Morality for Beautiful Girls

CHAPTER FOURTEEN GOD DECIDED THAT BOTSWANA WOULD BE A DRY PLACE

THE MAID had said that the midday meal would be at one o’clock, which was several hours away. Mma Ramotswe decided that the best way of spending this time would be to familiarise herself with her surroundings. She liked farms—as most Batswana did—because they reminded her of her childhood and of the true values of her people. They shared the land with cattle, and with birds and the many other creatures that could be seen if one only watched. It was easy perhaps not to think about this in the town, where there was food to be had from shops and where running water came from taps, but for many people this was not how life was.

After her revealing conversation with the maid, she left her room and made her way out of the front door. The sun was hot overhead, and shadows were short. To the east, over the low, distant hills, blue under their heat haze, heavy rain clouds were building up. There could be rain later on if the clouds built up further, or at least there would be rain for somebody, out there, along the border. It looked as if the rains would be good this year, which is what everybody was praying for. Good rains meant full stomachs; drought meant thin cattle and wilted crops. They had experienced a bad drought a few years previously, and the Government, its heart heavy, had instructed people to start slaughtering their cattle. That was the worst thing for anybody to have to do, and the suffering had cut deep.

Mma Ramotswe looked about her. There was a paddock some distance off, and cattle were crowded around a drinking trough. A pipe ran from the creaking windmill and its concrete storage tank over the surface of the ground to the trough and the thirsty cattle. Mma Ramotswe decided that she would go and take a look at the cattle. She was, after all, the daughter of Obed Ramotswe, whose eye for cattle was said by many to have been one of the best in Botswana. She could tell a good beast when she saw one, and sometimes, when she drove past a particularly handsome specimen on the road, she would think of what the Daddy would have said about it. Good shoulders, perhaps; or, that is a good cow; look at the way she is walking; or, that bull is all talk, I do not think that he would make many calves.

This farm would have a large number of cattle, perhaps five or six thousand. For most people, that was riches beyond dreaming; ten or twenty cattle were quite enough to make one feel that one had at least some wealth, and she would be happy with that. Obed Ramotswe had built up his herd by judicious buying and selling and had ended up with two thousand cattle at the end of his life. It was this that had provided her with her legacy and with the means to buy the house in Zebra Drive and start the agency. And there were cattle left over, some which she had decided not to sell and which were looked after by herdboys at a distant cattle post which a cousin visited for her. There were sixty of them, she thought; all fine descendants of the lumbering Brahman bulls which her father had so painstakingly selected and bred. One day she would go out there, travelling on the ox-wagon, and see them; it would be an emotional occasion, because they were a link with the Daddy and she would miss him acutely, she knew, and she would probably weep and they would wonder why this woman still wept for her father who had died long ago now.

We still have tears to shed, she thought. We still have to weep for those mornings when we went out early and watched the cows amble along the cattle paths and the birds flying high in the thermal currents.

“What are you thinking of, Mma?”

She looked up. A man had appeared beside her, a stock whip in his hand, a battered hat on his head.

Mma Ramotswe greeted him. “I am thinking of my late father,” she said. “He would have liked to see these cattle here. Do you look after them, Rra? They are fine beasts.”

He smiled in appreciation. “I have looked after these cattle all their lives. They are like my children. I have two hundred children, Mma. All cattle.”

Mma Ramotswe laughed. “You must be a busy man, Rra.”

He nodded, and took a small paper packet out of his pocket. He offered Mma Ramotswe a piece of dried beef, which she accepted.

“You are staying at the house?” he asked. “They often have people coming up here and staying. Sometimes the son who is in Gaborone brings his friends from the Government. I have seen them with my own eyes. Those people.”

“He is very busy that one,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Do you know him well?”

“Yes,” said the man, chewing on a piece of beef. “He comes out here and tells us what to do. He worries about the cattle all the time. He says this one is sick, that one is lame. Where is that other one? All the time. Then he goes away and things get back to normal.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned sympathetically. “That cannot be easy for his brother, the other one, can it?”

The cattleman opened his eyes wide. “He stands there like a dog and lets his brother shout at him. He is a good farmer, that younger one, but the firstborn still thinks that he is the one who is running this farm. But we know that their father had spoken to the chief and it had been agreed that the younger one would get most of the cattle and the older one could have money. That is what was decided.”

“But the older one doesn’t like it?”

“No,” said the cattleman. “And I suppose I can see how he feels. But he has done very well in Gaborone and he has another life. The younger one is the farmer. He knows cattle.”

“And what about the third one?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “The one who is out that way?” She pointed towards the Kalahari.

The cattleman laughed. “He is just a boy. It is very sad. There is air in his head, they say. It is because of something that the mother did when he was in her womb. That is how these things happen.”

