The Miracle at Speedy Motors

CHAPTER FOUR AN UNCLE WITH AN UNSOPHISTICATED, BROKEN NOSE

AS MMA RAMOTSWE and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni conversed on their verandah that evening, Mr. Phuti Radiphuti sat in the modest living room of his fiancée, Mma Grace Makutsi, waiting for her to serve his dinner. They were having their meal rather later than usual that evening, as they had been shopping together and had been distracted by a display of beds in the large furniture store at River Walk. Phuti Radiphuti had been surprised at the prices, which he thought were below cost, but Mma Makutsi had been taken by the headboards, which not only were covered in a deep red velvet but were heart-shaped into the bargain.

“These are very fine beds,” she observed, reaching out to feel the texture of the velvet headboard. “A person would sleep very well in a bed like that. And there is a lot of room too.”

It was a potentially indelicate reference, at least in its last part, to the fact that these beds would accommodate both husband and wife in comfort; the sort of reference which, if made by an engaged woman to her fiancé, might be interpreted as a hint. Phuti Radiphuti and Mma Makutsi did not live together, and both had their own beds. This was Phuti’s doing, and indeed Mma Makutsi had been slightly concerned that he had not been more passionate, so far. But that would come, she thought, in the fullness of time, and in the meantime there were plenty of matters to attend to without worrying about such things. As Mma Ramotswe had once delicately pointed out to Mma Makutsi, far too many people were permanently miserable because they allowed love affairs and everything that went with such things to dominate their lives. It is only one thing, she said, that business between men and women, and there are many other more important things, including food.

If Mma Makutsi’s remarks on the bed and its heart-shaped headboard might have been interpreted by Phuti Radiphuti as a reproach, or indeed as an encouragement, this was not the way in which he took them.

“It would fit very well in my house,” he said. “When we are married, this would be a very good bed for our room. And remember—beds are the one thing we don’t sell at the Double Comfort Furniture Shop.”

Mma Makutsi caught her breath. They had a firm date, or rather a tentatively firm date, for the wedding, but they had yet to deal with anything quite as concrete as a bed. This was progress, and she tried very hard to conceal her excitement. “You’re right,” she said. “And this velvet is very fine. Feel it.”

Phuti Radiphuti stretched to run his fingers over the soft cloth. “Very good,” he said. “But I don’t see how they can do this bed at this price. Where’s their profit?” He paused, glancing at the price of a nearby set of chairs. “A loss leader,” he said. “That is what they are doing. It’s an old trick.”

Mma Makutsi wondered whether she should suggest that he purchase the bed. She, of course, could not buy it herself, as she had very little money of her own. Her financial position had been immeasurably improved when she set up her small, part-time typing school for men, but that had now been abandoned and she was dependent on her salary from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Even with Mma Ramotswe’s generous rates of pay, that was not much; the agency barely made a profit and effectively relied on subventions from Mma Ramotswe’s own purse—she still had her fine herd of cattle, which meant that she was comfortably off—and from Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, in the form of rent-free premises.

Phuti Radiphuti was a kind man, and he was tactful in the exercise of his generosity. He had stopped short of giving Mma Makutsi an allowance, but he had taken on many of her expenses, paying grocery bills and giving her regular and frequent presents. Now he raised a hand to attract the attention of one of the assistants who had been hovering in the background.

“That is a very good bed, Rra,” said the assistant, sensing a sale. “And you and your wife will like it. It suits you.”

Phuti Radiphuti appeared momentarily flustered. He began to stammer. “I…I—”

“We are not yet married,” Mma Makutsi cut in. “We are engaged now, but not yet married. That will happen soon.”

The assistant apologised fulsomely. He saw the ring on her finger, that ring with the dazzling Botswana diamond, her proudest possession, the symbol of the man who loved her and of the country they both loved; such purity and light. “I thought…You looked as if you were married, Mma. And soon you will be.”

“Quite soon,” said Mma Makutsi.

The assistant looked down at the floor.

