Mr J. L. B. Matekoni snorted. ‘That thing never goes away, Mma. There will always be somebody prepared to pay those people to put a curse on his enemy.’
‘Don’t the police do anything about it?’
Mr J. L. B. Matekoni scratched his head. ‘If they hear about it; but nobody wants to report it to them. It is always the same. Fear works.’
Mma Ramotswe agreed, but her fundamental question remained unanswered. What sort of person would do such a thing?
‘Let me put it this way, Rra,’ she said. ‘If you received a feather or something like that, whom would you suspect?’
He answered quickly. ‘My enemies.’
‘But you have none, Rra.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Perhaps not. But if I did, then they would be the suspects.’ He paused. ‘Or a rival, I suppose. Anybody can have rivals.’
They were silent for a while, and Mma Ramotswe stared out of the window at the acacia tree. A small bird – not one of the doves who made their home there, but something altogether more modest – was arguing with another bird about the possession of a few inches of branch. The prize was nothing much, and there were plenty of unoccupied branches nearby, but for the birds it was worth fighting for. She watched the birds in their tiny rage, and was joined by Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, who stood at her shoulder.
‘Ridiculous birds,’ he said. ‘They are always squabbling with one another.’
‘Like people,’ muttered Mma Ramotswe. ‘We are always fighting too – over the same things that animals fight over. Land. A place to live or work.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Yes, we are. And the people who are in a place first think that this means that everybody else can be shooed away. Like that bird over there. He was there first, he says. The other bird is the intruder.’
He was thoughtful. They both knew what was being discussed. ‘But don’t people have the right to protect their place? This Botswana of ours – everybody would want to come and live here. All those people from countries where things don’t work, or where they are in a big mess – they would want to come here. And we couldn’t manage that, Mma Ramotswe…’
She understood the point he was making. You could not open your doors to everybody because you would go under if you did. So you had to harden your heart; you had to be selfish, which she did not like. But you cannot turn another away, she thought; you cannot.
‘It is very hard,’ she said. ‘But I suppose you’re right. We cannot take on all the problems of Africa. Nobody can.’ That was true, she realised, though she wished that it were otherwise.
She looked again at the birds. Mma Soleti was the bird that had come to the tree more recently. The other bird, the defender, was the bird that was already there.
She drove to the Radiphuti house in her tiny white van. Because the new house that Phuti Radiphuti had commissioned from the This Way Up Building Company was on the very edge of town, in an area yet to be adopted by the council, the road was rough and bumpy, and the van threw up a cloud of fine dust that seemed quite out of proportion to the vehicle’s size. It would be impossible for anybody to approach the house by stealth, thought Mma Ramotswe, as long as they drove and as long as they came by day.
She saw that Phuti’s car was parked beside the house, which did not surprise her as he had told her that he was taking a few days off while Mma Makutsi and the new baby settled. It would be good to see him; she had grown to like Phuti Radiphuti immensely, and she looked forward to witnessing his joy in his new son. There was another car, though, that Mma Ramotswe recognised, and this was a less welcome sight. It was a low-slung, rather old brown car – the colour of cattle dung, she could not help but observe – and had small, mean-spirited windows. It was a car, she thought, for a person who did not want to be looked at by the world, and wanted, in turn, to gaze out at the world only through narrow and defensive slits. It occurred to her that it might even have previously been a military vehicle, and that the purpose of the small windows was to stop people shooting at the occupants within.
The car belonged to Phuti’s contrary aunt, and for a brief moment she imagined the aunt driving off to the shops under the fire of her enemies, of whom there surely were many. She smiled at the picture.
She began to park the van next to the unpleasant brown car, but then she thought better of it. She was by no means as ready as Mr J. L. B. Matekoni was to attribute emotions to cars, but she did not like the thought of her van being so close to the brown car. It was ridiculous, she knew that, but she would feel more comfortable if she found another parking place. Very slowly, she drove round the side of the house. There was no real driveway there, but there also seemed to be no garden – yet.
She stopped the van and got out, remembering to take with her the small parcel of baby shoes. As she approached the house, she had a feeling that she was being watched. Trust your feelings, Clovis Andersen had written in The Principles of Private Detection. If the back of your neck tells you that you’re being watched, listen to it!
The back of Mma Ramotswe’s neck now told her that there was somebody looking at her. She turned and glanced at the windows that were slightly above her. She thought she saw a movement, but she could not be sure. She continued on her way to the front of the house.
As Mma Ramotswe feared, it was the aunt, rather than Phuti, who opened the door to her.
‘Yes?’ said the aunt. ‘Who are you, Mma?’
Mma Ramotswe was certain that the aunt must remember who she was. ‘We have met before, Mma. Perhaps you have forgotten. I am Mma Ramotswe.’
The aunt feigned sudden enlightenment. ‘Oh, that woman. The one from that garage.’
‘From the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,’ corrected Mma Ramotswe. ‘It is next to a garage, but it is not a garage itself.’
The aunt ignored this. ‘I’m sorry that there is nobody in,’ she said abruptly. ‘Come back some other time.’
