“There,” said Dr. Mwata. “There, you see.”

He had taken a small rubber hammer out of his pocket and was tapping at her knees. Then he slipped off her shoes and pinched the skin of her ankles. “Can you feel that?” he asked. “Or this? Over here? This?”

The examination continued for ten minutes or so. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked away, staring out of the window, his back turned so that the doctor might conduct his examination in private. There was an old metal windmill outside, and the wooden blades were turning slowly in the breeze, driving a borehole pump; he could hear the mechanical sucking noise, the rattling of a loose spar on the windmill tower; this was not a well-kept place, but the doctor must be busy, even if he had retired. You could not expect an educated man to worry about pumps and boreholes; there were plenty of other people to attend to such things. In the distance, towards the South African border, the clouds were building up again; there would be more rain, he thought, which was a good sign. Yesterday’s storm had laid the dust, and if rain followed later today it would begin to fill the rivers and dams. They could at least hope.

Dr. Mwata cleared his throat. “That is all I need to see,” he said, patting Motholeli on the shoulder. “You have been a very good girl. Now the Daddy can lift you off the table.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni stepped forward and placed the child back in her wheelchair. He was occasionally referred to as the Daddy by people who did not know, but the word remained strange in his ears.

Dr. Mwata now took Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s arm. “You and I should go for a walk, Rra.” He turned to Motholeli. “I will ask the lady in the kitchen to make you something to drink. She will look after you for a little while. The Daddy and I will not be long.”

He went to the door and called out down the corridor. A few moments later a woman appeared. She was a large woman wearing a housecoat and a pair of commodious blue slippers. She stared at Motholeli while her employer gave instructions. “You must give this girl some milk. And bread with plenty of honey on it.”

The men went outside, leaving the house from the back door. The yard at the back was neglected too—a patch of land which merged, without fence or marker, into the scrub bush. A few bricks had been placed in the ground in a circle, a forlorn attempt at decoration or the abandoned beginning of a flower bed; apart from that there was nothing.

“This is a nice place,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. He did not know what to say; I am just a mechanic, he thought.