He waved to her and made his way into the small building from which Mma Potokwani, as matron and general manager, ran the lives of the children under her care. She welcomed him warmly and enquired after the health of Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi.
‘Mma Makutsi is doing fine,’ he said. ‘She has a baby now.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘That is very good for her and for Mr Radiphuti. They will be very happy.’
‘They are, although Mma Ramotswe tells me that Phuti’s aunt has moved in. I think that is difficult for her.’
Mma Potokwani made a face. ‘That is a very sour woman, that aunt. I think she eats too many lemons.’ She paused. ‘And Mma Ramotswe, Rra? What about her?’
He suspected that she had sensed that something was wrong.
His reply was hesitant. ‘I think that in general she is all right, but…’
She waited for him to go on. He looked down at his hands. It was sometimes difficult for him, as a mechanic, to find the words that seemed to come easily to women.
‘Something is wrong, Rra,’ she prompted.
He drew in his breath. ‘Mma Potokwani, may I talk to you in private?’
She looked surprised. ‘Of course, Rra. There’s nobody else here. And remember I am a matron, and a matron hears all sorts of secrets. I could tell you, Rra! Only this morning there was…’ She stopped herself in time. ‘So you can talk, Rra.’
He looked awkward, and she made a further suggestion. ‘Why don’t we go for a walk, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni?’ she said. ‘It is easy to talk when you are walking.’
She did not wait for an answer, but rose and guided him out of her office. It was warm outside, but the afternoon sun was less oppressive than it had been earlier in the day and they were not uncomfortable. Mma Potokwani suggested that they follow a path that skirted round the edge of the grounds. This would enable them to see the children playing on the small sports field – now not much more than a square of parched and frazzled grass – and also to inspect the new vegetable patch that had been planted near the borehole.
Mma Potokwani did not walk fast. This was not because of any physical impediment, but because of her tendency to stop and examine what she came across; the ancient habit, he thought, of a matron who was used to inspecting and prodding things – and people – for whom she was responsible. So they stopped and looked at a gate that might need rehanging – if anybody could find the time to do it. And as she said this, she looked meaningfully at Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, who nodded meekly and made the offer she was expecting.
‘I should be able to do that some time,’ he said. ‘I can bring Charlie or Fanwell and they will give me a hand.’
‘That is very kind,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘I was not going to ask you, Rra, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘But since you offer, what about next week some time?’
He nodded.
‘But tell me, Rra,’ Mma Potokwani said. ‘What is the trouble? It is not a marriage thing, is it?’
He shook his head vigorously. ‘No, never that.’
‘I didn’t think it would be. I know that you and Mma Ramotswe are very happy.’
‘We are,’ he said. ‘But she is happy and unhappy, if you see what I mean.’
Mma Potokwani frowned. ‘I’m not sure that I do, Rra.’
‘I found her crying.’
She appeared to absorb this for a few moments. Then she asked why this was.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She said it was to do with sitting there and thinking about problems. She said that was why she was crying. But she normally never cries – not even when she has a whole lot of problems to think about.’
Mma Potokwani’s pace became even slower. ‘Do you remember what happened to you, Rra?’ she asked. Normally Mma Potokwani spoke in stentorian tones – the result of having to make herself heard over the voices of hordes of children; now her voice was softer, gentler.
Mr J. L. B. Matekoni was not sure what she was referring to. ‘Many things have happened to me,’ he said. ‘In fact, Mma, things happen to me every day.’
‘No, no, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. I am not thinking of ordinary things. I am thinking of when you were ill. Some years ago – remember?’
He stopped in his tracks. ‘Oh…’
Mma Potokwani was looking at him intently. ‘People get depressed, Rra – it is very common. One of the housemothers here had that happen to her just a few months ago. She sat and sat and thought about problems. One of the children came to me and said that the mother cried too much and sometimes could not manage to heat up their dinner. I knew what the trouble was.’
‘And this lady – how is she now?’
‘Good as new,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘I took her to the doctor and they knew what was wrong. It was the same thing that happened to you.’
‘That was thanks to Dr Moffat,’ said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni.
‘Yes,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘He is very kind.’
‘But I do not think she’s depressed,’ said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘She is eating as much as ever. She is keeping the house very well. She has no trouble with her sleeping. Dr Moffat told me that if you’re depressed you usually do none of those things.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Mma Potokwani.
‘I am very sure, Mma. She is still laughing. When I was depressed I did not do any laughing.’
They resumed their walk. They were now near the patch of grass and dust where a group of children were playing football. They were all wearing the khaki shorts and shirts of the classroom, but were barefoot. Two teams of six, running and wriggling with all the energy that young boys can muster, battled over a somewhat deflated old leather ball, urging each other on exuberantly and raising a cloud of dust that darted about the pitch like a tiny, localised tornado.
