like to talk about it do we? It's the thing we Africans are most ashamed of. We know it happens but we pretend it doesn't. We know all right what happens to children who go missing. We know.'
She looked up at him. Of course he was telling the truth, because he was a truthful, good man. And he was probably right-no matter how much everybody would like to think of other, innocent explanations as to what had happened to a missing boy, the most likely thing was exactly what Mr J.L.B. Matekoni said. The boy had been taken by a witch doctor and killed for medicine. Right there, in Botswana, in the late twentieth century, under that proud flag, in the midst of all that made Botswana a modern country, this thing had happened, this heart of darkness had thumped out like a drum. The little boy had been killed because some powerful person somewhere had commissioned the witch doctor to make strengthening medicine for him. She cast her eyes down.
'You may be right,' she said. 'That poor boy…' 'Of course I'm right,' said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. 'And why do you think that poor man had to write that letter to you? It's because the police will be doing nothing to find out how and where it happened. Because they're scared. Every one of them. They're just as scared as I am and those two boys out there under that car are. Scared, Mma Ramotswe. Frightened for our lives. Every one of us-maybe even you.'
MMA RAMOTSWE went to bed at ten that night, half an hour later than usual. She liked to lie in bed sometimes, with her reading lamp on, and read a magazine. Now she was tired, and the magazine kept slipping from her hands, defeating her struggles to keep awake.
She turned out the light and said her prayers, whispering the words although there was nobody in the house to hear her. It was always the same prayer, for the soul of her father, Obed, for Botswana and for rain that would make the crops grow and the cattle fat, and for her little baby, now safe in the arms of Jesus.
In the early hours of the morning she awoke in terror, her heartbeat irregular, her mouth dry. She sat up and reached for the light switch, but when she turned it on nothing happened. She pushed her sheet aside-there was no need for a blanket in the hot weather-and slipped off the bed.
The light in the corridor did not work either, nor that in the kitchen, where the moon made shadows and shapes on the floor. She looked out of the window, into the night. There were no lights anywhere; a power cut.
She opened the back door and stepped out into the yard in her bare feet. The town was in darkness, the trees obscure, indeterminate shapes, clumps of black.
'Mma Ramotswe!'
She stood where she was, frozen in terror. There was somebody in the yard, watching her. Somebody had whispered her name.
She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came. And it would be dangerous to speak, anyway. So she backed away, slowly, inch by inch, towards the kitchen door. Once inside, she slammed the door shut behind her and reached for the lock. As she turned the key the electricity came on and the kitchen was flooded with light. The fridge started to purr; a light from the cooker winked on and off at her: 3:04; 3:04
CHAPTER NINE
THERE WERE three quite exceptional houses in the country, and Mma Ramotswe felt some satisfaction that she had been invited to two of them. The best-known of these was Mokolodi, a rambling chateau-like building placed in the middle of the bush to the south of Gaborone. This house, which had a gatehouse with gates on which hornbills had been worked in iron, was probably the grandest establishment in the country, and was certainly rather more impressive than Phakadi House, to the north, which was rather too close to the sewage ponds for Mma Ramotswe's taste. This had its compensations, though, as the sewage ponds attracted a great variety of bird life, and from the verandah of Phakadi one could watch flights of flamingos landing on the murky green water. But you could not do this if the wind was in the wrong direction, which it often was.
The third house could only be suspected of being a house of distinction, as very few people were invited to enter it, and Gaborone as a whole had to rely on what could be seen of the house from the outside-which was not much, as it was surrounded by a high white wall-or on reports from those who were summoned into the house for some special purpose. These reports were unanimous in their praise for the sheer opulence of the interior.
'Like Buckingham Palace,' said one woman who had been called to arrange flowers for some family occasion. 'Only rather better. I think that the Queen lives a bit more simply than those people in there.'
The people in question were the family of Mr Paliwalar Sundigar Patel, the owner of eight stores-five in Gaborone and three in Francistown -a hotel in Orapa, and a large outfitters in Lobatse. He was undoubtedly one of the wealthiest men in the country, if not the wealthiest, but amongst the Batswana this counted for little, as none of the money had gone into cattle, and money which was not invested in cattle, as everybody knew, was but dust in the mouth.
Mr Paliwalar Patel had come to Botswana in 1967, at the age of twenty-five. He had not had a great deal in his pocket then, but his father, a trader in a remote part of Zululand, had advanced him the money to buy his first shop in the African Mall. This had been a great success; Mr Patel bought goods for virtually nothing from traders in distress and then sold them on at minimal profit. Trade blossomed and shop was added to shop, all of them run on the same commercial philosophy. By his fiftieth birthday, he stopped expanding his empire, and concentrated on the improvement and education of his family. There were four children-a son, Wallace, twin daughters, Sandri and Pali, and the youngest, a daughter called Nandira. Wallace had been sent to an expensive boarding school in Zimbabwe, in order to satisfy Mr Patel's ambition that he become a gentleman. There he had learned to play cricket, and to be cruel. He had been admitted to dental school, after a large donation by Mr Patel, and had then returned to Durban, where he set up a practice in cosmetic dentistry. At some point he had shortened his name-'for convenience's sake'-and had become Mr Wallace Pate BDS (Natal).
Mr Patel had protested at the change. 'Why are you now this Mr Wallace Pate BDS (Natal) may I ask? Why? You ashamed, or something? You think I'm just a Mr Paliwalar Patel BA (Failed) or something?'
The son had tried to placate his father.
'Short names are easier, father. Pate, Patel-it's the same thing. So why have an extra letter at the end? The modern idea is to be brief. We must be modern these days. Everything is modern, even names.'
There had been no such pretensions from the twins. They had both been sent back to the Natal to meet husbands, which they had done in the manner expected by their father. Both sons-in-law had now been taken into the business and were proving to have good heads for figures and a sound understanding of the importance of tight profit margins.
Then there was Nandira, who was sixteen at the time and a pupil at Maru-a-Pula School in Gaborone, the best and most expensive school in the country. She was bright academically, was consistently given glowing reports from the school, and was expected to make a good marriage in the fullness of time-probably on her twentieth birthday, which Mr Patel had felt was precisely the right time for a girl to marry.
The entire family, including the sons-in-law, the grandparents, and several distant cousins, lived in the Patel mansion near the old Botswana Defence Force Club. There had been several houses on the plot, old colonial-style houses with wide verandahs and fly screens, but Mr Patel had knocked them down and built his new house from scratch. In fact, it was several houses linked together, all forming the family compound. 'We Indians like to live in a compound,' Mr Patel had explained to the architect. 'We like to be able to see what's going on in the family, you know.'
The architect, who was given a free rein, designed a house in which he indulged every architectural whimsy which more demanding and less well-funded clients had suppressed over the years. To his astonishment, Mr Patel accepted everything, and the resulting building proved to be much to his taste. It was furnished in what could only be called Delhi Rococo, with a great deal of gilt in furniture and curtains, and on the walls expensive pictures of Hindu saints and mountain deer with eyes that followed one about the room.
When the twins married, at an expensive ceremony in Durban to which over fifteen hundred guests were invited, they were each given their own quarters, the house having been considerably expanded for the purpose.
