Helena has asked me about that. How many Black men died in mine accidents over the years, do you know, Mom? I don’t know, Helena, I said, but many. And not only in mine accidents, I said. You can find it in books, history books, I told her. She knows that; perhaps she’s spent many hours poring over such books, in that library near Waterbury, where she lives. I think she has.

DRIVING TO VILLIERS, we’d pass Vereeniging, Vanderbijlpark, then we’d see signs for other towns: Sasolburg, Viljoenskroon . . . and then we’d be on the veld.

It stretched, a dun colour, to the sky. We’d pass some signs, now and then, again: Vredefort, Steynsrus, Ventersburg. Some black electricity pylons. Nothing, nothing else, just flatness, as far as you could see.

The names of other towns: Abrahamsrust, Tweeling. I didn’t think the veld beautiful then, but it is beautiful as I think of it now. I thought it was brown and featureless, that’s what I thought.

I never painted the veld. I never painted landscapes much. But you know that.

We’d come upon the river then, the Vaal River. It was a brown river, and very wide, wider than anything I knew. There were pale trees that grew alongside, for many miles, but more often no trees — no green — at all. The highway followed the river, the river’s slow route. Once we drove to Villiers after the river had flooded, it flooded sometimes, when the great rains came. A brown stream, overflowing its banks, breaking its banks, we knew, then, its power.

SUMMER HAD ADVANCED, Joseph in the room for several more weeks, now. I’d still not seen him since the first evening, the first morning.

But my painting had receded further from me, I’d not worked on it.

Eric at the art shop didn’t see me for a while. Or, I didn’t see him. I’d think about him from time to time. Perhaps he was worried about me. Perhaps I’d go in again one day, I thought. But what would I say to him? He genuinely cared about my painting, it would hurt him, too, to hear what had happened, what had happened between me and my painting.

One day on the patio, as I was having lunch and looking down into the trees, thinking of Joseph and his room, invisible there, I thought perhaps I’d go and knock on his door. Perhaps that might make me feel better about everything. Perhaps, after that, I could go into my studio and see my painting again. Start work on it again.

Perhaps Joseph would welcome a visitor.

What possessed me? I don’t know.

I stood up. I started walking down the grass. It was a beautiful day, the trees hung, hung, as they always did, and rustled, just a little, as I walked. I walked down the small hill, I walked in my sandals, I remember the sandals. And then I was there, his room in front of me. I thought then it was a beautiful structure, so plain, its stone grey, a small symmetrical cottage, with two windows that weren’t large, surrounded by deep trees. That’s all.