His salvation was announced by a blare of impatient hooters and it came in the form of an old decrepit car that had stalled a little way down the busy street. It was streaked with dust, strapped high with baggage and crowded, mostly with women it seemed, because only two men got out to push. They got as far as the corner, much slower in this than Morris Tshabalala, and there after cursing and a lot of fist- shaking together with the laughing from the women who were hiding their heads they managed to turn it into the side street. The other cars, the ones with the loud hooters, ground their gears with impatience and roared away, shouting at the car that had stalled and getting it back in good measure. The two men took off their coats and looked down the street.

‘Hell Piet!’

‘Ja Stefanus.’

‘That’s a thing man.’

‘Just like that hey.’

‘Just like that man.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Push man. It’s not far.’

But first they sat down on the back bumper for a cigarette. The one called Stefanus banged on the back window. ‘You laugh now,’ he said, ‘okay. But wait and see,’ whereupon the women burst out laughing again. The men rolled up their sleeves, their cigarettes dangling between their lips.

‘You know what I think it is?’

‘No.’

‘Distribiter.’

‘Yes.’

‘Impatient buggers hey. Strange place this Piet. Look at that poor kaffir there. Shame hey.’

‘Ja Stefanus.’

‘Okay man. Back to work.’

‘Ja.’

And so they pushed, swearing again, panting before long, pausing once, and all of this to the renewed giggles of the women and in time to the slow rhythm of Morris Tshabalala who followed in their wake.

The sidestreet led into another wide thoroughfare which ran diagonally away from the main street. In its way it was just as big and busy, but not as bright. Walking down it you passed through a fringe world of unkempt, squarely-ugly, mostly double-storied buildings whose doorways led off the pavement into darker corridors and cement grey backyards. At ground level there was a host of nondescript little businesses run by whites, Indians and an occasional coloured, all of them existing like small parasites on the lumbering, unconcerned body of Africa. In the rooms above them could be found everything from cast-off white men lying on their beds and staring vacantly at the ceiling to shyster lawyers and pass book racketeers. In the side streets were factories and warehouses. A few of the big hostels for bachelor Africans were also in the neighbourhood. During the day the workers were here in their thousands and at lunch hour they sat about on the pavements, talking sport or politics and playing draughts. When the whistles blew they went back to work until five o’clock when the whistles blew again and they went home, pouring out like ants hurrying about the chaos of a broken heap.

In the Bantu Eating House Morris banged on the front of the counter and called up his order. ‘Dish of soup penny extra’—which meant you got a piece of meat floating in it— ‘and six breads with butter.’ The proprietor, Marcus da Souza, known to his customers as Susa, carried the soup and bread to a chair in a corner which Morris used as his table. Sometimes he teased the cripple.