The Full Cupboard of Life

CHAPTER SEVEN

MMA MAKUTSI woke early that day, in spite of having been to bed late and having slept very little. She had arisen at five, just before the first signs of dawn in the sky, and had gone outside to wash at the tap which she shared with two other houses. It was not ideal this sharing, and she looked forward to the day when she would have her own tap-and perhaps even a shower. This day was coming, which was one of the reasons why she had found it difficult to sleep. The previous afternoon she had found a couple of rooms to rent in another, rather better, part of town, which made up almost half-and the best half, too-of a low-cost house, and which had rudimentary plumbing all of their own. She had been told that it would not be expensive to install a simple shower, and was assured that this could be arranged within a week or two of her moving in. The information had prompted her into paying a deposit straightaway, which meant that she could make the move in little more than a week.

The rent of the new rooms was almost three times the rent which she was currently paying, but, rather to her surprise, she found that she could easily afford it. Her financial position had improved out of all recognition since she had started her part-time typing school, the Kalahari Typing School for Men. This school met several evenings a week in a church hall and offered supportive and discreet typing instruction for men. There had been many takers-she had been obliged to keep a waiting list-and the money which she had made had been carefully husbanded. Now there was enough for the deposit and more: if she chose to empty her account, she would be able to pay at least eight months’ rent and still send a substantial sum back to her family in Bobonong. She had already doubled the amount that she sent to them, and had received an appreciative letter from an aunt. “We are eating well now,” her aunt had written. “You are a kind girl, and we think of you every time we eat the good food which you make it possible for us to buy. Not all girls are like you. Many are interested only in themselves (and I have a long list of such girls), but you are interested in aunties and cousins. That is a very good sign.”

Mma Makutsi had smiled as she had read this letter. This aunt was a favourite of hers and one day she would pay for her to come on a visit to Gaborone. The aunt had never been out of Bobonong and it would be a great treat for her to come all the way down to Gaborone. But would it be an altogether good idea, she wondered? If you had never been anywhere in your life it could be disturbing suddenly to discover a new place. The aunt was content in Bobonong, but if she were to see how much bigger and more exciting was Gaborone, then she might find it hard to return to Bobonong, to all those rocks, and baked land, and hot sun. So perhaps the aunt would stay where she was, but Mma Makutsi could perhaps send her a picture of Gaborone, so that she would have some idea of what it was like to be in a city.

Mma Makutsi made her way out of her room and walked towards the tap at the side of the neighbouring house. She and the other people who used this tap paid the neighbour twenty pula a month for the privilege, and even then they were discouraged from using too much water. If the tap was left running while one doused one’s face under it, then the owner was apt to appear and make a comment about the shortage of water in Botswana.

“We are a dry country,” she had once said while Mma Makutsi was trying to wash her hair in the running water.

“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi from under the stream of deliciously cool water. “That is why we have taps.”

The owner had stormed off. “It is people like you,” she had remarked over her shoulder, “it is people like you who are causing droughts and making all the dams empty. You be careful or the whole country will dry up and we shall have to go somewhere else. You just be careful.”

This had irritated Mma Makutsi, as she was a careful user of water. But one had to turn the tap on sometimes; there was no point just standing there and looking at it, even if that is what the tap’s owner would really have wanted.

This morning there was no sign of the owner, and Mma Makutsi got down on her hands and knees and allowed the water to run over her head and shoulders. After a while, she changed her position and put her feet under the water, in this way experiencing a satisfactory tingling sensation that went all the way up her calves to her knees. Then, washed and refreshed, she returned to her room. She would make breakfast now, and give her brother Richard a bowl of freshly boiled porridge… She stopped. For a few moments she had forgotten that Richard was no longer there, and that the corner of her room which she had curtained off for his sickbed was now empty.

