‘A woman, Tsotsi.’ Boston was speaking again. He had waited a long time. ‘Maybe you had a woman. Ja, that’s right. And when she let you down, or she left you, it hurt inside. Hey?’ He waited a longer time. ‘Not one?’ Boston put his thumb and forefinger to his eyes. They were hurting. There was sweat on his upper lip which he wiped away. ‘Your folks Tsotsi. Your mother…or father. Sister? Jesus! What about a dog?’

There was nothing left after that, so he was silent. He didn’t move for a long time and Tsotsi sighed once and then looked down at his hands.

They stayed that way until the street cried, then laughter, and Soekie started her song again at the beginning, staying like that, Boston still, Tsotsi seemingly the same as always, the one in disbelief, the other at the explosive moment of action, and this moment precipitated when Boston whispered: ‘You must have a soul Tsotsi. Everybody’s got a soul. Every living human being has got a soul!’

Tsotsi stood up, as if to stretch, his arms above his head, the elbows straight but bent at the wrist and turning. He opened his mouth to yawn but instead a cry came out and with that he brought one of his arms down in a wide swinging arc, catching Boston full on the parted lips with his clenched fist.

Boston went down, but before he could move Tsotsi was over him, and this time with even more force, because he could aim. He broke his fist into his nose, and then his ear. Boston moaned softly. Tsotsi stood up and walked a few feet away, standing eventually with clenched fists almost flush against a blank wall. Boston still moaning, softly, rolled over on his stomach and raised himself on an arm. His words were blurred by the blood and broken teeth.

‘You’ll feel something one day. Ja Tsotsi. One day it’s going to happen. And God help you that day, because when it comes you won’t know what to do. You won’t know what to do with that feeling.’

Tsotsi spun around and in a few quick steps was beside Boston again. With a kick at Boston’s elbow he sent him sprawling. This time Boston cried, and a second, and a third, and a fourth time as Tsotsi went to work on him with his shoes, using the heel and the toe, using everything he had learnt about pain.

Soekie came through the door and for a time struggled to keep Tsotsi back. It was only when Die Aap and Butcher came back, and joined her, and Tsotsi realized that he could no longer get at the man, that he broke away from them and walked out into the night.

They rolled Boston over and whistled through their teeth.

3

He walked out of the shebeen and into the street where the sky was low with storm clouds which had at last rolled over the township and the street itself, slow with couples in the dark and people lounged around in gentle attitudes of waiting for the rain. He kept his back to the shebeen and the street before him, broad as a river it was with eddies of life on the corners and around the lampposts, and the sluggish drift on the pavements, walking through this without once looking back to the room where Butcher and Die Aap were whistling through their teeth and Soekie was telling them to take the unconscious man out of her place, all of this while her gramophone repeated unheeded the meaningless phrase of its last groove. Walking away, he passed somewhere the woman the two men had taken out earlier, returning now with wet thighs for the drink she had earned, but Tsotsi had no thought for her, or the others, seeing only Boston, hearing again his words.