The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (5 page)

She opened the conversation brightly. “You found this place all right, Rra. I like coming here. You can see everybody.” She made a gesture towards the car park. “These big shops are not like the markets we used to have, are they? So we need places like this instead.”

He looked out over the car park. Forty-five, she thought. Maybe fifty; old enough to remember how things used to be.

“Yes,” he said. “It is a good place.”

“And you can talk here,” she went on. “The tables are far enough apart to do that. Nobody can hear, except those two girls over there, perhaps, and they would not be interested in what we have to say—their heads are full of boys.”

He glanced in the direction of the girls; the photograph was still coming under intense scrutiny. He turned to Mma Ramotswe and smiled weakly. “And their phones,” he said.

“Ah,” said Mma Ramotswe, “their mobile phones. Yes, that is a big problem, isn’t it? So much talking going on. The air above Botswana must be almost full by now with all these words.”

He looked down at the ground.

She leaned forward. “I can tell that you are anxious, Rra.” She wanted to say that he was frightened, but decided that to refer to anxiety, rather than fear, was more polite—at this stage.

He kept his eyes fixed on the ground. His hands were clasped together on his lap; now she saw them tighten involuntarily. “It is not easy to talk about some things,” he muttered.

“Of course it isn’t, Rra. I know that. I have many people who come to me who find it very hard. I understand that very well.” She paused, watching the effect of her words. “But do you know something, Rra? Talking about it—just saying a few words—is often enough to help. Words can make big things little, you know.”

He lifted his gaze. There was still fear in his eyes, she thought; every bit as much fear as there had been at the beginning of their meeting.

“I am a farmer,” he said quietly.

“Yes?”

She waited for him to say something more, but he was silent.

“You told me that you lived just south of town,” she prompted. “But you did not say where.”

“Over there,” he said, indicating vaguely. “It’s off the Lobatse road. Half an hour.”

“Cattle?” she asked.

“Of course.” Everyone had cattle, Mma Ramotswe included.

“I was not always a farmer,” he continued. “I worked for many years with a mining company. I was in charge of recruitment.”

She nodded. “My father was a miner … over on that side.” She inclined her head in the direction of South Africa.

“That was hard,” he said.

“Very. But he came back to Botswana. Then he became late.” She realised that she had, in these few words, summed up the life of the man who meant more to her than any other. Yet anybody’s life story could be told in such a way, her own as much as anyone else’s. She had married a bad man and then been abandoned. She had lost her baby. She had loved her father, and when he died she
had opened a detective agency. She had married again, this time to a good man. That was her life in a few sentences.

He started to talk again. “I was left some money by my uncle, and I had also saved hard. So I had enough to stop working for the mining company and buy a small farm. It is not bad land—not the best, but it is good enough for me. We—that is my wife and I—were very happy with it. I bought some cattle and have been living down there.”

She nodded encouragingly. It was the commonest dream in Botswana: a small patch of land to call one’s own and a herd of cattle. A man who achieved that had achieved everything. Of course it was beyond the reach of most, and sights were lowered accordingly. A share in a small herd of cattle, even half a cow, was as much as many could aspire to. She had been in a room once, a single room lived in by a family struggling to survive financially, and had seen, pinned on the wall, a grubby photograph of a cow. She had known immediately that this was the family’s most precious possession—the thing that transformed that mean room into a home.

“So I have had some cattle,” Mr. Moeti went on. “Then one died.”

“I am sorry, Rra.”

“Thank you.” He went on: “It did not die of any disease, Mma. Its legs were cut. Like this.” He made a sawing motion against his wrist. “It went down on the ground and I found it the next morning. This thing, you see, happened at night.”

This thing happened at night.
The words made her shiver.

“And then, a week or so ago, it happened again. Another beast down. Same reason.” He looked at her. “Now you see, Mma, why I am anxious. That is the thing that is making me anxious.”

“Of course. Oh, Rra, this is very bad. Your cattle …”

“And it could get worse,” he muttered. “If somebody cuts the legs of your cattle, then might they not cut your legs too?”

She was quick to reassure him. “Oh, I don’t think so, Rra.”

“Don’t you, Mma?” There was a note of desperation in his voice. “You may not think that here in the middle of Gaborone, in this place with all its sunlight. But would you say that at night, out at my place, where the only light at night is the light of the moon and stars? And they can’t help you, Mma. The moon and stars are no help.”

She made a conciliatory gesture. “No, you’re right, Rra. I can see why you are frightened.” She paused. Why had he come to her, rather than to the authorities? “You have been to the police?”

He shook his head. “What can they do? They will say to me: somebody has killed your cattle, and then they will go away. How can they do anything more than that?”

It was a common view, even if a misguided one. The Botswana Police did act, and the courts did work, even if in other, less fortunate countries one might not be able to say the same thing with great conviction. “They might be able to—if you gave them some idea of who was doing it.”

His response came quickly. “I can’t. I have no idea.”

“You have enemies, Rra? Enemies from the past? Mining enemies?”

He appeared not to have expected this suggestion, and he frowned. “Why would I have enemies from mining? I was just the man who did the recruiting. I had nothing to do with what happened in the mines.”

“No, I suppose you didn’t. I just think that it’s important to consider who may have a reason to do this to you. Is there anybody like that?”

It is hard, she thought; it is hard for us to think of people who dislike us because none of us, in our heart, believes that we deserve the hate of others.

He shook his head. “I have no idea, Mma. And that is why I
have come to you. You are the one to find out these things and save my cattle. I am asking you to do that, Mma Ramotswe, because everybody says that you are the lady to help people.”

