CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NICE THINGS ABOUT YOUR SKIN
MMA RAMOTSWE was completely on her own—and it felt very strange. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had gone off in her van with Charlie and Fanwell to deal with the baby elephant, and the children, Motholeli and Puso, were both spending the night on separate sleepovers with friends, it being a Friday evening, with no school the following morning. She had agreed to their request, although she knew that sleepovers would mean a late night for both of them—in Motholeli’s case because of the teenage conversation that would go on past midnight; in Puso’s case, the friend who had invited him was proposing to make a fire and they would be cooking sausages in the open until well past Puso’s normal bedtime. But it did not matter if Saturday was a write-off; the children often did nothing in particular on a Saturday morning, and a long lie-in would probably suit everybody.
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had told her that he might not be back until nine, or even later, and that she should have her dinner rather than wait for him: he would be happy enough with a bowl of soup or a sandwich when he eventually returned. She already had soup in a pot in the fridge and she would leave that on the stove for him, she decided, along with two thick-cut slices of bread between which she would place a thick slice of roast Botswana beef. That was exactly the sort of sandwich that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni—or indeed any man—liked. In Mma Ramotswe’s experience, men did not like thin sandwiches, and they certainly did not like sandwiches that had vegetables in them. Lettuce or cucumber, or any other greens for that matter, were all very well, but most men did not like to discover these things in their sandwiches. Meat was what men liked in sandwiches—and if the man was sophisticated, then he might like a bit of mustard as well.
It was a strange feeling being dropped off at the house by Mma Makutsi, who asked her, as she stepped out of the car, “What are you going to do, Mma?”
“Now, Mma?”
“Yes. You said that the children were off with friends. And with no husband until later tonight—you are a free lady, Mma!”
Mma Ramotswe laughed. “That is what it’s like for us women, Mma. There is always somebody else to worry about, and then suddenly there is nobody and we think…”
Mma Makutsi took over. “We think: What are we going to do with our time?”
“Exactly.”
“You could put your feet up,” suggested Mma Makutsi. “You could treat yourself to a very long bath, with bath salts, Mma. You could close your eyes and imagine what it must be like to be able to do that every day—just lie in the bath with bath salts.”
Mma Ramotswe laughed. “I don’t have any bath salts, Mma.” An idea came to her. “Would red bush tea do, Mma? I have read that it is very good for the skin. It soothes outside, as well as inside.”
Mma Makutsi had heard that too, but she had not been convinced. People said all sorts of things were good for this, that, and the next thing, but she was sceptical—just as she would imagine Clovis Andersen would be about many of these claims. One of the cardinal principles of private detection, he reminded his readers, was the importance of evidence. Don’t believe something because you want it to be true, he wrote. Nor should you believe everything you read or are told by other people. Ask them for the evidence, and if they cannot produce it, then politely say “I am unconvinced” and leave it at that.
So now she said to Mma Ramotswe, “I am unconvinced, Mma.” And then she added, for good measure, “Where is the evidence, Mma? That is what I would like to know: Where is the evidence?”
Mma Ramotswe met Mma Makutsi’s unbelieving gaze. Her eyes drifted to a patch of slightly angry skin below her colleague’s chin. Mma Makutsi had always had skin trouble—nothing too serious, of course, but it would be wrong to describe her complexion as completely untroubled. She used some sort of cream that was meant to keep irritation under control, but Mma Ramotswe was suspicious of creams and emollients. They might be active in the way their makers claimed, but there could be no doubt but that they clogged the pores, and that, as everybody surely knew, was bad for your skin. Skin needed to breathe, and if there was a layer of oily cream preventing it from doing that, then it was no wonder that it flared up.
Bathing the skin in red bush tea cleansed it and opened the pores, and if only Mma Makutsi were to try it, she might find it would help. And now, faced with this hard-nosed scepticism, she felt tempted to point out that she, Mma Ramotswe, who used a lot of red bush tea—principally internally—had very clear skin, when compared with Mma Makutsi’s. But that, she realised, would be unkind, and unkindness was never the way to convert others to a truth of any sort. You did not change anybody, she had always believed, by shouting at them or by making them feel bad about themselves. On the contrary, it was kindness and concern that changed people within, that could soften the hardest of hearts, that could turn harsh words into words of love. That had been proved time and time again, and she had seen it herself; she had seen the power of a kind word to change a scowling or suspicious countenance.
So now she said to Mma Makutsi, “Well, Mma, you’re right—as you usually are.” Was that going too far, she wondered. Perhaps not, because Mma Makutsi smiled in response and inclined her head slightly, as if to express agreement. “Yes, you’re right, Mma. It’s important to have evidence for anything. But, even so, I was thinking that your complexion is really very nice, Mma—you have beautiful skin. I have heard many people say that.”
Mma Makutsi’s eyes widened. “You’ve heard people say that, Mma?”
Mma Ramotswe swallowed. She always told the truth—if at all possible—but now here she was being drawn into a lie. So she retrieved the situation by saying, “I have not exactly heard them, Mma, but I can well believe that is what they are saying.” She paused, noting the fall in Mma Makutsi’s face. “Mind you, Mma, I have heard people talk about how fashionable you are. I have heard people say that they like your clothes and your shoes. They certainly say that.”
She did not say who it was who had said that. It was Charlie, in fact, who had been talking to Fanwell and who had been overheard by Mma Ramotswe. He had said, “That Mma Makutsi, Fanwell, I’d rate her for her clothes, you know. She has expensive gear, ever since she married that Phuti Radiphuti. That furniture store of his…I think at her wedding she was standing there, and on her right was the furniture store. And the minister said to her, ‘Do you take this furniture store?’ And she said, ‘Yes, definitely. The whole lot please.’ ” Charlie had laughed. “That’s what marriage is, Fanwell. Cattle and furniture stores. Don’t tell yourself it’s about anything else.”
Mma Makutsi was interested. “Who was it?” she asked.
“Oh, just somebody,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They said very nice things.”
“I’m pleased,” said Mma Makutsi. “I do my best in that department, you know.”
