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the trees and tried to remember when he had known such happiness.
    He spent an hour at his mother’s bedside in the afternoon and another hour in the evening. Her face was grey, her breathing barely detectable. Once her jaw moved: fascinated, K watched the string of saliva between her withered lips shorten and lengthen. She seemed to be whispering something, but he could not make out what. The nurse who asked him to leave told him she was under sedation. ‘What for?’ asked K. He stole his mother’s tea and that of the old woman in the next bed, gulping it down like a guilty dog while the orderly’s back was turned.
    When he went back to his alley he found that the cardboard boxes had been cleared away. He spent the night in a doorway recessed from the street. A brass plate above his head read: LE ROUX & HATTINGH—PROKUREURS . He woke when the police cruised past but soon fell asleep again. It was not as cold as on the previous night.
    His mother’s bed was occupied by a strange woman whose head was wrapped in bandages. K stood at the foot of the bed and stared. Perhaps I am in the wrong ward, he thought. He stopped a nurse. ‘My mother—she was here yesterday …’ ‘Ask at the desk,’ said the nurse.
    ‘Your mother passed away during the night,’ the woman doctor told him. ‘We did what we could to keep her, but she was very weak. We wanted to contact you but you didn’t leave a number.’
    He sat down on a chair in the corner.
    ‘Do you want to make a phone call?’ said the doctor.
    This was evidently a code for something, he did not know what. He shook his head.
    Someone brought him a cup of tea, which he drank. People hovering over him made him nervous. He clasped his hands and stared hard at his feet. Was he expected to say something? He separated his hands and clasped them, over and over.
    They took him downstairs to see his mother. She lay with her arms at her sides, still wearing the smock with the legend KPACPA on the breast. The tube was gone. For a while he looked at her; then he no longer knew where to look.
    ‘Are there other relatives?’ asked the nurse at the desk. ‘Do you want to phone them? Do you want us to phone them?’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said K, and went and sat again on his chair in the corner. After that he was left alone, till at midday a tray of hospital food appeared, which he ate.
    He was still sitting in the corner when a man in a suit and tie came to speak to him. What had been his mother’s name, age, place of abode, religious denomination? What had her business been in Stellenbosch? Did K have her travel documents? ‘I was taking her home,’ replied K. ‘It was cold where she lived in Cape Town, it was raining all the time, it was bad for her health. I was taking her to a place where she could get better. We did not plan to stop in Stellenbosch.’ Then he began to fear he was giving away too much, and would answer no more questions. The man gave up and went away. After a while he came back, squatted in front of K, and asked: ‘Have you yourself ever spent time in an asylum or institution for the handicapped or place of shelter? Have you ever held paid employment?’ K would not answer. ‘Sign your name here,’ said the man, and held out a paper, pointing to the space. When K shook his head the man signed the paper himself.
    The shifts changed, and K wandered out into the parking lot. He walked about and looked up into the clear night sky. Then he returned to his chair against the wall. He was not told to leave.Later, when there was no one about, he went downstairs to look for his mother. He could not find her, or else the door that led to her was locked. He climbed into a great wire cage containing soiled linen and slept there, curled up like a cat.
    The second day after his mother’s death a nurse he had never seen appeared before him. ‘Come, it is time to go now, Michael,’ she said. He followed her to the desk in the hall. The suitcase was waiting for