Mma Ramotswe caught her breath. She had never been able to understand how some people could lie like this when it was so obvious that their lies would be exposed. ‘But, Mma, Mr Radiphuti’s car is here.’
The aunt hesitated. ‘Is it? Well, he must have come home, but I think he must be asleep. We cannot wake him. Sorry about that – you must go now.’
‘No,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘I have been asked to come here by Mma Makutsi herself. She will want to see me.’
She began to push past the aunt, who resisted for a few moments, but, in military terms, it was light armour against heavy, and heavy armour won, as it always does. A final push was all that was required, and Mma Ramotswe was in the living room. From deep within the house she could hear Phuti’s voice, and she made her way towards that.
Phuti was in the kitchen, as was Mma Makutsi, wearing a loose pink housecoat. They were both seated when she entered. Phuti rose to his feet, while Mma Makutsi remained in her chair. Mma Ramotswe gave a small cry of joy and crossed the room to embrace her assistant.
‘This is good news, Mma,’ she said. ‘This is very good news.’
Mma Makutsi adjusted her glasses. She was beaming with pleasure.
‘I am very happy too,’ she said. ‘It is a boy, Mma, as I think Phuti told you.’
Mma Ramotswe turned to smile at Phuti Radiphuti. ‘He did. He is a very proud father. Where is the baby?’ asked Mma Ramotswe. ‘I have brought him a present.’
Mma Makutsi nodded in the direction of the corridor that led off the kitchen. ‘He is sound asleep. He has just been fed, and now he is sleeping.’ She paused. ‘Would you like to see him, Mma?’
A voice came from behind them. The aunt had entered the room and was standing in the doorway. ‘It is not good for babies to be seen by too many people,’ she said, shaking her head in disapproval. ‘You should know that.’
Mma Ramotswe turned to face the aunt. ‘I’m not going to touch him, Mma. Only look.’
The aunt shook her head again. ‘There are traditions,’ she said. ‘You people may have forgotten
them, but I haven’t.’
Phuti Radiphuti had been silent, but now he spoke. ‘We all know about those, Auntie. But these days —’
‘These days makes no difference,’ the aunt spat out. ‘These days, these days. That is all that people say when they don’t want to follow tradition. And then…’ She made a gesture to suggest the collapse of everything.
‘I am the mother,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘I am the one who must decide.’
‘Yes,’ said Phuti Radiphuti. ‘Grace is the…’ He was silenced by a look from the aunt.
The aunt addressed herself to her nephew. ‘It is not men’s business, Phuti. This is women’s business and men should not put their noses into it.’
Mma Ramotswe looked anxiously at Mma Makutsi. She did not think it a good thing for somebody who had just given birth to be subjected to strain.
‘I think that I can see the baby a little bit later,’ she said. ‘This is not the time. Now is the time for me to talk to Mma Makutsi.’ She looked first at Phuti Radiphuti and then at the aunt. ‘And I think we should talk in private. These are business matters, you see.’
Phuti Radiphuti crossed the room to stand by his aunt. ‘You’re quite right, Mma Ramotswe,’ he said. ‘Auntie and I will go and sit on the veranda – it’s cooler there.’
‘Well!’ said Mma Ramotswe. And then, because she could not think of anything else that would adequately express her feelings, she said again, ‘Well!’
Mma Makutsi rolled her eyes. ‘She is the senior aunt, as you know. I have no family down here – all my people are up in Bobonong.’
Mma Ramotswe sighed. She understood the system and the perfectly legitimate claims that Phuti’s aunt had as the senior female relative. ‘I know, Mma,’ she said. ‘But it can’t be easy for you. Is she taking the traditional view?’
Mma Makutsi explained that Phuti Radiphuti’s aunt was extremely traditional. ‘She said that the baby should be kept inside for three months, Mma. She also wanted to rub ash into his skin – you’ll remember how they used to do that in the villages. But I said that nobody was going to put anything on my baby except Vaseline.’
Mma Ramotswe smiled. ‘There is nothing better for a baby than to be covered in that jelly,’ she said. ‘It helps to…’ She faltered. She was not sure what purpose was served by polishing babies with petroleum jelly, but there must have been some reason, or it would not have been done. Some people said that it was an old custom and should be given up, but she thought it harmless, even if it was difficult to think of any scientific reason to do it.
‘It helps the mother,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘If the mother sees that the baby is nice and shiny, then that makes the mother feel better, and if the mother feels better, then she looks after the baby better. There is a lot of evidence for that, I think.’
Mma Ramotswe wondered whether Mma Makutsi was going to disclose that she had learned this information at the Botswana Secretarial College, but she did not. ‘I am sure you are right, Mma,’ she said.
Mma Makutsi glanced towards the doorway through which Phuti Radiphuti and the aunt had disappeared. Then she looked at Mma Ramotswe.
‘Would you like to see him?’ she whispered.
Mma Ramotswe suppressed a giggle of glee. ‘Yes, I would love to, Mma. She needn’t know.’
Quietly, like stealthy conspirators, they crept out of the kitchen and into the small bedroom that was acting as nursery. There was a large green cot in one corner of this room, a changing table and a tall chest full of baby supplies: powder and creams and neat piles of woollen clothing. There was also that wonderful, evocative smell of a small human creature – a smell of softness, a smell of milk, a smell of life just beginning.
