Boesman and Lena Summary

Boesman and Lena, a Coloured couple, arrive in Swartkops (a town consisting mostly of muddy swamps) carrying all of their possessions on their backs and heads. They live in 1960s South Africa, during apartheid. That morning, white men told them to vacate their land in Korsten and bulldozed it, and they spent all day walking to Swartkops. Lena is upset with Boesman for walking so quickly, only to wind up in the mudflats. This triggers an argument between them: Lena is distressed that Boesman laughed at the poor people collecting their things that morning and thanked the white people for bulldozing their land. She blames him for being lost, and is frustrated that she feels like her life is being wasted every time they have to pick up their belongings and walk to a new place. Boesman largely ignores her while she voices her concerns in a monologue, only responding to torment and laugh at her.

Lena then wonders when the last time they came to Swartkops was, and Boesman refuses to answer her, instead building their pondok, or shanty, from materials he found along their walk. Lena tries to reconstruct the path that they took to various towns, but when Boesman questions the order of the towns she comes up with, she is frustrated and confused. Boesman then leaves to find more materials to build the pondok. Lena thinks to herself about her path, remembering that they had come from Redhouse (where a farmer chased them off his land with a gun), then they went to Swartkops, Veeplaas, Korsten, and back to Swartkops. She is happy to have figured this out herself, and starts humming to herself as she makes a fire.

When Boesman returns, he is skeptical of Lena’s good mood, and when she tells him the path she remembered, he immediately makes her question what she figured out. Boesman torments and mocks her as he finishes the pondok. Lena is disgusted by the shelter, longing for a time when they had stayed in a room with a door. Boesman tells Lena to forget the past, because “now is the only time in [her] life.” Lena becomes upset and is determined to walk away from the camp for good.

Before Lena is able to go, she and Boesman spot an old man approaching their camp. Despite Boesman’s protests and threats to beat her, Lena calls the man over. The man comes to sit by their fire, exciting Lena. She is disappointed, however, when she realizes the man is Xhosa and doesn’t speak English or Afrikaans. She begs Boesman for wine, but he refuses and threatens to beat her if she goes near the bottles before storming off.

Lena shows the old man the bruises she received that morning from Boesman for dropping and breaking three empty bottles that they could have exchanged for money. She describes how he had beaten her until the white men watching laughed at him. Lena teaches the old man to say her name, and when he repeats it back to her, she is excited and offers him water.

Lena then starts to tell the old man stories from her and Boesman’s journeys. In Korsten (the town they had been in before Swartkops), she fed scraps to a dog who then followed her and watched her cooking and making fire in the camp. Boesman beat the dog, so it would wait until Boesman was asleep to approach Lena. Lena confesses to the old man that she loved the dog because it was “another pair of eyes” that could see her. Lena also describes how she and Boesman haven’t been able to have children: one died at six months old, and the others were stillborn. Once, she gave birth under a donkey cart with no one around her to help.

The old man tries to leave several times over the course of Lena’s stories, but each time she makes him sit back down and listen to her. Boesman then returns with more firewood, and is surprised and agitated to see that the old man is still there. Lena begs Boesman to let the old man stay, bribing Boesman with her bottle of wine. Boesman relents, but refuses to let the old man sleep in their pondok. He gives her a choice: to sleep inside with him, or to sit outside by the fire with the old man. Lena chooses the old man. Boesman is furious, but when he sees Lena’s ferocious desire to keep the old man there he backs down. Lena prepares dinner, giving Boesman half a loaf of bread and a mug of tea. She takes the other mug and the other half loaf and splits it with the old man. Lena and the old man sit together under the blanket, warming themselves by the fire. Boesman, watching from the pondok, leaves his dinner untouched and drinks only wine instead.

An hour later, Boesman is drunk and violent, demanding that Lena reenact the scene that morning in which she had begged the white men to let them pack up their things. She disdains Boesman for laughing at his own people and helping the white men burn their things once the bulldozer cleared them. Boesman confesses that when the pondok was destroyed, he felt completely free—but that when Lena suggested going back to the “old rubbish dumps” they always went to, he felt weighed down once more. He has another revelation: that he and Lena are “whiteman’s rubbish”— everything white people throw away, they pick up and use. They are made completely of rubbish, he realizes.

Boesman then mocks the old man and Lena, while Lena asks him to leave them alone. Lena sees that the old man is closing his eyes and shakes him awake, asking Boesman to pass his bread and tea to them if he doesn’t want his. He pours out the tea and hurls the bread into the darkness, then returns to the pondok with his wine. Lena and the old man huddle together close to the fire, until Lena decides to do a dance to warm herself up. She dances and sings, making up words to cheer herself up. She sits once more, warm and happy, while Boesman watches from the pondok.

Boesman then reveals that he was actually the one who dropped the bag with the empty bottles that morning, then convinced Lena that she did it and beat her for it. Lena is livid, and asks the old man if he heard what Boesman said. Realizing that he doesn’t understand, Lena begs Boesman to hit her again so the old man can see that Boesman beats her for nothing. Boesman refuses, realizing as he looks at Lena in disgust that they’ll never be able to have freedom or meaningful lives.

Lena realizes in that moment that the old man has died, saying that he was holding her hand and then let go of it. She mourns over him, upset that she never learned his real name. Boesman grows nervous that there’s a dead body in their camp, telling her to get rid of it. He grows more and more agitated as Lena doesn’t respond, and tells her that she needs to be a witness if someone asks who killed the old man. They go through hypothetical questions of what the police might ask, and when Lena gives unhelpful and sarcastic answers, Boesman becomes angry and moves to beat her with a bottle. He stops himself, however, when he sees that she hasn’t moved away. She tells him he needs to be careful because there’s one body already.

Boesman becomes very afraid, but then Lena suggests that the old man might not be dead. Spurred by this possibility, Boesman nudges the body, then kicks it with escalating violence. When it becomes clear the old man is really dead, Boesman beats the body severely. When he has finished, Lena tells him he shouldn’t have done that—the bruises on the body will make Boesman look even more guilty. Boesman, panicked, starts to pack their things frantically, instructing Lena that they’re going to leave. Lena refuses, saying she’s had enough. She insists that she’s done running and loading all of their possessions onto her back. She tells him that he couldn’t have freedom that morning because he didn’t have room on his back next to all of their other things.

When Boesman has finished packing, he is almost comically weighed down. She tells him to go without her, saying goodbye. Boesman cannot move. Lena then looks at the old man’s body, noting, “Can’t throw yourself away before your time.” She has a change of heart, and tells Boesman to hand over the bucket on his head. She says they need to walk far away, to Coegakop. Boesman then tells her the correct order of the towns they’ve visited. When he’s finished, Lena concludes, “it doesn’t explain anything.”

Lena is content, at least, that a “dog and a dead man” saw a little bit of their lives. Lena affirms once more that she is still alive, and that she has time left to live. She instructs Boesman to walk, “but not so fast.” They walk off together into the darkness once more.