There was a sudden silence, and it seemed as if a cloud had passed over the gathering. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s fork paused where it was, half way to his mouth, and Mma Ramotswe’s knife stopped cutting into a large piece of pumpkin. She looked up at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who held her glance only for a moment before he looked away.
“Oh that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is all a mistake. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was going to do a parachute jump, but now Charlie, the apprentice at the garage, has offered to do it instead. I have already spoken to Mma Potokwane about it and she is very pleased with the new arrangements. She said that she was sure that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would want to give that young man a chance, and I said I would ask him what he thought.”
They all looked at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, whose eyes had opened wide as Mma Ramotswe spoke.
“Well?” said Mma Ramotswe, returning to her task of cutting the pumpkin. “What would you like to do, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni? Would you like to give that boy a chance?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked up at the ceiling. “I could do, I suppose,” he said.
“Good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You are a very generous man. Charlie will be very pleased.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. “It is nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”
They continued with the meal. Mma Ramotswe noticed that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni appeared to be in a very good mood and made several amusing remarks about the day’s events, including a joke about a gearbox, which they all laughed at but which none of them understood. Then, when the plates were cleared away and the children were out of the room, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni left his chair and, standing over Mma Ramotswe’s chair, he took her hand and said, “You are a kind woman, Mma Ramotswe, and I am very lucky to have found a lady like you. My life is a very happy one now.”
“And I am happy too,” said Mma Ramotswe. She was not going to be a widow after all, and she had managed to make it seem as if it had been his decision. That was what men liked—she was sure of it—and why should men not be allowed to think that they were getting what they liked, occasionally at least? She saw no reason why not.
CHAPTER TEN
MR J.L.B. MATEKONI’S DREAM
MR J.L.B. Matekoni was, of course, immensely relieved that Mma Ramotswe had presented him with the opportunity to withdraw from the parachute jump. She had done it so graciously, and so cleverly, that he had been saved all embarrassment. Throughout that day he had been plagued by anxiety as he reflected on the position in which Mma Potokwane had placed him. He was not a cowardly man, but he had felt nothing but fear, sheer naked fear, when he thought about the parachute jump. Eventually, by mid-afternoon, he had reached the conclusion that this was going to be the way in which he would die, and he had spent almost an hour thinking about the terms of a will which he would draw up the following day. Mma Ramotswe would get the garage, naturally, and she could run it with Mma Makutsi, who could become Manager again. His house would be sold—it would get a very good price—and the money could then be distributed amongst his cousins, who were not well-off and who would be able to use it to buy cattle. Mma Ramotswe should keep some of it, perhaps as much as half, as this would help to keep the children, who were his responsibility after all. And then there was his truck, which could go to the orphan farm, where a good use would be found for it.
At this point he stopped. Leaving the truck to the orphan farm was tantamount to leaving it to Mma Potokwane, and he was not at all sure whether this was what he wanted. It was Mma Potokwane, after all, who had caused this crisis in the first place and he saw no reason why she should profit from it. In one view of the matter, Mma Potokwane would be responsible for his death, and perhaps she should even be put on trial. That would teach her to push people around as she did. That would be a lesson to all powerful matrons, and he suspected that there were many such women. Men would simply have to fight back, and this could be done, on their behalf, by the Attorney-General of Botswana himself, who could start a show trial of Mma Potokwane—for homicide—for the sake of all men. That would at least be a start.
Such unworthy thoughts were now no longer necessary, and after that glorious release pronounced by Mma Ramotswe at the dinner table, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni felt no need to plan his will. That night, after he had returned to his house near the old Botswana Defence Force Club, he contemplated his familiar possessions, not with the eye of one who was planning their testamentary disposal, but with the relief of one who knew that he was not soon to be separated from them. He looked at his sofa, with its stained arms and cushions, and thought about the long Saturday afternoons that he had spent just sitting there, listening to the radio and thinking about nothing in particular. Then he looked at the velvet picture of a mountain that hung on the wall opposite the sofa. That was a fine picture which must have taken the artist a great deal of time to make. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew every detail of it. All of this would go over to Mma Ramotswe’s house one of these days, but for the time being it was reassuring to see things so firmly and predictably in their proper place.
It was almost midnight by the time Mr J.L.B. Matekoni went to bed. He read the paper for a few minutes before he put out the light, drowsily dropping the paper by his bedside, and then, enveloped in darkness, he drifted into the sleep that had always come so easily to him after a day of hard work. Sleep was welcome; the nightmare that he had experienced had been a diurnal one, and now it was resolved. There was to be no drop, no plummet to the ground, no humiliation as his fear made itself manifest to all …
That was in the waking world; the sleeping world of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had not caught up with the events of that evening, with the release from his torment, and at some point that night, he found himself standing on the edge of the tarmac at the airport, with a small white plane of the sort used by the Kalahari Flying Club taxi-ing towards him. A door of the plane was opened, and he was beckoned within by the pilot, who, as it happened, was Mma Potokwane herself.
