The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (13) (10 page)

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “There is no photograph of Mr. Andersen. He is a very modest man. As you would be too, Rra, if you wrote a book.
The Principles of Car Maintenance
, for example. You would have a photograph of a car on it, not of you.”

“I have not yet written a book,” mused Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I have thought of it, but I have not started one yet.”

Mma Ramotswe was eager to continue with her story, but could not let this remark go uncommented upon. “This book of yours, Rra: Would it be about car maintenance, or is it something different?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked bashful. “It will be something different, I think.”

She looked at him expectantly. “Well, Rra?”

He hesitated, as if deciding whether to trust her with a secret. “I thought of writing something for ladies.”

Mma Ramotswe’s eyebrows shot up. “For ladies? That is very interesting, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni! What exactly will this book for ladies be?”

“It will be on how to fix things in the house,” he said. “There are many things that a lady can fix herself. Washing-machine repairs, for example, are not all that difficult. Then there are things that can go wrong with cars. There is no reason why ladies should not change tyres, or do simple things like that. You do not need a man to do those things.” He paused. “That will be my book, Mma, if I ever write it, which I do not think I shall. I thought I might call it
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s Book of Hints for Ladies
.”

Mma Ramotswe clapped her hands together. “It will be a first-class book, Rra! They will sell it at that bookshop at Riverwalk. It will be in the window and take up all the space. Everybody will be buying it.”

“I must write it first,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And the problem is that I do not know how to do that. I am just a mechanic, Mma Ramotswe—as you well know. I am not a person who can write a book. You need a BA for that, and I do not have a BA.”

They returned to the subject of Clovis Andersen.

“What did he want?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

“He did not want anything,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He was passing by and he thought he would call in and say hello. It was just because he is a detective too. It is called a professional courtesy call, I think.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni took a forkful of his mutton stew. “Passing by? How is it that a famous person like that is just
passing by
the Tlokweng Road? How many famous people do you see on the Tlokweng Road, Mma Ramotswe? I have never seen one—not one. It is not a place where famous people like to go.”

“Those were my thoughts too,” said Mma Ramotswe. “So I asked him, and he told me.”

She waited while Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni dealt with his mutton stew. Then she resumed. “He said that he was in Botswana because he was invited here to visit some lady.”

“Some Motswana lady?”

She shook her head. “No, an American lady who has lived here for a few years. This lady is working here on a scheme that the American government has to build libraries in schools. They are building a library in Serowe, I think, and another one at Selebi-Phikwe. There will be many libraries all over the place, and it will be very nice for the children. That is what she is doing.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “It sounds like good work. And so Mr. Andersen knows this lady, and she asked him to come to see her. Has he not got a wife back wherever he comes from? Is there no wife to say, ‘You must not go off and visit library ladies’?”

Mma Ramotswe raised a finger in the air. “No, Rra, that is the point. There was a wife—there was a Mrs. Andersen, but she is late now.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni lowered his head, as was polite to do, even if one did not know the late person. “I am very sorry to hear that.”

“Yes, it is very sad. So he has no wife now …”

“And he is hoping that the library lady …”

“No, he is not hoping that. But I think the library lady is hoping that she will be the new Mrs. Andersen.”

“You mean she’s keener than he is?”

“That is exactly what I mean. He did not use those precise words, of course, but that is the impression I formed. I think that she is keen to marry him, but he has different ideas. I think he wants her just as a friend.”

“But what is the problem?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Do they not like one another? Is that not the most important thing?”

“I think they do like one another. In fact, he said to me, ‘I am very fond of this lady, but I do not love her.’ That is what he said, Rra.”

He shrugged. “There are many people who marry one another without being in love. There are many good marriages like that. I could make you a long list, Mma.”

She looked away. Was their own marriage based on love, or was it something else that brought them together? Affection? Friendship? The comfort of sharing their lives? She knew what she felt about Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni: she loved him. It was as simple as that. He was her husband, and she loved him. And she had every reason to believe, she felt, that he had loved her when he asked her to marry him and she had agreed. She was sure that he had loved her when they stood together, before Bishop Mwamba, under that tree at the orphan farm, with the sound of the children’s singing rising up into that great, empty sky and the words of the marriage service—those profound words—hanging in the air, proclaimed by the Bishop and repeated by the two of them so that all might hear; she was sure that he had loved her then, and she believed that he loved her still. She would not ask him, though, because you should never ask that question of another; you should wait for him or her to say it, so that you know, then, that it comes from the heart, from that part of us that can never lie, can never conceal the truth.

She acknowledged the veracity of what he said. “Yes, there are many such marriages, but I think that people still like to believe they are in love when they get married. I think that is important.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked thoughtful. “So he does not love this lady? Then why did he come out to see her here? Surely that is unkind, if she thinks that he’s coming out to Botswana so that he can ask her to marry him, and all the time he has no intention of doing that. Surely that is not very kind.”

She admitted that it could seem a bit like raising somebody’s
hopes, but would it not have been more unkind to refuse to come at all? He saw that. “It is a very difficult situation,” he said. “It must have been very hard for Mr. Andersen.” He stopped for a moment before continuing: “Why does he not love her, Mma? Is there a reason?”

