The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (13) (25 page)

It was not without trepidation that Phuti parked his car at the aunt’s front gate that evening and began his way up the short path to her front door. The last time I was here, he thought, I was a single man. And now I am a married man with a talented and attractive wife. I was a boy back then; now I am a man.

He glanced at the garden in the fading light of evening. There were the paw-paw trees from which his aunt had picked the heavy yellow fruit she had served to him with lumpy custard. There was the tree that he had climbed when he visited his aunt as a twelve-year-old;
the branch on which he had strung a swing that had broken at a crucial moment and sent another boy, a friend from school, sailing through the air to a broken leg and three days in hospital. And there, parked beside the house, in the position it had occupied for so many years, was the unfriendly brown car with its pinched windows and its sign that said
Don’t Waste Water
. That sign had always been there, although his aunt, as far as he could make out, had never been particularly abstemious when it came to water. The patch of grass outside her house was always liberally irrigated, and he had noticed that the baths she ran for herself almost reached the rim of the tub.

He knocked at the door and called out, “
Ko, ko
, Auntie!” From somewhere within the house he heard her footsteps approaching and then the door opened. Seeing Phuti on the doorstep, the aunt opened her arms to embrace him.
I am forgiven
, he thought.

“Phuti!” exclaimed the aunt. “Now you have come back to see your auntie.”

He stepped into the house and allowed her to give him a hug.

“Let me see you,” she said, standing back. “You’re looking so handsome, Phuti! Such a waste, such a waste.”

He recoiled momentarily at the words. In what way was it a waste for him to look handsome, not that he thought he looked handsome at all?

“You are well, Auntie?”

She made a non-committal gesture. “I am well, and then I am not well.”

He looked concerned. “You have been ill?”

“Not exactly ill, Phuti. But then, not well either. It is not easy, being alive these days, what with everything changing. But we must not talk about me, we must talk about you. You are the important one now, not me. Tell me what has happened.”

As she asked this question, she led him into the sitting room. In the middle of the room several large armchairs were positioned around a table on which a dictionary, a world atlas and an arrangement of red plastic flowers had been placed. There was a stale smell in the air.

“Sit down, Phuti.” It was more of a command than an invitation, but Phuti was used to his aunt’s adopting this tone and he obeyed without murmur.

She fixed him with a concerned stare. “You are looking very thin,” she began. “Here and here.” She pointed to her neck and stomach. “Those are the places where it always shows, Phuti.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not getting enough food, are you?”

Phuti held up his hands in denial. “No, no, Auntie. I am getting too much food, really. I am putting on weight, I think.”

She shook her head. “That cannot be, Phuti. Your neck is very thin now, and look at your trousers: they are hanging on you like an empty sack. You are very thin.”

Phuti struggled with his feelings of annoyance. It was quite obvious to him what the implication of these comments was: his new wife was no cook—or at least, that is what his aunt was trying to suggest without actually saying it.

“I am eating very well, Auntie,” he said. “Grace is a very good cook, and she is giving me plenty to eat.”

The aunt affected surprise that she should have thought that Mma Makutsi was anything but an expert cook. “Of course she is,” she said. “Of course she …” She struggled, as if finding it difficult to remember the name.

“Grace. Grace Makutsi.”

“Of course, Grace … Grace Ma …”

“Makutsi.”

“Yes, that woman.” She looked down at the floor and frowned.
“Makutsi? Where is that name from, I wonder? It is not from anywhere near here, I think. Perhaps it is South African. They have some very odd names over there.”

“She is a Motswana, Auntie. She comes from Bobonong.”

The aunt transferred her gaze to the window, looking out into the distance in the direction, perhaps, of Bobonong. “That is far away. I do not know any people up there. Maybe they are nice people, but how can you tell when you don’t know any of them? There are many people in China, but I cannot say whether they are nice people or not because I do not know any of them.”

Phuti felt his cheeks burning. He always felt like that when his aunt said such things. And he knew that if he closed his eyes and counted slowly, he worried less about it. But now he could not do that; Bobonong and China? What had China got to do with it? Nothing, he thought. Nothing at all.

“Bobonong is in Botswana,” he said. “The people who live there are all Batswana—the same as you and me, Auntie. They are no different.”

“I did not say they were,” said the aunt. “All I said is that I do not know any of those people, apart from Gracious …”

“Grace.”

“Yes, apart from her.”

The aunt sniffed. “You must eat more,” she said. “It is not good for a man to become too thin.”

“I am eating very well, Auntie. You mustn’t worry about me.”

The aunt looked pained. “How can I stop worrying about you, when you are my own nephew? How can I stop worrying about you when you go off and marry somebody I don’t know and whose people we’ve never heard about?”

Phuti did not answer, and the aunt continued. “And now where
is she? Gone away, I believe, and you have nothing to eat. Well, you always have a home to come back to. There is that same room you stayed in—I have changed nothing. And you will get fatter and stronger if you stay here—where you belong.”

“But Grace is only away for one night,” said Phuti mildly. “She is on business with Mma Ramotswe. They have gone—”

“Oh, that Mma Ramotswe! That fat lady who calls herself a private detective but who sits in her office all day eating doughnuts! That is what they say, you know. You’ll have to be careful, Phuti, if Gracious eats doughnuts with that woman all day, then your bed will break. You just remember that.”

Phuti closed his eyes. It was easier to talk to his aunt with his eyes closed, he had decided. Not only did this help him to say what he wanted to say, but it also had the effect of disconcerting her, which, he found, was of some help.

“We mustn’t talk about Grace too much,” he said. “She is a good wife to me and I am very happy. That is what I want you to know, Auntie: I am very happy.”