YOU ARE THE LADY
to help people.
The words came back to her as she made her way home that evening. It was pleasing to know that people thought that of you, but worrying too. You could not help everybody—nobody could—because the world was too full of need and troubles, a wide ocean of them, and one person could not begin to deal with all that. And yet, even if you were just one person, and even if you could never solve everybody’s problems, when somebody came to you and looked frightened, you could not say,
Go away, I cannot do anything for you.
You say, instead,
Yes, I will do what I can.
And then, when you go home from work at the end of the day, you sit on your small verandah watching the day turn to dusk, nursing a cup of red bush tea in your hands, and wonder what on earth you can possibly do to help.

 
CHAPTER FOUR
 
 RICH PEOPLE HAVE MANY CATTLE

T
HAT EVENING
was one of the nights in the week that Phuti Radiphuti, proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Store, came to eat dinner at the modest rented house of his officially betrothed fiancée, Grace Makutsi, associate detective at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Their dinner arrangements had changed since the accident in which Phuti had lost his right foot and a small portion of his leg. Rescued from the clutches of his jealous aunt, during the rest of his recuperation he had been looked after by Mma Potokwane, who had found him a spare room in the back of her home at the orphan farm. At first Mma Makutsi had come to see him at the Potokwane house and had meals with him there, but this arrangement was never entirely satisfactory from her point of view.

“It’s not that I don’t like Mma Potokwane,” she had said. “She is a very great lady—one of the greatest ladies in Botswana. But …”

“You do not need to say it,” said Phuti. “She is also a very bossy lady. A good but bossy lady. I think there are many people like that.”

Mma Makutsi smiled. “Yes. Have you noticed how she tells us
to eat up after she has put the food on the table? It is as if she is talking to one of the children. ‘Eat up now—leave nothing on your plate.’ Have you noticed that?”

Phuti had. “And she even told me the other day that I could have another piece of cake if I was good. I think she forgets that we are adults.”

“I think that maybe the time has come for us to have dinner at my house again,” said Mma Makutsi. “Do you think that you can drive yet?”

Phuti had shaken his head. He did not yet feel able to do that, he explained, although he hoped that it would not be long. The prosthetic foot he had been provided with by the hospital was taking a bit longer than he had imagined to get used to, and it would be a few weeks, he felt, before he could drive his car again. “But I have somebody from the furniture store who can drive me. He is one of our regular drivers, and we can transfer him from those duties. He is a very safe driver—you will not be worried.”

Mma Makutsi had been not so much worried as impressed. Having a driver whom one could casually allocate to new duties was something that seemed to belong to an entirely different world, to a plane of existence of which she had only the slightest inkling. She knew that the Radiphuti family was well-to-do, and she knew that when she and Phuti were married her life would change in certain respects, but she was not yet used to the idea.

“He will drive you all the time?” she asked.

Phuti shrugged. “Yes, if I want that.”

If I want that.
That, she had thought, was the difference. She had never really been in a position to have what she wanted, and now … She imagined what it would be like. If you saw a pair of shoes, you could simply take out your purse and buy them. If you wanted a fridge for your house, or a stove, you could simply go to a
shop where they had these things and say, “I will have that one, please. And that one too.” She paused. Would she do this? She thought not. Now that she was in a position to indulge such whims, she found that she had no desire to do so, except, perhaps, for the shoes … Shoes, of course, were different, and yes, the future looked very positive on the shoe front.

With the driver now available to take Phuti to dinner at his fiancée’s house, Phuti had informed Mma Potokwane that he would be eating dinner with Mma Makutsi at her place.

“Is that wise?” Mma Potokwane had asked.

He had looked puzzled, and she had gone on to explain. “You are still recovering from your accident, Rra,” she said. “You need very good food.”

“But she can make that for me,” he protested. “Mma Makutsi is a very good cook.”

Mma Potokwane had backed off. “Oh, I am not suggesting she is not a good cook, Rra. It is really just a question of experience. I have many years of experience of cooking for other people. It is not something that anybody can do. Mma Makutsi is a very good secretary, but I do not think that they taught cooking at the Botswana Secretarial College.”

He had stood up for his fiancée. “She is an associate detective, Mma,” he said firmly. “And she learned to cook at home, not at secretarial college.”

Mma Potokwane had recognised defeat. She would never have been bettered in such a discussion by another woman, but Phuti Radiphuti was a man, and Mma Potokwane came from a generation of women that was reticent about arguing with men. “But you will still have breakfast here, Rra?”

“I shall, Mma Potokwane. And thank you for that. Thank you for looking after me so well.”

She had smiled broadly. “I have been happy to do that, Rra. And I am so pleased that you are getting better at walking now. Soon you will be one hundred per cent again.”

“I hope that I shall not need a stick for much longer.”

She hoped that too, she said, although a stick lent a man a certain air of authority. “In my village,” she said, “we had a headman who always walked with a stick. He said that it was very useful for beating small boys with if they misbehaved. That is not how headmen conduct themselves these days. Things have changed.”

“They have,” said Phuti. “It is not good to beat people, I think.”

Mma Potokwane had looked thoughtful, wistful perhaps. “Maybe not,” she said hesitantly. “Even if they deserve it, maybe not.”

DINNER THAT EVENING
was a rich oxtail stew made with onions, carrots and mashed potatoes. Phuti arrived at six, and he and Mma Makutsi spent a pleasant half hour sitting at the table waiting for the stew to be ready and discussing the events of the day. Although Mma Makutsi respected the confidentiality of her clients, she did not think that this prevented passing on information to fiancés and spouses, who could be expected to be discreet about what they heard. She knew that Mma Ramotswe discussed her cases with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, and she understood why this was necessary. “You have to be able to talk to your husband,” Mma Ramotswe had said to her. “If you don’t, then everything gets bottled up inside you and pop! it explodes.”