"This is a lonely place, just us two," Lena cries. "Talk to me!"

"Talk to yourself," Boesman replies. "Your words are nonsense."

Desperate for a companion, Lena calls out to an old bum (Thomas Anderson) that she spots in the distance, the only other character in the performance. She calls him over to the fire, against Boesman's wishes. Even though the old man speaks only gibberish and doesn't understand what Lena is saying, she pretends that they understand one another.

In choosing to sleep next to the derelict under the open sky rather than in Boesman's makeshift shack, Lena gives up a bottle of liquor for permission to do so. Nevertheless, a drunk Boesman kicks and hits the old man as he sits slumped over and near death.

The old man dies before morning, leaving Lena alone with Boesman once again. At first, she refuses to continue traveling with her mate, who is afraid that he will be accused of murdering the derelict. She pleads with him to "learn to dance" and thus "leave his bruises on the earth" rather than on her body.

Angered, Boesman violently rips apart the shack he has built, just as the white men tore apart the couple's shanty on the day before. Then he is quiet, all energy spent. After a tense moment, Lena reaches out her hand to Boesman, takes her share of their belongings on her back and walks with him off stage.

The audience is left with little hope that Boseman's and Lena's lives, or, for that matter, that the lives of the oppressed South Africans they represent, will ever improve. It can take comfort only from having been witness to an intelligent, powerful testimony--and for having shared a little of the sorrow.