Blue Shoes and Happiness

CHAPTER THIRTEEN BLUE SHOES

MMA RAMOTSWE KNEW that she should not have left the office that afternoon. She now had rather more to do than she wanted, and none of the problems which had landed on her desk appeared to have any answer. There was a series of issues, each of them demanding to be resolved but each curiously resistant to solution. There was Mokolodi, which she should do something about sooner or later; there was Mma Tsau and the blackmailing letter; and then there was the question of Mr Polopetsi’s mean uncle and his favouritism towards Mr Polopetsi’s brother, for whom he had bought a car. She thought about that. No, there was nothing that she could do—just now—about that. The world was imperfect, and there were just too many claims. One day, perhaps, but not now. So that came off the list, which left one remaining item, the most difficult of course: the doctor. She admired Boitelo for coming to see her; many people would just have given up in the face of a wrong which they could not right, but she had brought the issue to her. And Boitelo had been correct, Mma Ramotswe thought, about civic duty. It was her duty not to stand by in the face of evidence of medical wrongdoing; and it was Mma Ramotswe’s civic duty to do something now that the issue had been brought to her attention. But it was difficult to think what to do, and, as she often did in such circumstances, Mma Ramotswe decided that the best thing to do would be to go shopping. She often found that ideas came to her when shopping, halfway down the vegetable aisle in the supermarket, or when trying on a skirt—which would inevitably be just a little bit too tight—she would have an idea and what had previously been a log-jam would gradually begin to shift.

“We shall go shopping, Mma Makutsi,” she announced after Boitelo had taken her leave. “We shall go downtown.”

Mma Makutsi looked up from her desk. She was working on a rather complex matter at the moment, the pursuit of a debtor on behalf of a firm of lawyers. The debtor, a Mr Cedric Disani, had established a hotel which had gone spectacularly bankrupt. It was thought that he had extensive holdings in land, and they now had a list of properties from the land register and were trying to work out which were owned by companies in which he had an interest. It was one of the most testing cases Mma Makutsi had ever been allocated, but at least it had a fee attached to it—a generous one—and this would make up for all the public-spirited work which Mma Ramotswe seemed to be taking on.

“Yes, yes,” urged Mma Ramotswe. “You can leave those lists for a while. It will do us both good to get downtown and do some shopping. And maybe we’ll have some ideas while we’re about it. I always find that shopping clears the head, don’t you agree, Mma?”

“And it clears the bank account,” joked Mma Makutsi as she closed the file in front of her. “This Mr Cedric Disani must have done a bit of shopping—you should see how much he owes.”

“I knew a lady of that name once,” said Mma Ramotswe. “She was a very fashionable lady. You used to see her in very expensive clothes. She was a very fancy lady.”

“That will be his wife,” said Mma Makutsi. “The lawyers told me about her. They said that Mr Disani put a lot of things in her name so that his creditors cannot touch them. They said that she still drives around in a Mercedes-Benz and wears very grand clothing.”

Mma Ramotswe made a clucking sound of disapproval. “Those Mercedes-Benzes, Mma—have you noticed how whenever we come across them in our line of work they are driven by the same sort of people? Have you noticed that, Mma?”

Mma Makutsi replied that she had. “I would never get a Mercedes-Benz,” she said. “Even if I had the money. They are very fine cars, but people would talk.”

Mma Ramotswe, halfway to the door, paused and looked at Mma Makutsi. “You saidEven if I had the money , Mma. Do you realise that?”

Mma Makutsi looked blank. “Yes,” she said. “That is what I said.”

“But, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Don’t you realise that now you could have a Mercedes-Benz if you wanted one? Remember who you’re going to marry. Phuti Radiphuti is very well off with that Double Comfort Furniture Shop of his. Yes, he is well off—not that I really like the furniture that he sells in that shop, Mma. Sorry to say that, but it’s not really to my taste.”

Mma Makutsi looked at Mma Ramotswe for a moment, and swallowed hard. It had not occurred to her that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni might fail to inform her of his purchase of the new chair, but now it struck her that this was precisely what had happened. And when he eventually came to explain that he had bought a chair, he would reveal, no doubt, that she had taken him there and had encouraged him to make the purchase. She was uncertain as to whether she should tell Mma Ramotswe herself; whether she should make a clean breast of it, or whether she should let matters take their natural course.

