The Colors of All the Cattle

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I have been reading something, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi, as she took a sip of tea. “It’s an article in this magazine.”

  From her chair on the other side of the room, Mma Ramotswe glanced at the magazine lying on Mma Makutsi’s desk. It was, as she had thought, the same magazine from which Mma Makutsi regularly extracted various ideas and theories. Some of these were interesting enough, and some, she imagined, were also quite true; others, though, were more dubious, their function being, Mma Ramotswe suspected, purely that of filling up the space between the magazine’s glossy advertisements.

  Mma Ramotswe raised her cup of red bush tea to her lips. “And what did it say, Mma?” she asked.

  Mma Makutsi reached for the magazine. Flipping through the pages, she came to the article, and began to read it out loud. “Does your life have any point?” she began.

  Mma Ramotswe looked surprised. “Why do you ask me that, Mma? That is a very strange question to ask somebody you have known for many years.”

  Mma Makutsi smiled at the misunderstanding. “No, Mma! That is not me speaking—that is what the article says. That is the title.” She jabbed with a forefinger at the open page. “You see? That is a general question to the readers. It is not me saying to you—not personally—does your life have any point. I would not say that to you, Mma—not in any circumstances.”

  Mma Ramotswe laughed. “That is a big relief, Mma,” she said. “It would be very alarming for us if our friends suddenly asked us a question like that. Just imagine—you would be going along quite nicely and then a friend would ask you whether your life had any point, and you would become highly confused as a result. It would be very unsettling, Mma.”

  Mma Makutsi reassured her that this was precisely why she would never ask Mma Ramotswe if her life had any point. But then she went on to say that, even if the article’s title was a bit abrupt, what it said was worthwhile and thought-provoking. “You see, Mma,” she continued, “the person who wrote this article says right at the beginning that she was somebody whose life did not have much point, but then she changed and now she feels her life has a point after all. That is what she says.”

  “And is she happier now?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Because that’s the most important thing, isn’t it, Mma—to be happy?”

  “She is much happier, Mma,” replied Mma Makutsi. “Look, this is a photograph of her, and you will see that she is smiling. She has a very big smile now.” She held up the magazine so that Mma Ramotswe could see the picture of the author of “Does your life have any point?”

  “She is certainly smiling,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Although we need to be careful about smiles, Mma. There are some people who smile on the outside when they are not smiling on the inside.”

  Mma Makutsi was well aware of that particular issue. “Oh, I know about people like that, Mma,” she said. “But you can always tell—or, at least, I can always tell. I’m not sure if ordinary people can tell, though…” The reference to ordinary people was one that cropped up occasionally in Mma Makutsi’s conversation. Ordinary people, clearly a large category of persons, were either those who had not attended the Botswana Secretarial College—Mma Makutsi’s alma mater—or those who had no experience of being a private detective. Both of these backgrounds seemed to endow one with qualities of understanding and percipience well beyond that enjoyed by even the most worldly-wise members of the general population.

  “But that is not the point,” Mma Makutsi continued. “It is very clear to me that this lady’s smile is both an inside and an outside smile. That is because she is definitely happy inside, and she is happy inside because she has examined her life and has now found a point to it.”

  Mma Ramotswe drained her teacup. “That is very good,” she said. “And what was that point, may I ask?”

  Mma Makutsi looked down at the magazine. “The point she found was to help other people find out if their lives had a point. That is her point, you see.”

  It took Mma Ramotswe a few moments to work this out. “Am I right in thinking, Mma,” she asked, “that once she started to help other people to find a point in their lives, then she thought: This is my own point—to help people find a point? Is that what happened, Mma?”

  “Exactly,” said Mma Makutsi.

  Mma Ramotswe was silent for a moment. This, she thought, was definitely one of those “filler articles.” But she was still intrigued by the question. Did her own life have a point and, if it did, what would that be? “So what else does it say, Mma?”

