CHAPTER NINE

MMA RAMOTSWE HAS FEW FAULTS

THEY RETURNED TO THE OFFICE, where Mma Ramotswe called what she termed an “extraordinary general meeting.” This was a rare occurrence, justified only in the most pressing or extreme circumstances, and involving the attendance of everybody present in the office and the garage. On this occasion, that meant Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi, Fanwell and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, the last two participants being dragged away somewhat reluctantly from a particularly interesting gearbox issue in an old Ford.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was not one to grumble, but he did so now—in his very mild way—pointing out to Mma Ramotswe that you did not normally call a surgeon out from theatre when he was engaged in a delicate surgical procedure. “It’s the same with gearboxes,” he said. “If you take them to pieces and then walk away, you can end up in a terrible mess.”

“The boss is right,” said Fanwell, nodding sagely. “A terrible mess.”

Mma Ramotswe explained that a co-ordinated plan of action needed to be decided then and there.

“We can’t let this matter ride,” she said. “That young elephant could cause serious harm. Children are likely to find out about his presence, and you know what they are like. Somebody could get hurt.”

They sat in the office while Mma Ramotswe told the two mechanics about their conversation with Mma Potokwane. “She was very helpful,” she said. “We did not have to spend a long time persuading her.”

“We did not have to spend any time at all,” said Mma Makutsi. “She made her offer very quickly.”

“They have an old cattle stockade,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They haven’t used it for years…”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded his head. “Yes, I know where that is. At the end of the vegetable gardens. They used it in the old days when the Orphan Farm had a small herd. The children loved having the cattle but they stopped keeping them when one of them was hit by a truck. The children were so upset by this that Mma Potokwane—or her predecessor, perhaps—said that it was better not to have cattle if that sort of thing was going to happen.”

“It’s good for children to be brought up with cattle,” said Mma Makutsi. “Then they understand. Phuti says that he had his first cattle when he was three.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. “That’s a bit young, surely. You cannot look after cattle when you’re that young.”

Mma Makutsi pursed her lips. “Phuti was very advanced, Mma. He has always been advanced.”

Mma Ramotswe did not argue. Mma Makutsi was fiercely loyal to her husband. “The point is,” she continued, “that Mma Potokwane has offered to take this elephant while arrangements are being made to get it back up north. Apparently, there is a place up there that will look after elephants who have lost their mothers. But it might take a little while to arrange. It will be safe at the Orphan Farm, in that old stockade.”

“Then that is what Charlie must do,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “We must tell him.”

Fanwell looked doubtful. “But Charlie wants to keep it at his uncle’s place. He says that it’s fine there. He doesn’t see a problem.”

“But there is a problem,” said Mma Makutsi. “That elephant is going to hurt somebody. It’s all very well for Charlie to say that it’s all quite safe, but it isn’t really. What happens when Charlie comes to work? He says everything is looked after by that young cousin of his, the one who wets the bed…”

Fanwell objected. “But that is not his fault, Mma Makutsi. He can’t help wetting the bed—and anyway it’s nothing to do with what we’re talking about.”

Mma Makutsi was dismissive. “If a boy wets the bed when he’s as old as that boy, then there’s an issue, Fanwell. And that issue is what we call psychological. You can’t have boys with psychological issues looking after elephants.”

Fanwell looked outraged. He turned to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. This was typical, he thought, of the general attack on men. That boy might be a bed-wetter but there were plenty of girls who wet the bed—weren’t there?—anyway, the point was that the competence of boys in general should not be called into question over such an irrelevant matter. Now he said to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, “She can’t say that, Rra, can she? She can’t say that that boy can’t do something like look after an elephant just because he wets the bed.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who was sitting in the client’s chair next to Mma Ramotswe’s desk, shifted his feet uncomfortably. “I don’t think a medical problem should affect your ability to do something like look after livestock. No, I don’t think that—on balance.”

“Livestock?” said Mma Makutsi, her voice raised. “Is an elephant livestock, Rra? An elephant is a wild creature—it is not livestock. A lion is not livestock. A giraffe is not livestock.”

