Blue Shoes and Happiness (11 page)

“What do you make of this?” she said.

Mma Makutsi unfolded the letter and laid it on the desk before her. The paper, she noted, was crumpled, which meant that somebody could have crunched it up and tossed it away. This was not a cherished letter. This was a letter which had brought only anger and fear.

“So, Mma Tsau,” Mma Makutsi read out. “So there you are in that good job of yours. It is a good job, isn't it? You have lots of people working for you. You get your cheque at the end of the month. Everything is fine for you, isn't it? And for that husband of yours too. He is very happy that you have this good job, as he can go and eat for nothing, can't he? It must be very nice to eat for nothing in this life. There are very few people who can do that, but he is one.

“But, you see, I know that you are stealing food for him. I saw him getting fatter and fatter, and I thought: that's a man who is eating for nothing! I could tell that. Of course you wouldn't want other people to know that, and so, you listen to me, listen carefully please: I will be getting in touch with you about how you can keep me from telling anybody about this. Don't worry—you'll hear from me.”

When she had finished reading out the letter, Mma Makutsi looked up. Her earlier expression of defeat, brought on by Phuti Radiphuti's non-appearance and by her contemplation of her future, had been replaced by one of anger. “That's blackmail,” she said. “That's … that's …” Her outrage had got the better of her; there were no words strong enough to describe what she felt.

“That's simple wickedness,” supplied Mma Ramotswe. “Even if Mma Tsau is a thief, the writer of that letter is much worse.”

Mma Makutsi was in strong agreement with this. “Yes. Wickedness. But how are we going to find out who wrote it? It's anonymous.”

“Such letters always are,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“Have you got any ideas?”

Mma Ramotswe had to confess that she had none. “But that doesn't mean that we shall not find out,” she said. “I have a feeling that we are very close to that person. I don't know why I feel that, but I am sure that we know that lady.”

“A lady?” asked Mma Makutsi. “How do we know it's a lady?”

“I just feel it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That's a woman's voice.”

“Are you sure that that's not just because I was reading it?” said Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe replied with care. No, it was not just that. The voice—the voice inside the letter—was the voice of a woman. And, as she explained to Mma Makutsi, she had the feeling, vague and elusive though it might be, that she
knew
this woman.

CHAPTER TEN

YOU ARE FRIGHTENED OF SOMETHING

T
HAT AFTERNOON Mma Ramotswe made one of her lists. She liked to do this when life seemed to be becoming complicated, which it was now, as the mere fact of listing helped to get everything into perspective. And there was more to it than that; often the listing of a problem produced a solution, as if the act of writing down the issues gave the unconscious mind a nudge. She had heard that sleep could have the same effect. “Go to sleep on a problem,” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had once advised her, “and in the morning you will have your answer. It always works.” He had then proceeded to describe how he had gone to sleep wondering why a rather complicated diesel engine would not fire and had dreamed that night of loose connections in the solenoid. “And when I got to the garage that morning,” he said, “there it was—a very bad connection, which I replaced. The engine fired straightaway.”

So that was what he dreamed about, thought Mma Ramotswe. Diesel engines. Solenoids. Fuel pipes. Her dreams were quite different. She often dreamed of her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, who had been such a kind man, and a loving one; a man whom everybody respected because he was such a fine judge of cattle, but also because he showed in all his actions the dignity which had been the hallmark of the Motswana of the old school. Such men knew their worth, but did not flaunt it. Such men could look anybody in the eye without flinching; even a poor man, a man with nothing, could stand upright in the presence of those who had wealth or power. People did not know, Mma Ramotswe felt, just how much we had in those days—those days when we seemed to have so little, we had so much.

She thought of her father, the Daddy as she called him, every day. And when she had those dreams at night, he was there, as if he had never died, although she knew, even in the dream, that he had. One day she would join him, she knew, whatever people said about how we came to an end when we took our last breath. Some people mocked you if you said that you joined others when your time came. Well, they could laugh, those clever people, but we surely had to hope, and a life without hope of any sort was no life: it was a sky without stars, a landscape of sorrow and emptiness. If she thought that she would never again see Obed Ramotswe, then it would make her shiver with loneliness. As it was, the thought that he was watching gave a texture and continuity to her life. And there was somebody else she would see one day, she hoped—her baby who had died, that small child with its fingers that had grasped so tightly around hers, whose breathing was so quiet, like the sound of the breeze in the acacia trees on an almost-still day, a tiny sound. She knew that her baby was with the late children in whatever place it was that the late children went, somewhere over there, beyond the Kalahari, where the gentle white cattle allowed the children to ride upon their backs. And when the late mothers came, the children would flock to them and they would call to them and take them in their arms. That was what she hoped, and it was a hope worth having, she felt.

