With his third or fourth poem for the superintendent, Lomba began to send Janice cryptic messages. She seemed to possess an insatiable appetite for love poems. Every day a warder came to the cell, in the evening, with the same request from the superintendent: ‘The poem.’ When he finally ran out of original poems, Lomba began to plagiarize the masters from memory. Here are the opening lines of one:

Janice, your beauty is to me

Like those treasures of gold…

I wonder, my heart, what you and I

Did till we loved…

Another one starts:

But it was Lomba’s bowdlerization of Sappho’s ‘Ode’ that brought the superintendent to the cell door:

A peer of goddesses she seems to me

The lady who sits over against me

Face to face,

Listening to the sweet tones of my voice,

And the loveliness of my laughing.

It is this that sets my heart fluttering

In my chest,

For if I gaze on you but for a little while

I am no longer master of my voice,

And my tongue lies useless

And a delicate flame runs over my skin

No more do I see with my eyes;

The sweat pours down me

I am all seized with trembling

And I grow paler than the grass

My strength fails me

And I seem little short of dying.

He came to the cell door less than twenty minutes after the poem had reached him, waving the paper in the air, a real smile splitting his granite face.

‘Lomba, come out!’ he hollered through the iron bars. Lomba was lying on his wafer-thin mattress, on his back, trying to imagine figures out of the rain designs on the ceiling. The door officer hastily threw open the door.

The superintendent threw a friendly arm over Lomba’s shoulders. He was unable to stand still. He walked Lomba up and down the grassy courtyard.

‘This poem. Excellent. With this poem. After. I’ll ask her for marriage.’ He was incoherent in his excitement. He raised the paper and read aloud the first line, straining his eyes in the dying light: ‘ “A peer of goddesses she seems to me”. Yes. Excellent. She will be happy. Do you think I should ask her for. Marriage. Today?’

He stood before Lomba, bent forward expectantly, his legs planted in their characteristic A formation.

‘Why not?’ Lomba answered. A passing warder stared at the superintendent and the prisoner curiously. Twilight fell dully on the broken bottles studded in the concrete of the prison wall.

‘Yes. Why not. Good.’ The superintendent walked up and down, his hands clasped behind him, his head bowed in thought. Finally, he stopped before Lomba and declared gravely: ‘Tonight. I’ll ask her.’

Lomba smiled at him, sadly. The superintendent saw the smile; he did not see the sadness.

‘Good. You are happy. I am happy too. I’ll send you a packet of cigarettes. Two packets. Today. Enjoy. Now go back inside.’