than the ragged Smaleses as they leave to meet the chief. The car ride fills the Smaleses with excitement. It is the first trip, the first adventure, that they have taken in their time in the bush, and because it promises to be temporary they all find it exciting. Maureen and the children see only joy and adventure in this departure from routine, these new views of the landscape. Dread fills Bam, who feels convinced the chief will tell them to move on and stop endangering his people. He does not speak of this to Maureen because he no longer knows who she is. Away from the conventions of their former society, such as tax brackets, their marital bond seems odd and laughable, and their personalities have morphed so dramatically in the bush that he no longer recognizes her or her behavior.

Bam drives under July's direction. July has decorated the steering wheel. As they drive, they see blacks getting firewood, picking greens, an endless repetition of their own village. The people look up at the bakkie expectantly, knowing that these whites are coming.

The fifteenth chapter opens with the Smaleses, Daniel, and July sitting in the bakkie under a tree. Gina and Daniel listen to the radio while Royce and Victor throw things at each other. Maureen asks where they are, what the rectangular building is, and Daniel responds it is the place where "the people … they come." He explains further that it is the chief's home and the seat of justice and that July will let them know what to do next. A radio broadcast in Portuguese mentions South African cities and the American Embassy and Bam tries to tune the radio in, but misses the broadcast.

When July returns, a proud man in tattered European garb follows him. Bam considers how awkward an introduction would be since July has no word for Bam other than "master," although Bam and Maureen tried to get him to drop it for years, even when they realized no other term described their relationship. July and the proud black man mumble greetings and introductions with no warmth, no approval. The man, who Bam assumes must be the chief, cross-examines Bam about their flight.

Daniel emerges from the bakkie and raises his fist in the nationalist salute, but is completely ignored. Bam says that the city is destroyed and that July offered them a safe place to stay, and July interrupts to say that the chief waits for them.

Bam realizes that the proud black man has the walk of a doorman and feels embarrassed at his own servility. July tells Bam that the man is the headman of the village, subservient to the chief. The group drives towards the chief's house and Bam tells Maureen they should have gifts. She responds sarcastically, "A case of gin and the promise of a gun-boat?"

The chief's hut looks identical to other village huts. A woman doing chores questions Daniel, then July, and two men come in and out with more questions. They wait, and Maureen sits on a car chair. Bam thinks how "if she didn't know what was expected of her she did as she liked," and thinks about the last time he felt so uncertain and unable to affect events.

A man emerges from the hut and July and Daniel drops to the ground, bowing. Bam stands. Chairs are brought out and the party squats or sits in a row, the chief facing the same direction as everyone else. Women with water jugs on their head face them, listening. Bam answers the chief's cross-examination and July translates. The chief asks why they have come to live with their servant boy and Daniel and Maureen laugh. The chief likes this response, but continues with the questioning. The chief wants to know what has happened in Johannesburg. Bam explains that the blacks in the police won't shoot on other blacks anymore, so there is no lawful force, only the militants and the riots they incite. The chief and his men discuss among themselves the probability of this, saying to each other that the whites will kill all the blacks who have fought and rioted. Maureen reflects that all of the "us and them" is really "an explosion of roles."

The discussion turns to land owned by whites, and the Cubans and Russians rumored to be helping the revolutionaries. The chief finally comes to the point of the meeting and the discussions and tells Bam he will teach shooting because soon all of the blacks will have guns to defend themselves. Bam rises and looks at Maureen. Maureen looks entranced, as if it would be dangerous to startle her. With sudden certainty, Bam tells the chief that the village won't shoot other blacks. He asks if they will help the white government and shoot the revolutionaries to protect this barren bush. Bam insists that they must not cave and "let the government make you kill each other. The whole black nation is your nation." Then Bam explains that his gun is only good for shooting birds, and he doesn't kill people. The whole assemblage laughs at this week protest, because they know he would defend both his family and himself. Bam kicks a dead bug, and Gina runs off with a group of children. Bam calls after her, demands that she stay, they are going home. Maureen realizes that home, for Gina, has become a village with communal pots and round huts. The adults make small talk about rain and Maureen expresses gratitude for July's every assistance. The chief calls July by his real name, Mwawate. The chief's farewell is a promise that he will come to learn about the gun.

