Other guests quickly departed, leaving Jackson's favourite 1960s township jazz playing loudly to an empty room. Lydia said she was going for coffee with Alec and Gracie, making it obvious that Silas was not welcome; he had humiliated her and embarrassed Mikey.

‘Christ! She's your son's age!’ she had said.

Silas drove home slowly, not only because he knew he had had too much to drink, but because he wanted to savour Vinu's smell, her young woman's breath, warm and fragrant (some kind of gum she was chewing, a breath freshener, mint, liquorice?), the green pools of her eyes. Yet, when he climbed into bed and switched off the light, hoping to take Vinu into his dreams, Michael's eyes confronted him. That cool, disdainful stare from Alec's stoep earlier that night, the look of faint disgust. Now Michael was intruding even upon his fantasies, his imaginary – and therefore innocent – seduction of a young woman (he was too old, too tired, to masturbate anyway, he rationalized afterwards). Silas felt hatred for Michael, sudden and fleeting. When it was gone, he lay awake, full of bitter remorse.

Perhaps it was time to go, to leave this place, this house, this country and its contorted history?

20

Michael and Vinu sit under the fig tree's canopy of dying fruit, inhaling the excessive, overripe sweetness of figs abandoned to the birds, to the thunderstorms that assail the city. The overhang of branches retains the day's heat; outside of this warm shelter, the night is chilly. Johannesburg cools down quickly, because of the altitude, six thousand feet above sea level, know-it-all conversationalists say.

‘This is such a fickle place,’ Michael says.

‘The place or the people?’ Vinu asks.

‘Both. They are one and the same.’

It is the sight of Silas staggering into the house that spurs their conversation. He mutters to himself, loudly opens and closes doors, bumps into things. His actions have the characteristic exaggeration of someone not only struggling against the effects of too much alcohol, but also against the tide of emotional turmoil that accompanies drunkenness.

Michael observes Silas at his familiar post by the kitchen sink, drinking glass after glass of water, and staring myopically into the darkness. What does he see in that mirror of his own eyes? A life lived as best he can, and therefore wasted, by definition. Michael resists the surge of sympathy he feels for Silas, his father in name, his keeper, mentor of sorts. Every now and then, Silas gets this wild look in his eyes, a redeeming sense of yearning, a desire for something more than mere existence.

Almost chastely, Michael sips his tea. ‘How are you going to resolve your problem?’

‘My problem?’

‘With your father.’

Vinu has also refused the offer of a glass of wine, attracted by the ascetic ritual with which he was preparing the tea. She looks into her cup, takes a sip, swirls the liquid around in her mouth. ‘Only death – his death – can resolve that problem. I have no intention of taking my own life.’ She smiles. ‘I could get you to kill him for me. Michael the Avenger. That title suits you.’