The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Mma Ramotswe returned to the van and eased herself into the driver’s seat. The man now addressed Mma Makutsi, suggesting that she push at the back of the van while he pulled on the yoke at the front and persuaded the donkeys to take the strain. Then they both got into position, and the man started to shout at the donkeys.

  Inside the cab, Mma Ramotswe felt the van move—but only slightly. Then, as the man gave a resounding smack to one of the donkeys, it moved again, rolling forwards as the wheels were dragged through the sand; only to stop and then roll back the few precious inches it had just achieved.

  “Stop,” called out the man, both to the donkeys and to Mma Makutsi.

  “I have stopped,” shouted Mma Makutsi from the back. “It’s too heavy, Rra.”

  The man was perplexed. “They are very strong …” He tailed off. He looked at Mma Ramotswe. “Perhaps, Mma, it might be better if we asked the other lady …” He gave a toss of the head in the direction of Mma Makutsi. “Perhaps we could ask that lady to steer while you pushed. It’s just that she’s quite a bit less …”

  Mma Ramotswe was polite but firm. “Traditionally built.”

  “That is right,” said the man. “She is a bit thinner, and you are …”

  “Traditionally built,” prompted Mma Ramotswe again. “Don’t worry, Rra. I am not ashamed of being who I am.”

  The man made an elaborate show of rejecting the very thought. “Of course, Mma, of course. It’s just that the donkeys are a bit old—that one in particular—and they are finding it a bit difficult to drag a van and a … a traditionally built lady. With the other lady at the wheel, I think we can do it.”

  Mma Makutsi, who had been following this exchange, smiled as she made her way round to the door. But she said nothing; that would have been rude, of course, and would have demonstrated a complete lack of feminine loyalty. Men, she knew, did not understand these matters.

  “You must be careful not to get too thin, Mma,” muttered Mma Ramotswe, as she yielded her place in the van.

  Mma Makutsi smiled. “Mma, I am already becoming a bit traditionally built. I do not think there is any danger of that.”

  The man now returned to his position with the donkeys while Mma Ramotswe leaned up against the back of the van, digging her feet into the sand and preparing to apply her weight in the hoped-for direction of travel. Already, as she did so, the van moved slightly, even before the donkeys had engaged.

  “I’ll count to three,” called the man. “Then we’ll pull and you push, Mma. One, two, three!”

  This time the reaction of the van was immediate, and Mma Ramotswe had to act quickly to avoid falling over backwards.

  “That’s it!” shouted the man from the front. “Pula, pula, pula!”

  Pula, pula, pula! was the cry of triumph, of joy, that was universal in Botswana. It meant rain, rain, rain—just the right cry for a dry country that lived for the day that the first life-giving rains arrived—that day of ominous purple skies, and heat, and the wind that precedes the first drops of water splattering and dancing on the baked ground. Pula, pula, pula!

  With the van free of the sand, Mma Makutsi decided to start the engine. She did this with her foot pressed down hard on the accelerator pedal—she was no driver, really—and the engine raced in response. For the donkeys, yoked so closely to this unusual burden, this was a source of sudden alarm, and they responded by backing sharply against their restraining straps. One of them, the older one, stumbled, attempted to regain its footing, failed to do so and then collapsed.

  The man gave a shout. “Turn the engine off, Mma! Turn it off!”

  Mma Makutsi complied, her hands shooting up to her mouth in a gesture of horrified realisation. “Oh, Rra,” she cried. “I have killed your donkey.”

  The man struggled with the straps that held the fallen donkey in the yoke. As he did so, the other donkey brayed suddenly, a mournful, broken sound. It took a few moments, but when the straps were released, the donkey sagged back into the sand, its chest heaving. It moved its head as if trying to get up, but then lowered it again and fixed the sky with a stare of reproach. Mma Makutsi, distraught over what she had done, was now joined by Mma Ramotswe. The donkey’s eyes, Mma Ramotswe found herself thinking, were so beautiful; flecked, almost golden, and rimmed with delicate black eyelashes. It was an incongruous thought—this admiration of the beauty of a creature that seemed to be on the point of death.

