Blue Shoes and Happiness (6 page)

He looked at Mma Makutsi as she cut at a piece of meat on her plate. She wielded the knife expertly, pushing the cut meat onto her fork. Then the fork was before her mouth, which opened wide to receive the food before the teeth came together. She smiled at him and nodded to his plate, encouraging him to get on with his meal.

Phuti looked down at his plate. It had just occurred to him that Mma Makutsi might be a feminist. He did not know why he should think this. She had never threatened to sweep him away, but there was no doubt about who had been in charge when they had danced together at the Academy of Dance and Movement. Mr Fano Fanope had explained that it was always the men who led in ballroom dancing, but Phuti had found himself quite unable to lead and had willingly followed the firm promptings of Mma Makutsi's hands planted on his shoulders and in the small of his back. Did this make her a feminist, or merely one who could tell when a man had no idea of how to take the lead in dancing? He raised his eyes from his plate and looked at Mma Makutsi. He saw his reflection in the lenses of her large round glasses, and he saw the smile about her lips. Perhaps it would be best to ask her, he thought.

“Mma Makutsi,” he began, “there is something I should like to ask you.”

Mma Makutsi put down her knife and fork and smiled at him. “You may ask me anything,” she said. “I am your fiancée.”

He swallowed. It would be best to be direct. “Are you a feminist?” he blurted out. His nervousness made him stumble slightly on the word “feminist,” making the letter “f” sound doubled or even tripled. His stammer had been vastly improved since his meeting with Mma Makutsi and her agreeing to marry him, but occasions of stress might still bring it out.

Mma Makutsi looked a bit taken aback by the question. She had not been expecting the topic to arise, but now that she had been asked there was only one answer to give.

“Of course I am,” she said simply. Her answer given, she stared at him through her large, round glasses; again she smiled. “These days most ladies are feminists. Did you not know that?”

Phuti Radiphuti was unable to answer. He opened his mouth to speak, but words, which had recently been so forthcoming, seemed to have deserted him. It was an old, familiar feeling for him; a struggle to articulate the thoughts that were in mind through a voice that would not come, or came in fits and starts. He had imagined a future of tenderness and mutual cherishing; now it seemed to him that he would face stridency and conflict. He would be swept aside, as he had been swept aside in that dream; but there would be no waking up this time.

He looked at Mma Makutsi. How could he, who was so cautious, have been so wrong about somebody? It was typical of his luck; he had never been noticed by women—it would never be given to him to be admired, to be looked up to; rather, he would be the target of criticism and upbraiding, for that is what he imagined feminists did to men. They put them in their place; they emasculated them; they derided them. All of this now lay ahead of Phuti Radiphuti as he stared glumly at his fiancée and then down again at his plate, where the last scraps of food, a mess of potage in a sense, lay cooling and untouched.

CHAPTER FIVE

MORE CONVERSATIONS WITH SHOES

T
HIS IS A VERY BUSY DAY,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, wiping his hands on a small piece of lint. “There are so many things that I have to do and which I will not have the time to do. It is very hard.” He raised his eyes up to the sky, but not before casting a glance in the direction of Mma Ramotswe.

She knew that this was a request. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was not one to ask for a favour directly. He was always willing to help other people, as Mma Potokwane, matron of the orphan farm, knew full well, but his diffidence usually prevented him from asking others to do things for him. There was sometimes a call for help, however, disguised as a comment about the pressures which were always threatening to overcome any owner of a garage; and this was one, to which Mma Ramotswe of course would respond.

She looked at her desk, which was largely clear of papers. There was a bill, still in its envelope but unmistakably a bill, and a half-drafted letter to a client. Both of these were things that she would happily avoid attending to, and so she smiled encouragingly at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

“If there is anything I can do?” she asked. “I can't fix cars for you, but maybe there's something else?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni tossed the greasy scrap of lint into the waste-paper basket. “Well, there is something, Mma,” he said, “now that you ask. And although it has something to do with cars, it doesn't involve actually fixing anything. I know you are a detective, Mma Ramotswe, and not a mechanic.”

“I would like to be able to fix cars,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Maybe some day I will learn. There are many ladies now who can fix cars. There are many girls who are doing a mechanic's apprenticeship.”

“I have seen them,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I wonder if they are very different from …” He did not finish the sentence, but tossed his head in the direction of the workshop behind him, where the two apprentices, Charlie and the younger one—whose name nobody ever used—were changing the oil in a truck.

“They are very different,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Those boys spend all their time thinking about girls. You know what they're like.”

