‘What’s that?’ It was Butcher speaking, a spasmodic, twitching Butcher who had been staring at the woman for a long time. He turned to Boston with impatience. He had no time left for him.

‘That’s why I got sick!’

‘You was as sick as a dog man.’

‘Decency!’

‘What the hell is that?’

‘Everything you are not.’

‘Shit.’

‘Ja shit,’ echoed Die Aap who had stirred out of his half-sleep for the drink in his glass.

But Boston was no longer interested in them. Free at last of their ridicule, the very real meaning of his nausea, his collapse as Tsotsi had anticipated after a simple Friday night job (a big bastard who smiled too much, now no more), this meaning and his feelings, feeling no longer the need for defence, possessed him and pushed him down into the seat beside Tsotsi, at whom he was looking.

‘You know the word Tsotsi?’

‘What word?’

‘Decency.’

Tsotsi opened his eyes wide and looked back at Boston. It was a red-eyed Boston. A wet-lipped, very serious Boston with his chin weighed down by his breath so that you could see his pink gums between his teeth and behind that his pinker tongue. That makes his words, Tsotsi thought, and a second later, he wants to hurt me. Books and words! I wipe my backside with books and words.

‘Don’t know it man,’ he said aloud.

‘You wouldn’t.’

‘So tell me man. Tell a man that word.’

‘Decency.’

‘Ja. That’s the word man!’

‘It’s why I was sick, Tsotsi.’

‘What’s it? Sickness?’

‘Ja. That’s it.’ And Boston closed his eyes tight and sort of laughed with a mirthless glee. ‘I had a little bit of it so I was sick and that big bastard had a lot so he’s dead. Man, was he dead.’

‘Go see a doctor, Boston.’

‘Soekie.’ It was Butcher, who had emptied his glass with one swallow.

‘Listen Tsotsi. I’m going to be serious.’ Boston leant forward to emphasize his words.

‘Soekie.’

‘We’ve never had a good talk Tsotsi.’

‘Go to hell man.’

‘No listen…’

‘You talk too much man.’

‘Soekie!’

‘For Christ’s sake man Butcher. Go fetch it yourself. I’m trying to talk serious.’

‘You was as sick as a dog.’

‘’S goed Butcher boy,’ s goed.’

‘Listen Tsotsi. How old are you?’

—And here there was a pause and dangerous lights in Tsotsi’s eyes, so he looked away from Boston, first up to the ceiling as if he were seeing it for the first time, and then to the wall opposite, and the woman in the corner, travelling irrationally from thing to thing until by accident he found Boston’s face in front of him again.

Tsotsi hated the questions for a profound but simple reason. He didn’t know the answers…neither his name, nor his age, nor any of the other answers that men assemble and shape into the semblance of a life. His memory went back vaguely to a group of young boys scavenging the township for scraps needed to keep alive. Before that a few vague, moody memories, a police chase and finding himself alone. Tsotsi didn’t know because he had never been told, and if he had once known he no longer remembered, and his not knowing himself had a deeper meaning than his name and his age. His own eyes in front of a mirror had not been able to put together the eyes, and the nose, and the mouth and the chin, and make a man with a meaning. His own features in his own eyes had been as meaningless as a handful of stones picked up at random in the street outside his room. He allowed himself no thought of himself, he remembered no yesterdays, and tomorrow existed only when it was the present, living moment. He was as old as that moment, and his name was the name, in a way, of all men.