Miracle at Speedy Motors (10 page)

Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment. Phuti seemed to her to be an understanding man; surely he would not be vindictive about the loss of a bed. But then, men were unpredictable; even outwardly mild men could suddenly become unreasonable. She pointed to the teapot. “First things first, Mma,” she said. “Tea helps us to think things through.”

They sat with their cups of tea. Mma Ramotswe took a sip of red bush, and Mma Makutsi raised her cup of ordinary tea to her mouth, anxiously, unenthusiastically.

“I could tell him,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I could do it. If you are too embarrassed, then let me tell him. That is the simplest solution.”

“Oh, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “If you would do that…I know that I am being a coward, but if you would do that.”

“It is not cowardice to be weak,” said Mma Ramotswe. She stopped herself. That was not quite what she had intended to say, but Mma Makutsi seemed either not to have noticed or not to have taken offence, so Mma Ramotswe left it at that.

RARELY HAD
Mma Ramotswe’s life been quite so complicated, but at least she knew what to do about it. The next morning, after sending a message to Mma Makutsi through Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to the effect that she would be in late that day, or perhaps even not at all, she drove her tiny white van along Zebra Drive, out into the traffic of Mobutu Drive, and headed for Mochudi, on the old road. That was the road she knew well, the road she had travelled so many times before, as a child, as a young woman, and now, although still the same person in many respects, as an established and well-known citizen, the wife of a much-admired mechanic, the owner of a business with a staff of two and a half (if one counted Mr. Polopetsi). Mr. Polopetsi…It saddened her just to think about it. But that, she supposed, was often the case with anonymous letters: they came from somebody one knew, and when they were signed, as they often were,
A Friend,
that was indeed the case.

But as she drove along the Mochudi Road, passing each land-mark—that tiny rural school with the stony yard and the crumbling whitewash; that normally dry river course, now with a muddy trickle of water from the previous day’s rain; that graveyard just off the road with its tiny shelters, umbrella-like, above each grave, so that the late people down below might be protected from the sun—as she drove along this road with all its memories, she put out of her mind the things that had been worrying her. For out here, out in the acacia scrub that stretched away to those tiny island-like hills on the horizon, the concerns of the working world seemed of little weight. Yes, one had to earn a living; yes, one had to work with people who might have their little ways; yes, the world was not always as one might want it to be: but all of that seemed so small and unimportant under this sky. The important thing, and really the only thing, Mma Ramotswe told herself, is that you are breathing and that you can see Botswana about you; that was the only thing that counted. And any person, no matter how poor he might be, could do that. Any woman might drive her tiny white van along this road and feel the warm breeze on her face. That was the important thing.

And now, coming into Mochudi, the place where she was born, she followed the road that led round the back of the hill which overlooked the village. There was a choice of trees under which to park, and she picked the one that looked the shadiest. Then, without asking herself why she should be here and why she should seek out that place at the edge, where the rock stopped and there was several hundred feet of tumbling nothing in front of you, she made her way over to that place and looked down. This was where she had come with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni when he had been recovering from his depressive illness—his sadness as he now called it—and they had sat together. This was where, many years before, she had played with her friends as a child, daring each other to go closer to the edge, risking the ire of the teacher who had banned them from going anywhere near the void. This was where she could sit and hear the sound of the cattle bells drifting up from below. This was where she could always find peace.

She sat, doing nothing, staring out over the plain below. If, when viewed from above like this, our human striving could seem so small, then why did it not appear like that when viewed from ground level? And as she thought this, she allowed her mind to turn to the problems in hand. The question of Mr. Polopetsi was the most serious of these, she felt, but here, in this light, he was no problem. If envy had driven him to write what he had written, then there was a very simple remedy for that. Love. She would tell him that she was sorry that he had been hurt into writing those letters. She would promote him. So that solved that.

