After putting the tray on the table, ReHlapi’s body language gave an impression that he’d walk back out.
“I thought you were going to sit with me?” Mamarato asked, while stirring her tea. She glanced up and was met by his questioning look. She quickly remembered that ReHlapi wore a hearing aid, she raised her voice. “I thought you were going to sit down and drink tea with me?”
ReHlapi smiled, struggling to decide. “I have to prune the roses before I go home, a stray cat may have stepped over them.”
“I see.” She hid her disappointment. She looked him up. “We did not talk much yesterday. I’m not used to us not talking.”
Her reminder seemed to cause him discomfort. He enjoyed talking to her but often found himself running out of things to say. He wished it weren’t so difficult. After all these years he did not know how to be friends with a woman. He came from the generation where a woman was either a man’s spouse or relative, anything in between was just complicated, if not discouraged.
Mamarato sipped her tea, and her face beamed. “It’s great,” she admitted, and seemed to savour the taste.
ReHlapi smiled, he enjoyed seeing this kind of reaction from her. He waited a moment before he spoke.
“Thank you for the scones, I finished them -” he scrambled for the word “- same time,” and then laughed at himself. “Don’t make them so tasty again because they don’t last for days like you intend.”
She gave a soft giggle and lowered the cup. “I’m glad you liked them, it was a new recipe,” she bragged.
“I knew it,” he said pleased that his suspicion had been correct for all this time. “I think I know all your recipes by now, Mamarato. You’ve been baking for me for years.”
Suddenly, his happy face became serious. “Your hands make delicious food Mamarato,” he told her. “Do you know what they say about someone like that?”
She glanced at him, and then minded her cup, as if the question did not rouse her curiosity. It felt great that she was getting a conversation out of him, ReHlapi was such a closed book. But once in a while he’d mention bits of his mischief as a youth. He did not talk about his life in prison. And whenever she probed about why a good man as he did not have a wife waiting at home, his explanation would bounce around until he changed the subject. The man was a mystery, perhaps it was the reason she was, for the shame of it, drawn to him.
“No, please, do tell,” she urged him. “What do they say about this type of person?”
His face brightened, then his eyes darted shyly before he faced her. “They say a person like that has a pure soul and a heart of gold.” He seemed to take pride in what he had said, as if the words were taken from a rare dictionary.
Mamarato pressed her lips and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, as if searching for an answer to a riddle. She was smitten by the man’s ‘heart of gold’ thing. She sipped her tea in an effort to conceal a faint smile.
She was delaying her response, hoping for the conversation to go on but ReHlapi killed the mood. “I must get back to work Mamarato, I believe my duty here is served,” he said hurriedly.
Tell us: Why do you think ReHlapi is so hesitant to talk to Mamarato?