Miracle at Speedy Motors (15 page)

She read it carefully, aware of the fact that Mma Makutsi was watching her.
So, fat woman, you think you know everything! You and that assistant of yours, with her stupid glasses—you know nothing about what you don’t know!

Mma Makutsi was about to say something, but Mma Ramotswe anticipated her. “Yes,” she said. “It is another one.” And she thought: Which stupid glasses? The original stupid glasses, or the new stupid glasses?

Mma Makutsi came over to take the letter. She peered at it, the paper close to her nose.
The glasses don’t work!
Mma Ramotswe said to herself. But any satisfaction she might have experienced on having her earlier suspicions confirmed was eclipsed by the gravity of the moment.

Mma Makutsi walked over to the door that led into the garage. “Charlie,” she shouted. “Please come through here.”

Charlie appeared at the door, an adjustable wrench in his hand. “I am very busy, Mma,” he said. “What is it?”

“This letter, Charlie. You said that somebody left it. Who left it?”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. She knew the answer to Mma Makutsi’s question; the letter would have been found on a surface somewhere in the garage, slipped there by Mr. Polopetsi, so that it might be thought that somebody had dropped in unobserved. As a detective, even if only an assistant detective, Mma Makutsi should have realised that one could not assume that the letter had come from outside.

Charlie shrugged. “Some woman,” he said. “It was while we were dealing with that car under the tree—all of us. I came back to get something and I saw her coming out of the garage. I asked her what she wanted, but she just muttered something about making a mistake. Then she went off.”

Mma Ramotswe sat quite still. It was a woman. It was not Mr. Polopetsi.

“Are you sure that she left it?” she asked. “Are you sure it wasn’t there before?”

Charlie seemed surprised that such interest was being taken in the details of what he thought was a very unimportant matter. What did it matter who left a letter? It would be perfectly obvious who had written it—letters bore signatures, after all. “Yes, I am sure, Mma. It was on the petrol drum. I had been sitting on top of that before I went outside. There was no letter there. Then there was. It was that lady.”

“And you saw her face?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

“Yes,” said Charlie. “She was a very pretty woman. Big bottom too.”

“You think of nothing but bottoms,” snapped Mma Makutsi. “You are like a little boy.”

“Oh yes,” said Charlie hotly. “So there are lots of bottoms about. So that’s my fault, is it?”

“You must not fight about…about unimportant things,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is not right.” She made a placatory gesture to Charlie. “Now listen, Charlie, you didn’t recognise this lady, did you? Had you seen her before?”

Charlie shook his head. “No. Never.” He cast an angry glance at Mma Makutsi. “Can I go now, Mma Ramotswe?”

“Of course you can, Charlie,” said Mma Ramotswe, adding, “and thank you. Thank you for helping me to avoid making a big mistake.”

After Charlie had left, Mma Makutsi returned to sit down at her desk. She looked at the letter once more, and then shifted her gaze over to Mma Ramotswe. “So, Mma Ramotswe,” she said. “It was not Mr. Polopetsi after all.”

Mma Ramotswe looked down at her hands—the hands of one who was capable, she realised, of the most appalling mis-judgement. “I feel very bad, Mma,” she said. “I feel very bad to have thought those things about him. It was very unfair.”

“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “It was.”

Mma Ramotswe continued with her contemplation of her hands. She had made a mistake, but it was one which anybody might make in the face of the evidence that had been before her. And Mma Makutsi was not one to lecture her about making mistakes. Had she forgotten that bed left out in the rain? What about the new, unsuitable glasses?

She looked up. While she had been staring at her hands, Mma Makutsi, it seemed, had taken off her new glasses and slipped her old ones back on. Mma Ramotswe was momentarily taken aback by this, but recovered her composure. “Yes,” she said to Mma Makutsi. “We can all make mistakes, Mma. Even you.”

Nothing more was said. Mma Ramotswe’s potentially disastrous mistake—fortunately not communicated to the entirely innocent Mr. Polopetsi, whose embarrassment at forgetting he had a letter for her in his pocket she had taken for guilt—was cancelled out by Mma Makutsi’s purchase of the unsuitable glasses. Both looked foolish. There need be no further mention of either matter, apart, perhaps, from one final question.

“Were they expensive, Mma?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Those glasses. Did they cost a lot?”

