The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

CHAPTER TWO THE RULE OF THREE

SO, MMA,” said Mma Makutsi from behind her desk. “Another day.”

It was not an observation that called for an immediate reply; certainly one could hardly contradict it. So Mma Ramotswe merely nodded, glancing at Mma Makutsi and taking in the bright red dress—a dress which she had not seen before. It was very fetching, she thought, even if a bit too formal for their modest office; after all, new clothes, grand clothes, can show just how shabby one’s filing cabinets are. When she had first come to work for Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi had possessed only a few dresses, two of which were blue and the others of a faded colour between green and yellow. With the success of her part-time typing school for men, she had been able to afford rather more, and now, following her engagement to Phuti Radiphuti, her wardrobe had expanded even further.

“Your dress, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It’s very smart. That colour suits you well. You are a person who can wear red. I have always thought that.”

Mma Makutsi beamed with pleasure. She was not used to compliments on her appearance; that difficult skin, those too-large glasses—these made such remarks only too rare. “Thank you, Mma,” she said. “I am very pleased with it.” She paused. “You could wear red too, you know.”

Mma Ramotswe thought: Of course I can wear red. But she did not say this, and simply said instead, “Thank you, Mma.”

There was a silence. Mma Ramotswe was wondering where the money for the dress came from, and whether it had been bought during that unauthorised absence from work. She thought that she might know the answer to the first question: Phuti Radiphuti was obviously giving Mma Makutsi money, which was quite proper, as he was her fiancé, and that was part of the point of having a fiancé. And as for the second question, well, she would be able to find that out readily enough. Mma Ramotswe strongly believed that the simplest way to obtain information was to ask directly. This technique had stood her in good stead in the course of countless enquiries. People were usually willing to tell you things if asked, and many people moreover were prepared to do so even if unasked.

“I always find it so hard to make up my mind when I’m choosing clothes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That’s why Saturday is such a good time for clothes-shopping. You have the time then, don’t you? Unlike a working day. There’s never time for much shopping on a work day, don’t you find, Mma Makutsi?”

If Mma Makutsi hesitated, it was only for a moment. Then she said, “No, there isn’t. That’s why I sometimes think that it would be nice not to have to work. Then you could go to the shops whenever you wanted.”

Silence again descended on the office. For Mma Ramotswe, the meaning of Mma Makutsi’s comment was quite clear. It had occurred to her before now that her assistant’s engagement to a wealthy man might mean her departure from the agency, but she had quickly put the idea out of her mind; it was a possibility so painful, so unwelcome, that it simply did not bear thinking about. Mma Makutsi might have her little ways, but her value as a friend and colleague was inestimable. Mma Ramotswe could not imagine what it would be like to sit alone in her office, drinking solitary cups of bush tea, unable to discuss the foibles of clients with a trusted confidante, unable to share ideas about difficult cases, unable to exchange a smile over the doings of the apprentices. Now she felt ashamed of herself for having begrudged Mma Makutsi her shopping trip during working hours. What did it matter if a conscientious employee slipped out of the office from time to time? Mma Ramotswe herself had done that on numerous occasions, and had never felt guilty about it. Of course, she was the owner of the business and had nobody to account to apart from herself, but that fact alone did not justify having one rule for herself and one for Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat. “Of course, one might always take a few hours off in the afternoon. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all. One cannot work all the time, you know.”

Mma Makutsi was listening. If she had intended her remark to be a warning, then it had been well heeded. “Actually, I did just that the other day, Mma,” she said casually. “I knew that you wouldn’t mind.”

Mma Ramotswe was quick to agree. “Of course not. Of course not, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi smiled. This was the response she had hoped for, but Mma Ramotswe could not be let off that easily. “Thank you.” She looked out of the window for a moment before continuing. “Mind you, it must be a very nice, free feeling not to work at all.”

“Do you really think so, Mma?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Don’t you think you’d become bored rather quickly? Particularly if you left a job like this, which is such an interesting one. I would miss it very badly, I’m afraid.”

Mma Makutsi appeared to give the matter some thought. “Maybe,” she said, non-committedly. And then added, as if to emphasise the doubtfulness of Mma Ramotswe’s proposition, “Perhaps.”