  Mma Makutsi was now in tears. “Oh, Mma, what have I done?”

  “It was an accident,” said Mma Ramotswe gently. “It was not your fault, Mma. You were not to know.”

  The man, who had been bending over the donkey, now rose and walked over to his cart. He seemed to be curiously unconcerned by what had happened, simply saying, “He will get up. He will know we are going home now.”

  He was right. The donkey now suddenly heaved a sigh and staggered to his feet.

  “See, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “No harm done.”

  “He is very lazy,” snapped the man. “He is always doing this.”

  “Maybe he is tired,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “Maybe,” said the man. “But I’m tired too, Mma. We are all tired.” He looked about him. “There is so much sand.”

  She thought about what he said. Perhaps Mma Potokwane was tired too. Perhaps there were just too many orphans, just as there was too much sand. Perhaps she had had enough of helping. If that were true, then she wondered whether she should be seeking her out here, or whether she should leave her in peace. It would be easy to go back now and leave Mma Potokwane at her lands, but then she reminded herself that Mma Potokwane had never once spoken in the past about retiring or giving up. No, the defeatist Mma Potokwane was not the real Mma Potokwane. The real Mma Potokwane was a fighter.

  With the donkeys back in harness, Mma Ramotswe reached into her bag to retrieve a fifty-pula note. “You have been very good, Rra. This is a present for you.”

  The man looked at the money. “You do not have to pay me, Mma. I wouldn’t leave anybody here. But since you are so kind …” He reached out and took the money, which he quickly tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt. “Since you are so kind, I will take you and this other lady to Mma Potokwane’s place. You should leave the van here because it gets even sandier later on. You can come back for it when you want to go home.”

  They collected a few necessities from the van, which Mma Ramotswe had driven on to a piece of firm ground beside the track. Then, climbing onto the back of the cart, they started the journey down the track, the same journey that people had made countless times over the years, back in the time of their parents, their grandparents; in the same way, in the same quiet, at the same pace, closer to the world than in the metal cocoons in which we now travel. There was birdsong, and the gentlest of breezes; and they heard the donkeys, the noise made by their hooves against the ground, the sound of their breathing, their sighs.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HAVE YOU HAD ANY INJECTIONS RECENTLY?

  WITH MMA MAKUTSI AWAY, Phuti Radiphuti felt at a loose end. He had very rapidly become accustomed to marriage—so rapidly, in fact, that on this first occasion on which he had been left alone, he found himself unable to settle. Mma Makutsi had left him a stew for his dinner and this required only to be warmed up, but Phuti felt disinclined to eat by himself in a kitchen that he now associated with the presence of his new wife. On impulse rather than on any serious reflection, he telephoned the aunt with whom he had stayed during his recent convalescence. This aunt, who had done her best to discourage his marriage, believing that Mma Makutsi was unworthy of her nephew and motivated, too, by a jealousy that would have prevented her from approving of any prospective wife for Phuti, had not attended the wedding. She had observed it from afar, though, sitting in the brown car with its mean-spirited narrow windows and watching the reception tents through a pair of binoculars. Phuti had seen her car and had started over towards it in the hope of persuading his aunt to bring hostilities to an e
nd and join them at the wedding party; he had not succeeded in speaking to her, though, as she had seen him approaching and had driven off at speed.

  This had not prevented him from sending her a piece of wedding cake and a photograph of himself in his wedding suit, inscribed To my dear aunt, from your faithful nephew, Phuti. With a more forgiving woman, this might have resulted in a letter of thanks, or at least a message, but neither had been forthcoming. Phuti did not take offence—it was not in his nature to do so—and now, ignoring her previous bad behaviour, he called his aunt and asked her whether he could possibly come for dinner that evening. “Just me,” he said quickly. “I shall be alone.”

