He looked up at the baby. It was crying again, a hard, worrying noise that made him desperate and uncomfortable. He went to the bed and bending low over the puffed-up knob of a head shouted: ‘Tula!’ and then a second time, much louder, shaking the mattress with his hands. The baby cried on. If only Boston…No. It was too late now for that thought. He didn’t finish it. Tsotsi looked once more at the tin, not at the words this time, just generally at the tin, feeling the weight of it in his hands and the noise of the baby in his ears, and then he decided.

‘Right. You take it like I take it.’ He spoke aloud.

With the decision he found himself busy again and that, together with the strong sound of the words, made him feel better. He made two holes in the side of the tin, using his knife, took a quick suck for himself, finding it thick and cloying in the throat, and then waited a few seconds while the viscous, white fluid slugged into a spoon. The baby took it and stopped crying. When the one spoon was finished he gave it another, and so on until ten had been slobbered up by the greedy lips.

After that the baby was quiet and Tsotsi took a rest. He took it standing up at the window, first taking down the piece of wood, and then resting there with his elbows sticking out. It was well into the afternoon now. He knew that if the others, meaning Butcher and Die Aap, were going to come to him for another job, it would be soon and if he wasn’t careful he would be caught with the baby. He studied the street. It was the right time to do something. It was the Saturday afternoon lull, with most people indoors or sleeping or sipping away the hot hours until the time was long with shadows and the first rhythm of night began to trouble the blood. His problem was the baby in the box, in his room, where it couldn’t stay.

Two men, the one with a guitar and an idle hand dropping warm chords as they talked, passed his window. Tsotsi had forged the first link in the reasoning out of his problem. He felt better. It must go some place else. That was even better. He felt good finding things a little clearer. Now where? Where could he take the shoebox? Soekie? Shit! She’d be just full of questions.

‘Where man?’

‘By Bluegumtrees.’

‘By Bluegumtrees?’

‘Ja man.’

‘But why man?’—and how did he answer that. Ja, why? Himself asking himself now. Why? He turned and looked back at the baby.

No time for that now. The question was where. Where could he take it.

Tsotsi was still at the window, trying to think and finding it hard, when a group of men, laughing in their bare feet and dusty, khaki clothes, appeared at a corner and turned into the street. They were one of the demolition squads, busy each day now as they broke down doors and windows and tore off the roofs of a few more houses so that no more people would come into the township. They were being carted away in lorries to some other place, so that one day the township itself would be no more. Seeing them, Tsotsi had the solution to his problems.