Mma Makutsi thought about this. There were so many decisions we made that at the time seemed very minor matters, but that could change the whole shape of our lives. “Yes, Mma, you are right. In my case, if I had not forgotten my pencil box at school and gone back for it one afternoon, we would not be sitting here today. That little decision to go back and fetch it changed my life.”
Mma Ramotswe was interested. The gloom that had descended on the office seemed to have lifted now, and it seemed that they were getting back to normal; this meandering conversation had restored their spirits, and a cup of red bush tea would do the rest. “Tell me about it, Mma. Tell me what happened, while you are putting on the kettle.”
Mma Makutsi rose from her desk and filled the kettle at the sink in the corner of the room. It was a story that she had told others countless times, but had not related to Mma Ramotswe. “I had left my pencil box behind and could not do my homework. I was sixteen then and I was just about to sit my Cambridge, so it was very important that I did lots of work. So I turned round and began to walk back towards the school. It was a hot day, Mma, I remember that. It was really hot.
“It took me about half an hour. When I reached the school, it was quiet. You know how schools are when everybody has gone home. There is a smell of chalk and just that silence, silence, nothing.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. Silence, silence, nothing. Yes, that was it.
“I was worried that the classroom doors would be locked, but they were not. In those days we didn’t worry about locking, did we, Mma? Nobody locked anything in Botswana. The whole country had no locks on it.”
Again Mma Ramotswe nodded. The whole country had no locks on it. Mma Makutsi was right; she often expressed herself in an unusual way, but she was right. The whole country had no locks on it; yes, that was true, and we loved one another then. We still do, of course, Mma Ramotswe thought, but it is different. Perhaps there was not so much love as there was in those days. Perhaps our love was running out.
Mma Makutsi stood beside the kettle, watching it. A watched kettle… thought Mma Ramotswe, but did not give voice to the proverb. Mma Makutsi liked to question proverbs and would point out that of course watched kettles did boil—eventually.
They were back in Bobonong. “I went into the classroom,” Mma Makutsi continued, “and I found my pencil box. Then, as I was leaving, one of the teachers came in. She was surprised to see me, and at first I think that she thought I was stealing something. But when I told her that I had just come in to fetch my pencil box she understood. She was a nice teacher, that one; I had always liked her.
“She had an envelope in her hand and she took a leaflet out of it. ‘I have just received this,’ she said. ‘It is from the Botswana Secretarial College. They are writing to us about a scholarship they have set up—for half the fees. The principal is from up here, from Bobonong, and she wants a bright girl from this school to apply, somebody whose work is very neat.’
“It took me a few moments to realise that she was suggesting me. Nobody had ever thought before that I could win something, and now this teacher was saying that I could be the girl who got that scholarship. My heart was like this, Mma, big like this. I was very happy.”
Mma Ramotswe was touched by this story. “You must have been very happy, Mma. And you won that scholarship?”
Mma Makutsi nodded. “Yes, I won it. And my family paid the other half of the fees. They sold some animals to do it. They sold some goats.”
Mma Ramotswe knew what that meant. The sale of cattle, of goats, inevitably took a family closer to the edge of survival; it was a serious matter. “They must have been very proud of you, Mma. And they must be proud too, now that you are engaged to a man like Phuti Radiphuti…”
She had meant to be reassuring, but it was the wrong thing to say; one had to be so careful with Mma Makutsi, who could so readily take things the wrong way. The younger woman’s face crumpled. “But what are we going to do, Mma Ramotswe?” she wailed. “Phuti is coming back from Serowe in a couple of days. He has been up there on business. What am I to do when he comes back? I cannot face him and tell him that I have destroyed our expensive new bed. I cannot face him, Mma Ramotswe. What will he think of me?”
Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment. Phuti seemed to her to be an understanding man; surely he would not be vindictive about the loss of a bed. But then, men were unpredictable; even outwardly mild men could suddenly become unreasonable. She pointed to the teapot. “First things first, Mma,” she said. “Tea helps us to think things through.”
They sat with their cups of tea. Mma Ramotswe took a sip of red bush, and Mma Makutsi raised her cup of ordinary tea to her mouth, anxiously, unenthusiastically.
“I could tell him,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I could do it. If you are too embarrassed, then let me tell him. That is the simplest solution.”
“Oh, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “If you would do that…I know that I am being a coward, but if you would do that.”
“It is not cowardice to be weak,” said Mma Ramotswe. She stopped herself. That was not quite what she had intended to say, but Mma Makutsi seemed either not to have noticed or not to have taken offence, so Mma Ramotswe left it at that.
RARELY HAD Mma Ramotswe’s life been quite so complicated, but at least she knew what to do about it. The next morning, after sending a message to Mma Makutsi through Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to the effect that she would be in late that day, or perhaps even not at all, she drove her tiny white van along Zebra Drive, out into the traffic of Mobutu Drive, and headed for Mochudi, on the old road. That was the road she knew well, the road she had travelled so many times before, as a child, as a young woman, and now, although still the same person in many respects, as an established and well-known citizen, the wife of a much-admired mechanic, the owner of a business with a staff of two and a half (if one counted Mr. Polopetsi). Mr. Polopetsi…It saddened her just to think about it. But that, she supposed, was often the case with anonymous letters: they came from somebody one knew, and when they were signed, as they often were, A Friend, that was indeed the case.
