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'Michiel doesn't know we went to Merweville. I didn't tell him.'

He tries one last time to start the engine. When he turns the key there is a dull click. The battery is flat.

She gets out and, at a decent distance, relieves her bladder. A thin wind has come up. It is cold and is going to be colder. There is nothing in the truck with which to cover themselves, not even a tarpaulin. If they are going to wait out the night, they are going to have to do so huddled in the cab. And then, when they get back to the farm, they are going to have to explain themselves.

She is not yet miserable; she is still removed enough from their situation to find it grimly amusing. But that will soon change. They have nothing to eat, nothing even to drink save water from the can, which smells of petrol. Cold and hunger are going to gnaw away at her fragile good humour. Sleeplessness too, in due course.

She winds the window shut. 'Shall we just forget,' she says, 'that we are a man and a woman, and not be too embarrassed to keep each other warm? Because otherwise we are going to freeze.'

In the thirty-odd years they have known each other they have now and then kissed, in the way that cousins kiss, that is to say, on the cheek. They have embraced too. But tonight an intimacy of quite another order is on the cards. Somehow, on this hard seat, with the gear lever uncomfortably in the way, they are going to have to lie together, or slump together, give warmth to each other. If God is kind and they manage to fall asleep, they may in addition have to suffer the humiliation of snoring or being snored upon. What a test! What a trial!

'And tomorrow,' she says, allowing herself a single acid moment, 'when we get back to civilization, maybe you can arrange to have this truck fixed properly. There is a good mechanic at Leeuw Gamka. Michiel uses him. Just a friendly suggestion.'

'I am sorry. The fault is mine. I try to do things myself when I ought really to leave them to more competent hands. It's because of the country we live in.'

'The country we live in? Why is it the country's fault that your truck keeps breaking down?'

'Because of our long history of making other people do our work for us while we sit in the shade and watch.'

So that is the reason why they are here in the cold and the dark waiting for some passer-by to rescue them. To make a point, namely that white folk should do their own car repairs. How comical.

'The mechanic in Leeuw Gamka is white,' she says. 'I am not suggesting that you take your car to a Native.' She would like to add: If you want to do your own repairs, for God's sake take a course in auto maintenance first. But she holds her tongue. 'What other kind of work do you insist on doing,' she says instead, 'besides fixing cars?' Besides fixing cars and writing poems.

'I do garden work. I do repairs around the house. I am at present re-laying the drainage. It may seem funny to you but to me it is not a joke. I am making a gesture. I am trying to break the taboo on manual labour.'

'The taboo?'

'Yes. Just as in India it is taboo for upper-caste people to clean up – what shall we call it? – human waste, so, in this country, if a white man touches a pickaxe or a spade he at once becomes unclean.'

'What nonsense you talk! That is simply not true! It's just anti-white prejudice!'

She regrets the words as soon as she has spoken them. She has gone too far, driven him into a corner. Now she is going to have this man's resentment to cope with, on top of the boredom and the cold.

'But I can see your point,' she goes on, helping him out, since he doesn't seem able to help himself. 'You are right in one sense: we have become too used to keeping our hands clean, our white hands. We should be more ready to dirty our hands. I couldn't agree more. End of subject. Are you sleepy yet? I'm not. I have a suggestion. To pass the time,why don't we tell each other stories.'

'You tell a story,'