Monkeys screeched higher up in the tree, their faces peering through the leaves to see what was happening. Then the monk suddenly called out, a wild, high-pitched imitation of the sound, and Montoya took an involuntary step back.

‘By God!’

Another projectile came flying through the air.

‘Ask him about the ice machine,’ Elisabeth said.

‘What are you doing, man?’ Montoya said, angry now. ‘Desist!’

The monk threw something again and shrieked like a monkey. The other monkeys above joined him in an excited, piercing chorus.

The paddler crouched down beside one of the projectiles on the ground, looked it over and then grimaced in disgust. It was a hardened piece of excrement. Human. The monk’s own.

‘He’s shitting on us!’

Back in the canoe, Montoya cursed the man vehemently, until Elisabeth’s laughter was too much for him to resist.

‘That’s the last time I take you anywhere,’ he said.

OBIA

When Krüger opened his eyes it was night, but the windows were silvered with moonlight. She was standing above him, a ring of keys in her hand, a soft glowing lamp in the other. It was true, what Mr Hendrik had said; she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

‘Tell me,’ Josephine said.

His mouth was dry, he could barely swallow. ‘Water.’

She put the keys and the lamp down, fetched him a cup.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

Krüger held up the empty cup. The shackles clinked, fluid, hard, water and stone together. ‘More,’ he said.

She went and poured him another. He listened intently to the sound of her bare feet padding over the floorboards.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

He drank the tepid water but was no nearer to quenching his thirst. He put the empty cup beside him.

‘You kill Mr Hendrik.’

‘No.’

‘You see him killed.’

‘No.’

Josephine kneeled down, sat on her heels.

‘He wanted me to take you away,’ Krüger said.

‘Dead don’t want nothin’.’

‘We should go from this place.’

Josephine looked away. ‘He was my brother.’

‘The keys.’

She pointed at his chest, at the obia there. ‘Don’t you know?’ she said, appalled at his ignorance.

The weight on Krüger’s body was sudden. He gasped, coughed. The pain in his ribs was sharp.

‘You know it,’ she said. ‘Accept.’

Krüger grimaced, but took strength from her shining eyes. She looked away, disappointed.

‘No changing it,’ she said.

‘We can go, together we can go. I will take you.’

Josephine shook her head. From somewhere in the front of her dress, she took out a pipe. She tamped tobacco into the bowl, took a long, thin splinter of wood and lifted the glass on the lamp, lit the splinter off the lazy oil flame. She brought it to the tobacco in the pipe and puffed.

‘Mr Hendrik suffer,’ she said.

‘He loved you.’

Josephine closed her eyes, rocked back and forth a little. ‘And he suffer.’