  The aunt had been quick to agree to this self-invitation. She had been hoping to see him but had been unable to swallow her pride sufficiently to make the first move. And this reference to being on his own intrigued her: Was it too much to hope that he had tired of the whole business of being married to Mma Makutsi and was keen to revert to bachelor status, preferably living with her and occupying the bedroom in which he had stayed on his last visit? She could feed him up again—as she had done during his convalescence—and make him happy. It would be better, far better, for him to be away from that dreadful woman with her large round glasses and her Bobonong ways.

  It was not without trepidation that Phuti parked his car at the aunt’s front gate that evening and began his way up the short path to her front door. The last time I was here, he thought, I was a single man. And now I am a married man with a talented and attractive wife. I was a boy back then; now I am a man.

  He glanced at the garden in the fading light of evening. There were the paw-paw trees from which his aunt had picked the heavy yellow fruit she had served to him with lumpy custard. There was the tree that he had climbed when he visited his aunt as a twelve-year-old; the branch on which he had strung a swing that had broken at a crucial moment and sent another boy, a friend from school, sailing through the air to a broken leg and three days in hospital. And there, parked beside the house, in the position it had occupied for so many years, was the unfriendly brown car with its pinched windows and its sign that said Don’t Waste Water. That sign had always been there, although his aunt, as far as he could make out, had never been particularly abstemious when it came to water. The patch of grass outside her house was always liberally irrigated, and he had noticed that the baths she ran for herself almost reached the rim of the tub.

  He knocked at the door and called out, “Ko, ko, Auntie!” From somewhere within the house he heard her footsteps approaching and then the door opened. Seeing Phuti on the doorstep, the aunt opened her arms to embrace him. I am forgiven, he thought.

  “Phuti!” exclaimed the aunt. “Now you have come back to see your auntie.”

  He stepped into the house and allowed her to give him a hug.

  “Let me see you,” she said, standing back. “You’re looking so handsome, Phuti! Such a waste, such a waste.”

  He recoiled momentarily at the words. In what way was it a waste for him to look handsome, not that he thought he looked handsome at all?

  “You are well, Auntie?”

  She made a non-committal gesture. “I am well, and then I am not well.”

  He looked concerned. “You have been ill?”

  “Not exactly ill, Phuti. But then, not well either. It is not easy, being alive these days, what with everything changing. But we must not talk about me, we must talk about you. You are the important one now, not me. Tell me what has happened.”

  As she asked this question, she led him into the sitting room. In the middle of the room several large armchairs were positioned around a table on which a dictionary, a world atlas and an arrangement of red plastic flowers had been placed. There was a stale smell in the air.

  “Sit down, Phuti.” It was more of a command than an invitation, but Phuti was used to his aunt’s adopting this tone and he obeyed without murmur.

  She fixed him with a concerned stare. “You are looking very thin,” she began. “Here and here.” She pointed to her neck and stomach. “Those are the places where it always shows, Phuti.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not getting enough food, are you?”

  Phuti held up his hands in denial. “No, no, Auntie. I am getting too much food, really. I am putting on weight, I think.”

  She shook her head. “That cannot be, Phuti. Your neck is very thin now, and look at your trousers: they are hanging on you like an empty sack. You are very thin.”

  Phuti struggled with his feelings of annoyance. It was quite obvious to him what the implication of these comments was: his new wife was no cook—or at least, that is what his aunt was trying to suggest without actually saying it.

  “I am eating very well, Auntie,” he said. “Grace is a very good cook, and she is giving me plenty to eat.”

  The aunt affected surprise that she should have thought that Mma Makutsi was anything but an expert cook. “Of course she is,” she said. “Of course she …” She struggled, as if finding it difficult to remember the name.

  “Grace. Grace Makutsi.”

  “Of course, Grace … Grace Ma …”

  “Makutsi.”

  “Yes, that woman.” She looked down at the floor and frowned. “Makutsi? Where is that name from, I wonder? It is not from anywhere near here, I think. Perhaps it is South African. They have some very odd names over there.”