Mr J. L. B. Matekoni called out encouragement, and Mma Potokwani gave a good-natured wave of her hand.
‘Boys,’ said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘Their batteries never seem to run down, do they, Mma?’
‘No,’ said the matron. ‘They’re on the go all day. Non-stop. I think that…’ She broke off and turned to look at Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘Batteries, Rra.’
He made a gesture towards the boys. ‘Yes, look at them…’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Not the boys’. Mma Ramotswe’s batteries.’
He took a little while to reply. Then he said, ‘Her batteries are run down? Is that what you’re saying, Mma?’
‘You see, Rra, women have to do so much. They have to run a house. They have to look after children. They have outside jobs to go to as well. Nearly every woman has three or four jobs altogether if you add everything up.’
He understood that. ‘We men often just have one.’
‘That is so, Rra. You men work hard, but it is often only at one job.’ She paused. ‘Not that I’m criticising men, you understand, Rra. It’s just that sometimes it all gets too much for women and it would help a great deal if their husbands could be a little bit more modern.’
‘More modern, Mma?’
She tried to explain. ‘Modern husbands support their wives more. They help around the house. They pay more attention to their wives. They try to look a bit smarter for their wives, too. That helps, you know. If men go around looking very run-down and scruffy, then that is not nice for their wives. A modern husband takes that into account.’
‘Oh.’
‘And there’s another thing,’ said Mma Potokwani, warming to her theme. ‘A modern husband is more sensitive. He knows how his wife is feeling.’
‘I see.’
‘Not that I am looking at you when I say any of this, Rra.’
‘No. That is good.’
‘Except it might be an idea – just an idea, Rra – if you were to think about these things and see how you might become a bit more modern.’
He looked down at the ground. He would not claim to be modern and had never considered whether he might be at
fault in that regard. But he had come for Mma Potokwani’s advice, and he knew from his own experience of advising people about their cars that advice, once sought, should be followed if at all possible.
‘I have been reading in the newspaper about a course,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘It might help if you could go on that.’
‘I have heard of that course,’ he said, guardedly. Mma Ramotswe had told him about it after the woman in the baby supplies shop had mentioned it to her.
‘Do you think you might try it?’ asked Mma Potokwani. ‘If you took that, it could help Mma Ramotswe a lot. She would be very much cheered up by having a modern husband.’
He made up his mind. ‘You’re right, Mma Potokwani. I shall find out about this modern husbands course and go on it. It will make a big difference, I think.’
Mma Potokwani was pleased. ‘If you were able to take my husband too,’ she said with a sigh, ‘that would be very good. But I’m afraid there are some men who are too old-fashioned to benefit from courses like that.’
Mr J. L. B. Matekoni thought this was true. He enquired where the course was held, and Mma Potokwani explained that she believed it was held in the evening in one of the buildings at the university. ‘I’m sure they will find you a place, Rra,’ she said. ‘I have heard that they turn nobody away, not even the most unpromising men. All men can benefit, Rra.’
He went over those words in his mind. All men can benefit. It would make a wonderful slogan for anything – even for a beer advertisement. But he stopped this train of thought, as he suspected that modern husbands did not allow themselves to think such things, at least not in public.
Chapter Ten
Not a Lady With Many Enemies
I
f Mma Ramotswe had felt at all defeated – and she had, after all, found herself in tears at her desk – then that feeling was a temporary one. It was not in her nature to be morose or to engage in self-pity; she saw these things in others and was always sympathetic to those who felt that the world was in some respect too much for them, but was herself rarely in anything but an equable state of mind. So while the sight of her in a momentary low state was enough to trigger alarm in Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, Mma Ramotswe was, within a matter of minutes, back to normal. Yes, she was missing Mma Makutsi, and yes, it was not easy to run a detective agency by yourself and with nobody to bounce ideas off, but these setbacks were minor irritations compared with the lot of so many other people; and anyway, they were not destined to last. Mma Makutsi had said that she did not intend to take a long maternity leave, and even in the time that she was away Mma Ramotswe could still consult her on any matter on which she needed advice. And she would do that, she decided, over the next day or so: she would visit Mma Makutsi and see what she made of the troublesome case of the young man who claimed to be Liso Molapo and who might or might not be lying.
That thought gave her pause. The young man might be lying – that was certainly possible – but there was another aspect of the situation that had not occurred to her. If Liso was telling the truth, then did that necessarily mean that he was the real Liso Molapo? Or could it be that he was not lying, but still was not the person he said he was? That could be the case if he believed himself to be Liso Molapo, having been told that this was who he was, but all the while he was actually somebody else altogether? The possibility was enough to make her head ache, but now it had come to her, she had to think it through.