“Get in, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” shouted Mma Potokwane above the noise of the engine. She seemed vaguely annoyed that he was holding things up in some way, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni obeyed, as he always did.
Mma Potokwane seemed quite confident, leaning forward to flick switches and adjust instruments. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni reached to touch a switch that appeared to need attention, as an orange light was flashing behind it, but his hand was brushed away by Mma Potokwane.
“Don’t touch!” she shouted, as if addressing an orphan. “Dangerous!”
He sat back, and the little plane shot forward down the runway. The trees were so close, he thought, the grass so soft that he could jump out now, roll over, and escape; but there was no getting away from Mma Potokwane, who looked at him crossly and shook a finger in admonition. And then they were airborne, and he looked out of the window of the plane at the land below him, which was growing smaller and smaller, a miniaturised Botswana of cattle like ants and roads like thin strips of twisting brown thread. Oh, it was so beautiful to look down on his land and see the clouds and the blue and all the air. One might so easily step out onto such clouds and drift away, off to the West, over the great brown, and alight somewhere where the lions walked and where there were springs of water and tall trees and little sign of man.
Mma Potokwane pulled on the controls of the plane and they circled, hugging the edge of the town so far below. He looked down and he saw Zebra Drive; it was so easy to spot it, and was that not Mma Ramotswe waving to him from her yard, and Mma Makutsi, in her new green shoes? They were waving, smiling up at him, pointing to a place on the ground where he might land. He turned to Mma Potokwane, who smiled at him now and pointed to the handle of the door.
He reached out and no more than touched the door before it flew open. He felt the wind on his face, and the panic rose in him, and he tried to stop himself falling, holding onto one of the levers in the plane, a little thing that gave him no purchase. Mma Potokwane was shouting at him, taking her hands off the controls of the plane to shove him out, and now kicked him firmly i
n the back with those flat brown shoes which she wore to walk about the orphan farm. “Out!” she cried, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, mute with fear, slipped out into the empty air and tumbled, head over heels, now looking at the sky, now at the ground, down to the earth that was still so far away beneath him.
There was no parachute, of course, just pyjamas, and they were billowing about him, hardly slowing him up at all. This is how it ends, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, and he began to think of how good life had been, and how precious; but he could not think of these things for long, for his fall was over in seconds and he landed on his feet, perfectly, as if he might have hopped off an old orange box at the garage; and there he was, out in the bush, beside a termite mound. He looked about him; it was an unfamiliar landscape, perhaps Tlokweng, perhaps not, and he was studying it when he heard his father’s voice behind him. He turned round, but there was no sign of his father, who was there but not quite there, in the way in which the dead can come to us in our dreams. There was much that he wanted to ask his father, there was much that he wanted to tell him about the garage, but his father spoke first, in a voice which was strange and reedy—for a dead man has no breath to make a voice—and asked a question which woke up Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, wrenching him from his dream with its satisfactory soft landing by the termite mound.
“When are you going to marry Mma Ramotswe?” asked his father. “Isn’t it about time?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MEETING MR BOBOLOGO
MMA RAMOTSWE had not been ignoring Mma Holonga’s case. It was true that she had as yet done nothing, but that did not mean that she had not been thinking about how she would approach this delicate issue. It would not do for any of the men to discover that they were being investigated, as this would give offence and could easily drive away any genuine suitor. This meant that she would have to make enquiries with discretion, talking to people who knew these men and, if at all possible, engineering a meeting with them herself. That would require a pretext, but she was confident that one could be found.
The first thing she would have to do, she thought, was to talk to somebody who worked at Mr Bobologo’s school. This was not difficult, as Mma Ramotswe’s maid, Rose, had a cousin who had for many years been in charge of the school kitchen. She had stopped working now, and was living in Old Naledi, where she looked after the children of one of her sons. Mma Ramotswe had never met her, but Rose had mentioned her from time to time and assured her employer that a visit would be welcome.
“She is one of these people who is always talking,” said Rose. “She talks all day, even if nobody listens to her. She will be very happy to talk to you.”
“Such people are very helpful in our work,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They tell us things we need to know.”
“This is such a lady,” said Rose. “She will tell you everything she knows. It makes her very happy to do that. You will need a long, long time.”
There were many people like that in Botswana, Mma Ramotswe reflected, and she was glad that this was so. It would be strange to live in a country where people were silent, passing one another in the street wordlessly, as if frightened of what the other might think or say. This was not the African way, where people would call out and converse with one another from opposite sides of a road, or across a wide expanse of bush, careless of who heard. Such conversations could be carried on by people walking in different directions, until voices grew too faint and too distant to be properly heard and words were swallowed by the sky. That was a good way of parting from a friend, so less abrupt than words of farewell followed by silence. Mma Ramotswe herself often shouted out to the children after they had left the house for school, reminding Puso to be careful of how he crossed the road or telling him to make sure that his shoelaces were tied properly, not that boys ever bothered about that sort of thing. Nor did boys ensure that their shirts were tucked into their trousers properly, but that was another issue which she could think about later, when the demands of clients were less pressing.
