BRAMsits on the bed, dejected.

BRAM: Hugh Lewin, in the cell next to me, showed me a poem he wrote. I read it a few times. It keeps turning over and over in my mind:

Hugh's sentence is almost over. He can start dreaming about touch again. He only has a few months left. Everyone is going to leave before me. Already I have seen them come and go, the white politicals of Pretoria Local. Issy Heyman, who was sentenced to five years because he refused to testify against me. Hugh, Marius, John Laredo, Baruch Hirson, Jack Tarshish, Eli Weinberg and all the others are going to walk out free men. Perhaps there will be a reunion one day of all the white politicals of Pretoria Local. And Marius and John Laredo and I will speak Afrikaans … And John will tell us about a new Afrikaans book or poem that he has read. And Denis will make a joke, as always.

The only thing is … Denis and I have been sentenced to life imprisonment. Who knows when we will get out? Who knows when we will be touched again?

Shortly after his sentence, Denis said to his wife that he would understand if she wanted to leave him for another … She was still young and who knew when he was going to walk free again … I wonder if I would be able to do the same if Molly was still there?

But Molly wasn't there … There was a cow … There was a man on a motor cycle … There was me, who jerked the steering wheel. There was the sound of the Mercedes bursting through the wire fence and donnering down the steep embankment. There was the quiet when we stopped on the banks of the Sand River.