Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni picked up the warning. “Oh, I’m not doubting Mma Makutsi’s general abilities. She is a very clever lady, as we all know. It’s just that she’s a bit …” He struggled to find the word, and Mma Ramotswe immediately felt sorry for him. Yes, Mma Makutsi was a bit … a bit … She too found it difficult to describe exactly what she wanted to say. There were plenty of people who were a bit … whatever it was.
“Bossy?” she suggested. “Is that what you’re trying to say, Rra?”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni frowned. He was not sure if that was exactly what he meant. Mma Potokwane was bossy—the word was exactly right for her, but she, of course, had no option but to be bossy. If you were the matron of an orphan farm, with all those children running around, then you had to be bossy. And presumably any advertisement for that job would have to specify the need for bossiness. If Mma Potokwane were to retire and a successor needed to be found, then the wording of the advertisement would have to spell things out quite clearly. Wanted: an experienced lady for the job of Matron. Only very bossy ladies need apply.
He smiled at the thought.
“Something funny, Rra?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
He put out of his mind the picture that had been forming of a line of bossy ladies queuing up for an interview for Mma Potokwane’s job. There would be a great deal of pushing and shoving and using of elbows, until eventually the bossiest, pushiest lady reached the head of the queue and was straightaway appointed.
He returned to the subject of Mma Makutsi’s restaurant. “No, it’s not exactly bossiness I’m talking about, Mma. It’s more a question of strictness. Yes, maybe that’s it.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. Strictness. That was it. Mma Makutsi could be strict.
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni now found the words. “You will get into trouble if you don’t eat everything on your plate, you see. She will be watching through one of those kitchen hatches—you’ll just see her spectacles peering out—and she will notice if you do not finish off her food. Then she will come out from the kitchen and ask for your excuse. It will be a very strange restaurant, that one.”
AS ONE MIGHT EXPECT, a different conversation took place in the Radiphuti house that evening. Dinner there was always eaten a bit later, as Phuti Radiphuti’s day ran on a rather different timetable from everybody else’s. Most people were at work by eight, but Phuti had decided some years previously that he would not arrive at the Double Comfort Furniture Store until nine o’clock, and sometimes even half an hour later than that. There were several reasons for this: one was his impatience with the stop-and-start driving that was necessary in the heavier traffic of the rush hour. He had discovered that if you left the house early, you would inevitably get caught up in a long line of cars driven by people who, like you, were eager to make the journey before eight. It was, he thought, rather like trying to get through a door when hundreds of people had exactly the same idea. At least if you were on foot trying to get through a door, people would behave reasonably courteously rather than trample one another or snarl in irritation if anybody were to be too slow, or be indecisive as to whether to turn left or right. How different it was when people were behind the wheel of a car; protected by the metal and glass surrounding them, they showed all sorts of impatience with other drivers, and rarely hesitated to secure some tiny advantage by slipping through a red light or ignoring the unambiguous message of a stop or give way sign. And this was in Botswana, he thought, where everybody—or at least nearly everybody—was so polite! How much worse was it in other countries not too far away where people drove as if they were being pursued by a swarm of bees; or where they paid no attention to the twists and bends in the road.
The consequences of having such roads were worse, he reminded himself, if you had mountains as well. Botswana at least had flat roads, since there were no real mountains, but it was different in Lesotho, which was not very far away and where all there was, really, was mountain after mountain. As he thought about this he remembered what had happened some years ago to the king of that country, who had been driven to his death off the side of a mountain. Everybody knew that the roads in Lesotho were not in good condition, and somebody, surely, should have been more careful with the king in the back seat. Of course you could not tell, thought Phuti. It may not have been the driver’s fault, as all sorts of things could happen on a road at night. Cattle strayed onto the tarmac, standing there practically invisible in the darkness until their eyes were suddenly caught in the headlights and it was too late; boulders tumbled down hillsides and came to rest at blind corners; rain washed away whole sections of the road, leaving great gaps into which anybody, even a king, might easily fall. No, you should never blame a driver unless you knew all the facts, and since that poor driver was late, just as the king himself was, you would never know exactly what happened. Some things were accidents, pure and simple, in the same way as had been that incident in which he himself was injured—where the delivery driver did not see him standing there. You should not go around sprinkling blame on other people, thought Phuti Radiphuti.
But it was not simply because of bad driving and traffic jams that Phuti had decided to avoid going into work early—there were good business reasons for his coming into the office slightly later than everybody else. Phuti believed that if there were any problems to be dealt with, they would make themselves known early in the day. Usually these were staff issues, with somebody not coming into work because he or she was ill, or discovering something wrong with some item of furniture, or a difficult letter arriving in the mail that one of his assistants picked up on the way to work. All of these things could very easily be dealt with by one of the three assistant managers, and letting them deal with problems rather than sorting it out himself was not only less stressful for Phuti, but was also a way of encouraging staff. If you were an assistant manager, then what you really wanted was the chance to manage, and if the real manager was around, you might feel inhibited from managing. By arriving late, he felt, the assistant managers would have an hour or so during which they could manage. Of course there were limits to this approach: if it were left to assistant managers, they would suggest that you arrive late in the afternoon, or even not at all, thus giving them all day to give orders and make decisions, leaving nothing for you to manage or decide yourself.