‘There he is,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘See him, Mma Ramotswe? See my baby?’
Mma Ramotswe leaned forward over the little figure in the cot. She reached out and very gently touched one of the tiny hands – carefully, as one might touch a butterfly or a delicate flower. The baby did not stir, not beyond the tiny movements of a sleeping infant – the almost imperceptible rise and fall of the soft blanket under which he slept, and the occasional twitch. She thought: for all he knows, he might still be in the womb, except here, in his new life, there was light and colour and the warm embrace of Africa.
She straightened up and looked at Mma Makutsi, who was still gazing raptly at the minor miracle before them. She noticed that her assistant’s large round glasses had misted up. She reached and put an arm about Mma Makutsi’s shoulders. It was a long road they had travelled together over the last few years; a long road that led from that very first day when the newly minted secretary had talked herself into the job, with Bobonong behind her but poverty still snapping at her heels. A road that then led to the meeting with Phuti Radiphuti and now to this – to motherhood and all the happiness it brought.
Mma Makutsi took off her glasses and dabbed at the lenses with a handkerchief. ‘My heart is full,’ she said.
‘That is why we are crying,’ said Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Makutsi replaced her glasses, but still there were tears in her eyes. ‘That is my baby, Mma,’ she whispered. ‘That is my own baby.’
It is your own baby, thought Mma Ramotswe. It is yours, as these other things you have are yours. And none of this came to you at the start of your life, because then you had nothing, or next to nothing, and you have earned all of it, Mma, every single bit of all this by your hard work and your sacrifice and by being kind to Phuti Radiphuti and loving him for what he is rather than because he has many of the things of this world. This is all yours, Mma Makutsi – your ninety-seven per cent share of everything.
They left the baby, returning to the kitchen where, for a few minutes, they sat together in complete silence, each with the thoughts that such a moment will always bring. There was no need for words, for there are times when words can only hint at what the heart would wish to say.
Chapter Seven
In the Chair of a Very Great Man
I
t felt very strange to be carrying out an investigation without Mma Makutsi’s advice and assistance. Mma Ramotswe had become so accustomed to discussing issues with her assistant that now, on her own, it seemed to her as if a standard office procedure had suddenly changed. With Mma Makutsi at her desk on the other side of the room, she could toss ideas into the air in the certainty that they would be examined, debated and then either confirmed or rejected. Now she had only herself with whom to conduct those meandering dialogues by means of which she was used to sorting out the tangled issues that people brought to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. And these issues were sometimes hopelessly tangled – and then it was only through some extraordinary serendipitous insight that the situation became clearer. Often that insight was triggered by something that Mma Makutsi said, by some question that she asked. Not now, though, and, rather to her surprise, Mma Ramotswe felt vulnerable as a result. There was Mr J. L. B. Matekoni to run ideas past, but helpful though he was he did not have feminine insight – for which she could hardly blame him. Feminine insight did not always go with mechanical ability – it could, of course, especially now that men and women were being encouraged to do the same things, but as a general rule it did not. One had to be realistic about that.
Mma Ramotswe was relieved that Mma Makutsi’s absence was not going to be a long one, but she could hardly shelve all cases until such time as her assistant returned. So the day after she had paid that first visit to the Radiphuti house to inspect the new baby, she decided that it was time to tackle the matter that Mma Sheba had recently entrusted to her. She had done nothing so far, and Mma Sheba had said something about phoning up to hear about progress in a week or so. She could not put it off any longer.
Seated at her desk in the office, a cup of freshly brewed redbush tea within reach, she took a blank piece of paper and wrote a summary of what she knew. It was always useful – and sometimes sobering – to write down what you knew. Occasionally the paper remained blank, which
was instructive, if somewhat unsettling.
It was not blank that morning. Rra Edgar, she wrote. Had farm. Had brother. Brother went to Swaziland and had son, Liso Molapo. Sister, aunt of boy in Swaziland, stayed in Botswana, on farm. Rra Edgar dies. Farm goes to Liso. Liso comes back and claims legacy. Mma Sheba thinks he is not Liso. His papers say he is. Aunt on farm confirms his identity.
Those were the facts of the case as she recalled them. But that was only the beginning. Now came the questions.
How do we know that the boy is Liso? Papers: he has a passport that says that he is Liso Molapo. He has a birth certificate that says same. The aunt says that he is Liso Molapo. If he is not, then somebody is lying. The passport? The birth certificate? The aunt?
She put down her pen and looked at what she had written so far. It seemed to her that the important questions had been asked, and now it was simply a matter of finding answers. That, however, was the difficult part; questions were easy enough to pose, but the answers to these questions were not always ready at hand. There was, however, one very obvious answer, and it was the one that she thought she should consider before she looked at any other possibilities. This was that Liso Molapo was indeed Liso Molapo, and that Mma Sheba’s doubts were unfounded, and even ill-intentioned. Did Clovis Andersen say something about that? She rose to her feet and took the well-thumbed copy of The Principles of Private Detection from the shelf above the filing cabinet.