Blue Shoes and Happiness

by Alexander McCall Smith

  The tea made, Mma Makutsi brought two cups over and placed them on the desk. As she put them down, Mma Ramotswe saw her looking at the client, as if preparing to say something, and threw her a warning glance.

  “I have come to see you on a very private matter,” Poppy began. “It is very hard to talk about it.”

  Mma Ramotswe stretched out a hand across the desk, just far enough to touch Poppy lightly on the forearm. It is a marriage matter, she thought, and these are never easy to talk about; they often bring tears and sorrow, just at the talking of them.

  “If it is a marriage question, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe gently, “just remember that we—that is, Mma Makutsi over there and myself—we have heard everything that there is to be said on such matters. There is nothing we have not heard.”

  “Nothing,” confirmed Mma Makutsi, sipping at her tea. And she thought of that client, a man, who had come in the previous week and told them that extraordinary story and how difficult it had been for both of them not to laugh when he had described how … Oh, it was important not to think of that, or one would begin to laugh all over again.

  Poppy shook her head vehemently. “It is not a marriage matter,” she said. “My husband is a good man. We are very happily married.”

  Mma Ramotswe folded her arms. “I am happy to hear that,” she said. “How many people can say that in these troubled times? Ever since women allowed men to think that they did not need to get married, everything has gone wrong. That is what I think, Mma.”

  Poppy thought for a moment. “I think you may be right,” she said. “Look at the mess. Look at what all this unfaithfulness has done. People are dying because of that, aren’t they? Many people are dying.”

  For a moment the three of them were silent. There was no gainsaying what Poppy had said. It was just true. Just true.

  “But I have not come to talk about that,” said Poppy. “I have come because I am very frightened. I am frightened that I am going to lose my job, and if I do, then how are we going to pay for the house we have bought? All my wages go on the payments for that, Mma. Every thebe. So if I lose my job we shall have to move, and you know how difficult it is to get somewhere nice to live. There are just not enough houses.”

  Mma Ramotswe took up a pen from her desk and twined her fingers about it. Yes, this woman was right. She, Mma Ramotswe, was fortunate in owning her house in Zebra Drive. If she had to try to buy it today it would be impossible. How did people survive when housing was so expensive? It was a bit of a mystery to her.

  Poppy was looking at her.

  “Please go on, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I hope you don’t mind if I fiddle with this pen. I am still listening to you. It is easier to listen if one has something to do with one’s hands.”

  Poppy made a gesture of assent. “I do not mind, Mma. You can fiddle. I will carry on talking and will tell you why I am frightened. But first I must tell you a little bit about my job, as you must know this if you are to help me.

  “I was always interested in cooking, Mma. When I was a girl I was always the one in the kitchen, cooking all the food for the family. My grandmother was the one who taught me. She had always cooked and she could make very simple food taste very good. Maize meal. Sorghum. Those very plain things tasted very good when my grandmother had added her herbs to them. Herbs or a little bit of meat if we were lucky, or even chopped-up Mopani worms. Oh, those were very good. I cannot resist Mopani worms, Mma. Can you?”

  “No Motswana can resist them,” said Mma Ramotswe, smiling. “I would love to have some right now, but I’m sorry, Mma …”

  Poppy took a sip of her tea. “Yes, Mopani worms! Anyway, I went off to do a catering course in South Africa. I was very lucky to get a place on it, and a scholarship too. It was one whole year and I learned a very great deal about cooking while I was on it. I learned how to cook for one hundred, two hundred people, as easily as we cook for four or five people. It is not all that difficult, you know, Mma Ramotswe, as long as you get the quantities right.

  “I came back to Botswana and got my first job up at one of the diamond mines, the one at Orapa. They have canteens for the miners there, and I was assistant to one of the chefs in charge of that. It was very hard work and those miners were very hungry! But I learned more and more, and I also met my husband, who was a senior cook up there. He cooked in the guest house that the mining company had for their visitors. They liked to give these visitors good food and the man I married was the cook who did that.

