Zokho stretched out her hands and inched forward.

‘Warm.’

She took tiny steps towards the folded clothes, and seconds later had the pipe in her hand.

‘How did you find it so quickly? I just put it there.’

‘I can smell.’ She took off the blindfold, laughing. ‘Your turn.’

The blindfold slipped over his eyes and he stood for a moment trying to sniff out the position of the pipe. What he didn’t know was that Zokho had rubbed a few grains of the tobacco on her palm and was waving it in front of him.

He stepped forward.

‘Warm.’

Another step.

‘Very warm.’

He stretched out his arms and bumped into her.

‘Very, very warm.’

He came forward some more and was almost on top of her.

‘You’re in the way, Zokho.’

‘No. You are very, very warm.’

He stopped.

‘Zokho?’

‘Yes?’

‘Is it on you?’

‘Yes.’

His hand encountered a naked shoulder.

‘Where’s your dress?’

‘You want to lose the game, Roff?’

‘What kind of game is this?’

‘It’s a game boys play with girls. Don’t be scared.’

Then they were up against each other and he felt her breast brush his hand.

‘Zokho!’

‘It’s all right to taste them.’

Roeloff felt the blood rush down to his groin. With the blindfold still over his eyes, his hands fumbled with the front of her dress, trying to get it off.

Then the back door opened and Willem Kloot, kicking the mud off his boots, stepped inside with David behind him. A grizzly giant of a man, he shook the rain from his hair, slapping his hat against the side of his leg. With two steps he had Roeloff by the neck and was pulling him off the girl.

‘What’s going on?’

Zokho folded her arms in front of her, trying not to look at the grootbaas and his older son staring open-mouthed at her.

Roeloff waited for his father’s anger to erupt. He was glad he was still in his clothes.

‘You want to stick yourself into a bosjesman?’ Willem Kloot shouted. ‘Your behind’s itching, is it?’

‘No, Pa.’

Willem punched him and Roeloff slammed into the trestle table, his head hitting a ledge in the wall, toppling mugs and tin plates and the bread pans of rising dough down on him as he fell to the floor.

‘This is what you do when I’m away? Act like an animal? And with a servant! Are you one of them? Tell me!’

Roeloff’s head hurt, and he held up his arms to protect it.

‘I’m talking to you! Get up!’

Roeloff got to his knees and Willem booted him in the small of his back, pushing him down again.

‘You want a bosjesman? Is that it? Go sleep outside and take your food with them, then, and don’t come back into this house! And you,’ Willem turned to Zokho, ‘you will not work in this kitchen again, you’ll work with the others outside!’ And he took them both by the neck and pushed them out through the door.

Roeloff stood in the rain, watching the door close in his face. Zokho’s dress was still on the kitchen floor, and she ran naked into the darkness. He looked about him. What was he to do now? Barefooted, cold, the rain drumming down on his head? Oupa Harman wouldn’t have allowed his father to do this but he hadn’t even woken up with the commotion. And how would Roeloff face him? The others? What would he say? Tomorrow everyone would know his sin. A chuckle behind him made him turn.

‘Ttt, ttt, ttt,’ Twa sniggered from his doorway where he squatted, warming his hands over the fire. ‘What did you do now?’

Roeloff looked at the Bushman laughing at him. He walked over.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing? Come, sit with me at my fire.’

‘My father just threw me out in the rain. Your fire won’t make me forget.’

‘You don’t know that. I have tabak, that makes you forget anything. And many stories. I haven’t told you yet about the day the men came on their horses to our camp. I saved that for when you’re big.’

‘I don’t feel very big.’

Twa looked at him slyly over his foul-smelling pipe. ‘What you did in there with Zokho, that is big.’