Part 11 (2/2)

”I hope I have not written too much,” she said. ”I know that you journalists are very busy people.”

Mma Makutsi took the form and ran her eye down the responses.

Question 1: Africa has a very great history, although many people pay no attention to it. Africa can teach the world about how to care for other people. There are other things, too, that Africa can teach the world.

Question 2: It is my greatest ambition to work for the benefit of other people. I look forward to the day when I can help more people. That is one of the reasons why I deserve to win this compet.i.tion: I am a girl who likes to help people. I am not one of these selfish girls.

Question 3: It is better to be a person of integrity. An honest girl is rich in her heart. That is the truth. Girls who worry about their looks are not as happy as girls who think about other people first. I am one of these latter girls, and that is how I know this thing.

Motlamedi watched as Mma Makutsi read.

”Well, Mma?” she said. ”Would you like to ask me about anything I have written?”

Mma Makutsi folded the sheet of paper and slipped it into her briefcase.

”No thank you, Mma,” she said. ”You have told me everything I need to know. I do not need to ask you any other questions.”

Motlamedi looked anxious.

”What about a photograph?” she said. ”If the paper would like to send a photographer I think that I could let a photograph be taken. I shall be here all afternoon.”

Mma Makutsi moved towards the door.

”Perhaps,” she said. ”But I do not know. You have given me very useful answers here and I shall be able to put them into the newspaper. I feel I know you quite well now.”

Motlamedi felt that she could now afford to be gracious.

”I am glad that we have met,” she said. ”I look forward to our next meeting. Maybe you will be at the compet.i.tion ... you could bring the photographer.”

”Perhaps,” said Mma Makutsi, as she left.

THE APPRENTICE was talking to a couple of young women when Mma Makutsi emerged. He was explaining something about the car and they were listening to him avidly. Mma Makutsi did not hear the entire conversation, but she did pick up the end: ”... at least eighty miles an hour. And the engine is very quiet. If a boy is sitting with a girl in the back and wants to kiss her in that car he has to be very quiet because they will hear it in the front.”

The students giggled.

”Do not listen to him, ladies,” said Mma Makutsi. ”This young man is not allowed to see girls. He already has a wife and three children and his wife gets very cross if she hears that girls are talking to him. Very cross.”

The students moved back. One of them now looked at the apprentice reproachfully.

”But that is not true,” protested the young man. ”I am not married.”

”That's what all you men say,” said one of the students, angry now. ”You come round here and talk to girls like us while all the time you are thinking of your wives. What sort of behaviour is that?”

”Very bad,” chipped in Mma Makutsi, as she opened the pa.s.senger door and prepared to get in. ”Anyway, it is time for us to go. This young man has to drive me somewhere else.”

”You be careful of him, Mma,” said one of the students. ”We know about boys like that.”

The apprentice started the car, tight-lipped, and drove off.

”You should not have said that, Mma. You made me look foolish.”

Mma Makutsi snorted. ”You made yourself look foolish. Why are you always running after girls? Why are you always trying to impress them?”

”Because that's how I enjoy myself,” said the apprentice defensively. ”I like talking to girls. We have all these beautiful girls in this country and there is n.o.body to talk to them. I am doing a service to the country.”

Mma Makutsi looked at him scornfully. Although the young men had been working hard for her and had responded well to her suggestions, there seemed to be a chronic weakness in their character-this relentless womanising. Could anything be done about it? She doubted it, but it would pa.s.s in time, she thought, and they would become more serious. Or perhaps they would not. People did not change a great deal. Mma Ramotswe had said that to her once and it had stuck in her mind. People do not change, but that does not mean that they will always remain the same. What you can do is find out the good side of their character and then bring that out. Then it might seem that they had changed, which they had not; but they would be different afterwards, and better. That's what Mma Ramotswe had said-or something like that. And if there was one person in Botswana-one person-to whom one should listen very carefully, it was Mma Ramotswe.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

THE COOK'S TALE.