Mma Makutsi stood in her doorway, looking down at the place where his bed had been. Only four months ago he had been there, struggling with the illness which was causing his life to ebb away. She had nursed him, doing her best to make him comfortable in the morning before she went off for work, and bringing him whatever small delicacies she could afford from her meagre salary. They had told her to make sure that he ate, even if his appetite was tiny. And she had done so, bringing him sticks of biltong, ruinously expensive though they were, and watermelons, which cooled his mouth and gave him the sugar that he needed.

But none of this-none of the special food, the nursing, or the love which she so generously provided-could alter the dreadful truth that the disease which was making his life so hard could never be beaten. It could be slowed down, or held in check, but it would always assert itself in the long run.

She had known, on that awful day, that he might not be there when she came back from work, because he had looked so tired, and his voice had been so reedy, like the voice of a thin bird. She had toyed with the idea of staying at home, but Mma Ramotswe was away from the office during the morning and there had to be somebody there. So she had said goodbye to him in a fairly matter-of-fact way, although she knew that this might be the last time she spoke to him, and indeed her intuition had been right. Shortly after lunchtime she had been summoned by a neighbour who looked in on him several times a morning, and she had been told to come home. Mma Ramotswe had offered to drive her back in the tiny white van, and she had accepted. As they made their way past the Botswana Technical College, she had suddenly felt that it was too late, and she had sat back in her seat, her head sunk in her hands, knowing what she would find when she arrived at her room.

Sister Banjule was there. She was the nurse from the Anglican Hospice and the neighbour had known to call her too. She was sitting by his bedside, and when Mma Makutsi came in she rose to her feet and put her arm around her, as did Mma Ramotswe.

“He said your name,” she whispered to Mma Makutsi. “That is what he said before the Lord took him. I am telling you the truth. That is what he said.”

They stood together for several minutes, the three women; Sister Banjule in the white uniform of her calling, Mma Ramotswe in her red dress, that she would now change for black, and Mma Makutsi in the new blue dress that she had treated herself to with some of the proceeds of the typing school classes. And then the neighbour, who had been standing near the door, led Mma Makutsi away so that Sister Banjule could ensure in private the last dignities for a man whose life had not amounted to much, but who now received, as of right, the unconditional love of one who knew how to give just that.Receive the soul of our brother, Richard, said Sister Banjule as she gently took from the body its stained and threadbare shirt and replaced it with a garment of white, that a poor man might leave this world in cleanliness and light.

SHE WISHED that he could have seen her new place, as he would have appreciated the space and the privacy. He would have loved the tap too, and she would have probably ended up being as bad as the woman who watched the water, telling him off for using too much. But that was not to be, and she accepted that, because she knew now that his suffering was at an end.

The new place, when she moved into it, would be much closer to work. It was not far from the African Mall, in an area which everybody called Extension Two. The streets there were nothing like Zebra Drive, which was leafy and quiet, but at least they were recognisably streets, with names of their own, rather than being the rutted tracks which dodged this way and that round Naledi. And the houses there were neatly set in the middle of small plots of land, with paw-paw trees or flowering bushes dotted about the yards. These houses, although small, were suitable for clerks, or the managers of small stores, or even teachers. It was not at all inappropriate that somebody of her status-a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College and an assistant detective-should live in a place like that, and she felt proud when she thought of her impending move. There would be less smell, too, which would be good, as there were proper drains and not so much litter. Not that Botswana smelled; anything but, though there were small corners of it-one of these near Mma Makutsi’s room-where one was reminded of humanity and heat.

The fact that Mma Makutsi had two rooms in a house of four rooms meant, in her mind, that she could say that she would now be living in a house.My house- she tried the words out, and at first they seemed strange, almost meretricious. But it was true; she would shortly be responsible for half a roof and half a yard, and that justified the expressionmy house. It was a comforting thought-anther milestone on the road that had led her from that constrained life in Bobonong, with its non-existent possibilities and its utter isolation, via the Botswana Secretarial College, with its crowning moment of the award of ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations, to the anticipated elevation to the status of householder, with a yard, and paw-paw trees of her own, and a place where the washing could be hung out to dry in the wind.