But this was a time for making lists, not for dreaming, and she sat at her desk and wrote down on a piece of paper, in order of their priority, the various matters which concerned her. At the top of the list she simply wrote
blackmail
, and under that she left a blank space. This was where ideas might be noted, and a few words were immediately scribbled in:
Who could know?
Then below that there was
Mr Polopetsi
. Mr Polopetsi himself was not a problem, but Mma Ramotswe had been moved by his description of his wealthy uncle and his cutting out of his nephew. That was an injustice, in her view, and Mma Ramotswe found it hard to ignore injustice. Under Mr Polopetsi's name she wrote:
Mean uncle
—
speak to him?
Then there was
Mokolodi
, under which was written:
something very odd going on.
And then, finally, almost as an afterthought, she wrote:
Phuti Radiphuti: Could I say something to him about Mma Makutsi?
Her pencil poised at the end of the last question, she then added:
Mind own business?
And finally, she wrote:
Find new shoes
. That was simple, or at least it sounded simple; in reality the question of shoes could be a complicated one. She had been meaning for some time to buy herself a pair of shoes to replace the ones which she always wore to the office and which were becoming a bit down-at-heel. Traditionally built people could be hard on shoes, and Mma Ramotswe sometimes found it difficult to get shoes which were sufficiently well constructed. She had never gone in for fashionable shoes—unlike Mma Makutsi, with her green shoes with the sky-blue linings—but she wondered now whether she should not follow her assistant's lead and choose shoes which were perhaps just slightly more elegant. It was a difficult decision to make, and it would require some thought, but Mma Makutsi might help her, and this would at least take her mind off her problems with Phuti Radiphuti.

She looked at her list, sighed, and let the slip of paper fall from her hand. These were difficult issues, indeed, and not one of them, as far as she could see, involved a fee. The trickiest one was undoubtedly the blackmail problem, and now that she had established that Poppy was unlikely to lose her job—for which she could hardly charge very much, if anything—there was no financial reason to become further involved. There was a moral reason, of course, and that would inevitably prevail, but the setting of wrong to right often brought no financial reward. She had sighed, but it was not a sigh of desperation; she knew that there would be other cases, lucrative ones in which bills could be sent to firms that could well afford to pay. And had they not just posted a whole raft of such bills, each of which would bring in a comfortable cheque? And was there not an awful lot of banging and clattering going on in the garage next door, all of which meant money in the till and food on several tables? So she could afford to spend the time, if she wanted to, on these unremunerative matters, and she need not feel bad about it.

She picked up the list again and looked at it. Blackmail was too difficult. She would come back to it, she knew, but for now she felt like dealing with something which was more manageable. The word
Mokolodi
stood out on the page. She looked at her watch. It was three o'clock. She had nothing to do (ignoring, for the moment, everything else on the list), and it would be pleasant to drive down to Mokolodi and talk to her cousin perhaps and see whether she could find out what was happening down there. She could take Mma Makutsi with her for company; but no, that would not be much fun, with Mma Makutsi in her current mood. She could go by herself or, and here another possibility came to mind, she could take Mr Polopetsi. She was keen to train him to do the occasional piece of work for the agency, as well as the work that he did for the garage. He was always interesting company and would keep her entertained on the short drive south.

 

“I HAVE NEVER BEEN to this place,” said Mr Polopetsi. “I have heard of it, but I have never been here.”

They were no more than a few minutes away from the main gate of Mokolodi, with Mma Ramotswe at the wheel of the van and Mr Polopetsi in the passenger seat, his arm resting on the sill of the open window as he looked with interest at the passing landscape.

“I do not like wild animals very much,” he continued. “I am happy for them to be there, out in the bush, but I do not like them to be too close.”

Mma Ramotswe laughed. “Most people would agree with you,” she said. “There are some wild animals that I would prefer not to come across.”

“Lions,” said Mr Polopetsi. “I don't like to think that there are things which would like to have me for breakfast.” He shuddered. “Lions. Of course, they would probably go for you first, Mma Ramotswe, rather than me.” He made the remark without thinking, almost as a joke, and then he realised that it was not in very good taste. He glanced quickly at Mma Ramotswe, wondering whether she had missed what he had said. She had not.

