Blue Shoes and Happiness tn1lda-7

by Alexander McCall Smith

  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 wroteblackmail , 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 wasMr 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 wasMokolodi , 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 wordMokolodi 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 t
hat 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.

  They exchanged family news, standing there in the courtyard. Was his father well? No, but he was still cheerful, and spent a lot of his time talking about the old days. He had talked about Obed Ramotswe recently, and still missed his advice on cattle. Mma Ramotswe lowered her eyes; there was nobody who knew more about cattle than her late father, and it touched her that this knowledge should still be talked about; wise men are remembered, they always are.

  And what was she doing? Was it true that she had a detective agency, of all things? And that husband of hers? He was a good man, as everybody knew. There was a local man whose car had broken down in Gaborone and who had been helped by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who had seen this man standing in despair beside that car and who had stopped and towed him back to the garage, where he had fixed the car—for nothing. That had been talked about.

  So the conversation continued, until Mma Ramotswe, hot under the slanting afternoon sun, had mopped her brow and had been invited inside for a mug of tea. It was the wrong sort of tea, of course, but it was still welcome, even if it did cause a slight fluttering of the heart, which ordinary tea or coffee always did to her.

  “Why have you come out here?” the relative asked. “I heard that you were here the other day. I was in town. I did not see you.”

  “I was collecting a part for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” she explained. “Neil had found it for him. But I didn’t manage to speak to anybody. So I thought I would come back and say hallo.”

  The relative nodded. “You are always welcome,” he said. “We like to see people out here.”

  There was a silence. Mma Ramotswe picked up the mug of tea he had prepared and took a sip. “Is everything going well here?” she asked. It was an innocent-seeming question, but one which was asked with an ulterior motive, and it did not sound innocent to her.

  The relative looked at her. “Going well? I suppose so.”

  Mma Ramotswe waited for him to say something else, but he did not. She saw, though, that he was frowning. People did not normally frown when they said that something was going well.

  “You look unhappy,” she said.

  This remark seemed to take the relative by surprise. “You noticed?” he said.

  Mma Ramotswe tapped the table with a finger. “That is what I am paid to do,” she said. “I am paid to notice things. Even when I am off duty, I notice things. And I can tell that there’s something uncomfortable going on here. I can tell.”

  “What can you tell, Mma Ramotswe?” said the relative.

  Mma Ramotswe patiently explained to him about atmospheres, and about how one could always tell when people were frightened. It showed in their eyes, she said. Fear always showed in the eyes.

  The relative listened. He looked away as she spoke, as people will do when they did not wish their eyes to be seen. This confirmed her impression.

  “You yourself are frightened of something,” she coaxed, her voice low. “I can tell.”

  The relative glanced back at her. His look was a pleading one. He rose to his feet and closed the door. There was only one small window in the room, a small rectangle of sky, and they were immediately enveloped in gloom. It was slightly cold too, as the floor of the room was of uncovered concrete and the warming sunlight which had slanted in through the door was now excluded. In the background, against one of the walls, a tap that ran into a dirty basin dripped water.

  Mma Ramotswe had suspected it, but had put the thought to the back of her mind. Now, to her dismay, the possibility returned, and it chilled her. She could cope with anything. She understood very well what people were capable of, how cruel they could be, how perverse in their selfishness, how ruthless; she could cope with all that, and with all the general misfortunes of life. She was not afraid of human wickedness, which was usually tawdry and banal, something to be pitied, but there was one thing, one dark thing, which frightened her no matter how much she saw it for what it was. That thing, she now felt, might be present here, and it might explain why people were frightened.

  She reached out and took her relative’s hand. And at that moment she knew that she had been right. His hand was shaking.

  “You must tell me, Rra,” she whispered. “You must tell me what it is that is frightening you. Who has done it? Who has put a curse on this place?”

  His eyes were wide. “There is no curse,” he said, his voice low. “There is no curse … yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  Mma Ramotswe digested this information in silence. She was convinced that behind this there would be some scruffy witch doctor somewhere, a traditional healer, perhaps, who had found the profits of healing too small and had taken to the selling of charms and potions. It was a bit like a lion turning man-eater: an old lion, or an injured one, would discover that he could no longer run down his usual prey and turned to those slower two-legged creatures for easier pickings. It was easy for a healer to be tempted.Here’s something to make you strong; here’s something to deal with your enemies.

  Of course, there was much less of that sort of thing than there used to be, but it still existed, and its effects coul
d be potent. If you heard that somebody had put a curse on you, then however much you might claim not to believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, you would still feel uneasy. This was because there was always a part of the human mind that was prepared to entertain such notions, particularly at night, in the world of shadows, when there were sounds that one could not understand and when each one of us was in some sense alone. Some people found this intolerable, and succumbed, as if life itself simply gave out in the face of such evil; and when this happened, it served only to strengthen the belief of some that such things worked.

  She looked at the relative, and saw his terror. She put her arms around him and whispered something. He looked at her, hesitated, and then whispered something in return.

  Mma Ramotswe listened. On the roof, a small creature, a lizard perhaps, scuttled across the tin, making a tiny tapping sound. Rats did that, thought Mma Ramotswe; made such a sound at night in the rafters, which could wake up a light sleeper and leave her tossing and turning in the small hours of the morning.

  The relative finished, and Mma Ramotswe moved her arms. She nodded, and placed a finger against his lips in a gesture of conspiracy.

  “We don’t want him to know,” he said. “Some of us are ashamed of this.”

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. No, she thought, one need not be ashamed about such a thing. Superstitions persist. Anybody—even the most rational people—can be a little worried about things like that. She had read that there are people who throw salt over their shoulder if they spilled some, or who would not walk under ladders, or sit in any seat numbered thirteen. No culture was immune to that sort of thing, and there was no reason for African people to be ashamed of such beliefs, just because they did not sound modern.

  “You need not feel ashamed,” she said. “And I shall think of some way of dealing with this. I shall think of some tactful way.”