‘Friend,’ the voice was saying. ‘You didn’t hear me.’

‘I was thinking,’ Morris said.

‘Not now. I mean at the corner.’ It was the thin, sad- voiced man. He put a penny down on the chair beside Morris’s coffee. He sat down at a table, but in such a way that he could still see the cripple.

‘You left it behind. I called you but you didn’t hear. I threw it but you let it roll away into the gutter.’ He took a greedy mouthful of bread dipped in the soup. ‘A penny buys a box of matches. One penny and you can set the world on fire.’ Newspaper headlines had given him a bent
for the bold, dramatic touch.

Morris picked up the coin and looked at it.

The newspaper seller watched him and when he had swallowed what was in his mouth he spoke again. ‘People will kill for a penny,’ and then, as if replying to his own statement: ‘There is nothing that somebody won’t do.’

Morris put the penny away in a linen tobacco bag with his other money, and then told the man about the tsotsi who had followed him.

The thin one threw down the crust of his last slice of bread, lit a cigarette and listened in silence. He had large, sorrowful eyes. The sockets were wrinkled underneath as if by the weight of the eyeballs.

‘They’re dogs,’ he said when Morris had finished, ‘mad dogs. They bite their own people.’

‘If I had my sticks,’ Morris said, ‘and I was a man, I would have killed him.’

The news vendor shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t help. Man dies in back street fight. One arrest. They’d hang you. It always happens. They always hang somebody.’

‘So what does a man do?’ Morris asked.

The thin one stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Go home and pray to God on the way and thank God when you get there and don’t see nothing. There was a story once. It wasn’t my business. Man denies responsibility. That’s us.’ He said goodnight and left.

Morris finished what was left of his coffee, then went to the door. The street was almost empty. He could see no sign of the tsotsi.

Da Souza came behind him and looked over his head. He yawned and stretched. ‘Tomorrow,’ he grumbled. ‘Tomorrow and yesterday. Hell!’ He blew his nose in a handkerchief. ‘It’s finished. Today is finished. I’m closing.’

With a sharp twist of fear Morris heard the door slam behind him and the bolts rattle home. He had been safe inside. Now he was in the street again. Still he could see no sign of the man, and like the thin one said you had to go home. There was nothing else to do, so he moved off. For some months now ‘home’ had been a derelict signalman’s hut beside the railway line that some years ago had been used to carry goods to and from the factories in this area. It was no longer in use and would be torn up one fine day. Morris realized this but wasn’t overworried. His first months in the city had taught him that there was a never- ending collection of places to sleep. He’d already had half a dozen homes.