The aunt sniffed. “I’m glad to hear that. But if you ever are unhappy, you know where to come. That is all I will say for the time being.” She sniffed again. “And why are your eyes closed, Phuti? Did you not sleep enough last night?”

Phuti opened his eyes. “I slept well, Auntie. But now I’m hungry, and the thought of your delicious cooking is making my stomach jump up and down.”

The aunt smiled coquettishly. “You’re right to remind me, Phuti. I have some very good stew that I am going to give you.” There was a pause—the slightest pause. Then: “Far better than anything you get at your place, I think, but let’s not talk too much about that …”

The stew, when it was served, proved to be every bit as good as
the aunt had claimed. Over the dinner table, watching Phuti tackle his second helping, she seemed to mellow, and the conversation moved on to less controversial subjects. The aunt had been to Lobatse to visit a relative who had been ill; she had found a new pair of shoes in a shop and had bought them because they had been reduced in price by sixty per cent. She had received a telephone call that morning from somebody who had got the wrong number; her neighbour had been bitten by a dog and had been obliged to have anti-rabies injections—“just in case”—but knowing the neighbour as she did, it was almost certainly the neighbour’s fault rather than the dog’s. “They should give that dog a course of injections, if you ask me, Phuti. You know what that woman is like—I’ve told you, haven’t I?” And then, “Have you had any injections recently, Phuti? I must go to the doctor myself some day and get an injection.”

They finished the meal and the aunt made a pot of tea. She served this on the verandah, where it was cooler, and from where they had a good view of the neighbour’s house, now a dark shape in the night. “You never know what you’re going to see going on in there,” said the aunt. “Sometimes they leave a light on and forget that it is on. I have seen some things that I cannot speak about, you know. Even if you ask me, I cannot speak about them.”

There was an expectant silence, as if she was waiting for Phuti to ask her. But he did not, and the conversation moved on to the new house.

“I hear that you have that Mr. Putumelo building you a house,” said the aunt. “I know his wife. She is a big lady in the church, although you never see him there.”

“Maybe that is because he is very busy,” said Phuti. “Some people are too busy to go to church.”

“That’s true,” said the aunt. “I myself cannot go every Sunday, because I am so busy.” She reached out to refill Phuti’s cup. “He is
building his own house, you know. It’s very close to my butcher’s house. The butcher says it is a very fine house.”

“That’s what you’d expect of a builder,” observed Phuti. “I have never known a builder who lived in a not-so-good house. They know what makes a good place. They know those things, Auntie.”

The aunt nodded. “That’s very true. Yes, they know. The butcher told me that this house is made of very high-class bricks. They are imported, he says.”

Phuti was not surprised by this. “He likes bricks, that builder. He recommended that we use bricks, too.”

“Mind you,” the aunt continued, “I do not know where he finds the money. The butcher says that he has a big bill run up with him, and when he talked to him about it he told him that he is finding things very difficult at the moment. He says that there is not very much work, and that he has a big overdraft with the bank.”

This did not sound unfamiliar to Phuti. “People often say that,” he remarked. “They say that their business is not doing well when it really is. They do not want to make other people jealous.”

The aunt considered this. “Maybe, but not in this case. The reverend at the church said something about them. He said that they were in financial difficulties and we should pray that the Lord brings them some money. The wife must have told him that.”

Phuti closed his eyes. Financial difficulties. Bricks. The Lord. Houses. There was so much to think about, and the thoughts came crowding in on him. Then one line of thought, in particular, emerged from the rest.
How could the builder be building a house for himself when he had no money? How did one do that? With the Lord’s help?

WHILE PHUTI WAS
wrestling with the question of Mr. Clarkson Putumelo’s new house, Mma Makutsi, along with Mma Ramotswe and Mma Potokwane, was sitting around an open fire, under the stars. They had finished the meal Mma Potokwane had prepared for them—a stew of beans, carrots, and tomato soup, all poured over a base of freshly cooked pap. Mma Ramotswe had pronounced it delicious, and Mma Makutsi had enthusiastically concurred. Mma Potokwane had accepted their compliments, but had added a remark to the effect that she would have more time to cook now that “nobody had any use for her.” This had been vigorously refuted by Mma Ramotswe, who had insisted that of all the citizens of Botswana—all two million of them—Mma Potokwane was without question one of the most useful. Mma Makutsi, without prompting from Mma Ramotswe, had agreed. “Nobody is useless,” she said heatedly, “and you are less useless than nobody else, Mma. Definitely.”

This remark was greeted with silence while Mma Ramotswe and Mma Potokwane had tried to work out what it meant. The spirit in which it was made, though, was clear enough, and Mma Potokwane simply thanked her. “You have always been very kind to me, Mma,” she said. “Always.”

“And you to me,” said Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe knew that this was not entirely true—indeed it was completely false—but was pleased that such good spirit was abroad, and said nothing to contradict what had been expressed. New friendships can be every bit as strong as old friendships, and of course became old friendships in due course. She thought of this in silence, watching the flickering light of the fire play across the faces of the other two women; three friends sitting out in the darkness in the immensity of the surrounding bush, with the Kalahari a stone’s throw away and the stars, silver-white
fields of them, hanging high above, so dizzying, so humbling to look at.

“No,” said Mma Potokwane after a while. “I have made up my mind, you see. I have stopped working, and I am going to do some things for myself—things I’ve always wanted to do.”

Mma Ramotswe understood this. She knew a number of people who had stopped working with the same thing in mind, and they had told her that the decision had been the best decision of their lives. One had opened a poultry farm and now supplied eggs and chickens to many of the major shops in Gaborone; another, a mechanic friend of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s, had taken to restoring old cars and had already sold a 1956 Pontiac to a collector over the border. There were so many things that you could do if you simply had the time, but most of us left it too late.