Etienne lifted his right foot slightly, and the irregular rumble of the road hammering at the thick tires dropped in tone as the Toyota slowed. The gate had to be around here somewhere. It was hard to tell - one place looked much like another. In front of him the road stretched in a straight line of sienna brown across the khaki colored veld. If the dust that billowed from his wheels were to settle, Etienne knew that he would see the same straight line in his mirror stretching behind him to where the pale blue cloudless sky touched the arid ground. Other than the pounding of the rough road surface, the only evidence of travel was the passing by of the enormous, pear-shaped nests of the weaver birds which hung from the crossbars of the poles that carried the twin telegraph wires from somewhere far away to somewhere else far away. The road, the telegraph wires and the fence, the sagging strands of rusted barbed-wire held up by rough-hewn branches of the scrubby trees that dotted the landscape, were the only signs that man had ever ventured into this desolate land. Everything looked just the same as it had fifteen-odd years before. Here on the southern edge of the Kalahari, Etienne reflected, little had changed in the last fifteen-odd centuries.

He almost missed it. The small cairns of stones that his father had carefully piled to mark the turnoff had become overgrown with the patchy grass that had completely covered the three metres of sand between the berm and fence.

Carefully Etienne steered the Toyota off the road toward the long, iron gate. He cut the engine and opened the door allowing a blast of hot air to engulf him. Walking over to the fence he understood how he had almost missed the entrance: the ubiquitous ants had chewed at the post that held the sign and it had fallen down. He bent and hefted it up, propping the fragile wood against the fence so that the frame with the farm's name welded out of thin iron rods could be seen from the road. Xanadu. The word with its strange spelling had been the name of the farm when his father had purchased it, and the old man had not changed it, even though the dominee, on a parochial visit to his far-flung flock, had said it came from a very sensual poem. "That may be," his father had said after the cleric had left, "but I notice that the dominee has learned all the verses by heart."

The old sign his grandfather had hand-lettered still hung from the top bar of the gate: 'Behandel die hek soos jy jou broeke behandel'. He remembered the gruff old man laughing at his own humor. Treat the gate like you treat your pants. Etienne looked down at his jeans, torn at the knees and stained from travel. 'They must have taken better care of their clothes back then,' he thought as he lifted the rusted chain link off the hook and pushed the protesting barrier open. Gingerly he stomped on the steel bars of the cattle grate to see if they would support the Toyota. They seemed firm, and anyway the ditch underneath it was full of blown sand, so if the bars were to give way, the truck would fall a bare centimetre. He turned, wiped the brown iron dust off his hands onto his jeans, and got back into the vehicle. The parallel iron bars, designed to stop animals from wandering through, held firm, and he edged the vehicle forward in four-wheel drive, the better to traverse the soft sand. He did not stop to close the gate as he would have done before. What was the point? The last sheep had long vanished; the herds of buck accepted back into the wild life of their ancestors.

Slowly he drove along the track to the house. He steered by instinct because the twin ruts had long been reclaimed by the blown sand and natural vegetation, but the regular gap between the witgatbome gave an inkling of where it used to run. Witgat. White hole. The English name was shepherd's tree - maybe because sheep would nibble at its leaves, Etienne was not sure. The English tended to be fanciful when it came to naming things, although the name the Boers had given it, witgat, was hardly less so. Witgat, that was the nickname he had given David when he brought him here, because his buttocks were so pale, unlike Etienne's, which had regularly seen the sun since he was a boy on the farm and, later, in the secluded back garden of his city home.

He followed the level area, skirting the base of the long, rocky ridge, and suddenly the house, totally hidden from the road, came into view. It looked more or less the same as it always had. There was sand all over the stoep now, and the red, corrugated iron roof, having lost much of its paint, now reflected the sunlight off the dull gray of its galvanized metal. Etienne climbed out of the truck, stretched his shoulders, and made his way toward the front steps. He stopped at the bottom, gazing down at the worn stone treads. They looked no different from when he had first seen them. That was the day his father had picked him up from the airport in Upington, just one day after he had finished his matric exams. They had driven several hours across the midday plains in the pickup, and as they traveled, the older man had laid out his dream for their destiny. Here was the future, he explained to his son, a new chance for their family. An opportunity for the de Villiers name to become known in the world again, as it had been before. Hereafter their fortunes would be based on the sheep and antelope which did well in this environment. The market for venison was growing, both in Jo'burg and Cape Town, and now, too, people overseas were starting to show an interest in imported lamb, as their own supplies became strapped due to growing populations and shrinking grazing. Mr. Uys, the new minister of agriculture, had held a meeting in Upington, where he had told the people that farming was vital to South Africa's interests. Farmers, he had said, were as important as soldiers. The government, he assured them, recognized this and would help them with loans and subsidies.

