So here he was safely deposited back into a country that was no longer at war with itself. They called it a ceasefire as if that was an easy enough thing to do: cease … fire. Stop hostilities. Quiet the raging.

As he ran his fingers through hair that was slightly too long, he felt so tired of the world that he was sure he had lived a lifetime much longer than his eighteen years. He should have been making his way home, like every other surviving member of the security forces, but he did not know where home was.

Vida could not bring himself to walk through the heart of the City of Kings, cross Lobengula Street, make his way to Thorngrove, the coloured section of the city, and enter his parents’ house that was missing not only their presence but their unconditional love as well. And, for now, he could not bring himself to cross Borrow Street and disturb the peace of Flat 2A.

He looked down the stubborn straightness of Selborne Avenue as though it would make up his mind for him. Of course the road did no such thing. What it did do, however, was present Vida with the beige bakkie that belonged to Emil Coetzee. As he watched the vehicle approach the intersection of Selborne Avenue and Borrow Street, Vida decided, on the spur of the moment, that he would cross the road towards the Prince’s Mansions only if Emil Coetzee looked up at the windows of Flat 2A.

Emil Coetzee drove through the intersection looking straight ahead.

Vida wondered how Emil Coetzee could drive by without looking, no matter how briefly, at the windows of the flat where his son had lived before going off to war. As he watched the beige bakkie travel into the distance, the rage within sounded in his ears and drowned out the stridency of the city around him. Vida knew that he would never make a home for himself in the silence of Flat 2A. He turned his back on the intersection of Selborne Avenue and Borrow Street and walked aimlessly through the City of Kings – a man with no direction home.

As Lukha Hlotshwayo made his way to The Tower, he saw Emil Coetzee’s beige bakkie approach up Selborne Avenue, and he allowed himself to feel something that he had not allowed himself to feel in such a very long time that he no longer remembered ever having felt it: relief.

Now he knew that his journey would not be in vain. He would go to The Tower, confess what he had done, and Emil Coetzee would punish him for it. Lukha felt certain that with every blow to his body, the weight of the world that he had been carrying on his shoulders for most of his years as an adult would fall away, leaving him as light as spirit.

It was not that he no longer wanted the responsibility for what he had done; he just wanted to lay his burden down. He had killed people; nothing could ever really take that away from him. The die had been cast a long time ago, and Lukha was as assured as he could ever be about anything that, if he walked into The Tower and told them what he had done, Emil Coetzee would personally see to it that Lukha’s feeling of relief was not particularly long-lived. Lukha almost smiled as he imagined the sweet release of being that would come with his final breath.