Mma Ramotswe settled back in her seat. “That is the point, Rra. There is a very big reason why poor Mr. Andersen cannot love this lady who builds libraries. It is because he is still in love with his late wife. That is the reason.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni finished the last of the mutton stew on his plate and looked enquiringly at Mma Ramotswe. Sometimes he was allowed a second helping, but these days, following the discovery that a belt he had been wearing for years no longer fitted him, he was on a less calorific regime.

“No more,” she said. “We can eat the rest tomorrow.”

He sighed, but did not argue.

“So, Mma Ramotswe, what is Mr. Andersen to do?”

“I do not know, Rra. All that I know is that he is sad in his heart.” She touched her chest. “That is the place where his sadness is. Right there. And I do not think that it is ever very easy to deal with sadness in that part of the body.”

He nodded his assent to that comment. “You are right, Mma. It is very difficult.”

“But I shall do my best to cheer him up,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have invited him to come to the office tomorrow to discuss some of our cases. He was very happy to be invited—I think that he has nothing to do all day while the library lady is building libraries. And he is here for three weeks, Rra, which is a long time when you have nothing to do.” She paused. “Except to be sad. Three weeks of sadness is a long time, I think.”

It was, reflected Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Three weeks of sadness was a long time, by any standards, but it would be particularly long
when one was far from home in a strange country, when everybody else would have their friends and family about them and would seem so occupied with their own lives. In such circumstances you might easily forget who you were, and how you once were happy. He almost expressed these thoughts to Mma Ramotswe, but did not do so, inhibited, perhaps, by the feeling that he was just a mechanic, not a poet or a philosopher, and that on the lips of mechanics such words might sound false or contrived, and certainly not as authentic as anything they might say on the subject of gearboxes, or fuel systems, or any of those other matters in respect of which he knew he stood on far firmer ground.

G
RACE MAKUTSI
, Dip. Sec. (97%), did not accompany her husband, Mr. Phuti Radiphuti (of the Double Comfort Furniture Store), to his next meeting with Mr. Clarkson Putumelo, the proprietor of the This Way Up Building Company. This was not because she was indifferent to the design of the house that Mr. Putumelo was to build for them—she was extremely interested in that—but because she felt that she had not forgiven the builder his rudeness towards her and would avoid being in his presence until such time as he changed his attitude. That, she knew, was unlikely; in Mma Makutsi’s opinion, attitudes were qualities with which one was born, and the likelihood of their being changed was, sadly, remote.

That is not to say it was impossible, as in her time she had witnessed a number of marked changes in attitude so profound, in fact, as to be quite astonishing. There was a man in northern Botswana, for instance, who was a known cattle thief; and yet while he was visiting a relative up near Kasane, he had come under the influence of a charismatic preacher and had been baptised in the waters of the Zambezi River. The change in that man had been so remarkable that there was talk of its being attributable to the
special qualities of the Zambezi River. People said that as far as washing away sin was concerned, there was nothing to beat Zambezi water and that the religious zeal of those immersed in lesser waters—the Notwane River, to name just one river readily on hand for baptism ceremonies—was far less impressive than those of Zambezi converts. Of course it would be difficult to measure something as elusive as inner virtue, but in the case of this man there had certainly been a dramatic change. Far from stealing the cattle of others, he now actively sought out those that had been stolen, identified the thieves, and then reported the matter to the owners and the authorities. In all of this he was conspicuously successful, owing to his intimate knowledge of the ways of cattle thieves, his having been one in the first place.
Set a thief to catch a thief:
Mma Makutsi had read that somewhere, and it had struck her as containing a valuable insight—almost worthy of elevation into one of Clovis Andersen’s famous rules in
The Principles of Private Detection
.

Mma Makutsi did not imagine that Mr. Clarkson Putumelo would change, and she therefore reconciled herself to having to watch the building of the house from a distance, making only irregular visits to the site. She had full confidence in Phuti, though, as she took the view that if you could manage a large furniture store, as Phuti did so successfully, then you could manage just about anything. She had nonetheless been careful to explain to Phuti exactly what she wanted in the kitchen. That would be her domain, and she wanted everything to be perfect. “The fridge,” she said, “must not be too close to the door, or you will find that you cannot have the kitchen door open at the same time as you have the fridge door open.”

“Very wise,” said Phuti. “I would never have thought of that.”

“That is because you’re …” Mma Makutsi stopped herself in time. She had been about to say, “That’s because you’re a man,” but then she thought that this was perhaps a bit unkind, even if it was
true. You should not make people feel guilty about things that are beyond their control, and the fact that Phuti was a man was not something he could do anything about. So she completed the observation by saying instead, “… because you’re too busy thinking about so many other important things. How can you be expected to think about fridge doors when your mind is full of big decisions on things like ordering furniture, and so on and so forth?”

Phuti nodded. It was true that he had many such decisions to make, but he also felt that he should concern himself with minutiae. He called this
micromanagement
, and he had learned about it from a correspondence course he had taken called “Managing the Details in Retail and Related Industries.”

“Is there anything else?” he had asked. “Do you need one cooker or two?”

Mma Makutsi was unprepared for this question. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that she would be in a position to have two cookers; indeed, it was achievement enough, she felt, to have had the single-plate cooker-cum-oven that she had successfully used for the last few years. Two cookers!