Boston listened in silence.

‘I need to know things. You must tell me.’

‘Why me?’

‘You were a teacher man. You read the books.’

Boston looked at Tsotsi carefully. Was it the light, was it his eyes? There were lights in those eyes. Where there had been darkness there was something like light. The effort tired him out. He closed his eyes. ‘I know nothing.’

And Tsotsi, not knowing the nature of the ignorance the other man confessed, said, ‘I’ll tell you.’

First of all, he told him about the baby, and Boston listened for a long time, piecing together the broken sentences, the half-thoughts of the other man, until he had the picture. Tsotsi and a baby, that was a strange thought—could it be true? Why not, Tsotsi was telling him and Tsotsi in all the time he had known him had been totally without imagination. It must have happened. Why did it happen? What did it mean? Will it happen again, why do things happen? He no longer heard the other’s voice, his mind lost in the labyrinth of questions; until suddenly, like the image that rises cool and clear out of the concentric ripples widening away where the pebble has fallen in the water, rising cooler and clearer than ever before, came the thought and phrase again, so he said it aloud: ‘The fields of my youth.’

Tsotsi stopped and considered what Boston had said. What did it mean? What was he trying to say? What relevance was there between that sentence and the baby? He broke out into a sweat. I know so little, he thought. I know so little I know nothing.

‘And then Boston man, there was the beggar.’

The man on the bed didn’t move.

‘Boston man.’ He waited. ‘Hey Boston. The beggar.’ Boston looked at him. ‘Help me there man. I had him. Really I had him right, but I let him go.’

Boston continued to watch him, so he told that story as well.

Boston concentrated hard, and listened. He heard that story right through to the end. In its way it was as surprizing as the other. Why was it strange to find mercy? What a tremendous thought mercy is! The word itself is like the sigh of the wind. Where had he heard it like that? Then it came to him; the long, lonely wind that swept through the long grass in the fields of his youth.

But this time he did not say it aloud. He looked at Tsotsi. He has clenched his hands together in the attitude of prayer. He has beautiful hands. What is he saying? Yellow bitch? Memory of a mother? Tsotsi a mother. Why not, all men come from women. I did. I never went back. She waited for me in the fields of my youth. Standing there, on her hoe in the midday sun, looking down the road. I never went back. Is she still waiting? What is Tsotsi saying?

‘I never knew about it. Not till yesterday. Like a long forgetting, you know.’ Tsotsi wiped the sweat away from his forehead. Boston had been staring a long time and said nothing. He went to the door, and let the cool air pass over his body. He had told him everything and it had been hard. Not having to tell. That had come easy, driven as he was by some inner compulsion to know the meaning of the past three days and their strange events, a compulsion that had started with the baby and gained momentum ever since until he no longer had a desire for anything else except to know. He had told his stories and Boston had listened and now he must ask his questions and Boston must answer them.