Analysis
When Maureen joins the other women in the work of gathering greens, she manages to finally set aside her notions of entitlement. She is delighted to be able to reveal her ugly legs and be open with the other women, just as she is delighted to finally have something concrete to do. Furthermore, by gathering greens for her own family she reduces the labor of the other women. Maureen's act does more to equalize the women than any of her speeches or volunteer work in the city ever managed.

When July speaks of "home" as the place in the city, and takes great pride in the possessions he has saved from looters and rioters with a big padlock, Maureen recognizes that July has not yet figured out that the city life is gone. He speaks dreamily about the security of their city home, but Maureen feels as if she is a different person. Still, July's words challenge her ownership of the house and its contents, and thus to the role that she once inhabited. Even though she has moved past that role, Maureen still has to keep herself from contradicting July.

Then July tells Maureen not to gather greens with the other women, and Maureen realizes how happy she is to have company and work. She also objects to July's authoritative tone and indication that he knows best. Maureen wants to accept July as an individual and to be accepted in turn, and so to be told that she cannot do what she wishes reduces her individuality. His response to her yet again throwing Ellen in his face makes their relationship much more clear. He tells her that the only thing she can tell Martha is that he was a good servant for fifteen years. In a few sentences, he sums up their entire relationship from his perspective. The only important parts were the duration, his subservient status, and her appreciation of him. For July, their relationship is one where they cannot become equals. Now that he has the bakkie, July has a symbol of the white man's power in his grasp as well as being the central authority and savior in his own village. Thus, when Maureen returns to his side to whisper that Bam won't steal the truck when he comes to fix it, Maureen actually affirms July's ownership of the bakkie. Bam can't steal his own truck; he can only steal the bakkie if it belongs to someone else. Thus, even when angered by July, Maureen makes sure that her family doesn't threaten his power. She knows how much they need July.

The odd adventure of visiting the chief gives the Smaleses a further sense of their distance from the world they know. Bam cannot tell who is the chief, cannot guess what the chief wants, and does not know how to reply to the formalities required during the visit. The strangeness of the encounter, of sitting in a line without looking at each other, of having to ask a strange man for permission to live in the hovel they have been forced by circumstances to inhabit, seems to cause Maureen to go into shock. She becomes unresponsive and blank, unable to interact or influence the discussion.

On the other hand, Bam becomes hardened in his liberal beliefs. He refuses to teach the chief how to shoot because he doesn't agree with the chief's intended targets (other blacks). In that refusal, Bam reveals that he still considers himself and his logic superior to that of the chief. His entitled attitude does him no good, because the conversation concludes with the chief's promise to come visit and learn to shoot. Bam's helplessness is more and more evident as the encounter progresses. Maureen hears Bam's speech from her new perspective as the words of a liberal white speaking to uneducated blacks who operate on a hardship level beyond the ideology of the words. Bam speaks impractically, and Maureen knows it.

By contrasting Maureen and Bam with their children, it becomes apparent how rigidly unchanged they are. Their children have made friends with village children, eat village food, obey village rules, and regard the village as a home. Maureen and Bam cannot do this. They do not make friends with other adults in the village, they do not take on the typical roles of those in the village (except for Maureen's greens gathering, which occurs late in the novel) and they hold to old, liberal ideas that no longer hold true. The children learn the language, fall into new roles and get to know the villagers as individuals. Maureen and Bam become estranged even from each other. Each of them reflects on the strange person who they married under such different circumstances. Maureen does not know Bam's smell, Bam does not understand Maureen's practical, callous behavior, and they each reflect on the lack of commonality between them now. In part, this may be because the children see adults as authorities more readily than they perceive the difference between whites and blacks. Thus, they give in to black authority easily so long as it comes from an adult. Maureen and Bam, however, must relinquish their pretense of liberal beliefs, their actual power of self-determination and the habit of ordering others around. Just as they lose their idea of themselves, they also lose their notions of marriage and of July and his rightful place in the world. The adult Smaleses do not learn new roles so much as shed old ones.