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three—one. Do you understand that, or is it too difficult to understand?’ K looked away. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, not knowing what else to say, and returned to the yard.
    The suitcase was with his mother. He had no money save the change from the previous evening’s meal. He bought a doughnut and drank from a tap. He took a walk about the streets, kicking his feet in the sea of dry leaves on the pavement. Finding a park, he sat on a bench staring up through the bare branches at the pale blue sky. A squirrel chattered at him and he started. Suddenly anxious that the cart might have been stolen, he rushed back to the hospital. The cart was where he had left it in the parking lot. He removed the blankets and cushions and stove but then did not know where to hide them.
    At six he saw the nurses from the day shift leave and felt free to sneak back. His mother was not in the corridor. At the desk he asked where to find her and was sent to a remote wing of the hospital where no one knew what he was talking about. He returned to the desk and was told to come back in the morning. He asked whether he might spend the night on one of the benches in the hall and was refused.
    He slept in the alley with his head in a cardboard box. He had a dream: his mother came visiting him in Huis Norenius, bringing a parcel of food. ‘The cart is too slow,’ she said in the dream—‘Prince Albert is coming to fetch me.’ The parcel was curiouslylight. He awoke so cold that he could barely straighten his legs. Far away a clock tolled three or perhaps four. Stars shone on him out of a clear sky. He was surprised that the dream had not left him upset. With a blanket wrapped around him he first paced up and down the alley, then wandered out along the street peering into the dim shop windows where behind diamond grillework mannequins displayed spring fashions.
    When at last he was allowed into the hospital he found his mother in the women’s ward wearing no longer her black coat but a white hospital smock. She lay with her eyes closed and the familiar tube up her nose. Her mouth sagged, her face was pinched, even the skin of her arms seemed to have wrinkled. He squeezed her hand but met with no response. There were four rows of beds in the ward with no more than a one-foot space between them; there was nowhere to sit.
    At eleven o’clock an orderly brought tea and left a cup at his mother’s bedside with a biscuit in the saucer. Michael raised her head and held the cup to her lips but she would not drink. For a long while he waited as his stomach rumbled and the tea grew cold. Then, with the orderly about to return, he gulped down the tea and swallowed the biscuit.
    He inspected the charts at the foot of the bed but could not make out whether they referred to his mother or someone else.
    In the corridor he stopped a man in a white coat and asked for work. ‘I don’t want money,’ he said, ‘just something to do. Sweep the floor or something like that. Clean the garden.’ ‘Go and ask at the office downstairs,’ said the man, and pushed past him. K could not find the right office.
    A man in the hospital yard fell into conversation with him. ‘You here for stitches?’ he enquired. K shook his head. The man looked critically at his face. Then he told a long story of a tractor that had toppled over on him, crushing his leg and breaking his hip, and of the pins the doctors had inserted in his bones, silver pins that would never rust. He walked with a curiously angledaluminium stick. ‘You don’t know where I could get something to eat,’ asked K. ‘I haven’t eaten since yesterday.’ ‘Man,’ said the man, ‘why don’t you go and get us both a pie,’ and passed K a one-rand coin. K went to the bakery and brought back two hot chicken pies. He sat beside his friend on the bench and ate. The pie was so delicious that tears came to his eyes. The man told him of his sister’s uncontrollable fits of shaking. K listened to the birds in