  Mma Makutsi looked at the magazine once again. “It says that many people do not have a point. She says that most people, in fact, are pointless.”

  “And?” prompted Mma Ramotswe.

  “She says that you can be pointless for many years—just living your life without ever really doing anything—and then one day somebody asks you what your point is, and the truth comes to you that your life has no point.”

  “That must be a very sad moment,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “Very sad,” agreed Mma Makutsi. “But it is not the end of the world, because, when you realise that you have no point, then you will want to find one. And, once that happens, then you will feel much more…” She looked down at the article. “You will feel much more fulfilled, Mma.”

  “I am sure it will be better,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is better to be fulfilled than to be unfulfilled, I think.”

  Mma Makutsi nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yes, that is certainly true. But there is more to this article than that, Mma. It is three pages long, and there is a questionnaire at the end. It asks you questions, and they help you find out if your life has a point.”

  Mma Ramotswe was not surprised by the addition of a questionnaire. It seemed to her that many of the articles that Mma Makutsi read in that magazine of hers involved a questionnaire of some sort. And now Mma Makutsi read out one of these questions and waited expectantly while Mma Ramotswe considered her answers.

  “Think of the last six months,” Mma Makutsi began. “Then make a list of the things you have achieved. What can you put on this list? Ten things? Five things? One thing? Or nothing?” She paused, watching as Mma Ramotswe refreshed her cup of red bush tea. “That’s the question, Mma. What have you achieved in the last six months?”

  Mma Ramotswe looked thoughtful. Then her expression of thoughtfulness turned, almost imperceptibly, to one of regret. Now that she thought about it, she had achieved nothing very much in the last six months. She had done her job, of course, and she had helped various people with the problems in their lives—but that was just her job, nothing more. At home, she had cleaned out the kitchen cupboards, but that was hardly an achievement—anybody could clean out their kitchen cupboards—and indeed many people cleaned out their cupboards on a much more regular basis than she did. They were achievers, perhaps, and could answer the question with much greater credit. She had, of course, spent a lot of time with the children—with Puso and Motholeli—and had helped them with their various projects. She had helped Motholeli to make a quilt, and that had been sold at a school fund-raising event for a respectable sum. That was an achievement. And then she had guided Puso through the transfer of his collection of stamps to a new stamp album—that was an achievement too. But she had her doubts as to whether Mma Makutsi’s magazine would think much of that sort of thing. And this meant, she concluded, that she would almost certainly fail the test behind the questionnaire. Her life, it seemed, was pointless—at least in the eyes of Mma Makutsi’s magazine, and possibly the eyes of the world at large. Mma Ramotswe, Private Detective…and Pointless Person. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

  But then she laughed. “Such nonsense, Mma,” she exclaimed. “That magazine of yours is full of nonsense.”

  Mma Makutsi looked wounded. “You should not say such things, Mma. Just because the truth hurts, you should not say such things.”

  Mma Ram
otswe was quick to apologise. Mma Makutsi was sensitive, and she did not want to upset her over such a minor matter as this. To put Mma Makutsi into one of her moods over something as unimportant as a magazine article…that was something that would certainly qualify as a pointless act. “I’m very sorry, Mma,” she said. “I did not mean to say that. I spoke as I did because I felt that the article was touching on some very important truths.”

  Mma Makutsi was suitably pacified. “Well, there you are, Mma,” she said. “Sometimes all that it takes to make us re-evaluate our lives is a simple question—a very simple question, Mma.”

