Outside Goas church. After the funeral for Nicholas Kombumbi, Vilho and I sit across from each other on the benches that used to be part of the stolen picnic table. The table must have been a monster to lift. It was a solid slab of concrete. We imagine it is out in the veld somewhere, although nobody has come up with a satisfactory motive for taking it, other than to prove that if it’s stealable, Pohamba’s Standard Sevens will light the way. Vilho and I shuffle our best shoes in the sand. We’ve stopped trying to talk about it. The boy Nicholas was his. Not his best learner, but not his worst either, so he didn’t know him very well. Now he feels he failed the boy. The boy’s mediocrity was a mask that prevented Vilho from seeing an individual soul. Now he goes to his final reward unknown by the people entrusted to remember him. I have given up trying to talk him out of this. So here we sit. We watch the priest lock the door of the church. He greets us with a slow, solemn nod and disappears behind the tall rectory gate. A pair of goats wander by, their ribs protruding. Vilho is trying to remember a single thing about this boy. His body has already left for Karibib, followed by cars and bakkies loaded with relatives and friends. There’s a whistle in the late-afternoon wind. Vilho stops shuffling his feet and looks as though something has occurred to him. I watch his face tighten. Grief is useless without memory, yet he might be making progress. Everybody else has gone to sleep, or to Obadiah’s for a nip, then sleep.