“So you would never buy a chair there?” she asked innocently. “Not even if it was on sale? Say, fifty per cent off?”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “Not even ninety-seven per cent off, Mma. No. I’m sure that the furniture is very good, it’s just that it’s not for me.”

Nor for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, thought Mma Makutsi ruefully. But what was this about a Mercedes-Benz? Why did Mma Ramotswe think that she might buy a Mercedes-Benz? It was an impossible thought … and yet, it was true that Phuti was quite a rich man; perhaps she should get used to being the wife of a man who even if not very wealthy was nonetheless comfortably off by any standards. It was a strange thought. Phuti Radiphuti was so modest and unassuming, and yet he undoubtedly had the resources to live a showier life if he chose to do so.

“When Phuti and I get married,” said Mma Makutsi, “we will not act like rich people. We will be just the same as we always have been. That is the way we are.”

“And that is very good,” said Mma Ramotswe. It was not the Botswana way to be showy. Here it was quietness and discretion that people admired. A great person was a quiet person. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, for instance; he was a quiet man and a great man too, like many mechanics and men who worked well with their hands. And there were many such men in Africa—men whose lives had been ones of hardship and suffering, but who were great men nonetheless.

MMA RAMOTSWE locked the door of the office behind them and said goodbye to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He was bent over the engine of a car, explaining something to the apprentices, who stood up and stared at the two women.

“We are going shopping,” said Mma Makutsi, taunting the young men. “That is what women like to do, you know. They much prefer shopping to going out with men. That is very well known.”

The younger apprentice let out a howl of protest. “That is a lie!” he shouted. “Boss, listen to how that woman lies! You cannot have a detective who lies, Mma Ramotswe. You need to fire that woman. Big glasses and all. Fire her.”

“Hush!” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “We have plenty of work to do. Let the ladies go shopping if it makes them feel better.”

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe, as she let herself into the tiny white van. “It certainly makes us feel better.”

They drove down the Tlokweng Road to the busy roundabout. There were hawkers at the side of the road selling rough-hewn stools and chairs, and a woman with a smoking brazier on which maize cobs were being grilled. The smell of the maize, the sharp-sweet smell that she knew so well and which spoke so much of the African roadside, wafted through the window of the tiny white van, and for a moment she was back in Mochudi, a child again, at the fireside, waiting for a cob to be passed over to her. And she saw herself all those years ago, standing away from the fire, but with the wood-smoke in her nostrils; and she was biting into the succulent maize, and thinking that this was the most perfect food that the earth had to offer. And she still thought that, all these years later, and her heart could still fill with love for that Africa that she once knew, our mother, she thought, our mother who is always with us, to provide for us, to nourish us, and then to take us, at the end, into her bosom.

They passed the roundabout and drove on to the busy set of shops that had sprung up near Kgale Hill. She did not like these shops, which were ugly and noisy, but the fact of the matter was that there were many different stores there and their selection of merchandise was better than any other collection of shops in the country. So they would put up with the crowds and the noise and see what the shops had to offer. And it would not be all window-shopping. Mma Ramotswe had long promised herself a pressure cooker, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had urged her to buy one. They could look for a pressure cooker, and even if they did not buy it today it would be interesting to see what was on offer.

The two women spent an enjoyable half hour browsing in a shop that sold kitchen equipment. There was a bewildering array of cooking utensils—knives and chopping boards and instruments with which to slice onions into all sorts of shapes.

“I have never needed anything like that to cut up onions,” Mma Ramotswe observed. “I have found that a knife is usually enough.”

Mma Makutsi agreed with her on this, but made a secret mental note of the name of the implement. When Phuti Radiphuti gave her the money to restock her kitchen—as he had promised to do—then she would undoubtedly buy one of those onion-slicers, even if Mma Ramotswe said that they were unnecessary. Mma Ramotswe was certainly a good cook, but she was not an expert on onions, and if somebody had invented an onion-slicer, then it must have been because there was a need for one.

They left the shop having identified and priced a pressure cooker. “We shall find another shop that sells those cookers,” said Mma Ramotswe, “and then we shall compare their prices. It is not good to waste money. Seretse Khama himself said that, you know. He said that we should not waste money.”

