The Miracle at Speedy Motors

CHAPTER FIFTEEN HE LOVED HIS CATTLE. HE LOVED HIS COUNTRY

TWO DAYS AFTER Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had left for Johannesburg with Motholeli, he telephoned Mma Ramotswe and told her at length about the trip and about their accommodation in a small hotel on the outskirts of the city. It was the second time that he had stayed in a hotel; for Motholeli it was the first. Both were excited.

“There is a very big bath in the bathroom,” Motholeli told Mma Ramotswe. “And in the morning you can help yourself to as many eggs and as much bacon as you like. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has been eating a lot.”

“Not that much,” she heard her husband saying in the background.

“And the doctors?” she asked.

“They are very kind,” said Motholeli.

Mma Ramotswe waited for something else to be said about the treatment, but neither Motholeli nor Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was forthcoming on the subject. “They are doing a lot of things,” he said. “I am not there, though, and so I cannot say what it is that they are doing.”

There was time enough to ponder this, and she did; rather too much, perhaps, as she found that anxiety over what was happening began to gnaw away at her. Now she started to reproach herself for not being firmer, for failing to veto a trip which she saw as pointless and even counter-productive. Motholeli had handled her disability with remarkable maturity and dignity; was it right, Mma Ramotswe wondered, that she should be encouraged to think that something could be done when it so obviously could not? Of course it would have been difficult to oppose the whole thing, for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni tended to hold on to an idea once he became attached to it. If she had refused to allow Motholeli to go to Johannesburg, then he could have ended up resenting her. So perhaps it was the right decision after all. On the other hand…

She had not asked how the trip and the treatment were to be paid for, and she might never have found out had Mma Makutsi not taken it upon herself during Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s absence to open the mail addressed to Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. This was hardly voluminous: a few envelopes containing cheques for work done, a letter or two from suppliers of parts, advertisements for batteries—and a letter from the bank.

Mma Ramotswe could tell that there was something wrong when she saw her assistant frown. For a few moments she thought that perhaps the anonymous letter-writer had struck again, but then Mma Makutsi looked up and began to read. “This is from the bank, Mma,” she said. “This is what it says. ‘Dear Mr. Matekoni, Further to your application for an un-secured loan, we regret to inform you that we shall, after all, require security for the sum for which you have applied. Our legal department will be in touch about setting up a bond over your garage premises to the extent of the sum applied for. This can be arranged within ten days of our receiving your instruction…’” Mma Makutsi tailed off. “He’s going to mortgage the garage,” she said.

Mma Ramotswe got up from her desk and walked across the room to retrieve the letter. She read it through again, silently, and then returned it to its envelope. “It’s for Motholeli’s treatment,” she said. “That can be the only reason why he has applied for a loan.”

“Did he not tell you how much it would cost?” asked Mma Makutsi. “That loan is for a lot of money, Mma. A lot. And if he fails to pay it back, then the bank takes the garage.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. “He is a kind man,” she said. “He has always been a kind man.”

“Eee,” said Mma Makutsi. “Eee, Mma.” It was really all that one could say in the face of such behaviour.

“But I can’t let him do it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We cannot have a mortgage on this building. It is our main property.”

“And if we lost this building, then where would there be for the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency?” asked Mma Makutsi. “We would be out on the street, along with the hawkers and the vegetable sellers. Can you imagine clients coming to an agency that was just a roadside stand?”

“They would not come,” said Mma Ramotswe. She imagined for a moment Mma Makutsi typing on a small, upturned wooden box, perhaps under a large blue umbrella to protect her from the sun, her ninety-seven per cent certificate from the Botswana Secretarial College leaning against the side of the box. No, it would not do.

“I shall have to get this money myself,” said Mma Ramotswe.

Mma Makutsi let out a low whistle. “Have you got that much in your account, Mma? It is a lot of money.”

“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I do not have that. Not in money.”

Mma Makutsi knew what Mma Ramotswe was going to say. “Your cattle?”

There was silence. In Botswana, the sale or slaughter of one’s cattle is the last resort; it is the last thing that anyone wishes to do. Cattle were the ultimate security, the property that stood before the very gates of indigence and kept them from opening. Once one had sold the cattle, there would be nothing left to sell.

Mma Ramotswe nodded her reply. “I have a large herd,” she said. “My daddy was very good with cattle. He left me some very fine beasts, and they have multiplied. There are many of them now. I shall not have to sell all of them.”

“It is not a good thing to sell cattle,” said Mma Makutsi. “Is there no other way, Mma?”

“I do not see one,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I shall go out to the cattle post and choose the ones to sell.”

“This is a very sad day,” said Mma Makutsi.

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is.” She would have liked to say that it was not, that there was a positive side to this; she was not one to concentrate on the bleak. But where was the positive side in having to dispose of those lovely animals, the legacy of her father, the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the very cattle that had gathered round his house when in Mochudi he lay in his final illness; had gathered, she thought, to say goodbye to their owner?

But she would have to do it, and so she prepared the next day to go out to the cattle post, a journey of six hours on a very bumpy dirt road. She went in the tiny white van and stopped halfway through the journey to eat a sandwich by the side of the road. It was mid-morning, and getting hotter. A hornbill watched her from the branch of a tree, casting his unnaturally large eye upon her. From another tree, some distance away, a lourie cried out with its distinctive call. She looked up at the sky. What was money? Nothing. A human conceit, so much smaller a thing than love, and friendship, and the pursuit, no matter how pointless, of hope. What did it matter that this money was being thrown away for no good reason? It mattered not at all, she decided.

And when, a few hours later, she stood with the man who looked after the cattle and identified those that she would sell, she did not think that it was the wrong thing to do, but picked them out bravely, without regret. That one, she said, and that one over there; that one is the calf of a cow my father called the brave one, that one came from far away, over that side, and was very strong; that one had a father who had only one horn. The cattle were rounded up, lowing, watching with their wide brown eyes, their heads moving to keep flies at bay; it was hot that afternoon and the trees themselves seemed to wilt; there was dust, kicked up by the cattle as they moved; there was the sound of bells tied round the necks of some of the herd. They are the ones who give music to the other cattle, her father had said of those ones.

Now that line came back to her, and she said it, under her breath. They are the ones who give music to the other cattle.

“What was that, Mma?” said the man. “What did you say?”

Mma Ramotswe looked down at him; he was a short man, bow-legged, and his eyes were bright with intelligence. She smiled. “It was something my daddy said. He was a man who knew a lot about cattle.”

The man inclined his head respectfully. “I have heard that, Mma. I have heard people say that about him. They have said it.”

That Obed Ramotswe should be remembered, that people should still speak of him; that touched her. One did not have to be famous to be remembered in Botswana; there was room in history for all of us.

“He was a very good man,” she said. “He loved his cattle. He loved his country.”

She had not intended to utter an epitaph, but that, she realised, was what she had done. And she thought: if your spirit is anywhere, then it is here, among your cattle, where you might hear what I have just said.