“Of course not,” Mma Ramotswe corrected herself. “But I would not wish anybody to be uncomfortable, would you, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni?”
He thought for a moment, and then agreed. He did not wish misfortune on anybody, he decided, even if they deserved it. Mma Ramotswe was undoubtedly right about that, even if she was inclined to be a little bit too generous in her judgements.
“They started to talk, and I pretended to be very interested in reading the menu which the waiter had brought me.” He laughed. “I read about the price of a Castle lager and about the various sorts of sandwich fillings. Then I read it all again.
“In the meantime, I was listening as closely as I could to what they were saying. It was a bit hard, as there was somebody sitting nearby who was laughing like a donkey. But I did hear something.”
Mma Ramotswe frowned. “Excuse me, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” she said. “But why were you listening to them? Where was the woman?”
“What woman?” asked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.
“The woman with whom Mr Botumile is having an affair,” Mma Ramotswe replied. “That woman.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked up at the ceiling. He had expected to see Mr Botumile meeting a woman, and when he had sat down next to Charlie Gotso he thought that perhaps the woman would arrive a bit later; that they both knew Mr Gotso. But then, even when it became apparent that no woman would be joining them, he found himself engrossed in the encounter that was taking place at the neighbouring table. This was more interesting than mere adultery; this was the edge of something much more important than that. He imagined now that he would be able to reveal to Mma Botumile that her husband was up to something far worse than that which she had imagined; he was consorting with no less a person than Charlie Gotso, the least salubrious of Gaborone’s businessmen, a man who used intimidation and fear as instruments of persuasion; a bad man, in fact, to put it simply. And Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had no reluctance to use unadorned, direct language, whether about cars, or people. Just as there were some bad cars—cars that were consistently slow to start or that invariably had inexplicable, incorrigible rattles—so too there were bad people. Fortunately there were not too many of these in Botswana, but there were some, and Mr Charlie Gotso was certainly one of them.
“There was no sign of that woman,” he conceded. “Maybe it was not his evening for seeing her. There will be time enough to find her.”
“I see,” said Mma Ramotswe. “All right. But what did they talk about anyway?”
“Mining,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “Mr Botumile said something about bad results. He said that the cores had come in and that the results were not good.”
Mma Ramotswe shrugged. “Prospecting,” she said. “People do that all the time.”
“Then he said: the share price will come down in two weeks, in Johannesburg. And Mr Gotso asked him if he was sure about that. And he replied yes he was.”
“And then?” prompted Mma Ramotswe.
“Then Mr Gotso said that he was very pleased.”
Mma Ramotswe was puzzled. “Pleased? Why would he be pleased about bad news?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni thought for a moment. “Perhaps it’s because he is such an unpleasant man,” he said. “Perhaps he likes to hear of the misfortune of others. There are people like that.”
Yes, thought Mma Ramotswe. There were such people, but she did not think that Charlie Gotso was like that. He was the sort of person who would be unmoved by the misfortune of others; completely uninterested. All that he would be pleased about would be those things that were in his interests, that made him richer, and this raised a very difficult question: Why should the failure of prospectors to find minerals be good news for a bad man?
They finished their conversation on that note. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had nothing further to report, and the pumpkin and the lamb, judging from the smell from the pot and from the oven, were both ready, or just about. It was time for dinner.
CHAPTER NINE
THE UNDERSTANDING OF SHOES
MMA MAKUTSI AWOKE the next morning slightly earlier than normal. It had been another cold night, and her room, which had no heating apart from a one-bar electric heater—which was turned off—was still chilly. When the sun came up properly, the light would flood in through her window and warm the place up, but that would not happen for twenty minutes or so. She looked at her watch. If she got up now, she would have fifteen minutes or so in hand before she went off to catch her minibus into work. She could use this time to do something constructive, some sewing, perhaps, on the new sewing machine which Phuti Radiphuti had bought her. She was making a dress for herself and had all the panels cut out, pinned together, and ready for the machine. Now all she needed was a bit of time. She could do fifteen minutes of work on it that morning and then, when she came home from work, she could devote at least two hours to the task, which might well be enough to finish it off.
But there would be no going to work that day, and now that she remembered this she opened her eyes wide, astonished by the realisation. I do not have to get up, she said to herself. I can stay in bed. She closed her eyes again, and nestled her head back into her pillow; but she could not keep her eyes closed, she could not drift back to sleep, for she was wide awake. On a cold morning an extra few minutes of sleep, snatched in denial of the imminent call of the alarm clock, would normally be irresistible. But not now; that which we have, we suddenly find we do not want. She sat up in bed, shivered, and tentatively lowered her feet onto the cement floor of her room. There might be running water in the house, and electric light, but in the villages and in the country they still had floors, here and there, which did not freeze your feet like this—floors made of the dung of cattle, sweet-smelling dung, packed down hard and mixed with mud to give a surface that was cool in the heat and warm to the touch in the cold weather. For all that modern buildings were more comfortable, there were some things, some traditional things, that could not be improved upon.
This thought of things traditional reminded her of Mma Ramotswe, and with a sudden jolt of regret she realised that she would not be seeing her former employer today. A day—a week-day too—with no Mma Ramotswe; it seemed strange, almost ominous, like a day on which something dark was due to happen. But she put that thought out of her mind. She had resigned and had moved on. That’s what people said these days—they talked about moving on. Well, that’s what she had done, and presumably people who moved on did not look back. So she would not cast an eye back to her old life as an assistant detective; she would look forward to her new life as Mrs Phuti Radiphuti, wife of the proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Store, former secretary.
It was strange having breakfast and not having to rush; strange eating toast without glancing at the clock; and strange, too, not having to leave the second cup of tea half-finished simply because time had run out. Breakfast that morning seemed not to finish—it merely petered out. The last crumbs of toast were cleared from the plate, the last sip of tea taken, and then…nothing. Mma Makutsi sat at her table and thought of the day ahead. There was the dress—she could easily finish that this morning, but somehow she did not want to. She was enjoying the making of that garment, and she had no material for another one. If she finished the dress, then there would be one less thing to do, and her new sewing machine would have to go back into the cupboard. She could clean the house, of course; there was always something to attend to in a house, no matter how regularly one swept and scrubbed. But although she kept the house spickand-span, that was not a task that she actually enjoyed, and she had spent almost the entire last weekend giving it a thorough cleaning.
She looked about the room. Her living room, where she ate her breakfast, was sparsely furnished. There was the table at which she now sat—a table condemned by Phuti Radiphuti who had promised to replace it, but had not yet done so; there was a small second-hand settee that she had bought through a newspaper advertisement and which now sported the satin-covered cushions which Phuti Radiphuti had given her; there was a side table on which she had placed several small framed pictures of her family in Bobonong. And that, apart from a small red rug, was it.