He was musing on the bland word “passed.” She was hardly sixty. He had disliked her and doubted her, yet she had been telling the truth.

“Excuse me—did you hear?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to view the body?”

What was the point? And he feared the feelings the sight of his mother might provoke.

“No,” he said, and asked for the body to be sent to Borthwick Mortuary.

In an unexpected turn, Milly and Orlando showed up at the cremation, loudly grieving, and later filed a suit challenging the will, which Sharkey fought off.

When people asked, Sharkey said, “It’s tough—if you’ve been through a divorce and then your mother dies, you know what I mean.”

Yet he was relieved; he’d ridden this wave to the shore, as he had with Sugar. He was unburdened, free to do what he wished. He tried to remember what it was that had impelled him to marry. But he knew the alluring woman he had proposed marriage to did not in the least resemble the unreasonable woman who became his wife—nor could he recall much about the allure. He gave thanks for his freedom, and five months later, just before he went to South Africa, he saw Sugar at the tax office visiting her mother; he was at the Registry of Motor Vehicles across the hall, renewing his driver’s license. He was delighted to see that she was as pretty as ever, forgiving, dressed in a loose blouse. Beaming beautifully, she said, “Hapai”—pregnant. Not married, she said, but was planning to; her fiancé was a policeman—“Dispatch,” she said—in the same building.

“He knows you,” Sugar said. “Your career.”

“Why are you smiling?”

“It’s incredulous.”

South Africa, cold in July, was strange and bleak. The long flight to Jo’burg, the connecting flight to Cape Town, and, as always, he looked for surf when the plane banked toward the city, flying parallel to the coastline and the great granite flat-topped mountain. He’d come alone—none of his friends could afford the trip, though all of them had heard of the waves at Jeffreys Bay.

The taxi driver who took him to his hotel said, “American?” and then, “You’ve got problems with your Blacks too.”

“I live in Hawaii,” Sharkey said.

“I saw that movie,” and then, “Hula-hula.”

“What problems?”

“Not with the Blacks as such,” the man said, “but these whites who want to start trouble. Blacks aren’t the problem. The whites who stir things up are the problem. All Blacks want is a push-bike and a little rondavel to raise their kids. What do they know about voting? They never had a vote. They obey the chief.” Then he stopped at a red light and looked around. “And by the way, you want to stay out of this area—it’s all Blacks and coloreds mixed in.”

“What is this area?”

“District Six.”