“But you had other cases of blackmail,” said Mr Polopetsi. “You had that doctor and that man who was having an affair.”
“I made up the one about the man having an affair,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But I thought it likely that she would be blackmailing such a person. It’s very common. And I think I was right. She didn’t contradict me, which confirmed that she was the one. But I don’t think that she was blackmailing Dr Lubega. I think that he is a man who needed money because he liked it.”
“I am very confused about all this,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I do not know who this doctor is.”
Mma Ramotswe looked at her watch. It was time to go home, as she had to cook the evening meal, and that would take time. So they left the office, and after saying goodbye to Mr Polopetsi, she and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni gave Mma Makutsi a ride home in Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck. The tiny white van could stay at the garage overnight, said Mma Ramotswe. Nobody would steal such a vehicle, she thought. She was the only one who could love it.
On the way she remarked to Mma Makutsi that she was not wearing her new blue shoes that day. Was she giving them a rest? “One should rotate one’s shoes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is well known.”
Mma Makutsi smiled. She was embarrassed, but in the warm intimacy of the truck, at such a moment, after the emotionally cathartic showdown they had all just witnessed, she felt that she could speak freely of shoes.
“They are a bit small for me, Mma,” she confessed. “I think you were right. But I felt great happiness when I wore them, and I shall always remember that. They are such beautiful shoes.”
Mma Ramotswe laughed. “Well, that’s the important thing, isn’t it, Mma? To feel happiness, and then to remember it.”
“I think that you’re right,” said Mma Makutsi. Happiness was an elusive thing. It had something to do with having beautiful shoes, sometimes; but it was about so much else. About a country. About a people. About having friends like this.
THE FOLLOWING DAY was a Saturday, which was Mma
Ramotswe’s favourite day, a day on which she could sit and reflect on the week’s events. There was much to think about, and there was good reason, too, to be pleased that the week was over. Mma Ramotswe did not enjoy confrontation—that was not the Botswana way—and yet there were times when finding oneself head-to-head with somebody was inevitable. That had been so when her first husband, the selfish and violent Note Mokoti, had returned unannounced and tried to extort money from her. That moment had tested her badly, but she had stood up to him, and he had gone away, back into his private world of bitterness and distrust. But the encounter had left her feeling weak and raw, as arguments with another so often do. How much better to avoid occasions of conflict altogether, provided that one did not end up running away from things; and that, of course, was the rub. Had she not faced up to Aunty Emang, then the blackmail would have continued because nobody else would have stood up to her. And so it was left to Mma Ramotswe to do so, and Aunty Emang had folded up in the same way that an old hut made of elephant grass and eaten by the ants would collapse the moment one touched its fragile walls.
Now she sat on her verandah and looked out over her garden. She was the only one in the house. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had taken Puso and Motholeli to visit one of his aunts, and they would not be back until late afternoon, or, more likely, the evening. That particular aunt was known for her loquaciousness and had long stories to tell. It did not matter if the stories had been heard before—as they all had—they would be repeated that day, in great detail, until the sun was slanting down over the Kalahari and the evening sky was red. But it was important, she thought, that the children should get to know that aunt, as there was much she could teach them. In particular, she knew how to renew the pressed mud floor of a good traditional home, a skill that was dying out. The children sometimes helped her with this, although they would never themselves live in a house with a mud-floored yard, for those houses were going and were not being replaced. And all that was linked to them, the stories, the love and concern for others, the sense of doing what one’s people had done for so many years, could go too, thought Mma Ramotswe.
She looked up at the sky, which was empty, as it usually was. In a few days, though, perhaps even earlier, there would be rain. Heavy clouds would build up and make the sky purple, and then there would be lightning and that brief, wonderful smell would fill the air, the smell of the longed-for rain, a smell that lifted the heart. She dropped her gaze to her garden, to the withered plants that she had worked so hard to see through the dry season and which had lived only because she had given them each a small tinful of water each morning and each evening, around the roots; so little water, and so quickly absorbed, that it seemed unlikely that it would make a difference under that relentless sun. But it had, and the plants had kept in their leaves some green against the brown. When the rains came, of course, then everything would be different, and the brown which covered the land, the trees, the stunted grass, would be replaced by green, by growth, by tendrils stretching out, by leaves unfolding. It would happen so quickly that one might go to bed in a drought and wake up in a landscape of shimmering patches of water and cattle with skin washed sleek by the rain.
Mma Ramotswe leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She knew that there were places where the world was always green and lush, where water meant nothing because it was always there, where the cattle were never thin and listless; she knew that. But she did not want to live in such a place because it would not be Botswana, or at least not her part of Botswana. Up north they had that, near Maun, in the Delta, where the river ran the wrong way, back into the heart of the country. She had been there several times, and the clear streams and the wide sweeps of Mopani forest and high grass had filled her with wonder. She had been happy for those people, because they had water all about them, but she had not felt that it was her place, which was in the south, in the dry south.
No, she would never exchange what she had for something else. She would never want to be anything but Mma Ramotswe, of Gaborone, wife of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, and daughter of the late Obed Ramotswe, retired miner and fine judge of cattle, the man of whom she thought every day, but every day, and whose voice she heard so often when she had cause to remember how things had been in those times. God had given her gifts, she thought. He had made her a Motswana, a citizen of this fine country which had lived up so well to the memory of Sir Seretse Khama, that great statesman, who had stood with such dignity on that night when the new flag had been unfurled and Botswana had come into existence. When as a young girl she had been told of that event and had been shown pictures of it, she had imagined that the world had been watching Botswana on that night and had shared the feelings of her people. Now she knew that this was never true, that nobody had been at all interested, except a few perhaps, and that the world had never paid much attention to places like Botswana, where everything went so well and where people did not squabble and fight. But slowly they had seen, slowly they had come to hear of the secret, and had come to understand.
She opened her eyes. The old van driven by Mma Potokwane had arrived at the gate, and the matron had manoeuvred herself out of the driver’s seat and was fiddling with the latch. Mma Potokwane had been known to come to see Mma Ramotswe on a Saturday morning, usually to ask her to get Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to do something for the orphan farm, but such visits were rare. Now, the gate unlatched and pushed back, Mma Potokwane got back into the van and drove up the short driveway to the house. Mma Ramotswe smiled to herself as her visitor nosed her van into the shady place used by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to park his truck. Mma Potokwane would always find the best place to park, just as she could always be counted upon to find the best deal for the children whom she looked after.