Mma Makutsi was non-committal. Mma Ramotswe had a habit of quoting Seretse Khama on a wide range of subjects, and she was not at all sure whether her employer was always strictly accurate in this. She had once asked Mma Ramotswe to supply chapter and verse for a particular quotation and had been fobbed off with a challenge. “Do you think I invent his words?” Mma Ramotswe had asked indignantly. “Just because people are beginning to forget what he said, that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten.”

Mma Makutsi had left it at that, and now said very little when the late President was quoted. It was a harmless enough habit, she thought, and if it helped to keep alive the memory of that great man, then it was, all in all, a good thing. But she wished that Mma Ramotswe would be a little bit morehistorically accurate; just a bit. The problem was that she had not been to the Botswana Secretarial College, where the motto, proudly displayed above the front entrance to the college, wasBe Accurate. Unfortunately, there was a spelling mistake, and the motto readBe Acurate . Mma Makutsi had spotted this and had pointed it out to the college, but nothing had been done about it so far.

They walked together in the direction of another shop that Mma Ramotswe had identified as a possible stockist of pressure cookers. All about them there were well-dressed crowds, people with money in their pockets, people buying for homes that were slowly beginning to reflect Botswana’s prosperity. It had all been earned, every single pula of it, in a world in which it is hard enough to make something of one’s country, in a world of selfish and distant people who took one’s crops at rock-bottom prices and wrote the rules to suit themselves. There were plenty of fine words, of course—and lots of these came from Africa itself—but at the end of the day the poor, the people who lived in Africa, so often had nothing to show for their labours, nothing. And that was not because they did not work hard—they did, they did—but because of something that was wrong which made it so hard for them to get anywhere, no matter how hard they tried. Botswana was fortunate, because it had diamonds and good government, and Mma Ramotswe was well aware of that, but her pride did not allow her to forget the suffering of others, which was there, not far away, a suffering which made mothers see their children fade away before their eyes, their little bodies thin and rickety. One could not forget that in the middle of all this plenty. One could not forget.

But now Mma Makutsi stopped, and took Mma Ramotswe by the arm, pointing to a shop window. A woman was peering into the window, a woman in a striped blue dress, and for a moment Mma Ramotswe thought that it was this woman who had attracted Mma Makutsi’s attention. Was she a client, perhaps, or somebody else who had come to the attention of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, one of those adulterous wives that men sometimes asked them to follow and report upon? But Mma Makutsi was not pointing at the woman, who now moved away from the window, but to the contents of the window display itself.

“Look, Mma Ramotswe,” she said. “Look over there!”

Mma Ramotswe looked into the window. There was a sale of some sort on, with large reductions, the window claimed. Indeed, shouted a sign within, the sale amounted to madness on the part of the shoe shop.

“Bargains,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There always seem to be so many bargains.”

But it was not the bargain shoes that had made Mma Makutsi stop and look—it was the full-price offerings, all neatly arrayed along a shelf and labelled Exclusive models, as worn in London and New York .

“You see that pair over there?” said Mma Makutsi, pointing into the window. “You see that pair? The blue pair?”

Mma Ramotswe’s gaze followed the direction in which Mma Makutsi was pointing. There, set aside from the other exclusive models, but still in the category of the exclusive, was a pair of fashionable blue shoes, with delicate high heels and toes which came to a point, like the nose of a supersonic aircraft. It was difficult to see the linings from where they were, but by standing on her tip-toes and craning her neck Mma Makutsi was able to report on their colour.

“Red linings,” she said with emotion. “Red linings, Mma Ramotswe!”

Mma Ramotswe stared at the shoes. They were certainly very smart, as objects, that is, but she doubted whether they were much use as shoes. She had not been to London or New York, and it was possible that people wore very fashionable shoes in those places, but she could not believe that many people there would be able to fit into such shoes, let alone walk any distance in them.

