don’t feel the hardness, only the adventure.
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    I look up from the floor. My parents are moving about as people do when they’ve been awake for some time. It is light and our mother tells us to get up.
    â€˜Frankie, see that Nicky gets up now. Come on, boys, we don’t have time. Be a big boy, Frankie, and help your brother brush his teeth.’
    I’m sleepy-slow and Frank is urging me to go to the toilet and get out of my pyjamas. Milk and rusks that Sophie baked, no putu porridge this morning, no breakfast, just sluggish drinking and eating and our hurried parents around us.
    â€˜Come now, boys, let’s not make your father angry, come-come. Say goodbye to Sophie you two, quickly, and get to the car, quickquick!’ I hug Sophie and say goodbye. Her embrace is rigid.
    My mother looks at Sophie. ‘Don’t upset the little
baas
(master) . . .’
    I walk to the car. Before I get there, I hear a wail and words I don’t understand because they are drowned by sobs. Sophie bursts past my mother and runs to me. She calls out her name for me, ‘Isipho!’—my gift! She moves towards me, charged with momentum. She has lost her composure and the quiet peace that dwells in her. I have never seen her like this, and it unsettles me.
    Bent over and weeping, she picks me up. A sound like shouting comes from deep in her throat, ‘Ngizokubona . . . Ngizokubona, Isipho, Isipho, Isipho.’ She is sobbing and crying and saying over and over, ‘I see you, I will see, I will see you always, my gift, my gift,’ and then we are both crying.
    I hear my father’s angry voice, but my mother says, ‘Wait, Peet, he’s like a child to her, just let her be.’
    â€˜I don’t care. What will the neighbours think?’
    â€˜Forget about the neighbours . . .’
    Then my mother speaks to Sophie, and her grip relaxes. She sits down on the garden wall, her body round and hunched up. She doesn’t move, and when my mother tells her to help with the bags, she ignores her for the first time in her life.
    Suddenly I feel a loneliness, as if something has been taken out of me. It’s confusing and overshadows the excitement of the journey ahead. Thus, at the age of four, I leave the rolling foothills of the Drakensberg. I leave forever where the dragon