“Well,” he went on. “We—the management, so to speak—lived in one large house. There was a German who was in charge of it—a man from Namibia, Burkhardt Fischer. He had a wife, Marcia, and then there was a South African woman, Carla Smit, the American boy and myself.

“We all got on quite well, except that Burkhardt did not like me. He tried to get rid of me shortly after I arrived, but I had a contract from the Foundation and they refused. He told lies about me, but they didn’t believe him.

“The American boy was very polite. He spoke reasonable Setswana and people liked him. The South African woman took to him and they started to share the same room. She did everything for him—cooked his food, washed his clothes, and made a great fuss of him. Then she started to get interested in me. I didn’t encourage her, but she had an affair with me, while she was still with that boy. She said to me that she was going to tell him, but that she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. So we saw one another secretly, which was difficult to do out there, but we managed.

“Burkhardt suspected what was happening and he called me into his office and threatened that he would tell the American boy if I did not stop seeing Carla. I told him that it was none of his business, and he became angry. He said that he was going to write to the Foundation again and say that I was disrupting the work of the collective. So I told him that I would stop seeing Carla.

“But I did not. Why should I? We met one another in the evenings. She said that she liked going for walks in the bush in the dark; he did not like this, and he stayed. He warned her about going too far and about looking out for wild animals and snakes.

“We had a place where we went to be alone together. It was a hut beyond the fields. We used it for storing hoes and string and things like that. But it was also a good place for lovers to meet.

“That night we were in the hut together. There was a full moon, and it was quite light outside. I suddenly realised that somebody was outside the hut and I got up. I crept to the door and opened it very slowly. The American boy was outside. He was wearing just a pair of shorts and his veldschoens. It was a very hot night.

“He said: ‘What are you doing here?’ I said nothing, and he suddenly pushed past me and looked into the hut. He saw Carla there, and of course he knew straightaway.