LITMIR.BIZ

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whispers to the empty air. He is struck, immobile, by the choice he has made.

      He waits ten minutes before a man approaches, tall and warmed by layers of clothing. Thick glasses take up half his face. Thomas looks at him and tries to find something that he recognises there, an echo or a voice from a long time ago, but there are only the glasses, and the time gone, and the way the man’s head tilts a little to the side. Houses surround them, some brick and some painted bright and some fenced and patrolled by mangy dogs with bright eyes and matted coats. They bark at him before losing interest, distracted by what they scrounge for in the dust.

      The men find each other on the side of the street. The world waits for the night to pass.

      ‘Lucas,’ Thomas holds out his hand. The other takes it warmly in his own, and shakes it.

      ‘Thomas. My god, you’ve grown.’ Both men laugh. ‘Did you have a good journey?’

      ‘All journeys are good,’ Thomas says. ‘Moving is what we’re meant to do. It feels good to be moving again.’

      ‘It depends what we leave behind,’ Lucas replies. ‘And I thought you might have changed your mind.’ The cold takes his words and transforms them into a fine mist: his visible breath. They turn together and walk.

      ‘It’s good to be out of a city, anyway,’ Thomas says. ‘I feel very strange. Excited. I feel everything.’

      ‘This isn’t much of a place. There’s sweet nothing here. Roads and buildings and houses and electricity. These are what we need now.’

      The yellow light lies flat across their path. There is no moon. A woman collapsed in the gutter with an empty bottle beside her greets them with half-closed eyes. Lucas raises a hand in return. A stray cat tiptoes on quick legs, flattens its body and slinks into a stormwater drain. Thomas follows the creature with his eyes and something moves inside him. On the road is a soggy mound that was once an animal of some sort.

      At the corner two girls in jeans with shiny belts and tight shirts lean up against a wall. Three youths loiter beside them, leaning in. The group turn their heads in unison towards the two men. Lucas greets them, but there is no reply. Their attention is caught by the sight of the white man.

      ‘People will know you soon,’ Lucas says. ‘Nobody stays hidden out here for long.’

      ‘This is a big country. And they won’t find anything if nobody’s looking.’

      Lucas laughs. ‘And what you look for most always escapes you.’

      ‘I hope that’s not true for me.’

      ‘So you’re looking for something, Thomas?’

      Thomas tilts his face to the sky. What stars there might have been are diminished to nothing by the light from the ground. ‘We’re always looking for something,’ he says. ‘But right now I’m probably most looking forward to a bed.’

      ‘You could have done it another way, Thomas. A normal person would have got divorced. Sounds easier to me.’

      ‘There was no reason to,’ Thomas says. ‘It’s not about my wife or my work or even my life. I had to do this. I couldn’t stand my life any more.’

      ‘Why? A lot of people would envy you. Would want what your life is. Or what it was.’

      ‘I don’t want anything to follow me any more. We only get one life. I can choose what I want to do with it for myself. Can’t I have that?’

      In silence now, they pass houses and dogs and rickety fences, doorways where old men sit and drink their beer alone while soccer games blare out from second-hand television sets.

      ‘Bafana Bafana aren’t doing so well,’ Lucas says eventually.

      ‘Everything has its day. It all comes and goes.’

      ‘Did you tell anyone?’

      ‘About Bafana Bafana?’

      Lucas smiles.

      ‘Yes. I did tell someone,’ Thomas says ruefully.

      ‘Oh shit, man.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘That was stupid.’

      ‘I told a friend. He’s safe as houses. He’s the only one who knows. He’ll never say a word.’

      Three young women crouch beneath a flickering light and proposition the men as they pass. They titter like small birds amongst themselves.

      ‘You kids, go home and get some sleep,’ Lucas says. ‘I want to see you in school tomorrow.’

      Thomas thinks they are really just tall children, playing dress-up in their mother’s clothes.

      ‘There are some kids at the school who have never been children,’ Lucas tells him. ‘That bigger one, she’s a wild child. But it’s too late for her now.’

      ‘Does she have parents?’

      ‘Both have passed. Now she looks after herself. She still comes to school, and spends most of her nights on the street.’

      ‘What about Social Services? Can’t they do anything?’

      ‘I can make sure she gets an education. Beyond that, I don’t know if anyone really cares. There are a million others out there, just like her.’

      Before they reach the house, Lucas grips the edge of Thomas’s coat with his fingers. ‘I’m scared for you,’ he says. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done, how stupid you’ve been. How will you go back, if you change your mind?’ He blinks as though the world is another place behind those glasses, as if he can see something else. ‘You can’t go back now. You can’t change your mind, Thomas. This is it. You’ve made your bed.’

      ‘There’s nothing to go back to,’ Thomas answers. ‘Life is a forward motion. All the way to death.’

      In the house a pot of stew is simmering on the stove. A woman lifts the lid and ladles the meat and sauce in steaming heaps onto plates. Lucas hangs his coat and hat on a hook behind the door. ‘This is Lumka,’ he says. The woman looks awkward and wipes her hands on her apron. She nods and gazes intently at the stew. She barely glances at Thomas.

      While they are eating, Lucas tells the woman that he’s made up the bed in the spare room. She nods again and raises her eyes to him, but she doesn’t keep them there for long.

      ‘Thanks for having me,’ Thomas says when the meal is over. Lucas takes a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Lumka scrapes the plates one by one into a bowl of waste.

      Outside Lucas offers Thomas a cigarette, angling the soft pack towards him. Thomas shakes his head and Lucas withdraws one for himself from the pack, and puts it to his lips.

      ‘Lumka … your wife. She’s not happy I’m here,’ Thomas says. It is more of a question than a statement though the sentence stays flat.

      Lucas exhales and yawns and rubs his left eye. ‘Change is difficult for everyone. She’ll get used to it,’ he says.

      ‘Does she also teach?’

      ‘No. She trained as a secretary but there are no jobs now. Looking after a house is also a job. I tell her that. She doesn’t really think so. We get by though. Teaching salaries are better than they used to be.’

      ‘Did you always want to be a teacher?’

      ‘Not really.’

      ‘Why then?’

      ‘My mother wanted it. For me and for my brother. For both of us.’ He pats his pocket, finds a lighter and brings a flame to the cigarette. ‘But Xolani wasn’t the type. He was never cut out for teaching.’

      ‘And you were?’

      ‘Xolani was my mother’s golden boy. It became more so after he died. I was always trying

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