The furnishing and decoration of the new house was a matter of the utmost importance, and had been the subject of lengthy discussion with Mma Ramotswe. There were long hours at the office when nothing very much happened, and these might be spent in conversation, or crocheting perhaps, or in simply looking up at the ceiling, with its little fly tracks, like miniature paths through the bush. Mma Ramotswe had strong views on the subject of decoration, and had put these into effect in the house on Zebra Drive, where the living room was unquestionably the most comfortable room Mma Makutsi had ever seen. When she had first visited Mma Ramotswe at home, Mma Makutsi had stood for a moment in the living room doorway, marvelling at the matching suite of sofa and chairs, with their thick cushions, so inviting for a tired or discouraged person, and at the treasures on the shelves-the commemorative plate of Sir Seretse Khama and the Queen Elizabeth II tea cup, with the Queen smiling out in such a reassuring way; and the framed picture of Nelson Mandela with the late King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho; and the illuminated motto which called for peace and understanding in the house. She had stood there and realised that there had been little beauty in her life; that she had never had a room which in any way expressed her striving for something better, but that perhaps one day she would. And now it was happening.

Mma Ramotswe had been generous. When she first heard of the move, she had taken Mma Makutsi to the house on Zebra Drive and she had gone through the whole place, room by room, identifying household effects which she could pass on to her assistant. There was a chair which nobody used any more, but which had a bright red seat. She could have that. And then there were the yellow curtains, which had been replaced by a new set; Mma Makutsi had scarcely dared to ask for those, but they had been offered, and she had accepted with alacrity.

Now, sitting at her desk in the morning, it seemed to her that her life could hardly get any better. There was her new home to look forward to, furnished in part with Mma Ramotswe’s generous gifts; there was the prospect of having a little spare money in her pocket, rather than having to count every thebe;and there was the knowledge that she had a good job, with good people, and that her work made things better, at least for some. Since she had started at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, she had managed to help quite a number of clients. They had gone away feeling the better for what she had done for them, and that, more than any fee, made her work worthwhile. So those glamorous girls who had gone to work in those companies with new offices; those girls who had never achieved much more than fifty per cent in the examinations at the Botswana Secretarial College; those girls may have highly paid jobs,but did they enjoy their work? Mma Makutsi was sure that they did not. They sat at their desks, pretending to type, watching the hands of the clock approach five. And then, exactly on the hour, they disappeared, eager to get as far away as possible from their offices. Well, it was not like that for Mma Makutsi. Sometimes she would be there in the office well after six, or even seven. Occasionally she found that she was so absorbed in what she was doing that she would not even notice that it had become dark, and when she walked home it would be through the night, with all its sounds and the smells of wood-smoke from cooking fires, and with the sky up above like a great black blanket.

Mma Makutsi rose from her chair and went to look out of the window. Charlie, the older apprentice, was getting out of a minibus which had drawn off the main road. He waved to somebody who remained inside, and then began to walk towards the garage, his hands stuck in his pockets, his lips moving as he whistled one of those irritating tunes which he picked up. Just as he reached the garage, he began a few steps of a dance, and Mma Makutsi grimaced. He was thinking of girls, of course, as he always did. That explained the dance.

She drew back from the window, shaking her head. She knew that the apprentices were popular with girls, but she could not imagine what anybody saw in them. It was not that they had much to talk about-cars and girls seemed to be their only interest-and yet there were plenty of girls who were prepared to giggle and flirt with them. Perhaps those girls were in their own way as bad as the apprentices themselves, being interested only in boys and make-up. There were plenty of girls like that, Mma Makutsi thought, and maybe they would make very good wives for these apprentices when they were ready to marry.

The door, which was ajar, was now opened and the apprentice stuck his head round.

“Dumela, Mma,” he said. “You have slept well?”

“Dumela, Rra,” Mma Makutsi replied. “Yes, I have. Thank you. I was here very early and I have been thinking.”

