Read Online Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith - Free Book Online Page A

homes on selected outings (accompanied, of course)? For some days after he had listened to the interview, Phuti Radiphuti had worried about being swept aside, and had experienced a vivid and uncomfortable dream—a nightmare, really—in which he was indeed swept aside by a large feminist with a broom. It was an unpleasant experience, tumbling head over heels, covered with a cloud of dust, in the face of the frightening woman’s aggressive brush-strokes.
    He looked at Mma Makutsi as she cut at a piece of meat on her plate. She wielded the knife expertly, pushing the cut meat onto her fork. Then the fork was before her mouth, which opened wide to receive the food before the teeth came together. She smiled at him and nodded to his plate, encouraging him to get on with his meal.
    Phuti looked down at his plate. It had just occurred to him that Mma Makutsi might be a feminist. He did not know why he should think this. She had never threatened to sweep him away, but there was no doubt about who had been in charge when they had danced together at the Academy of Dance and Movement. Mr Fano Fanope had explained that it was always the men who led in ballroom dancing, but Phuti had found himself quite unable to lead and had willingly followed the firm promptings of Mma Makutsi’s hands planted on his shoulders and in the small of his back. Did this make her a feminist, or merely one who could tell when a man had no idea of how to take the lead in dancing? He raised his eyes from his plate and looked at Mma Makutsi. He saw his reflection in the lenses of her large round glasses, and he saw the smile about her lips. Perhaps it would be best to ask her, he thought.
    â€œMma Makutsi,” he began, “there is something I should like to ask you.”
    Mma Makutsi put down her knife and fork and smiled at him. “You may ask me anything,” she said. “I am your fiancée.”
    He swallowed. It would be best to be direct. “Are you a feminist?” he blurted out. His nervousness made him stumble slightly on the word “feminist,” making the letter “f” sound doubled or even tripled. His stammer had been vastly improved since his meeting with Mma Makutsi and her agreeing to marry him, but occasions of stress might still bring it out.
    Mma Makutsi looked a bit taken aback by the question. She had not been expecting the topic to arise, but now that she had been asked there was only one answer to give.
    â€œOf course I am,” she said simply. Her answer given, she stared at him through her large, round glasses; again she smiled. “These days most ladies are feminists. Did you not know that?”
    Phuti Radiphuti was unable to answer. He opened his mouth to speak, but words, which had recently been so forthcoming, seemed to have deserted him. It was an old, familiar feeling for him; a struggle to articulate the thoughts that were in mind through a voice that would not come, or came in fits and starts. He had imagined a future of tenderness and mutual cherishing; now it seemed to him that he would face stridency and conflict. He would be swept aside, as he had been swept aside in that dream; but there would be no waking up this time.
    He looked at Mma Makutsi. How could he, who was so cautious, have been so wrong about somebody? It was typical of his luck; he had never been noticed by women—it would never be given to him to be admired, to be looked up to; rather, he would be the target of criticism and upbraiding, for that is what he imagined feminists did to men. They put them in their place; they emasculated them; they derided them. All of this now lay ahead of Phuti Radiphuti as he stared glumly at his fiancée and then down again at his plate, where the last scraps of food, a mess of potage in a sense, lay cooling and untouched.

CHAPTER FIVE

    MORE CONVERSATIONS WITH SHOES
    T HIS IS A VERY BUSY DAY,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, wiping his hands on a small piece of