Then there was Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and his determination to take Motholeli to Johannesburg. Of course it was hopeless: this doctor, whoever he was, had no business raising Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s hopes like that. There was nothing that could be done for Motholeli—that had been made quite clear by the doctors at the Princess Marina when they had done their scan. They had shown her the results and pointed to the place they thought was responsible. They said that if there had been a tumour, which could be operated upon, it would have shown. But there was nothing. A diagnosis by elimination, they explained: there had been damage caused by infection, by something nobody could see. They had been firm in their view that this was the explanation, and so too had they been firm in their view that Motholeli would never walk. That had to be accepted, and this doctor was simply raising hopes that would have to be dashed. And when she had probed, and got Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to admit it, she had uncovered the doctor’s motivation: money. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had not revealed how he would pay, but here, on this rock, payment seemed not to be the issue. Let him do what he wished. If he wanted to take Motholeli to Johannesburg, then he should be allowed to do so. What was the point of striving to stop somebody from doing something when the sky was as large as this and when you could see, on the dry land stretching out below, the first touches of green from the rains?

And Mma Makutsi and her bed? That was simple; hardly a problem at all. She should tell Phuti Radiphuti the truth, because that was what he was owed; but the truth would include the fact that Mma Makutsi was afraid to speak to him about what she had done. Mma Sebina and her lies? Simple too: she must be treated as if she was telling the truth,
because that was what she thought it was.
Everything, in fact, was very clear, and very untroubling. In such a way might worries be lifted, allowing them to float up of their own accord, float up off one’s shoulders and disappear into the high sky of Botswana, so empty, so white, that it made one feel dizzy simply to look at it.

She rose to her feet and for a moment felt unsteady. It would be so easy to fall, she thought, to go over the edge in that moment of disorientation that can come when you suddenly stand up and the blood rushes from the head. But the feeling passed, and she was steady enough as she took one last look at the land down below, the piece of this earth that she knew so well. Then she picked her way across the rocks to the place where the tiny white van was parked, got into it, and began the drive back to Gaborone. The landmarks of her journey earlier that day would repeat themselves in the opposite order: graveyard, riverbed, whitewashed school, home. The wrong order for a journey, thought Mma Ramotswe, and smiled.

CHAPTER TEN

THE DOCTOR’S HOUSE

M
R. J.L.B. MATEKONI
had not told Mma Ramotswe that he had set up an appointment for Motholeli to see the doctor from Selebi-Phikwe. He did not wish to deceive her, but his suspicion that she would not approve had been proved right.

“There is no point,” she said. “We know that, Rra. We have been told.”

He had rehearsed his arguments to the contrary, and he had used them. There was such a thing as a second opinion, he pointed out; there were plenty of cases in which one doctor had given up and then another doctor had achieved a cure. Were there? she asked. And did he know of anywhere this thing that Motholeli had, this precise thing, had been cured?

He knew that he was no match for Mma Ramotswe; it was something to do with the sort of mind she had, a detective’s mind, which would always come up with arguments that he, a mere mechanic, would never be able to refute. But there were second opinions, and he held his ground.

“It’s the same with cars,” he argued. “If you brought a car into the garage and Charlie told you that he thought you needed a new gearbox, wouldn’t you want a second opinion? And might not that second opinion be quite different from Charlie’s?”

That was a powerful example, as far as it went; but Mma Ramotswe did not think that it went very far. “Charlie is not a proper mechanic, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni,” she said. “Nobody would listen to his opinion in the first place.” She paused, letting the point sink in. She was being gentle here, because she knew that he wanted desperately to believe that this doctor could do something. “Those doctors at the Princess Marina knew what they were doing. And Dr. Moffat as well. He said the same thing too, didn’t he? Wouldn’t you prefer to listen to Dr. Moffat rather than Charlie?”

He had let the matter ride at that, but he was still determined, and the next day he had lifted Motholeli gently into his truck.

“It’s best if you don’t discuss this with Mma Ramotswe,” he had said to her. “There is a doctor I would like you to see, but I don’t think Mma Ramotswe likes him very much.”

Motholeli had been puzzled. “Why does she not like him?” she asked. “Is he unkind?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni laughed. “Of course not! He is a very kind doctor who has said that he will just take a look at your legs to see if there is anything he can do to help. He probably won’t be able to do anything, I’m afraid, but I think we should see him, don’t you?”

She did. She had become reconciled to being in a wheelchair, adapting in the way children will adapt to virtually any adversity. This, in her eyes, was how the world was, and she had neither moped nor railed against her illness. At the same time, she still dreamed that she could walk, and these dreams came quite frequently; not daydreams, but sleeping dreams in which she suddenly slipped out of the wheelchair and simply walked like other children.

