Josias fed the dogs their meat, that was another task he had, then he’d sit on his chair, his wooden chair, next to the laundry lines, smoking a cigarette. My mother visiting had once complained that the dogs’ bowls were dirty and with flies, she had gone out to the backyard to call Emily.

Your Josias is very lazy you know, she said.

I didn’t care, didn’t care about things like that. I thought of Josias, as I say, as a peaceful person, and graceful, in his ways. But I am speaking about his temperament, which I could see, I have no idea what went on behind that, in his mind. Whom he loved, who loved him, what he had left behind, in the Transkei. I don’t know.

The new maid had told us her name was Tiny. The name struck me right away, she wasn’t small. And, like Emily and Josias, she looms large, gigantic, in my mind. Even now.

ONE DAY EARLY that year Howard came home from work and told me he had a problem. We were going to bed, I was reading, my lamp on, and he had come in from his study. He’d been working late.

Jack Benator knows a lawyer who must go underground, Howard said. (Jack was Howard’s colleague.) This lawyer’s a fine man, he’s working for the resistance, Jack wants to help him, Howard said. I felt a stab of pride. Howard, who believed in the resistance, as I did.

The guy needs somewhere to stay, Howard said, for a short while. Until they find him a permanent place. We can fix up the garden room near your studio.

Howard was thinking of an old room, a small stone structure at the end of our garden. It had a tiny bathroom, never used. Perhaps it had been built as a pool change-room at one time, I don’t know. We used it only as a storeroom.

What are you talking about, I said. I felt alarmed. It sounded ridiculous. It was, on the face of it, ridiculous. We argued about it for several days, always at night, in our bedroom.

Howard said it wouldn’t bother us, we didn’t even know the man. We would be kept out of it, he would just be using an old room we had. The security police likely had no idea where this man was, if they even knew about him in the first place.

I thought Howard was going too far, much too far. I became angry with him and he was angry with me.

Howard and I didn’t often argue.

Then I thought: that room is hidden, nobody goes there, or anywhere near. I suppose it’s alright for a few weeks, it’s a small thing, and it’s temporary. That’s what I remember, what I remember thinking.

And Howard was determined. Someone had asked him to help, and he said he would. That’s how Howard was, always was.

I suppose you could say I capitulated.

WE HAD JOSIAS move an old iron bed into the room. I had bedding, sheets and towels, a pillow. A blanket, I put them all there. Josias had cleaned the bathroom with its tub and toilet. I ran the tap to check the water. It came out in spurts, the pipes long unused, but then it flowed smoothly, and I knew it was fine. I put bathroom tissue, some bars of soap, how I remember them, stacked in a small tower on the sill. Howard had remembered an old bar fridge we had in our garage, Josias carried it down in his barrow, I watched him wheel it down to the room, I was watching through my bedroom window. An image that returns and returns: Josias, lean Josias, crookedly wheeling his barrow with the old white fridge atop, down the grass, down the hill, to the trees. And then: invisible. You couldn’t see the stone room from the house.