She had been flattered, and their acquaintance had blossomed. Months might go by when she would not see him, but he would appear from time to time and bring her presents—a silver clock once, a bag (with the purse still in it), a bottle of Cape Brandy. He lived over at Old Naledi, with a woman by whom he had had three children.

“She is always shouting at me, that woman,” he complained. “I can’t do anything right as far as she is concerned. I give her money every month but she always says that the children are hungry and how is she to buy the food? She is never satisfied.”

Florence was sympathetic.

“You should leave her and marry me,” she said. “I am not one to shout at a man. I would make a good wife for a man like you.”

Her suggestion had been serious, but he had treated it as a joke, and had cuffed her playfully.

“You would be just as bad,” he said. “Once women are married to men, they start to complain. It is a well-known fact. Ask any married man.”

So their relationship remained casual, but, after her risky and rather frightening interview with the police—an interview in which his alibi was probed for over three hours—she felt that there was an obligation which one day could be called in.

“Philemon,” she said to him, lying beside him on Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s bed one hot afternoon. “I want you to get me a gun.”

He laughed, but became serious when he turned over and saw her expression.

“What are you planning to do? Shoot Mr J.L.B. Matekoni? Next time he comes into the kitchen and complains about the food, you shoot him? Hah!”

“No. I am not planning to shoot anybody. I want the gun to put in somebody’s house. Then I will tell the police that there is a gun there and they will come and find it.”

“And so I don’t get my gun back?”

“No. The police will take it. But they will also take the person whose house it was in. What happens if you are found with an illegal gun?”

Philemon lit a cigarette and puffed the air straight up towards Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s ceiling.

“They don’t like illegal weapons here. You get caught with an illegal gun and you go to prison. That’s it. No hanging about. They don’t want this place to become like Johannesburg.”

Florence smiled. “I am glad that they are so strict about guns. That is what I want.”

Philemon extracted a fragment of tobacco from the space between his two front teeth. “So,” he said. “How do I pay for this gun? Five hundred pula. Minimum. Somebody has to bring it over from Johannesburg. You can’t pick them up here so easily.”