She glanced at Mma Makutsi, who was staring at the shoes in what seemed to be a state of near-rapture. She was aware of the fact that Mma Makutsi had an interest in shoes, and she had witnessed the pleasure that she had derived from her new pair of green shoes with sky-blue linings. She had entertained her doubts about the suitability of those particular shoes, but now, beside this pair that she was staring at in the window, those green shoes seemed practicality itself. She drew a breath. Mma Makutsi was a grown woman and could look after herself, but she felt, as her employer and as the person who had inducted her into the profession of private detection, that she had at least some degree of responsibility to ensure that Mma Makutsi did not make too many demonstrably bad decisions. And any decision to buy these shoes would be unambiguously bad—the sort of decision that one would not want a friend to make.

“They are very pretty shoes,” Mma Ramotswe said cautiously. “They are a very fine colour, that is certainly true, and …”

“And the toes!” interrupted Mma Makutsi. “Look at how pointed those toes are. Look at them.” And, as she herself looked, she let out a whistle of admiration.

“But nobody is that shape,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have never met anybody with pointed feet. If your feet were pointed like that, then you would have only one toe.” She paused, uncertain as to how her comments were being received; it was difficult to tell. “Perhaps those are shoes for one-toed people. Perhaps they are specialist shoes.”

She laughed at her own comment, but Mma Makutsi did not.

“They are not for one-toed people, Mma,” she said disapprovingly. “They are very fine shoes.”

Mma Ramotswe was apologetic. “I’m sorry, Mma. I know that you do not like to joke about shoes.” She looked at her watch. “I think that we should move on now. There is much to do.”

Mma Makutsi was still gazing intently at the shoes. “I did not think we had all that much to do,” she said. “There is plenty of time to look at pots and pans.”

It seemed to Mma Ramotswe that looking at pots and pans, as Mma Makutsi put it, was a rather more useful activity than looking at blue shoes in shop windows, but she did not say this. If Mma Makutsi wished to admire shoes in a window, then she would not spoil her fun. It was an innocent enough activity, after all; like looking at the sky, perhaps, when the sun was going down and had made the clouds copper-red, or looking at a herd of fine cattle moving slowly over the land when rains had brought on the sweet green grass. These were pleasures which the soul needed from time to time, and she would wait for Mma Makutsi until she had examined the shoes from all angles. But a word of caution, perhaps, would not go amiss, and so Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat and said, “Of course, Mma, we must remember that if we have traditionally shaped feet, then we should stick to traditionally shaped shoes.”

For a moment, in spite of all the hustle and bustle about the shops, there was a cold silence. Mma Makutsi glanced down at Mma Ramotswe’s feet. She saw the wide-fitting flat shoes, with their sensible buckles, rather like the shoes which Mma Potokwane wore to walk around the orphan farm (though perhaps not quite so bad). Then she glanced at her own feet. No, there was no comparison, and at that moment she decided that she must have those blue shoes. She simply had to have them.

They went inside, with Mma Makutsi in the lead and Mma Ramotswe following passively. Mma Ramotswe remained silent during the resulting transaction. She watched as Mma Makutsi pointed to the window. She watched as the assistant reached for a box from a shelf and took out a pair of the blue shoes. She said nothing as Mma Makutsi, seated on a stool, squeezed her foot into one of the shoes, to the encouragement of the assistant who pushed and poked at her foot with vigour. And she remained silent as Mma Makutsi, reaching into her purse, paid the deposit that would have the shoes set aside for her; the precious, hard-earned Bank of Botswana notes being placed down on the counter; those notes with the pictures of cattle, which in their heart of hearts the people of Botswana thought were the real foundation of the country’s wealth.

As they left the shop, Mma Ramotswe made amends and told Mma Makutsi that she really thought the blue shoes very beautiful. There was no point in disapproving of a purchase once the deed had been done. She remembered learning this lesson from her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, about whom she thought every day, yes, every day, and who had been, she believed, one of the finest men in Botswana. He had been asked for his view of a bull which a man in Mochudi had bought, and although he had already confided in Precious that the bull would not be good for the herd—too lazy, he had said; a bull who would often say to the cows that he was too tired—although that was his view, he had not said that to the new owner.

“That is a bull who will give you no trouble,” he had said.

And that, she thought, had been just the right thing to say about that particular bull. But could she say the same thing about Mma Makutsi’s new shoes? She thought not. For those shoes would most certainly give Mma Makutsi trouble—the moment she tried to walk anywhere in them. That, thought Mma Ramotswe, was glaringly obvious.