In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

CHAPTER NINE MR POLOPETSI STARTS AT THE GARAGE

THE REPAIR of the bicycle had been effected by the younger apprentice. He had managed to straighten the handlebars and attend to a buckle in the wheel, with the result that even if the bicycle was not as good as new, it was possible to ride it safely. Mma Ramotswe had her misgivings about this; she would have liked to be able to say to its owner that it was perfect, indeed that it had been improved upon, but she felt that she could not claim this. Instead she would have to say that they had done their best, and that she hoped that he might be satisfied with the repair. Of course, in view of the offer she was about to make him, he would be unlikely to protest very much.

She had asked him to come to the garage to fetch the bicycle and now he was here, knocking at the door of her office, his hat in his hand. She had bade him enter and he had done so, not boldly as men usually entered, but almost apologetically. Mma Ramotswe noticed this, and thought how this must be the effect of prison, at least its effect on an honest man who had been sent there unjustly. What greater wrong can there be than that, what greater hurt? To know that you were reviled for something that you had not done, or for something for which you did not deserve to be punished; that must be very painful, she thought.

She rose to her feet to greet him.

“You are very welcome, Rra,” she said. “You must come in and sit down, and we can talk. Then …”

“It is not ready? It is not fixed?”

She smiled to put him at his ease. “Of course it’s ready, Rra. We have done our best, or rather the apprentice through there—you might have seen him—has done his best. I hope that it is all right.”

His relief was visible. “I am glad of that, Mma. I need that bicycle to look for work.”

Mma Ramotswe looked across the room to where Mma Makutsi was sitting at her desk and they exchanged glances.

“Well, Rra,” she began. “On that thing I have something to say to you. I can tell you …”

As she spoke, Mr Polopetsi suddenly raised a hand to stop her. “No, Mma,” he said, his tone becoming firmer. “Please do not tell me. I have had so many people telling me how I can find work. They all tell me that I must look in this place and look in that place. And I do that, and it is no good. It is always the same thing—I tell them about what happened to me and they say thank you, but we cannot help you. That is what they tell me. Every time. So please do not tell me again. I know you are being kind, but I have heard these things so many times.”

He stopped, and again there was an apologetic look, as if the courage that his declaration had required had now run out.

Mma Ramotswe stared at him. “I was not going to say that, Rra,” she said quietly. “I was not going to give you advice. No, I was going to offer you a job. That is all.”

For a few moments Mr Polopetsi said nothing, but looked at her, and then looked over his shoulder at Mma Makutsi, as if for confirmation. Mma Makutsi smiled encouragingly.

“Yes, Rra,” she said. “Mma Ramotswe does not say things that she does not mean. She is going to offer you a job.”

Mma Ramotswe leaned forward and tapped her desk. “This job is right here in the garage,” she said.

“And maybe you will do a bit of work for us too. You can help us. It is not a big job.”

Mr Polopetsi appeared to be having difficulty in taking in what was being said to him. He opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again. Then he asked a question.

“Is this job for a long time?” he asked. “Or just for a few days?”

Mma Ramotswe looked down at her desk. She had not discussed this matter with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and now, faced with the hopes of Mr Polopetsi, she had to make a decision.

“It will be for at least a year,” she said confidently. “We cannot see what will happen beyond that. But you will be safe for a year.”

After she had spoken, she glanced at Mma Makutsi, who raised an eyebrow. Mma Makutsi understood that there was an impulsive side to her employer, just as there sometimes was to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Both of them could act in that way when they were being kind, and then find that there were reproaches from the other. There were two fine examples of this that Mma Makutsi knew about. Mma Ramotswe had acted in exactly that way when she had promoted her to Assistant Detective. Mma Makutsi knew that this had been done in times of financial difficulty when sound economic sense should have dictated precisely the opposite course of action. But Mma Ramotswe had been unable to disappoint her and had gone ahead and done what her heart dictated. And then Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had done just the same thing, had he not, when he had adopted the two children from the orphan farm? Everybody knew that Mma Potokwane pushed Mr J.L.B. Matekoni around and must have browbeaten or tricked him into that decision, but the wily matron knew exactly how to play on his good nature. So this decision was nothing unusual, although Mma Ramotswe would at some point have to own up to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni that she had given this assurance.

