A Drink in the Passage by Alan Paton. • A Drink in the Passage, by Alan Paton, is a short story about a black well-educated South African winning-prize sculptor called Edward Simelane who one night met in the street a white guy called Jannie van Rensburg who was staring at Edward’s sculpture called “African Mother and Child” right outside a windows’ art gallery. Suddenly, to Edward’s surprise, Jannie started talking to him as if they knew for a long time and commented about how deeply touched he felt about that piece of art and how nice it would be to greet the author. Without knowing that the person next to Jannie was the author himself, he invited Edward to have a drink with him (this was very unusual at that time due to apartheid.) With very discomfort and reluctance, Edward finally accepted the invitation. This decision would lead him to find himself drinking alcohol among a whole group of white people, with the aggravating factor that this was taking place after curfew and outside his neighbourhood. After a couple of minutes, he realised that the whole situation was quite bizarre, so he excused himself by telling van Rensburg it was getting late to catch the last train home. Jannie offered Simeland a lift to the train station and drop him there to never see each other again.