There is a wide
window with pale green curtains, facing onto Burger Street and
the provincial offices
of the Department of Transport There are two doors that lead,
one outside onto the front
stoep with its cracked and broken red tiles, the other into a long
and dark passage with
a dusty wooden floor and a dead light bulb that is never replaced
There is the same
old pine desk with four drawers filled with unopened NBS bank
statements and old
school exercise books he had bought because the girl with the
red hair, who had a
boyfriend waiting for her at home, had told him that all real
writers keep notebooks
for their profound thoughts and ideas But since he had never
had any profound thoughts
and ideas (or the discipline to be still and listen for them) the
books are still sealed
in their brown paper wrapping