Mma Mateleke glanced at her watch. She did not seem particularly interested in this conversation. “Maybe,” she said. “There are many instances of bad behaviour, but I do not think that we have time to talk about them right now.” She turned to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Could you take a look, Rra, and see what is wrong with this car of mine?”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni moved towards the car and opened the driver’s door. He would never mention the fact to Mma Mateleke, but he did not like her car. He found it difficult to put his finger on it, but there was something about it that he distrusted. Now, sitting in the driver’s seat and turning the key in the ignition, he had a very strong sense that he was up against electronics. In the old days—as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni called everything that took place more than ten years ago—you would never have had to bother very much about electronics, but now, with so many cars concealing computer chips in their engines, it was a different matter. “You should take this car to a computer shop,” he had been tempted to say on a number of occasions. “It is really a computer, you know.”
The ignition was, as Mma Mateleke had reported, quite unresponsive. Sighing, he leaned under the dashboard to find the lever that would open the bonnet, but there was no lever. He turned to unwind the window so that he could ask Mma Mateleke where the lever was, but the windows, being electric, would not work. He opened the door.
“How do you get at the engine on this car?” he asked. “I can’t see the lever.”
“That is because there is no lever,” she replied. “There is a button. There in the middle. Look.”
He saw the button, with its small graphic portrayal of a car bonnet upraised. He pressed it; nothing happened.
“It is dead too,” said Mma Mateleke, in a matter-of-fact voice. “The whole car has died.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni climbed out of the car. “I will get it open somehow,” he said. “There is always some way round these things.” He was not sure that there was.
Mr. Ntirang now spoke. “I think that it is time for me to get on with my journey,” he said. “You are in very good hands now, Mma. The best hands in Gaborone, people say.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was a modest man, but was clearly pleased with the compliment. He smiled at Mr. Ntirang, almost, if not completely, ready to forgive him his earlier display of bad driving. He noticed, though, an exchange of glances between Mma Mateleke and Mr. Ntirang, glances that were difficult to read. Was there reproach—just a hint of reproach—on Mma Mateleke’s part? But why should she have anything over which to reproach this man who had stopped to see that she was all right?
Mr. Ntirang took a step back towards his car. “Goodbye, Rra,” he said. “And I hope that you get to the bottom of this problem. I’m sure you will.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni watched as the other man got into his car and drove off. He was interested in the car, which was an expensive model, of a sort that one saw only rarely. He wondered what the engine would look like, mentally undressing the car. Mechanics did that sometimes: as some men will imagine a woman without her clothes, so they will picture a car engine without its surrounding metal; guilty pleasures both. He was so engaged in this that Mr. Ntirang was well on his way before Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni realised that the red car was being driven back to Gaborone. Mma Mateleke had said, quite unambiguously, that Mr. Ntirang had been on his way to Lobatse, and Mr. Ntirang had nodded—equally unambiguously—to confirm that this was indeed true. Yet here he was, driving back in the direction from which he had come. Had he forgotten where he was going? Could anybody be so forgetful as to fail to remember that they were driving from Gaborone to Lobatse, and not the other way round? The answer was that of course they could: Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni himself had an aunt who had set out to drive to Serowe but who had turned back halfway because she had forgotten why it was that she wanted to go to Serowe in the first place. But he did not think it likely that Mr. Ntirang was liable to such absent-mindedness. It was his driving style that pointed to this conclusion—he was a man who very clearly knew where he was going.
CHAPTER TWO
TEAPOTS AND EFFICIENCY
MMA MATELEKE may not have been endowed with great mechanical knowledge, but her assessment that there was no life left in her engine proved to be quite correct.
“You see,” she said, as they settled down to the trip back to Gaborone, her car travelling behind them like a half-welcome hitchhiker, its front wheels hoisted up on the back of the towing truck, “you see, I was right about the engine. Dead. And what am I going to do now, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni? How am I going to cope with no car? What if somebody starts to have a baby, and I have to wait for a minibus to come along? And the minibus says, ‘We’re not going that way, Mma, but we can drop you nearby.’ What then? You can’t say to a mother, ‘Please wait, Mma, until I get a minibus that is going near you.’ You can’t say that because I can tell you one thing, Rra, that I’ve learned over the last fifteen years. One thing. And that thing is that you cannot tell a baby when is the right time to come into this world. That is something the baby decides.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni listened politely. He knew that Mma Mateleke had a tendency to talk at great length; indeed, he could always tell when Mma Ramotswe had been to see her friend because she inevitably came back not only exhausted but also disinclined to say very much. “Mma Mateleke has done all my talking for me today,” she once said. “I cannot say anything more until tomorrow. Or maybe the day after that. It has all been said.”