  “My husband decided one day that he had had enough of living up at the diamond mine. ‘There is nothing to do here,’ he said. ‘There is just dust and more dust.’

  “I said to him that we should not move until we had made more money, but he was fed up and wanted to come to Gaborone. Fortunately, he got a job very easily through somebody who had stayed in the guest house and who knew that the President Hotel was looking for another chef. So he came down here, and I soon found a job at that college, the big new one which they built over that way—you know the place, Mma. I was very happy with this job and I was happy that we were able to live in Gaborone, where everything is happening and where it is not just dust, dust, dust.

  “And everything went very well. I was not the senior cook—there is another woman who has that job. She is called Mma Tsau. She was very good to me and she made sure that I got a pay-rise after I had been there one year. I was very happy, until I discovered something bad that was going on.

  “Mma Tsau has a husband, whom I had seen about the place once or twice. One day, one of the cleaning ladies said to me, ‘That man is eating all the food, you know. He is eating all the best food.’

  “I had no idea what this lady meant, and so I asked her which man she was talking about. She told me that it was Mma Tsau’s husband and that there was a storeroom in the college where he came for a meal from time to time and was given all the best meat by his wife. On other days, she said, Mma Tsau would take home packets of the best meat to cook for her husband at their house. This food belonged to the college, she said, but it went straight into the mouth of Mma Tsau’s husband, who was getting fatter and fatter as a result of all these good meals he was having.

  “I did not believe this at first. I had noticed that he was a very fat man, but I had thought that this must be because he was married to a good cook. The husbands of good cooks are often fatter than other men—and that is natural, I suppose.

  “I decided one day to see whether what the cleaning lady had told me was true. I had noticed that at lunchtimes Mma Tsau used to leave the kitchen from time to time, but I was always so busy that I hardly paid any attention to it. There is always something happening in a busy kitchen, and there are many reasons why the head cook may need to leave the stoves for a short time. There are supplies to be checked up on. There are telephones to answer. There are assistants to chase up.

  “On that day I kept an eye on Mma Tsau. She went outside at one point to call one of the helpers, who was standing outside in the sun and not doing enough work. I looked out of the window and saw her shaking a finger at this woman and shouting at her, but I did not hear what she said. I had a good idea of it, though.

  “Then, a few minutes later, I noticed that she went to the door of one of the warming ovens and took out a covered dish. It was an oven that we never used, as we had too much capacity in that kitchen. She took this dish, which was covered by a metal plate, and went out of the kitchen. I moved over to a window and saw her walking towards a small block near the kitchen. There was an old office there, which was not used any more, and a storeroom. She went in, was inside for a few moments, and then came out again, without the dish, but wiping her hands on her apron.

  “I waited a few minutes. Mma Tsau was now busy supervising the assistants who were dishing out the stew to the students. She was telling them that they should not give helpings that were too generous, or there would not be enough for the students who came in for their lunch a bit later. I overheard her telling
one of them that they should not give more food to those students whom they liked, who smiled at them when they reached the head of the line, or who were related to them. I could not believe that I was hearing that, if what I thought I had just seen was true. I think that you should not say one thing and then do exactly the opposite yourself, should you, Mma Ramotswe? No. That is what I thought too.

  “This was now the best time for me to leave the kitchen, while Mma Tsau was lecturing the assistant. I went outside and ran across to the block which I had seen her enter. I had decided that the best thing to do would be to pretend to be looking for something, and so I did not knock on the door, but just pushed it open. There was a man inside, that fat man, the husband of Mma Tsau. He was sitting at a small table with a large plate of steak in front of him. There were vegetables too—some potatoes with gravy on them and a pile of carrots. He had a bottle of tomato sauce on the table in front of him and a copy of The Daily News, which he was reading as he ate.

