WHILE MMA RAMOTSWE was sitting in the café with Herbert Mateleke, Mma Makutsi set off out of the office for the rest of the afternoon-and why not, given that all her filing was completely up to date and all the bills, such as they were, had been sent out? What was the point of her sitting in the office waiting for five o’clock, when she could go home and wait until five o’clock, when she would go to see Phuti at his aunt’s house? To pass the time she would make a cup of tea and read a copy of the magazine she had bought at Exclusive Books. This magazine was full of delights, and she could hardly wait to start turning its glossy, newly printed pages. The cover promised an article on the doings of some big stars; that always made for interesting reading, as the big stars were often up to no good. She liked to look at the pictures that accompanied such articles, and to study the clothes that these big stars wore. They dressed expensively, these people, and as for their shoes…
She looked down at her feet. She had decided to wear the boots she had just bought so that they would be worn in by the time she went up to the Delta. Now, making her way along Odi Drive, she felt very pleased with the comfort of her new footwear. She had read that ankle support was very important, and she had thought at the time that this was being made rather too much of. She had never had trouble with her ankles, and she did not see why it would be necessary to give that part of the leg special treatment. What about the knees? Surely they deserved support too; not that they got it, of course. There were many things in this life that deserved support and that did not get it.
Her new boots gave a great deal of ankle support. They were also much lighter than she had imagined. I could dance in these boots, she thought.
Oh, so you’re thinking of dancing, Boss? You never danced in us.
She glanced into the bag in which she was carrying her old shoes. She was never sure whether her shoes really talked-she thought that it was highly unlikely-and yet they did seem to make remarks from time to time. Usually their comments were of a reproachful or critical nature; shoes, it seemed, were rather resentful, put-upon things that clearly did not accept their manifest destiny underfoot.
Don’t worry about them, Boss. It was a different voice. The new shoes spoke in a firm, confident tone. She looked down at them.
That’s right, Boss. You trust in us. We know where we’re going.
That, she thought, was exactly what one would want to hear of boots. It did not matter so much with ordinary town shoes, but it mattered a great deal with boots. If one were going into danger-and the Okavango Delta was filled with wild animals-then it would undoubtedly be a good thing to have shoes that could look after themselves in difficult conditions.
That’s us, Boss! said the boots. That’s us, all right.
She continued walking, coming to the end of Odi Drive and turning onto Maratadiba Road. There were deserted houses on that corner-old buildings now half eaten by termites, half covered in the bush that grows so quickly over human efforts. It was a good place for snakes, she thought; even here in the city, in these forgotten corners of wasteland, snakes might make their homes: cobras, puff adders, even mambas. She glanced at the tangle of vegetation that had been brought by the recent rains. Everything greened so quickly, transformed from thinness and brownness, thickened, ran riot. She gazed at the derelict windows, their glass broken; at the bulging walls that would surely soon collapse. Yes, there were snakes there, but she had these boots, and that was exactly what boots were for.
She stopped. She looked behind her, back in the direction of Tlokweng. The radio had spoken of rain, and the sky confirmed the forecast. A bank of purple cloud had built up to the east, and even as she had been walking from the shops it had grown in size and anger. Now it filled half the sky; to the west it was light and sunny, to the east it was storms and rain. It happened so quickly, the clouds sweeping in within minutes. And with them was that smell of rain, that half dusty smell that was like no other, overpowering in the intensity of its associations for anyone raised in a dry country. It was synonymous with joy, with renewal, with life itself.
Pula, she muttered; a word that stood for so much, that meant joy, and money, and rain. And rain it was, with initial, fat drops falling on the dusty ground to make a tiny crater in the sand; and then another million such craters before the ground became a shimmer of water. It was so sudden, and she looked around as the water began to stream down her face. It was in her eyes; warm and welcome, but to be wiped away so that she could see through the watery curtain of white that was all about her.
The only place to shelter was one of the deserted houses, almost obscured now in the torrent of the storm. She ran, her boots making her sure-footed in the water and mud. There was a door, which stood ajar, and beyond it a room in which the ceiling boards hung down in fragments. All this work, all this human effort, all brought to this.
With the storm outside, the room was darkened further than what must have been its usual gloom. She looked about her. The concrete floor was shattered here and there, as if by small, localised earthquakes. There was a smell, and there was a person, a man sitting on his haunches at the far end of the room, staring at her. He was an old man, and his face was criss-crossed by lines. She saw his eyes, though, which caught the light, dim though it was, from what had once been the window.
She gave a start. The man smiled. “Do not be afraid, Mma. This is my house, but you are welcome to shelter from the rain.”
She took in what was on the floor. A bag from which a few old clothes, rags really, spilled. A few cans, open and abandoned. A single bicycle wheel, salvaged for some reason and then forgotten.
She took a step forward, and then another. She squatted down beside him, remembering this easy, chairless way of sitting that is so natural in Africa.
“I come from up there,” the old man said, pointing north.
She nodded. He spoke Setswana in the accent of an age ago.
“So this is your house,” she said. “I always thought that there was nobody here.”
“There is always somebody,” he said.
Mma Makutsi looked up at the failed ceiling. The drumming of the rain on the roof was less insistent now. She would be able to continue her walk soon. She reached into the pocket of her blouse. She had a fifty-pula note in it, now damp from the rain. She gave it to the man, and he took it, examining it carefully as one might examine an important document.
“Thank you, Mma. You do not have to pay to visit my house, though.”
“This is a present, Rra. It is not payment.”
He put the note away, somewhere in the rags that were his clothes. Then they waited, in silence, for the storm to abate and for the sky to appear again. Mma Makutsi rose to her feet and went to look out of the door. There were stretches of water where once there had been red earth. These would drain quickly, as the water percolated deep down into the thirsty heart of Botswana, somewhere far below the Kalahari.
She turned to say goodbye to the man whose house she had visited. He raised a hand and smiled. She thought: This is the first time I have given anybody fifty pula. It felt very strange; very satisfactory.
On the way out, her shoes suddenly addressed her. The boots were silent, having to cope with the challenge of the wet that was all about. But this came from the shoes in the bag, who said, quite clearly, We saw that, Boss. We were proud.