Chapter 21 Summary

Terrified, Pieter enters the house and goes to the study where, with the curtains drawn, he reads the note again and prays again, doubling the penance he offered before. His paranoia is uncontrollable; he hears a car in the street and thinks it the one that passed him on the farm road earlier in the evening; he hides the note in a book yet fears that people entering the room will be drawn unerringly to it. He tries to read the book of South Africans, but cannot. He retrieves the note from the book and studies it once again, and prays yet another time and thinks of his family and friends and his children and what it is that he has done to them all.

In the kitchen, he builds a fire and places the tins of water on, and before it, he...