“So you have been able to pay nothing?”
“Yes. But now… Well, now I can give him the money.”
“He thinks he already has it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And in a way, he has.”
She shivered. The sun had disappeared now, and the air had become cooler. It was a very good end to the day, she thought. A debt had disappeared. A mistake had been made, and been rectified by an extraordinary coincidence. No, she thought, nothing is extraordinary. Such things have happened before, and will happen again. There were probably numerous Mrs. Grants, travelling the world and causing confusion. It was nothing unusual.
THE TRIP BACK by boat was uneventful. Mma Ramotswe sat in the bow, sweeping the river ahead of them with the beam of Mighty’s powerful yellow torch. On one or two occasions she thought that she saw eyes shining back at her, but it was only a trick of the water, a stone on the bank, a leaf on the surface, and there was no sign of any hippo. When they reached the camp, Mighty took her to the kitchen, where she was given a plate of food. Mma Makutsi had already eaten, she was told, and had gone back to their room with a paraffin lamp. Mighty stayed with her while she ate, and then conducted her back to the staff quarters, his torch again sweeping the darkness for animal hazards. “We have an old elephant who comes into the camp,” he said. “He is not aggressive, but we wouldn’t like to bump into him at night.” She agreed. She would not like to bump into anything at night, unless it was a meerkat, perhaps, or a dassie. Even then…
Mma Makutsi had settled on her sleeping mat, the paraffin lamp still burning in a corner of the room. Mma Ramotswe told her of the meeting with Moripe Moripe and of the unexpected, but welcome, outcome. “We made a bad mistake,” she said. “I was dreading telling Tebogo that it was not him after all who would get the money. Now I can tell him the truth. I can tell him about the mistake, but reassure him that he will be getting most of it, if not all, as the lobola that Moripe Moripe owes him. So everybody should be happy enough.”
“That is an excellent outcome,” said Mma Makutsi. “There are very few cases when you can say at the end that everybody is happy.”
“And we are happy too,” said Mma Ramotswe. “This has been a successful business trip, and a very comfortable safari that we have had.”
“I am not sure that I like safaris,” said Mma Makutsi. “Maybe I’m a town girl at heart.”
Mma Ramotswe said nothing to this. It was getting late, and she was tired. So she went to the lamp and turned down the wick until there was just a tiny flickering of the flame, and then no light at all. She lay in the darkness, mulling over what had happened that day. Mma Makutsi muttered something that she did not quite catch, but was probably Goodnight. She said Goodnight, softly, in case Mma Makutsi was already asleep, or drifting off.
Later that night, much later, Mma Ramotswe awoke. At first she had no idea why-perhaps it was a bad dream-but she suddenly found herself wide awake. The curtain across the window made the room pitch dark, and it was silent too, with only the faint sound of Mma Makutsi’s breathing on the other side. Then she heard the sound. It must have penetrated the veils of sleep and prodded her into consciousness. There it was-a curious sniffing sound.
Her thoughts went immediately to snakes. There was a particular sort of snake, the puff adder, that made a sound like that when it was agitated. Those snakes were always finding their way inside and causing terrible trouble. Perhaps there was one in the room already, sliding its way across the floor to where she lay. She sat bolt upright. The sound came again, and this time she was able to locate it as being outside the room. It was definitely outside, and she had decided now that this was no snake.
She rose to her feet and crept silently across the room to the low window. Very slowly, she drew the curtain and peered outside. The moon was a sliver away from fullness, bathing the staff quarters and the surrounding bush in silver light. Her eyes took a moment to adjust, and then everything was clear, sharply delineated enough to throw ghostly moon shadows on the ground.
She looked, and saw, barely an arm’s length away from the gauze window, looking directly in at her, a fully grown lion. He looked straight at her, surprised, and she saw for a moment the moon in his eyes. Then, with a sudden tensing of muscle and a whipping movement of his tail, he turned and shot back into the bush. It happened so quickly that she wondered for a moment whether she had imagined it, but there was a rustle of leaves in the bush where he had run, and that was proof that this was no dream, no illusion.
She heard her heart thumping within her, her mouth dry from shock and fear. She stared at the place where only seconds ago the lion had been; she would not have been surprised had she seen his shadow in the moonlight, imprinted on the ground, as a shadow will register on a photographic plate, caught, as now, in silver.
She let the curtain fall back into place. She made her way back to her sleeping mat. She would not wake Mma Makutsi, nor, she thought, would she tell her about this the following morning. There were some things it was better that people-and Mma Makutsi in particular-did not know.
THEY STARTED their journey home the next day. The boatman did not engage them in unsettling conversation, but kept up his tuneless whistle for much of the way back. Then, picking up the van from the cousin’s house, they started the long drive home. They talked about all sorts of things on the way back: about weddings and children and money. About cattle. About jealousy and envy and love. About cakes. About friends and enemies and people they remembered who had gone away, or changed, or even died. About everything, really.
They stayed overnight in Francistown, as they had started late from Maun and needed the break. Their hotel was cheap and noisy, and there were mosquitoes to keep them from sleeping. In the morning they left without breakfasting, eager to get away from the smell of the place, and stopped at a small village on the main road, where they bought doughnuts and large mugs of tea. By noon they were back in Gaborone.
Mma Ramotswe dropped Mma Makutsi off at her house and made her way to the office to attend to the mail, which Charlie would have picked up from the postbox for them. She was going through the small number of letters she had received when Mma Mateleke arrived.
“I do not have an appointment, Mma,” her visitor said. “But you do not need an appointment to see an old friend, do you?”
Mma Ramotswe felt tired. She was not in the mood to see anybody, but she could not turn Mma Mateleke away. “I am always happy to see you,” she said.
“Good,” said Mma Mateleke. “Since I saw you last, my husband has been very attentive. He has tried to take me out to dinner, to the Portuguese restaurant-you know the one? But I do not have time for such things, Mma, particularly when the invitation is the result of guilt over an affair. Men are very easy to read, aren’t they?”
Mma Ramotswe did not reply, and so Mma Mateleke continued. “So tell me, Mma, have you found out that my husband is having an affair? Who is the woman?”
Mma Ramotswe sighed. She wanted to be at home; she did not want to have to give Mma Mateleke the advice that she had planned to give her. She just did not have the energy. But she could hardly refuse to answer, and so she said, “I have looked into it, Mma. And I am satisfied of one thing: your husband is not having an affair. No girlfriend. Nothing.”
Mma Mateleke stared at her. “You are sure, Mma?” the midwife asked. “You are sure that he is not seeing somebody?”
Mma Ramotswe suddenly became very alert, very aware of what was happening. And at that moment, simply by looking at her friend, she knew. Mma Mateleke was disappointed. She wanted to hear that the Reverend Mateleke was having an affair. That realisation made it all clear. A wife would not be disappointed to hear that her husband was not having an affair, unless she herself was having an affair. If she was having an affair, it would be much easier for her to blame him for the breakdown of the marriage if he were having one too. It was very simple.