AT THE DOUBLE COMFORT FURNITURE SHOP Phuti Radiphuti was standing at the window of his office, looking out over the barn-like showroom. The lay-out had been designed with just that in mind: from where he stood the manager could look down and signal to the staff below. If customers brought children who bounced on the chairs, or if people came to try out the beds and showed signs of lying too long on the comfortable mattresses—which they sometimes did, even those who had no intention at all of buying a bed but who merely wanted a few minutes of comfort before continuing with their shopping tasks elsewhere — he could draw the attention of his assistants to the problem and tell them what to do with a quick hand signal. A finger pointed in the direction of the door meant out; the clenching of a fist meant tell them to keep their children under control; and the shaking of a finger directed at a member of staff meant there are customers waiting to be served and you are sitting there talking to your friends.
He saw Mma Makutsi come in with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and for a moment he did nothing. He swallowed hard. He had meant to telephone Mma Makutsi and apologise for his failure to turn up last night, but it had been a frantic day, with the visit to the hospital to see his aunt and the list of things that she had given him to do. She had been admitted to the Princess Marina Hospital the previous morning, her face drawn with pain, and they had removed the bloated appendix barely an hour later. It had been close to bursting, they explained, and that would have been perilous. As it was, she had been sitting up in bed that morning, ready to give him instructions, and he had spent much of the rest of the day performing the chores that she had set him. There had been no time to telephone Mma Makutsi, and now here she was in search of an explanation, with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni in support, and he would have to explain everything to her. As he watched her enter the showroom, he felt that familiar knot of anxiety in his stomach—the knot that he had always felt in the past when he had been faced with the need to talk and which always seemed so effectively to paralyse his tongue and vocal cords.
He turned away from the window and went down into the showroom. Mma Makutsi had not spotted him yet, although he had seen her glancing around as if to look for him. Now she was standing before a large armchair covered in black leather and was pointing it out to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who was bending down to examine the label attached to the chair. Oddly, Phuti found himself trying to remember the price. It was not expensive, that chair, covered as it was in soft leather, but it was certainly not a bargain. He wondered whether Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was the sort of man to spend a lot of money on a chair. He remembered, of course, that Mma Makutsi had said that Mma Ramotswe had a comfortable house in Zebra Drive and so there was some money there. And perhaps that garage of his on the Tlokweng Road did well, although on the few occasions that he had been there he had not seen signs of great activity.
He made his way past a display of dining-room tables, noting with irritation that somebody had placed a sticky hand print on one of them, the finest in the room, with its highly polished black surface. It would be somebody’s child, he thought; a child had reached out and touched the furniture with a hand that had been used to push sweets into his mouth. And the same hand would have been placed on the light red velvet of the sofas on the other side of the table, and they would have to get some of that cleaning fluid … He sighed. There was no point getting exercised over this; the country was full of dust and children with sticky hands, and termites that liked nothing better than to eat people’s furniture; that was just how it was, and if one worried about it, then it simply made one stammer all the more and feel hot at the back of the neck. Mma Makutsi had told him that he should stop worrying, and he had made a real effort to do so, with the result that he stammered less and felt less hot. He was a fortunate man, he thought, to be engaged to a woman like that. Many women made life worse for their husbands with their nagging and hectoring; one saw such men in the store, defeated men, men with all the cares of the world on their shoulders, looking at the furniture as if it was just one more thing to worry about in lives already full of anxieties.
“That is a very g … goo … ,” said Phuti Radiphuti as he approached Mma Makutsi and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.
He closed his eyes. There was that sensation of heat at the back of his neck and the familiar, cramping feeling in the muscles of the tongue. He saw the wordgood written down on an imaginary piece of paper; he had only to read it out, as she had told him to do, but he could not. She had read a book about this problem and she had helped him, but now he could not say that this chair was good.
“A ve …” He tried again, but it would not come. He should have telephoned her, and told her, and now she would be angry with him and might be having second thoughts about their marriage.
“It looks very comfortable,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, reaching out to touch the leather on one of the armrests. “This leather …”
“So soft,” said Mma Makutsi quietly. “Some of these leather chairs you see are very hard. They are from old, old cows.”
“Chairs like that are called cowches,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, and laughed.
Mma Makutsi looked at him. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was a good man, and much admired, but he was not noted for his witty remarks. Now it was possible that he had said something very amusing, and she found herself so taken by surprise that she did not laugh.
Phuti Radiphuti fiddled nervously with a shirt button. Making a conscious effort to relax, he opened his mouth again and made a statement. This time the words came more easily.
“A couch usually has two or three seats,” he said. “It is also called a sofa. That chair over there—the big one—is a couch. This one is just a chair.”
Mma Makutsi nodded. She had been taken aback by his sudden appearance and now she was uncertain what to do. She had imagined that she would start their conversation by asking after his health, as was polite, but now he had launched into a technical discussion of couches, and so she explained that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was looking for a new chair and they wondered whether something like this would be suitable.
Phuti Radiphuti listened attentively. Then he turned to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “Do you like this chair, Rra?” he asked. “Why don’t you sit down in it and see how you feel? It is always best to sit in a chair before you make up your mind.”
“I was just looking around,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni hurriedly. “I saw this chair, but there are many other chairs …” He had seen the price on the ticket and had realised that the chair was not cheap. One could get an engine re-bore for the price of that chair.
“Just sit in it, Rra,” said Phuti Radiphuti, smiling at Mma Makutsi. “Then you will know for sure if it is a good chair.”
He sat down, and Phuti Radiphuti looked at him enquiringly.
“Well, Rra?” said Phuti. “It is very comfortable, isn’t it? That chair is made in Johannesburg, in a big chair factory there. There are many chairs like that in Johannesburg.”
“It is very comfortable,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “Yes, it is very comfortable. But I must look at some other chairs. I think that there will be many other good chairs in your store.”
“Oh, there are,” said Phuti. “But when you find a chair that is right, then it is a good idea to choose that one.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni glanced at Mma Makutsi. He wanted her help now, but she seemed to be having thoughts of her own. She was watching Phuti Radiphuti, staring at him in a way which Mr J.L.B. Matekoni found rather disconcerting. It was as if she was expecting him to say something which he was not saying; some private business between them, he thought, which they should go away and discuss rather than exchanging glances like this. Women always had private business to raise with men, he reflected. There was always something going on in the background—some plotting or mulling over some slight or lack of attention, quite unintended, of course, but noted and filed away for subsequent scrutiny. And much of the time men would be unaware of it, until it all came out in a torrent of recrimination and tears. Fortunately, Mma Ramotswe was not like that, he thought. She was cheerful and direct; but this Mma Makutsi, with her big round glasses, might be different when it came to men, and this poor man, this Phuti Radiphuti, could be in for a difficult time. He would not like to be engaged to Mma Makutsi.