Etienne climbed up the steps to the wide stoep. A lizard, startled by the movement, scampered over the hot sand that, except in scattered places, plek-plek as the Afrikaners say, covered the cement. Every morning he had spent in this house, Etienne had woken to the thrish, thrish sound of a grass broom, wielded by the strong arms of Martha, the Griqua maid, doing battle with the red dust that was always trying to regain its usurped ownership of the land. The stoep was bare of furniture now. Gone was the wooden bankie, its open seat criss-crossed with leather riempies, that had stood to the right of the door and where a fellow farmer, on the infrequent occasions when they might come by, would sit and smoke a pipe with his father, or perhaps, if it were morning, sip a mug of the strong, black coffee they called boeretroos. There had also been a wicker couch, he remembered, with a big square cushion, where sometimes his mother had sat at the end of a long day, watching the sunset, and waiting for the men to come in and wash for dinner. How uncomplicated their life had been. Where ignorance is bliss... Maybe he had been stupid to go to the university. Had he remained here he would have been running this farm now. Instead... With a quick look back to the front yard, he stretched his hand out to the verdigris-covered brass knob on the front door. There had never been the need for a lock: people were honest. Here nobody, not the black people, not the white people, took from each other. He put his arm against the faded, gray wood with the small cracks that ran along the grain, and gave a shove. The door swung open, dropping a little shower of dust onto his shirt. He brushed his sleeve with the back of his fingers and stepped across the threshold. God, it was hot. It was as though he had entered a kiln, and he felt the sweat begin to trickle down his spine. Pulling the front door fully open, he trod carefully across the old wooden floor, kicking at dead insects and brushing the cobwebs aside, stepping through the eetkamer where every night they had had dinner, to the kitchen in the back.

The old Dutch door, with separate top and bottom halves, took a couple of firm tugs before it gave up its hold on the jamb and opened with a long, protesting groan from the big black hinges. At once he felt the stirring of air, barely cooler, but at least fresh, move through the room, causing the strands of arachnid gossamer that hung from every protrusion to dance and twirl. He stood in the doorway, filling his lungs with the clean air as he surveyed the room. On the walls, the white tiles with the blue border could still be discerned through the dust. The old stove stood resolutely against the wall, its big cooking plates, where a kettle had always stood ready to provide a cup of rooibos tea, were now cold and covered with a thin layer of red rust. He could not remember a time when the cast-iron Aga had not provided heat for cooking, or for the large pots of water to be carried through, and poured into the enameled, iron tub, that squatted on ornamental clawed feet on the floor of the bathroom which had always smelled of Lifebuoy soap.

When Etienne had gone south to the university in Stellenbosch, he left behind his father, grandfather, and older brother working the farm. They toiled hard and, in their simple way, prospered. The government kept their word. Financial assistance flowed from the bureaucratic cornucopia in Pretoria, and contracts for the supply of mutton and venison to countries across the sea were secured. In the harsh landscape of the Northern Cape, close to the almost dry Molopo River, the farm had flourished.

To learning and sport, which had been the focus at boarding school, Stellenbosch University added good life and sophistication, and since there was an unspoken understanding that his older brother would inherit the farm, Etienne turned his mind away from agriculture toward finance and business, and his visits to the northern part of the province became shorter and less frequent. In his first year after graduation he joined Trafalgar Bank in Cape Town. The young man proved to have a knack for the banking business, and his movement up the management chain was rapid. But success exacts a price, and, at the end of his second year, the promotion required a transfer to the corporate office in Johannesburg. Although somewhere in the back of his mind Etienne had known this move was on the cards, still, when it came, it was an onerous decision: Jo'burg had none of the natural beauty of Cape Town, and little recreation that was not man made. Nonetheless, his career was paramount, and so, two months later and with mixed feelings, he made the move. At first he chafed at the new surroundings, but the job was interesting, and he compromised for the harsher environs by buying several acres in rural Sandton, north of the city, where he created an oasis of aloes and other native plants to remind him, as though viewed through a keyhole, of his home in the dry lands to the west.

Etienne opened his shirt and pulled it out of his jeans, letting the eddies of dry air wick the perspiration from his skin. Leaving the kitchen he strolled back into the eetkamer. The heavy wooden table where they had bowed their heads each night as his grandfather had said the simple tafelgebed, the prayer always ending with the request that the Lord not let them forget those who had nothing to eat - something almost impossible for a farmer to understand, was gone. He brushed the dirt on the floor aside with his boot. Yes, if he looked carefully, he could still make out the dents in the wooden floor made by their chairs. He leaned against the wall, running the tips of his fingers across the lighter patch of color where the heavy stinkwood sideboard, in which his mother's good china had stood neatly in piles, had shielded the yellow paint from the soot of the candles. Only later, much later, had his father put in electric lights, powered by some heavy-duty tractor batteries, but even then, on most nights, the family had preferred to eat in the gentle flickering light of candles or a paraffin lamp to which they were accustomed.

His parents and brother had visited his Johannesburg home at irregular intervals - normally when they had found it necessary to go to Pretoria to see some government lackey about one or other contract. His father hated the city. It was too noisy, the air was not fresh, and, moreover, too many of the duplicitous English lived there, forever shouting about the government's policies toward the blacks, but yet, quietly thanking God for the National Party so they could drive to their fancy clubs, and come home to sleep in carefree security. His brother, too, was wont to deride the flashy lifestyle of exurbia, and scorned Etienne for becoming soft. But, as the Xhosa saying goes, the skunk does not smell itself, and for all his scoffing, Louis felt himself drawn to the tumultuous life of the city, and one night quietly set out to explore Hillbrow. At first he had been shy, sitting at the bar, beer in hand, watching the cricket on the television. The blonde who sat next to him scared him when first she spoke to him; in his experience, women never entered bars. But gradually her questions, the rapt attention with which she listened to his answers, and the apparently genuine, surprised gratitude with which she received the drinks he bought her, overcame his diffidence. In the bright lights of that cosmopolitan tavern, he flew into the web of Charlene and became ensnared. Charlene already had a husband, yet, like Bertilak's wife, she preyed on the honest, virile farmer. Dissimilar to Gawain, however, the country boy lacked the experience of the worldly, and had no stratagem with which to resist her ploys. Within two weeks of his return to the Northern Cape, his dusty pickup truck was at Upington airport to bring Charlene back to the farm for a visit.

