Mine Boy

Narrated from a third-person omniscient perspective, Peter Abrahams’s Mine Boy opens in the protagonist Xuma’s point of view. Tired and carrying a small bundle, Xuma walks through Malay Camp, Johannesburg, in the dark, listening to a distant clock strike three times to indicate that it is three in the morning. In the impoverished area of mostly black and mixed-race residents, Xuma meets Leah and asks where he can have a drink, admitting he has no money. Leah says he is strange and asks where he comes from. He says up north. Leah shines a flashlight over his large body before saying he can come in for a drink and a rest.

Three men and an old woman sit inside Leah’s place, drinking beer. Ma Plank goes to bring some food for Xuma. Dladla and Daddy are hostile toward Xuma before starting a knife fight with each other. Ma Plank returns to break up the fight before it really begins, and Daddy goes back to sleep, snoring loudly. Leah explains that “her man” is serving a three-year sentence for killing a man who tried to kiss her; she keeps Dladla around because she gets lonely and needs a “plaything.”

Xuma says he came to the area intending to work in the mines. Leah warns him against it, saying he’s strong now but he’ll wind up coughing blood, growing thin, and dying. She says he should work for her. The others work for her burying beer: there’s good money in it. She could use Xuma as a strong man. She offers him a bed, saying he can repay his debt later. Leah warns him that if he tries to cheat her, she’ll cut him up. Xuma is amused and says he doesn’t understand her; all he understands is her kindness. She says the city is a strange place. Xuma tries to sleep but dwells on the odd people he has just met. Nothing ties them down, and they seem to believe in nothing.