  It was time for the tea break to end. The cups were washed, and the teapots—Mma Makutsi’s ordinary teapot and the special one that Mma Ramotswe kept for her red bush tea—were both put away in the cupboard. Work resumed, but a seed had been planted, and the subject would crop up again a few days later when Mma Ramotswe travelled along that bumpy and dusty road to the Orphan Farm presided over by her friend and confidante, the redoubtable Mma Sylvia Potokwane, stout defender of children, and a woman whose life most clearly and unambiguously had a clear point to it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A SILENT BOY, AND TEA

  TWO TINY EGGS, pale brown but speckled with pink; impossibly fragile, they seemed, for a landscape such as this, with its hard outcrops of rock and its baked red soil; a single touch, a puff of wind, might be enough to break them. And a third egg had already broken in the pocket of the boy’s khaki shirt, making a wet patch that soaked through the fabric, a stain of guilt.

  The boy—no more than six, thought Mma Ramotswe—was standing in front of Mma Potokwane, not far from the acacia tree under which Mma Ramotswe invariably parked her car when she came to visit her friend. Nobody spoke at first, and the sound of the cooling of the van’s engine, that click click of heated machinery returning to normal, was all they heard. Then Mma Potokwane, turning to greet her visitor, said, “You see these eggs, Mma? You see these eggs taken from some poor bird? A guinea fowl, I think.”

  She held the two eggs in her outstretched palm. Mma Ramotswe looked at them, then at the boy, who did not meet her eye. It was obvious to her what had happened; the child had stolen the eggs from a nest and had been found out.

  Mma Potokwane was rarely severe with the children, but she was clearly struggling not to show too much displeasure. “This is Mpilo,” she explained, and then, to the boy himself, “Mpilo, this auntie is Mma Ramotswe. You must greet her.”

  The boy’s eyes remained fixed on the ground in front of him. She saw his fists clenched tight; she saw that at the back of his neck there were two small scars. How did he get those? Boys were always falling over and bruising their knees—it was nothing unusual for a boy’s knees to be covered with cuts—but at the back of his neck?

  He said nothing. Embarrassed, Mma Ramotswe smiled and issued the first greeting herself. This brought no reaction.

  “One day he will learn,” muttered Mma Potokwane apologetically. “One day.”

  The boy glanced up, a quick, furtive glance before he resumed his staring at the ground.

  “Mpilo has taken eggs from a bird’s nest,” said Mma Potokwane. “And we must put them back now.” She paused. “Because these do not belong to us, do they, Mpilo?”

  She looked at Mma Ramotswe, as if for confirmation of the decision.

  “The bird will need them,” said Mma Ramotswe gently. “They will become the bird’s children, you see.”

  The boy looked up again. There was a flicker of something, thought Mma Ramotswe, but she was not sure if it was understanding.

  “So now you must show us where you found them,” pressed Mma Potokwane. Her tone had softened, the note of disapproval replaced by gentle cajoling. “You understand, Mpilo? You know what I’m saying to you?”

  There was an almost imperceptible nod from the boy, but it was enough.

  “Right,” said Mma Potokwane. “Mma Ramotswe will help us. You show us where these came from and we will all put them back.”

  He pointed, and they followed, walking behind him on one of those almost invisible tracks that wound their way through the scrub bush behind Mma Potokwane’s office. These tracks are everywhere in the African bush, used by animals for the most part, known only to the creatures that had reason to go that way, petering out inexplicably, joining other tracks, forming a network of secret passages. The boy wore no shoes, but, like all children who lived on the edge of the bush, his feet would be hardened to the rough texture of the ground. Now he made his way effortlessly past the stunted vegetation of the late summer, avoiding the restraining grasp of the thorn bushes that would delay the unwary, walking almost too fast for the two traditionally built women behind him.

  Somewhere ahead of them they could hear cattle bells, and could smell, too, the sweet dung of the herd. This smell of cattle, so redolent of the Botswana countryside, always made Mma Ramotswe think of her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, who in the last years of his life had lived for his cattle—my other children, he had called them; not as important to me as you are, Precious, but still my children. He had been understanding when as a young girl she had been badly behaved; he had always been patient, had never raised a hand to her. But children had to learn, and this boy had to be taught not to steal the eggs of birds. If children did not learn this lesson, then there would be no birds, and the air would be silent. Mma Potokwane had to teach him.

