They finished their conversation on that note. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had nothing further to report, and the pumpkin and the lamb, judging from the smell from the pot and from the oven, were both ready, or just about. It was time for dinner.

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

THE UNDERSTANDING OF SHOES

MMA MAKUTSI AWOKE the next morning slightly earlier than normal. It had been another cold night, and her room, which had no heating apart from a one-bar electric heater—which was turned off—was still chilly. When the sun came up properly, the light would flood in through her window and warm the place up, but that would not happen for twenty minutes or so. She looked at her watch. If she got up now, she would have fifteen minutes or so in hand before she went off to catch her minibus into work. She could use this time to do something constructive, some sewing, perhaps, on the new sewing machine which Phuti Radiphuti had bought her. She was making a dress for herself and had all the panels cut out, pinned together, and ready for the machine. Now all she needed was a bit of time. She could do fifteen minutes of work on it that morning and then, when she came home from work, she could devote at least two hours to the task, which might well be enough to finish it off.

But there would be no going to work that day, and now that she remembered this she opened her eyes wide, astonished by the realisation. I do not have to get up, she said to herself. I can stay in bed. She closed her eyes again, and nestled her head back into her pillow; but she could not keep her eyes closed, she could not drift back to sleep, for she was wide awake. On a cold morning an extra few minutes of sleep, snatched in denial of the imminent call of the alarm clock, would normally be irresistible. But not now; that which we have, we suddenly find we do not want. She sat up in bed, shivered, and tentatively lowered her feet onto the cement floor of her room. There might be running water in the house, and electric light, but in the villages and in the country they still had floors, here and there, which did not freeze your feet like this—floors made of the dung of cattle, sweet-smelling dung, packed down hard and mixed with mud to give a surface that was cool in the heat and warm to the touch in the cold weather. For all that modern buildings were more comfortable, there were some things, some traditional things, that could not be improved upon.