Rose’s cousin, Mma Seeonyana, was at home when Mma Ramotswe called on her. Her house was not a large one—no more than two small rooms, Mma Ramotswe saw—but her yard was scrupulously clean, with circles traced in the sand by her wide-headed broom. This was a good sign; an untidy yard was a sign of a woman who no longer bothered with the traditional Botswana virtues, and such people, Mma Ramotswe found, were almost always unreliable or rude. They had no idea of botho, which meant respect or good manners. Botho set Botswana apart from other places; it was what made it a special place. There were people who mocked it, of course, but what precisely did they want instead? Did they want people to be selfish? Did they want them to treat others unkindly? Because if you forgot about botho, then that was surely what would happen; Mma Ramotswe was sure of that.
She saw Mma Seeonyana standing outside her front door, a brown paper bag in her hand. As she parked the tiny white van at the edge of the road, she noticed the older woman watching her. This was another good sign. It was a traditional Botswana pursuit to watch other people and wonder what they were up to; this modern habit of indifference to others was very hard to understand. If you watched people, then it was a sign that you cared about them, that you were not treating them as complete strangers. Again, it was all a question of manners.
Mma Ramotswe stood at the gate and called out to Mma Seeonyana. The other woman responded immediately, and warmly, inviting Mma Ramotswe to come in and sit with her at the back of the house, where it was shadier. She did not ask her visitor what she wanted, but welcomed her, as if she were a friend or neighbour who had called in for a chat.
“You are the woman who lives over that way, on Zebra Drive,” said Mma Seeonyana. “You are the woman who employs Rose. She has told me about you.”
Mma Ramotswe was surprised that she had been recognised, but further explanation was quickly provided. “Your van is very well-known,” said Mma Seeonyana. “Rose told me about it, and I have seen you driving through town. I have often thought: I would like to get to know that lady, but I never thought I would have the chance. I am very happy to see you here, Mma.”
“I have heard of you too,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Rose has spoken very well of you. She was very proud that you were in charge of those school kitchens.”
Mma Seeonyana laughed. “When I was in that place I was feeding four hundred children every day,” she said. “Now I am feeding two little boys. It is much easier.”
“That is what we women must do all the time,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am feeding three people now. I have a fiancé and I have two children who are adopted and who come from the orphan farm. I have to make many meals. It seems that women have been put in the world to cook and keep the yard tidy. Sometimes I think that is very unfair and must be changed.”
Mma Seeonyana agreed with this view of the world, but frowned when she thought of the implications. “The trouble is that men would never be able to do what we do,” she said. “Most men will just not cook. They are too lazy. They would rather go hungry than cook. That is a big problem for us women. If we started to do other things, then the men would fade away and die of hunger. That is the problem.”
“We could train them,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There is much to be said for training men.”
“But you have to find a man to train,” said Mma Seeonyana. “And they just run away if you try to tell them what to do. I have had three men run away from me. They said that I talked too much and that they had no peace. But that is not true.”
Mma Ramotswe clicked her tongue in sympathy. “No, Mma, it cannot be true. But sometimes men seem not to like us to talk to them. They think they have already heard what we have to say.”
Mma Seeonyana sighed. “They are very foolish.”
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. Some men were foolish, she thought, but by no means all. And there were some very foolish women too, if one thought about it.
“Even teachers,” said Mma Seeonyana. “Even teachers can be foolish sometimes.”
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Mma Ramotswe looked up sharply. “You must have known many teachers, Mma,” she said. “When you were working in that place you must have known all the teachers.”
“Oh I did,” said Mma Seeonyana. “I knew many teachers. I saw them come as junior teachers and I saw them get promotion and become senior teachers. I saw all that happening. And I saw some very bad teachers too.”
Mma Ramotswe affected surprise. “Bad teachers, Mma? Surely not.”
“Oh yes,” said Mma Seeonyana. “I was astonished over what I found out. But I suppose teachers are the same as anybody else and they can be bad sometimes.”
Mma Ramotswe looked down at the ground. “Who were these bad teachers?” she asked. “And why were they bad?”
Mma Seeonyana shook her head. “They came and went,” she said. “I do not remember all their names. But I do remember a man who came to the school for six months and then the police took him away. They said he had done a very bad thing, but they never told us what it was.”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “That must have been very bad.” She paused, and then, “The good teachers must have been ashamed. Teachers like Mr Bobologo, for example. He’s a good teacher, isn’t he?”
She had not expected the reply, which was a peal of laughter. “Oh that one! Yes, Mma. He’s very good all right.”
Mma Ramotswe waited for something more to be said, but Mma Seeonyana merely smiled, as if she were recalling some private, amusing memory. She would have to winkle this out without giving the impression of being too interested. “Oh,” she said. “So he’s a ladies’ man, is he? I might have suspected it. There are so many ladies’ men these days. I am surprised that there are any ordinary husbands left at all.”
This brought forth another burst of laughter from Mma Seeonyana, who wiped at her eyes with the cuff of her blouse. “A ladies’ man, Mma? Yes, I suppose you could say that! A ladies’ man! Yes. Mr Bobologo would be very pleased to hear that, Mma.”