To reach his present home he had to slip down another side street, and then along the loading bays of a factory. It was poorly lit, the lights were spaced at long intervals, and it was here that he realized that Tsotsi was behind him again. He heard the footsteps and looking back saw him silhouetted in the light of one of the lamps.

To reach the next light Morris Tshabalala had to crawl through a stretch of darkness. It seemed endless.

He looked back repeatedly, expecting to hear the whisper of quick feet any minute. It took so long and took so much of him, not counting the blood from the cracks on his hands, that when he reached the light he smothered his tears and paused for breath, and then finding the brightest spot he took out his money and held it high for the other one to see before putting it down. It lay like a small but lustrous silver spot in the dust.

At the light after that he looked back to see what would happen, and what he saw was more terrifying than anything he had expected. The young man walked up to the heap of coins, looked down at them for a few seconds and then kicked them flying into the darkness. And came on after the cripple, who then started throwing stones. There were plenty lying around and some of them were as big as a man’s fist. Morris Tshabalala had had powerful arms as a full man. Six years of dragging himself through the street had doubled that strength. He threw hard, and with accuracy, stealing a few feet between every throw.

It was a good idea because if he had hit the young man once, it would have been the end of him. As it was, all he succeeded in doing was to make him jump once or twice, and duck when they came hurling towards his head, rebounding harmlessly further down and skipping off into the darkness.

Crawling forward after one such throw, Morris Tshabalala looked back and could see him no more. He knew then that the young man was keeping to the shadows and darkness and that the moment was near.

If I can’t see him, he can hear me—and it was with that thought that he started swearing.

He filled the night with obscenities, roaring them between his tears, throwing the words with even more violence than the stones. He kept it up until his voice cracked and was only a whisper. A few minutes later, a few more feet and he was in the final darkness beyond the last light and he knew that he had come to the moment and the place for which the young one had waited so patiently the whole night.

7

Tsotsi afterwards realized one thing about that night. His mistake was that he let the cripple reach Main Street. He should have taken him after he left Terminal Place. There had been enough time and chances. What is more, he would have had the advantage of complete surprize because the cripple hadn’t realized he was being followed until almost at the end of the deserted street. But instead, and for a reason he could only guess at in terms of what happened later in the night, Tsotsi let him escape into the safety of the bright lights and big crowds. Allowing that to happen was in its way like the bluegum trees. It led to a lot.