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frightened, but decided that to refer to anxiety, rather than fear, was more polite—at this stage.
    He kept his eyes fixed on the ground. His hands were clasped together on his lap; now she saw them tighten involuntarily. “It is not easy to talk about some things,” he muttered.
    “Of course it isn’t, Rra. I know that. I have many people who come to me who find it very hard. I understand that very well.” She paused, watching the effect of her words. “But do you know something, Rra? Talking about it—just saying a few words—is often enough to help. Words can make big things little, you know.”
    He lifted his gaze. There was still fear in his eyes, she thought; every bit as much fear as there had been at the beginning of their meeting.
    “I am a farmer,” he said quietly.
    “Yes?”
    She waited for him to say something more, but he was silent.
    “You told me that you lived just south of town,” she prompted. “But you did not say where.”
    “Over there,” he said, indicating vaguely. “It’s off the Lobatse road. Half an hour.”
    “Cattle?” she asked.
    “Of course.” Everyone had cattle, Mma Ramotswe included.
    “I was not always a farmer,” he continued. “I worked for many years with a mining company. I was in charge of recruitment.”
    She nodded. “My father was a miner … over on that side.” She inclined her head in the direction of South Africa.
    “That was hard,” he said.
    “Very. But he came back to Botswana. Then he became late.” She realised that she had, in these few words, summed up the life of the man who meant more to her than any other. Yet anybody’s life story could be told in such a way, her own as much as anyone else’s. She had married a bad man and then been abandoned. She had lost her baby. She had loved her father, and when he died shehad opened a detective agency. She had married again, this time to a good man. That was her life in a few sentences.
    He started to talk again. “I was left some money by my uncle, and I had also saved hard. So I had enough to stop working for the mining company and buy a small farm. It is not bad land—not the best, but it is good enough for me. We—that is my wife and I—were very happy with it. I bought some cattle and have been living down there.”
    She nodded encouragingly. It was the commonest dream in Botswana: a small patch of land to call one’s own and a herd of cattle. A man who achieved that had achieved everything. Of course it was beyond the reach of most, and sights were lowered accordingly. A share in a small herd of cattle, even half a cow, was as much as many could aspire to. She had been in a room once, a single room lived in by a family struggling to survive financially, and had seen, pinned on the wall, a grubby photograph of a cow. She had known immediately that this was the family’s most precious possession—the thing that transformed that mean room into a home.
    “So I have had some cattle,” Mr. Moeti went on. “Then one died.”
    “I am sorry, Rra.”
    “Thank you.” He went on: “It did not die of any disease, Mma. Its legs were cut. Like this.” He made a sawing motion against his wrist. “It went down on the ground and I found it the next morning. This thing, you see, happened at night.”
    This thing happened at night.
The words made her shiver.
    “And then, a week or so ago, it happened again. Another beast down. Same reason.” He looked at her. “Now you see, Mma, why I am anxious. That is the thing that is making me anxious.”
    “Of course. Oh, Rra, this is very bad. Your cattle …”
    “And it could get worse,” he muttered. “If somebody cuts the legs of your cattle, then might they not cut your legs too?”
    She was quick to reassure him. “Oh, I don’t think so, Rra.”
    “Don’t you, Mma?” There was a note of desperation in his voice. “You may not think that here in the middle of Gaborone, in this place with all its sunlight. But would you say that at