So it was because of all this that Phuti’s day ran rather later than everybody else’s. And that meant that Mma Makutsi had more time to attend to the needs of their son, Itumelang Clovis Radiphuti, who was now six months old and not inclined to go to sleep until at least eight in the evening. The three or four hours that Mma Makutsi now spent with him after she returned from work in the late afternoon was, she felt, the most valuable time in her day—and his too. The woman whom they had engaged as nurse to Itumelang was completely trustworthy and had exceeded their expectations in every respect, but Mma Makutsi believed, as did most people, that there was no substitute for the attention of a mother. And Itumelang himself seemed to share this view, as his expression always became one of complete delight when he saw his mother come home at the end of the working day. And when she picked him up and held him to her, he would make a strange gurgling sound—a sound of unconcealed pleasure that Mma Ramotswe, when she witnessed it one day, had described as being like the purring of a cat.
“You can tell that he is happy,” she said to Mma Makutsi. “Listen. That is the noise that a cat makes when it has been fed and is happy with the world. He is purring, Mma. You have the only purring baby in Botswana.”
“I am very happy that he purrs,” said Mma Makutsi. “Maybe that means he’s a little lion. When he grows up he will be brave and strong—like a lion.”
Mma Ramotswe had laughed, but the comment had triggered a memory that came back to her now, none the less vivid for not having been thought about for years—since childhood, in fact. She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to fix the recollection in her mind before it vanished, as old thoughts can so easily do. For a few moments she w
as back in Mochudi, still a girl, sitting with her father’s cousin, who had helped bring her up, and the cousin had told her a story that she herself must have learned from her grandmother or an aunt or somebody of the generation that still stored all these traditional stories in some corner of their minds.
“A lion,” muttered Mma Ramotswe. “There was a story about that.”
Mma Makutsi planted a kiss on Itumelang’s brow. “About a boy who was as brave as a lion? Like my Itumelang?”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “I was told it a long time ago by my daddy’s cousin. She was the one who helped him when I was a girl.”
Mma Makutsi inclined her head respectfully. She knew about Mma Ramotswe’s early years. “After your mother became late?”
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The cousin was older than my late daddy. She was like a grandmother to me.”
“They are the ones for stories,” said Mma Makutsi. “They know all those stories about things that happened a long time ago—or did not happen.”
“It doesn’t matter if they did not happen,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There are many stories about things that did not happen.” She paused. “This one was about a girl who married a lion. She did not know it when she married him, but the young man she had chosen was really a lion. He looked like an ordinary man, but there was something about him …”
“It would be the eyes,” said Mma Makutsi, glancing anxiously at Itumelang’s eyes to reassure herself. “You can tell if somebody is really a lion by examining the eyes. Lions have eyes that are a bit yellow, Mma. They are like the colour of grass when there has been no rain for a while. Or sometimes they are the colour of the sand out in the Kalahari, which is also a sort of yellow colour.”
“I think that what makes a lion’s eyes different from other eyes is their fierceness,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There are other animals that have eyes that colour, but they are different. They are not fierce, like a lion’s eyes. They do not look at you in the same way—they do not make you wish you were somewhere else.”
Mma Makutsi agreed. “But what about this girl?” she asked. “How did she know he was a lion? Was it the eyes, do you think?”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “No, it was not the eyes. She did not say anything about his eyes; in fact, it was her brothers who noticed. It was the girl’s brothers.”
“They could tell?”
“Yes, Mma. They noticed that by the way he smelled. If you are a lion, you cannot really disguise the way you smell. You can change the way you look, but not the way you smell.”
Mma Makutsi was thoughtful. “It is the same with people,” she said. “You can change your clothes. You can change the look of your hair. Doctors can even change the shape of your nose or ears, but you can never change the way you smell. That will always give you away.”
Mma Ramotswe was used to Mma Makutsi’s theories, which were often rather unusual. This one, she thought, was distinctly unlikely, but she did not want to pursue the matter. Mma Makutsi was apt to argue a point tenaciously, and Mma Ramotswe did not want to get involved in a prolonged debate on the way people smelled.
“That may be so, Mma,” she said evenly. “Or it may not be. But the point here is that the girl’s brothers told her they thought her new husband was a lion because he smelled a bit like a lion. And they said there was also something in the way he walked that reminded them of a lion.”
“Lions walk on four legs,” observed Mma Makutsi. “Was this man walking on four legs? That can be a big giveaway, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “He walked normally, on two legs. But there was something in the way he walked that made them suspicious. I do not know what it was, as my cousin did not say anything about that. But you can imagine it, Mma, can’t you? He would have walked with that sort of sway that lions like to use. They sway their hips a bit.”
