Tears Of The Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith

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 Potsane. “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