  They did not have far to go. Suddenly the boy stopped in his tracks and pointed to a spot off to his right—a small cluster of rocks between which tufts of grass protruded. Grazing cattle, perhaps deterred by the rocks, had left the spot alone, and the grass had grown high, bent here and there by the wind or the movement of birds.

  “So that is the nest,” said Mma Potokwane.

  The boy nodded, but did not say anything.

  “Put them back where you found them, Mpilo.” She had been cradling the eggs gently in her hand and passed them back to him now. He took them, making a cup with both hands.

  “On you go.”

  He picked his way between the rocks and then bent down. Standing up again, he pointed down at the ground to show that he had complied.

  “Now we can go back,” said Mma Potokwane. “And you can have a piece of cake from your housemother. I will tell her that you have been a good boy. I will explain to her about your shirt.”

  The boy looked up sharply, and for a moment there was a flicker of expression that had not been there before.

  * * *

  —

  “HAS HE ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THAT?” asked Mma Ramotswe as she watched her friend pour her a cup of red bush tea.

  Mma Potokwane sighed. Her sighs were always deep ones—not short sighs of the sort that most people sigh, but long-drawn-out sighs, like the sound of air escaping from an inflated tyre. It was remarkable, thought Mma Ramotswe, that anybody could have so much air in their lungs, but the matron had a large chest, and there must be room for it somewhere in there.

  “More or less,” said Mma Potokwane at the end of the sigh. “We got a little bit out of him when he first turned up here. The social work people from Selibi Pikwe passed him on to us. We get quite a few children from up there, you know. The mine sends them. They’re good about it—they always give us some money to start things off.”

  Selibi Pikwe was a mining town halfway up the country’s eastern border. Like all mining towns, it had a floating population; men came and went for the work, and women followed them. Some of the women came from over the border, earning their living in the way that women trapped in poverty sometimes felt they had to do. In some cases they looked out for their children as best they could, while in others the young ones were passed on or simply abandoned.

  “What did he tell you?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  “Not very much. We got his name from them—the social work people had got that wrong, but who
can blame them? They’re under pressure these days. Then he said he had a sister, but I think she’s late. He cried when he told us that. He gave us a name and then started to cry. We didn’t get much more out of him.” She shrugged. “We often have to start afresh, you know, Mma. We’re used to it. There are some children who are just struck dumb because of what has happened to them.”

  Mma Ramotswe asked if the boy spoke Setswana, and was told that he did. “At least I think he does,” said Mma Potokwane. “He seems to understand well enough, but, as you’ve seen, he doesn’t really speak any longer. We have a battle to stop the other children making fun of him; you know what children are like.”

  “The back of his neck…”

  Mma Potokwane nodded. “Yes. Those scars. And he has some on his right leg. Very strange. The nurse did get something out of him when she asked him about that. He just said: lightning. That’s all—lightning.”

  Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. “He says he was struck by lightning?”

  Mma Potokwane laughed. “So it would seem. And yet, you know, Mma, you can’t really put too much store in what a six- or seven-year-old says. They’re very inventive.”

  “Like some adults,” Mma Ramotswe observed. It was not a sarcastic remark—Mma Ramotswe never showed sarcasm; it was more rueful than anything else. Her profession, after all, brought her into contact with people who were sometimes less than truthful, and she knew only too well how people could embellish reality, or make it up entirely.

  Mma Potokwane agreed. “Indeed. There are some very inventive adults, Mma. When you listen to them, you have to divide everything they say by two, and then take away ten. As you have to do with some politicians.”

  “Politicians…,” mused Mma Ramotswe. “Yes, maybe you are right, Mma. But not all of them speak like that, of course. There are some very good politicians—honest ones.” She thought of Botswana’s good fortune in its early leaders—that great man Seretse Khama had been one such; and there had been others, men in his mould who had made Botswana the country that it was.