The apprentice smiled. “You must not think too much, Mma,” he said. “It is not good for women to think too much.”

Mma Makutsi decided to ignore this remark, but after a moment she had to reply. She could not let this sort of thing go unanswered; he would never have said something like that if Mma Ramotswe had been present, and if he thought that he could get away with it then she would have to disabuse him of that idea.

“It is not good for men if women think too much,” she retorted. “Oh yes, you are right there. If women start thinking about how useless some men are, then it is bad for men in general. Oh yes, that is true.”

“That is not what I meant,” said the apprentice.

“Hah!” said Mma Makutsi. “So now you are changing your mind. You did not know what you were saying because your tongue is out of control. It is always walking away on its own and leaving your head behind. Perhaps there is some medicine for that. Maybe there is an operation that can fix it for you!”

The apprentice looked cross. He knew that there was no point in trying to better Mma Makutsi in an argument, but anyway he had not come into the office to argue; he had come in to impart some very important news.

“I have read something in the paper,” he said. “I have read something very interesting.”

Mma Makutsi glanced at the paper which he had extracted from his pocket. Already it had been smudged with greasy fingerprints, and she wrinkled her nose in distaste.

“There is something about Mr J.L.B. Matekoni in here,” said the apprentice. “It is on the front page.”

Mma Makutsi drew in her breath. Had something happened to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni? Newspapers were full of bad news about people, and she wondered whether something unpleasant had happened to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Or perhaps Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had been arrested for something or other; no, that was impossible. Nobody would ever arrest Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He was the last person who would ever do anything that would send him to jail. They would have to arrest the whole population of Botswana before they got to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

The apprentice, relishing the interest which his comment had aroused, unfolded the newspaper and handed it to Mma Makutsi. “There,” he said. “The Boss is going to do something really brave. Ow! I’m glad that it’s him and not me!”

Mma Makutsi took the newspaper and began to read. “Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, and a well-known figure in the Gaborone motor trade,” began the report, “has agreed to perform a parachute jump to raise money for the Tlokweng orphan farm. Mma Silvia Potokwane, the matron of the orphan farm, said that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni made the surprise offer only a few days ago. She expects him to be able to raise at least five thousand pula in sponsorship. Sponsorship forms have already been distributed and many sponsors are coming forward.”

She read the report aloud, the apprentice standing before her and smiling.

“You see,” said the apprentice. “None of us would have imagined that the Boss would be so brave, and there he is planning to jump out of an aeroplane. And all to help the orphan farm! Isn’t that good of him?”

“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. It was very kind, but she had immediately wondered what Mma Ramotswe would think of her fiance making a parachute jump. If she had a fiance herself, then she was not sure whether she would approve of that; indeed the more she thought about it the more she realised that she would not approve. Parachute jumps went wrong; everybody knew that.

“They go wrong, these parachute jumps,” said the apprentice, as if he had picked up the direction of her thoughts. “There was a man in the Botswana Defence Force whose parachute didn’t open. That man is late now.”

“That is very sad,” said Mma Makutsi. “I am sorry for that man.”

“The other men were watching from the ground,” the apprentice continued. “They looked up and shouted to him to open his emergency parachute-they always carry two, you see-but he did not hear them.”

Mma Makutsi looked at the apprentice. What did he mean:he didn’t hear them? Of course he wouldn’t hear them. This was typical of the curious, ill-informed way in which the apprentices, and so many young men like them, viewed the world. It was astonishing to think that they had been to school, and yet there they were, with a good Cambridge Certificate. As Mma Ramotswe pointed out, it must be very difficult being the Minister of Education and having to deal with raw material like this.

“But he would never be able to hear them,” said Mma Makutsi. “They were wasting their breath.”

“Yes,” said the apprentice. “It is possible that he had fallen asleep.”

Mma Makutsi sighed. “You would not fall asleep while you were jumping from an aeroplane. That doesn’t happen.”

