With the donkeys back in harness, Mma Ramotswe reached into her bag to retrieve a fifty-pula note. “You have been very good, Rra. This is a present for you.”

The man looked at the money. “You do not have to pay me, Mma. I wouldn’t leave anybody here. But since you are so kind …” He reached out and took the money, which he quickly tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt. “Since you are so kind, I will take you and this other lady to Mma Potokwane’s place. You should leave the van here because it gets even sandier later on. You can come back for it when you want to go home.”

They collected a few necessities from the van, which Mma Ramotswe had driven on to a piece of firm ground beside the track. Then, climbing onto the back of the cart, they started the journey down the track, the same journey that people had made countless times over the years, back in the time of their parents, their grandparents; in the same way, in the same quiet, at the same pace, closer to the world than in the metal cocoons in which we now travel. There was birdsong, and the gentlest of breezes; and they heard the donkeys, the noise made by their hooves against the ground, the sound of their breathing, their sighs.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

HAVE YOU HAD ANY INJECTIONS RECENTLY?

WITH MMA MAKUTSI AWAY, Phuti Radiphuti felt at a loose end. He had very rapidly become accustomed to marriage—so rapidly, in fact, that on this first occasion on which he had been left alone, he found himself unable to settle. Mma Makutsi had left him a stew for his dinner and this required only to be warmed up, but Phuti felt disinclined to eat by himself in a kitchen that he now associated with the presence of his new wife. On impulse rather than on any serious reflection, he telephoned the aunt with whom he had stayed during his recent convalescence. This aunt, who had done her best to discourage his marriage, believing that Mma Makutsi was unworthy of her nephew and motivated, too, by a jealousy that would have prevented her from approving of any prospective wife for Phuti, had not attended the wedding. She had observed it from afar, though, sitting in the brown car with its mean-spirited narrow windows and watching the reception tents through a pair of binoculars. Phuti had seen her car and had started over towards it in the hope of persuading his aunt to bring hostilities to an end and join them at the wedding party; he had not succeeded in speaking to her, though, as she had seen him approaching and had driven off at speed.