“Well, Rra?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Would you like this job?”

Mr Polopetsi nodded his head. “My heart is too full to speak,” he said. “My heart is too full, Mma. You are a very kind lady. God was watching when he made you knock me over. That was God’s act.”

“That is kind of you,” said Mma Ramotswe in a businesslike tone. “But I think it was something altogether different. Now I think that we should go through there to speak to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni so that he can start you off.”

Mr Polopetsi stood up. “I am very happy,” he said. “But I know nothing about cars. I hope that I can do this job.”

“For years we have had two young men working here who know nothing about cars,” interjected Mma Makutsi. “That did not stop them. So it should not stop you, Rra.”

“That is true,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But let us talk about that later.” She paused before adding, “There is one thing, Rra.”

Mr Polopetsi hesitated. “Yes?”

“You have this job now,” said Mma Ramotswe, “so you can tell us about what happened to you. Tell us at lunchtime today, right from the beginning, so that we know all about it and will not have to wonder what happened. Tell us so that we no longer have to think about it.”

“I can do that,” said Mr Polopetsi. “I can tell you everything.”

“Good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Now you can start work. There is a lot to do. We are very busy these days and we are very pleased to have another man …”

“To order about,” interjected Mma Makutsi, and then laughed. “No, Rra, do not worry. I am only joking about that.”

MR J.L.B. MATEKONI was busy at lunchtime, taking the remaining apprentice off with him to deal with a breakdown out on the Molepolole Road. So it was only Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi who sat in the office listening to Mr Polopetsi while he told his story. Mma Makutsi had made sandwiches for them with the bread they kept in the office cupboard—thick slices with generous helpings of jam—and Mma Ramotswe noticed how eagerly Mr Polopetsi tackled the food. He is hungry, she thought, and realised that he had probably been giving what little food there was to his family. She signalled to Mma Makutsi to make more sandwiches, which Mr Polopetsi wolfed down as he spoke.

“I was born in Lobatse,” he began. “My father was one of the attendants at the mental hospital there. You will know the place. His job was to help the doctors control the very sick people who struggled when the doctors tried to treat them. There were some very strong patients and they would shout and strike out at everybody. My father was a strong man too, and he had a special jacket that he could put on these people and tie their arms behind them. That would make it easier for the doctors.

“I worked hard at school. I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up, but when the examinations came along I did not do well enough. I knew the answers to the questions, because I had worked so hard, but I became very frightened when the examinations started and I could not write properly. My hand would shake and shake and the examiners must have wondered who was this stupid boy who could not even write neatly. So I never did as well as I should have. If I hadn’t shaken like that, then maybe I would have been given a scholarship and gone off to South Africa to study medicine. That happened to one boy at my school, but it did not happen to me.

“But I did not sit and complain about this because I knew that God would find me some other work. And He did. When I was sixteen I was given a job in the hospital where my father worked. There is a pharmacy in the hospital and they needed somebody to wash the bottles and to help carry and lift things. I also had to write notes in the drugs stock book, and I had to count the bottles and the pills. I was very good at that and they made me a pharmacy assistant when I was twenty. That was a very good job. I even took some examinations to do with that work and I found that I was not so frightened this time. I wrote neatly and I passed.

“I worked down there for twelve years before they sent me up to Gaborone. I was very pleased to get this new job because it was more senior and I was given more money. I became a pharmacy assistant at the Princess Marina, which is a very fine hospital. There is a very big pharmacy there and they have many, many shelves of bottles. I worked very hard and did well. Now I could marry a lady whom I had met at my church. She is a very good lady and she has given me two children, two girls, this big and this big, and they are very good children.

“I was a very happy man and a very proud one too. Then one day a very bad thing happened to me, a thing which changed my life forever and which I can never forget. And it was just an ordinary day, the same as any day. When I left my house that morning I did not know what was going to happen to me. I did not know that this was the last day that I would be happy.”

