Читать книгу The Girl Who Married A Lion - Alexander McCall Smith - Страница 6

hen I was a very young girl in Mochudi I listened to stories just like the ones in this book. They were told to me by my father’s aunt, who was very old then, and who is now late. She was a very kind woman, and she knew many stories, which she had told to my father, Obed Ramotswe, when he was a small boy. That is how these stories are remembered in Botswana, and in many other countries in Africa.

When I hear these stories they make me sad. That is not because they are stories of sad things that have happened, it is because they remind me of the Africa of my childhood and of all the good things that there were then. Everybody feels a little bit sad when they think of their childhood, because the world we knew then seems so far away. Looking back is like looking through a window which is covered with dust: you can just make out the faces, but nothing is very clear.

But then you hear these old stories – the stories that you heard so many times – and suddenly everything comes back. You are there again, sitting with your aunt outside her house, and it is quiet, and the sky is empty and the sun is on the land. And you think: I am a lucky person to be here, to be listening to these things that happened in another place, just round the corner, in the days when the animals could speak. And the sadness goes away and your heart is full again.

I shall put this book on my desk and read it when there is nothing much to be done in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. And I shall choose one of the stories and ask my assistant, Mma Makutsi, whether she remembers it. And she will laugh, and say yes, and we shall think about that story while the kettle is boiling and we are preparing our tea. That is what we shall do.

Precious Ramotswe,

No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,

behind Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, Tlokweng

Road, Gaborone, Botswana