The Kalahari Typing School For Men

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MMA RAMOTSWE was driving back to Zebra Drive that evening, taking her normal route from the Tlokweng Road and turning off into Odi Drive, when the tiny white van began to pull over to the left. She wondered for a moment whether the steering was faulty, and she shifted her weight in the seat towards the right, but this made no difference. Now there was a strange sound coming from the back of the van, a grinding sound, as of metal on stone, and she realised that she had a flat tyre. This was both an annoyance and a relief at the same time, the relief coming from the fact that it was an easily tackled problem. If one had a spare wheel, that is, and she did not. She had asked one of the apprentices to take it out for inflating, and she had seen it propped up against the wall of the garage and had been on the point of putting it back when Mma Makutsi had called her inside to take a telephone call. So the spare wheel remained in Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, and she was here, on the side of the road, where it was needed.

She felt a momentary irritation with herself. There was really no excuse for driving without a spare wheel; tyres were always going flat with all those sharp stones on the road and dropped nails and the like. If it had happened to somebody else, she would have had no hesitation in saying: Well, it’s not very clever, is it, to drive a car without a spare wheel; and here it had happened to her, and she richly deserved such self-reproach.

She drew over to the left, to keep the car away from the traffic, not that there was much of that along this quiet residential road. She looked about her. She was not far from Zebra Drive -about half an hour’s walk, at the most-and she could easily walk home and wait for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to come round for dinner. Then they could rescue the tiny white van together. Or, and this made more sense in terms of avoiding extra journeys, she could telephone him at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, where he was working late, and ask him to bring the spare wheel with him on his way to Zebra Drive.

She looked about her. There was a public telephone in the shopping centre at the end of the road, or, and this was the obvious answer, there was Dr. Moffat’s house, close to which the tiny white van was now parked. Dr. Moffat, who had helped Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni recover from his depressive illness, lived with his wife in a rambling old house, surrounded by a generous-sized garden, the gate of which Mma Ramotswe now opened tentatively, bearing in mind how careful one had to be about dogs in yards like that. But there was no dog barking defiance, only the surprised voice of Mrs. Moffat, who emerged from behind a shrub which she had been tending.

“Mma Ramotswe! You are always creeping up on people!”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “I am not here on business,” she said. “I am here because my van out there has a flat tyre and I need to phone Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni for help. Would you mind, Mma?”

Mrs. Moffat slipped her garden secateurs into her pocket. “We can telephone straightaway,” she said. “And then we can have a cup of tea while we are waiting for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.”

They went into the house, where Mma Ramotswe telephoned Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, told him of her misfortune, and explained where she was. Then, invited by the doctor’s wife to join her on the verandah, they sat around a small table and talked.

There was much to talk about. Mrs. Moffat had lived in Mochudi when her husband had run the small hospital there, and she had known Obed Ramotswe and many of the families who were friendly with the Ramotswes. Mma Ramotswe liked nothing more than to talk about those days, long past now, but so important to her sense of who she was.

“Do you remember my father’s hat?” she asked, stirring sugar into her tea. “He wore the same hat for many years. It was very old.”

“I remember it,” said Mrs. Moffat. “The doctor used to describe it as a very wise hat.”

Mma Ramotswe laughed. “I suppose a hat sees many things,” she said. “It must learn something.” She paused. The memory was coming back to her of the day that her father lost his hat. He had taken it off for some reason and had forgotten where he had left it. For the best part of a day they had gone round Mochudi, trying to remember where he might have left it, asking people whether they had seen it. And at last it had been found on a wall near the kgotla, placed there by somebody who must have picked it up from the road. Would somebody in Gaborone put a hat in a safe place if it were found in the road? She thought not. We do not care about other people’s hats in the same way these days, do we? We do not.

“I miss Mochudi,” said Mrs. Moffat. “I miss those mornings when we listened to the cattle bells. I miss hearing the singing of the children from the school when the wind was in the right direction.”

“It is a good place,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I miss listening to people talking about very small things.”

“Like hats,” ventured Mrs. Moffat.

“Yes, like hats. And special cattle. And which babies have arrived and what they are called. All those things.”

Mrs. Moffat refilled the teacups, and for a few minutes they sat in easy silence, each with her own thoughts. Mma Ramotswe thought of her father, and of Mochudi, and her childhood, and of how happy it had been even without a mother. And Mrs. Moffat thought of her parents, and of her father, an artist who had become blind, and of how hard it must have been to move into a world of darkness.

“I have some photographs which may interest you,” Mrs. Moffat said after a while. “There are some photographs of Mochudi in those days. You will know the people in them.”

She went off into the living room and returned with a large cardboard box.

“I have been meaning to put these into albums,” she said, “but I have never got round to it. I shall do it one day, maybe.”