In the deserted house, Etienne wandered around, immersed in nostalgia, and surrounded by the musky smell of hot wood and dry dust. Without the heavy, maroon curtains that had draped across its windows, the formal living room was brighter than he ever remembered it being when he had lived there. Why had his parents insisted on such a somber environment for this room, he mused? With the deep stoep, and its southerly aspect, the sun never hit its windows. Each night they would sit there and read or listen to a concert on the little radio. As the six pips sounded before the nine o'clock news, Etienne's father would stand up and check the ancient clock with its Westminster chimes. Even with the dust and decay, and without any furniture to hold the scents, Etienne's would have sworn that his nose could still detect the cedary aroma of the old man's pipes. He stepped across to the fireplace. In previous times the thick carpet would have muted the sound, now his heavy hiking boots sounded out each step on the hardwood floor. The pipes had always stood in their rack on the right side of the mantel, one for each day of the week, each carefully cleaned out to avoid stinking up the room and annoying his mother.

Etienne's parents, with the innate hospitality of their kind, gave Charlene the reserved welcome to their home that befitted a visiting lady. But just as there are protocols for hosts, there is an expected pattern of behavior for guests, so while the old couple strove to overlook the plunging necklines and abbreviated shorts, and while, with old-world courtesy, they made no comments about her total lack of any attempt to speak to them in their own tongue, they could hardly disregard the yelps and cries and groans that emitted from her room during the night. Nor were they prepared to see her and Louis come out of its doorway together in the morning.

"Is jy mal?" Are you crazy, his father demanded of his older son, having called him outside and out of earshot of their guest. "Have you no self respect? Have you no respect for your mother? That woman is another man's wife?"

"Ag, Pa," Louis tried to shrug off the question, "It's only a piece of paper. He left her long ago - he doesn't live with her. It's just the lawyers hanging onto the documents to squeeze a few more Rand in fees."

"That is nonsense. A person is either married or not married. That is the law. I don't want to hear about pieces of paper and lawyers. This is my house, and in my house a woman married to another man sleeps with him or by herself. What do you think the Hot'nots think? Do you think because they are black they are stupid? Do you think that they don't notice? We come here, to their land, to show them a Christian life, and then you and this girl carry on like cats and dogs."

The argument continued for over an hour, the father angry, his oldest son stubborn and sullen. Neither gave or took quarter, and in the afternoon Louis and Charlene packed her stuff into his bakkie and, without saying goodbye, drove down to Upington where they spent the next few days in a hotel.

Etienne gently brushed the dust off the wall above the reddish wood of the mantelpiece. The family coat of arms, the shield with red bar cutting across the top half, in the lower part the paschal lamb bearing the banner of St. George, and over everything, the arm wielding the scimitar, though faded, still stood proudly. His grandfather had painted it to remind family and visitor alike of their proud heritage that went back to France before the Huguenot flight. The plight of the European Protestants, some 200 years before his birth, had had a deep impact on the old man. "Never forget that our people were also once helpless under a harsh government," he would admonish his neighbors if they behaved in a way which he believed to be un-Christian toward their black servants.

It was in front of the Groote Kerk in Cape Town that Etienne had first seen David. The artist's satchel, casually slung over one shoulder, had been the object that first caught his eye as he waited to cross the street. Weathered and stained, the bag appeared to be at least three times the age of its twenty-something year old owner. The light changed to green, and the slight young man in the torn jeans and thin white T-shirt stepped forward. In some unconscious way Etienne had felt connected to him. It was an entirely new perception for him: almost as though some destiny, that had lain dormant inside him from prezygotic times waiting through eons for just this moment, had come to life inside him

The two men walked up Adderly Street, hot under the midday sun and cloudless sky, until they entered the shady sanctuary of The Gardens. Etienne always enjoyed business trips that brought him back to Cape Town. The people here were nicer, the air smelled cleaner, the architecture was more interesting than in Johannesburg. He sat down on a bench, the paper bag holding his lunch at his side, and contemplated the young man who moved around the green lawns, his eyes darting back and forth, looking at the people in the park. Idly he strolled here and there, and then, with a jolt to Etienne's gut, the young man's gaze swept over him. For that instant it seemed that the very slightest of smiles touched the wide lips as the two men's eyes met, but it vanished as quickly as it had formed. In a single fluid motion he lifted the satchel from his shoulder and sank to the green lawn. Having given Etienne nary a glance since that first connection, the man sat cross legged on the lawn, and, delving into the leather bag, withdrew an artist's sketch pad and a small box. Only when he had selected a pencil from the box and flipped the pad open to a clean page, did his eyes return to Etienne. No smile, no acknowledgement, just a look of concentration as the pencil flew across the paper, pausing briefly now and then, brows lifted so that the deep chocolate eyes could seek out some new detail, to take a quick glance at his model. Etienne felt uncomfortable about being studied in this way, yet there was no force on earth that could have dragged him from the brown wooden bench. Opening the paper bag, he pulled out the sandwich he had bought down by the Flower Market, and began to munch on it. He assiduously kept his eyes off the artist on the grass ten metres away. Instead he looked up to the distant low mountains, their reflections clear in the shallow ponds that graced the paths in the park, his mind barely aware of the fat, city pigeons waddling around his feet in excited expectation of the crumbs, which they had learned were inevitably tipped onto the ground from the paper bags the tall creatures carried.