And that provided Mma Ramotswe with her opportunity. “You do, Mma—you certainly do. That is very well known. But even your very nice skin might be made even nicer if you tried a bit of red bush tea. No harm in trying, Mma. They say that you pour the red bush tea onto a cloth so that it’s soaked through. Then you put the cloth on the skin and let it lie there for a few minutes. They say that this makes good skin even better.”
She decided that was enough. The seed had been planted, and any further mention of it might be counterproductive. So she looked at her watch and said to Mma Makutsi through the open window of her car, “No, I think I shall just cook myself a tasty meal and then sit on the verandah until it’s time to go to bed.”
Mma Makutsi had driven off and Mma Ramotswe had lingered at her gate, watching her friend’s car disappear. There was almost an hour of light left before night fell, and she would use that time, she thought, to do a bit of work in her garden. She had put a lot of effort into her bed of beans, and the plants were doing well. Then there were her tomatoes too—they were a new venture—and a melon patch that could probably do with a bit of weeding. If she made herself a large mug of red bush tea, she could take that with her and drink it as she attended to these gardening tasks. And then, when dusk came, she could go inside, have a bath—even without bath salts—and then cook the chicken that she had bought the day before and placed in the fridge. That, served with pumpkin, would be her dinner—and she need not show too much restraint in tackling it by herself. She could have both drumsticks if she wanted them, and all the skin, which she particularly prized. Crisp chicken skin, dusted with salt—oh, that would be a very fine dish for one unworried by too much guilt over what she ate. There might come a time when she would eat less chicken skin, but that time was not yet. For the time being, she was Mma Ramotswe, a lady of traditional build, who needed the occasional evening of comfort food when nobody else was watching. And after the chicken, she might have a fat cake, dusted with sugar, to round off the meal. There was one in the fridge and it would be a terrible waste if it were to be allowed to go stale.
The house seemed so quiet. Children were like traffic noise: they made a constant background hum. It was something you got used to, as people who live near airports get used to the sound of jets landing and taking off. There was a difference, of course, between the background noise made by boys and that made by girls. Girls made a more peaceful noise, rather like running water, in a way, while their brothers made a sort of low-level clattering noise—the sound of things being shoved about and occasionally broken. Husbands, too, made a noise, now that she came to think about it. Their noise was a sort of shuffling noise, interrupted by the occasional cough or clearing of the throat and…and here she smiled at the thought…and the sound a beer bottle makes when its cap is taken off with a bottle-opener. Yes, that was a sound that accompanied many husbands when they came home from work. And why not? They had to have something in their lives, and the occasional bottle of cold beer was a reward that many men could justifiably claim as deserved. Poor men: they spent so much of their time working and often got little thanks for it. Yet all that many men wanted was to be loved, which was what everybody wanted, really, at the end of the day. And love did not cost anything; it could be given freely and the wells from which it was drawn could be easily filled again. There was no shortage of love in the world; it was as plentiful as oxygen—and as necessary.
She thought all this on the threshold of the kitchen, while looking at the sink and the fridge and the chopping board. You could think these big things, she told herself, while looking at very small things.
She turned on the radio, partly to break the unnerving silence, partly to hear the news broadcast that went out at that time of day. Nothing special seemed to have happened, and even the newsreader herself sounded bored with what she had to report. The Minister of Water Affairs had visited a dam and made a speech about the government’s plans to improve the water supply in certain remote villages. “If there is more rain,” the minister was quoted as saying, “then we will have more water.” This had brought applause, the newsreader said.
Mma Ramotswe smiled. She was glad she did not have to make speeches about nothing and be reduced to saying that more rain meant more water. Really! But then she checked herself; the minister was doing his best. It could not be an easy job to be Minister of Water Affairs in a dry country like Botswana. Governments could do many things, but the one thing they could not do was to bring rain in a parched time. Perhaps people needed reminding of this, and needed to be told where water came from. It did not come from the government…
She opened the fridge and took out the chicken. It was wrapped in butcher’s brown paper, and tied about with string. The butcher at the supermarket meat counter was an old admirer of Mma Ramotswe’s, and always took particular care with any meat she ordered, sometimes securing her parcels with coloured ribbon that no other customer seemed to merit. She was vaguely embarrassed by this—there had never been anything between them, although she had always been aware of his appreciative glances before she and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had married. Thereafter, the butcher had behaved with utter probity, and had sent no glances her way, even if he did use special ribbon for her orders and insisted on serving her himself, elbowing his assistants out of the way when she appeared at the counter.
This chicken, retrieved from a special shelf in the cold room, had come with a particular recommendation from him. “This is no ordinary chicken, Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “Most of those chickens over there…” And here he gestured towards the poultry section. “Most of them come from those big chicken farms. You know the ones. They have thousands and thousands of chickens all crowded together. And then they bring the chickens up from over the border in those big refrigerated trucks. No wonder those chickens taste of nothing, Mma.”
She had thanked him. “I’m looking forward to cooking this one, Rra.”
“It will be very tasty,” he said. “That is one of our free-range chickens. We do not have many. They are just for special customers.”
“You’re very kind, Rra.”
“That chicken will have eaten a lot of different things, you see, Mma. They wander around and peck at grubs. They are always pecking.”
“That’s good, Rra.”
“And they get a bit of exercise that way. That makes a difference.”
And now she took the chicken from its plate and put it on the chopping board to be jointed. She would boil the chicken, as her father’s cousin had taught her to do in Mochudi all those years ago. Had her mother lived, then it would have been she who would have taught Mma Ramotswe the right way to cook chicken in Botswana, but the cousin had done that instead, and she had been a good teacher.
She put the pieces of chicken into a pot, saving the carcass for the making of stock. She added carrots and onions and, as a special treat, since she alone would be eating this, a generous pinch of peri-peri chilli, to give the whole thing a kick. Then, with the pot heating up on the stove, she prepared the pumpkin, cutting the thick yellow flesh into generously sized squares before immersing them in salted water for boiling. That was all that you had to do to a pumpkin, other than to put butter on it when it was soft enough. And salt and pepper, of course, just before you ate it.