The matter was left at that. Mma Makutsi had made her point—that she was now a woman who did not actually need the job she occupied, and who would go shopping if she wished; and for her part, Mma Ramotswe had been made to understand that there had been a subtle shift in power, like a change in the wind, barely noticeable, but nonetheless there. She had always been a considerate employer, but her seniority in age, and in the business, had lent her a certain authority that Mma Makutsi had always recognised. Now that things appeared to be changing, she wondered if it would be Mma Makutsi, rather than herself, who decided when tea break was to be. And would it stop at that? There was always Mr Polopetsi to be considered. He was the exceedingly mild man to whom Mma Ramotswe had given a job—of sorts—after she had knocked him off his bicycle and had heard of his misfortunes. He had proved to be a keen worker, capable of helping Mr J.L.B. Matekoni in the garage as well as taking on small tasks for the agency. He was both unobtrusive and eager to please, but she had already heard Mma Makutsi referring to him as “my assistant” in a tone of voice that was distinctly proprietorial, even though there had never been any question but that she was herself an assistant detective. Mma Ramotswe wondered whether Mma Makutsi might now claim to be something more than that, a co-detective, perhaps, or better still an associate detective; there were many ways in which people could inflate the importance of their jobs by small changes to their titles. Mma Ramotswe had met an associate professor from the university, a man who brought his car to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni for repair. She had reflected on his title, imagining that this would be appropriate for one who was allowed to associate with professors, without actually being allowed to be one himself. And when they had tea, these professors, did the associate professors drink their tea while sitting at the edge of the circle, or a few yards away perhaps—of the group but not quite of it? She had smiled at the thought; how silly people were with their little distinctions, but here she was herself thinking of some way of bringing Mma Makutsi forward, but not too far forward. That, of course, would be a way of keeping her assistant. It would be easy enough to give her a nominal promotion, particularly if no salary increase was required. This would be an exercise in window-dressing, in tokenism; but no, she would do this because Mma Makutsi actually deserved it. If she was to become an associate detective, with all that that implied—whatever that was—it would be because she had earned the title.

“Mma Makutsi,” she began. “I think that it is time to have a review. All this talk of jobs and not working and such matters has made me realise that we need to review things…”

She got no further. Mma Makutsi, who had been looking out of the window again, had seen a car draw up to park under the acacia tree.

“A client,” she said.

“Then please make tea,” said Mma Ramotswe.

As Mma Makutsi rose to her feet to comply, Mma Ramotswe breathed a discreet sigh of relief. Her authority, it seemed, was intact.

“SO, WE’RE COUSINS!” said Mma Ramotswe, her voice halfway between enthusiasm and caution. One had to be careful about cousins, who had a habit of turning up in times of difficulty—for them—and reminding you of cousinship. And the old Botswana morality, of which Mma Ramotswe was a stout defender, required that one should help a relative in need, even if the connection was a distant one. There was nothing wrong with that, thought Mma Ramotswe, but at times it could be abused. It all depended, it seemed, on the cousin.

She glanced discreetly at the man sitting in the chair in front of her desk, the man whom Mma Makutsi had spotted arriving and whom she had ushered into the office. He was well dressed, in a suit and tie, and his shoe laces, she noticed, were carefully tied. That was a sign of self-respect, and such evidence, together with his open demeanour and confident articulation, made it clear that this was not a distant cousin on the scrounge. Mma Ramotswe relaxed. Even if a favour was about to be asked for, it would not be one which would require money. That was something of a relief, given that the income of the agency over the past month had been so low. For a moment she allowed herself to think that this might even be a paying case, that the fact that the client was a cousin would make no difference when it came to the bill. But that, she realised, was unlikely. One could not charge cousins.

The man smiled at her. “Yes, Mma. We are cousins. Distant ones, of course, but still cousins.”

Mma Ramotswe made a welcoming gesture with her hands. “It is very good to meet a new cousin. But I was wondering…”

“How we are related?” the man interrupted. “I can tell you that quite simply, Mma. Your father was the late Obed Ramotswe, was he not?”

Mma Ramotswe nodded in confirmation: Obed Ramotswe—her beloved Daddy—the man who had raised her after the death of the mother she could not remember; Obed Ramotswe, the man who had scrimped and saved during all those hard, dark years down the mines and who had built up a herd of cattle that any man might be proud of. Not a day went past, not a day, but that she thought of him.

“He was a very fine man, I have been told,” said the visitor. “I met him once when I was much younger, but we had left Mochudi, you see, and we were living down in Lobatse. That is why we did not meet, you and I, even though we are cousins.”

Mma Ramotswe encouraged him to continue. She had decided that she liked this man, and she felt slightly guilty about her initial suspicions. You had to be careful, some people said; you had to be, because that was how the world had become, or so such people argued. They said that you could no longer trust people, because you did not know where other people came from, who their people were; and if you did not know that, then how could you trust them? Mma Ramotswe saw what was meant by such pronouncements, but did not agree with this cynical view. Everybody came from somewhere; everybody had their people. It was just a bit harder to find out about them these days; that was all. And that was no reason for abandoning trust.

Their visitor took a deep breath. “Your late father was the son of Boamogetswe Ramotswe, was he not? That was your grandfather, also late?”

“That was.” She had never known him, and there were no pictures of him, as was usually the case with people of that generation. Nobody knew any more how they looked, how they dressed. All that was lost now.

