For a moment, in spite of all the hustle and bustle about the shops, there was a cold silence. Mma Makutsi glanced down at Mma Ramotswe’s feet. She saw the wide-fitting flat shoes, with their sensible buckles, rather like the shoes which Mma Potokwane wore to walk around the orphan farm (though perhaps not quite so bad). Then she glanced at her own feet. No, there was no comparison, and at that moment she decided that she must have those blue shoes. She simply had to have them.
They went inside, with Mma Makutsi in the lead and Mma Ramotswe following passively. Mma Ramotswe remained silent during the resulting transaction. She watched as Mma Makutsi pointed to the window. She watched as the assistant reached for a box from a shelf and took out a pair of the blue shoes. She said nothing as Mma Makutsi, seated on a stool, squeezed her foot into one of the shoes, to the encouragement of the assistant who pushed and poked at her foot with vigour. And she remained silent as Mma Makutsi, reaching into her purse, paid the deposit that would have the shoes set aside for her; the precious, hard-earned Bank of Botswana notes being placed down on the counter; those notes with the pictures of cattle, which in their heart of hearts the people of Botswana thought were the real foundation of the country’s wealth.
As they left the shop, Mma Ramotswe made amends and told Mma Makutsi that she really thought the blue shoes very beautiful. There was no point in disapproving of a purchase once the deed had been done. She remembered learning this lesson from her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, about whom she thought every day, yes, every day, and who had been, she believed, one of the finest men in Botswana. He had been asked for his view of a bull which a man in Mochudi had bought, and although he had already confided in Precious that the bull would not be good for the herd—too lazy, he had said; a bull who would often say to the cows that he was too tired—although that was his view, he had not said that to the new owner.
“That is a bull who will give you no trouble,” he had said.
And that, she thought, had been just the right thing to say about that particular bull. But could she say the same thing about Mma Makutsi’s new shoes? She thought not. For those shoes would most certainly give Mma Makutsi trouble—the moment she tried to walk anywhere in them. That, thought Mma Ramotswe, was glaringly obvious.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AT DINNER
THAT EVENING, Mr Polopetsi had his dinner early, almost immediately after he had returned from Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. It had been a hard afternoon for him, as he had been replacing tyres on a large cattle truck owned by a loyal friend of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. This client, who had a fleet of such trucks, could have taken his vehicles to one of the large garages which specialised in looking after such concerns, but chose instead to stick with his old friend. With the growth of the cattle transport firm, their business had become increasingly valuable, and now accounted for almost one eighth of the income of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.
Changing the tyres on such large trucks was very physical work, and Mr Polopetsi, who was a relatively slight man, found that it sorely taxed his strength. But it was not physical tiredness that caused him to ask for an early dinner; there was quite another reason. “I have work to do tonight,” he announced to his wife, slightly mysteriously. “Work for the agency.”
Mma Polopetsi raised an eyebrow. “Does Mma Ramotswe ask you to do overtime? Will she pay you?”
“No,” he said. “She does not know that I am doing this work. I am doing it quietly.”
Mma Polopetsi stirred the pot of maize meal. “I see,” she said. “It’s nothing illegal, is it?” She remembered her husband’s imprisonment—how could one forget that spell of loneliness and shame?—and she had not been very enthusiastic about the thought that he would engage in detective work, which could so easily go wrong. And yet everything she had heard about Mma Ramotswe had inspired confidence, and she shared her husband’s gratitude to one whom she regarded as the family’s saviour.
Mr Polopetsi hesitated for a moment, but then shook his head. “It is not illegal,” he said. “And the only reason I have not told Mma Ramotswe is that it is a problem which is worrying her. I have found out what is happening and I can fix it. I want it to be a nice surprise for her.”
The surprise, as he called it, had required some planning, and the co-operation of his friend and neighbour David, who had a battered old taxi which he used to ferry office-workers home from a parking place under a tree near the central mall. David owed Mr Polopetsi a favour, going back to an argument which had flared up with other neighbours over the ownership of a goat. Mr Polopetsi had sided with him and helped his side of the case to prevail, and this had cemented the friendship between the two men. So when Mr Polopetsi had asked him to drive him down to Mokolodi and to help him with something that needed doing down there, he readily agreed.
They set off shortly after seven. In town, this was still a busy time, with the traffic quite heavy, but by the time they reached the last lights of Gaborone and the dark shape of Kgale Hill could be made out to their side, it was difficult to imagine that there were people about, not far behind them. There was the occasional car on the Lobatse Road, but nothing very much, and on either side of the road there were just the dark shapes of the acacia trees, caught briefly in their headlights and then lost to the night. Mr Polopetsi had not told David about the precise nature of the errand, but now he did so.
“You don’t have to come with me,” he said. “You just park the car nearby. I’ll do the rest.”
David stared at the road ahead. “I’m not happy about this,” he said. “You didn’t tell me.”
“It is quite safe,” said Mr Polopetsi. “You aren’t superstitious, are you?”
It was a challenge that had to be met. “I am not scared of these things,” said David.
They reached the turn-off to Mokolodi, and David nosed the taxi down the road which led in the direction of the game park. There were several houses in the bush to one side, and lights shone out from one or two of these, but for the rest they were in darkness. After a while, Mr Polopetsi tapped his friend on the shoulder and told him to extinguish the headlights.
“We can go very slowly from here,” he said. “Then you can park under a tree and wait until I come back. Nobody will see you.”
They stopped, and the car’s engine was turned off. Now Mr Polopetsi got out of the car and closed the door quietly behind him. It was utterly still, apart from the sound of insects, the persistent chirruping sound that seems to come from nowhere and from everywhere. It was a curious sound, which some people said was the sound of the stars calling their hunting dogs. He looked up. There was no moon that night, and the sky was filled with stars, so high, so white, that they were like an undulating blanket above him. He turned round to find south, and there it was, low down in the sky, as if suspended by something that he could not see, the Southern Cross. He had seen that constellation at night from the window of the prison, from the board and blankets that was his bed, and it had, in a strange way, sustained him. He was unjustly imprisoned; what had happened had not been his fault, and the sight of the stars had reminded him of the smallness of the world of men and their injustices.