Her feast could now be left to itself for an hour and a half before it could be enjoyed. That gave her time to change out of her office clothes, prepare a mug of tea, and then go out into her garden to tackle the tasks she had planned. She turned off the radio; the newsreader was cut off mid-sentence and silence returned to the house. She went through to their bedroom, where the silence seemed even greater, almost tangible, like something hanging in the air. The evening sun, streaming through the bedroom window, made a square of butter yellow on the polished cement floor. She stood in the doorway for a few moments, taking in the familiar objects of her bedroom: the dresser with its bits and pieces—the half-empty bottle of scent that Motholeli had given her for her last birthday; the pile of three men’s handkerchiefs that she had ironed for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and that he had forgotten to take to work with him; the picture of her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, in its frame of black Bakelite; her bedroom radio, inherited from an aunt, an old Supersonic that still worked in spite of the world’s having changed completely since its manufacture at the factory up in Bulawayo, sixty years previously. It was a miracle that the radio still received broadcasts with complete clarity—a miracle, indeed; and she thought for a moment that if there were any saints around these days—and nobody seemed to suggest there were—then they might perform modern miracles to impress the sceptical. So, a modern saint might make a radio that was dumb speak once again; or work a miracle at the supermarket fish counter…She stopped herself. It was wrong to think such thoughts, she told herself. The things that people believed were important to them, and it was wrong to make fun of them. And she believed too. She believed in God, because she wanted to believe in him and because a world without God would simply be too painful for us to bear. Without God, the wicked could do what they wanted to, and none of us would be able to do anything about it. At least if there were a God, then she and others could point to him and face up to the wicked and the selfish and warn them that they would not get away with it. She was not sure where or who God was, but she was sure that he was probably not far from Botswana. Beyond some cloud, perhaps, that kept us from seeing him; some place where there was no weeping and no separation from those we loved; where there would be none without a friend to hold their hand, or a brother or a sister; a place of sweet-smelling cattle and gentle, life-giving rain. That was her theology, and it was enough; it had sustained her this far, and it would see her out. That was all that anybody needed, surely.
She changed into her garden clothes and returned to the kitchen to make herself some red bush tea. Then, mug of tea in hand, she went out by the back door into the garden behind the house. It was just that stage of the early evening when the rays of the sun, occluded in part by the acacia trees in her neighbour’s garden, no longer fell on her vegetable beds, which were now in shadow. The weeding of the melon patch would be a comfortable task, then, without the sun making one feel too warm.
She knelt down beside the ripening melons and tugged at the weeds that seemed to have run riot since her last spell in the garden. They came up easily; few plants put down deep roots in the sandy soil of this part of Botswana. Trees did, of course, but for the rest, the grip of roots was confined to the brittle surface of the land. She tugged at the weeds, some of which had that sharp smell that weeds sometimes have. They made a growing pile that she would put on her compost heap at the back of the garden.
She felt the sides of the melons, which had prospered in her garden. She thought of them as lazy plants; while other plants reached upwards towards the sky, melons did not bother, but extended themselves along the ground, finding what purchase they could in the horizontal. They did not ask for much, and could survive in just about the driest of conditions. They grew in the Kalahari, where few plants could cope with the lack of rain. And yet somehow their fruit was so moist, so full of water. Another miracle, she thought: the miracle of the melons.
She was examining the frames up which she had trained her bean plants when she became aware that somebody was watching her. It had always puzzled her that people could be aware of the fact that they were being watched before they saw the watcher. It was an odd feeling—a prickling in the back of the neck; a slight current of electricity that told you that there were eyes upon you. And as often as not, when you looked about you, you saw them and realised that those mute senses that had alerted you had not been wrong.
She had been bending down to look at the roots of one of the bean plants, and now she straightened up. It crossed her mind at first that perhaps Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had come back earlier than anticipated—that he had changed his plans and was not going out to Mma Potokwane’s place after all. She looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see her van parked outside the house in its normal place, but the front gate was closed and there was no sign of either her van or his truck.
She wiped her brow, as she felt a bead of perspiration on the bridge of her nose, one of those awkward, tickly places. She looked about her.
“Well, Mma, good evening.”
The voice was disembodied. It was a woman’s voice, and what it said was clear enough, but she could not see where it came from. For a few moments she remained nonplussed. What should you do if you suddenly heard somebody say “Good evening” to you but you had no idea who it was or where they were. The voice could even come from the sky, and for a brief moment Mma Ramotswe looked up, before lowering her eyes again because it was absurd to imagine that anybody should address you from that quarter. Talk of heavenly voices was all very well, but they were usually figments of people’s imagination.
But you could hardly remain silent: you had to say something. And so Mma Ramotswe, still looking about her in puzzlement, replied, as loudly as she could, “Good evening, Mma.” And then she added, “Wherever you are.”
For a few moments there was silence. A bird flew overhead, one of the Cape doves who had taken up residence in the tree by her gate. There was a brief flutter of beating wings, and then nothing—except the noise of the sky, of course, because there was a sound of the sky if you listened hard enough, a sound like wind in the trees, but softer.
Then there came a laugh—a chuckle, really.
“I’m sorry,” said the voice, “you cannot see me. I am being very rude. One moment.”
On the other side of the fence that separated Mma Ramotswe’s garden from the next-door yard, the foliage of a large shrub parted and a woman appeared. She was a woman of about Mma Ramotswe’s age, of her general build, but perhaps not quite as traditional in her girth, and wearing gardening clothes—jeans and loose-fitting blouse—and a battered blue sun hat. It was her neighbour.
“Oh, Mma!” exclaimed Mma Ramotswe. “I did not see you. I was looking everywhere and beginning to wonder whether I was hearing things.”
The woman laughed again. “I was pruning that bush. I was on the other side, actually, when a pen fell out of my pocket. I had to go into the bush to find it.”
“And have you found it?” Mma Ramotswe asked. “I am always losing pens. One a day, my husband says, but that is not true, I think.”
The woman advanced towards the fence. “My name is Margaret,” she said. “I am Margaret Matlapeng.”
Mma Ramotswe introduced herself. “I am Precious Ramotswe.”
Mma Matlapeng smiled. “Oh, I know who you are, Mma. Everybody knows who you are. You’re that lady who has the detective agency. What do you call it? The Women’s Detective…”
“The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Yes, that is me, Mma. I’m that lady.” She brushed her hands against the side of her skirt. “It is a messy business, gardening.”
