Alexander McCall Smith - Tears of the Giraffe

The nurse and her husband had to move. The husband worked for a meat-packing firm and they wanted him down in Lobatse. The nurse had heard of the orphan farm, and so she wrote to me. I said that we could take them, and I went up to Francistown to collect them just a few months ago. Now they are with us, as you have seen.

That is their story, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. That is how they came to be here.

MR J.L.B. Matekoni said nothing. He looked at Mma Poto-kwane, who met his gaze. She had worked at the orphan farm for almost twenty years-she had been there when it had been started-and was inured to tragedy-or so she thought. But this story, which she had just told, had affected her profoundly when she had first heard it from the nurse in Francistown. Now it was having that effect on Mr J.L.B. Matekoni as well; she could see that.

"They will be here in a few moments," she said. "Do you want me to say that you might be prepared to take them?"

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni closed his eyes. He had not spoken to Mma Ramotswe about it and it seemed quite wrong to land her with something like this without consulting her first. Was this the way to start a marriage? To take a decision of such momentum without consulting one's spouse? Surely not.

And yet here were the children. The girl in her wheelchair, smiling up at him and the boy standing there so gravely, eyes lowered out of respect.

He drew in his breath. There were times in life when one had to act, and this, he suspected, was one of them.

"Would you children like to come and stay with me?" he said. "Just for a while? Then we can see how things go."

The girl looked to Mma Potokwane, as if for confirmation.

"Rra Matekoni will look after you well," she said. "You will be happy there."

The girl turned to her brother and said something to him, which the adults did not hear. The boy thought for a moment, and then nodded.

"You are very kind, Rra," she said. "We will be very happy to come with you."

Mma Potokwane clapped her hands.

"Go and pack, children," she said. "Tell your housemother that they are to give you clean clothes."

The girl turned her wheelchair round and left the room, accompanied by her brother.

"What have I done?" muttered Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, under his breath.

Mma Potokwane gave him his answer.

"A very good thing," she said.

THEY DROVE out of the village in Mma Ramotswe's tiny white van. The dirt road was rough, virtually disappearing at points into deep potholes or rippling into a sea of corrugations that made the van creak and rattle in protest. The farm was only eight miles away from the village, but they made slow progress, and Mma Ramotswe was relieved to have Mma Pot-sane with her. It would be easy to get lost in the featureless bush, with no hills to guide one and each tree looking much like the next one. Though for Mma Potsane the landscape, even if dimly glimpsed, was rich in associations. Her eyes squeezed almost shut, she peered out of the van, pointing out the place where they had found a stray donkey years before, and there, by that rock, that was where a cow had died for no apparent reason. These were the intimate memories that made the land alive-that bound people to a stretch of baked earth, as valuable to them, and as beautiful, as if it were covered with sweet grass.

Mma Potsane sat forward in her seat. "There," she said. "Do you see it over there? I can see things better if they are far away. I can see it now."

Mma Ramotswe followed her gaze. The bush had become denser, thick with thorn trees, and these concealed, but not quite obscured, the shape of the buildings. Some of these were typical of the ruins to be found in southern Africa; whitewashed walls that seemed to have crumbled until they were a few feet above the ground, as if flattened from above; others still had their roofs, or the framework of their roofs, the thatch having collapsed inwards, consumed by ants or taken by birds for nests.

"That is the farm?"

"Yes. And over there-do you see over there?-that is where we lived."

It was a sad homecoming for Mma Potsane, as she had warned Mma Ramotswe; this was where she had spent that quiet time with her husband after he had spent all those years away in the mines in South Africa. Their children grown up, they had been thrown back on each other's company and enjoyed the luxury of an uneventful life.

"We did not have much to do," she said. "My husband went every day to work in the fields. I sat with the other women and made clothes. The German liked us to make clothes, which he would sell in Gaborone."

The road petered out, and Mma Ramotswe brought the van to a halt under a tree. Stretching her legs, she looked through the trees at the building which must have been the main house. There must have been eleven or twelve houses at one time, judging from the ruins scattered about. It was so sad, she thought; all these buildings set down in the middle of the bush like this; all that hope, and now, all that remained were the mud foundations and the crumbling walls.

They walked over to the main house. Much of the roof had survived, as it, unlike the others, had been made of corrugated iron. There were doors too, old gauze-screened doors hanging off their jambs, and glass in some of the windows.

"That is where the German lived," said Mma Potsane. "And the American and the South African woman, and some other people from far away. We Batswana lived over there."

Mma Ramotswe nodded. "I should like to go inside that house."

Mma Potsane shook her head. "There will be nothing," she said. "The house is empty. Everybody has gone away."

I know that. But now that we have come out here, I should like to see what it is like inside. You don't need to go in if you don't want to."

Mma Potsane winced. "I cannot let you go in by yourself," she muttered. "I shall come in with you."

They pushed at the screen which blocked the front doorway. The wood had been mined by termites, and it gave way at a touch.

"The ants will eat everything in this country," said Mma Pot-sane. "One day only the ants will be left.

They will have eaten everything else."

They entered the house, feeling straightaway the cool that came with being out of the sun. There was a smell of dust in the air, the acrid mixed odour of the destroyed ceiling board and the creosote-impregnated timbers that had repelled the ants.

Mma Potsane gestured about the room in which they were standing. "You see. There is nothing here. It is just an empty house. We can leave now."

Mma Ramotswe ignored the suggestion. She was studying a piece of yellowing paper which had been pinned to a wall. It was a newspaper photograph-a picture of a man standing in front of a building. There had been a printed caption, but the paper had rotted and it was illegible. She beckoned for Mma Potsane to join her.

"Who is this man?"

Mma Potsane peered at the photograph, holding it close to her eyes. "I remember that man," she said. "He worked here too. He is a Motswana. He was very friendly with the American. They used to spend all their time talking, talking, like two old men at a kgotla."

"Was he from the village?" asked Mma Ramotswe.

Mma Potsane laughed. "No, he wasn't one of us. He was from Francistown. His father was headmaster there and he was a very clever man. This one too, the son; he was very clever. He knew many things. That was why the American was always talking to him. The German didn't like him, though. Those two were not friends."

Mma Ramotswe studied the photograph, and then gently took it off the wall and tucked it into her pocket. Mma Potsane had moved away, and she joined her, peering into the next room. Here, on the floor, there lay the skeleton of a large bird, trapped in the house and unable to get out. The bones lay where the bird must have fallen, picked clean by ants.