Tsotsi bravado hissed through a clenched mouth. Bad teeth, stench of the doomed.

Ali Ali had smiled at the young thug, and then at Silas, and said, ‘He's right, you know.’

One day, Silas arrived at the hospital and found Ali Ali's bed empty. A kindly nurse told him that his father had died early that morning, that he was coherent right to the end. He even had the presence of mind to ask the staff to give something to his son, ‘Silas, the quiet one who comes every day.’

That's how Silas acquired Ali Ali's Kaaba stone. He marvelled for a while at how it glowed in the dark, then forgot about it, his life filled with more pressing needs. Where was that stone, Silas wondered now? Maybe he should search for it, probably in that old box of useless things acquired over the years. Treasured heirlooms, the old people used to think. Nothing but rubbish to him. Except that stone. It had some strange effect, hypnotic almost. He could give it to Mikey, he had that kind of curiosity. Get him interested in his grandfather's rather mysterious life.

But Silas dared not go to the door and open it, say in his usual, calm voice, ‘Lydia, are you home? Mikey, Mikey, where is your mother? She didn't wait for me, even though she knew I was on my way. I was only a few minutes late.’

A slight exaggeration, half an hour late, but hardly serious. Drove like mad. Literally insane to do that on the N1 freeway. Imagine being stopped by a cop. Ministry of Justice man arrested for speeding, doing 160 kilometres an hour, weaving dangerously through the traffic. ‘My wife came out of hospital,’ says Truth Man. The media so newly vigilant. Where were they when we were being murdered?

Silas realized that he was addressing Mikey, as if he was practising to live with the silence that was bound to envelop his relationship with Lydia. It was also his way of not thinking directly about what he feared was happening beyond that heavy wooden door. Reinforced oak, keeps out the unwanted of Berea, illegals from Nigeria, the Ivory Coast – or should he say ‘Côte d'Ivoire’, like some fancy perfume? The music of fugitive tongues. All shiny suits and flashy cars, the legend goes, drug dealers and currency smugglers. Where was the fabulous wealth the xenophobes kept talking about? Not here, not in Berea. Here there is only dark sin and incest.

He sat down on the kerb, felt the heat through his trousers, his civil servant's suit, purchased off the peg from Woolworths. Ill-fitting at the best of times. What would he say if he opened the door and found them together? No, he must not think the unthinkable. Can scarcely think of Lydia with another man, let alone … If there was another man, what would he do? Respond with dignity, resign this miserable job, petty heroics, drudgery of the intrigue, do the things he'd always wanted to, quietly go away. If the worst came to the worst, he could angle for an ambassador's post; now that the Old Man was about to retire, he had some hope. It would be just reward for all the years of struggle. Somewhere warm, though, none of those frostbitten places for him. Mauritius maybe, bachelor ambassador on the loose, white beaches, brown bodies, at home among his bastard kind. Getting tired of this ‘not-black-enough shit’.