“And being a detective too, I imagine,” said Mma Matlapeng.
Mma Ramotswe had not been prepared for the quick retort. She looked at Mma Matlapeng. She was a well-educated woman, obviously.
“Yes, you’re right, Mma. Being a detective can be a bit demanding sometimes. There are times I think: Is this really what I want to do?”
Mma Matlapeng nodded. “We all think that, Mma, wouldn’t you say? If you don’t say that, then you must have your eyes closed—that’s what I believe, anyway.”
Again, the comment was a thought-provoking one. Was this what one should expect from people who suddenly stepped out of a bush? The thought made Mma Ramotswe smile.
She said, “I’ve been meaning to come over and say hello, Mma. I’m sorry. I have been very busy and I wasn’t sure when you moved in. I saw your furniture arrive, of course, the other day, but I was not sure whether you were there too.” It was not strictly true; there had been those raised voices, but she did not want to mention that. By saying that she was not sure whether they had arrived, she was allowing her neighbour to believe that she had not heard the row.
Mma Matlapeng made a gesture to reassure her that there had been no breach of comity. “No, Mma, you need not apologise. We only came a couple of days ago. And I should have come over to see you, but…but…” She shrugged. “There is so much to do when you move house. Everything is in the wrong place.”
Mma Ramotswe asked her if she had everything she needed. “If I can help you at all, Mma, while you are settling in, just let me know.” She paused. “And there is always tea, you know. Even at this time of day, there is always tea.”
Mma Matlapeng clapped her hands together. “That was exactly what I was thinking, Mma. It has been a long day and there is a lot of gardening to do, but that is no excuse for not having a cup of tea.”
“Exactly,” agreed Mma Ramotswe. “Will you come over to my house, Mma? I have plenty of tea.”
SEATED ON MMA RAMOTSWE’S VERANDAH, nursing a mug of tea—two spoons of sugar, well stirred—Mma Matlapeng began the conversation. “This is our second move in four years, Mma. Two moves in four years. We are very popular with the removal company.”
“They do not like people to stay where they are,” agreed Mma Ramotswe. “I have seen their advertisements. They say, ‘Isn’t it time you moved?’ I don’t think that’s helpful, Mma. It makes people who would otherwise be quite happy where they are think: Oh dear, I’m not moving enough. That’s the danger, Mma.”
“Rental property,” said Mma Matlapeng. “We rent, you see. We have a house down in Lobatse, but we rent that out now that our work brings us up to Gaborone.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. And if you rent, they often won’t give you a lease for more than a year or two because the owner wants to get back into the house, or wants to sell it, or something else. That’s why we moved from the last place. We were on the edge of the village, back there near the old Gaborone Club—you know that place. And the people who owned the house wanted it for their daughter, who had just got married. She was a very self-satisfied young woman, Mma. Entitlement is what they call it. She was entitled.”
“Spoiled?” said Mma Ramotswe.
“Definitely, oh definitely. One hundred per cent spoiled. Doting parents.” Mma Matlapeng sighed. “I have met many of those, Mma. I’m a teacher, you see.”
Mma Ramotswe was not surprised. There was something about Mma Matlapeng’s manner that pointed in that direction; and her voice too: she spoke beautifully, with a clear diction that stood out in a time when so many people rushed their words. Mma Ramotswe could not understand that: there was plenty of time in the world for us to say everything we wanted to say. We did not need to hurry to get it out.
“Yes,” continued Mma Matlapeng. “I’m teaching at that school just round the corner. You know the place?”
“I have two children there,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They are foster children, but they have been with us for a long time. They are my children now.”
Mma Matlapeng nodded. “That is kind of you, Mma. I have taught some foster children before, and they were very happy with their homes.”
“And do you…” Mma Ramotswe began.
“I have two daughters,” said Mma Matlapeng. “They are twins. They are twenty-three now. The years, Mma…”
“The years go very quickly. Close your eyes, and a year has gone. Just like that.”
“My daughters are both nurses, Mma Ramotswe. They are working out at the hospital at Molepolole. They trained together and now they are working on the same ward. They are inseparable.”
“You must be proud of them, Mma. Two nurses. That is a very fine job.”
“Oh, I am very proud of them,” said Mma Matlapeng. “Not everybody can be a nurse. It requires a very special sort of character. You have to be patient. You have to be kind. You have not to mind too much if people are difficult because they’re feeling ill or frightened. You have to be able to take all of that.”
“And your girls can?”
Mma Matlapeng nodded. “They don’t mind. They have always been like that.”
Mma Ramotswe noticed that Mma Matlapeng had finished her tea. She topped up her cup. “And you, Mma?” she enquired. “What do you teach?”
“Mathematics,” replied Mma Matlapeng. “I teach mathematics to the older children.” She paused. “Yes, that is what I do, Mma.”
“And your husband, Mma?”
“He is an accountant,” said Mma Matlapeng.
Mma Ramotswe noticed a change in her tone. You could always tell how somebody felt about somebody else by the way they spoke. There was warmth or coldness according to the state of the heart.
Now Mma Matlapeng continued, in the same, suddenly flat tone, “He is a big bankruptcy man. If you are going to go bankrupt, you go to see him. He takes over. He fires all the staff and sells the stock and, bang, you’re bankrupt.”
Mma Ramotswe was silent. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency did not make much profit. In fact, at the end of some months, when she steeled herself to look at the books, it seemed that her business had made no profit at all. Rra Matlapeng no doubt would confirm that if he came round and took a look, then, as his wife had just said, it would be a case of “Bang, you’re bankrupt!”
Mma Matlapeng sipped at her tea. “He is away on business now. He is up in Francistown. Somebody up there is going bankrupt. Bang.”
Mma Ramotswe clicked her tongue sympathetically. “So many businesses spend all their time on the edge of bankruptcy,” she said. “My own little agency…” She sighed. “We stay afloat, but sometimes I think we are sinking.”
Mma Matlapeng’s reply took her by surprise. “We’re all sinking, Mma. Even those of us who are floating, are sinking.”