“Oh?” she said. “And why would a lion prefer to eat me rather than you, Rra? Why would that be?”

Mr Polopetsi looked up at the sky. “I'm sure that I'm wrong,” he said. “I thought that they might eat you first because …” He was about to say that it was because he would be able to run faster than Mma Ramotswe, but he realised that the reason that he would be able to run faster was because she was too large to run fast, and that she would think that he was commenting on her size, which was the real reason for his original remark. Of course any lion would prefer Mma Ramotswe, in the same way as any customer in a butcher's shop would prefer a tasty rump steak to a scrap of lean meat. But he could not say that either, and so he was silent.

“Because I'm traditionally built?” prompted Mma Ramotswe.

Mr Polopetsi raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “I did not say that, Mma,” he protested. “I did not.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled at him reassuringly. “I know you didn't, Rra,” she said. “Don't worry. I don't mind. I've been thinking, you know, and I've decided that I might go on a diet.”

They had now arrived at the Mokolodi gate, where stone-built rondavels guarded the entrance to the camp. This gave Mr Polopetsi the respite he needed: there need be no further talk of lions or diets now that they had people to talk to. But he would not put to the back of his mind the extraordinary news which Mma Ramotswe had so casually imparted to him and which he would breathlessly pass on to Mma Makutsi the moment he saw her. It was news of the very greatest import: if Mma Ramotswe, stern and articulate defender of the rights of the fuller-figured as she was, could contemplate going on a diet, then what would happen to the ranks of the traditionally built? They would be thinned, he decided.

 

MMA RAMOTSWE HAD TOLD Mr Polopetsi that there was something brewing at Mokolodi. She could not be more specific than that, as that was all she knew, and she wondered whether, as a man, he would understand. It seemed to her that men were often unaware of an atmosphere and could assume that all was well when it very clearly was not. This was not the case with all men; there were some who were extremely intuitive in their approach, but many men, alas, were not. Men were interested in hard facts, and sometimes hard facts were simply not available and one had to make do with feelings.

Mr Polopetsi looked puzzled. “So what do you want me to do?” he asked. “Why are we here?”

Mma Ramotswe was patient. “Private detection is all about soaking things up,” she said. “You speak to people. You walk around with your eyes wide open. You get a feel for what's happening. And then you draw your conclusions.”

“But I don't know what I'm meant to be reaching conclusions about,” protested Mr Polopetsi.

“Just see what you feel,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I'm going to talk to a relative of mine. You just … just walk about the place as if you're a visitor. Have a cup of tea. Look at the animals. See if you
feel
anything.”

Mr Polopetsi still looked doubtful, but he was beginning to be intrigued by the assignment. It was rather like being a spy, he thought, and that was something of a challenge. When he was a boy he had played at being a spy and had positioned himself beneath a neighbour's window and listened to the conversation within. He had noted down what was said (the conversation had mostly been about a wedding which was going to take place the following week), and he was in the middle of writing when a woman came out of the house and shouted at him. Then she had hit him with a broom, and he had run away and hidden in a small cluster of paw-paw trees. How strange it was, he thought, that here he was now doing what he had done as a boy, although he could not see himself crouching beneath a window. If Mma Ramotswe expected him to do that, then she would have to think again; she could crouch under windows herself, but he would certainly not do that, even for her.

 

MMA RAMOTSWE'S RELATIVE, the nephew (by a second marriage) of her senior uncle, was the supervisor of the workshop. Leaving Mr Polopetsi in the parking place, where he stood, rather awkwardly, wondering what to do, she made her way down the track that led to the workshops. This track took her past a small number of staff houses, shady buildings finished in warm earth, with comfortable windows of the traditional type—eyes for the building, thought Mma Ramotswe; eyes that made the buildings look human, which is how buildings should look. And then, at the bottom of the track, close to the stables, was the workshop, a rambling set of buildings around a courtyard. With its grease and its working litter—an old tractor, engine parts, the metal bars of an animal cage awaiting welding—it had some of the feel of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, the sort of place in which one might expect the wife of a mechanic to feel at home. And Mma Ramotswe did. Had Mr J.L.B. Matekoni himself strolled out of a doorway, wiping his hands on a piece of lint, she would not have been surprised; instead of him, though, it was her relative, looking at her in surprise, and breaking into a broad grin.