“It depends on the light,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. He spoke seriously, and did not intend his remark to be barbed: it really did depend on the light, he thought. Strong sunlight, especially when it came from such an angle that it glinted off Mma Makutsi’s glasses, was not flattering. But when the light was weaker—at dusk, for example—then her high cheekbones stood out in an interesting way. He had noticed that and had even once mentioned the fact to Mma Ramotswe, who had said nothing, but had looked at him in a way which suggested that he should return to working on his cars. Women did not like men to discuss the appearance of other women, although they liked to do so themselves, he had noticed; and no woman would object to a man’s discussing her own appearance, in complimentary terms of course.
Mma Ramotswe was loyal. “Mma Makutsi is pretty in every light, I think. When I said ‘but,’ I was about to say that there are some people who think that her glasses are too big.”
“I am one of those,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Are big glasses more powerful than small glasses? I do not think so: it is what is in the glass that counts, not how much glass there is.” He paused. “But her eyes are quite big, aren’t they? Have you seen them, Mma Ramotswe? They are big, like the eyes of a kudu.”
Mma Ramotswe felt uncomfortable at the direction the conversation was taking. She had not intended that they should get into such a detailed discussion of Mma Makutsi’s appearance, and she decided that it was time to return to the subject of the dowry.
“This bogadi business,” she said. “I have never been sure about it, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had paid ten cattle for Mma Ramotswe. Was she now offering to give them back? “Those ten cattle I paid,” he began. “Ten good cattle. Fat ones…”
The cattle had certainly been large, sweet-smelling beasts who had been specially fed on bales of lucerne bought at some expense from over the border; they had grown fat and their coats had shone with health. They were a worthy tribute to Mma Ramotswe, and although three had been taken by one of her uncles, and another had been slaughtered for the marriage feast of one of her cousins, those that remained were out at her cattle post and by all accounts doing well.
She made it clear that it was not those cattle she was talking about. The negotiations that had preceded their marriage had been model ones, with her family readily agreeing to what was proposed by the aged uncle who had acted for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. No, that was not the sort of case that concerned her; she was worried about those cases where the husband had great difficulty in finding the means to pay the bride price. People got themselves into debt; they spent money which should have been spent on other things. But most of all she thought that the whole idea made women seem like property—things that could be bought.
“Would it not be better if a man did not have to pay for his wife?” she asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I am not one to disturb old customs unnecessarily, but wouldn’t it be better?”
Rather to her surprise, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was quick to agree. “Yes. It would be better. You pay for a car, you do not pay for a wife.”
Mma Ramotswe looked at him with admiration. “That is a very modern view, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni,” she said, almost adding “for a man,” but not doing so. Men could be modern too, she reminded herself.
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni now added something instead. “Of course, you cannot take a wife back as you can take a car back. There is a difference there.”
Mma Ramotswe frowned. She was not sure why he had said this or what it meant, but she decided not to seek clarification. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni generally meant well, and was respectful of women—unlike the apprentices.
“What’s worrying me,” she said, “is the negotiations. Did you hear that Mma Makutsi’s uncle has been down in Gaborone?”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had not heard this. “Nobody tells me about these matters,” he said. “I did not know that.”
“Well, he has been. He is a very odd-looking man with a broken nose. I caught a glimpse of him when I dropped her off after work one afternoon. He came to the gate.”
“There are some strange people up there,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Bobonong, isn’t it?”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “That is where they are from. Not all people from up there are like that, but sometimes…”
“I wonder how his nose was broken,” mused Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I knew a mechanic once who had a car door slammed on his nose. It was a very bad thing to happen.”
Mma Ramotswe drew in her breath sharply. “On his nose?”
“Yes,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “It was very sore, I think.”
Mma Ramotswe was puzzled. “But how did it happen? Why was his nose in the way?” She could understand how fingers got slammed in car doors, but it would be difficult, she thought, to get one’s nose in the wrong place.
“He was leaning into the car,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And I think that his nose was quite a long one.”
For a moment neither of them spoke. There were many dangers in this world, and the longer one journeyed through life the more one understood how varied these dangers were. That, thought Mma Ramotswe, was why one worried more and more about others: one could imagine the manifold disasters that might befall them. And she did not want anything unpleasant to happen to others; Mma Ramotswe wished ill on nobody. In particular, she would not wish that any man, no matter how long his nose, should suffer indignity and pain on that account.
She brought the conversation back to Mma Makutsi’s uncle. “He is a greedy man, I fear. He has asked for too much.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. “That is exactly what an uncle should not do,” he said. “It makes everything very complicated.”
“Exactly.” Mma Ramotswe paused. “You said eight cattle for Mma Makutsi?”
“That would be about right,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “She is a competent lady. She is educated. And the Radiphuti family can easily afford eight cattle.”
“All of that is true,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But in this case, do you know what he asked for?”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni tried to put himself in the position of the uncle from Bobonong. Such a man would be very impressed by the Double Comfort Furniture Shop. He would not know about overheads and bad debts and all the things that sapped the profits of a business. In the mind of an uncle from Bobonong, an uncle with an unsophisticated, broken nose, the owner of a large store would be unimaginably wealthy, and have many cattle. “Twenty?” he ventured. Twenty would be an outrageously large bogadi; far more than Mma Makutsi was worth.
