The Full Cupboard of Life

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WHILE MMA RAMOTSWE was visiting Mr Bobologo and his House of Hope, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was completing a tricky repair at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. He was relieved, of course, about the cancellation of the parachute jump, but at the same time he was concerned about the fact that one of the apprentices was going to do it in his stead. He knew that these boys were feckless, and he knew that they would do anything to impress girls, but he was their apprentice-master, after all, and he considered that he had a moral responsibility for them until they had served out their apprenticeship. Many people would say that this did not extend to cover what they did in their own time, but Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was not one to take a narrow view of these matters and he could not avoid feeling at least slightly paternal towards these young men, irritating though they undoubtedly were. He was not sure, though, how he could deal with this issue. If he persuaded the young man not to jump, then Mma Potokwane might insist that he do the jump after all. If she did so, then that would lead to a row between her and Mma Ramotswe, and that could become complicated. There might be no more fruit cake, for example, and he would miss his trips out to see the orphans, even if he was inevitably given some task to perform the moment he arrived at the orphan farm.

The repair took less time than he had anticipated, and well before it was time for the morning break Mr J.L.B. Matekoni found himself wiping the steering wheel and the driver’s seat to make the car ready for collection by its owner. He was always very careful to ensure that cars were returned to the customer in a clean state-something he had attempted to drill into the apprentices, but without success.

“How would you feel if your car came back to you with greasy fingerprints all over it?” he said to them. “Would you like it?”

“I would not see them,” said one of the young men. “I am not worried about fingerprints. As long as a car goes fast, that is the only thing.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni could barely credit what he had heard. “Do you mean to say that the only thing that advantages is speed? Is that what you really think?”

The apprentice had looked at him blankly before he gave his reply. “Of course. If a car goes fast, then it is a good car. It has a strong engine. Everybody knows that, Boss.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni shook his head in despair. How many times had he explained about solid engineering and the merits of a reliable gearbox? How many times had he spelled out to these young men the merits of an economical engine, particularly a good diesel engine that would give years and years of service with very little trouble? Diesel-powered cars did not usually go very fast, but that was not the point; they were good cars anyway. None of these lessons, it appeared, had sunk in. He sighed. “I have been wasting my time,” he muttered. “Wasting my time.”

The apprentice smiled. “Wasting your time, Boss? What have you been doing? Dancing? You and Mma Ramotswe going dancing at one of those clubs? Hah!”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni wanted to say, “Trying to teach a hyena to dance,” but did not. Where had he heard that expression before? It seemed familiar, and then he remembered he had said it himself only a few days ago when he had been discussing First Class Motors with Mma Ramotswe. The memory made him start, and put the apprentices quite out of his mind. There was something hanging over him; he had forgotten what it was, but now it came back: he still had to deal with the issue of the butcher’s car, which was due to be brought into the garage that morning. The thought appalled him: he would be able to effect a temporary repair, until such time as he tracked down the right parts, but there was more to it than that. He had agreed that he would confront the Manager of First Class Motors and tell him that his wrongdoing had been discovered. He did not relish this, in view of the other man’s reputation. Indeed, it might have been moderately more attractive to do a parachute jump, perhaps, rather than meet the Manager of First Class Motors.

“You look worried,” said the apprentice. “Is there something troubling you, Boss?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. “I have an unpleasant duty to do,” he said. “I have to go and speak to some bad mechanics about their work. That is what is troubling me.”

“Who are these bad mechanics?” asked the apprentice.

“Those people at First Class Motors,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “The man who owns it and the men who work for him. They are all bad, every one of them.”

The apprentice whistled. “Yes, they are bad all right. I have seen those people. They know nothing about cars. They are not like you, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who knows everything about all sorts of cars.”

The compliment from the apprentice was unexpected, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, in spite of his modesty, was touched by the young man’s tribute.

“I am not a great mechanic,” he said softly. “I am just careful, that is all, and that is what I have always wanted you to be. I would want you to be careful mechanics. It would make me very happy if you would be that.”

“We will be,” said the apprentice. “We will try to be like you. We hope that people will always look at our work and think: they learned that from Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. “Someof your work, maybe…” he began, but the apprentice interrupted him.

