Whatever else you could say or see about him, Morris Tshabalala was not afraid. That is why, when the foot came down on his hand on the pavement of Terminal Place, he had no hesitation in saying in anger: ‘Whelp of a yellow bitch!’

It wasn’t because of the pain. His hands were hard now, his fingers had forgotten their disgust of the gobs of phlegm or dog piss because they no longer felt them. It was the insult of the foot that stung him. It meant he had been seen and nothing provoked so easily to life the harsh and bitter truth about himself. No one found half a man as meaningless as Morris Tshabalala himself.

‘Whelp of a yellow bitch!’ he cried when the foot came down. ‘Can’t you look where you go!’

Usually they shook their heads and stepped aside. Some even commiserated, calling him Little Father. ‘Little Father,’ they said, ‘forgive me. But I did not see you’— which only made matters worse.

But this time it was different. The man said nothing and he didn’t move, not even to smile or scowl. He simply remained standing in front of the cripple on the pavement. Finding his way still blocked, Morris Tshabalala threw back his head to swear again. But he didn’t. He was moved to caution. Something in the eyes looking down at him, as remote as mountain peaks, as cold, as sheer with threat, made him keep his peace. He satisfied himself with a grunt, swung his body to the left and carried on his way.

It wasn’t fear. Morris Tshabalala admitted to having known fear only once, and anything that did not add up to the terror of that moment was something else. It was the day the mineshaft collapsed. Day? There was no sun down there, and by the same token it was not night, because there was also no moon. It was altogether another world where time was a length of labour called a shift, and although the men changed, coming and going in helmeted gangs, the work never stopped, and the lights never went out, shining continuously on the damp, dripping sides of the shafts and the gleaming, sweat-wet bodies so that it seemed that everything was compounded of the same elemental stuff. A man was no more than a chunk of the earth that had torn itself away to hack and hammer and blast unceasingly at the body of his mother.

We are moles—they sang.

We are become rats.

The owl is my brother.

The sun is a stranger

And does not know me.

The moon is a shy girl

And has hidden her face.

And dissatisfied wife

Has left my bed.

They heard it in silence because the lights had gone out suddenly and they had stopped singing and working and were standing quite still. They knew it for what it was. Above ground they spoke about it often and those who knew said it sounded like a rumble in the belly of a bull elephant.