“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. And then, with the air of one disclosing a scandalous fact, “Ninety-seven.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s eyes revealed his surprise. But then he remembered, and he began to smile. A wily uncle indeed; one who had absorbed the salient facts of family history.
“Because…” he began.
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Because.”
Then they both laughed.
CHAPTER FIVE
COULD ONE REND THE HEART IN TWO?
HOW, Mma Ramotswe asked herself, do you put together the story of a life when you don’t know the very beginning—who your parents were?
She looked past Mma Makutsi’s unattended desk, out through the window and onto the branches of the acacia tree outside. It was the morning following the conversation with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni in which they had discussed the absurd demands of Mma Makutsi’s uncle, and she was by herself. Mma Makutsi would be in the office that morning, but only later on: she had arranged with Mma Ramotswe to come in at eleven, after the delivery van had delivered her new bed.
“A new bed?” Mma Ramotswe had asked. “That is very good.”
She spoke without thinking why it should be particularly good to receive a new bed, but a moment’s subsequent thought justified the comment. Many people, she felt, did not have a good night’s sleep, and this was often because they did not have a good bed. And if you did not have a good night’s sleep
, it showed in the way you behaved towards others. Some of her clients, she thought—the irritable or irascible ones—probably did not have a good bed, and would have been much improved by a night or two in a more comfortable place; not that she could tell them that, of course.
She imagined the scene. “I think I know the answer to your problem, Rra,” she would say. “It is in your bed. That is where the answer lies.”
Such advice would not be well received, and could well be misinterpreted. The client might take it as a disparaging reference to a wife or husband, for example, and it could be awkward explaining that the solution lay in the mattress rather than in any person upon the mattress. Mind you, that was often the case too, she suspected, but she could not say that either.
Mma Ramotswe sighed and took a sip from her cup of bush tea. She had been obliged to make the tea herself, in the absence of Mma Makutsi, and this brought home to her the implications of Mma Makutsi’s marriage, if it ever took place. Her assistant had spontaneously assured her that becoming Mrs. Phuti Radiphuti would make no difference to her career, and that she had every intention of continuing to work as an associate detective, but Mma Ramotswe wondered about this. She did not doubt the sincerity of Mma Makutsi’s assurance—Mma Makutsi would never lie to her—but she wondered whether the distractions involved in being married to a man with a large furniture store would simply prove too much for her assistant. And if that were to be the case, then who would make the tea in the agency? And who would collect the mail, and do the filing, and answer the telephone? And who would go out to buy doughnuts from the Lucky Chance Tuck Shop round the corner on Friday mornings, when they treated themselves?
There were so many respects in which Mma Makutsi would be missed—not only in those practical ways, but in ways connected with the moral support she gave Mma Ramotswe and in the inspiration which so often flowed from their casual discussion of a troubling case. Mma Makutsi tackled problems from a slightly different angle than did Mma Ramotswe, and asked slightly different questions. That perspective often led to a solution, and cut short the time which Mma Ramotswe would otherwise have spent on a case. It would be sorely missed, as would the tea and the doughnuts, and all the rest.
Now, for instance, in the absence of Mma Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe was having to work out for herself how she might approach the case of Mma Sebina, with her hidden past and her unknown relatives. If Mma Makutsi had been there, she might well have said something which would trigger a productive line of inquiry. But she was not, and there was no point in speculating what she might have said. Or was there?
Mma Ramotswe closed her eyes for a moment and imagined her assistant at her desk.
“Now then, Mma Makutsi,” she muttered. “What do we have here? We have Mma Sebina, who now knows that her mother was not her mother and her father was not her father. So that means that—”
“Wait a moment, Mma,” said the imaginary Mma Makutsi. “All you know, Mma Ramotswe, is that the late mother told somebody that she was not the mother. Does that mean we can say for sure that Mma Sebina was not the daughter of that lady? Does it really mean that, Mma?”
It was an unexpected question, but it made Mma Ramotswe pause. She had often taken Mma Makutsi to task for assuming things too readily, and now here was her assistant accusing her of exactly the same thing.
Her eyes still firmly shut, Mma Ramotswe spread her hands in a gesture of acceptance. “You’re quite right, Mma,” she said. “It is possible that the mother—that is, the lady who was known as the mother—was really the mother after all and was lying when she told that other lady that she was not. That is possible, I think.”
Mma Makutsi shook her head. “No, Mma,” she said. “You have misunderstood me. Perhaps the lady who said that the other lady said that thing—perhaps that is the lady who was making up the story. That is what I meant.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “Why, of course! A real mother would not lie about such a matter, particularly when she was very ill and would shortly be called to account for all her lies, if she had any. She would not lie then, even if she had been a liar before, would she?”
“Excuse me, Mma.” It was not Mma Makutsi’s voice, but another voice altogether, and Mma Ramotswe opened her eyes with a start. Mr. Polopetsi, the general assistant at the garage and their occasional helper in the agency, was standing in the door, framed by the morning sunlight, an empty mug in his hand.
