the birds singing in cages. He lingered at the gate, peering in, listening to the circus of sounds. A parrot with a blue neck cackled to its mate. Tiny little birds flew around inside the cages, chirping to one another. Inside the garden was a large sunken space, deep earth and shade, looking like coolness itself, surrounded by orange, lemon, and grapefruit trees and banana trees with long scarves of waving leaves. The sides of the sunken garden were lined with flat rocks, and in between the rocks were desert plants—blue green, dusty blue, some of them flowering, and a cluster of huge aloes with stalks. At the bottom were flagstones with creeping plants between them, and a small table and two upholstered chairs, facing into a syringa tree.
An old African with a crooked back, wearing a tattered safari suit, bent over a patch of flowers on the near side of the sunken garden. “Dumela, rra!” called Isaac.
The man turned and greeted him back. His hair was short and mostly gray. The knuckles of his hands were knobbed. His face was filled with calm, as though he’d seen many things and was tired now.
“I was studying to see how you’ve made the garden.”
The man moved toward Isaac on legs that looked painful, took off a battered hat, and held it in his hand. He looked at Isaac suspiciously. “You’re not from here, are you?”
“No,” said Isaac.
The old man stuck the long tip of his little fingernail in his ear. He looked at his feet and said, “Sit,” offering Isaac a piece of ground. They were quiet together, then unexpectedly the old man said, “Never trust a woman.” Isaac could not have agreed less. He would trust his mother, his granny, or Boitumelo with his life, any one of them.
It seemed that the old man did not plan to elaborate, but after some time he went on. “I am telling you how I came to make this garden. I once loved a woman, a beautiful woman. We were happy. I thought myself the luckiest man in the world. But when our son was born, she grew restless. She neglected the cooking, she refused to wash our clothes. She gave our child to other people to watch. In those days, I was collecting firewood and peddling it from a donkey cart. One day, I came home and found her in bed with my best friend. This was a man I knew before I could walk and talk. At first I didn’t believe what my eyes told me. I walked away into the bush.
“But I realized my eyes had spoken the truth. That night, I sharpened a knife on a stone and killed him. And then I put the knife down in plain sight and sent a boy to call the police. I thought of killing my wife too, but I was not able to raise my hand against her. I was held at Lobatse and transferred to Gaborone where I stayed many years.
“At first I made furniture in the prison. Then they put me in the garden, growing vegetables. In time I became the head gardener. When I came out of prison, I was an old man. That is how I came here, and that is why I tell you, never trust a woman.”
Out of respect, Isaac didn’t argue.
“These people hired me when I came out of prison,” the old man continued. “They are good people, especially the madam. And no one else will have me now.”
“Why is that?”
“Ke a lwala.” I am ill.
“U lwala fa kae?”
“Go botlkoko makgwafo.” The lungs. That is where I’m sick.
“You thought to make the garden this way yourself?”
“Ee, rra.”
“I’d like to make something like this.”
“Why not? Take your time. Don’t hurry. When you finish, come back, and I’ll give you some things to plant.” He leaned over a succulent and said, “If you cut here, put it in the ground, it will grow.”
“Thank you, rra.”
“I have a child as I told you,” the old man said, “but I wouldn’t know him if he walked down that road.”
“I have a father working in the mines outside Johannesburg, if he’s alive. Perhaps I would not know him now, either. You can drop a city into the hole where he works. One man is so small, he disappears. I saw this place only once. Small men die for big men. They live in a prison just as surely as you were in prison.”
“O botlhale thata.”
“No, rra, I am not