“What about an ostrich?” Fanwell challenged. “What about ostriches then? You answer me that, Mma Makutsi. Look at those ostrich farms—they’d say that their ostriches are livestock, I’d say. And yet, what is the difference between an ostrich and a lion?”

Mma Makutsi snorted. “If you can’t tell that, Fanwell, you’d better keep out of the bush. It would be very bad for you if you were walking through the bush one day and you saw a lion and you thought: Oh, that lion will just fly away. That would not be very good, I’d say.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni intervened. “Ostriches cannot fly, Mma. They have wings, but you never see them fly. They are too large.”

Mma Makutsi turned to him. “What are their wings for, then, Rra? You tell me that. If ostriches cannot fly, then why do they have wings?”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. This was an extraordinary general meeting, and here they were immersed in a pointless argument about the capabilities of ostriches. Of course ostriches could not fly—you saw them running through the bush on those long legs of theirs, but you never saw them fly. But the question as to why ostriches had wings was an interesting one, she reflected, even if it was not one that they should be considering at that particular time.

“Not everything in nature has a purpose,” said Fanwell.

“Fanwell,” said Mma Ramotswe, “we do not need to talk about that.”

Fanwell looked indignant. “I didn’t start it, Mma. It was Mma Makutsi who started talking about ostriches and lions and so on. All I’m saying is that there are things that have happened because of evolution.” He cast a glance in Mma Makutsi’s direction. “That is very important, you see—evolution.” He paused. “Have you heard of that, Mma Makutsi? Have you heard of Einstein and his theory of evolution?”

“Don’t think I don’t know about evolution,” said Mma Makutsi. “And, anyway, it wasn’t Einstein. He was the person who…” She hesitated, but only briefly, not wanting to confuse Einstein with Clovis Andersen. “He was the person who said, ‘E equals mc squared.’ ”

Fanwell stared at her defiantly. “So? So, what does that mean, Mma? It’s all very well to say that sort of thing, Mma, but what does it mean?”

Mma Makutsi waved a hand in the air. “There isn’t time to go into that right now, Fanwell. Some other time, I think.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni thought of something. “I read somewhere that we came from fish. Have you heard that, Mma Ramotswe? Have you heard that we were all fish once?”

Fanwell shook his head in disbelief. “I cannot believe that, Rra. If we were all fish, then how did we get out of the water? How would we have been able to breathe?”

“Perhaps we took a deep breath underwater first,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Then we got out of the water for a bit, holding our breath for as long as we could. Then we went back into the water again. Gradually we would have spent more time out than in, and that is when we would have started to evolve into monkeys.”

Mma Ramotswe had had enough. Clapping her hands, she announced that the topic of evolution, along with the topic of ostriches and lions, was now closed and they should return to the issue of elephants.

“Are you saying,” she asked Fanwell, “that Charlie will not want to have the elephant moved to Mma Potokwane’s place? Is that what you’re saying?”

Fanwell said that he feared that was the case. “You know how Charlie can be, Mma. He is a very stubborn person.”

Mma Ramotswe said that she was very sorry to hear that. “I know what you mean, though. There have been occasions in the past when Charlie has dug his heels in and has refused to be moved. When he’s doing that, you just can’t get him to change his views. He is like a Kgale Hill—a great big rock that’s going nowhere. There’s no shifting him.”

“Do you think he likes having the elephant there?” asked Mma Makutsi. “Is that the problem?”

Fanwell said that he thought it was. “I think the idea of having an elephant appeals to Charlie. After all, how many people have elephants? Hardly any.”

Mma Makutsi said she thought Charlie might feel that having an elephant gave him status. “He’s always been very sensitive about status,” she said, adding, “Largely because he has none, I think.”

