Ten shillings it was, mostly in pennies with a few tickeys and one sixpence. To be exact it was nine shillings and sixpence because when he had sorted it out, being a neat man, there were seven shilling lots of pennies, two lots of four tickeys each and one sixpence, all in a row before him. He realized he’d made a mistake in letting it accumulate. It was difficult to get rid of when there was so much. If he started throwing the pennies and tickeys and one sixpence into the street, it would attract attention even at that hour. They might think him mad or take him away or do something equally terrible. So what was he to do? Leave it? Yes. Right. Just leave it and not look back. Fine. He would go somewhere. Where? Somewhere. But where? Not the eating house because he didn’t have any money for bread, let alone the butter for his hands.

Nine shillings and sixpence in pennies, tickeys and one sixpence. It wasn’t a long struggle. Maybe half an hour later, so short it had been, he started down the street which was coming alive with lights and people, dragging himself and the extra weight of the despised money, despising himself for having taken it.

Once lost, that battle was never fought again. The next day he was back at that corner and the days after at others, some better, some worse, until he knew them all. The character of each he learnt was different, and their times too. There was one which he sometimes worked late at night to catch the crowds from the bioscopes. The same one was useless during the day, while the one near the market was only good for an early hour. Together with this there were other things he had to learn, like choosing one spot and sticking to it, no matter how bad it seemed to be. At first he sometimes wore himself out trying one place after another, and ending up with sore hands and little money.

When all this knowledge had been acquired, Morris Tshabalala never went hungry again and always had money for butter until his hands no longer needed it, so it went on his bread instead. But there was one part of him that starved until death, and that was his pride. Although he filled his life and mind with the word ‘man’, he doubted it and this doubt, working slow, taking its time in the years, the six of them, had bred bitterness inwardly. His cup was flowing over.

‘I tell you anyman, anyman I tell you—I tell go to hell Mister. Go to hell and cook for your black sins.’

But there was no man in his world to tell this to. Even when he threw back his head and shouted it up at them they were too far to hear. They only smiled and sometimes called him Little Father, Little Baba, which was that word in his own language. Even the children, the youngest of them, those who had just discovered their legs, stood taller than Morris Tshabalala.