Mma Ramotswe was not sure how to respond. To a certain extent, she thought, what Mma Matlapeng said was true: nobody was getting any younger, and that meant that most of us were slowing down, even if imperceptibly. And there was also gravity to be considered: as you went through life, the effects of gravity seemed to get more and more and more pronounced; you felt that, you really did. But even if this were all true, there was no cause to dwell on it, and certainly no reason to say that we were all sinking.
She smiled at her guest. “I don’t know about that, Mma,” she said. “If we stopped swimming, we would certainly sink—but we’re not going to stop swimming, are we?”
Mma Matlapeng had been about to say something more, but this remark brought her up short. “That’s an interesting way of putting it, Mma,” she said. “If we stopped swimming…” Her voice trailed off. “Stopped swimming…”
Mma Ramotswe felt emboldened. Mma Matlapeng was better educated than she was. She had left school at sixteen, whereas Mma Matlapeng must be a university graduate, with a degree in mathematics, of all subjects. That was impressive by any standards: there were people with degrees that did not involve all that much work, but mathematics…So, with the respect that Batswana people feel for education, Mma Ramotswe stood in some awe of a mathematics teacher, but when it came to knowing how to cope with life, then she had no reason to defer to anybody. And now she had said something that had clearly impressed Mma Matlapeng, for all that she had a degree in mathematics. So she said, “Yes, life is like…” She paused. The swimming metaphor had come without much thought, but its further development was not proving easy.
“Like swimming?” Mma Matlapeng suggested.
Mma Ramotswe hesitated. That was not what she had been going to say. She had never learned to swim, and she was not sure now why she should say that life was like swimming. It was possible that it was, but on the other hand there were probably many other things that life was like—once you started to think about it.
“Life is like a river,” she said at last.
Mma Matlapeng nodded. “I suppose it is. Yes, it is a river, I suppose.” She looked at Mma Ramotswe, as if waiting for more, but nothing was said.
Mma Ramotswe looked down at her hands. She stole a glance at Mma Matlapeng. She had learned in life not to make too many snap judgements of people—that, she thought, was one of the main lessons we learned as we got older—but she still found that her initial instincts were often correct. People revealed their characters to you without too much encouragement; you simply had to listen. Or they might do so even without saying very much: in the expression on their face; in the look in their eyes. Eyes, in particular, were revealing. A malevolent disposition always showed in the eyes, in the way in which the light shone out of them. If that light was gentle, if it reassured you, then you could be confident that the person within was of that temper. But if it was hard, if it was hostile, then you could count on there being a character to match within.
For a second or two she watched Mma Matlapeng as her neighbour reached forward to pick up her mug of tea. Their eyes met, very briefly, and the light that she saw in the other woman’s was unmistakable.
Mma Ramotswe said, “My husband is away too. Not away away—not in Francistown or anywhere like that—but out in Tlokweng. I am going to have dinner by myself, Mma. I have a chicken in the pot.”
Mma Matlapeng smiled. “I smelled it, Mma. I sat here thinking: Mma Ramotswe is going to have chicken for her dinner. She is very lucky.” She took a sip of her tea. “Perhaps I should be a detective—like you, Mma.”
They laughed.
“Anybody can be a detective,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I had no training. But not everybody can be a teacher of mathematics, I think. Certainly not me.”
Mma Matlapeng was modest. “It is not all that difficult, Mma. Numbers always behave according to some simple rules. Learn those rules and—bang!—you are doing mathematics.”
Mma Ramotswe noticed the bang. It was the third time Mma Matlapeng had used the word. There had been two bankruptcy bangs, and now there was a mathematics bang.
Mma Matlapeng referred back to what had been said about training. “Somebody must have taught you something, Mma,” she said. “Nobody does a job without at least some training.”
“I had a book,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There is a very good book on the subject by somebody called Clovis Andersen. He is an American. I know him, actually. He came to Botswana once and my assistant and I met him. Mma Makutsi. She works with me. We both met Mr. Andersen.”
“And this book tells you everything you need to know?”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Yes. He sets out a lot of rules.”
“Propositions?”
“Yes, you can call them propositions. They are all about what you should do when investigating a matter for your client. Often they are simply rules of common sense—about how to draw a conclusion, that sort of thing.”
“Logic?” suggested Mma Matlapeng.
“Yes. He talks about that, Mma. About not judging people before you have evidence. About not believing what you want to believe rather than paying attention to what your eyes or ears tell you.”
Mma Matlapeng said that this all sounded very sensible to her. Then she sniffed at the air and said, “Chicken is one of my favourites. My grandmother used to make us chicken on Sundays. We went to her house and she had a big pot of chicken and she always gave me and my brother the feet.”
They both knew what that meant. Chicken feet were the favourite part of the chicken in Botswana.
“You must have been happy,” said Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Matlapeng turned to her. “Happy?”
“Yes, you must have been happy at your grandmother’s house. With the chicken for lunch, and your grandmother. What else do we need to be happy?”
Mma Matlapeng smiled, and Mma Ramotswe saw that the smile was rueful. She made her decision. “Mma,” she said, “I have a whole chicken in the pot, but there is only one of me. My husband will not be back until, oh, ten o’clock—maybe even later. I have made him a beef sandwich. Will you help me eat my chicken?”
“But, Mma, that is very kind of you. I did not mean to ask you…When I said that chicken was my favourite dish, I was just thinking. You know how you do, when you smell something, you think about it and may say something? You do not mean to say, ‘Can I have some of your food?’ I would not say that, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe assured her that she had not thought that—not for a moment. “One chicken is too much for one person,” she said. “You should not eat a whole chicken.” It was what she had planned to do, but you should always be prepared to change your plans, she told herself. And if the plans had been slightly greedy plans, then you would always feel better after you had changed them.
“Then I will help you, Mma.”
“That is very kind of you, Mma.”
Mma Matlapeng looked at her watch. “I will go home and get out of these gardening clothes. They are very dusty. Then I will come back.”
“We will eat in the kitchen,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is easier that way.”
“The best place to eat,” said Mma Matlapeng, as she rose to her feet.