This, she told herself, was how it might work: eighteen years ago, Edgar Molapo’s brother – the one who lived in Swaziland – has a son, and he and his wife call this boy Liso. Then, in a terrible accident of the sort that is always happening on those mountainous Swazi roads, Liso loses his life. The father, in his misery, takes under his wing the child of one of the women working in his hotel. This woman has more children than she can manage – four or five, perhaps – and the grieving parents informally adopt one of these children and call him by the name they had given to their own son. Liso is replaced by a new Liso, who at the same time is Liso but is not Liso. Edgar, of course, thinks that the child is his nephew, and treats him accordingly. But he is not… or is he? If Edgar thought of him as Liso Molapo, his nephew, then when he made provision for him in his will, he was thinking of that actual child. And if that were so, then why should the young man who was treated as Liso Molapo not benefit from something that was meant for him – as a person, rather than as a name?
It was a possibility, she felt, but only a remote one, and it did not really bring her any closer to a solution. The problem with being a private detective was that people expected you to provide them with a clear-cut answer to their query. Sometimes that could be done, and Mma Ramotswe was able to provide a full account of exactly what happened, but there were many occasions on which that simply was not possible and a more tentative answer was all that could be given – or no answer at all. Some matters remained obstinately unresolved because that was what life was like. Not all the uncertainties we faced were capable of being resolved – there were many strings left untied; there were many events that happened and could not be explained; there were many injustices that remained injustices because we could not find out who had perpetrated them, or who could rectify them. As a child she had believed that wrongs would always be righted, that somehow the world would not let the innocent suffer, but now she realised that this was not true. Old oppressors were replaced by new ones, from another distant place or from right next door. Old lies were replaced by new ones, backed up by old threats. There had been so much suffering in Africa, and nobody had done a great deal to stop it. In some places the suffering continued: through wars fought by child soldiers, crying behind their guns; through famine and disease, quick to take root in the shanty towns that perched on the edge of plenty. People waited for intervention, for rescue, but it never came – or only rarely, and then too late. Contemplating this vast human suffering, you might be tempted to shrug your shoulders, but you could not. You had to try, thought Mma Ramotswe – you had to try to sort things out for others and point them in the direction of the truth that they were so anxious to find.
Now that she had resolved to talk to Mma Makutsi about the Molapos, the decision seemed to relieve her of the anxiety that had been building up around the case. And there were other everyday things to occupy her time and her mind, including the shopping. Men might believe that food appeared miraculously in the kitchen, but women, Mma Ramotswe included, knew better than that. They could hardly forget that there was a lot of trudging around shops to be done, and the choosing of this item rather than that one, which sometimes involved squeezing things to determine ripeness, or sniffing them to gauge freshness. This, she had noticed, was not something that men tended to do; they did not squeeze things in shops.
She decided that she would do some shopping and at the same time collect the mail, a task usually performed by Mma Makutsi. Letters were placed by the post office in serried banks of private boxes, each opened by the owners with small keys entrusted to them by the postal authorities. She could check her box, and the box rented by Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, before going on to the nearby shops. Then, if she felt in the mood – and that morning she thought she did – she could have a cup of coffee at the Equatorial and watch what was happening around the market stalls – which was always something interesting if one enjoyed people-watching, which she did.
Her walk from the post boxes to the supermarket took her directly past the premises of the Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon. As she approached, she saw that Mma Soleti was standing in the doorway, looking out at the concourse. Mma Ramotswe hesitated. She had not come up with any further advice for Mma Soleti and she felt vaguely guilty that she had not been able to offer her more comfort when she had received her threat. But what could she do? It probably really was best to ignore things like that, as the issuer of such a threat wanted a reaction and might lose interest if the victim did nothing. Yet if you were on the receiving end of hatred, inaction might seem a rather weak res
ponse. People wanted others to do something; to express their outrage, and not merely to say, as Mma Ramotswe had said, that they should let it be.
She took a deep breath and steeled herself. It would be easy to stick to the other side of the concourse and thus avoid Mma Soleti, but she could not do that. She would do her duty, which was to speak to her and find out whether anything else had happened. If another threat had been sent, then it might provide some clue as to the motives of the sender; or, of course, it might not, and in that case her advice would have to be the same.
The beautician had seen her and beckoned to her from her doorway. Mma Ramotswe waved back and began to make her way over towards the salon. Greetings were exchanged before Mma Soleti said, ‘You should come inside, Mma – it is too hot to stand outside.’
Mma Ramotswe looked up at the sky. ‘The rains will be here any day, Mma. We shall not have to wait long now.’
‘It is still too hot,’ said Mma Soleti. ‘And besides, there is something I need to talk to you about, Mma.’