“Oh?” said Mma Ramotswe. “What did she do?” She knew of the belief which people in the country had that a handicapped child was the result of some bad act on the parents’ part. If a woman had an affair with another man, for example, then that could lead to the birth of a simpleton. If a man rejected his wife and went off with another woman while she was expecting his child, that, too, could lead to disaster for the baby.

The cattleman lowered his voice. But who was there to hear, thought Mma Ramotswe, but the cattle and the birds?

“She is the one to watch,” said the man. “She is the one. The old woman. She is a wicked woman.”

“Wicked?”

He nodded. “Watch her,” he said. “Watch her eyes.”

THE MAID came to her door shortly before two o’clock and told her that the meal was ready.

“They are eating in the porch on that side,” she said, pointing to the other side of the house.

Mma Ramotswe thanked her and left her room. The porch was on the cooler side of the house, shaded by an awning of netting and a profusion of creepers that had been trained across a rough wooden trellis. Two tables had been drawn up alongside one another and covered with a starched white tablecloth. At one end of the large table, several dishes of food had been placed in a circle: steaming pumpkin, a bowl of maize meal, a plate of beans and other greens, and a large tureen of heavy meat stew. Then there was a loaf of bread and a dish of butter. It was good food, of the type which only a wealthy family could afford every day.

Mma Ramotswe recognised the old woman, who was sitting slightly back from the table, a small gingham cloth spread over her lap, but other members of the family were there too: a child of about twelve, a young woman in a smart green skirt and a white blouse—the wife, Mma Ramotswe assumed—and a man at her side, dressed in long khaki trousers and a short-sleeved khaki shirt. The man stood up when Mma Ramotswe appeared and came out from behind the table to welcome her.

“You are our guest,” he said, smiling as he spoke. “You are very welcome in this house, Mma.”

The old woman nodded at her. “This is my son,” she said. “He was with the cattle when you arrived.”

The man introduced her to his wife, who smiled at her in a friendly way.

“It is very hot today, Mma,” said the young woman. “But it is going to rain, I think. You have brought us this rain, I think.”

It was a compliment, and Mma Ramotswe acknowledged it. “I hope so,” she said. “The land is still thirsty.”

“It is always thirsty,” said the husband. “God decided that Botswana would be a dry place for dry animals. That is what he decided.”

Mma Ramotswe sat down between the wife and the old woman. While the wife started to serve the meal, the husband poured water into the glasses.

“I saw you looking at the cattle,” said the old woman. “Do you like cattle, Mma?”

“What Motswana does not like cattle?” replied Mma Ramotswe.

“Perhaps there are some,” said the old woman. “Perhaps there are some who do not understand cattle. I don’t know.”

She turned away as she gave her answer and was now looking out through the tall, unglazed windows of the porch, out across the expanse of bush that ran away to the horizon.

“They tell me that you are from Mochudi,” said the young woman, handing Mma Ramotswe her plate. “I am from there, too.”

“That was some time ago,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am in Gaborone now. Like so many people.”

“Like my brother,” said the husband. “You must know him well if he is sending you out here.”

There was a moment of silence. The old woman turned to look at her son, who looked away from her.

“I do not know him well,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But he invited me to this house as a favour. I had helped him.”

“You are very welcome,” said the old woman quickly. “You are our guest.”

The last remark was aimed at her son, but he was busy with his plate and affected not to notice what his mother had said. The wife, though, had caught Mma Ramotswe’s eye when this exchange took place, and had then quickly looked away again.

They ate in silence. The old woman had her plate on her lap, and was busy excavating a pile of maize meal soaked in gravy. She placed the mixture in her mouth and chewed slowly on it, her rheumy eyes fixed on the view of the bush and the sky. For her part, the wife had helped herself only to beans and pumpkin, which she picked at halfheartedly. Looking down at her plate, Mma Ramotswe noticed that she and the husband were the only people who were eating stew. The child, who had been introduced as a cousin of the wife’s, was eating a thick slice of bread onto which syrup and gravy had been ladled.

Mma Ramotswe looked at her food. She sank her fork into the pile of stew which nestled between a large helping of pumpkin and a small mound of maize meal. The stew was thick and glutinous, and when she took up her fork it trailed a thin trail of glycerine-like substance across the plate. But when she put the fork into her mouth, the food tasted normal, or almost normal. There was slight flavour, she thought, a flavour which she might have described as metallic, like the taste of the iron pills which her doctor had once given her, or perhaps bitter, like the taste of a split lemon pip.

She looked at the wife, who smiled at her.

“I am not the cook,” the young woman said. “If this food tastes good, it is not because I cooked it. There is Samuel in the kitchen. He is a very good cook, and we are proud of him. He is trained. He is a chef.”

