Moffie by Andre Carl van der Merwe Page B

The cabernet looks black in the two glasses.
    What we are doing is flirting with DB. Alcohol is forbidden for
rofies
, but the ridicule could be even worse. Yet for us this all belongs to another world, outside this ring of candles.
    â€˜I asked my mother to put this in. It’s a gift for you, but first I want to read you something. This,’ tilting a book towards me, ‘is the story of a little prince who lived on a small planet, actually on an asteroid . . . uhm . . . asteroid B-612 to be exact.’ He shows me an illustration of a timid yellow-haired boy standing on an asteroid. To the left of the little prince some gas escapes from an insignificant protrusion on the tiny planet. Ethan glances up shyly. If I had to give in to my immediate impulse, I would kiss him. ‘He would move his chair around the planet to continuously see the sun set. One day he watched forty-four sunsets.’ He checks again to gauge my reaction to this information. It pleases him and he smiles.
    â€˜Why do you think sunsets are different from sunrises?’
    â€˜They are, hey!’
    â€˜Nick, do you think they are actually the same, or is it just that we know they are what they are?’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜Well, say I took a picture of a sunrise and then of a sunset, do you think you would know the difference?’
    â€˜No, guess not. They would just be pictures of shapes and light. I think we need to experience them to know. I think they feel different.’
    â€˜Yes, a sunset actually feels different, doesn’t it?’
    â€˜You know, I love a sunset, and not just for sentimental reasons.
    â€˜I have a theory: In Africa, for me, sunrise and sunset are different not for their appearance, but for the effect they have on me. In the mornings over, say, the Karoo, in the cold, low distance, it stretches far and then rises with promise, looking on a clean and innocent world, but at dusk it sets with forgiveness. It’s the grace I find so warm. Sounds loopy, hey?’ Immediately I regret what I have said, thinking I sounded pompous and melodramatic.
    He looks at me for a long time and I look back, focusing only on his eyes, until a tremor deep within me forces me to look away. I only turn back to him when he says, ‘This little guy in the book, I’ve always liked him and I always think of him when it comes to friendship and sunsets.’ This sentence is so beautiful that I smile at him. He looks at me, branding into different parts of me forever something that transcends this plane.
    â€˜I want to read you the chapter about friends,’ and he reads a short chapter about a fox from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s
The Little Prince
. I watch him so intently that I have no capacity for observation left to hear the story. I study him with all my senses.
    The only part I remember, and only because I ask him to reread it, is, ‘
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
’
    Why, at that moment, do I not touch him, can he not see, can eyes not see, can our hearts not see rightly? This is how profound the barriers are that we carry so heavily around us, the structures of refutation, how complicated our fear; we doubt even the vision of our hearts! Maybe if we knew what was waiting for us we would touch each other gently, but we don’t. If only we could know.
    I will carry this night with me forever in all its unrealised fulfilment and tortured imperfection. Tonight I let him talk, not only to hear the voice, but for the things that are being said. He speaks of home and of sunsets.
    He tells me about the light at the end of day against the Twelve Apostles, the mornings on the white beaches, the sun that spills over Lion’s Head and turns the sea into silvery-blue mercury, and the storms that can sweep an entire beach out to sea.
    He tells me about it like an invitation to nirvana. His eyes sparkle as though he