To the left of the fireplace, a window looked out over the side stoep onto the yard. His mother had made a hok there once to keep chickens. But the jackals took them. So Etienne's father had built a sturdier structure out of concrete blocks with a big wooden door, and each evening either Martha or his mother, with shrill cries of "kiep, kiep, kiep!" would shoo the clucking birds into their gulag, and every morning, Kobus, the man who would chop the firewood for the stove, would release them again. The concrete hut remained, but the only bird in sight was a Kori Bustard, walking across the sand with large steps in search of some unwary insect.

Louis had used concrete blocks to modify one of the old sheds into a small house for him and Charlene, since his parents were adamant that the two could not cohabit under their roof until they had been married by the dominee. The building was more an act of recalcitrance than anything else, because the lure of the beauty of the Kalahari was not felt by his superficial girlfriend, and she made the trip only once every ten weeks or so. Building it was more Louis' way of stating that his father could not run his life for him. The apple had not, however, fallen far from the tree. Louis' obdurate nature had come to him from the genes of his father who was equally unbending. There was not much the old man could do about Louis or his little house, but in defiance he altered his will: on his death, under the new testament, the farm would not go any more solely to Louis, but instead would be shared between the two brothers. In reality, it was not a bad idea. Etienne had been managing the financial affairs for several years, and the farm was actually turning a tidy profit. The symbolism of the act, however, was hard for Louis to bear, since it was a public manifesto of his father's distrust in him. After that, other than in the day-to-day running of the farm, he kept to himself.

While the pigeons hopped around, pecking at his crumbs and each other, Etienne stood up, pushed the paper bag into a nearby trash basket, and walked across to the young artist sitting on the grass. Standing behind him, he studied the sketch pad. It was a quick sketch, bold lines, indistinct background. More than a photograph, it was as though the dexterous fingers had captured the inner spirit of the sitter. The short hair had become longer, curling slightly over the ear. The neat business shirt and plain tie that Etienne was wearing had been replaced by a rumpled safari-type shirt, the sleeves rolled up above the biceps almost to the armpits. It was how Etienne looked at the end of almost any day on the farm.

The young artist set his pencil down on the grass and leaned back slightly to afford a better view of his work.

"Why did you draw me in that shirt?" Etienne asked.

"Because that's how I saw you. You don't look like you belong in the city."

"My parents have a farm," Etienne stated. Then, when he realized his response lacked substance, added, "But I work in a bank. I don't like farm work, though: it's too hard."

"Your eyes aren't the eyes of a city guy. People in the city keep their eyes on things nearby. Your eyes look further away, almost like they're looking for a way out." His voice had the heavy South African accent of an English speaker from up North - from the Transvaal, perhaps.

"Where're you from?"

"I grew up in Jo'burg. Now I live in Dieprivier down here. D'you live here?"

"Not any more. I live in Jo'burg, too. But I used to live here." He changed the subject. "I like the drawing you made." As the words came out of his mouth, he regretted uttering them. They sounded as though he was patronizing a child. But he didn't know the right word, the word an artist would use.

"Thanks." Carefully he tore the page from the pad and held it up to Etienne. "D'you want it?"

"Ja. Please. Very much. How much do you want for it?" he asked taking the sheet into his hand.

"Nothing. I enjoyed making it."

"No. I must give you something for it. It is too good to take for nothing."

For the first time, the young man smiled. "You could buy me some dinner, tonight," he suggested. "Not expensive stuff. Just fish and chips down by the docks."

Etienne sensed his pulse rate rising. He felt as though he was inhabiting the body of another person, that the thoughts, the feelings inside were not really his. "That would be good."

Out in the yard, the Kori Bustard had loped forward and seized a small lizard or gecko. Etienne sighed, and tilting his head back, closed his eyes. The family had sat in this room together after they had buried his grandfather in the little farm kerkhof with the wrought iron fence, under the shady kameeldoringbome with their wide branches. They had sat in here together, the group smaller by one, after his brother had been killed. His father, unbending even then, had insisted that Louis had brought it on himself from continually going to Johannesburg. Maybe it was the husband of that Charlene (was it not just like the English not to even come up for the funeral because it was too far?) or maybe the boyfriend of another woman he could have met. The last time he had sat in this room, he had had Daphne with him. It was the first time in the three years of their marriage that she had come to the farm. In spite of Etienne's urgings, she had steadfastly refused to consider the trip, claiming that the dust of the gravel roads brought on her asthma. But when Etienne's father had died, she had made the trip, her fear of asthma being less than the fear that, at the reading of the will, Etienne might give away the farm. She meant to ensure that he would inherit what was rightfully his - and then sell it for a tidy sum of money.

But she could have spared her bronchia the threat: Etienne's father left the farm to his mother, and when the matriarch had rejected Daphne's suggestion that she cede the farm to her son, Daphne had insisted that Etienne drive her to Upington to get a flight home.