Mma Makutsi pursed her lips. They must have been very expensive, thought Mma Ramotswe.

Then Mma Makutsi said, “I don’t know, Mma.”

So Phuti Radiphuti bought them for her, thought Mma Ramotswe. That will lead to difficulties, as he will surely expect her to wear them.

Mma Makutsi realised that further explanation was necessary, and she now provided it. “I found them, you see,” she said, her voice quiet, almost ashamed. “I found them by the side of the road.”

It took Mma Ramotswe a little time to speak. “You must—”

“Yes, I know,” interjected Mma Makutsi. “I will hand them in. I was going to, I suppose. It’s just that—”

“Good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “So that’s that.”

But it was not. Now came the thing that Mma Makutsi had not intended to tell Mma Ramotswe, but now it just tumbled out. “I think I know who wears glasses like this,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Violet Sephotho!”

Mma Ramotswe gasped. “Violet Sephotho! That horrid woman from the recruitment agency? The one who—”

“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “That man-eater from the dancing class. The one who was rude about Phuti. The one who—”

“You have told me all about her,” said Mma Ramotswe. She hesitated. An idea was coming to her; just the germ of an idea. But she knew from experience that in these tiny, incipient ideas, these hunches, there often lay the answer to a major question.

“When did you find them?” she asked.

“A week ago,” said Mma Makutsi. “Last Monday. I wasn’t going to wear them, you see, and then…”

Mma Ramotswe held up a hand. She was not interested now in Mma Makutsi’s struggles with her conscience. What she was interested in was finding out exactly where the glasses had been found. And the answer, when it came, confirmed what she had been thinking.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

HE LOVED HIS CATTLE. HE LOVED HIS COUNTRY

T
WO DAYS AFTER
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had left for Johannesburg with Motholeli, he telephoned Mma Ramotswe and told her at length about the trip and about their accommodation in a small hotel on the outskirts of the city. It was the second time that he had stayed in a hotel; for Motholeli it was the first. Both were excited.

“There is a very big bath in the bathroom,” Motholeli told Mma Ramotswe. “And in the morning you can help yourself to as many eggs and as much bacon as you like. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has been eating a lot.”

“Not that much,” she heard her husband saying in the background.

“And the doctors?” she asked.

“They are very kind,” said Motholeli.

Mma Ramotswe waited for something else to be said about the treatment, but neither Motholeli nor Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was forthcoming on the subject. “They are doing a lot of things,” he said. “I am not there, though, and so I cannot say what it is that they are doing.”

There was time enough to ponder this, and she did; rather too much, perhaps, as she found that anxiety over what was happening began to gnaw away at her. Now she started to reproach herself for not being firmer, for failing to veto a trip which she saw as pointless and even counter-productive. Motholeli had handled her disability with remarkable maturity and dignity; was it right, Mma Ramotswe wondered, that she should be encouraged to think that something could be done when it so obviously could not? Of course it would have been difficult to oppose the whole thing, for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni tended to hold on to an idea once he became attached to it. If she had refused to allow Motholeli to go to Johannesburg, then he could have ended up resenting her. So perhaps it was the right decision after all. On the other hand…

She had not asked how the trip and the treatment were to be paid for, and she might never have found out had Mma Makutsi not taken it upon herself during Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s absence to open the mail addressed to Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. This was hardly voluminous: a few envelopes containing cheques for work done, a letter or two from suppliers of parts, advertisements for batteries—and a letter from the bank.

Mma Ramotswe could tell that there was something wrong when she saw her assistant frown. For a few moments she thought that perhaps the anonymous letter-writer had struck again, but then Mma Makutsi looked up and began to read. “This is from the bank, Mma,” she said. “This is what it says. ‘Dear Mr. Matekoni, Further to your application for an un-secured loan, we regret to inform you that we shall, after all, require security for the sum for which you have applied. Our legal department will be in touch about setting up a bond over your garage premises to the extent of the sum applied for. This can be arranged within ten days of our receiving your instruction…’” Mma Makutsi tailed off. “He’s going to mortgage the garage,” she said.

Mma Ramotswe got up from her desk and walked across the room to retrieve the letter. She read it through again, silently, and then returned it to its envelope. “It’s for Motholeli’s treatment,” she said. “That can be the only reason why he has applied for a loan.”

