The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (13) (24 page)

“A day or two’s walk for us, or for a lion?” asked Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe made light of the question. “It doesn’t matter, Mma. He says there are no lions.”

“For us,” said the man, turning to Mma Makutsi. “For a lion, two hours, maybe. Lions are very fast runners. Have you seen them running, Mma?”

Mma Makutsi thought for a moment. She had never seen a lion doing anything, not ever having come across one, but somehow she felt she knew how they ran.

“I know how they go,” she said. “They lie down on their stomachs and creep along.”

The man frowned. “No, that is only when they are stalking their prey, Mma. And that is a lioness. If you are walking through the bush, say, and a lioness sees you and decides that she will eat you, then she goes down like this and she walks on bended legs. That is so that her head doesn’t stick up over the top of the grass. It means that nobody can see her. That is what lions like.” He paused, and gestured to the bush that stretched out behind the van. “Over there, you see, that is a good place for a lioness to creep. Those little bushes would cover her and we wouldn’t know that she was there, while all the time she’s getting closer, closer.”

He turned back to face Mma Ramotswe. “You said you were here to see Mma Potokwane, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “That is so, Rra. She is our old friend, and she has her lands along there.”

“Oh, I know that,” said the man. “She is my old friend too. In fact, she is the cousin of my brother’s cousin, by a different mother. I have known her all my life.”

“Is she here, Rra?” asked Mma Makutsi.

The man pointed down the track. “Yes, she is here. She came out yesterday. Nobody had been expecting her, but there she was. There is something wrong, I think, but she won’t speak to the other ladies about it. My wife has asked her, and she says that everything is all right. But it isn’t.”

“No, Rra, you’re right,” Mma Ramotswe. “There is something very wrong. It’s to do with her work.”

The man absorbed this. “She can come back here. She has good fields. She could stay. She has many relatives out here, and they will look after her.” He turned to look at the van. “But you cannot get to her place in that van, Mma. You will have to leave it here and walk. It is not far to her place now—just half an hour or so along that way.”

“But we can’t leave the van stuck in the sand,” objected Mma Makutsi. “How will we get back to Gaborone? We cannot walk.”

“We won’t leave it in the sand,” said the man. “I will help you pull it out, and then we will leave it here. You can collect it when you have finished visiting Mma Potokwane. It will be perfectly safe.”

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi looked at the donkeys. One of them, clearly older than the other, grey about the muzzle and the eyes, appeared to be asleep on his feet, his head drooping, indifferent to the flies that buzzed about what looked like an open sore on one of his ears.

“They are very strong,” said the man, intercepting the glance. “They have pulled bigger vans out of there. You needn’t worry, Mma.”

“I have some rope,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Under the seat there is some rope that my husband put in there. We could use that, Rra.”

The man shook his head. “I have my own, Mma. I always carry it because I know that I need it. We can use mine.”

He walked round to the back of the cart and extracted a length of rope from a box nailed to the boards. Then he detached the yoke from the front of the cart and began to cajole the two donkeys into position in front of the tilting nose of the tiny white van. Mma
Ramotswe was impressed by his businesslike manner—this was a man, she decided, who knew what he was doing. “You get in and steer, Mma,” he said to her. “Otherwise the wheels will point in the wrong direction and you’ll go further into the sand. Steer back into the middle of the road.”

Mma Ramotswe returned to the van and eased herself into the driver’s seat. The man now addressed Mma Makutsi, suggesting that she push at the back of the van while he pulled on the yoke at the front and persuaded the donkeys to take the strain. Then they both got into position, and the man started to shout at the donkeys.

Inside the cab, Mma Ramotswe felt the van move—but only slightly. Then, as the man gave a resounding smack to one of the donkeys, it moved again, rolling forwards as the wheels were dragged through the sand; only to stop and then roll back the few precious inches it had just achieved.

“Stop,” called out the man, both to the donkeys and to Mma Makutsi.

“I have stopped,” shouted Mma Makutsi from the back. “It’s too heavy, Rra.”

The man was perplexed. “They are very strong …” He tailed off. He looked at Mma Ramotswe. “Perhaps, Mma, it might be better if we asked the other lady …” He gave a toss of the head in the direction of Mma Makutsi. “Perhaps we could ask that lady to steer while you pushed. It’s just that she’s quite a bit less …”

Mma Ramotswe was polite but firm. “Traditionally built.”

“That is right,” said the man. “She is a bit thinner, and you are …”

“Traditionally built,” prompted Mma Ramotswe again. “Don’t worry, Rra. I am not ashamed of being who I am.”

The man made an elaborate show of rejecting the very thought. “Of course, Mma, of course. It’s just that the donkeys are a bit old—that one in particular—and they are finding it a bit difficult to
drag a van
and
a … a traditionally built lady. With the other lady at the wheel, I think we can do it.”

Mma Makutsi, who had been following this exchange, smiled as she made her way round to the door. But she said nothing; that would have been rude, of course, and would have demonstrated a complete lack of feminine loyalty. Men, she knew, did not understand these matters.

“You must be careful not to get
too
thin, Mma,” muttered Mma Ramotswe, as she yielded her place in the van.

Mma Makutsi smiled. “Mma, I am already becoming a bit traditionally built. I do not think there is any danger of that.”

The man now returned to his position with the donkeys while Mma Ramotswe leaned up against the back of the van, digging her feet into the sand and preparing to apply her weight in the hoped-for direction of travel. Already, as she did so, the van moved slightly, even before the donkeys had engaged.

“I’ll count to three,” called the man. “Then we’ll pull and you push, Mma. One, two, three!”

This time the reaction of the van was immediate, and Mma Ramotswe had to act quickly to avoid falling over backwards.

“That’s it!” shouted the man from the front. “Pula, pula, pula!”

