The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

CHAPTER NINE THE UNDERSTANDING OF SHOES

MMA MAKUTSI AWOKE the next morning slightly earlier than normal. It had been another cold night, and her room, which had no heating apart from a one-bar electric heater—which was turned off—was still chilly. When the sun came up properly, the light would flood in through her window and warm the place up, but that would not happen for twenty minutes or so. She looked at her watch. If she got up now, she would have fifteen minutes or so in hand before she went off to catch her minibus into work. She could use this time to do something constructive, some sewing, perhaps, on the new sewing machine which Phuti Radiphuti had bought her. She was making a dress for herself and had all the panels cut out, pinned together, and ready for the machine. Now all she needed was a bit of time. She could do fifteen minutes of work on it that morning and then, when she came home from work, she could devote at least two hours to the task, which might well be enough to finish it off.

But there would be no going to work that day, and now that she remembered this she opened her eyes wide, astonished by the realisation. I do not have to get up, she said to herself. I can stay in bed. She closed her eyes again, and nestled her head back into her pillow; but she could not keep her eyes closed, she could not drift back to sleep, for she was wide awake. On a cold morning an extra few minutes of sleep, snatched in denial of the imminent call of the alarm clock, would normally be irresistible. But not now; that which we have, we suddenly find we do not want. She sat up in bed, shivered, and tentatively lowered her feet onto the cement floor of her room. There might be running water in the house, and electric light, but in the villages and in the country they still had floors, here and there, which did not freeze your feet like this—floors made of the dung of cattle, sweet-smelling dung, packed down hard and mixed with mud to give a surface that was cool in the heat and warm to the touch in the cold weather. For all that modern buildings were more comfortable, there were some things, some traditional things, that could not be improved upon.

This thought of things traditional reminded her of Mma Ramotswe, and with a sudden jolt of regret she realised that she would not be seeing her former employer today. A day—a week-day too—with no Mma Ramotswe; it seemed strange, almost ominous, like a day on which something dark was due to happen. But she put that thought out of her mind. She had resigned and had moved on. That’s what people said these days—they talked about moving on. Well, that’s what she had done, and presumably people who moved on did not look back. So she would not cast an eye back to her old life as an assistant detective; she would look forward to her new life as Mrs Phuti Radiphuti, wife of the proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Store, former secretary.

It was strange having breakfast and not having to rush; strange eating toast without glancing at the clock; and strange, too, not having to leave the second cup of tea half-finished simply because time had run out. Breakfast that morning seemed not to finish—it merely petered out. The last crumbs of toast were cleared from the plate, the last sip of tea taken, and then…nothing. Mma Makutsi sat at her table and thought of the day ahead. There was the dress—she could easily finish that this morning, but somehow she did not want to. She was enjoying the making of that garment, and she had no material for another one. If she finished the dress, then there would be one less thing to do, and her new sewing machine would have to go back into the cupboard. She could clean the house, of course; there was always something to attend to in a house, no matter how regularly one swept and scrubbed. But although she kept the house spickand-span, that was not a task that she actually enjoyed, and she had spent almost the entire last weekend giving it a thorough cleaning.

She looked about the room. Her living room, where she ate her breakfast, was sparsely furnished. There was the table at which she now sat—a table condemned by Phuti Radiphuti who had promised to replace it, but had not yet done so; there was a small second-hand settee that she had bought through a newspaper advertisement and which now sported the satin-covered cushions which Phuti Radiphuti had given her; there was a side table on which she had placed several small framed pictures of her family in Bobonong. And that, apart from a small red rug, was it.

She could do something more about decorating the room, she thought. But then if she was going to get married in January, when she would move to Phuti Radiphuti’s house, there seemed little point in doing much to her own place. The landlord would be pleased, no doubt, if she went to the hardware store and bought some paint for the walls, but again there seemed to be no point in doing that. Indeed, there seemed to be little point in doing anything.

No sooner had she reached that conclusion, than she realised how absurd it was. Of course there was a point in doing something. Mma Makutsi was not one to waste her time, and she now told herself that her resignation should be a challenge to her to work out a new routine of activity. Yes, she would take advantage of this and do something fresh, something exciting with her life. She would…She thought. There must be something. She could get a new job, perhaps. She had read about a new employment agency which had opened which would specialise, it had been announced, in the placing of high-class secretaries. “This agency is not for everyone,” the press announcement had read. “We are for the cream of the crop. We are for people who go the extra mile—every day.”