“And girls don't spend any time thinking about boys?” asked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

Mma Ramotswe considered this for a few moments. She was not quite sure what the answer was. When she was a girl she had thought about boys from time to time, but only to reflect on how fortunate she was to be a girl rather than a boy. And when she became a bit older, and was susceptible to male charm, although she occasionally imagined what it would be like to spend time in the company of a particular boy, boys
as a breed
did not occupy her thoughts. Nor did she talk about boys in the way in which the apprentices talked about girls, although it was possible that modern girls were different. She had overheard some teenagers—girls of about seventeen—talking among themselves one day when she was looking for a book in Mr Kerrison's new book shop, and she had been shocked by what she had heard. Her shock had registered in her expression, and in the dropping of her jaw, and the girls had noticed this. “What's the trouble, Mma?” said one of the girls. “Don't you know about boys?” And she had struggled for words, searching for a reply which would tell these shameless girls that she knew all about boys—and had known about them for many years—while at the same time letting them know that she disapproved. But no words had come, and the girls had gone away giggling.

Mma Ramotswe was not a prude. She knew what went on between people, but she believed that there was a part of life that should be private. She believed that what one felt about another was largely a personal matter, and that one should not talk about the mysteries of the soul. One should just not do it, because that was not how the old Botswana morality worked. There was such a thing as shame, she thought, although there were many people who seemed to forget it. And where would we be in a world without the old Botswana morality? It would not work, in Mma Ramotswe's view, because it would mean that people could do as they wished without regard for what others thought. That would be a recipe for selfishness, a recipe as clear as if it were written out in a cookery book:
Take one country, with all that the country means, with its kind people, and their smiles, and their habit of helping one another; ignore all this; shake about; add modern ideas; bake until ruined.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's question about whether girls thought about boys hung in the air, unanswered. He looked at her expectantly. “Well, Mma?” he asked. “Do girls not think about boys?”

“Sometimes,” said Mma Ramotswe nonchalantly. “When there is nothing better to think about, that is.” She smiled at her husband. “But that is not what we were discussing,” she continued. “What is this thing that you want me to do?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni explained to her about the errand he wished her to carry out. It would involve a trip to Mokolodi, which was half an hour away to the south.

“My friend who dealt with the cobra,” he said. “Neil. He's the one. He has an old pickup down there, a bakkie, which he kept for years and years. And then …” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni paused. The death of a car diminished him, because he was involved with cars. “There was nothing much more I could do for it. It needed a complete engine re-bore, Mma Ramotswe. New pistons. New piston rings.” He shook his head sadly, as a doctor might when faced with a hopeless prognosis.

Mma Ramotswe looked up at the ceiling. “Yes,” she said. “It must have been very sad.”

“But fortunately Neil did not get rid of it,” he said. “Some people just throw cars away, Mma Ramotswe. They throw them away.”

Mma Ramotswe reached for a piece of paper on her desk and began to fold it. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni often needed some time to get to the point, but she was used to waiting.

“I have a customer with a broken half-shaft,” went on Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “That is part of the rear axle. You know that, don't you? There's a shaft that comes down the middle until it gets to the gear mechanism in the middle of the rear axle. Then, on each side of that there's something called the half-shaft that goes to the wheel on either side.”

The piece of paper in Mma Ramotswe's right hand had been folded in two and then folded again at an angle. As she held it up and looked past it, it seemed to her that it was now a bird, a stout bird with a large beak. She narrowed her eyes and squinted at it, so that the paper became blurred against the background of the office walls. She thought of the customer with a broken half-shaft—she understood exactly what Mr J.L.B. Matekoni meant, but she smiled at his way of expressing it. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni regarded cars and their owners as interchangeable, or as being virtually one and the same, with the result that he would talk of people who were losing oil or who were in need of bodywork. It had always amused Mma Ramotswe, and in her mind's eye she had seen people walking with a dribble of oil stretching out behind them or with dents in their bodies or limbs. So, too, did she picture this client with the broken half-shaft; poor man, perhaps limping, perhaps patched up in some way.

“So,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “So, could you go and fetch this for me, Mma Ramotswe? You won't have to lift anything—he'll get one of his men to do that. All you have to do is to drive down there and drive back. That's all.”