“You see,” he said, “my father is late. He became late when I was a small boy-just that high-very small. And I did not have uncles who were any good, and so I think of you as my father, Rra. That is what I think. You are my father.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was silent. He had always had difficulty in expressing his emotions-as mechanics often do, he thought-and it was hard for him now. He wanted to say to this young man: What you have said makes me very proud, and very sad, all at the same time-but he could not find these words. He could, however, place a hand on the young man’s shoulder and leave it there for a moment, to show that he understood what had been said.

“I have never said thank you, Rra,” went on the apprentice. “And I would not want you to die without being thanked by me.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni gave a start. “Am I going to die?” he asked. “I am not all that old surely. I am still here.”

The apprentice smiled. “I did not mean that you were going to die soon, Rra. But you will die one of these days, like everybody else. And I wanted to say thank you before that day came.”

“Well,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, “what you say is probably true, but we have spent too much time standing here talking about these things. There is work to be done in the garage. We have to get rid of that dirty oil over there. You can take it over to the special dump for burning. You can take the spare truck.”

“I will do that now,” said the apprentice.

“And don’t pick up any girls in the truck,” warned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “You remember what I told you about the insurance.”

The apprentice, who had been already walking away, suddenly stopped in his tracks, guiltily, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew immediately that this was precisely what he had been planning to do. The young man had made a moving statement, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had been touched by what he had said, but some things obviously never changed.

A few hours later, as the sun climbed up the sky and made shadows short and even the birds were lethargic, when the screeching of the cicadas from the bush behind Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors had reached a high insistent pitch, the butcher drew up in his handsome old Rover. He had had the time to reflect on what Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had told him, and he now spoke angrily of First Class Motors, with whom he intended to have no further dealings. Only shame, the shame of being a victim, prevented him from returning there to ask for his money back.

“I shall do that for you, Rra,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I feel responsible for what my brother mechanics have done to you.”

The butcher took Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s hand and shook it firmly. “You have been very good to me, Rra. I am glad that there are still some honest men left in Botswana.”

“There are many honest men in Botswana,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I am no better than anybody else.”

“Oh yes you are,” said the butcher. “I see many men in my work and I can tell…”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni cut him short. This was clearly a day for excessive compliments, and he was beginning to feel embarrassed. “You are very kind, Rra, but I must get on with my work. The flies will be settling on the cars if I don’t look out.”

He had spoken the words without thinking that a butcher might take such a remark as a slight, as a suggestion that his own meat was much beset by flies. But the butcher did not appear to mind, and he smiled at the metaphor. “There are flies everywhere,” he said. “We butchers know all about that. I would like to find a country without flies. Is there such a place, do you think, Rra?”

“I have not heard of such a country,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I think that in very cold places there are no flies. Or in some very big towns, where there are no cattle to bring the flies. Perhaps in such places. Places like New York.”

“Are there no cattle in New York?” asked the butcher.

“I do not think so,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

The butcher thought for a moment. “But there is a big green part of the town. I have seen a photograph. This part, this bit of bush, is in the middle. Perhaps they keep the cattle there. Do you think that is the place for cattle, Rra?”

“Perhaps,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, glancing at his watch. It was time for him to go home for his lunch, which he always ate at noon. Then, after lunch, fortified by a plate of meat and beans, he would drive round to First Class Motors and speak to the Manager.

MMA MAKUTSI ate her own lunch in the office. Now that she had a bit more money from the Kalahari Typing School for Men, she was able to treat herself to a doughnut at lunchtime, and this she ate with relish, a magazine open on the desk before her, a cup of bush tea at her side. It was best, of course, if Mma Ramotswe was there too, as they could exchange news and opinions, but it was still enjoyable to be by oneself, turning the pages of the magazine with one hand and licking the sugar off the fingers of the other.

The magazine was a glossy one, published in Johannesburg, and sold in great numbers at the Botswana Book Centre. It contained articles about musicians and actors and the like, and about the parties which these people liked to attend in places like Cape Town and Durban. Mma Ramotswe had once said that she would not care to go to that sort of party, even if she were to be invited to one-which she never had been, as Mma Makutsi helpfully pointed out-but she was still sufficiently interested to peer over Mma Makutsi’s shoulder and comment on the people in the pictures.