  “I pretended to be surprised, although what I saw was exactly what I had expected to see. So I greeted him and said that I was sorry to have disturbed his lunch. He smiled and said that it did not matter, and that I should look for whatever it was that I was searching for. Then he went back to eating his steak, which smelled very good in the small space of that room.”

  As the story progressed, Mma Ramotswe’s mouth opened wider and wider with astonishment. Mma Makutsi also seemed transfixed by the tale which their client was telling, and was sitting quite still at her desk, hanging on every word.

  Poppy now paused. “I hope that you do not think that I was being too nosy,” she said. “I know that you should not look into things that are not your business.”

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “But it was your business, Mma,” she said. “It was surely your business. It is always the business of people who work in a place that somebody else in that place is stealing. That is everybody’s business.”

  Poppy looked relieved. “I am glad you said that, Mma. I would not like you to think that I was one of those nosy people. I was worried …”

  “So,” interrupted Mma Ramotswe. “You have to decide what to do. Is that why you have come to see me today?”

  This conclusion seemed reasonable to Mma Ramotswe, but Poppy held up her hands in denial. “No, Mma,” she said. “I decided what to do straightaway. I went to Mma Tsau the next day and asked her about her husband. I said, ‘Why is your husband eating all this college food? Do you not have enough food of your own?’

  “She was inspecting a pot at the time, and when I asked her this question she dropped it, she was so surprised. Then she looked closely at me and told me that she did not know what I was talking about and that I should not make up wild stories like that in case anybody believed that what I said was true.

  “‘But I saw him myself,’ I told her. ‘I saw him in the storeroom over there eating steaks from the college kitchen. I saw him, Mma.’”

  Mma Makutsi, who had been silent, could no longer contain herself. “Surely she did not try to deny that, Mma,” she said. “That wicked woman! Taking the meat from the students and giving it to that fat husband of hers! And our taxes paying for that meat too!”

  Poppy and Mma Ramotswe both looked at Mma Makutsi. Her outrage was palpable.

  “Well, she didn’t,” Poppy continued. “Once I had told her that I had seen what was going on, she just became silent for a while. But she was watching me with her eyes narrowed—like this. Then she said that if I told anybody about it, she would make sure that I lost my job. She explained to me that this would be easy for her to do. She said that she would simply tell the college managers that I was not up to the job and that they would have to get somebody else. She said that they would believe her and that there would be nothing I could do.”

  “I hope that you went straight to the police,” said Mma Makutsi indignantly.

  Poppy snorted. “How could I do that? I had no proof to give the police, and they would believe her rather than me. She is the senior cook, remember. I am just a junior person.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked up at the ceiling. She had recently read an article about this sort of problem and she was trying to remember the word which was used to describe it. Whistle-blowing! Yes, that was it. The article had described how difficult it was for whistle-blowers when they saw something illegal being done at work. In some countries, it had said, there were laws to protect the whistle-blower—in some countries, but she was not sure whether this was true of Botswana. There was very little corruption in Botswana, but she was still not sure whether life was made any easier for whistle-blowers.

  “Whistle-blowing,” she said aloud. “That’s what it is—whistle-blowing.”

  Poppy looked at her blankly. “Who is blowing a whistle?” she asked.

  “You are,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Or you could blow a whistle.”

  “I do not see what whistles have to do with it,” said Poppy.

  “If you went to the police you would be a whistle-blower,” explained Mma Ramotswe. “It’s a way of describing a person who lets others know about what is going on behind the scenes.”

  “Behind what scenes?” asked Poppy.

  Mma Ramotswe decided to change tack. There were some people who were rather literal in their understanding of things, and Poppy, it seemed, was one of these.

  “Well, let us not think too much about whistles and such things,” she said. “The important thing is this: you want us to do something about this woman and her stealing. Is that right?”

  The suggestion seemed to alarm Poppy. “No,” she said. “I do not want that, Mma. You must wait until I finish telling you my story.”

