‘Where is Butcher?’

‘Gone. He won’t come.’ Die Aap was resting his chin on the windowsill. His head bobbed as he spoke. ‘But I did.’

Tsotsi considered this. Butcher gone. Boston gone. The gang finished. Just like that. Finished. Himself thinking it just like that. One word. Finished. What now? Another gang? Could there be another one? Why not…Since the river…But what about before the river?

‘He was fed up about Saturday,’ Die Aap continued. ‘He said you done a job alone.’ Saturday night and the cripple. ‘We come here on Sunday morning but you wasn’t here.’ Sunday morning and the ants. ‘We come back in the afternoon but we heard a woman here.’ The woman who had fed the baby.

‘Ja. Maybe you did!’ Tsotsi said suddenly. ‘Maybe there was a woman here. Maybe I done a job alone. So what?’

‘That’s what I tell him Tsotsi. All along I been saying maybe. And when he says this morning to let us go join up with Buster and his boys I says maybe but he finds a bloody long word man and goes.’

‘So what are you doing here?’

‘I come here.’

‘Why don’t you go with him?’

‘Two years Tsotsi.’

‘What’s two years?’

‘We been together.’

Tsotsi looked at Die Aap. He blinked a few times as if that would clear his vision of habit, of the muzziness that came from seeing the same thing so much until you saw it no more. Two years and he’s got no front teeth and…two years…strong…the strongest…two years he stayed and followed me like a dog follows a man.

‘So we start again Tsotsi, hey man. It was like this then. So now we find a couple of others and we start again and…’

The baby started crying.

For a moment Die Aap was fooled and he looked back over his shoulder. Then he realized the sound was coming from the room, from under the bed on which Tsotsi was sitting. He opened his mouth to say something and then realized that Tsotsi hadn’t moved when it started, hadn’t even registered that he’d heard the sound. Just sitting there watching him. Die Aap closed his mouth, and pretended he hadn’t heard a thing.

It cried for a few minutes. Die Aap tried to whistle again; looked up at the ceiling, the floor; then all the walls. Tsotsi was thinking, start again, since the river…but what about before the river?

The baby stopped suddenly. ‘No Aap. You’re wrong. We don’t start again.’

‘No.’

‘It’s finished.’

‘Me…’

‘Finished man. Like breakfast, or yesterday or Boston. Finished cold.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘Go.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Okay.’

He waited a few minutes longer and in that time they stared at each other. Once more Die Aap tried to whistle, but failed.

Then he left, neither having said another word. Tsotsi went to the window and watched him walk down the street. He looks drunk, he thought. He walks drunk. What do I care? He had said finished. What did that mean? What was finished, like breakfast and yesterday and Boston? Maybe he was dead. Jesus, what about Boston—maybe he, Tsotsi, would be too late. Wait, wait man. His time is coming, is near. Finished?…with songs? What else was there? What else had there ever been? Only one day a long, long time ago before the river. But what the hell was finished! He had said it, he had said it himself.