Mma Makutsi had seen the advertisement in the Botswana Daily News and had been struck by the wording. She liked the expression go the extra mile, which had the ring of a journey to it; and that, she thought, was what life really was—it was a journey. In her case, the journey had started in Bobonong, and had been by bus, all the way down to Gaborone. And then it had become a metaphorical journey, not a real one, but a journey nonetheless. There had been the journey to her final grade at the Botswana Secretarial College, with the marks as milestones along the way: sixty-eight per cent in her first examination, seventy-four in the second; then on to eighty-five per cent; and finally, in a seemingly impossible leap, ninety-seven per cent, and the glory that had come with that. That had surely been a journey.

And then there had come the hunt for the first job—a journey of disappointing blind alleys and wrong turnings, as she discovered that at that level of secretarial employment a crude form of discrimination was at work. She had gone to interview after interview, dressed in the sole good dress that she possessed, and had discovered time and time again that the employer was not in the slightest bit interested in how she had done at the College. All that was required was that one should have passed and got the diploma; that was all. What was on the diploma did not matter, it seemed; all that counted was that one should be glamorous, which Mma Makutsi was realistic enough to know she was not. She had those large round glasses; she had that difficult skin; her clothes spoke of the hardship of her life. No, she was not glamorous.

Here was an agency, though, that implied that hard work and persistence would be rewarded. And the reward would come, no doubt, in the shape of a challenging and interesting job, with a large company, she imagined, in an office with air conditioning and a gleaming staff canteen. She would move amongst highly motivated people, who would be smartly dressed. She would live in a world of memos and targets and workshops. It would be a world away from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, with its battered old filing cabinets and its two tea-pots.

She had made up her mind, and the decision made her feel more optimistic about the day ahead. She rose from the table and began to wash up the breakfast plates. Two hours later, having made satisfactory progress with her new dress, she put away the sewing machine, locked the house, and began to walk into town. It was a cool day, but the sun was still there; it was perfect, she thought; it was weather for walking, and for thinking as one walked. The doubts of the earlier part of the day had disappeared and now seemed so baseless, so unimportant. She would miss Mma Ramotswe, just as she would miss any friend, but to think, as she did, that her life would be empty without her was a piece of nonsense. There would be plenty of new colleagues once she started her new job and, without being disloyal to Mma Ramotswe, many of them would perhaps be a little bit more exciting than her former employer. It was all very well being of traditional shape, believing in the old Botswana values, and drinking bush tea, but there was another world to explore, a world filled with exciting, modern people, the people who formed opinions, who set the pace in fashion and in witty things to say. That was the world to which she could now graduate, although of course she would always have a soft spot for Mma Ramotswe and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Even a thoroughly modern person would like Mma Ramotswe, in the way in which modern people can retain affection for their aunts back in the villages even though they really had nothing in common any more with those aunts.

She had kept the issue of the paper in which the advertisement appeared, and had noted down the address of the agency. It was not a long way away—a half hour walk at the most—and this walk went quickly, made all the quicker by the thoughts she was entertaining of the interview that no doubt lay ahead of her.

“Ninety-seven per cent?” the agency person might say. “Is that correct? Not a misprint?”

“No, Mma. Ninety-seven per cent.”

“Well, that’s very impressive, I must say! And there’s a job which I think would be just right for you. It’s a pretty high-level job, mind you. But then you’ve been…”

“An associate detective. Second from the top in the organisation.”

“I see. Well, I think you’re the lady for the job. The pay is good, by the way. And all the usual benefits.”

“Air conditioning?”

“Naturally.”

The thought of this exchange was deeply satisfying; absorbing too, with the result that she walked past her destination and had to turn back and retrace her footsteps. But there it was, the Superior Positions Office Employment Agency, on the second floor of a slightly run-down, but still promising-looking building not far from the Catholic church. Once she had climbed the stairs, she saw a sign pointing down a corridor inviting visitors to ring the bell on the door and enter. The corridor was dark, and had a slightly unpleasant smell to it, but the door of the agency office had been recently painted and, reflected Mma Makutsi, she was not going to work there, in that building, which was only a means to a much-better-appointed end.