“I have seen men walk like that,” said Mma Makutsi. “But I did not think they were lions.”
“So they told the girl, Mma,” continued Mma Ramotswe. “They said to her: this new husband is really a lion. You will have to get rid of him. And the girl was very upset.”
“It would not be a good thing to discover about your new husband,” said Mma Makutsi. “I don’t know what I would do if I discovered that Phuti was a lion. It would be a very sad thing to find out.”
“I do not think your husband is a lion,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I see no evidence at all.”
“Thank heavens,” said Mma Makutsi. “It would be hard for me to go back up to Bobonong and tell my family. They would say: please do not bring your new husband up here, or he might eat our cattle.”
They both laughed. Then Mma Makutsi said, “I am worried about this young woman, Mma. What did they do?”
“The brothers made a cage,” said Mma Ramotswe. “This cage was a trap and they put a goat in it. They said, ‘If our sister’s husband is really a lion, then he will smell the goat and he will go into the cage to eat it. Then the trap will close on him and we shall know.’ ”
“And is that what happened?”
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And once he was in the trap, the new husband showed that he really was a lion. He began to roar, and they saw that his teeth were like the teeth of a lion. They saw all this, Mma, and they knew. The girl, of course, was upset, but I think she got over it, once her brothers had chased her husband away.”
“It was best to have discovered it,” said Mma Makutsi. “I could not live with the uncertainty of not knowing if my husband was a lion. Could you, Mma? Could you live with uncertainty like that?”
Mma Ramotswe could not. “It is best for a woman to know her husband’s weak points right at the beginning. All men have their weak points—although they try to pretend that they do not have any, they are always there. But if you know about them in advance, then you can deal with them. It is the hidden weak points that are the problem.”
They were both silent for a while. Itumelang looked up at his mother, and made his slight gurgling sound. Mma Makutsi was wondering about Phuti’s weak points. There was his stammer, of course, and there was also his artificial foot and ankle—the result of that accident with the delivery truck. But although one might think of these as weak points, they were not weaknesses. Weak points were things that had happened to him. Weaknesses were character flaws, and Phuti had none of those.
The mention of weak points had Mma Ramotswe thinking about her own husband. Did Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni have any weaknesses? He had been a bit indecisive in taking so long over their engagement, but that indecisiveness was probably a result of his simply not being forceful enough, which was a rather attractive quality, she thought. There were more than enough forceful men about, and a man who did not try to force his will on others was a refreshing change. As far as the other common vices went, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had none of those: he did not drink much—other than the occasional beer—and he was never selfish. He did not gamble, nor did he look at other women, although that did not mean that other women did not look at him; Mma Ramotswe had seen them, and imagined the thoughts going through their heads: Now there’s a nice, gentle-looking man … Oh yes, she could just hear those thoughts, but they did not worry her unduly because she understood how those who did not have the company of a good man, who had been saddled with a bad or indifferent one, with one who never paid them much attention or showed them any affection—she could understand how such women might lay eyes on a man like Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and dream. She did not begrudge such women their dreams. And it was a compliment to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni that women should think such things about him, and usually the women who thought these things did not go on to flirt with him or anything like that. Except sometimes, and in those rare cases Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was always polite and would make a pointed reference to something his wife had said or done, and that was usually enough to put a stop to that. Unless you were somebody like Violet Sephotho, of course; she was shameless and would, if anything, be encouraged if mention were made
of a wife. Mma Makutsi had many stories to tell of Violet’s husband-stealing activities, including one occasion when she had flirted with a new husband at his wedding. Fortunately, the new mother-in-law had witnessed this and had managed to seat Violet next to an uncle who was a lay preacher and whose only topic of conversation was the Bible.
“That is a very good way of dealing with somebody like Violet Sephotho,” Mma Makutsi had said, chuckling at the recollection. “That uncle would have regarded her as a challenge—somebody who clearly needed to be saved, and he would have made a big effort to do so.”
BUT NOW ITUMELANG WAS ASLEEP and Mma Makutsi was sitting in the kitchen, aware that she would have to start cooking the evening meal, but too excited by the news she had received that day to concentrate on any mundane task. She sat like that for almost twenty minutes, going over in her mind her short, businesslike conversation with the lawyer. Her offer for the lease of the premises had been accepted and, under the power of attorney she had granted him, he had signed it. Nothing remained to be done. For the next five years she was to be the tenant of the commercial premises on Plot 1432 Extension Two, Gaborone; she, Grace Makutsi, daughter of the last Hector Makutsi, of Bobonong—just that and nothing else, but now, all rather suddenly, it seemed, Mrs. Radiphuti, mother of Itumelang Radiphuti, and tenant in her own right of commercial premises. It was almost too much to take in, and when Phuti eventually came home she was still thinking of it all with the warm glow that comes from the contemplation of something deeply satisfying, something that one cannot quite believe has happened.