M MA RAMOTSWE lay on her bed and gazed up at the whiteboards of the ceiling. Her stomach felt less disturbed now, and the worst of the dizziness had pa.s.sed. But when she shut her eyes, and then opened them again fairly shortly thereafter, there was a white ring about everything, a halo of light which danced for a moment and then dimmed. In other circ.u.mstances it might have been a pleasant sensation, but here, at the mercy of a poisoner, it was alarming. What substance would produce such a result? Poisons could attack eyesight, Mma Ramotswe knew that well. As a child they had been taught about the plants which could be harvested in the bush, the shrubs that could produce sleep, the tree bark which could bring an unwanted pregnancy to a sudden end, the roots that cured itching. But there were others, plants that produced the muti used by the witch doctors, innocent-looking plants which could kill at a touch, or so they were told. It was one of these, no doubt, that had been slipped onto her plate by her host's wife, or, more likely, put into an entire dish of food, indiscriminately, but avoided by the poisoner herself. If a person was wicked enough to poison a husband, then she would not stop at taking others with him.

Mma Ramotswe looked at her watch. It was past seven, and the windows were dark. She had slept through the sunset and now it was time for the evening meal, not that she felt like eating. They would be wondering where she was, though, and so she should tell them that she was unwell and could not join them for supper.

She sat up in her bed and blinked. The white light was still there, but was fading now. She put her feet over the edge of the bed and wriggled her toes into her shoes, hoping that no scorpions had crawled into them during her rest. She had always checked her shoes for scorpions since, as a child, she had put her foot into her school shoes one morning and had been badly stung by a large brown scorpion which had sheltered there for the night. Her entire foot had swollen up, so badly, in fact, that they had carried her to the Dutch Reformed Hospital at the foot of the hill. A nurse there had put on a dressing and given her something for the pain. Then she had warned her always to check her shoes and the warning had remained with her.

”We live up here,” said the nurse, holding her hand at chest height. ”They live down there. Remember that.”

Later, it had seemed to her that this was a warning that could apply in more senses than one. Not only did it refer to scorpions and snakes-about which it was patently true-but it could apply with equal force to people. There was a world beneath the world inhabited by ordinary, law-abiding people; a world of selfishness and mistrust occupied by scheming and manipulative people. One had to check one's shoes.

She withdrew her toes from the shoes before they had reached the end. Reaching down, she picked up the right shoe and tipped it up. There was nothing. She picked up the left shoe and did the same. Out dropped a tiny glistening creature, which danced on the floor for a moment, as if in defiance, and then scuttled off into the dark of a corner.

Mma Ramotswe made her way down the corridor. As she reached the end, where the corridor became a living room, the maid came out of a doorway and greeted her.

”I was coming to find you, Mma,” said the maid. ”They have made food and it is almost ready.”

”Thank you, Mma. I have been sleeping. I have not been feeling well, although I am better now. I do not think that I could eat tonight, but I would like some tea. I'm very thirsty.”

The maid's hands shot up to her mouth. ”Aiee! That is very bad, Mma! All of the people have been ill. The old lady has been sick, sick, all the time. The man and his wife have been shouting out and holding their stomachs. Even the boy was sick, although he was not so bad. The meat must have been bad.”

MMA RAMOTSWE stared at the maid. ”Everybody?”

”Yes. Everybody. The man was shouting that he would go and chase the butcher who sold that meat. He was very cross.”

”And the wife? What was she doing?”

The maid looked down at the floor. These were intimate matters of the human stomach and it embarra.s.sed her to talk about them so openly.

”She could keep nothing down. She tried to take water-I brought it to her-but it came straight up again. Her stomach is now empty, though, and I think she is feeling better. I have been a nurse all afternoon. Here, there. I even looked in through your door to see that you were all right and I saw you sleeping peacefully. I did not know that you had been sick too.”

Mma Ramotswe was silent for a moment. The information which the maid had given her changed the situation entirely. The princ.i.p.al suspect, the wife, had been poisoned, as had the old woman, who was also a suspect. This meant either that there had been an accident in the distribution of the poison, or that neither of these had anything to do with it. Of the two possibilities, Mma Ramotswe thought that the second was the more likely. When she had been feeling ill she imagined that she had been deliberately poisoned, but was this likely? On sober reflection, beyond the waves of nausea that had engulfed her, it seemed ridiculous to think that a poisoner would strike so quickly, and so obviously, on the arrival of a guest. It would have been suspicious and unsubtle, and poisoners, she had read, were usually extremely subtle people.

The maid looked at Mma Ramotswe expectantly, as if she thought that the guest might now take over the running of the household.

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