“That woman in the red dress,” Mma Ramotswe had said. “Look at her. She is a lady who is only good for going to parties. That is very clear.”

“She is a very famous lady, that one,” Mma Makutsi had replied. “I have seen her picture many times. She knows where there are cameras and she stands in front of them, like a pig trying to get to the food. She is a very fashionable lady over in Johannesburg.”

“And what is she famous for?”

“The magazine has never explained that,” Mma Makutsi had said. “Maybe they do not know either.”

This had made Mma Ramotswe laugh. “And then that woman there, that one in the middle, standing next to…” She had stopped, suddenly, as she recognised the face in the photograph. Mma Makutsi, engrossed in the contemplation of another photograph, had not noticed anything untoward. So she did not see the expression on Mma Ramotswe’s face as she recognised, in the middle of the group of smiling friends, the face of Note Mokoti, trumpet player, and, for a brief and unhappy time, husband of Precious Ramotswe and father-not that it had meant anything to him-of her tiny child, the one who had left her after only those few, cherished hours.

Now, though, Mma Makutsi paged through the magazine on her own, while from within the garage there came the sound of a car’s wheels being taken off. The sounds of wheel-nuts being thrown into an upturned hub-cap was one she recognised well, and was reassuring, in a strange way, just as the sound of the cicadas in the bush was a comforting one. The sounds that were alarming were those that came from nowhere, strange sounds that occurred at night, which might be anything.

She abandoned her magazine and reached for her tea cup, and it was at that point that she saw the envelope at the end of her desk. She had not noticed it when she came in that day, and it was not there last night, which meant that it must have been put there first thing in the morning. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had opened the garage and the office, and he must have found it slipped under a door. Sometimes customers left notes that way, when they passed by and the garage was closed. Bills were even settled like this, with the money tucked into an envelope and pushed into the office through a crack in the door. That worried Mma Makutsi, who imagined that it would be very easy for money to go missing, but Mr J.L.B. Matekoni seemed unconcerned about it, and said that his customers had always paid in all sorts of ways and money had never been lost.

“One man used to pay his bills with bags of coins,” he said. “Sometimes he would drive past, throw out one of those old white Standard Bank bags, wave, and drive off. That is how he settled his bills.”

“That’s all very well,” Mma Makutsi had said. “But that would never have been recommended to us at the Botswana Secretarial College. They taught us there that the best way to pay bills was by cheque, and to ask for a receipt.”

That was undoubtedly true, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had not cared to argue with one who had achieved the since then unequalled score of ninety-seven per cent in her final examinations at the Botswana Secretarial College. This letter, though, was plainly not a bill. As Mma Makutsi stretched across her desk to pick it up, she saw, written across the front of the envelope:To Mr Handsome, Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.

She smiled. There was no means of telling who this Mr Handsome was-there were, after all, three men who worked at the garage and it could be addressed to any one of them-and this meant that she would be quite within her rights to open it.

There was a single sheet of paper inside the envelope, and Mma Makutsi unfolded this and began to read.Dear Mr Handsome, the letter began.You do not know who I am, but I have been watching out for you! You are very handsome. You have a handsome face and handsome legs. Even your neck is handsome. I hope that you will talk to me one day. I am waiting for you. There is a lot we could talk about. Your admirer.

Mma Makutsi finished reading and then folded the letter up and put it back in the envelope. People did send such notes to one another, she knew, but the senders usually made sure that the letters were picked up by those for whom they were intended. It was strange that this person, this admirer, whoever she was, should have put the letter under the door without giving any further clue as to which Mr Handsome she had in mind. Now it was up to her to decide who should get this letter. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni? No. He was not a handsome man; he was pleasant-looking in a comfortable sort of way, but he was not handsome, in that sense. And anyway, whoever it was who had left the letter had no business in sending a letter like that to an engaged man and she, Mma Makutsi, would most certainly never pass on a letter of this nature to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, even if it had been intended for him.

