‘He’s too dirty!’ Miriam cried.

‘Then clean him,’ Tsotsi said savagely. ‘Clean him and feed him.’

When she still hesitated, he took out his knife and gave her one last chance.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now. Or I go back for yours.’

Miriam fought down her disgust and went to work. She washed the baby in a basin of water, which he provided, and when that was finished wrapped him up as best she could in the rags which came out of Tsotsi’s clothes box in the corner. Once the baby was washed and cleaned, her first revulsion for him was passed, but there still remained the feeding. There was no point in delaying it. Closing her eyes, and cradling the baby on her lap, she put her nipple into his mouth. Her breasts were dry when he started sucking, but she knew enough to wait patiently and let him continue.

With the first pull of his greedy mouth on the nipple a sudden wave of erotic feeling passed through her body. With an imperceptible movement her thighs relaxed. If Tsotsi had meant what she had first thought to be his intentions and had taken her at that moment, she wouldn’t have fought him for long. The baby had had that effect on her, and before long his alien, rapacious sucking opened the deepest reservoirs of her milk. He drank deeply.

At the end of half an hour Miriam took him away from her second breast with a feeling of tremendous physical fatigue. ‘He has had enough,’ she said quietly.

Tsotsi had been at the window, looking into the street, all that time. He watched her bounce the baby on her lap for a while, rubbing his back, before wrapping him up and putting him down on the bed.

He lay quietly. Very gently, she touched the raw patches around his mouth with her fingertips and looked at Tsotsi enquiringly.

‘Ants,’ he said.

She didn’t seem to understand, so he said it a second time, ‘Ants man, on the wall’, but she didn’t understand or wouldn’t believe him, so he closed his eyes for a few seconds and said nothing more.

Miriam buttoned up her blouse and tucked it into her skirt. She hesitated at the bed, as if uncertain whether to stand up or to stay longer. Again at the door, only a few steps away from the freedom of the street, she hesitated with her hand on the doorknob, looking back at the bed.

‘Where’s his mother?’ she asked.

Tsotsi shrugged his shoulders. He had lost all interest in her now. Miriam stole a quick, searching look at him and then fiddled unnecessarily with her blouse.

‘A bitch,’ she said, ‘a bitch in a backyard would look after its puppies better.’

The words had a strange effect on Tsotsi. He turned slowly away from the window and looked at her with large, frightened eyes. ‘No,’ he whispered.

Miriam thought he said ‘Go.’ She opened the door, then closed it behind her and walked home.