The sea had been thundering on Bloubergstrand when Etienne had taken David to his favorite restaurant as payment for the sketch. Conversation over dinner had never lagged. David told of his emergence from the chrysalis of a poor-white family in the City of Gold where his father worked on the railway, to the butterfly existence of an artist, thanks to a scholarship awarded by The Rand Daily Mail newspaper. Etienne spoke of his life, its bipolar nature evident from the brief and factual revelations of his career contrasting with his eloquent descriptions of life on the edge of the agterland, the outback of the Northern Cape. His depictions of the bright blue skies, the red dunes, of Gemsbok lying ruminating in the noonday shade of a thorn tree, of pans, twenty kilometres in diameter that filled with water little more than a metre deep in the rainy season and then dried to cement-like hardness as the water evaporated, evoked a yearning in the artist to capture on paper just some part of this landscape. The young man was a Heracles, and as Etienne's words tumbled out in his ever growing enthusiasm, there arose in the banker's soul a passion, as though the bonds of his everyday life were loosed, and his soul might, at last, be set free again. After the dinner, the two walked barefoot for close on a kilometre along the beach, the sea reflecting the myriad stars, the white surf rushing up to their ankles, tumbling the tiny shells on its way, while across the bay, the iridescent lights of the city twinkled silently. They returned to the car, unabashedly hand in hand, and fell into a carefree sleep only an hour before the eastern sky began to lighten, spooned together in the wide bed of Etienne's hotel room.

As he stepped through the doorway from the living room, Etienne clicked the little lever on the domed brass light switch. Nothing happened, which is what he had expected - the battery, if it still sat outside, must have long lost any charge. He walked down the short passage where had always hung dismal etchings of European towns. The second doorway was his bedroom. In his mind, this was the best room in the house. The window faced east, and his daily routine had always started when the flaming sun edged over the distant horizon to begin its climb into the cerulean sky. There was a doorway from his room to the stoep, a door with a window in it which had side panels of deep cobalt glass. Every morning he would get up, pull on some ragged khaki shorts, and take the fifty metre hike to the little outhouse in back, behind the chicken coop. With ablutions complete, his next quest had been the kitchen, to grab an enamel mug, fill it with the dark coffee from the green enamel pot on the stove and, with a rusk in the other hand, retreat to the stoep outside his room to smell the awakening land as the day began.

He had waited until his parents and brother had planned a trip to Johannesburg, then bought a ticket for David to fly up to Upington. He picked his friend up at the airport off the early morning flight and they began the trek up to the farm, tumbling over each other's words as they related what they had been doing since they were last together. David marveled at the quaint names of places, not necessarily inhabited, along the way: Gelukspruit, Aarpan, Kalkpan, Inkbospan, Sewefontein, all reflecting the time-to-time presence of water. At Eensaamheidspan, Eensaamheid meaning loneliness, they decided it was an apt place to celebrate their togetherness, and it was there, in post-coital relaxation, in the shade of the large acacia, that Etienne first referred to David as Witgat.

The week had gone by quickly. With the rest of the family absent, Etienne had had to run the farm, supervising the laborers, checking on equipment, and mending any breaks in the fences. Sometimes David came with him, sketching furiously while Etienne worked. At other times he would sit on the stoep or under a tree, a jug of water and his pigments beside him, and paint.

And every night they made love, passionately, and again in the morning after Etienne had brought through the coffee.

On the Saturday, the day on which they would leave, the sunlight was just hitting the very top of the bedroom wall, the air still carried the nip of the night and David had snuggled back against Etienne's warm skin, when the door onto the stoep opened with a crash. In a single movement, Etienne had rolled out of bed and reached for the long knife that stood propped against the nightstand in case a cobra should venture in uninvited. In the doorway, silhouetted against the pale sky, stood Louis.

"So," he said as he surveyed the scene, "This is how it is."

"No...no... What're you doing here? No...Boet, it's not what you think," Etienne had stammered.

"Ag, do you think I am so stupid?" He stepped forward and threw the covers back. "What should I think? I think that I should think that you're a moff and you've got yourself a moffie friend."

"I'm not...he's not a...we weren't," Etienne protested.

Louis gave a mirthless chuckle, put his arm around Etienne's shoulder and with his other hand took the weapon from his fingers. "Come, little brother. Put the knife away before someone gets hurt. Why are you worried about what I say or what I think? You were always Pa's favorite. What can possibly happen to you? He's not going to throw you out of the house."

"Shit, Louis, man, you can't tell Pa about this. Please."

"Why not?" He stood back, suddenly angry. "Why must I always be the one that is held up to everyone as the black sheep? Why must I live in a pondok outside because I have a girlfriend? I'm happy that you found a boy to screw around with. I hope you two always stay together. Maybe it's time for Pa to come into the twentieth century. Now he can see what the good son does, too."

Etienne grabbed his brother's shirt. "You know what'll happen. I'm as good as dead. Pa doesn't have favorites. You tell him about this, and I'm fucked!"

"Eet kak en vrek. Did you ever take my side when he kicked me and Charlene out of the house? You sat there at the table with them, pretending you were so much better because you knew about politics and wine and business people in Jo'burg." He pushed Etienne away from him. "Who the fuck cares about that shit? Anyway, now it's your turn to see what it's like to be at the bottom of the dung-heap." And he turned and walked out of the room, onto the stoep and into the yard.

Still naked, Etienne ran outside. "Boet...Louis," he called to his brother's back.

Without turning, Louis waved a dismissive hand. "Go back to your fucking."

Etienne stepped back into the bedroom. He looked across at David who was sitting on the bed with the sheet pulled up to his neck. Etienne sat down next to him and gave him a hug. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"No. Don't say that. If anything, I'm the one that should be sorry," the young man whispered with a catch in his throat. "I shouldn't have come to your home."