It was a small room, dominated by a desk in the middle of the floor. At this desk there was a slight young woman with elaborately braided hair. She was applying varnish to her nails as Mma Makutsi entered, and she looked up with a vague air of annoyance that she should be disturbed in this task. But she greeted Mma Makutsi in the proper way before asking, “Do you have an appointment, Mma?”

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “Your advertisement in the Daily News said that none was necessary.”

The receptionist pursed her lips. “You should not believe everything you read in the papers, Mma,” she said. “I don’t.”

“Even when it’s your own advertisement?” asked Mma Makutsi.

For a moment the receptionist said nothing. She dipped the varnish brush into the container and dabbed it thoughtfully on the nail of an index finger.

“You’re an experienced secretary, Mma?” she asked at last.

“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “And I’d like to see somebody more senior, please.”

A further silence ensued. Then the receptionist picked up her telephone and spoke into the receiver.

“She’ll see you in a few minutes, Mma,” she said. “She’s seeing somebody else at the moment. You can wait over there.” She pointed to a chair in the corner of the room. Beside the chair was a small table laden with magazines.

Mma Makutsi sat down. She had encountered rude receptionists before and she wondered what it was about the job that seemed sometimes to attract unfriendly people. Perhaps it was that people did the opposite of what they really wanted to do. There were gentle prison guards and soldiers; there were unkind nurses; there were ignorant and unhelpful teachers. And then there were those unfriendly receptionists.

She did not have to wait long. After a few minutes the door to the inner office opened and a young woman walked out. She was carrying a folded piece of paper and was smiling. She walked over to the receptionist and whispered something into her ear. There was laughter.

When the young woman had left, the receptionist glanced at the door and gestured for Mma Makutsi to go in. Then she continued with her nail-painting. Mma Makutsi rose to her feet and made her way to the door, knocked, and without waiting for an invitation, went in.

THEY LOOKED at one another in astonishment. Mma Makutsi had not expected this, and the sight of this woman behind the desk deprived her of all the poise she had summoned for her entry. But in that respect she was equal with the woman behind the desk; equal in other respects too, as it was her old classmate from the Botswana Secretarial College, Violet Sephotho.

It was Violet who recovered first. “Well, well,” she said. “Grace Makutsi. First the College. Then the Academy of Dance and Movement. Now here. All these crossings of our paths, Mma! Perhaps we shall even find out now that we are cousins!”

“That would be a surprise, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi, without saying what sort of surprise it would be.

“I was only joking,” said Violet. “I do not think we are cousins. But that is not the point. The point is that you have come here looking for a job? Is that correct?”

Mma Makutsi opened her mouth to reply, but Violet continued. “You must have heard of us. We are what are called head hunters these days. We find top people for top jobs.”

“It must be interesting work,” said Mma Makutsi. “I wondered whether…”

“It is,” said Violet. “Very interesting.” She paused, looking quizzically at Mma Makutsi. “I thought, though, that you had a good job,” she went on. “Don’t you work for that fat woman who runs that detective business next to that smelly old garage? Don’t you work for her?”

“That is Mma Ramotswe,” said Mma Makutsi. “And the garage is Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. It is run by…”

Violet interrupted. “Yes, yes,” she said impatiently. “So you’ve lost that job, have you?”

Mma Makutsi gasped. It was outrageous that this Violet, this fifty-per-cent (at the most) person should imagine that she had been dismissed from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. “I did not!” she burst out. “I did not lose that job, Mma! I left of my own accord.”

Violet looked at her unapologetically. “Of course, Mma. Of course. Although sometimes people leave just before they’re pushed. Not you, of course, but that happens, you know.”

Mma Makutsi took a deep breath. If she allowed herself to become angered, or at least to show her anger, then she would be playing directly into Violet’s hands. So she smiled gently and nodded her agreement with Violet’s comment. “Yes, Mma. There are many cases of people who are dismissed who say that they resigned. You must see a lot of that. But I really did resign because I wanted a change. That’s why I’m here.”