But as she drove along the Mochudi Road, passing each land-mark—that tiny rural school with the stony yard and the crumbling whitewash; that normally dry river course, now with a muddy trickle of water from the previous day’s rain; that graveyard just off the road with its tiny shelters, umbrella-like, above each grave, so that the late people down below might be protected from the sun—as she drove along this road with all its memories, she put out of her mind the things that had been worrying her. For out here, out in the acacia scrub that stretched away to those tiny island-like hills on the horizon, the concerns of the working world seemed of little weight. Yes, one had to earn a living; yes, one had to work with people who might have their little ways; yes, the world was not always as one might want it to be: but all of that seemed so small and unimportant under this sky. The important thing, and really the only thing, Mma Ramotswe told herself, is that you are breathing and that you can see Botswana about you; that was the only thing that counted. And any person, no matter how poor he might be, could do that. Any woman might drive her tiny white van along this road and feel the warm breeze on her face. That was the important thing.
And now, coming into Mochudi, the place where she was born, she followed the road that led round the back of the hill which overlooked the village. There was a choice of trees under which to park, and she picked the one that looked the shadiest. Then, without asking herself why she should be here and why she should seek out that place at the edge, where the rock stopped and there was several hundred feet of tumbling nothing in front of you, she made her way over to that place and looked down. This was where she had come with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni when he had been recovering from his depressive illness—his sadness as he now called it—and they had sat together. This was where, many years before, she had played with her friends as a child, daring each other to go closer to the edge, risking the ire of the teacher who had banned them from going
anywhere near the void. This was where she could sit and hear the sound of the cattle bells drifting up from below. This was where she could always find peace.
She sat, doing nothing, staring out over the plain below. If, when viewed from above like this, our human striving could seem so small, then why did it not appear like that when viewed from ground level? And as she thought this, she allowed her mind to turn to the problems in hand. The question of Mr. Polopetsi was the most serious of these, she felt, but here, in this light, he was no problem. If envy had driven him to write what he had written, then there was a very simple remedy for that. Love. She would tell him that she was sorry that he had been hurt into writing those letters. She would promote him. So that solved that.
Then there was Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and his determination to take Motholeli to Johannesburg. Of course it was hopeless: this doctor, whoever he was, had no business raising Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s hopes like that. There was nothing that could be done for Motholeli—that had been made quite clear by the doctors at the Princess Marina when they had done their scan. They had shown her the results and pointed to the place they thought was responsible. They said that if there had been a tumour, which could be operated upon, it would have shown. But there was nothing. A diagnosis by elimination, they explained: there had been damage caused by infection, by something nobody could see. They had been firm in their view that this was the explanation, and so too had they been firm in their view that Motholeli would never walk. That had to be accepted, and this doctor was simply raising hopes that would have to be dashed. And when she had probed, and got Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to admit it, she had uncovered the doctor’s motivation: money. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had not revealed how he would pay, but here, on this rock, payment seemed not to be the issue. Let him do what he wished. If he wanted to take Motholeli to Johannesburg, then he should be allowed to do so. What was the point of striving to stop somebody from doing something when the sky was as large as this and when you could see, on the dry land stretching out below, the first touches of green from the rains?
And Mma Makutsi and her bed? That was simple; hardly a problem at all. She should tell Phuti Radiphuti the truth, because that was what he was owed; but the truth would include the fact that Mma Makutsi was afraid to speak to him about what she had done. Mma Sebina and her lies? Simple too: she must be treated as if she was telling the truth, because that was what she thought it was. Everything, in fact, was very clear, and very untroubling. In such a way might worries be lifted, allowing them to float up of their own accord, float up off one’s shoulders and disappear into the high sky of Botswana, so empty, so white, that it made one feel dizzy simply to look at it.
She rose to her feet and for a moment felt unsteady. It would be so easy to fall, she thought, to go over the edge in that moment of disorientation that can come when you suddenly stand up and the blood rushes from the head. But the feeling passed, and she was steady enough as she took one last look at the land down below, the piece of this earth that she knew so well. Then she picked her way across the rocks to the place where the tiny white van was parked, got into it, and began the drive back to Gaborone. The landmarks of her journey earlier that day would repeat themselves in the opposite order: graveyard, riverbed, whitewashed school, home. The wrong order for a journey, thought Mma Ramotswe, and smiled.
CHAPTER TEN
THE DOCTOR’S HOUSE
MR. J.L.B. MATEKONI had not told Mma Ramotswe that he had set up an appointment for Motholeli to see the doctor from Selebi-Phikwe. He did not wish to deceive her, but his suspicion that she would not approve had been proved right.
“There is no point,” she said. “We know that, Rra. We have been told.”
