“I think that he must have been working late,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You should call him on the telephone and find out. Yes, just use the office phone. That is fine. Call Phuti.”
Mma Makutsi shook her head. “No, I cannot do that. I cannot chase him.”
“You’re not chasing him,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is not chasing a man just to speak to him on the telephone and ask him why he did not come to your house. Men cannot let women cook for them and not eat the food. Everybody understands that.”
This remark did not seem to help, and in the face of Mma Makutsi’s sudden and taciturn gloominess, Mma Ramotswe herself became silent.
“That is why I’m late this morning,” Mma Makutsi said suddenly. “I could not sleep at all last night.”
“There are many mosquitoes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They do not make it easy.”
“It had nothing to do with mosquitoes,” Mma Makutsi mumbled. “They were sleeping last night. It was because I was thinking. I think it is all over, Mma.”
“Nonsense,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is not over. Men are very strange—that is all. Sometimes they forget to come to see ladies. Sometimes they forget to get married. Look at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Look at how long it took him to get round to marrying me.”
“I cannot wait that long,” said Mma Makutsi. “I was thinking of being engaged for six months at the most.” She reached for a piece of paper on her desk and stared at it. “Now I shall be doing this filing for the rest of my life.”
Mma Ramotswe realised that she could not allow this self-pity to continue. That would only make it worse, in her view. So she explained to Mma Makutsi that she would have to seek out Phuti Radiphuti and reassure him. If she did not wish to do that, then she herself, Mma Ramotswe, could do it for her. Her offer was not taken up, but she repeated it, and it was reflected upon. Then the working day began. It was the day on which bills were due to be sent out, and that was always an enjoyable experience. If only there were a day on which bills were all returned, fully paid, that would be even more enjoyable. But the working world was not like that, and there were always more that went out than came in, or so it seemed. And in this sense, Mma Ramotswe mused, the working world reflected life; which was an adage worthy of Aunty Emang herself, even if she was not quite sure whether it was true or not.
THE BILLS ALL TYPED UP and sealed in their neat white envelopes, Mma Ramotswe remembered that she had something that she wanted to show to Mma Makutsi. Reaching into the old leather bag that she used for carrying papers and lists and the one hundred and one other accoutrements of her daily life, she extracted the letter which Mma Tsau had handed over to her the previous day. She crossed the room and handed it to Mma Makutsi.
“What do you make of this?” she said.
Mma Makutsi unfolded the letter and laid it on the desk before her. The paper, she noted, was crumpled, which meant that somebody could have crunched it up and tossed it away. This was not a cherished letter. This was a letter which had brought only anger and fear.
“So, Mma Tsau,” Mma Makutsi read out. “So there you are in that good job of yours. It is a good job, isn’t it? You have lots of people working for you. You get your cheque at the end of the month. Everything is fine for you, isn’t it? And for that husband of yours too. He is very happy that you have this good job, as he can go and eat for nothing, can’t he? It must be very nice to eat for nothing in this life. There are very few people who can do that, but he is one.
“But, you see, I know that you are stealing food for him. I saw him getting fatter and fatter, and I thought: that’s a man who is eating for nothing! I could tell that. Of course you wouldn’t want other people to know that, and so, you listen to me, listen carefully please: I will be getting in touch with you about how you can keep me from telling anybody about this. Don’t worry—you’ll hear from me.”
When she had finished reading out the letter, Mma Makutsi looked up. Her earlier expression of defeat, brought on by Phuti Radiphuti’s non-appearance and by her contemplation of her future, had been replaced by one of anger. “That’s blackmail,” she said. “That’s … that’s …” Her outrage had got the better of her; there were no words strong enough to describe what she felt.
“That’s simple wickedness,” supplied Mma Ramotswe. “Even if Mma Tsau is a thief, the writer of that letter is much worse.”
Mma Makutsi was in strong agreement with this. “Yes. Wickedness. But how are we going to find out who wrote it? It’s anonymous.”
“Such letters always are,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“Have you got any ideas?”
Mma Ramotswe had to confess that she had none. “But that doesn’t mean that we shall not find out,” she said. “I have a feeling that we are very close to that person. I don’t know why I feel that, but I am sure that we know that lady.”
“A lady?” asked Mma Makutsi. “How do we know it’s a lady?”
“I just feel it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That’s a woman’s voice.”
“Are you sure that that’s not just because I was reading it?” said Mma Makutsi.
Mma Ramotswe replied with care. No, it was not just that. The voice—the voice inside the letter—was the voice of a woman. And, as she explained to Mma Makutsi, she had the feeling, vague and elusive though it might be, that sheknew this woman.
CHAPTER TEN
YOU ARE FRIGHTENED OF SOMETHING
THAT AFTERNOON Mma Ramotswe made one of her lists. She liked to do this when life seemed to be becoming complicated, which it was now, as the mere fact of listing helped to get everything into perspective. And there was more to it than that; often the listing of a problem produced a solution, as if the act of writing down the issues gave the unconscious mind a nudge. She had heard that sleep could have the same effect. “Go to sleep on a problem,” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had once advised her, “and in the morning you will have your answer. It always works.” He had then proceeded to describe how he had gone to sleep wondering why a rather complicated diesel engine would not fire and had dreamed that night of loose connections in the solenoid. “And when I got to the garage that morning,” he said, “there it was—a very bad connection, which I replaced. The engine fired straightaway.”
So that was what he dreamed about, thought Mma Ramotswe. Diesel engines. Solenoids. Fuel pipes. Her dreams were quite different. She often dreamed of her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, who had been such a kind man, and a loving one; a man whom everybody respected because he was such a fine judge of cattle, but also because he showed in all his actions the dignity which had been the hallmark of the Motswana of the old school. Such men knew their worth, but did not flaunt it. Such men could look anybody in the eye without flinching; even a poor man, a man with nothing, could stand upright in the presence of those who had wealth or power. People did not know, Mma Ramotswe felt, just how much we had in those days—those days when we seemed to have so little, we had so much.
She thought of her father, the Daddy as she called him, every day. And when she had those dreams at night, he was there, as if he had never died, although she knew, even in the dream, that he had. One day she would join him, she knew, whatever people said about how we came to an end when we took our last breath. Some people mocked you if you said that you joined others when your time came. Well, they could laugh, those clever people, but we surely had to hope, and a life without hope of any sort was no life: it was a sky without stars, a landscape of sorrow and emptiness. If she thought that she would never again see Obed Ramotswe, then it would make her shiver with loneliness. As it was, the thought that he was watching gave a texture and continuity to her life. And there was somebody else she would see one day, she hoped—her baby who had died, that small child with its fingers that had grasped so tightly around hers, whose breathing was so quiet, like the sound of the breeze in the acacia trees on an almost-still day, a tiny sound. She knew that her baby was with the late children in whatever place it was that the late children went, somewhere over there, beyond the Kalahari, where the gentle white cattle allowed the children to ride upon their backs. And when the late mothers came, the children would flock to them and they would call to them and take them in their arms. That was what she hoped, and it was a hope worth having, she felt.