"No, my Witgat, it is not your fault." He held David's face in his hands, peering into his eyes. "Promise me you will never think that." David said nothing as Etienne's thumb massaged his cheek. "Promise!" Etienne repeated, and finally the other man nodded. Etienne let his hands fall to his lap and gazed out of the window to the dunes. "This was the best time I have ever had, Witgat. You are the best person I have ever known."

"So what's going to happen?" David had asked.

"I don't know," Etienne replied with a deep sigh. "I don't know." He swung his legs off the bed, grabbed his jeans off the floor and tugged them onto his legs. "Get dressed, get your shit together and let's get on the road."

"Etienne, let me help you. Please."

Etienne merely shrugged.

The sky was blue, without a cloud as it almost always was in the morning, when David loaded his bag into the Land Rover. About forty metres overhead, two jackal buzzards circled on a thermal of warm air, their wings not moving as they scanned the ground for prey. As the two men drove away from the house, David's eyes caught sight of four Gemsbok, their saber-like horns held high, watching them warily from a rocky outcrop, ready to run from the first sign of danger. How can danger lie in this beautiful land, he thought?

"Vyf sent, my baas. Asseblief, vyf sent" David called out, giggling, hands cupped and outstretched, as he held the gate open for Etienne to drive through. In previous times, when there were fewer main roads, the little black children would stand at the gates to open them for traveling motorists, calling out to them for a small five cent coin to be tossed out of the car window in return for their services.

Once on the road, Etienne seemed reluctant to talk, and David eventually gave up trying to make conversation. For an hour they drove along the dusty road, listening to the tapes he had brought. The young artist gazed out over the landscape of rocky brown hills, the beige-yellow sand different from the gray sand of the road. Here and there, green bushes jutted up, stems branching out from a single stem. His head was filled with the colors, the images of a land that appeared mythical to his city mind. As they came up to Eensaamheidspan, he had gently punched his friend on the shoulder and pointed. Etienne looked at him, then abruptly steered the car to the side of the road, and pulled the fair-skinned man into his arms. Grabbing a tarpaulin from the back, the two headed through the sand to the shade of a kameeldoringboom at the edge of the pan where, for an hour, they made passionate love, and afterwards sat, gulping down water from the thermos to replace what the arid air had wicked off their naked bodies.

"Witgat," Etienne broke the silence, "you know I can't go on with this."

David sat up. "What d'you mean?"

"Us. I just can't do it. It won't work, and it wouldn't be fair to you."

"Why? What won't work? Is this because of Louis and your father?"

"No," he paused and prodded an errant ant with a twig. "Not really. He made me realize, though, what my life with another man would come to. Always hiding, always lying."

"It needn't be like that, Etienne. Here, maybe, but not in Jo'burg or Cape Town."

"Ja, my Witgat, even in Joeys and Cape Town. Not for you. Not amongst the people you work with and go out with. But for me," he sighed almost wistfully, "for me it is different. I will not get any more promotions if I live with a guy. And if I can't get promoted, I'm just in somebody else's way, so I'll get canned." He looked at David out the corners of his eyes. "You don't believe me, but it's true. The bank is very strict with things like that. Only up until two years ago, anyone on the bank staff who wanted to get married had to bring their fiancée to meet their manager. And if he didn't approve of the person, you had a choice: don't marry them, or leave the bank."

"Why would the bank care?" David asked.

Etienne stabbed the twig into the ground, and without looking up said, "The bank cares for two reasons. One because they have an image to uphold. People don't put their money in a place that they don't think is proper. And also, because I have control over bank accounts, they don't want to employ anyone who is in a position to be blackmailed.

"For me to survive in my profession, I have to be squeaky clean, man."

They argued for a further half hour, Etienne trying to explain arcane realities that David could not fully comprehend, while David pleaded with his friend to at least give it a try. But Etienne's mind was made up, and eventually David stood up and took his jeans and shirt from the pile, so that his friend wouldn't see the tears welling over the lids of his eyes. He pulled his clothes on in silence, folded up the tarpaulin, and went back to the Land Rover.

They drove to Upington almost in silence. When they were a few kilometres from the town, David put his hand on Etienne's shoulder. "I don't think Louis will tell your father."

"Ja, you are probably right."

At the airport, they pulled up outside the terminal and, Etienne hugged David, holding his thin body close to him. At length he let him go. "Go. Go back to Cape Town and find a guy who loves you more than he loves himself. You deserve a man who is better than I am."

"Etienne, please..." David started, but the other man cut him short.

"It cannot be, my Witgat," he stated with finality, and two minutes later he was driving away, looking with stinging eyes at the young man in his rear view mirror waving after him.

In the bare room, now, Etienne could still remember looking at the anxious face of David after Louis had left the stoep. David had been sitting on the bed roughly where the long cobweb hung now. They tell you in church, he thought, that the Day of Judgment comes when you die. It is not so. It is not so. For Etienne it had come in the early morning, and it had come in this room.

He had had ample time to prepare. Almost thirty years. Then, on that morning, he had been called to defend his Life. And on that morning he had failed.

He had had been given four or five hours to reconsider, yet he had contumaciously not even considered taking the break the Almighty offered. Had he done so, had he listened to everything he knew in his heart was right, how different things would now be. Two men, long dead, might still be alive. His own life might have been considered rewarding. But on that one day he had made a fateful decision, and for that he had been condemned to walk forever with the lonely.

Four days after he had left David to go his own way, Etienne's parents had returned to the Kalahari to find Louis dead in his house, beaten to death with a rough club of wood, a piece of firewood from the stack outside his door.