Mma Ramotswe was not going to let that pass. “That’s unkind, Mma. Charlie is an employee of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. He has the status that goes with that.” She paused. Sometimes Mma Makutsi had to be reminded of the country’s ideals; not every day, but sometimes. “And the status of being a citizen of this country. That is a status. And being a person—that is a status too, in the eyes of God. God likes all of us—even Charlie.”

Mma Makutsi looked chastened. “I didn’t say that God didn’t like Charlie, Mma. I never said that. He probably likes him a bit—who knows? But I can’t imagine that God would want to spend too much time with him. A bit, maybe, but not much.”

Fanwell chose to issue a warning. “You’d better be careful, Mma Makutsi. If God heard you talking about Charlie like that, he’d be furious. You’d better be careful—unless you’ve got a very good lightning conductor.”

“Come now, everybody,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Let us not get bogged down in these things.” First it had been ostriches and lions and evolution, and now it was theology. She would have to steer the discussion back to where it should be.

“If Charlie won’t agree to move the elephant,” she said, “then he could find himself in big trouble. If a child were to be knocked over—crushed, even—then Charlie would almost certainly be arrested. If a life were lost, then it could even be manslaughter, which is a very serious offence in the Botswana Penal Code. It is there, you know, manslaughter, for just this sort of situation.”

“And that can mean years in prison,” said Mma Makutsi. “We would not want that, would we?”

“I would not want anybody to go to prison,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

“Except those people who deserve it,” said Mma Makutsi quickly. “There are some people who should definitely be in prison.”

Mma Ramotswe made another effort to focus the discussion. “Charlie is the problem here,” she said. “You know what Clovis Andersen says…”

Mma Makutsi looked up. Mma Ramotswe had few faults, she thought, but if there was one respect in which she might perhaps be criticised, it was in her tendency to attribute quotes to people who almost certainly never said anything of the sort. She did that a great deal with Sereste Khama, who, if Mma Ramotswe were to be believed, gave wise rulings on almost every conceivable subject. Some of these were undoubtedly true—Seretse Khama had been a very wise man indeed—but others, Mma Makutsi suspected, were Mma Ramotswe’s own opinions falsely, even if quite innocently, attributed to the great man. So, she thought, it was highly unlikely that Seretse Khama had ever said anything about the benefits of red bush tea, even if Mma Ramotswe had on more than one occasion said that Seretse Khama was one of the first public advocates of red bush tea and that he endorsed the view that it was good for the digestion. Similarly, she very much doubted whether Seretse Khama had ever had cause to remark on the need to soak dried beans overnight before cooking them. He may have known about that—although it was not the sort of thing that anybody would expect a man to know—but would he have thought it right for him to speak in his role as Paramount Chief of the Bamangwato people and then as President of Botswana, on such a subject? She thought not, and so she maintained a certain scepticism when Mma Ramotswe spoke of these matters. Mma Makutsi did not fully appreciate, of course, that even if Mma Ramotswe was not absolutely certain that Seretse Khama had pronounced on a matter, she restricted herself to attributing a claim to that effect to those instances where she felt that he would almost certainly have expressed such a view had he turned his mind to the matter. That was quite different from making something up—a distinction that Mma Makutsi, for all her many merits, was unlikely to appreciate, given her own tendency to see the world in absolute terms. Not that Mma Ramotswe would ever overtly take her to task for that—in a world in which there were far too many people prepared to tolerate the sort of moral ambiguity or obfuscation that was at odds with the old Botswana sense of what was right or wrong—in such a world it was refreshing to come across somebody like Mma Makutsi, who had no difficulty at all in drawing a clear and robust line between right and wrong. And it was quite proper, too, that such standards should be defended by the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, because if you could not trust a detective agency to be on the right side, then what hope was there for anything? If there was any institution in which people might expect to find a firm expression of rectitude, then surely it was a detective agency whose mission statement was to get to the bottom of things in the pursuit of justice and the truth—or something to that effect, the precise wording having been lost when Mma Makutsi inadvertently threw out the file in which she had lodged the relevant piece of paper recording the statement.