Pula, pula, pula!
was the cry of triumph, of joy, that was universal in Botswana. It meant
rain, rain, rain
—just the right cry for a dry country that lived for the day that the first life-giving rains arrived—that day of ominous purple skies, and heat, and the wind that precedes the first drops of water splattering and dancing on the baked ground.
Pula, pula, pula!

With the van free of the sand, Mma Makutsi decided to start the engine. She did this with her foot pressed down hard on the accelerator pedal—she was no driver, really—and the engine raced in response. For the donkeys, yoked so closely to this unusual burden, this was a source of sudden alarm, and they responded by
backing sharply against their restraining straps. One of them, the older one, stumbled, attempted to regain its footing, failed to do so and then collapsed.

The man gave a shout. “Turn the engine off, Mma! Turn it off!”

Mma Makutsi complied, her hands shooting up to her mouth in a gesture of horrified realisation. “Oh, Rra,” she cried. “I have killed your donkey.”

The man struggled with the straps that held the fallen donkey in the yoke. As he did so, the other donkey brayed suddenly, a mournful, broken sound. It took a few moments, but when the straps were released, the donkey sagged back into the sand, its chest heaving. It moved its head as if trying to get up, but then lowered it again and fixed the sky with a stare of reproach. Mma Makutsi, distraught over what she had done, was now joined by Mma Ramotswe. The donkey’s eyes, Mma Ramotswe found herself thinking, were so beautiful; flecked, almost golden, and rimmed with delicate black eyelashes. It was an incongruous thought—this admiration of the beauty of a creature that seemed to be on the point of death.

Mma Makutsi was now in tears. “Oh, Mma, what have I done?”

“It was an accident,” said Mma Ramotswe gently. “It was not your fault, Mma. You were not to know.”

The man, who had been bending over the donkey, now rose and walked over to his cart. He seemed to be curiously unconcerned by what had happened, simply saying, “He will get up. He will know we are going home now.”

He was right. The donkey now suddenly heaved a sigh and staggered to his feet.

“See, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “No harm done.”

“He is very lazy,” snapped the man. “He is always doing this.”

“Maybe he is tired,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“Maybe,” said the man. “But I’m tired too, Mma. We are all tired.” He looked about him. “There is so much sand.”

She thought about what he said. Perhaps Mma Potokwane was tired too. Perhaps there were just too many orphans, just as there was too much sand. Perhaps she had had enough of helping. If that were true, then she wondered whether she should be seeking her out here, or whether she should leave her in peace. It would be easy to go back now and leave Mma Potokwane at her lands, but then she reminded herself that Mma Potokwane had never once spoken in the past about retiring or giving up. No, the defeatist Mma Potokwane was not the real Mma Potokwane. The real Mma Potokwane was a fighter.

With the donkeys back in harness, Mma Ramotswe reached into her bag to retrieve a fifty-pula note. “You have been very good, Rra. This is a present for you.”

The man looked at the money. “You do not have to pay me, Mma. I wouldn’t leave anybody here. But since you are so kind …” He reached out and took the money, which he quickly tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt. “Since you are so kind, I will take you and this other lady to Mma Potokwane’s place. You should leave the van here because it gets even sandier later on. You can come back for it when you want to go home.”

They collected a few necessities from the van, which Mma Ramotswe had driven on to a piece of firm ground beside the track. Then, climbing onto the back of the cart, they started the journey down the track, the same journey that people had made countless times over the years, back in the time of their parents, their grandparents; in the same way, in the same quiet, at the same pace, closer to the world than in the metal cocoons in which we now travel. There was birdsong, and the gentlest of breezes; and they heard the donkeys, the noise made by their hooves against the ground, the sound of their breathing, their sighs.

W
ITH MMA MAKUTSI AWAY
, Phuti Radiphuti felt at a loose end. He had very rapidly become accustomed to marriage—so rapidly, in fact, that on this first occasion on which he had been left alone, he found himself unable to settle. Mma Makutsi had left him a stew for his dinner and this required only to be warmed up, but Phuti felt disinclined to eat by himself in a kitchen that he now associated with the presence of his new wife. On impulse rather than on any serious reflection, he telephoned the aunt with whom he had stayed during his recent convalescence. This aunt, who had done her best to discourage his marriage, believing that Mma Makutsi was unworthy of her nephew and motivated, too, by a jealousy that would have prevented her from approving of any prospective wife for Phuti, had not attended the wedding. She had observed it from afar, though, sitting in the brown car with its mean-spirited narrow windows and watching the reception tents through a pair of binoculars. Phuti had seen her car and had started over towards it in the hope of persuading his aunt to bring hostilities to an end and join them at the wedding party; he had not succeeded in speaking to
her, though, as she had seen him approaching and had driven off at speed.

This had not prevented him from sending her a piece of wedding cake and a photograph of himself in his wedding suit, inscribed
To my dear aunt, from your faithful nephew, Phuti
. With a more forgiving woman, this might have resulted in a letter of thanks, or at least a message, but neither had been forthcoming. Phuti did not take offence—it was not in his nature to do so—and now, ignoring her previous bad behaviour, he called his aunt and asked her whether he could possibly come for dinner that evening. “Just me,” he said quickly. “I shall be alone.”

The aunt had been quick to agree to this self-invitation. She had been hoping to see him but had been unable to swallow her pride sufficiently to make the first move. And this reference to being on his own intrigued her: Was it too much to hope that he had tired of the whole business of being married to Mma Makutsi and was keen to revert to bachelor status, preferably living with her and occupying the bedroom in which he had stayed on his last visit? She could feed him up again—as she had done during his convalescence—and make him happy. It would be better, far better, for him to be away from that dreadful woman with her large round glasses and her Bobonong ways.