  “She is a Motswana, Auntie. She comes from Bobonong.”

  The aunt transferred her gaze to the window, looking out into the distance in the direction, perhaps, of Bobonong. “That is far away. I do not know any people up there. Maybe they are nice people, but how can you tell when you don’t know any of them? There are many people in China, but I cannot say whether they are nice people or not because I do not know any of them.”

  Phuti felt his cheeks burning. He always felt like that when his aunt said such things. And he knew that if he closed his eyes and counted slowly, he worried less about it. But now he could not do that; Bobonong and China? What had China got to do with it? Nothing, he thought. Nothing at all.

  “Bobonong is in Botswana,” he said. “The people who live there are all Batswana—the same as you and me, Auntie. They are no different.”

  “I did not say they were,” said the aunt. “All I said is that I do not know any of those people, apart from Gracious …”

  “Grace.”

  “Yes, apart from her.”

  The aunt sniffed. “You must eat more,” she said. “It is not good for a man to become too thin.”

  “I am eating very well, Auntie. You mustn’t worry about me.”

  The aunt looked pained. “How can I stop worrying about you, when you are my own nephew? How can I stop worrying about you when you go off and marry somebody I don’t know and whose people we’ve never heard about?”

  Phuti did not answer, and the aunt continued. “And now where is she? Gone away, I believe, and you have nothing to eat. Well, you always have a home to come back to. There is that same room you stayed in—I have changed nothing. And you will get fatter and stronger if you stay here—where you belong.”

  “But Grace is only away for one night,” said Phuti mildly. “She is on business with Mma Ramotswe. They have gone—”

  “Oh, that Mma Ramotswe! That fat lady who calls herself a private detective but who sits in her office all day eating doughnuts! That is what they say, you know. You’ll have to be careful, Phuti, if Gracious eats doughnuts with that woman all day, then your bed will break. You just remember that.”

  Phuti closed his eyes. It was easier to talk to his aunt with his eyes closed, he had decided. Not only did this help him to say what he wanted to say, but it also had the effect of disconcerting her, which, he found, was of some help.

  “We mustn’t talk about Grace too much,” he said. “She is a good wife to me and I am very happy. That is what I want you to know, Auntie: I am very happy.”

  The aunt sniffed. “I’m glad to hear that. But if you ever are
unhappy, you know where to come. That is all I will say for the time being.” She sniffed again. “And why are your eyes closed, Phuti? Did you not sleep enough last night?”

  Phuti opened his eyes. “I slept well, Auntie. But now I’m hungry, and the thought of your delicious cooking is making my stomach jump up and down.”

  The aunt smiled coquettishly. “You’re right to remind me, Phuti. I have some very good stew that I am going to give you.” There was a pause—the slightest pause. Then: “Far better than anything you get at your place, I think, but let’s not talk too much about that …”

  The stew, when it was served, proved to be every bit as good as the aunt had claimed. Over the dinner table, watching Phuti tackle his second helping, she seemed to mellow, and the conversation moved on to less controversial subjects. The aunt had been to Lobatse to visit a relative who had been ill; she had found a new pair of shoes in a shop and had bought them because they had been reduced in price by sixty per cent. She had received a telephone call that morning from somebody who had got the wrong number; her neighbour had been bitten by a dog and had been obliged to have anti-rabies injections—“just in case”—but knowing the neighbour as she did, it was almost certainly the neighbour’s fault rather than the dog’s. “They should give that dog a course of injections, if you ask me, Phuti. You know what that woman is like—I’ve told you, haven’t I?” And then, “Have you had any injections recently, Phuti? I must go to the doctor myself some day and get an injection.”

  They finished the meal and the aunt made a pot of tea. She served this on the verandah, where it was cooler, and from where they had a good view of the neighbour’s house, now a dark shape in the night. “You never know what you’re going to see going on in there,” said the aunt. “Sometimes they leave a light on and forget that it is on. I have seen some things that I cannot speak about, you know. Even if you ask me, I cannot speak about them.”