He did not see the traffic lights, which were red, against him; nor the truck that was approaching and that had no time to apply its brakes. Charlie, gazing in his rear-view mirror, saw nothing that lay ahead; not the frantic movements of the truck driver as he realised that impact was inevitable; not the crumpling of metal as the front of the car folded in; not the shattering of the windscreen as it fragmented into little pieces, like diamonds or droplets of water in the sun. But he heard the screaming of the woman in the seat behind him and a slow ticking sound from the engine of his car; he heard the slamming of the door of the truck as the driver, shaking, let himself out of his relatively unharmed cabin. He heard the protests of metal as his own door was prised open.

Another motorist had stopped and had put his arm around Charlie’s passenger. She was standing beside the car, weeping with shock. There was no blood.

“Everybody is all right,” said the other motorist. “I saw it happen. I saw it.”

“I was coming that way,” stuttered the truck driver. “The light was green.”

“Yes,” said the motorist. “I saw that. The light was green.”

They looked at Charlie. “Are you all right, Rra? You are not injured?”

Charlie could not speak. He shook his head. He had escaped injury, thanks to the solidity of German engineering.

“God must be watching,” said a passer-by, who had seen all three step unharmed from the wreckage. “But look at that car! I’m sorry, Rra. Your poor car.”

Charlie had now sat down on the side of the road. He too was shaking. He was staring at his shoes; now he looked up and saw the ruins of his Mercedes-Benz, with its crumpled front, stained green by spurting coolant; at the metal rubbed bare where the truck had ground across it; at the buckled door with its newly painted sign. The ruptured metal had shortened the sign. The No. 1 Ladies’ Tax it now read; a curious legend which caused the policeman who shortly afterwards arrived at the scene to scratch his head. Tax?

Charlie reached home four hours later. His aunt was there, and she could tell immediately that there was something wrong.

“I have had an accident,” he said.

The aunt let out a wail. “Your beautiful new car?”

“It is finished, Aunty. That car is finished now.”

The aunt looked fixedly at the ground; she had known, of course, that this, or something like this, would happen. Charlie, silent now that he had pronounced the requiem on his car, sat down. I am twenty, he thought. Twenty, and it is all finished for me.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MMA POTOKWANE ON THE SUBJECT OF TRUST, AMONGST OTHER THINGS