The Double Comfort Safari Club - By Alexander McCall Smith Page 0,62

for Mma Makutsi. One of them would know somebody who came from there, or had relatives there; one of them would know a story that came from that place—a story of envy or overreaching ambition or simple human need.

“That place,” said Mma Makutsi as they drove past a small settlement called Serule. “That is the place where they have discovered uranium. I read about it in the Botswana Daily News. They are going to mine it some day. And then those people living in Serule will have a lot of uranium.”

“I do not want to have any uranium,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They are welcome to it.”

“Of course they won’t keep it. You do not need to keep uranium.”

“There are other things that have happened there,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Apart from finding uranium. I knew a man who came from Serule. He had a sister who did very well at school. High marks … like yours, Mma.”

The compliment pleased Mma Makutsi. She liked people to refer to her results, even if she tried to wear the ninety-seven per cent gracefully. “I see,” she said demurely. “And then?”

“The sister was a clever girl. So it was not just hard work. Some people get good results from working very hard, others from being very bright. These people do not have to work very much—they just get their good results. It’s like standing under a tree and waiting for the figs to fall into your arms.”

At first Mma Makutsi was silent. She was not sure if there was a barb in this remark. But she would let it pass anyway. “Standing under a fig tree is safe enough, Mma,” she said. “But you should never stand under a sausage tree.” The sausage tree, the moporoto in Setswana, was a sort of jacaranda that had heavy fruit like great, pendulous sausages.

“Certainly not, Mma. There are many people who are late now because of that. Those are very heavy pods, and if you get one on your head, then you are in great danger of becoming late.”

She used the expression that the Batswana preferred: to become late. There was human sympathy here; to be dead is to be nothing, to be finished. The expression is far too final, too disruptive of the bonds that bind us to one another, bonds that survive the demise of one person. A late father is still your father, even though he is not there; a dead father sounds as if he has nothing further to do—he is finished.

“This girl,” Mma Ramotswe continued, “was always doing well. People said, That girl is going to be an important somebody one day. She will be going to Gaborone, definite.”

Mma Makutsi frowned. She could tell which way this story was going, as it was an old story in Botswana, a theme repeated time and time again. The person who does well, who excels, is asking for trouble. “People were watching?” asked Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe confirmed the worst. “They were watching, Mma. They were listening too. There are always people who are watching and listening.”

Of course there are, thought Mma Makutsi. She had gone from Bobonong to Gaborone. She knew all about envy.

“Somebody—and they did not know who it was at first—put a spell on this girl.”

There was silence. To report the casting of a spell does not mean that you believe in the efficacy of spells. But spells were used, whether or not the rest of us believed in them; and somebody was prepared to believe in them. If that somebody were the victim, then the spell had worked. It was as simple as that. And people could be frightened to death by the knowledge that there was a spell on them; it happened regularly.

“How did she know?” asked Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe shrugged. “It is difficult to say. Spells are nothing—they don’t exist. So how do you tell when there is nothing there—just air? Maybe somebody spoke to her. That is how people come to know about spells. People say, They have bought some bad medicine to use against you. That sort of thing.” She did not like to think about it; that was the old Africa, not the Africa of today, and certainly not the Botswana she knew. And yet it was there; just as it was elsewhere in the world, everywhere, really, where underneath the modern and the rational there ran a dark river of unreason and fear.

“The girl told her family,” Mma Ramotswe continued. “They said that they had feared something