They needed to talk about something different, and so Mma Makutsi asked after the children. How was Puso doing at school, and was Motholeli still talking about becoming a mechanic?
“He is doing well,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He is not very good at writing but his arithmetic is good. His head is full of numbers, I think.”
“That is very useful,” said Mma Makutsi. “He can be a bookkeeper or an accountant.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. It was difficult for her to imagine Puso grown up, and she saw for a moment an accountant in short trousers, a catapult sticking out of his pocket, and in his hand a jam sandwich of the sort that Puso loved to eat. But children changed, as adults did, and the image in her mind became one of a young man in a suit, with shiny shoes and a businesslike look to him. How everybody would have changed by then; how the country would have changed too.
“And Motholeli?” prompted Mma Makutsi.
“I think that she still wants to be a mechanic. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni talks to her about cars and she is always asking him about gearboxes and such things. There are not many girls who talk about engines, but she is one.”
“That will also be a very good thing,” said Mma Makutsi. “It means that there will be a Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors even in twenty years’ time, when you and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni are both late.”
Mma Ramotswe did a quick calculation in her head. “I do not think that either of us need be late by then, Mma,” she said. “We are not that old.”
Mma Makutsi looked doubtful. “Maybe not,” she admitted, rather reluctantly, thought Mma Ramotswe.
MANY HOURS and many stories later they reached Maun. It was early evening, and they saw in the distance the first lights of the town in the gathering dusk. There was something deeply reassuring about the sight. It was not simply that they were reaching the end of their long journey; the lights were comforting signs of human settlement in a great emptiness. To the south, under a sky that, as the evening approached, became an expanse of red, were the Makadikadi salt pans, a landscape of improbable whiteness that went on for a hundred miles, forever, it seemed, if one stood on their edge, a tiny human. Mma Ramotswe shivered: to stand on the verge of something so great and so empty seemed to be in danger of being swallowed up; she often felt that when she was in the wild places of her country. It would be so easy to become lost, to disappear, to find yourself alone in a wide slice of Africa, reduced to what you really were, a small and vulnerable creature among many other creatures.
The lights drew nearer. Now they were individual dwellings, dotted here and there amid the acacia scrub. A few had fires outside, small flickering points of orange seen through the trees. A truck, a figure, a set of headlights in the darkness; and then Maun itself, with its streets and lit windows, and its frontier air.
Mma Makutsi looked out of her window. “So this is the place,” she said. “So this is it.”
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We must find Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s cousin’s place now.”
That, as it happened, was not easy. They took directions from a man they saw standing at the side of the street, near one of the hotels. He sent them off into the night in entirely the wrong direction, or so they were told by the next person from whom they obtained guidance. He was more reliable, and they eventually found the house half an hour after they had arrived in the town.
The cousin himself, Mr. H.B.C. Matekoni, was away, but his wife was welcoming. They had young children, who solemnly welcomed the visitors and were then dispatched back to bed. A meal followed and family news was exchanged, with stories of distant cousins and their doings. Mma Makutsi was tired and went to bed in the room that she was to share with Mma Ramotswe. She lay there, on her narrow bed, listening to the low murmur of conversation in the room next door, relishing the novelty of her situation: she was on a business trip, in Maun; she had new boots that she had worn in the car and that were now at the foot of her bed; she could see the night sky outside, through a small window above her head. There were so many stars, in many cases with names, she believed. Did they have African names too, she wondered? It would be good if they did, she decided, if we named the ones over our own heads, because they were ours just as much as they were anybody’s. She felt drowsy, her thoughts wandering; night, stars, the moon… Had anyone claimed the moon yet? she asked herself. It would be wrong for anybody to claim the moon; it was everybody’s, but if it ever belonged to Botswana then it would be well looked after. We would soon have cattle there, she thought… and drifted off.
When Mma Ramotswe came into the room, she found Mma Makutsi asleep, one arm hanging down from her bed, her mouth slightly open, the blanket with which she had covered herself having largely slipped off her. Mma Ramotswe gazed at her assistant for a moment; Mma Makutsi looked different, she noticed, without her large glasses; her face had softened. But now it went further than that; it looked vulnerable, as we all may look in sleep. She reached forward and gently pulled the blanket back over the sleeping woman. Mma Makutsi stirred, but only slightly. Mma Ramotswe turned out her torch and placed it on the table beside her bed. There was enough light from the night sky outside-the light of the moon and stars-to make the torch unnecessary.
She slipped into bed and closed her eyes. She was exhausted from the drive, but she did not drop off to sleep immediately. Her mind was on the next day and what it would bring-on the journey they would have to make to Eagle Island Camp. They would travel by boat, possibly by makoro, one of the traditional canoes that people still used to get about the Delta. They were cheap and easily manoeuvred: all that was required was the strength of the paddler and the local knowledge to navigate the confusing channels that fingered their way through the watery landscape around Maun. That knowledge was more than a matter of knowing where to go-an important part of navigating was being aware of who else might be using those channels at the same time. If it was another makoro, then all was well. If it was a hippo, though, it was a different matter altogether.
She opened her eyes. Would the boatman be able to spot hippos easily enough? What if he missed one, as people sometimes did? There was only one outcome then-there could be no contest between an angry hippo and a frail canoe. The hippo won.
She told herself to stop worrying. It would take a strong hippo to upset a canoe containing both her and Mma Makutsi. The weight of such a canoe would be considerable, and she wondered whether a hippo would have the strength or energy to upset it. No, they would be safe from hippos and… crocodiles. She opened her eyes again. She had heard recently of a terrible incident in which a crocodile had seized somebody from a boat. That was very unusual, but it had happened, and it had happened in Botswana, on the Limpopo River. She shuddered. If the crocodile seized Mma Makutsi, would she have the courage to jump in and rescue her? A crocodile would have difficulty in dealing with two substantial ladies at the same time, especially if they were both determined not to be eaten, and resisted, which she was confident would be the case. There was safety in numbers, perhaps. It was when we were alone that we were in the greatest danger-a rule that applied to so many occasions, she thought, not just to those on which we were confronted with hippopotamuses and crocodiles, and other things in-and out-of the water.
THE COUSIN’S WIFE had arranged with a local boatman to pick them up beside the river.
“This is very exciting,” said Mma Makutsi, as they stood beneath a large mopani tree, waiting for their makoro. “Do you know something, Mma Ramotswe? I have never been in a boat before.”