Jonathan Kaplan, November 2005

1

There had been a silence, as always happened at about the same time, a long silence when none of them moved except maybe to lift up a glass and hold it high over their heads for the dregs to drip into their open mouths, or to yawn and stretch and then slump back into their chairs, when one of them might scratch himself, another consider the voice of the woman in the backyard, the old woman who was scolding, rattling her words like stones in a tin, and all of them in their own time looking at the street outside, and the shadows, wondering if they were not yet long enough. It was not a deliberate silence; there was no reason for it, being at first just the pause between something said and the next remark, but growing from that because they were suddenly all without any more words. It ended, as always happened at about the same time, when the young one, the youngest of the four, the one who had said the least, who had sat there and listened to the other three, the one they called Tsotsi, leant forward and brought his slim, delicate hands together, the fingers interlocking in the manner of prayer. The other three looked up at him and waited.

Before that the one called Boston had been telling his story. Boston always had a story. He started early in the afternoon when they came together in Tsotsi’s room and settled down with the first bottle of beer, telling it from then for a long time, almost to the hour when the shadows were long enough and Tsotsi told them what they would be doing that night. He told it slowly, taking his time, the words coming in an easy rhythm between the swallows of beer, the belches, the bother of opening another bottle and the other interruptions like leaving the room for the backyard where you rested against the hot corrugated iron fence with an outstretched arm and pissed into the sand, and watched it soak up and dry away before you had left the spot. When he got back he would ask, where was I, and sometimes someone remembered and most times no one cared because it wasn’t important. All that mattered was that his voice filled that last reluctant hour of an afternoon that was heavy with the weight of idle hands. They toyed with their glasses, they drew out the wet rings left by the beer bottles into strange patterns on the tabletop, while Boston with a gesture that was becoming habitual rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. It was a strain to be without glasses.

The other two were mostly listeners. Die Aap, so called because of his long arms—his knuckles seemed to drag in the dust—listened attentively to every word. Sometimes he had something to say, or asked a question, and he laboured a lot in finding words and putting them together. The last of the four, the one called Butcher, built like Tsotsi with lithe supple bones, but different in his small, dangerous eyes and his pendulous lower lip, Butcher also listened, but with impatience. Why all the words? His stories were told in ten words or less. But there was nothing else to do except listen.