But now Mma Makutsi was waiting for Mma Ramotswe to reveal what it was that Clovis Andersen had said that was relevant here. It came after a short delay: “You know what Clovis Andersen says—he says find the person who has the solution and then you will find the solution.”

Mma Makutsi looked at Mma Ramotswe. “Did he say that, Mma? Are you sure?”

Any further discussion of the source of this proposition was cut short by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s intervention. “That is very true, Mma,” he said. “And in this case, it means that there is only one way of preventing a disaster—and that is to take Charlie out of the picture.”

This remark brought a gasp of astonishment from Fanwell. “Take Charlie out?” he stuttered. “Do you mean kill him, Boss?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni rolled his eyes. “Kill Charlie? Don’t be ridiculous, Fanwell. You mustn’t talk like that.”

“But I wasn’t talking like that,” protested Fanwell. “You were, Boss. You said—”

Mma Ramotswe raised a hand to silence the debate. “I think there’s a misunderstanding here. I think that what Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni meant was that Charlie’s views have to be overridden. That is definitely not the same thing as killing him.” She looked nervously at Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I am right, aren’t I, Rra…I hope.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “Of course you are, Mma. I’m a mechanic, not a gangster.”

Mma Makutsi laughed. “That is very funny,” she said. “Fanwell has obviously been watching too many films about gangsters and so on. Those people talk about taking people out…”

“Rubbing them out,” said Fanwell. “That also happens a lot. People rub other people out.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “I do not like language like that. We do not speak like that in this country. There can be no rubbing out here.”

“No,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “You are right, Mma.”

“So, what do we do?” asked Fanwell.

Mma Ramotswe looked thoughtful. “I think we have no alternative but to get the elephant away from that place…”

Mma Makutsi took over. “And take it to another place—to Mma Potokwane’s, in fact. And that means, I think, that we shall have to do it at night.” She smiled. “I can just see Charlie’s face when he wakes up and finds there is no elephant any longer.”

“It would be for the best, I suppose,” said Mma Ramotswe. She felt uneasy, and it showed in her expression.

“I don’t think we should do it at night,” said Fanwell. “The police often patrol Old Naledi at night. You see them driving about in their cars. That is because it’s a good place for criminals to walk around at night. They like walking around that place.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked doubtful. “But can we drive through the streets of Gaborone with an elephant in the back of the van? I don’t think so. In fact, I don’t think we should go behind Charlie’s back like this after all. I think it’s wrong.” He paused, letting his gaze dwell on Mma Makutsi and Mma Ramotswe. “It’s just wrong to do something like that.”

Fanwell looked uncomfortable. “I think you may be right, Boss. Maybe I should have another talk with Charlie. I could try to persuade him.”

Mma Ramotswe made up her mind. “Yes,” she said. “Speak to him, Fanwell. I’ll lend you the van to go round there this evening. Get him to see sense.”

The meeting came to an end. Mma Makutsi collected the mugs from which everybody attending the meeting had been drinking. As she washed them at the sink, she addressed Mma Ramotswe over her shoulder. “Why is it, Mma,” she asked, “that the best way of putting off a decision is to have a meeting about it?”

Mma Ramotswe laughed. “That is a very interesting question, Mma Makutsi,” she said. And then something occurred to her. “And why is it,” she continued, “that the best way of not answering a question is to ask it in the first place?”

Mma Makutsi stared at her, adjusting her new glasses at the end of her nose. “Did Clovis Andersen say that, Mma? It’s a very interesting thing to say.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “No, I said it, Mma Makutsi.” She paused. “But it is the sort of thing he says, I think.”

They both laughed. Mma Ramotswe watched as Mma Makutsi took off her glasses and polished them with her handkerchief. That was the third time she had done that since the beginning of their extraordinary general meeting. Many people would not remark on that—perhaps not even notice it—but then Mma Ramotswe was a detective, and it was precisely the sort of thing that a detective would notice. And a detective, moreover, might be expected to have a theory as to why people do things more frequently than might normally be expected. Look for the irregular pattern, wrote Clovis Andersen…