There was nothing for Boston to do but crawl across to the trousers. It took a long time and when he reached them he was crying. Every move had brought its own individual wave of pain. He rested, and then began the even more difficult, more excruciating job of getting the trousers on. The little boy came back with his hoop while he was busy, standing a safe distance away to watch him with the same expressionless intensity.

Boston staggered down the alleyway. Where am I going? he asked himself once. It doesn’t matter, he thought. Nothing matters now. Not a single thing. He had seen his body and felt his face. He had remembered Tsotsi. There’s nothing left. It’s all finished now. At last. Every single bloody thing is finished. He felt like saying goodbye to the earth, and the sky, and the sun. If there had been a tree nearby he would have shaken its hand. He was convinced it was all utterly finished.

‘He won’t come,’ Butcher said, bending forward to pick up a few stones, which he started throwing at a lamp-post.

‘He will,’ said Die Aap. They were lounging about on the pavement outside Tsotsi’s room.

‘Anyway, I don’t care,’ Butcher added.

‘Same here,’ said Die Aap.

This had been going on for a long time. The trouble was neither of them knew what to think about the fight at Soekie’s last night, whether or not Tsotsi had included them in his attack on Boston. They had been discussing the matter ever since. Did it mean, for example, that the gang was finished or just Boston. He certainly was. He was more finished than anything they had ever seen. He was so finished he was almost dead. Soekie hadn’t been able to help.

‘I heard nothing I tell you. Just all of a sudden-like Boston cries.’

‘What was Tsotsi doing?’

‘Kicking him.’

‘What’s he say?’

‘Who?’

‘Tsotsi!’

‘Nothing.’

‘And Boston?’

‘He was crying man, like I tell you.’

They hadn’t worried much about it then because the day was finished, a job done, they had drunk a lot and taken a woman. Soon they would sleep. It emerged as a real problem the next day when they awoke. Time always posed the same question: What can I do with it? Your only escape from this predicament lay in a gang because that had a leader and he decided what to do. For a long time they had been following Tsotsi in this way. The prospect of getting through a whole day without him was unsettling. They discussed the matter, sitting in the morning sun.

‘So what you say?’ asked Butcher.

‘He didn’t say nothing to us,’ said Die Aap.

‘So?’

‘So I don’t know,’ said Die Aap.

‘He was finished all right.’

‘Who?’

‘Boston man!’

‘Truly.’

‘So do you think he wants us?’ Butcher waited. ‘Speak man!’

‘I don’t know,’ said Die Aap unhappily, ‘I tell you I don’t know man.’

They drifted in this style through the day, through the streets, stopping for a drink, there for dice, somewhere else for something to eat, pulled on by gravity of habit and dependence so that around the middle of the afternoon, almost you might say by accident, since they were so free of a conscious purpose, they found themselves outside Tsotsi’s room. They waited a long time, lounging around on the pavement.