Saskia could tell from the look in Joseth’s eyes that it had occurred to him that she was loitering in order to communicate something – the easy transfer of her adoration, perhaps from Emil Coetzee to Clement Rutherford or, better still, Joseth Maraire. It suited her purposes for him to believe that she was so fickle in her affections, and so she said, ‘Taken with Emil Coetzee? I am rather, I suppose. He is a very powerful man.’

‘And it’s the power that does it for you, doesn’t it?’ Joseth asked, growing bolder.

‘It very well may be power that does it for me,’ Saskia said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other in a way she knew men found becoming.

‘I wonder if you will write my biography someday,’ Joseth said.

Rutherford cleared his throat and Saskia ignored him.

‘Well, that depends, doesn’t it?’

‘Depends? Depends on what?’

‘On whether you have a life that is worth writing about?’

‘I’ll make sure I have that kind of life.’

Saskia had the distinct impression that Joseth was not a particularly brave man, and yet here he was being fearless enough to stop pointing at the edges of a thing and delineate it clearly instead. She knew that what Joseth was doing had as much to do with her as it did with Rutherford. Joseth was letting Rutherford know their dynamic was shifting, that things between them were in flux, and that Joseth had every intention of coming out on top. For Saskia, this was a very interesting development – one she could see working to her advantage.

But there were other considerations. An affair with a black man? Could she do it? It would be scandalous – the sort of thing that would have the tongues of the City of Kings wagging for months to come. It would make the city afraid of this thing called independence, and that would be a prodigious triumph in itself.

‘You go ahead and make sure of that,’ Saskia said, smiling encouragingly at Joseth, driving a wedge into the chink that had appeared in the relationship between Rutherford and Joseth, and ensuring that they would both be eager to win her over. ‘What do you think of the title Emil Coetzee: A Son of the Soil?’

Joseth grinned at her and took a step closer. His teeth were perfectly white and even, and were probably the most unimpeachable thing about him. She imagined those teeth playfully biting into the flesh of her skin, and the thought was not altogether unwelcome or unpleasant. ‘I prefer Joseth Maraire: A Son of the Soil.’

She looked away from those teeth into Rutherford’s grim and angry face and sweetly said, ‘Clement, I am sure you also have a story worth telling.’ She placed a placating hand on his forearm before walking out of Emil Coetzee’s office. When she closed the door behind her, Saskia knew that her mission had been accomplished.