He prowled the streets, turning irrationally on sudden impulses and not even asking himself why he had chosen one way and not another. Curtains on windows, dogs at the gates. The drifting rain was with him for a little time and then it poured and some of the clouds lumbered away silently overhead, leaving room for the moon. Rooftops, left wet by the rain, shone brilliant in the moonlight. It was suddenly a white world, a prismatic, polished, gleaming world of white surfaces; the streets, the moon-washed walls and rooftops almost a glacial white. This quality was caught by his ear as well. In the wet, soft, shrunken curled-up moments of the rain, there had been silence. But now with the rain gone, excited by the moonlight, the crickets had come back. It was a hard, leaping, crystal sound defining the smaller facets of that moment. They were busy in the hedges, under the stones in the gardens, in the trees, and the distant ones seemed to sound as distant echoes of those around them.

The clock struck somewhere, and all was silent for a moment as they listened, so Tsotsi stopped and also listened for a while to the dull, discordant toll but did not bother to count. Ahead of him was a grove of bluegum trees and because he was tired, suddenly very tired, he turned that way, meaning to rest.

When he reached the trees (there were about twenty), he slipped quietly to the middle and stood for a moment quite still, noticing for the first time that there was a slight breeze. The moonlight lay around him in pools, splashing over roots and dry leaves, mobile as quicksilver as the treetops moved gently and their shadows shifted on the ground. The wind was just a whisper among the leaves and branches creaked intermittently with dry, complaining sounds. Tsotsi drew in a deep breath. The air was damp and drenched with heavy scent of the bluegums. His eyes, opened wide, mirrored the cataracts of light splashing around him. He was content and stood like that a long time until his legs throbbed and he remembered he was tired.

He sat down with his back to a tree and no sooner was he comfortable than he regretted it, because immediately the image of Boston rose up before him. I shouldn’t have stopped here, he thought. I should have kept on until I could go no more.

He was not that tired that he couldn’t have stood up. The ache in his legs was no worse than a ten-day-old knife wound. He could have risen to his feet and carried on to another place, another destiny, because the stars were busy that night. But instead he chose to remain, and in remaining picked up the silken thread of the chances that were to lead him a strange way.

And so the image of Boston, considered, now that his violence was spent, without the madness of hate. Boston! He, Tsotsi, had himself picked Boston from the thousand lives adrift in the location streets. He had picked Boston because he had a virtue, just as Die Aap had a virtue, which was strength, inhuman strength, and Butcher with his virtue, which was the accuracy that had earned him his name, an accuracy as reliable as the edge of a good knife. Boston’s virtue being that he was clever. He was a lot of other things as well. He was a coward, he was weak, he talked too much, he drank even more than he talked. But more important than anything else—he was clever. He could think. Boston had already proved himself, a hundred times over. In as many jobs his cleverness had engineered success. The little details that got you caught, these Boston thought about, in a panic of fear it was true, but he thought about them and that was all that mattered.