“I am the same,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I will do these things one day.”

The photographs were taken out and examined, one by one. There were many people Mma Ramotswe remembered; here was Mrs. de Kok, the wife of the missionary, standing in front of a rosebush; here was the schoolteacher from the primary school giving a prize to a small child; here was the doctor himself playing tennis. And there, in a group of men in front of the kgotla, was Obed Ramotswe himself, wearing his hat, and the sight made her catch her breath.

“There,” said Mrs. Moffat. “That’s your father, isn’t it?”

Mma Ramotswe nodded.

“You take that,” said Mrs. Moffat, handing her the photograph.

She accepted the gift gratefully and they looked at more photographs.

“Who is this?” asked Mma Ramotswe, pointing to a photograph of an elderly woman sitting at a table in a shady part of a garden, playing cards with the Moffat children.

“That is the doctor’s mother,” said Mrs. Moffat.

“And this person standing behind them? This man who is looking at the camera?”

“That is somebody who comes to stay with us from time to time,” said Mrs. Moffat. “He writes books.”

Mma Ramotswe examined the photograph more closely. “It seems that he is looking at me,” she said. “He is smiling at me.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Moffat. “Maybe he is.”

Mma Ramotswe looked again at the photograph of her father which Mrs. Moffat had given to her. Yes, that was his smile; hesitant at first, and then broader and broader; and his hat, of course… She wondered what the occasion had been, why these people were standing outside the gate of the kgotla, the meeting place; the doctor would know, perhaps, as he must have taken the photograph. Perhaps it was something to do with the hospital; people raised money for it and had meetings about it. That might have been it.

Everybody in the photograph was smartly dressed, even under the sun, and everybody was looking at the camera with courtesy, with an attitude of moral attention. That was the old Botswana way-to deal with others in this way-and that was passing, was it not, just as the world and the people captured in this photograph were passing. She touched the photograph with her finger, briefly, as if to communicate with, to touch, those in it, and as she did so, she felt her eyes fill with tears.

“Please excuse me, Mma,” she said to Mrs. Moffat. “I am thinking of how this old Botswana is going away.”

“I understand,” said Mrs. Moffat, reaching out for her friend’s arm. “But we remember it, don’t we?” And she thought, yes, this woman, this daughter of Obed Ramotswe, whom everybody agreed was a good man, would remember things about the old Botswana, about that country that had been-and still was-a beacon of light in Africa, a country of integrity and generosity in both the simple and the big things.

THAT EVENING the typing class went particularly well. Mma Makutsi had planned a test for her students, to determine their speed, and had been pleasantly surprised by the results. One or two of the men were not very good-indeed, one of them was talking about giving up but had been persuaded by the other members of the class to persist. Most, however, had worked hard and were beginning to feel the benefits of practice and the expert tuition provided by Mma Makutsi. Mr. Bernard Selelipeng was doing particularly well and, entirely on the basis of merit, had attained the highest words-per-minute score in the class.

“Very good, Mr. Selelipeng,” said Mma Makutsi as she looked at his score. She was determined to keep their professional relationship formal, although as she spoke to him, she felt a warm flush of feeling for this man who treated her with such respect and admiration. And he, in turn, treated her as his teacher, not as his girlfriend; there was no familiarity, no assumption that he would be given special treatment.

After the class ended and she had locked the hall, Mma Makutsi went outside and found him, as they had agreed, sitting in his car, waiting for her. He suggested that they go to the cinema that evening, and afterwards to a café for something to eat. This idea appealed to Mma Makutsi, who relished the thought that rather than going to the cinema by herself, as was often her lot, she would this time be sitting with a man, like most of the other women.

The film was full of silly, rich people living in conditions of unimaginable luxury, but Mma Makutsi was barely interested in it and scarcely followed what was happening on screen. Her thoughts were with Mr. Bernard Selelipeng, who, halfway through the performance, slipped his hand into hers and whispered something heady into her ear. She felt excited and happy. Romance had arrived in her life at last, after all these years and all that waiting; a man had come to her and given her life a new meaning. That impression-or delusion-so common to lovers, of personal transformation, was strong upon her, and she closed her eyes at the sheer pleasure and happiness of it all. She would make him happy, this man who was so kind to her.

They went to a café after the cinema and ordered a meal. Then, sitting at a table near the door, they talked about one another, as lovers do, their hands joined under the table. That is where they were when Mma Ramotswe came in, with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Mma Makutsi introduced her friend to Mma Ramotswe, who smiled and greeted him politely.

Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not stay long in the café.

“You are upset about something,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to Mma Ramotswe as they made their way back to the van.

“I am very sad,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have found something out. But I am too upset to talk about it. Please drive me back to my house, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. I am very sad.”