‘Sunshine,’ he said. ‘Sunshine in stones. The warm stones of the streets. I felt it tonight at the end of the day. I must feel it tomorrow. If my hands don’t feel I’ll make a hole in my trousers and sit with my soft bum to feel, or lay my face on the ground. There is also…’

‘What is there also?’ Tsotsi asked. He was also trembling now with excitement. He didn’t understand the outward meaning of the words. He didn’t need to. Their intimacy at that moment was of so fine a nature that the excitement, the wonder of the cripple broke through the personal context of his words and touched Tsotsi.

‘Rain. Falling down. And wind blowing, and trees growing, and the colour of things, and the streets where I have heard birds sing. Do you understand now? I want to live. Do you understand?’

‘Yes man. I’m telling you all the time I’m feeling with you.’

‘Why do you have to kill me, tsotsi?’

Tsotsi took an eternity to reply, or so it seemed to the man beneath him. And even when he did speak, the pauses between the words were so long it seemed men could be born and live and die in them.

‘I don’t have to.’ This meant nothing to Morris Tshabalala until the young man said it again. ‘I don’t have to.’

Then Tsotsi stood up, and with something like a laugh he walked a little distance away where he stood for a long time with his hands on his hips.

Tsotsi did not go back to his perch on the wall, but like the other man sat down with his back to it a distance away in the darkness. He said it for the third time: ‘I don’t have to. It is over, beggar. I let you live.’

‘How old are you, tsotsi?’ Morris Tshabalala asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied truthfully. ‘But I will find out.’

Morris Tshabalala tried hard to see him, but because of the darkness there was only the shape of a man. He tried to remember what he had seen of him in the streets where there had been light, but all he could picture was his own terror. I must give him something, he thought. I must give this strange and terrible night something back for all it has given me. With the instinct of his kind, he turned to beauty and gave back the most beautiful thing he knew.

‘Mothers love their children. I know. I remember. They sing us songs when we are small. I’m telling you, tsotsi. Mothers love their children.’

After this there was silence for the words to register and make their meaning, for Tsotsi to stand up and say in reply: ‘They don’t. I’m telling you, I know they don’t,’ and then he walked away.

He looked back. The cripple had crawled away to the lamp-post where the money was scattered and he was picking up what he could find.