This submissive tone seemed to appeal to Violet. She looked at Mma Makutsi thoughtfully. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said slowly. “But I can’t work miracles. The problem is that…Well, the problem, Mma, is one of presentation. These days it is very important that firms have a smart image. It’s all about impact, you know. And that means that senior staff must be well presented, must be…of good appearance. That’s the way it is in business these days. That’s just the way it is.” She shuffled a few papers on her desk. “There are a few high-level vacancies at the moment. A personal assistant post to a chief executive. A secretary to the general manager of a bank. That sort of thing. But I’m not sure if you’re quite right for that sort of job, Mma. Maybe something in a Ministry somewhere. Or…” She paused. “Have you thought of leaving Gaborone? Of taking something down in Lobatse or Francistown or somewhere like that? Lots of people like those places, you know. There’s not so much going on, of course, but it’s a peaceful life out of town.”

Mma Makutsi watched Violet as she spoke. The face revealed so much; that she had been taught by Mma Ramotswe, who had pointed out that the real meaning of what anybody said was written large in the muscles of the face. And Violet’s face said it all; this was a calculated put-down, an intentional humiliation, possibly inspired by jealousy (Violet knew about Phuti Radiphuti and knew that he was well off), possibly inspired by anger over their vastly differing performances at the Botswana Secretarial College, but more probably inspired by pure malice, which was something which often just occurred in people for no apparent reason and with which there was no reasoning.

She rose to her feet. “I don’t think you have anything suitable for me,” she said.

Violet became flustered. “I didn’t say that, Mma.”

“I think you did, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “I think you said it very clearly. Sometimes people don’t have to open their mouths to say anything, but they say it nonetheless.”

She moved towards the door. For a moment or two it seemed as if Violet was about to say something, but she did not. Mma Makutsi gave her one last glance, and then left, nodding to the receptionist on her way out, as politeness dictated. Mma Ramotswe would be proud of me, she thought; Mma Ramotswe had always said that the repaying of rudeness with rudeness was the wrong thing to do as it taught the other person no lesson. And she was right about that, as she was right about so many other things. Mma Ramotswe…Mma Makutsi saw the face of her friend and heard her voice, as if she was right there, beside her. She would have laughed at Violet. She would have said of her insults, Little words, Mma, from an unhappy woman. Nothing to think twice about. Nothing.

Mma Makutsi went out into the sunshine, composed herself, and began to walk home. The sun was high now, and there was much more warmth in it. She could get a minibus most of the way, if she waited, but she decided to walk, and had gone only a short distance when the heel of her right shoe broke. The shoe now flapped uselessly, and she had to take both shoes off. At home, in Bobonong, she had often gone barefoot, and it was no great hardship now. But it had not been a good morning, that morning, and she felt miserable.

She walked on. Near the stretch of open bush that the school used for playing sports, she picked up a thorn in her right foot. It was easy to extract, but it pricked hard for such a small thing. She sat down on a stone and nursed her foot, rubbing it to relieve the pain. She looked up at the sky. If there were people up there, she did not think that they cared for people down here. There were no thorns up there, no rudeness, no broken shoes.

She rose and picked up her shoes. As she did so, a rattly old blue taxi drove past, the driver with his right arm resting casually on the sill of the window. She thought for a moment, That’s a dangerous thing to do—another car might drive too close and that would be the end of your arm.

She raised her own arm, suddenly, on impulse. The taxi stopped.

“Tlokweng Road, please,” she said. “You know that old garage? That place. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.”

“I will take you there, Mma,” said the taxi driver. He was not rude. He was polite, and he made conversation with Mma Makutsi as they drove.

“Why are you going there, Mma?” he asked as they negotiated the lights at the old four-way stop.

“Because that’s where I work,” said Mma Makutsi. “I took the morning off. Now it’s time to go back.”

She looked down at the broken shoe, now resting on her lap. It was such a sad thing, that shoe, like a body from which the life had gone. She stared at it. Almost challenging it to reproach her. But it did not, and all she heard, she thought, was a strangled voice which said, Narrow escape, Boss. You were walking in the wrong direction, you know. We shoes understand these things.

