“This is a trumpet, you know. I am a musician.”
She looked at the case. It had a sticker on it; a picture of a man playing a guitar.
“Do you like music?” he asked. “Jazz? Quella?”
She looked up, and saw that he was still smiling at her.
“Yes. I like music.”
“I play in a band,” he said. “We play in the bar at the President Hotel. You could come and listen. I am going there now.”
They walked to the bar, which was only ten minutes or so from the bus stop. He bought her a drink and sat her at a table at the back, a table with one seat at it to discourage others. Then he played, and she listened, overcome by the sliding, slippery music, and proud that she knew this man, that she was his guest. The drink was strange and bitter; she did not like the taste of alcohol, but drinking was what you did in bars and she was concerned that she would seem out of place or too young and people would notice her.
Afterwards, when the band had its break, he came to join her, and she saw that his brow was glistening with the effort of playing.
“I’m not playing well today,” he said. “There are some days when you can and some days when you can’t.”
“I thought you were very good. You played well.”
“I don’t think so. I can play better. There are days when the trumpet just talks to me. I don’t have to do anything then.”
She saw that people were looking at them, and that one or two women were staring at her critically. They wanted to be where she was, she could tell. They wanted to be with Note.
He put her on the late bus after they had left the bar, and stood and waved to her as the bus drew away. She waved back and closed her eyes. She had a boyfriend now, a jazz musician, and she would be seeing him again, at his request, the following Friday night, when they were playing at a braaivleis at the Gaborone Club. Members of the band, he said, always took their girlfriends, and she would meet some interesting people there, good-quality people, people she would not normally meet.
And that is where Note Mokoti proposed to Precious Ramotswe and where she accepted him, in a curious sort of way, without saying anything. It was after the band had finished and they were sitting in the darkness, away from the noise of the drinkers in the bar. He said: “I want to get married soon and I want to get married to you. You are a nice girl who will do very well for a wife.”
Precious said nothing, because she was uncertain, and her silence was taken as assent.
“I will speak to your father about this,” said Note. “I hope that he is not an old-fashioned man who will want a lot of cattle for you.”
He was, but she did not say so. She had not agreed yet, she thought, but perhaps it was now too late.
Then Note said: “Now that you are going to be my wife, I must teach you what wives are for.”
She said nothing. This is what happened, she supposed. This is how men were, just as her friends at school had told her, those who were easy, of course.
He put his arm around her and moved her back against the soft grass. They were in the shadows, and there was nobody nearby, just the noise of the drinkers shouting and laughing. He took her hand and placed it upon his stomach, where he left it, not knowing what to do. Then he started to kiss her, on her neck, her cheek, her lips, and all she heard was the thudding of her heart and her shortened breath.
He said: “Girls must learn this thing. Has anybody taught you?”
She shook her head. She had not learned and now, she felt, it was too late. She would not know what to do.
“I am glad,” he said. “I knew straightaway that you were a virgin, which is a very good thing for a man. But now things will change. Right now. Tonight.”
He hurt her. She asked him to stop, but he put her head back and hit her once across the cheek. But he immediately kissed her where the blow had struck, and said that he had not meant to do it. All the time he was pushing against her, and scratching at her, sometimes across her back, with his fingernails. Then he moved her over, and he hurt her again, and struck her across her back with his belt.
She sat up, and gathered her crumpled clothes together. She was concerned, even if he was not, that somebody might come out into the night and see them.
She dressed, and as she put on her blouse, she started to weep, quietly, because she was thinking of her father, whom she would see tomorrow on his verandah, who would tell her the cattle news, and who would never imagine what had happened to her that night.
Note Mokoti visited her father three weeks later, by himself, and asked him for Precious. Obed said he would speak to his daughter, which he did when she came to see him next. He sat on his stool and looked up at her and said to her that she would never have to marry anybody she did not want to marry. Those days were over, long ago. Nor should she feel that she had to marry at all; a woman could be by herself these days—there were more and more women like that.
She could have said no at this point, which is what her father wanted her to say. But she did not want to say that. She lived for her meetings with Note Mokoti. She wanted to marry him. He was not a good man, she could tell that, but she might change him. And, when all was said and done, there remained those dark moments of contact, those pleasures he snatched from her, which were addictive. She liked that. She felt ashamed even to think of it, but she liked what he did to her, the humiliation, the urgency. She wanted to be with him, wanted him to possess her. It was like a bitter drink which bids you back. And of course she sensed that she was pregnant. It was too early to tell, but she felt that Note Mokoti’s child was within her, a tiny, fluttering bird, deep within her.
THEY MARRIED on a Saturday afternoon, at three o’clock, in the church at Mochudi, with the cattle outside under the trees, for it was late October and the heat was at its worst. The countryside was dry that year, as the previous season’s rains had not been good. Everything was parched and wilting; there was little grass left, and the cattle were skin and bones. It was a listless time.
The Reformed Church Minister married them, gasping in his clerical black, mopping at his brow with a large red handkerchief.
He said: “You are being married here in God’s sight. God places upon you certain duties. God looks after us and keeps us in this cruel world. God loves His children, but we must remember those duties He asks of us. Do you young people understand what I am saying?”
Note smiled. “I understand.”
And, turning to Precious: “And do you understand?”
She looked up into the Minister’s face—the face of her father’s friend. She knew that her father had spoken to him about this marriage and about how unhappy he was about it, but the Minister had said that he was unable to intervene. Now his tone was gentle, and he pressed her hand lightly as he took it to place in Note’s. As he did so, the child moved within her, and she winced because the movement was so sudden and so firm.
AFTER TWO days in Mochudi, where they stayed in the house of a cousin of Note’s, they packed their possessions into the back of a truck and went down to Gaborone. Note had found somewhere to stay—two rooms and a kitchen in somebody’s house near Tlokweng. It was a luxury to have two rooms; one was their bedroom, furnished with a double mattress and an old wardrobe; the other was a living room and dining room, with a table, two chairs, and a sideboard. The yellow curtains from her room at the cousin’s house were hung up in this room, and they made it bright and cheerful.
Note kept his trumpet there and his collection of tapes. He would practise for twenty minutes at a time, and then, while his lip was resting, he would listen to a tape and pick out the rhythms on a guitar. He knew everything about township music—where it came from, who sang what, who played which part with whom. He had heard the greats, too; Hugh Masekela on the trumpet, Dollar Brand on the piano, Spokes Machobane singing; he had heard them in person in Johannesburg, and knew every recording they had ever made.
She watched him take the trumpet from its case and fit the mouthpiece. She watched as he raised it to his lips and then, so suddenly, from that tiny cup of metal against his flesh, the sound would burst out like a glorious, brilliant knife dividing the air. And the little room would reverberate and the flies, jolted out of their torpor, would buzz round and round as if riding the swirling notes.
She went with him to the bars, and he was kind to her there, but he seemed to get caught up in his own circle and she felt that he did not really want her there. There were people there who thought of nothing but music; they talked endlessly about music, music, music; how much could one say about music? They didn’t want her there either, she thought, and so she stopped going to the bars and stayed at home.