“I am happy to see this doctor,” she said. “I know…”

“Yes,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “We must not go with any hopes. But we can at least go.”

Now, sitting in the passenger seat of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck, Motholeli gave an anxious glance at her wheelchair, which was in the open back of the vehicle and was bouncing about as the truck negotiated the dirt road which led to the doctor’s house.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni reassured her that it would be safe. “We are almost there,” he said. “That is Mr. Mgang’s house over there, you see, and that means we are only a mile from the doctor’s place.”

The road curved round to the right, back in the direction of town. On either side of the road was scrub bush of a neglected and desolate nature, half-heartedly grazed by a small herd of thin cattle, dusty even after the first fall of rain, dotted with stunted acacias and discouraged thorn bushes. The road was now little more than a track, so deeply rutted in the centre that it was safer to drive with the wheels on one side up on the thick verge of sand. A lesser vehicle might quickly be bogged down and sink in this sand, but not Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck, with its wide tyres and its low-ratio gears.

The doctor’s gate appeared without warning in the fence. Beyond it, another track, but not a very long one, leading to the house itself, which was set down beside a small stand of eucalyptus trees; a house which must once have been a farmhouse, back in the nineteen-fifties, in Bechuanaland Protectorate days, before Botswana. Along the front of the house ran a verandah, with squat white-painted pillars supporting a sloping tin roof that had been painted deep red. Here and there, where the weather had made its mark, the paint had worn off and the corrugated surface of the tin below was revealed, rusty patches of discolouration. A single telephone wire ran from the roof of the house to a pole by a water tank, and then to another pole, marching off to join other wires near the side of the road. Oddly, inconsequentially, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni muttered, “That carried my voice.” And Motholeli, looking up, said, “What?”

“That telephone wire,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “It carried my voice when I phoned the doctor to make your appointment.”

She frowned. “Yes. And is that him, that man? Is that the doctor?”

He had come out and was watching them from the shade of the verandah, a tall man, his tight greying hair looking almost white against the dark of his skin.

“Where is he from?” asked Motholeli. “Is he a Motswana?”

“He is half Motswana,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Motswana mother, Zambian father. But he has lived here a long time. He is a very clever doctor, I think. He is called Dr. Mwata.”

They parked by the side of the house and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni unloaded the wheelchair from the back. Then he picked up Motholeli and helped her gently into the chair. This is why I am here, he thought; this is why I have come here.

Dr. Mwata had emerged from the verandah and was looking down at Motholeli. “So this is the young lady,” he said.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni fingered the crease on his trousers. He had changed out of his garage clothes into freshly ironed khaki trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt. “She is called Motholeli,” he said. “She…” He tailed off. He was awed by the doctor’s presence, which was a powerful one; by his big hands; by the gold-rimmed glasses he wore; and by the fact that he was a man of education, a graduate of a university somewhere, the beneficiary of years of training.

“Come inside,” said the doctor. “This way.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni pushed the wheelchair round to the front of the house and with the help of the doctor lifted it up the three low steps onto the verandah. Then they followed the doctor through the front door and down a short corridor. The floor of the corridor was lined with wide planks which had been recently varnished and reflected the little light that penetrated the gloom of the interior.

“This is a fine house,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nervously.

“It is too old,” said the doctor. “But it will last me out. Then the white ants will finish their job of eating it. They are waiting for that.”

“They will eat the whole country one day,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “They are waiting for us to let them.”

The doctor laughed. “They do not like the creosote I use,” he said. “That spoils their appetite.”

He opened a door and led them into a large room furnished with a desk and a few chairs; a bookcase under the window was stuffed with yellowing journals and papers. There was a kitchen table of some sort, raised up by the positioning of bricks beneath its legs so that it was high enough to be an examination couch. A sheet had been draped over this; a sheet with a red line through it, signifying hospital ownership.

Suddenly Motholeli started to cry. The doctor became aware of it first and bent down to comfort her. “You mustn’t be frightened,” he said. “There is nothing to be frightened of.” He turned to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Perhaps it might have been better if the mother…”

“The mother is late. There is just my wife, and she…”

The doctor nodded. “The child will be all right,” he said. And with that he leaned over and lifted Motholeli out of the chair and placed her on the table. She reached out and held on to the sleeve of his shirt. Her head was bent.

