whistled climbing up the dark stairs to my small flat that day. I was happy, happier than I’d ever been. My wedding was just a few days away and I was marrying a man who would be able to make every one of my wishes come true. That day I should have slowed down a bit and savoured the simple raw taste of pure happiness, because that sweltering December afternoon would be my last happy day for a long, long time. That day was the end of blind innocence and the beginning of bare, painful truth.
Carrying too many packages, I struggled to get the key in the lock of my apartment’s door. I was sweating in the stale heat of the flat and dropped the bags on the floor when I finally got inside. I reached to turn on the fan in the corner but then something caught my eye. I shut the door behind me without taking my eyes from the table in the centre of the kitchen. There was something there, something that hadn’t been there when I left.
I moved cautiously towards it. When I was near enough, I saw it was a knife. A knife I knew I hadn’t left there, I knife I’d never seen before. Who had been in my flat? Who could have left a knife on my kitchen table?
For a moment I panicked — maybe they were still there. I needed to check the bathroom and the bedroom, the only other rooms in the small flat. I crept toward the hall.
‘Who’s there?” I shouted into the unknown with a bravery I didn’t feel. Silence.
I continued. The bathroom? Empty. The bedroom? Empty, too. Relieved, I leaned against the frame of the door. Then who? Who left this knife on my table?
I went back to the kitchen, hesitating before picking up the knife, remembering police shows on TV where the detective took the knife in for evidence, finger prints and DNA analysis, always touching it with gloved hands, dropping it in a sealed plastic bag, I laughed at myself and my wild imagination. It was just a knife. No one had been murdered. There was no crime committed here; there would be no police. Someone left it here, that’s all — maybe I even had, without thinking. There were so many things on my mind with the preparations for my upcoming wedding, remembering a knife on the kitchen table could have easily slipped my mind.
I sat down on the cheap Formica chair and took it in my hand. It was a three star knife, very common; many people had them. It had a brown wooden handle with gold metal edging and three gold stars. It had once been broken and the end of the handle was held together with tightly wound black electrical tape. The blade, which could fold inside of the handle, was open. It was worn and had obviously been sharpened carefully to form a finely honed edge. I tried to fold the blade back inside, but because of the damage, it couldn’t close completely. I rolled it around in my hand trying to think of where it could have come from. Many people had been in and out of the flat in the past few days. It could be anyone’s.
Sometimes, for things to make sense, we push our own reality to the side and replace it with a more sensible one. Though I was positive the knife had not been there when I left, I convinced myself that it had. I told myself that my eyes had let me down, that my mind was playing tricks, that I was tired and forgetful. I was still holding the knife in my hand when I heard my cellphone ringing in my bag still with my packages on the floor near the front door.
I rushed to get it. ‘Hello?”
It was Michael, my soon to be husband. ‘Are you still out shopping?” he asked. His deep, careful voice settled my mind.
‘No, I’m home, I just got here.”
‘You sound funny; is something wrong?”
‘No, not really. It’s nothing, nothing at all.” I knew Michael didn’t like drama. He wanted sensibility. I’d gotten far on giving him what he wanted and a forgotten knife would not mess that up now.
‘Okay. Lefatshe, listen, my parents want to meet us tonight to discuss some last-minute details about the wedding. I’ll come and collect you at seven, is that okay?”
I agreed and hung up the phone picturing him sitting in his spacious office on the top floor of the building his father owned. He was the head of legal affairs at Moremi and Sons, the only Botswana-owned diamond prospecting company in the country. They now owned three diamond mines in Botswana, one in Namibia and one in South Africa. Michael Moremi was the eldest son of Matilda and Kgalalelo Moremi, their heir apparent, and the most eligible bachelor in the country. I still wasn’t sure how I had snatched him, a poor girl from a no-name family in Serowe. It was like a lovely, never-ending dream.
I dropped the knife in my handbag. I had decided I must ask my mother. It looked like something that she might have brought from the village, thinking she’d need it to chop vegetables or skin a goat at the wedding, despite the fact that I told her the army of workers at the Moremi farm in the Tuli Block, where the wedding would be held, would do the preparations. She’d stay in an air-conditioned luxury chalet along with the other visitors, taking game drives and eating seven-course meals. It wasn’t anything that she knew a wedding to be so until it smashed up against her long kept ideas, she’d hold tightly to what she knew and a three star knife would come in handy.
The platinum club
The 13th BTA/Anglo Platinum Short-Story Competition saw Botswana writer Lauri Kubuitsile take the R25 000 first prize for The Christmas Wedding. She also won the Platinum prize for creativity, a piece of platinum jewellery from the Djadji range.
Second was Trevor Crisp for The Landscape (R15 000). Jenny Robson took third (R12 000) for The Wordsmith, Tsireledzo Mushoma fourth (R8 000) for A New Beginning and Lourens Erasmus fifth (R5 000) for Football Farm.
Notably, Crisp is a 76-year-old who has not previously entered his writing in any competition. At the prize-giving ceremony, Erasmus received the encouraging news that his story, based on real life, has been optioned for film rights.
Entrants are asked ‘to write a gripping and original story of between 4 500 to 5 000 words”. Story quality and creativity are the key criteria and, uniquely, the competition acknowledges that many entrants are writing in their second or third language.