“And he had a sister whose name I cannot remember,” the man went on. “She married a man called Gotweng Dintwa, who worked on the railways back in the Protectorate days. He was in charge of a water tower for the steam trains.”

“I remember those towers,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They had those long canvas pipes hanging down from them, like an elephant’s trunk.”

The man laughed. “That is what they were like.” He leaned forward. “He had a daughter who married a man called Monyena. He was your father’s generation and they knew one another, not very well, but they knew one another. And then this Monyena went to Johannesburg and was thrown in jail for not having the right papers. He came back home to his wife and settled near Mochudi. That is where I come in. I am that man’s son. I am called Tati Monyena.”

He uttered the last sentence with an air of pride, as a storyteller might do at the end of a saga when the true identity of the hero is at last revealed. Mma Ramotswe, digesting the information, allowed her gaze to move off her guest and out of the window. There was nothing happening outside the window, but you never knew. The acacia tree might be still, its thorny branches unmoved by any breeze, with just the pale blue sky behind them, but birds landed there and watched, and moved, and led their lives. She thought of what had been told her—this potted story of a family that had shared roots with her own. A few words could sum up a lifetime; a few more could deal with a sweep of generations, whole dynasties, with here and there a little detail—a water tower, for instance—that made everything so human, so immediate. It was a distant link indeed, and she was as closely connected to him as she was to hundreds, possibly thousands of other people. Ultimately, in a country like Botswana, with its sparse population, everybody was connected in one way or another with virtually everybody else. Somewhere in the tangled genealogical webs there would be a place for everybody; nobody was without people.

Mma Makutsi, who had been listening from her desk, now decided to speak. “There are many cousins,” she said.

Tati Monyena turned round and looked at her in surprise. “Yes,” he said. “There are many cousins.”

“I have so many cousins,” Mma Makutsi continued. “I cannot count the number of cousins I have. Up in Bobonong. Cousins, cousins, cousins.”

“That is good, Mma,” said Tati Monyena.

Mma Makutsi snorted. “Sometimes, Rra. Sometimes it is good. But I see many of these cousins only when they want something. You know how it is.”

At this, Tati Monyena stiffened in his chair. “Not everybody sees their cousin for that reason,” he muttered. “I am not one of those who…”

Mma Ramotswe threw a glance at her assistant. She might be engaged to Phuti Radiphuti now, but she had no right to speak to a client like that. She would have to talk to her about it, gently, of course, but she would have to remonstrate with her.

“You are very welcome, Rra,” Mma Ramotswe said hurriedly. “I am glad you came to see me.”

Tati Monyena looked at Mma Ramotswe. There was gratitude in his eyes. “I haven’t come to ask a favour, Mma,” he said. “I mean to pay for your services.”

Mma Ramotswe tried to hide her surprise, but failed, as Tati Monyena felt constrained to reassure her once more. “I shall pay, Mma. It is not for me, you see, it’s for the hospital.”

“Don’t worry, Rra,” she said. “But what hospital is this?”

“Mochudi, Mma.”

That triggered so many memories: the old Dutch Reformed Mission Hospital in Mochudi, now a Government hospital, near the meeting place, the kgotla; the hospital where so many people she knew had been born, and had died; the broad eaves of which had witnessed so much human suffering, and kindness in the face of suffering. She thought of it with fondness, and now turned to Tati Monyena and said, “The hospital, Rra? Why the hospital?”

His look of pride returned. “That is where I work, Mma. I am not quite the hospital administrator, but I am almost.”

The words came quickly to Mma Ramotswe. “Associate administrator?”

“Exactly,” said Tati Monyena. The description clearly pleased him, and he savoured it for a few moments before continuing, “You know the hospital, Mma, don’t you? Of course you do.”

Mma Ramotswe thought of the last time she had been there, but put that memory out of her mind. So many had died of that terrible disease before the drugs came and stopped the misery in its tracks, or did so for many; too late, though, for her friend of childhood, whom she had visited in the hospital on that hot day. She had felt so powerless then, faced with the shadowy figure on the bed, but a nurse had told her that holding a hand, just holding it, could help. Which was true, she thought later; leaving this world clasping the hand of another was far better than going alone.

“How is the hospital?” she asked. “I have heard that you have a lot of new things there. New beds. New X-ray machines.”

“We have all of that,” said Tati Monyena. “The Government has been very generous.”

“It is your money,” chipped in Mma Makutsi from behind his chair. “When people say that the Government has given them this thing or that thing, they are forgetting that the thing which the Government gave them belonged to the people in the first place!” She paused, and then added, “Everybody knows that.”

