“That place,” said Mma Makutsi as they drove past a small settlement called Serule. “That is the place where they have discovered uranium. I read about it in the Botswana Daily News. They are going to mine it some day. And then those people living in Serule will have a lot of uranium.”

“I do not want to have any uranium,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They are welcome to it.”

“Of course they won’t keep it. You do not need to keep uranium.”

“There are other things that have happened there,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Apart from finding uranium. I knew a man who came from Serule. He had a sister who did very well at school. High marks… like yours, Mma.”

The compliment pleased Mma Makutsi. She liked people to refer to her results, even if she tried to wear the ninety-seven per cent gracefully. “I see,” she said demurely. “And then?”

“The sister was a clever girl. So it was not just hard work. Some people get good results from working very hard, others from being very bright. These people do not have to work very much-they just get their good results. It’s like standing under a tree and waiting for the figs to fall into your arms.”

At first Mma Makutsi was silent. She was not sure if there was a barb in this remark. But she would let it pass anyway. “Standing under a fig tree is safe enough, Mma,” she said. “But you should never stand under a sausage tree.” The sausage tree, the moporoto in Setswana, was a sort of jacaranda that had heavy fruit like great, pendulous sausages.

“Certainly not, Mma. There are many people who are late now because of that. Those are very heavy pods, and if you get one on your head, then you are in great danger of becoming late.”

She used the expression that the Batswana preferred: to become late. There was human sympathy here; to be dead is to be nothing, to be finished. The expression is far too final, too disruptive of the bonds that bind us to one another, bonds that survive the demise of one person. A late father is still your father, even though he is not there; a dead father sounds as if he has nothing further to do-he is finished.

“This girl,” Mma Ramotswe continued, “was always doing well. People said, That girl is going to be an important somebody one day. She will be going to Gaborone, definite.”

Mma Makutsi frowned. She could tell which way this story was going, as it was an old story in Botswana, a theme repeated time and time again. The person who does well, who excels, is asking for trouble. “People were watching?” asked Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe confirmed the worst. “They were watching, Mma. They were listening too. There are always people who are watching and listening.”

Of course there are, thought Mma Makutsi. She had gone from Bobonong to Gaborone. She knew all about envy.

“Somebody-and they did not know who it was at first-put a spell on this girl.”

There was silence. To report the casting of a spell does not mean that you believe in the efficacy of spells. But spells were used, whether or not the rest of us believed in them; and somebody was prepared to believe in them. If that somebody were the victim, then the spell had worked. It was as simple as that. And people could be frightened to death by the knowledge that there was a spell on them; it happened regularly.

“How did she know?” asked Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe shrugged. “It is difficult to say. Spells are nothing-they don’t exist. So how do you tell when there is nothing there-just air? Maybe somebody spoke to her. That is how people come to know about spells. People say, They have bought some bad medicine to use against you. That sort of thing.” She did not like to think about it; that was the old Africa, not the Africa of today, and certainly not the Botswana she knew. And yet it was there; just as it was elsewhere in the world, everywhere, really, where underneath the modern and the rational there ran a dark river of unreason and fear.

“The girl told her family,” Mma Ramotswe continued. “They said that they had feared something like this would happen. And they tried to keep her in the house. They did not like her to go anywhere except the school. At nights they all slept in the same room with the girl at the back, so that any person who came into the house would have to step over other sleepers before they came to the one they were looking for.

“The mother went quietly to a witch doctor and bought something to protect the girl. Some useless mixture of ground bones and leaves-they love that sort of thing-made into a paste. She put this on the girl’s cheeks, although the girl said that she did not believe in this nonsense. The mother said, ‘And when something bad happens, will you not believe in it then?’ And the girl said, ‘All of this is part of a world that has gone now. It is no longer true, any of this.’”

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “Poor girl.”

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Because something bad did happen. She had an old aunt, this girl. Her parents said to her, ‘Do not visit your aunt now. Her place is far away. You will be in danger if you go.’

“The girl said that this was just superstition. ‘I am a strong girl,’ she said. ‘How can anything like that harm a strong girl in broad daylight?’ That is what she said, Mma, which is just the right thing for her to say. If more people said that sort of thing, then all this business could never flourish. It would die when it is out in the sun. It is a business that needs darkness and fear to stay alive.”

Their road was now almost deserted. It was lunchtime, and the sun was high in the sky overhead, casting short, vertical shadows. Before them, stretched out to the distant horizon on either side, was acacia-dominated scrub bush-mile upon mile of olive-green trees, like tiny umbrellas erected against the heat of the sun. And through the windows of the van, open to allow a draught of cooling air, came the noise of the cicadas, that high-pitched screeching that provided a constant background of sound for the African bush.

Light made all the difference. Under this midday sky fear and terror seemed very far away, but at night it was easy to imagine the presence of evil and its attendants, even here.

“The girl went to see her aunt. She walked a long way to see her, and then said goodbye to her aunt and began the walk back. It was mid-afternoon. But it was getting dark, because it was the rainy season-as it is now. There was lightning. The girl said later that she knew that she was going to be hit because she could smell the lightning before it came. People say that it has a smell, Mma, but I have never smelled it because I have never been close enough. I do not want to get so close to lightning that I shall be able to smell it-just as I do not want to get close enough to smell a lion’s breath.

“She started to run when the rain drew near, but the storm was too quick for her and it caught up with her. That is when she was struck by lightning, thrown to the ground and knocked out. They took her back to her place when they found her. They thought that she was dead because she did not move, not even to breathe, and they could see the burns on her clothes that told them what had happened. Her family wailed and wailed and called the headman to tell him what had happened. He said that it was difficult to go to the police in such cases because they could not tell who had put a spell on the girl. ‘And how can anybody prove anything?’ he asked. ‘This is the doing of lightning. You cannot arrest lightning.’

“That night the girl woke up. They screamed some more when they saw the body move, but they were happy too. The girl told them what had happened. ‘I have been dreaming since then,’ she said. ‘So that is what it is like to be late,’ her father said. ‘It is as if you are dreaming.’

“The girl’s mother had a good idea. She said, ‘Let’s go ahead with the funeral tomorrow because we have already killed the cow for the guests. But let us see if we can find out who put this spell on our daughter. If she wakes up at the funeral, we shall see who runs away, and we shall know who it is.’