“Oh yes?” challenged the apprentice. “And what about falling asleep at the wheel-while you’re driving? I saw a car go off the Francistown Road once, just because of that. The driver had gone to sleep and the next thing he knew he had hit a tree and the car rolled over. You can go to sleep anywhere.”

“Driving is different,” said Mma Makutsi. “You do that for a long time. You become hot and drowsy. But when you jump out of an aeroplane, you are not likely to feel hot and drowsy. You will not go to sleep.”

“How do you know?” said the apprentice. “Have you jumped out of an aeroplane, Mma? Hah! You would have to watch your skirt! All the boys would be standing down below and whistling because your skirt would be over your head. Hah!”

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “It is no good talking to somebody like you,” she said. “And anyway, here’s Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck. We can ask him about this parachute business. We can find out if what the paper says is true.”

MR J.L.B. Matekoni parked his truck in the shade under the acacia tree beside the garage, making sure to leave enough room for Mma Ramotswe to park her tiny white van when she arrived. She would not arrive until nine o’clock, she had told him, because she was taking Motholeli to the doctor. Dr Moffat had telephoned to say that a specialist was visiting the hospital and that he had agreed to see Motholeli. “I do not think that he will be able to say much more than we have said,” Dr Moffat had warned. “But there’s no harm in his seeing her.” And Dr Moffat had been right; nothing new could be said.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was pleased that he was getting to know the children better. He had always been slightly puzzled by children, and felt that he did not really understand them. There were children all round Botswana, of course, and nobody could be unaware of them, but he had been surprised at how these orphans thought about things. The boy, Puso, was a case in point. He was behaving very much better than he had in the past-and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was thankful for that-but he was still inclined to be on the moody side. Sometimes, when he was driving with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni in his truck, he would sit there, staring out of the window, and saying nothing at all.

“What are you thinking of?” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would ask, and Puso would shake his head and reply, “Nothing.”

That could not be true. Nobody thought of nothing, but it was difficult to imagine what thoughts a boy of that age would have. What did boys do? Mr J.L.B. Matekoni tried to remember what he had done as a boy, but there was a curious gap, as if he had done nothing at all. This was strange, he thought. Mma Ramotswe remembered everything about her childhood and was always describing the details of events which had happened all those years ago. But when he tried to do that, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni could not even remember the names of the other boys in his class, apart from one or two very close friends with whom he had kept in touch. And it was the same with the initiation school, when all the boys were sent off to be inducted into the traditions of men. That was a great moment in your life, and you were meant to remember it, but he had only the vaguest memories.

Engines were different, of course. Although his memory for people’s names and for people themselves was not terribly good, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni remembered virtually every engine that he had ever handled, from the large and loyal diesels which he had learned to deal with during his apprenticeship to the clinically efficient, and characterless, motors of modern cars. And not only did he remember the distinguished engines-such as that which powered the British High Commissioner’s car-but he also remembered their more modest brothers, such as that which drove the only NSU Prinz which he had ever seen on the roads of Botswana; a humble car, indeed, which looked the same from the front or the back and which had an engine very like the motor on Mma Ramotswe’s sewing machine. All of these engines were like old friends to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni-old friends with all the individual quirks which old friends inevitably had, but which were so comfortable and reassuring.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni got out of his truck and stretched his limbs. He had a busy day ahead of him, with four cars booked in for a routine service, and another which would require the replacement of the servo system on its brakes. This was a tricky procedure, because it was difficult to get at in the first place, and then, when one got there, it was very easy to replace incorrectly. The problem, as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had explained to the apprentices on numerous occasions, was that the ends of the brake pipes were flared and one had to put a small nut into these flared ends. This nut allowed you to connect the servo mechanism to the pipes, but, and this was the real danger, if you cross-threaded the nuts you would get a leak. And if you avoided this danger, but if you were too rough, then you could twist a brake pipe. That was a terrible thing to do, as it meant that you had to replace the entire brake pipe, and these pipes, as everybody knew, ran through the body of the car like arteries. The apprentices had caused both of these disasters in the past, and he had been obliged to spend almost a whole day sorting things out. Now he no longer trusted them to do it. They could watch if they wished, but they would not be allowed to touch. This was the main problem with the apprentices; they had the necessary theoretical knowledge, or some of it, but so often they were slipshod in the way they finished a job-as if they had become bored with it-and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew that you could never be slipshod when it came to brake pipes.