Mr Polopetsi paused to bite into the fresh sandwich which Mma Makutsi had passed him. He took a large mouthful, and the two ladies watched him in silence as he chewed on the food. Mma Ramotswe wondered what it was that could have suddenly brought his world to an end. He had said when they had first met them that there had been an accident, but what accident could have resulted in his spending two years in prison? A road accident? Had he driven while drunk and killed somebody? He seemed an unlikely candidate for that.

“We were very busy that morning,” continued Mr Polopetsi, wiping crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sometimes it was like that. All the wards would run out of medicines at the same time and there would be a whole line of out-patients waiting for their prescriptions. So we would be running this way and that, trying to get things sorted out. There were two pharmacists who were ill that day because there was a lot of flu in the town. So we were very busy.

“We were not allowed to do many things. We were just pharmacy assistants, and so we were not allowed to measure out drugs and things like that. But when it was busy like that they sometimes told us that we could do simple things, like counting out pills and putting them in bottles. So we did that.

“I was doing that sort of thing on that morning. And that is when I made a mistake. I took pills from the wrong place and put them into the bottle which the pharmacist had given me. I put these pills in because I thought that he had pointed to one place and not to another. I misunderstood him.

“The drugs that I put in that bottle were very strong. They killed a lady who took them. It was because of what I did.

“They were very cross when this lady died. They found the bottle with the wrong drugs in it and they asked who had put them in there. The pharmacist said that he had passed the right drugs to me to put in and that I must have disobeyed him. He was very frightened because he thought that they would blame him. He was just a junior person, a foreigner who used to work there, and who has gone now. So he lied. I heard him lying and I shouted out that what he said was not true. So they asked him again and he said that he remembered that morning very well and he remembered giving me the right drugs, and that there were no other pills around at the time. That was not true. There were many containers of pills and he should have realised that I might misunderstand his instructions.

“That evening when I went home I sat at my place and said nothing. I could not speak. My wife tried to comfort me. She said that it was not my fault that somebody had died and that what had happened was a true accident, like a dog running across the road or a plate falling off the table. But I could not even hear her words very well because my heart was cold, cold within me, and I knew that I would lose my job. How would we get anything to eat if I had no job? My father was late now and I could not go back to his place. We would be finished.

“I had no idea then how much worse things would be. It was only a few weeks later, after the police had spoken to me three or four times, that they told me that they were going to charge me with culpable homicide. That’s what they called it. They said that it was culpable homicide to do something so careless that another person died. I could not believe that they would blame me so much, but the family of the lady who died were making a very big fuss about this and they kept asking the police when the man who had killed their mother would be punished for what he had done.

“I went to see them. They lived over there in Old Naledi, and I went to their house and begged them to forgive me. I said that I had never intended to harm the mother. Why should I want to harm her? I said that I felt as bad as if I had killed my own mother. I asked them if they would stop asking the police to send me to prison and tell them that I had explained to them what had happened. I went down on my knees to them. But they did not even look at me. They said I was to get out of their house or they would run and fetch the police.

“So I left their place and went home and waited for the day to come when I would have to go to court. I had a lawyer who said that he would work for me if I could pay him. I went to the Post Office and took out almost all the money I had saved and I gave this to the lawyer. He said that he would do his best for me, and I am sure that he did. But the prosecutor said that what I had done was very careless. He said that nobody who was being careful would have done what I did. And the magistrate was looking at me all the time, and I could tell that he thought I was a very careless man who had gone and killed somebody with his carelessness.

“When he said that I would have to go to prison for two years, at first I could not look behind me. My wife was there, and I could hear her cry out, and so I turned round and saw her there with my two little girls, and the girls were looking at their daddy and wondering whether I was coming home with them now, and I did not know what to do, whether I should wave goodbye to them, and so I just stood there until the policemen who were standing on either side of me said that I would have to go. These policemen were kind to me. They did not push me; they did not speak unkindly. One of them said, ‘I am sorry, Rra. I am sorry about this thing. You must come now.’ And I left, and I did not look behind me again, and I went away.”

He stopped, and there was silence. Mma Ramotswe reached forward to pick up a pencil from the table top. Then she put it down again. Mma Makutsi was quite still. Neither of them spoke, because there was nothing that either of them felt that she could say.