Etienne had made the journey back to the farm for the funeral. The words of the dominee, the condolences of the neighbors, even his father's terrible pronouncements, had gone unheard by his ears. All he could think of was that, in spite of all the pain, through this death he had been granted a reprieve, he would be able to keep his terrible secret from his parents.

Once back in the city, he settled into his work in a frenzy. Two weeks later he had accepted a temporary assignment to the bank's headquarters in London for a year and a half. The trip took his mind off Louis, but even better, it was a sign that he was on what his colleagues enviously referred to as 'the fast track'. Before the stone was even set in place on his brother's grave, he was on a jet to England.

In the busy city he buried himself in his job and his career. What little free time he allowed himself he used to mix with 'the right people'

His parents wrote to him. Every Sunday afternoon, his mother sat down with the Croxley pad of onion-skin, air mail paper, and scribed in her heavy longhand about the day to day happenings on the farm and in the land. The drought had ended with the rainy season, the pans had filled up with water and the animals were getting some more meat on them. There was unrest in the locations where the black people lived in the cities, but in the country the black Hot'nots all seemed content with their lot. Pa said it was because the white people in the cities forgot about their ancestors and about God. There were, she wrote, people from the government doing something hush-hush in the Kalahari. Nobody knew exactly where, but apparently there was a big area North of Upington that was fenced off and guarded. Somebody the dominee knew from Upington said some men from Israel had gone up there. The dominee thinks the government is making an atom bomb. A ewe had had a breech birth and she had had to put her hand deep inside the warm and trembling body to get the tiny creature's legs repositioned so it could be delivered.

Some other things, however, she did not write about. She did not tell him of the lump that grew in her breast and the operation that followed. She knew he would just get on a plane and come home, and really what could he do to help? She would be fine again soon, the doctors said. And she did not mention that the police had caught the man who had killed Louis. Why bring the memories back? The man was some drifter, which was some consolation: at least it was not someone they knew.

Etienne read each letter at night in his Kensington apartment, and replied about half as often. What could people living on a farm in the Kalahari comprehend about going to parties with the right people?

One blustery November afternoon, when the brown leaves lay plastered to the wet ground in Hyde Park, and when it was already getting dark early and his soul longed for the sun of his homeland, he had walked down The Strand to meet one of the financial people at the South African embassy. While he sat in the waiting room, he picked up a week-old copy of the Johannesburg Star. When he reached page four, he froze. David Layne, he read, had been hanged in Pretoria Central Prison for the killing of Louis de Villiers on the farm Xanadu, in the vicinity of Inkbospan. His bowels clenched, and a loud, drawn-out groan, almost a howl, escaped from his chest. So tormented was the sound that the receptionist rushed over to the man whose face had turned ashen to see if he were all right. It was his David. It was Witgat.

The sun was moving towards the red dunes on the horizon. Already the trees were throwing long shadows across the beige earth. Etienne walked out to the Toyota and carried his rucksack and sleeping bag back into the house. He used one of the car mats to sweep most of the dust off the floor of his bedroom, then laid down a space blanket and the sleeping bag. By the time he had everything inside, the sky to the west was turning to flaming oranges and reds. Nowhere on earth are seen sunsets as over the sands and dunes of the Kalahari. 'The heaven's declare the glory of God,' said the Psalmist, and thus one had to be truly blessed to be allowed to live in the Kalahari and witness the manifestation daily, Etienne believed. He wondered what Daphne was doing tonight. Probably out at one of her society dinners where people spoke long and earnestly about the problems in the country. Always, he thought, they portrayed themselves as the victims, never as the problem. He and Daphne lived together, but to all intents and purposes their marriage was over. Had been for years. Maybe, Etienne reflected, they had never had a marriage at all.

The South African Airways jet that was taking him home from London had barely taken off before Etienne was engrossed in conversation with the young woman in the seat next to him. What had she seen in him? The successful banking executive that could keep her in the limelight of white society? Who knew? Who cared? The question he always pondered was what had he seen in her? He had thought it was love, but then how could he have known? In all his life he had had strong feelings for only one person, and he had walked away from them. Maybe, having committed such a sin, one is never again permitted to feel love. On the other hand, Daphne came from a very prominent family, and that had put him in good standing with the bank, and aided his chances at advancement.

Yet over the last months he had begun to realize that both marriage and promotion as the youngest executive ever to sit on the bank's board of directors, were as the mirages of cool water seen across the hot sands, that lead even experienced travelers to doubt their charts and to leave the safety of the well-traveled roads, to end up lying on the parched sands, dying of thirst.

Etienne pumped up the pressure in the Coleman lamp, and its harsh white light filled the room. It was strange being all alone here. If he were to go out on the stoep, he would not see the lights and cooking fire of the hands. They had all long ago returned to their kraals and villages. It was almost as though he had gone back in time, to a time before the white men came here. He snapped the top off a bottle of lager and took a large gulp. Not ice cold, but still good. He reached into his rucksack and pulled out a large beige envelope.

On the Sunday, six days before Etienne was to get married, he was standing in the driveway of his home cleaning his car, when a Ford Cortina, its lusterless beigeness a silent witness to the accumulation of many kilometres, drove up to the curb. From the driver's seat emerged a short, stocky man who appeared to be in his late fifties, early sixties. Etienne observed him as he took a carefully folded suit jacket from the rear seat and pulled it onto his shoulders. After locking the driver's door and testing it with a mighty tug at the handle, the man walked up the driveway, carefully avoiding the rivulets of water that ran down from the Etienne's car.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

"Meneer de Villiers?"

