Over breakfast, Lydia complained about Johnny's late-night comings and goings, saying that he was no example to young kids, especially those of an impressionable age like Mikey. Yes, he'll come to a bad end, Silas said in agreement, only to have her turn on him. ‘You should never wish bad endings on people!’ Somewhere inside her, a Catholic dread of what happens to people who die unsavoury deaths.

‘Does the street belong to Johnny Smith?’ Michael asked, when he was old enough to wonder what it was like to live in a street that bore your own name. Silas snorted, Lydia gave him an indulgent look, and Ouma Angel said it must be terrible to be named after a street.

Michael often wondered what kind of end Johnny Smith had come to. Years later, he heard Silas telling Lydia that Johnny was dead. ‘Ag, shame,’ she had answered, offhandedly. Michael was sure that Johnny must have gone to hell.

The house has a high, diamond-mesh fence around it. A car parked under a do-it-yourself carport (the uprights not completely upright), a small, well-kept garden, the grass cut as closely as the uneven earth will allow. There is something jarringly new: a ‘water feature’ has been built on the old asphalt pathway. Water spouts from the mouth of a lion, just like at Uncle Alec's. It dominates the entrance. The door that once opened directly into the face of the morning sun is now partially obscured from the street. What a grandiose search for privacy!

A dog raises its head lazily, decides that Michael does not pose a threat, goes back to sleep. A curtain parts and someone peers at him through a window. Then the door opens, and a man comes ambling up the path. A pre-emptive form of self-defence, Michael thinks. Show no fear, and maybe the potential intruder will go away.

‘Can I help?’ the man asks.

‘No, no, just passing,’ Michael answers. ‘Admiring the fountain.’

The man looks back at the fountain, admires what he imagines Michael finds admirable, his suspicion gone, his posture relaxed.

‘I found it here when I bought the place. Some crazy old bastard believed it would keep the tsotsis out.’ The man's laughter echoes in the growing dusk.

‘Well, goodnight,’ Michael says with a smile, and hurries off. He feels the man's eyes on him, as he passes through the smog-filled twilight. He inhales the smell of smoke as if testing the quality of the air. In households everywhere, fires are starting up. People still use coal stoves?

What am I doing here? Michael asks himself. Looking for Du Boise, for the ghost of Du Boise?