Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Read Online Free PDF

waiting for the
bus that would go that way later on. I fell asleep from the heat, and was woken
by the sound of a car drawing up.
    It was a large car, an American car,
I think, and there was a man sitting in the back. The driver came up to me and
spoke to me in Setswana, although the number plate of the car was from South
Africa. The driver said that there was a leak in the radiator and did I know
where they might find some water. As it happened, there was a cattle-watering
tank along the track to my cattle post, and so I went with the driver and we
filled a can with water.
    When we came back to put the water in the
radiator, the man who had been sitting in the back had got out and was standing
looking at me. He smiled, to show that he was grateful for my help, and I
smiled back. Then I realised that I knew who this man was, and that it was the
man who managed all those mines in Johannesburg—one of Mr
Oppenheimer’s men.
    I went over to this man and told him who I
was. I told him that I was Ramotswe, who had worked in his mines, and I was
sorry that I had had to leave early, but that it had been because of
circumstances beyond my control.
    He laughed, and said that it was good
of me to have worked in the mines for so many years. He said I could ride back
in his car and that he would take me to Mochudi.
    So I arrived back in
Mochudi in that car and this important man came into my house. He saw Precious
and told me that she was a very fine child. Then, after he had drunk some tea,
he looked at his watch.
    “I must go back now,” he said.
“I have to get back to Johannesburg.”
    I said that his wife
would be angry if he was not back in time for the food she had cooked him. He
said this would probably be so.
    We walked outside. Mr
Oppenheimer’s man reached into his pocket and took out a wallet. I turned
away while he opened it; I did not want money from him, but he insisted. He
said I had been one of Mr Oppenheimer’s people and Mr Oppenheimer liked
to look after his people. He then gave me two hundred rands, and I said that I
would use it to buy a bull, since I had just lost one.
    He was pleased
with this. I told him to go in peace and he said that I should stay in peace.
So we left one another and I never saw my friend again, although he is always
there, in my heart.

    CHAPTER
THREE
    LESSONS ABOUT BOYS AND GOATS
    O BED RAMOTSWE installed his cousin in a room at the
back of the small house he had built for himself at the edge of the village
when he had returned from the mines. He had originally planned this as a
storeroom, in which to keep his tin trunks and spare blankets and the supplies
of paraffin he used for cooking, but there was room for these elsewhere. With
the addition of a bed and a small cupboard, and with a coat of whitewash
applied to the walls, the room was soon fit for occupation. From the point of
view of the cousin, it was luxury almost beyond imagination; after the
departure of her husband, six years previously, she had returned to live with
her mother and her grandmother and had been required to sleep in a room which
had only three walls, one of which did not quite reach the roof. They had
treated her with quiet contempt, being old-fashioned people, who believed that
a woman who was left by her husband would almost always have deserved her fate.
They had to take her in, of course, but it was duty, rather than affection,
which opened their door to her.
    Her husband had left her because she
was barren, a fate which was almost inevitable for the childless woman. She had
spent what little money she had on consultations with traditional healers, one
of whom had promised her that she would conceive within months of his
attentions. He had administered a variety of herbs and powdered barks and, when
these did not work, he had turned to charms. Several of the potions had made
her ill, and one had almost killed her, which was not surprising, given its
contents, but the barrenness remained and she knew that her