"Ja."

The older man lifted up a yellowish envelope that he had been carrying in his left hand and peered at the writing on a piece of paper stuck to it with Scotch tape. "Meneer Etienne de Villiers?"

"Ja. Ek is Etienne de Villiers."

The man came up to him. In the rather coarser Afrikaans of the Transvaal, he asked, "Is there somewhere we can sit and talk?"

"Yes, sure." Etienne turned off the hose, and wiping his dripping hands on his cut-offs, led the man up to the front verandah. "Can I get you something to drink? A beer, perhaps? A Coke?"

"If meneer would be so kind, a glass of water."

Etienne had returned to the verandah bearing a large pitcher of iced water and two glasses. His visitor slaked his thirst in silence, then looked at Etienne. "That was very kind of meneer." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sat for a few seconds as though carefully considering what to say. "Meneer, I work for the prison department," he started off, then stopped to see Etienne's reaction. Etienne nodded, half wondering if he was being solicited for a donation. "For many years now I have worked on death row." He stopped again, as though Etienne might need time to think about this. "I am very honored to be there," he continued seriously, "because I am one of the last people to see men before they go to see God."

It was warm outside, the thunder clouds were building up in the West and there would be a storm within an hour, but Etienne's skin suddenly felt cold.

"It is very humbling how people who have done very bad things can repent and prepare to meet The Almighty. Meneer cannot know it, but working there for many years allows one to see into the souls of men." He stopped again, and took another mouthful of water, followed by the automatic wipe with his hand. "There was one man..." Etienne knew instinctively of whom he spoke. His throat constricted. "This man, meneer, he and I talked many hours. He was a very good man. In spite of what he had done, a terrible thing, he was, yet, a good man.

"Meneer might not know, but prisoners on death row, small things they have, perhaps a Bible, sometimes a letter, these things are collected and the prison department sends them to the family. But the warden is allowed to read the letters. This man, meneer, had a letter he wished to send to someone. A letter and a picture he had drawn. He did not want the warden to see them, so he asked me if I would take them. As I said, I knew he was a good man, so I did what he bade me." He pushed the envelope across the table toward Etienne. "He wanted you to have these."

Etienne let his fingers touch the envelope, then looked up at his visitor. "That was a long time ago, meneer. Why do you come now?"

"Meneer, I am sorry. I had put the envelope on my desk. While I was out of the office, one of the assistants accidentally knocked the ink well over. The ink spilled on the envelope and it covered meneer's name. If you open that envelope, you will see the one inside still has the stain. I had no idea any more to whom I was to deliver it.

"I was very troubled, meneer. I had given a dying man my word and now I could not keep it. But I never threw the letter away. I knew that one day The Almighty would show me what to do with it. Two weeks ago, at the Police College, I met someone from the C.I.D who is a detective. Those are smart people, meneer. He and I had been talking, and he was explaining about evidence and how they found it. I told him about the envelope I had kept for so long, and I asked him if he could perhaps, with his microscopes, see the pencil writing under the ink.

"He said he would see what he could do. That was a big thing for him to say, meneer, because he knew I had broken the rules and he could have got into trouble, too. But he took the envelope, and within a few days, I got a parcel back from him. Inside was the envelope, and also that piece of paper with your name. He was a good man, too, meneer. He had found which Meneer Etienne de Villiers I needed to see, and he found out your address for me, too."

Through the window of his old bedroom, Etienne looked up at the numberless stars that shone steadily through the clear, dry air. Beside him, carefully laid out on his sleeping bag as though on some altar, lay the beige envelope. Next to it, neatly arranged, were its contents: the small white envelope with the dark run of ink across its face, and a piece of cardboard. Carefully he withdrew the letter, the paper now a little blotchy with age, and placed it on top of its envelope. He knew its contents by heart: he had probably read it at least once a month since he first saw it. There had been times of soul-searching torment when he had taken it out of his safe daily, like some reserved sacrament, to read the contents and from them, perhaps, gain some faith.

Rolling over, he pulled the small bottle of pills from his rucksack. "Do not take more than one in twenty four hours," his doctor had instructed him in earnest tones when he had asked for the prescription for stronger sleeping pills. Now he read the same injunction typed on the label as he twisted the cap and emptied the contents onto the satin-like surface of his sleeping bag. His long, thin fingers pushed them into groups as he counted the thirty little yellow, oblong pellets.

For half an hour he sat looking out into the black night. Back in his office lay an envelope in which he, so inadequately, had tried to put into words the long trail that had led up to this evening. He realized that, in the end, no one would probably ever understand, but that did not matter. Louis' death could no longer be the barrier that separated him from his lover. Now he had to go to David and hopefully, again hand in hand, they would face their Creator together.

He removed the cap off another bottle of lager, and with mouthful after mouthful of its tepid contents, washed down all the little pills. When the bottle was at last empty he sat, once again, staring into the star filled sky. The words from a song entered his mind, a song he had not heard for ten years or more, but he remembered it was one that had been on a tape that David had brought for the trip.

He picked up the small piece of cardboard. Its surface held a pen and ink sketch of two men in jeans, their shirts hanging open, walking hand in hand toward a kameeldoringboom. One of the men carried a tarpaulin on his shoulder. Etienne held the card to his lips briefly, then returned it to its place.

He picked up the letter and unfolded the tired creases and began to read the words.