“Maybe…” began Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Maybe…” He did not know what to do. He could not bear her sobbing, which was louder now.

“Hush,” said Dr. Mwata. “There is nothing to cry about. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“No,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “This will not hurt.”

Motholeli looked at him. She was trying to stifle her sobs, and was succeeding now.

“There,” said Dr. Mwata. “There, you see.”

He had taken a small rubber hammer out of his pocket and was tapping at her knees. Then he slipped off her shoes and pinched the skin of her ankles. “Can you feel that?” he asked. “Or this? Over here? This?”

The examination continued for ten minutes or so. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked away, staring out of the window, his back turned so that the doctor might conduct his examination in private. There was an old metal windmill outside, and the wooden blades were turning slowly in the breeze, driving a borehole pump; he could hear the mechanical sucking noise, the rattling of a loose spar on the windmill tower; this was not a well-kept place, but the doctor must be busy, even if he had retired. You could not expect an educated man to worry about pumps and boreholes; there were plenty of other people to attend to such things. In the distance, towards the South African border, the clouds were building up again; there would be more rain, he thought, which was a good sign. Yesterday’s storm had laid the dust, and if rain followed later today it would begin to fill the rivers and dams. They could at least hope.

Dr. Mwata cleared his throat. “That is all I need to see,” he said, patting Motholeli on the shoulder. “You have been a very good girl. Now the Daddy can lift you off the table.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni stepped forward and placed the child back in her wheelchair. He was occasionally referred to as the Daddy by people who did not know, but the word remained strange in his ears.

Dr. Mwata now took Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s arm. “You and I should go for a walk, Rra.” He turned to Motholeli. “I will ask the lady in the kitchen to make you something to drink. She will look after you for a little while. The Daddy and I will not be long.”

He went to the door and called out down the corridor. A few moments later a woman appeared. She was a large woman wearing a housecoat and a pair of commodious blue slippers. She stared at Motholeli while her employer gave instructions. “You must give this girl some milk. And bread with plenty of honey on it.”

The men went outside, leaving the house from the back door. The yard at the back was neglected too—a patch of land which merged, without fence or marker, into the scrub bush. A few bricks had been placed in the ground in a circle, a forlorn attempt at decoration or the abandoned beginning of a flower bed; apart from that there was nothing.

“This is a nice place,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. He did not know what to say; I am just a mechanic, he thought.

The doctor glanced at him and then looked away. “We could walk over that way. There is a water tank.” He paused. “We will have rain later on, I think.”

“I think so too,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Your cattle—”

“They are not mine,” the doctor interrupted him. “They belong to my son. He is the one who has cattle. I have never had a cattle post. Nothing like that.”

“You are a doctor. You don’t have time for that. You have more important things to do.”

The doctor nodded. “Maybe. But sometimes the things that doctors do may not seem to be all that important. When I was a doctor up on the mines, most of the time I was giving medicals to men before they were signed on. I had to make them run a mile in the heat and then take their pulse. I looked in their mouths for obvious signs of infection, into their eyes, while all the time, you know, the thing that was going to do the real damage was invisible. No microscope would show you it was there. But it was there. And it was years before we knew what it was and what it would do to our people.” He stopped walking and looked at Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Do you know what I’m talking about, Rra?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not meet his eyes. He looked at the ground. “I do.”

They had stopped walking while the doctor spoke; now they resumed. “I lost heart,” said Dr. Mwata. “What could I do? We had the drugs, but could we ever get them to people in time? And then they came and said to me that I was too old to carry on. But I did not want to leave medicine altogether. And so I have found a way of helping, particularly those people who have been told by other doctors that nothing can be done. I take on lost causes, you could say. Like that saint. What do they call him? St. Jude, I think. The Catholics have this saint who will help them when nobody else will.”

They were nearing the water tank, a low-built, half-crumbling concrete construction to which an old lead pipe ran up from the ground.

“Do you think that you can help her?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Do you?”

They were at the side of the tank. At the edge of the concrete, where it rose up from the sandy soil, a snake had abandoned its old skin, the slough a gossamer tube, twisted by the wind, but still a perfect mould of the creature that had been within. Dr. Mwata reached down and picked it up, delicately holding it so that the sun shone through the crinkle of tiny scales.