Mma Mateleke looked out of the window. They were passing a road that led off to the west, one of those rough, dirt roads that was more holes than surface, but which had served people and cattle, as well as the occasional wild animal, year after year. It had served, and would continue to do so until it was washed away in some heavier-than-usual rainy season, and people would forget that anybody ever went that way. “That road,” observed Mma Mateleke, “goes to a place where there is a woman I know well, Rra. And why do I know this woman well? Because she has had fifteen children, can you believe it? Fifteen. And fourteen of them are still here—only one is late. That one, he ate a battery, Rra, and became late quite quickly after that. He was not right in the head.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni frowned. Was eating a battery always fatal, or did it depend on the battery? Did it matter if the battery was charged, or flat? These were the questions that popped up in his mind, but he knew that they were the questions a man would ask and a woman would not, and he should not raise them. So he confined himself to saying, “That is very sad, Mma. Even if you have sixteen children, it is still sad to lose one.”
“Fifteen,” corrected Mma Mateleke, in a rather school-marmish way. “She had fifteen, and now has fourteen. And no husband, by the way. All the children are by different fathers.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni shook his head. “That is very wrong,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed Mma Mateleke. “What happened to marriage, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni?”
“I am married,” he said. “I am very much in favour of it.” He paused. He was thinking of what he had witnessed at the site of the breakdown. What was that man—Mr. Ntirang or whatever he was called—what was he doing coming down to see that Mma Mateleke was all right? He recalled what he had imagined Mma Ramotswe might have said, had he told her about Mr. Ntirang’s bad driving: That man is having an affair. Was he? Was that why he was rushing down to Lobatse, to meet his lover—none other than Mma Mateleke?
He glanced at Mma Mateleke, sitting beside him. She was an attractive woman, he decided, although an unduly talkative woman would never have appealed to him personally. Yet there were some men who liked that sort of woman, who got nothing but pleasure from listening to the incessant chatter of their wife or girlfriend. Some men even found that exciting in a physical way … He bit his lip. He could not imagine being interested in that way in somebody like Mma Mateleke; how would one ever get to plant a kiss on such a person if she was always talking? It would be difficult to get one’s lips into contact with a mou
th that was always opening and shutting to form words; that would surely be very distracting for a man, he thought, and might even discourage him to the point of disinclination, if that was the right word. But it did not do to think about these things, he felt; it was no business of his whether or not Mma Mateleke was having an affair with Mr. Ntirang, and this was not even altered by the fact that she was married—apparently happily—to a part-time reverend, of all people. This reverend was popular and highly thought of, and even broadcast every now and then on Radio Botswana, when he would talk on a programme called From the Pulpit. It is no business of mine, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni; my business is to fix cars, just as it is Mma Mateleke’s business to bring babies into the world.
No, it was none of his business to speculate, but he could still ask Mma Mateleke how her husband was, which he did, and she replied, “My husband is in very good health, thank you, Rra.”
The answer came quickly, and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni found himself wondering whether it was not perhaps a little bit on the dismissive side, as if she wished to preclude any further discussion of the reverend. The words thank you can sometimes be uttered in that way, meaning No further discussion, please, as in: I am quite all right, thank you very much.
“I am glad to hear that he is well,” he said. “That is good.”
“Yes,” said Mma Mateleke. “That is good.”
There was a silence. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni took the opportunity to wind down the window on the driver’s side. Then he said, “He must be very busy. A popular reverend is always busy, isn’t he? Even if he is part-time.”
Mma Mateleke nodded. She was looking out of the window on her side. “There is always something happening,” she said. “People forget that he is part-time, and that he has a business to run as well. They get married and die and do all these things that need reverends. And he has to think about what he is going to say in his sermons on the radio. That is very hard work, of course, because you cannot go on the radio and say any old thing, can you?”
He shook his head. “That is very true. You cannot say the first thing in your mind when you know that the whole country is listening.”
“If it’s listening,” said Mma Mateleke. “I think there are many people who turn off the radio when my husband’s programme comes on.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni frowned. This was a strange thing for a wife to say; surely if one’s spouse was on the radio one should be a bit more loyal in one’s remarks. It was a very odd remark, but he decided to make light of it. “Those will be the bad people,” he said. “Bad people do not like to listen to reverends on the radio. They make them feel guilty. So all the bad people turn off at the same time—click, click, click.”
He looked at her sideways, expecting her to laugh, or at least smile, at his observation. But she did not. She was looking out of the window again, and he was not sure that she had heard him.
“It is his birthday next week,” she said suddenly. “I shall make him a very special cake. He is turning forty, you see, and I am planning a special party for him.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni felt relieved. That settled that, he thought. If Mma Mateleke were having an affair, then she would hardly be talking about making a special effort for her husband’s birthday. This was not the way a woman in that situation behaved. He felt guilty about his suspicions; if everybody who saw a married woman talking to a strange man were to draw the conclusion that there was something going on, then ordinary life would become quite impossible. He would be unable to talk to Mma Makutsi, for example, and she to him. And Mma Ramotswe would be unable to talk to the apprentices—especially Charlie, whom any husband might very readily assume was up to no good, with those shoes of his and the sunglasses that he affected, even on an overcast day and, as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had once observed, at night. No, there was nothing at all to justify any suspicions, and he should stop thinking this way. And yet … why had Mma Mateleke’s friend changed course so readily from Lobatse to Gaborone? No matter which way he looked at it, that did not make sense. He would talk to Mma Ramotswe; she knew about these things, and if there was an innocent explanation—which surely there must be—she could be expected to find it.