THEY SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, the pot of chicken between them. The conversation had flowed easily, and Mma Ramotswe had found that her initial impression of Mma Matlapeng was confirmed. She liked her, and found herself wondering whether this was the same woman whom she had heard shouting at her husband. Was this courteous and engaging woman the same person who had been hurling insults, including that colourful comparison with an anteater? It was hard to imagine that, and yet, as she had found time and time again in the course of her professional duties, one should never be surprised by anything one found out to be going on in a marriage.
Mma Matlapeng told her more about her background. Her father, she said, had been a school inspector. He was a graduate, in history, of Fort Hare, and could have had a career in politics but had had no stomach for arguments.
“He could never see why people couldn’t co-operate,” she said. “He said that he could see good points in all the different parties, and yet they were always running one another down.”
Mma Ramotswe agreed with that. She thought it ridiculous that party leaders refused to recognise that their opponents could get at least some things right. “And they are so quick to insult one another,” she said. “I can’t stand hearing people insult one another, Mma…” She stopped herself. She had not intended to stray onto that ground.
Fortunately, Mma Matlapeng did not appear to notice.
“He knew Seretse Khama,” she said. “He could have been Minister of Education in his government, I think, but he wanted to stay in the civil service. He was a civil service man at heart.”
“I would not like to be in the government,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You would have no peace, I think. Problems, problems, problems—every day. That is what it’s like being in the government. You have all these problems and then there are all those people waiting to find fault with what you’re doing. You get no thanks.”
Mma Matlapeng was of the same view. “If they came to me tomorrow and asked me to be minister of something or other, I would say no. I wouldn’t hesitate—I would just say no.”
“That would be best,” said Mma Ramotswe. Then she asked, “Are you happy in your job, Mma? Do you like teaching mathematics?”
Mma Matlapeng shrugged. “I like most of it. Most people like some bits of their jobs and not others. I like it when I get through to some of the kids. Maybe a child who has not been doing well—who has a confidence problem, maybe—and then you show them that they can actually do mathematics rather well, and then you see their face light up and you know that you’ve got through to them. That is a very special moment.”
“It must be,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“I had a boy, fourteen, maybe fifteen; he was not doing very well in my mathematics class, and so I gave him some extra time in the afternoon. And I managed to get out of him what was bothering him—what was holding him back. You know what it was, Mma? It was his own father. His own father was telling him that he was stupid and would never be any good.”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “There are some very unkind parents,” she said. “I don’t know why they bother to have children.” She paused. “What did you do, Mma?”
“I let him talk to me. Sometimes half the problem with these children is that nobody ever listens to what they want to say. So I sat there and let him tell me. I heard the lot, Mma. All about his father making him feel small. And the father sounded like a thoroughly nasty piece of work—one of these people who step all over other people. You know the sort.”
“I do,” said Mma Ramotswe, and thought, inevitably, of Violet Sephotho.
“And then a very strange thing happened, Mma,” continued Mma Matlapeng. “This arrogant father had a big fall. Bang! He went bankrupt. My husband told me that he had been appointed to wind up his affairs. I felt sorry for the family, but I was able to talk to the son about it. I did not want to turn him against his father, but I was able to point out to him that his father had shown that he was human, like everybody else. I think it made all the difference, Mma. He had been in awe of his father for a long time; now he could stand up to him—inside.”
“And his mathematics?”
“He started to do very well, Mma. He has gone off now to do a degree in mathematics. He wants to be an actuary. Do you know about actuaries, Mma?”
“They are the people who tell you when you’re going to die?”
Mma Matlapeng laughed. “Well, not you personally—but you as a lady of such and such an age, living in such and such a place, and smoking twenty cigarettes a day, or whatever dangerous things you’re doing. Not that you smoke, Mma, I’m not accusing you of that, but some people do. Then bang, their arteries get clogged up and they become late. The actuaries can say to these people: you are going to last so many more years because that’s what the actuarial tables say about somebody like you.” She paused. “I’m not sure that it would make me any happier to know when I was going to die, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe agreed with her on that. That was not knowledge that she wanted to have. She said, almost without thinking about it, “Are you happy now, Mma? You said that would not make you any happier…”
Mma Matlapeng frowned. “Am I happy now?”
“Yes.”
Mma Matlapeng looked away. For some time, she said nothing, and the silence in the kitchen became noticeable. Then, “You know, Mma, the other day—did you hear something?”
Mma Ramotswe hesitated, but then made her decision. “I suppose I did, Mma. I heard…”
She was not sure how to put it. A loud discussion? A little disagreement? There were tactful ways of describing it, but before she could choose which expression to use, Mma Matlapeng continued, “I am very ashamed, Mma. I have only just moved to this place, and then people hear me shouting.” She paused; she looked shamefaced now. “And everybody will be thinking: Who is this woman who shouts and shouts like that? That’s what they’ll be thinking, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe tried to reassure her. “I hardly heard you, Mma. It was very faint. I really don’t think people will be talking.”
Mma Matlapeng reached out and touched Mma Ramotswe’s arm briefly. “You are far too kind, Mma. I’m afraid I lost control. I shouted.”
“We all shout,” said Mma Ramotswe. “From time to time, that is. Is there anybody—anybody, Mma—who hasn’t shouted at one time or another?”
“In private, maybe, Mma. You can shout a little in private, but you have to keep your voice down. I didn’t, and now I’m very embarrassed, Mma, because you must be wondering what sort of people have moved in beside you. I wouldn’t be surprised, Mma, if you have been thinking that we are a very low sort of person.”
Mma Ramotswe made a dismissive gesture. “Certainly not, Mma. I have not been thinking that. Although…” She stopped. She had not intended to say anything about her misgivings, and indeed it would be quite inappropriate to mention the single beds.
“Although what, Mma?”
“Although I did wonder if you and your husband were happy together…You seemed very cross with him.”
Mma Matlapeng sighed. “I was. I have been very cross with my husband for ten months now.”
Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. With her experience of matrimonial investigations, there could be only one reason for that: an errant husband. It was a familiar story.
She looked at Mma Matlapeng, who nodded, as if to confirm the suspicions that she imagined were in Mma Ramotswe’s mind. Then she said, “Yes. The usual, Mma.”
“Oh.”
Mma Matlapeng continued, “I think that one woman does not have to explain these things to another woman. We are all sisters, Mma. We all know how men behave.”