He went into the garage and, hearing voices from the detective agency, he knocked on the door and looked in to see Mma Makutsi handing Charlie a folded-up newspaper. They turned and stared at him.

“Here’s the Boss,” said the apprentice. “Here’s the brave man himself.”

“The hero,” echoed Mma Makutsi, smiling.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni frowned. “What is this?” he asked. “Why are you calling me a brave man?”

“Not just us,” said the apprentice, handing him the newspaper. “The whole town will be calling you brave now.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni took the newspaper. It can only be one thing, he thought, and as his eye fell upon the article his fears were confirmed. He stood there, his hands shaking slightly as he held the offending newspaper, the dismay mounting within him. This was Mma Potokwane’s doing. Nobody else could have told the newspaper about the parachute jump, as he had spoken to nobody about it. She had no right to do this, he thought. She had no right at all.

“Is it true?” asked Mma Makutsi. “Did you really say that you would jump out of an aeroplane?”

“Of course he did,” exclaimed the apprentice. “The Boss is a brave man.”

“Well,” began Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, “Mma Potokwane said to me that I should and then…”

“Oh!” said Mma Makutsi, clapping her hands with delight. “So it is true then! This is very exciting. I will sponsor you, Rra. Yes, I will sponsor you up to thirty pula!”

“Why do you say ‘up to’?” asked the apprentice.

“Because that’s what these sponsorship forms normally say,” said Mma Makutsi. “You put down a maximum amount.”

“But that’s only because when a person is doing something like a sponsored walk they may not reach the end,” said the apprentice. “In the case of a parachute jump, the person you have sponsored usually reaches the end-one way or the other.” He laughed at his observation, but Mr J.L.B. Matekoni merely stared at him.

Mma Makutsi was annoyed with the apprentice. It was not right to make remarks like that in the presence of one who would be taking such a great personal risk for a good cause. “You must not talk like that,” she said severely. “This is not a joke for you to laugh at. This is a brave thing that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is doing.”

“Oh it’s brave all right,” said the apprentice. “It is surely a brave thing, Mma. Look what happened to that poor Botswana Defence Force man…”

“What happened to him?” asked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

Mma Makutsi glowered at the apprentice. “Oh that has nothing to do with you, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” she said quickly. “That is another thing. We do not need to talk about that thing.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked doubtful. “But he said that something happened to a Botswana Defence Force man. What is that thing?”

“It is not an important thing,” said Mma Makutsi. “Sometimes the Botswana Defence Force makes silly mistakes. It is only human after all.”

“How do you know it was the Defence Force’s mistake?” interjected the apprentice. “How do you know that it wasn’t that man’s fault?”

“What man?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

“I do not know his name,” said Mma Makutsi. “And anyway, I am tired of talking about these things. I want to get some work done before Mma Ramotswe comes in. There is a letter here which we shall have to reply to. There is a lot to do.”

The apprentice smiled. “All right,” he said. “I am also busy, Mma. You are not the only one.” He gave a small jump, which could have been the beginnings of one of his dances, but which also could have been just a small jump. Then he left the office.

Mma Makutsi returned to her desk in a businesslike fashion. “I have drawn up the accounts for last month,” she said. “It was a much better month.”

“Good,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “Now about this Defence Force man…”

He did not finish, as Mma Makutsi interrupted him with a screech. “Oh,” she cried, “I have forgotten something. Oh, I am very stupid. Sorry, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, I have forgotten to enter those receipts over there. I am going to have to check everything.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni shrugged. There was something which she did not want him to be told, but he thought that he knew exactly what it was. It was about a parachute that had not opened.