IF IT HAD BEEN a bleak morning for Mma Makutsi, it was equally bleak at the premises of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. In Mma Ramotswe’s small office the desk previously occupied by Mma Makutsi stood forlorn, bare of paper, with only a couple of pencils and an abandoned typewriter upon it. Where three cups had stood on the cabinet behind it, along with the tea-making equipment of a kettle and two tea-pots, there now were only two—Mma Ramotswe’s personal cup and the cup that was kept for the client. The absence of Mma Makutsi’s cup, a small thing in itself but a big thing in what it stood for, seemed only to confirm in Mma Ramotswe’s view that the heart had been taken out of the office. Steps could be taken, of course: Mr Polopetsi could be invited to keep his mug there rather than on the hook which it occupied beside the spanners in the garage. But it would not be the same; indeed it was impossible to imagine Mr Polopetsi occupying Mma Makutsi’s chair; much as Mma Ramotswe liked him, he was a man, and the whole ethos of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, its guiding principle really, was that it was a business in which women were in the driving seat. That was not because men could not do the job—they could, provided they were the right sort of men, observant men—it was simply because that particular business had always been run by women, and it was women who gave it its particular style. There was room in this world, Mma Ramotswe thought, for things done by men and things done by women; sometimes men could do the things done by women, sometimes not. And vice versa, of course.

She felt lonely. In spite of the sounds from the garage, in spite of the fact that immediately on the other side of the office wall was Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, her husband and helpmate, she felt alone, bereft. She had once been told by an aunt in Mochudi how, shortly after being widowed, she had seen her husband in empty rooms, in places where he liked to sit in the sun, coming back down the track that he always walked down; and these were not tricks of the light, but aches of the mind, its sad longings. And now, after her assistant had been absent for so short a time, she had looked up suddenly when she thought she heard Mma Makutsi say something, or had seen something move on the other side of the room. That movement was a real trick of the light of course, but it still brought home the fact that she was on her own now.

And that was difficult. Mma Ramotswe was normally quite content with her own company. She could sit on her verandah on Zebra Drive and drink tea in perfect solitude, with her only company that of the birds outside, or of the tiny, scrambling geckos that made their way up the pillars and across the roof; that was different. In an office one needed to be able to talk to somebody, if only to make the surroundings more human. Homes, verandahs, gardens were human in their feel; offices were not. An office with only one person in it was a place unfurnished.

On the other side of the wall, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni felt a similar moroseness. It was perhaps not quite as acute in his case, but it was still there, a feeling that somehow things were not complete. It was as a family might feel, he thought, if it sat down to dinner on some great occasion and had one seat unoccupied. He liked Mma Makutsi; he had always admired her determination and her courage. He would not like to cross her, of course, as she could be prickly, and he was not sure whether she handled the apprentices very well. In fact she did not; he was certain of it, but he had never quite got round to suggesting to her that she should change her tone when handling those admittedly frustrating young men. And of course Charlie was going to go too, once he had finished tinkering with that old Mercedes and the taxi licence application had been approved. The garage would not be the same without him, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni thought; there would be something missing, in spite of everything.

Charlie, from the other side of the garage, where he was about to raise a car on the hydraulic ramp, glanced at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and said to the younger apprentice standing beside him, “I hope that the Boss doesn’t think that she’s gone because of me. I hope he doesn’t think that.”

The younger apprentice wiped his nose on the sleeve of his blue overalls. “Why would he think that, Charlie? What’s it got to do with you? You know what that woman’s like. Nag, nag, nag. I bet that the Boss is relieved that she’s gone.”

Charlie thought about this possibility for a moment, and then dismissed it. “He likes her. Mma Ramotswe likes her too. Maybe even you like her.” He looked at the younger man and frowned. “Do you? Do you like her?”

The younger apprentice shifted his feet. “I don’t like her glasses,” he said. “Where do you think she got those great big glasses?”

“An industrial catalogue,” said Charlie.

The younger apprentice laughed. “And those stupid shoes of hers. She thinks she looks good in those shoes of hers, but most girls I know wouldn’t be seen dead in them.”

Charlie looked thoughtful. “They take your shoes off when you’re dead, you know.”

The younger apprentice was concerned. “Why?” he asked. “What do they do with them?”

Charlie reached forward and polished the dial of the panel that controlled the hydraulic lift. “The doctors take them,” he explained. “Or the nurses in the hospital. Next time you see a doctor, look at his shoes. They all have very smart shoes. Lots of them. That’s because they get the shoes when…”

He stopped. A blue taxi had drawn up in front of the garage and the passenger door was opening.