It was much more likely, then, that the letter was intended for the apprentices. But which one? Charlie, the older apprentice, was certainly good-looking, in a cheap sort of way she thought, but the same could probably be said of the younger one, perhaps even more so, when one considered the amount of hair gel that he seemed to rub on his head. If one were a young woman, somebody aged perhaps seventeen or eighteen, it is easy to see how one would be taken in by the looks of these young men and how one might even write a letter of this sort. So there was really no way of telling which of the young men was the intended recipient. It might be simpler, then, to throw the letter in the bin, and Mma Makutsi had almost decided to do this when the older apprentice walked into the room. He saw the envelope on the desk before her and, with a typical lack of respect for what is right, peered at the writing on the envelope.

“To Mr Handsome,” he exclaimed. “That letter must be for me!”

Mma Makutsi snorted. “You are not the only man around here. There are two others, you know. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and that friend of yours, that one with the oil on his hair. It could be for either of them.”

The apprentice stared at her uncomprehendingly. “But Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is at least forty,” he said. “How can a man of forty be called Mr Handsome?”

“Forty is not the end,” said Mma Makutsi. “People who are forty can look very good.”

“To other people who are forty maybe,” said the apprentice, “but not to the general public.”

Mma Makutsi drew in her breath, and held it. If only Mma Ramotswe had been here to listen to this; what would she have done? She certainly would not have let any of this pass. The effrontery of this young man! The sheer effrontery! Well, she would teach him a lesson, she would tell him what she thought of his vanity; she would spell it out… She stopped. A better idea had materialised; a wonderful trick that would amuse Mma Ramotswe when she told her about it.

“Call the young one in,” she said. “Tell him I want to tell him about this letter you have received. He will be impressed, I think.”

Charlie left and soon returned with the younger apprentice.

“Charlie here has received a letter,” said Mma Makutsi. “It was addressed to Mr Handsome and I shall read it out to you.”

The younger apprentice glanced at Charlie, and then looked back at Mma Makutsi. “But that could be for me,” he said petulantly. “Why should he think that such a letter is addressed to him? What about me?”

“Or Mr J.L.B. Matekoni?” asked Mma Makutsi, smiling. “What about him?”

The younger apprentice shook his head. “He is an old man,” he said. “Nobody would call him Mr Handsome. It is too late.”

“I see,” said Mma Makutsi. “Well, at least you are agreed on that. Well, let me read out the letter, and then we can decide.”

She opened the envelope again, extracted the piece of paper, and read out the contents. Then, putting the letter down on the table, she smiled at the two young men. “Now who is being described in that letter? You tell me.”

“Me,” they both said together, and then looked at one another.

“It could be either,” said Mma Makutsi. “Of course, I now remember who must have put that letter there. I have remembered something.”

“You must tell me,” said the older apprentice. “Then I can look out for this girl and talk to her.”

“I see,” said Mma Makutsi. She hesitated; this was a delicious moment. Oh, silly young men! “Yes,” she continued, “I saw a man outside the garage this morning, first thing. Yes, there was a man.”

There was complete silence. “A man?” said the younger apprentice eventually. “Not a girl?”

“It was for him, I think,” said the older apprentice, gesturing at the younger one. And the younger one, his mouth open, was for a few moments unable to talk.

“It was not for me,” he said at last. “I do not think so.”

“Then I think that we should throw the letter into the bin, where it belongs,” said Mma Makutsi. “Anonymous letters should always be ignored. The best place for them is the bin.”

Nothing more was said. The apprentices returned to their work and Mma Makutsi sat at her desk and smiled. It was a wicked thing to have done, but she could not resist it. After all, one could not be good all the time, and occasional fun at the expense of another was harmless. She had told no lies, strictly speaking; she had seen a man walking away from the garage, but she had recognised him as one who did occasionally take a shortcut that way. The real sender of the letter was obviously some young girl who had been dared to write it by her friends. It was a piece of adolescent nonsense which everybody would soon forget about. And perhaps the boys had been taught some sort of lesson, about vanity certainly, but also, in an indirect way, about tolerance of the feelings of others, who might be a bit different from oneself. She doubted if they had learned the latter lesson, but it was there, she thought, visible if one bothered to think hard enough about it.