AS MR. J.L.B. MATEKONI was driving Mma Mateleke and her unresponsive car back to Gaborone, in the offices of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Mma Makutsi, assistant detective and graduate summa cum laude of the Botswana Secretarial College, was busy making the mid-morning tea. As usual, she was preparing red bush tea for her employer and ordinary tea for herself, using a special teapot for each purpose. The two teapots were the same colour, an indeterminate brown, but there was a distinguishing feature: Mma Ramotswe’s teapot was considerably larger. Mma Makutsi, who had been used all her life to having very little, and accepted this with the quiet resignation that such people often possess, had never questioned this arrangement. Mma Ramotswe was, after all, the proprietor of the agency, and the owner of both pots. But she had recently asked herself whether it would not make more sense for the red bush tea, which was required in smaller quantities, to be brewed in the smaller teapot, while the ordinary tea might be made in the larger pot, since it was not only for her own consumption, but was also drunk by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, by his unqualified assistant, Mr. Polopetsi, and by the two apprentices, Charlie and Fanwell. It was unusual for all of these to present themselves for tea at the same time, but it sometimes did happen. Then it was necessary for Mma Makutsi to brew another pot, while the resources of Mma Ramotswe’s commodious teapot were barely called upon.
She had been silent, but now she decided to broach the subject. At the Botswana Secretarial College, where she had obtained the hitherto unheard-of result of ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations, Mma Makutsi had been taught that it was always better to raise issues of office procedure rather than to brood over them. “There is nothing worse, ladies, than muttering about something,” said the lecturer. “If something is wrong, then raise it. Not only is that better for you—nursing a grudge makes you far less efficient in your work—but it is also much better for your boss. So spit it out, and always remember this: a problem shared is a problem solved.” Or had she said, A problem shared is a problem halved? It was difficult to remember these things when there were so many proverbs jostling to give advice. Locusts do not land only on the land that belongs to your neighbour. The person who lies by the fire knows how hot it is … And so on; all of these sayings were undoubtedly true, but might still quite easily be forgotten—until the moment you found yourself doing exactly the thing that the proverb warned you against.
Perhaps there was a saying warning you against questioning the size of another’s teapot; something like, A teapot is only as large as it needs to be, or Do not talk about the size of another’s teapot when … No, this was nonsense, Mma Makutsi decided, and there was no reason at all why she should not raise the matter with Mma Ramotswe, who was reasonable, after all, and full of proverbs too.
“I’ve been thinking,” she began.
Mma Ramotswe looked up from her desk. She smiled. “Thinking? We all have a lot to think about, I suppose.”
Mma Makutsi busied herself with the kettle. “Yes, Mma. You know how sometimes a good idea comes to you? You don’t necessarily think about it deliberately, but it just comes. And there you have your idea.”
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And what idea do you have, Mma Makutsi? I’m sure it will be a good one.” She was always polite—and encouraging too; a lesser employer might have said, Thinking? There is work to do, Mma! Or, even more discouragingly, I am the one to do the thinking round here, Mma!
Mma Makutsi glanced at Mma Ramotswe. There was no trace of sarcasm in her voice; Mma Ramotswe did not believe in sarcasm. “This idea is about teapots. About efficiency and teapots. Yes, it’s about those two things.”
“Good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Anybody who could invent a more efficient teapot would be doing a great service to …” She paused, before concluding: “to all tea-drinking people.”<
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Mma Makutsi swallowed; sometimes it was easier to deal with a hostile reaction rather than a welcoming one. “Well, I don’t think I could invent a new teapot, Mma. I am not that sort of person. But—”
Mma Ramotswe interrupted her with a laugh. “Anybody can invent something, Mma. Even you and I—we might invent something. You do not have to be a scientist to invent something very important. Some inventions just happen. Penicillin. You know about that?”
Mma Makutsi saw the conversation drifting away from teapots. “I was wondering …”
“We were taught about penicillin in school,” Mma Ramotswe mused. “At Mochudi. We were taught about the man who found penicillin growing in …” She tailed off. Again, it was hard to remember, even if she could see herself quite clearly in the school on the top of the kopje overlooking Mochudi, with the morning sun coming through the window, illuminating in its shafts of light the little flecks of floating dust; and the voice of the teacher telling them about the great inventions that had changed the world. Everything, all these great things, had happened so far away—or so it seemed to her at the time. The world was made to sound as if it belonged to other people—to those who lived in distant countries that were so different from Botswana; that was before people had learned to assert that the world was theirs too, that what happened in Botswana was every bit as important, and valuable, as what happened anywhere else.
But where had that doctor grown the penicillin that was to save so many lives? In his garden? She thought not. It was in his laboratory somewhere, perhaps in a cup of tea that he left on a windowsill, as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had done once and Mma Ramotswe had discovered it, months later, when the half-finished liquid had turned to green mould.
“In a cup of tea,” she said hesitantly. “Maybe. Or in a saucer, perhaps.”