Mma Ramotswe rather liked the idea of a run down to Mokolodi. Although she lived in Gaborone, she was not a town person at heart—very few Batswana were—and she was never happier than when she was out in the bush, with the air of the country, dry and scented with the tang of acacia, in her lungs. On the drive to Mokolodi she would travel with the windows down, and the sun and air would flood the cabin of her tiny white van; and she would see, opening up before her, the vista of hills around Otse and beyond, green in the foreground and blue beyond. She would take the turning off to the right, and a few minutes later she would be at the stone gates of the camp and explaining to the attendant the nature of her business. Perhaps she would have a cup of tea on the verandah of the circular main building, with its thatch and its surrounding trees, and its outlook of hills. She tried to remember whether they served bush tea there; she thought they did, but just in case, she would take a sachet of her own tea which she could ask them to boil up for her.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at her anxiously. “That's all,” he said. “That's all I'm asking you to do.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “No,” she said. “That's fine. I was just thinking.”

“What were you thinking?” asked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

“About the hills down there,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And about tea. That sort of thing.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni laughed. “You often think about tea, don't you? I don't. I think about cars and engines and things like that. Grease. Oil. Suspension. Those are my thoughts.”

Mma Ramotswe put down the piece of paper she had been folding. “Is it not strange, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni?” she said. “Is it not strange that men and women think about such very different things? There you are thinking about mechanical matters, and I am sitting here thinking about tea.”

“Yes,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “It is strange.” He paused. There was a car needing attention outside and he had to see to it. The owner wanted it back that afternoon or he would be obliged to walk home. “I must get on, Mma Ramotswe,” he said. Nodding to Mma Makutsi, he left the office and returned to the garage.

Mma Ramotswe pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. “Would you care to come with me, Mma Makutsi?” she asked. “It's a nice day for a run.”

Mma Makutsi looked up from her desk. “But who will look after the business?” she asked. “Who will answer the telephone?”

Mma Ramotswe looked at herself in the mirror on the wall behind the filing cabinet. The mirror was intended for the use of Mma Makutsi and herself, but was used most frequently by the apprentices, who liked to preen themselves in front of it. “Should I braid my hair?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “What do you think, Mma Makutsi?”

“Your hair is very nice as it is, Mma,” said her assistant, but added, “Of course, it would be even nicer if you were to braid it.”

Mma Ramotswe looked round. “And you?” she asked. “Would you braid your hair too, if I had mine done?”

“I'm not sure,” said Mma Makutsi. “Phuti Radiphuti is an old-fashioned man. I'm not sure what his views on braiding would be.”

“An old-fashioned man?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “That's interesting. Does he know that you're a modern lady?”

Mma Makutsi considered the question for a moment. “I think he does,” she said. “The other night he asked me if I was a feminist.”

Mma Ramotswe stiffened. “He asked you that, did he? And what did you reply, Mma?”

“I said that most ladies were feminists these days,” said Mma Makutsi. “So I told him, yes, I am.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. “Oh dear,” she said. “I'm not sure that that's the best answer to give in such circumstances. Men are very frightened of feminists.”

“But I cannot lie,” protested Mma Makutsi. “Surely men don't expect us to lie? And anyway, Phuti is a kind man. He is not one of those men who are hostile to feminists because they are insecure underneath.”

She's right about that, thought Mma Ramotswe. Men who put women down usually did so because they were afraid of women and wanted to build themselves up. But one had to be circumspect about these things. The term
feminist
could upset men needlessly because some feminists were so unpleasant to men. Neither she nor Mma Makutsi was that sort of person. They liked men, even if they knew that there were some types of men who bullied women. They would never stand for that, of course, but at the same time they would not wish to be seen as hostile to men like Mr J.L.B. Matekoni or Phuti Radiphuti—or Mr Polopetsi, for that matter; Mr Polopetsi, who was so mild and considerate and badly done by.

“I'm not saying that you should lie,” said Mma Ramotswe quietly. “All I'm saying is that it's unwise to talk to men about feminism. It makes them run away. I have seen it many times before.” She hoped that the engagement would not be threatened by this. Mma Makutsi deserved to find a good husband, especially as she had not had much luck before. Although Mma Makutsi never talked about it, Mma Ramotswe knew that there had been somebody else in Mma Makutsi's life—for a very brief time—and that she had actually married him. But he had died, very suddenly, and she had been left alone again.

Mma Makutsi swallowed hard. Phuti Radiphuti had seemed unnaturally quiet that evening after their conversation. If what Mma Ramotswe said was right, then her ill-considered remarks might prompt him to run away from her, to end their engagement. The thought brought a cold hand to her chest. She would never get another man; she would never find another fiancé like Phuti Radiphuti. She would be destined to spend the rest of her days as an assistant detective, scraping a living while other women found comfortably-off husbands to marry. She had been given a golden chance and she had squandered it through her own stupidity and thoughtlessness.