“It is woman’s work,” said the husband. “That is why you do not find me in the kitchen. A man should be doing other things.”

He looked at Mma Ramotswe as he spoke, and she sensed the challenge.

She took a moment or two to answer. Then: “That is what many people say, Rra. Or at least, that is what many men say. I am not sure whether many women say it, though.”

The husband put down his fork. “You ask my wife,” he said, quietly. “You ask her whether she says it. Go on.”

The wife did not hesitate. “What my husband says is right,” she said.

The old woman turned to Mma Ramotswe. “You see?” she said. “She supports her husband. That is how it is here in the country. In the town it may be different, but in the country that is how it is.”

SHE RETURNED to her room after the meal and lay down on her bed. The heat had got no better, although the clouds had continued to build up in the east. It was clear now that there was going to be rain, even if it would not come until nighttime. There would be a wind soon, and with it would come that wonderful, unmistakable smell of rain, that smell of dust and water meeting that lingered for a few seconds in the nostrils and then was gone, and would be missed, sometimes for months, before the next time that it caught you and made you stop and say to the person with you, any person: That is the smell of rain, there, right now.

She lay on her bed and stared up at the white ceiling boards. They had been well dusted, which was a sign of good housekeeping. In many houses, the ceilings were fly-spotted or marked, at the edges, with the foundations of termite trails. Sometimes large spiders could be seen looping across what must have seemed to them upside-down white tundras. But here, there was nothing, and the paintwork was unsullied.

Mma Ramotswe was puzzled. All that she had learned today was that the staff had views, but that they all disliked the Government Man. He threw his weight around, it seemed, but was there anything untoward in that? Of course the older brother would have views on how the cattle should be handled, and of course it was natural for him to give these views to his younger brother. Of course the old woman would think that her handicapped son was clever; and of course she would believe that city people lost interest in cattle. Mma Ramotswe realised that she knew very little about her. The cattleman thought she was wicked, but he gave no reason to back up his assessment. He had told her to watch her eyes, which she had done, to no effect. All that she had noticed was that she looked away, into the distance, while they all had lunch together. What did this mean?

Mma Ramotswe sat up. There was something to be learned there, she thought. If somebody looked away, into the distance, then it meant that he or she did not want to be there. And the most common reason for not wanting to be somewhere was because one did not like the company one was in. That was always true. Now, if she was always looking away, that meant that she did not like somebody there. She does not dislike me, thought Mma Ramotswe, because she gave no indication of this when I saw her earlier and she has not had the chance to develop a dislike. The child would hardly have given rise to that sort of reaction, and indeed she had treated him quite fondly, patting his head on one or two occasions during the meal. That left the son and his wife.

No mother dislikes her son. Mma Ramotswe understood that there were women who were ashamed of their sons, and there were also women who were angry with their sons. But no mother actually disliked a son at heart. A son could do anything, and would be forgiven by his mother. This old woman, therefore, disliked her daughter-in-law and disliked her intensely enough to want to be somewhere else when she was in her company.

Mma Ramotswe lay back on her bed, the immediate excitement of her conclusion having passed. Now she had to establish why the old woman disliked the daughter-in-law, and if it was because her other son, the Government Man, had said something to her about his suspicions. Perhaps more important, though, was the question of whether the woman knew that her mother-in-law disliked her. If she did, then she would have a motive for doing something about it, but if she were a poisoner—and she did not look like it, and there were also the contrary views of the maid to be taken into account—then surely she would have attempted to poison the old woman rather than her husband.

Mma Ramotswe felt drowsy. She had not slept well the previous evening, and the drive and the heat and the heavy lunch were having their effect. The stew had been very rich; rich and viscous, with that glutinous trail. She closed her eyes, but did not see darkness. There was a white aura, a faint luminous line, that seemed to cross her inner vision. The bed moved slightly, as if with the wind that had now started to blow from over the border, far away. The rain smell came, and then the hot, urgent drops, punishing the ground, stinging it, and bouncing back up like tiny grey worms.

Mma Ramotswe slept, but her breathing was shallow, and her dreams were fevered. When she awoke and felt the pain in her stomach, it was almost five o’clock. The main storm had passed, but there was still rain, beating on the tin roof of the house like a troop of insistent drummers. She sat up, and then lay down again from the nausea. She turned on the bed and dropped her feet to the floor. Then she rose, unsteadily, and stumbled on her way to the door and the bathroom at the end of the corridor outside. There she was sick, and almost immediately felt better. By the time she had reached her room, the worst of the nausea had passed and she was able to reflect on her situation. She had come to the home of a poisoner and had been poisoned herself. She should not be surprised at that. Indeed it was entirely and completely predictable.