Mma Ramotswe was silent for a few moments. Mma Matlapeng was right, of course; all women knew how men behaved. And although she was not one to consign all men to the crowded ranks of philanderers, many men freely and by their own actions enrolled themselves therein. It was something to do with the way men were inside. They had to do these things when common sense and caution, not to say loyalty and simple decency, pointed in the other direction. It was not only tragic—it was puzzling.
She lowered her voice. “I take it that your husband has…has wandered, Mma. I take it that is what you’re saying to me?”
Mma Matlapeng inclined her head. Then she raised it, and gravity of manner was replaced by outrage. “Yes, he has wandered, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe made a clicking sound with her tongue. It was a noise that so many women, all over the world, made when they thought of the behaviour of men. It was a universal gesture. “Men can be very foolish,” she said. “I believe it is something to do with their brains.”
“I don’t think it’s their brains,” said Mma Matlapeng. “The brain often says stop, but the rest of the man is not listening at that point.”
“No, it is in the brain,” insisted Mma Ramotswe. “Everything we do, Mma, comes from the brain. The brain says, ‘Do this,’ and we do it. That is the latest view, Mma.”
“Hormones,” said Mma Matlapeng. “It is to do with hormones. Hormones are very bad news for men.”
“That is true,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But the point I’m making, Mma, is that your story must be the commonest story in the country. Up and down the land, there are men being affected by hormones, and doing stupid things.” She sighed once more. “We women have to live with it, I’m afraid.”
Mma Matlapeng frowned. “Do we? Do we have to put up with this sort of thing? Why, Mma?”
“Because I don’t see men changing,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We can tell them that we expect better—and that will have some effect—but we are not going to change some things about men. We are not going to be able to change their nature.”
“So, we tolerate it?” asked Mma Matlapeng. And then she continued, “So, I have to accept that my husband can go off for a weekend with another woman, Mma? Are you suggesting that?”
“Is that what happened?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Matlapeng did not answer immediately, and Mma Ramotswe wondered whether her question had been too intrusive. She was about to change the subject when her neighbour suddenly answered, “Yes. It started about a year ago. I found out quite quickly. A wife can always tell.”
Mma Ramotswe knew what she meant. Over the years she had listened to any number of women in her office saying exactly that. “You can always tell, Mma,” they would say. “A wife is never wrong about that sort of thing. Wives have an instinct for such things.” And, by and large, these women who said that were right. Wives could tell, no matter how much their husbands tried to hide what was going on. Women could tell.
“She is another of these bankruptcy people,” Mma Matlapeng continued. “She works in a different firm, but she does the same sort of thing as he does. They met when a mine went bankrupt.” She gave Mma Ramotswe a sceptical look. “How can a mine go bankrupt, Mma? All you have to do is dig.”
“I suppose there are wage bills, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And then perhaps they dig in the wrong place and they have to start again, and that costs money, and so on. Running a business is not easy. At any moment you can discover that you have no money to pay the bills and none of your clients is replying to your reminder that they should pay the invoice you sent them a month ago. And you don’t know where to turn…”
Mma Matlapeng thought about this. “I suppose you’re right, Mma, but anyway, he met this woman and she must have encouraged him. You know how there are some women who encourage men, Mma. You know about those women?”
Mma Ramotswe indicated that she did. “There is a well-known woman like that,” she said. “There is a certain lady in this town called Violet. She is famous for that sort of thing.”
“I have never heard of her,” said Mma Matlapeng. “This woman is called Rose.”
“They are both names of flowers,” mused Mma Ramotswe. “Not that there can be any connection, but it’s interesting that they should both have flower names.”
Mma Matlapeng tackled a piece of chicken on the side of her plate. “This chicken is very delicious, Mma,” she said. “But to get back to this woman. How could she? She knew that he was married. She knew that, and yet she allowed this affair to develop.”
“That is what happens, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is to do with male weakness. Men are weak when it comes to that department, Mma. That is what they are like.”
Mma Matlapeng was having none of that. “Well, women should tell them that it is not going to happen. If women said, ‘I am not going to have anything to do with a married man,’ then the man would just go home and behave himself.” She paused. “I confronted him, Mma. I sat him down in a chair and told him that I knew all about it. He closed his eyes and sank his head in his hands. He said that he would bring it to an end. He said that he did not know what had come over him.”
Mma Ramotswe listened. This was not what usually happened. “You were lucky, Mma. Often men just say nothing. Or they deny it all and then the next day they disappear with the other woman. There have been many cases like that.”
“I believe that he did as he said he would do,” said Mma Matlapeng. “She turned up at the house the following day and tried to claim him. Right in front of my nose, Mma. She didn’t seem to mind that I knew. She came and tried to drag him away.”
Mma Ramotswe’s eyes widened. “That must have been very awkward, Mma.”
Mma Matlapeng laughed. “I saw her off,” she said. “I was in the kitchen when this happened. He was in the garden—he had been washing his car—when she came and grabbed him. I went outside. We had a hosepipe at the side of the house, and he had been using that. I took it and sprayed her with water. She was completely soaked. She was shouting and swearing, Mma—very bad language—but I just turned up the pressure on the tap and tried to get the water into her mouth. She eventually went away, dripping.”
Mma Ramotswe was smiling. She did not approve of violence, but there were times when a bit of gentle force seemed to be justified: people who used bad language should not be surprised if other people came and washed their mouth out with a hosepipe.
“And then I sprayed him too,” continued Mma Matlapeng. “Just for good measure. I felt very cross, Mma—I hope you can understand why. I soaked him too, and he just stood there because he was in the wrong and could not do anything about it. If you are in the wrong and somebody sprays you with water, you have to accept it.”
Mma Ramotswe was not sure what to say. She could understand how Mma Matlapeng had felt, but she was not certain that this was the way to repair a marriage. So she asked, “And then, Mma?”
“And then?” echoed Mma Matlapeng. “And then I told him what he could expect, Mma. I told him that he could stay in the house if he wanted, but that I would not forget what he had done. And that is where we are now, Mma. He is in disgrace. He is like a dog that has stolen the mince and is in disgrace.”