In the silence that followed, a small white gecko, one of those albino-like creatures that cling to walls and ceilings, defying gravity with their tiny sucker-like toes, ran across a section of ceiling board. Two flies, which had landed on the same section, moved, but languidly, to escape the approaching danger. Mma Ramotswe’s gaze followed the gecko, but then dropped to Mma Makutsi, sitting defiantly below. What she said might be true—in fact, it was self-evidently true—but she should not have used that disparaging tone, as if Tati Monyena were a schoolboy who needed the facts of public finance spelled out for him.

“Rra Monyena knows all that, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe quietly.

Tati Monyena gave a nervous glance over his shoulder in the direction of Mma Makutsi. “What she says is right,” he said. “It is our money.”

“You wouldn’t think that some politicians knew that,” said Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe decided that it was time to get the conversation off politics. “So the hospital wants me to do something,” she said. “I am happy to help. But you must tell me what the problem is.”

“That’s what doctors say,” offered Mma Makutsi from the other side of the office. “They say, What seems to be the problem? when you go to see them. And then they say…”

“Thank you very much, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe firmly. “No, Rra, what is this problem that the hospital has?”

Tati Monyena sighed. “I wish we had only one problem,” he began. “In fact, we have many problems. All hospitals have problems. Not enough funds. Not enough nurses. Infection control. It would be a very big list if I were to tell you about all our problems. But there is one problem in particular that we decided I needed to ask you about. One very big problem.”

“Which is?”

“People have died in the hospital,” he said.

Mma Ramotswe caught Mma Makutsi’s eye. She did not want any further remarks from that quarter, and she gave her assistant a severe look. She could imagine what Mma Makutsi might have said to that: that people were always dying in hospitals, and that it was surely no cause for complaint if this happened from time to time. Hospitals were full of sick people, and sick people died if the treatment did not work.

“I am sorry,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I can imagine that the hospital does not like its patients to become late. But, after all, hospitals…”

“Oh, we know that we’re going to lose a certain number of patients,” said Tati Monyena quickly. “You can’t avoid that.”

“So, why would you need my services?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

Tati Monyena hesitated before he replied. “This will go no further?” he asked. His voice was barely above a whisper.

“This is a confidential consultation,” Mma Ramotswe reassured him. “It is just between you and me. Nobody else.”

Tati Monyena looked over his shoulder again. Mma Makutsi was staring at him through her large round glasses and he quickly looked back again.

“My assistant is bound to secrecy too,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We do not talk about our clients’ affairs.”

“Except when…,” began Mma Makutsi, but she was cut off by Mma Ramotswe, who raised her voice.

“Except never,” she said. “Except never.”

Tati Monyena looked uncomfortable at this display of disagreement and hesitated a moment. But then he continued, “People become late in a hospital for all sorts of reasons. You would be surprised, Mma Ramotswe, at how many patients decide that now that they’ve arrived in hospital it’s time to go…” He pointed up at the ceiling. “To go up there. And then there are those who fall out of bed and those who have a bad reaction to some drug and so on. There are many unfortunate things that happen in a hospital.

“But then there are those cases where we just don’t know why somebody became late—we just don’t know. There are not many of these cases, but they do happen. Sometimes I think that is because of a broken heart. That is something that you cannot see, you know. The pathologist does a post-mortem and the heart looks fine from outside. But it is broken inside, from some sadness. From being far from home, maybe, and thinking that you will never again see your family, or your cattle. That can break the heart.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded her agreement at that. She knew about broken hearts, and she understood how they can occur. Her father had told her about that many years ago; about how some men who went off to the mines in South Africa died for no reason at all, or so it seemed. A few weeks after they had arrived in Johannesburg, they simply died, because they were so far from Botswana, and their hearts were broken. She remembered that now.

“A broken heart,” mused Tati Monyena. “But to have a broken heart you have to be awake, Mma, would you not agree?”

Mma Ramotswe looked puzzled. “Awake?”

“Yes. Let me tell you what happened, Mma, and then you will see what I mean. I’m not sure if you know much about hospitals, but you know about a ward they have which is called intensive care. That is for people who are very ill and have to be looked after by nurses all the time, or just about all the time. Sometimes these people are in comas, on ventilators, which help them to breathe. You know about those machines, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe did.

“Well,” continued Tati Monyena, “we have a ward like that in the hospital. And of course when people become late in that ward, nobody is too surprised. They are very sick when they go in and not all of them will come out. But…” He raised a finger in the air to emphasise the point. “But, when you have three deaths in six months and each of those takes place in the same bed, then you begin to wonder.”

“Coincidence,” muttered Mma Makutsi. “There are many coincidences.”

This time, Tati Monyena did not turn to answer her, but addressed his reply to Mma Ramotswe. “Oh, I know about coincidences,” he said. “That could easily be a coincidence. I know that. But what if those three deaths take place at more or less exactly the same time on a Friday? All of them?” He raised three fingers in the air. “Friday.” One finger went down. “Friday.” The second finger. “Friday.” The third.