“I heard you talking,” he said. “And I knocked. Like this. Knock, knock. But you did not hear me. You were busy talking to…to…”
His embarrassment was evident, and Mma Ramotswe, although herself embarrassed to have been found talking to herself, sought to reassure him.
“To Mma Makutsi,” she said. “I was talking to Mma Makutsi, Rra.”
Mr. Polopetsi glanced at Mma Makutsi’s empty desk. “I see.”
Mma Ramotswe laughed. “No, she is not there, Mr. Polopetsi. There is no Mma Makutsi. I was thinking of what I would say to her, you see. I was imagining that we were talking to one another. But she is not there…as you can see,” she ended lamely.
“No, she is not there,” said Mr. Polopetsi, advancing towards the teapot. “That is correct. She is not there, Mma.”
“Exactly,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But I closed my eyes to imagine that she was there, because I needed to know what she would think about something.”
“I see,” said Mr. Polopetsi as he filled his mug with tea from Mma Ramotswe’s teapot. “But who is this lady who has no mother?”
Mma Ramotswe looked at the man standing before her and watched him take a sip of his freshly poured tea. There was something vulnerable about Mr. Polopetsi that always made her feel slightly sorry for him. But she liked him, and indeed had liked him from the time when they had first met in those inauspicious circumstances almost two years previously. Mma Ramotswe had inadvertently knocked him off his bicycle when she was driving to Tlokweng in her tiny white van. She had picked him up, driven him home, and arranged for the repair of the buckled bicycle wheel. After that, she had persuaded Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to take him on as an assistant in the garage—a role in which he had quickly showed his worth. Since then, if there was not enough work for him in the garage, he had helped in the agency, not on major cases—if any of their cases could be called major, which was doubtful—but on small inquiries, particularly on those which required a man rather than a woman. Mma Ramotswe could not go into a bar, for example, without attracting attention, whereas a slight man like Mr. Polopetsi could slip into a bar virtually unnoticed.
“The lady without a mother is a new client,” she explained. “Her name is Mma Sebina. She is an orphan.”
“We are all orphans,” said Mr. Polopetsi. “I am an orphan. And you too, Mma Ramotswe, you are an orphan.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “Yes, I suppose we are. But it is different for us. We know who our late parents were. This lady is not sure who they were, and that is what she wants me to find out.”
Mr. Polopetsi blew across the rim of his mug to cool the tea. A small wisp of steam was caught in a beam of sunlight from the window, then vanished. “I suppose that is something we all want to know,” he said reflectively. “Have you noticed how people seem very interested in these family things when they get older? Sixty is when it starts. That is when they really want to know who were their parents’ parents and the parents of those ones before them. Right, right back to Chief Sechele’s days.” He paused, sipping at his tea. Mma Ramotswe noticed how he puckered his lips when he sipped; like a bushbuck drinking from the water, she thought. But perhaps we were all like some animal or another, not just Mr. Polopetsi, who looked so much like one of those timid creatures one saw in the bush at the side of the road, ready to dart off into the undergrowth. And of course she had run him down, just as people sometimes ran small antelope down on the bush roads.
“Mind you,” continued Mr. Polopetsi, “mind you, I can understand why people want to find these things out. If you’ll be joining the an
cestors, it’s useful to know who the ancestors are before you meet them.”
Mma Ramotswe stared at him in surprise. Mr. Polopetsi was a modern man, who had been a pharmacy assistant. He knew about chemicals and the like, and here he was talking about the ancestors. Usually if educated people believed in such things they were discreet about it. It was not fashionable to go on about the ancestors in public.
She decided to ask him directly. “Do you think that it’s true, Rra? Do you think that the ancestors are up there, waiting for us?”
Mr. Polopetsi looked into his mug. Mma Ramotswe watched him and suppressed an irreverent thought. It was as if he was searching for ancestors there, in his mug of bush tea.
“The ancestors,” he began portentously. “The ancestors…”
She waited for him to continue, but he was silent, as if defeated by the sheer weight of the topic, or of the ancestors, perhaps.
“I think that they are with us,” she said. “They are all around us. What they have done. Their voices. The memories they have left us. All of that is there.”
He looked up sharply, with the air of one to whom a major discovery is announced, an annunciation. “That is a very good way of putting it,” he said. “That is very good, Mma. Yes, indeed. That is how I shall think of it in the future.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled modestly. She was not sure if she had said anything very significant; in fact, she felt that what she had said did not really address the question of whether the ancestors were there or not, in the sense that being there meant actual existence. She had not answered that question directly; in fact, she had not answered it at all. But if what she had said to Mr. Polopetsi was at all helpful, then she was pleased with that.
“But getting back to this Mma Sebina and her problems,” she said. “She thinks that she was looked after by a lady who was not her mother. Now that lady is late and she says that there are no relatives she knows of on that side. That is very unusual, of course, as everybody has relatives. But apparently that lady and her husband had none, or none that they ever mentioned.”