Mma Ramotswe’s doubts about the wisdom of this were unassuaged. There was a limit to the extent to which a husband might be punished before it might occur to him to leave. It seemed to her that Mma Matlapeng had embarked on a dangerous strategy. “You have to be careful with husbands,” she said. “They might go away if things are too uncomfortable for them. I have seen that happen, Mma.”
“I don’t think he will go away,” said Mma Matlapeng. “I own the farm, you see.”
Mma Ramotswe waited.
“We have a big farm down near Lobatse,” Mma Matlapeng explained, a note of triumph in her voice. “We have a house in the town, but we also have a farm. It is probably one of the best farms in that part of the country.” She paused, and then, with a smile, continued, “And it’s mine, Mma. It belonged to my parents, who are late, and it is now mine.”
Mma Ramotswe said nothing, but, having first offered the pot to Mma Matlapeng, she helped herself to a chicken drumstick and a spoonful of sauce. There was more pumpkin and a bowl of rice from which she ladled several spoonfuls onto her plate. Then she topped up their water glasses before she tackled her second helping. She needed to think about what Mma Matlapeng had just said: it was the piece of information that made sense of what she had just heard. It was an old, familiar story of a relationship that had gone wrong but that was limping along because of some outside factor—children or property. And both of these, when one thought about them, amounted to the same thing: dependence.
This situation, she thought, was slightly different from the usual case. It was so often the woman who was obliged to remain in an unhappy marriage or partnership because the man held all the financial cards. Here, it was different—she was well off and even if he, as a bankruptcy accountant, was no doubt comfortably placed, the really important asset was hers. And about time, thought Mma Ramotswe—it was about time that men stopped hoarding all the property and allowed women to have their fair share. It would take years—centuries, perhaps—before there was a just division, but at least things were moving in the right direction.
They ate in silence for a while. Mma Ramotswe noticed that Mma Matlapeng was smiling, as if she were relishing the satisfaction of having an errant husband exactly where she wanted him. Then Mma Ramotswe said, “And what about the future, Mma?”
Mma Matlapeng laid her knife and fork aside. “Very good,” she said, and then added, “I mean the chicken is very good, Mma Ramotswe—not the future. Although I don’t see anything wrong with the future.”
Mma Ramotswe considered this. “The future…Well, the future, Mma, is…I mean, what about him, Mma?”
“My husband? He’d better watch out, Mma. If he wants a future—any future—he’d better watch out.”
Mma Ramotswe took a deep breath. There was a question that she wanted to ask, but she was not sure whether this was the time to ask it. Perhaps it was.
“Are you going to forgive him, Mma?”
Mma Matlapeng looked astonished. “Forgive?”
“Yes. Sometimes we do things that we regret. All of us, Mma. We do things and then we think, Oh, goodness, look what I’ve done. And then we feel very bad about ourselves, and we hope that—”
“That nobody notices?”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “That was not what I was going to say, Mma. I was going to say, ‘And then we hope that people will forgive us.’ I think that is what we sometimes hope—often, in fact.”
Mma Matlapeng was concentrating on what Mma Ramotswe said. She was listening. And this encouraged Mma Ramotswe to continue, “Forgiveness is very powerful, Mma. It can change things completely. It’s like the rain that we long for. Everything is dry, dust everywhere, and then the rain comes. You smell it coming and suddenly it is there and it changes everything. You know what that is like, Mma—the first rains.”
Mma Matlapeng was clearly struggling. “I don’t see what the rain has to do with it, Mma,” she said. “People still behave badly when it rains.”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “That’s not the point, Mma. I’m saying that forgiveness is like the rain. That’s all I’m saying. It makes things better. Rain does that too. Things grow…”
Mma Matlapeng went off on another tack. “But if you forgive people, Mma Ramotswe, then you know what happens?” She did not let Mma Ramotswe respond, but went on to answer her own question. “If you forgive them, they say, ‘Good, now I can go and do it again.’ I’m telling you, Mma—that’s how people think. It’s just like that in the classroom: you have an unruly pupil and you let him off. The next moment, when you turn your back, he does the same thing again. That’s the way it is, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe looked at her plate, now wiped clean. They had finished the chicken, the two of them, and it was time for a fat cake, dusted in sugar, and a cup of tea perhaps. She offered these to Mma Matlapeng, who accepted with enthusiasm. “This has been a wonderful dinner, Mma Ramotswe. You are a very good cook, I think.”
Mma Ramotswe took the fat cakes out of the fridge and set them out on two plates. She took a bite, watched by Mma Matlapeng, who was removing excess sugar off the first of her cakes.
“No,” said Mma Matlapeng, as she licked the tip of a finger. “If you go round forgiving people, then they will be very pleased and will do it again.”
She looked at Mma Ramotswe challengingly as she said this, and Mma Ramotswe almost gave up. But then she thought of Bishop Mwamba, and of what he had said about forgiveness. His words had never left her; she had heard them in the cathedral opposite the hospital, on a warm Sunday morning, with the great ceiling fans above their heads turning slowly. He had said, “It is our duty to forgive because if we do not, then we sentence ourselves to the repetition of the very things we want to avoid.” And she had thought at the time: Yes, that is right. If you forgive somebody, then normal life can resume. You start again.
So she said to Mma Matlapeng, “We have to forgive, Mma, because it is wrong to hold something against somebody forever.”
Mma Matlapeng was studying her fat cake, poised before her lips. She hesitated.
“We have to, Mma,” Mma Ramotswe continued. “Because it’s cruel to make somebody suffer more than they deserve. Forgiveness stops that.”
Mma Matlapeng continued to study the fat cake. She opened her mouth and took a bite.
“Is that what you really think, Mma?” she said.
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe.
She picked up a fat cake and popped it into her mouth. She could no longer talk now, nor could Mma Matlapeng, and so they finished the fat cakes, their mouths full of pleasure.
“Look at the time,” said Mma Matlapeng at last. “I must go home, Mma. I’ve enjoyed myself very much, thank you.”
Mma Ramotswe saw her guest out as far as the gate. Then she turned and walked back to the house, through the cool of the evening. Above her, high above her, the constellations of the African sky dipped and swung against the darkness of the night.