“Did he not tell you how much it would cost?” asked Mma Makutsi. “That loan is for a lot of money, Mma. A lot. And if he fails to pay it back, then the bank takes the garage.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. “He is a kind man,” she said. “He has always been a kind man.”

“Eee,” said Mma Makutsi. “Eee, Mma.” It was really all that one could say in the face of such behaviour.

“But I can’t let him do it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We cannot have a mortgage on this building. It is our main property.”

“And if we lost this building, then where would there be for the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency?” asked Mma Makutsi. “We would be out on the street, along with the hawkers and the vegetable sellers. Can you imagine clients coming to an agency that was just a roadside stand?”

“They would not come,” said Mma Ramotswe. She imagined for a moment Mma Makutsi typing on a small, upturned wooden box, perhaps under a large blue umbrella to protect her from the sun, her ninety-seven per cent certificate from the Botswana Secretarial College leaning against the side of the box. No, it would not do.

“I shall have to get this money myself,” said Mma Ramotswe.

Mma Makutsi let out a low whistle. “Have you got that much in your account, Mma? It is a lot of money.”

“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I do not have that. Not in money.”

Mma Makutsi knew what Mma Ramotswe was going to say. “Your cattle?”

There was silence. In Botswana, the sale or slaughter of one’s cattle is the last resort; it is the last thing that anyone wishes to do. Cattle were the ultimate security, the property that stood before the very gates of indigence and kept them from opening. Once one had sold the cattle, there would be nothing left to sell.

Mma Ramotswe nodded her reply. “I have a large herd,” she said. “My daddy was very good with cattle. He left me some very fine beasts, and they have multiplied. There are many of them now. I shall not have to sell all of them.”

“It is not a good thing to sell cattle,” said Mma Makutsi. “Is there no other way, Mma?”

“I do not see one,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I shall go out to the cattle post and choose the ones to sell.”

“This is a very sad day,” said Mma Makutsi.

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is.” She would have liked to say that it was not, that there was a positive side to this; she was not one to concentrate on the bleak. But where was the positive side in having to dispose of those lovely animals, the legacy of her father, the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the very cattle that had gathered round his house when in Mochudi he lay in his final illness; had gathered, she thought, to say goodbye to their owner?

But she would have to do it, and so she prepared the next day to go out to the cattle post, a journey of six hours on a very bumpy dirt road. She went in the tiny white van and stopped halfway through the journey to eat a sandwich by the side of the road. It was mid-morning, and getting hotter. A hornbill watched her from the branch of a tree, casting his unnaturally large eye upon her. From another tree, some distance away, a lourie cried out with its distinctive call. She looked up at the sky. What was money? Nothing. A human conceit, so much smaller a thing than love, and friendship, and the pursuit, no matter how pointless, of hope. What did it matter that this money was being thrown away for no good reason? It mattered not at all, she decided.

And when, a few hours later, she stood with the man who looked after the cattle and identified those that she would sell, she did not think that it was the wrong thing to do, but picked them out bravely, without regret. That one, she said, and that one over there; that one is the calf of a cow my father called
the brave one,
that one came from far away, over that side, and was very strong; that one had a father who had only one horn. The cattle were rounded up, lowing, watching with their wide brown eyes, their heads moving to keep flies at bay; it was hot that afternoon and the trees themselves seemed to wilt; there was dust, kicked up by the cattle as they moved; there was the sound of bells tied round the necks of some of the herd. They are the ones who give music to the other cattle, her father had said of those ones.

Now that line came back to her, and she said it, under her breath. They are the ones who give music to the other cattle.

“What was that, Mma?” said the man. “What did you say?”

Mma Ramotswe looked down at him; he was a short man, bow-legged, and his eyes were bright with intelligence. She smiled. “It was something my daddy said. He was a man who knew a lot about cattle.”

The man inclined his head respectfully. “I have heard that, Mma. I have heard people say that about him. They have said it.”

That Obed Ramotswe should be remembered, that people should still speak of him; that touched her. One did not have to be famous to be remembered in Botswana; there was room in history for all of us.

“He was a very good man,” she said. “He loved his cattle. He loved his country.”

She had not intended to utter an epitaph, but that, she realised, was what she had done. And she thought: if your spirit is anywhere, then it is here, among your cattle, where you might hear what I have just said.