  Mma Ramotswe made an apologetic gesture, and Poppy began to speak again.

  “I was frightened, Mma. I could not face losing my job and so I did nothing. I did not like the thought of that man eating all that government food, but then I thought of what it would be like not to have a house, and so I just bit my tongue. But then, three days ago, Mma Tsau came to me just as I was about to leave work to go home. My husband has a car and was waiting for me at the end of the road. I could see him sitting in the car, looking up at the sky, as he likes to do. When you are a chef all you see is the kitchen ceiling and clouds of steam. When you are outside, you like to look at the sky.

  “Mma Tsau drew me aside. She was shaking with anger and I thought that I had made some very bad mistake in my work. But it was not that. She gripped me by the arm and leaned forward to speak to me. ‘You think you’re clever,’ she said. ‘You think that you can get me to give you money not to say anything about my husband. You think that, don’t you?’

  “I had no idea what she was talking about. I told her that, but she just laughed at me. She said that she had torn up the letter I had written. Then she said that on the very first opportunity that she could find, she would get rid of me. She said that it might take a few months, but she would make very sure that I would lose my job.”

  Poppy stopped. Towards the end of her tale, her voice had risen, and by the time that she finished, the words were coming in gasps. Mma Ramotswe leaned forward and took her hand. “Do not be upset, Mma,” she said gently. “She is just making threats. Often these people don’t do what they threaten to do, isn’t that right, Mma Makutsi?”

  Mma Makutsi glanced at Mma Ramotswe before she answered. She thought that people like that often did exactly what they threatened to do—and worse—but now was not the time to express such doubts. “Hot air,” she said. “You would think that in Botswana we had enough hot air, with the Kalahari just over there, but there are still people like this Mma Tsau who add to the hot air. And you do not need to worry about hot air, Mma.”

  Poppy looked over towards Mma Makutsi and smiled weakly. “I hope that you’re right, Mma,” she said. “But I am not sure. And anyway, what was this letter? I did not write to her about it.”

  Mma Ramotswe rose from her seat and walked to the window. Poppy had spoken about how
chefs liked to look at the sky when they had the chance; well, so did private detectives, she thought; ladies and private detectives. Indeed, everybody should look at the sky when they could, because the sky had many answers, provided one knew how to see them. And now, as she looked at the sky, over the tops of the acacia trees and up into that echoing emptiness, it seemed to her so very obvious that Poppy was not the only person who knew about the food and that the other person who knew—who, again so obviously, must have been the cleaning woman—was taking the opportunity to blackmail Mma Tsau. Unfortunately for Poppy, she was getting the blame, but that was quite typical of life, was it not? The wrong people often got the blame, the wrong people suffered for what the right people did. And the sky in all this, the sky which had seen so much of it, was neutral, absolutely neutral.

  The problem with blackmail, thought Mma Ramotswe, is this: the victim is often a wrongdoer, but, once blackmailed, attracts our sympathy. But why should we feel sorry for somebody who is simply being made to pay for the wrong that he did? It occurred to Mma Ramotswe that this was a problem that deserved serious consideration. Perhaps it was even a question to put to Aunty Emang. Aunty Emang …

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHAT FEMINISTS HAVE IN MIND FOR MEN

  MMA MAKUTSI made the evening meal that night for Mr Phuti Radiphuti, her newly acquired fiancé. Phuti Radiphuti was the son of the elder Mr Radiphuti, successful businessman, farmer, and proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop. She had met Phuti at the dancing classes which they had both attended at the Academy of Dance and Movement. This was not a real academy, in that it had no buildings and indeed had no staff other than the woman who took the money and the instructor, Mr Fano Fanope, an accomplished dancer who had danced, successfully, in Johannesburg and Nairobi. Word of the engagement had spread round the dance class, and Mr Fanope himself had made an official announcement at the end of one evening that the academy was proud to have brought the couple together.