He had rehearsed his arguments to the contrary, and he had used them. There was such a thing as a second opinion, he pointed out; there were plenty of cases in which one doctor had given up and then another doctor had achieved a cure. Were there? she asked. And did he know of anywhere this thing that Motholeli had, this precise thing, had been cured?
He knew that he was no match for Mma Ramotswe; it was something to do with the sort of mind she had, a detective’s mind, which would always come up with arguments that he, a mere mechanic, would never be able to refute. But there were second opinions, and he held his ground.
“It’s the same with cars,” he argued. “If you brought a car into the garage and Charlie told you that he thought you needed a new gearbox, wouldn’t you want a second opinion? And might not that second opinion be quite different from Charlie’s?”
That was a powerful example, as far as it went; but Mma Ramotswe did not think that it went very far. “Charlie is not a proper mechanic, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni,” she said. “Nobody would listen to his opinion in the first place.” She paused, letting the point sink in. She was being gentle here, because she knew that he wanted desperately to believe that this doctor could do something. “Those doctors at the Princess Marina knew what they were doing. And Dr. Moffat as well. He said the same thing too, didn’t he? Wouldn’t you prefer to listen to Dr. Moffat rather than Charlie?”
He had let the matter ride at that, but he was still determined, and the next day he had lifted Motholeli gently into his truck.
“It’s best if you don’t discuss this with Mma Ramotswe,” he had said to her. “There is a doctor I would like you to see, but I don’t think Mma Ramotswe likes him very much.”
Motholeli had been puzzled. “Why does she not like him?” she asked. “Is he unkind?”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni laughed. “Of course not! He is a very kind doctor who has said that he will just take a look at your legs to see if there is anything he can do to help. He probably won’t be able to do anything, I’m afraid, but I think we should see him, don’t you?”
She did. She had become reconciled to being in a wheelchair, adapting in the way children will adapt to virtually any adversity. This, in her eyes, was how the world was, and she had neither moped nor railed against her illness. At the same time, she still dreamed that she could walk, and these dreams came quite frequently; not daydreams, but sleeping dreams in which she suddenly slipped out of the wheelchair and simply walked like other children.
“I am happy to see this doctor,” she said. “I know…”
“Yes,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “We must not go with any hopes. But we can at least go.”
Now, sitting in the passenger seat of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck, Motholeli gave an anxious glance at her wheelchair, which was in the open back of the vehicle and was bouncing about as the truck negotiated the dirt road which led to the doctor’s house.
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni reassured her that it would be safe. “We are almost there,” he said. “That is Mr. Mgang’s house over there, you see, and that means we are only a mile from the doctor’s place.”
The road curved round to the right, back in the direction of town. On either side of the road was scrub bush of a neglected and desolate nature, half-heartedly grazed by a small herd of thin cattle, dusty even after the first fall of rain, dotted with stunted acacias and discouraged thorn bushes. The road was now little more than a track, so deeply rutted in the centre that it was safer to drive with the wheels on one side up on the thick verge of sand. A lesser vehicle might quickly be bogged down and sink in this sand, but not Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck, with its wide tyres and its low-ratio gears.
The doctor’s gate appeared without warning in the fence. Beyond it, another track, but not a very long one, leading to the house itself, which was set down beside a small stand of eucalyptus trees; a house which must once have been a farmhouse, back in the nineteen-fifties, in Bechuanaland Protectorate days, before Botswana. Along the front of the house ran a verandah, with squat white-painted pillars supporting a sloping tin roof that had been painted deep red. Here and there, where the weather had made its mark, the paint had worn off and the corrugated surface of the tin below was revealed, rusty patches of discolouration. A single telephone wire ran from the roof of the h
ouse to a pole by a water tank, and then to another pole, marching off to join other wires near the side of the road. Oddly, inconsequentially, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni muttered, “That carried my voice.” And Motholeli, looking up, said, “What?”
“That telephone wire,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “It carried my voice when I phoned the doctor to make your appointment.”
She frowned. “Yes. And is that him, that man? Is that the doctor?”
He had come out and was watching them from the shade of the verandah, a tall man, his tight greying hair looking almost white against the dark of his skin.
“Where is he from?” asked Motholeli. “Is he a Motswana?”
“He is half Motswana,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Motswana mother, Zambian father. But he has lived here a long time. He is a very clever doctor, I think. He is called Dr. Mwata.”
They parked by the side of the house and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni unloaded the wheelchair from the back. Then he picked up Motholeli and helped her gently into the chair. This is why I am here, he thought; this is why I have come here.
Dr. Mwata had emerged from the verandah and was looking down at Motholeli. “So this is the young lady,” he said.
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni fingered the crease on his trousers. He had changed out of his garage clothes into freshly ironed khaki trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt. “She is called Motholeli,” he said. “She…” He tailed off. He was awed by the doctor’s presence, which was a powerful one; by his big hands; by the gold-rimmed glasses he wore; and by the fact that he was a man of education, a graduate of a university somewhere, the beneficiary of years of training.
“Come inside,” said the doctor. “This way.”