2

‘Okay. Okay! I was sick. What’s that prove! Tell me. What’s that prove?’

Butcher laughed. ‘Ja. Sick man. Like a dog. Sick like a dog.’

‘So what’s it prove?’ Boston spoke with vehemence, raising his voice above the laughter. He was losing his control. Spit bubbles had formed in the cracks at the side of his mouth. He repeated his question and then the fifth person in the room, a woman seemingly asleep on a chair in the corner, looked up.

They were drinking at Soekie’s place. There were many places to drink in the township, and their number and location was never quite constant from day to day, because the police were busy most nights and every day somebody new would get a bottle and set up shop. The choice was big. You could drink with the men or you could drink with the girls. You could drink alone if it was that sort of day and that sort of world, you could sit down on a chair in a corner and drag out the one tot to last all night and no one would give a damn one way or another why your mother was dead or your woman gone. You could drink with a picture on the wall or no picture at all. You could drink comfortable in a club easy, or sitting on a wooden bench, you could even drink standing up in a backyard.

Soekie’s place had a table with chairs around it, and a few more along the walls, which were bare. There was a piece of linoleum on the floor but that counted for nothing because the floorboards were rotten. The light hung naked above the table and on nights when the wind blew and found its way through the broken window pane and the gap under the door, then the bulb swung slowly to and fro and the shadow of its filament moved in a sinister manner on the wall. There was one door in from the street and in the opposite wall a second door which lead to the second room where Soekie lived, and slept, and ate her meals and played her gramophone and had her bottles hidden.

Tsotsi was sitting at the head of the table, rocking on the back legs of his chair. Die Aap was on his right, Butcher opposite him. The chair on his left was empty. Boston had not yet sat down. The woman was sitting apart in a corner. She had been there when they came in. She might have been there all day, with her head slumped forward, legs outstretched, her arms swinging loose at her sides, a meaningless mumble on her lips at odd moments.

Boston was wide-eyed, with spit on his lips.

‘So what does it prove?’ he asked.

The woman looked up suddenly. ‘Come here Johnny,’ she cried. She was in her thirties and spoke without opening her eyes. Her features were as puffy as well-kneaded dough. None of the four even looked at her.