“I will buy this bed,” said Phuti Radiphuti, recovering from his embarrassment. “Yes, I will take it.”

The assistant’s face broke into a smile. He made a little boxing feint in the air, narrowly missing Phuti Radiphuti in his exuberance. “An excellent decision, Rra. It’s a very good buy.” He took a notebook out of his pocket and began to take Phuti’s details. The bed, he said, would be delivered the following day. And then, “Will you be buying the headboard too, Rra?”

The unexpected question hung unanswered in the air. Mma Makutsi glanced at Phuti Radiphuti, who was looking in a worried way at the price tag on the bed. “But it says…” he began.

The assistant bent down to point to the wording at the bottom of the tag. “You’ll see, Rra,” he said, “that the headboard is excluded. You see here. It says, ‘Headboard excluded.’ The headboard is twelve hundred pula, Rra.” He paused. “That is a very big bargain, I think.”

Mma Makutsi thought. Twelve hundred pula was almost her monthly salary; for many people it was more than that. Her cousins up in Bobonong, where there was little work, would have to save for months, a year perhaps, to accumulate such an amount.

Phuti hesitated. “You…You sh…should…” He was beginning to stammer. Mma Makutsi frowned at the assistant. It was his fault that this misunderstanding had arisen—he should have made it clear at the outset that the bed and the headboard were separate items. And now Phuti’s stammer was starting again, which was frustrating for her, after all the efforts she had made to help him overcome it. Perhaps she should ask to speak to the manager and give him a piece of her mind about the need to make terms and conditions clear to customers. In her business practice course at the Botswana Secretarial College they had stressed that one should never try to mislead the customer. And indeed Clovis Andersen, whose book Mma Ramotswe was always going on about, said much the same thing about telling the truth to clients. Never put anything in small print and then spring it on the client. That breaks trust.

“That breaks trust,” she muttered.

The assistant only half heard her. “What was that, Mma?”

Phuti cleared his throat. “I’ll take the headboard too,” he said. The stammer had gone, replaced by a note of resignation in his voice.

“We’ll deliver them both tomorrow,” said the assistant. “To your address, Rra?”

Phuti turned to Mma Makutsi. “It can go to your house first, Grace,” he said. “You can enjoy sleeping in it until we move it to my house after the wedding.”

Mma Makutsi accepted demurely. She gave the address to the assistant, who wrote it down in his notebook. So much had changed in her life since she had become engaged to Phuti. Now, with the arrangements being made for the delivery of the bed, it seemed to her that a further, tangible improvement was about to be achieved. This bed, with its elaborate headboard, would have been an impossible self-indulgence in her earlier state. Phuti had made the decision to purchase the bed as if the expense were something that one would hardly notice, and yet it had cost so much. She wondered if that was what it would be like to have buying power—not having to worry about what one had to pay, but deciding whether or not to buy something purely on the basis of whether one wanted it. And would that apply, she asked herself, to shoes? For a moment she imagined the shoes she might have—a cupboard full of new shoes, all set out on racks. She would wear a different colour each day, depending on her mood, and perhaps take a spare pair along with her to work so that she could change them as the spirit moved her. She closed her eyes at the thought.

So that’s what you think of us, Boss! Too grand for us—after all we’ve done for you! The voice of her shoes, her green shoes with sky-blue linings, was filled with reproach, and her eyes popped open. She looked away, ashamed at her greed. She would have to be careful. It was all very well becoming Mrs. Phuti Radiphuti, wife of the proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop, but one should not forget where it was that one had come from; although, if one did, there were always one’s shoes to remind one.

CURIOUSLY ENOUGH, while Mma Makutsi prepared Phuti Radiphuti’s dinner that evening, happily anticipating the arrival of the new bed the following morning, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and Mma Ramotswe, comfortably seated on their verandah, were talking about her. Although their conversation did not have anything to do—directly—with the bed in question, nonetheless it did concern an intimate problem arising from Mma Makutsi’s engagement.

“Mma Makutsi spoke to me about her engagement this morning,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We were having tea…”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. They were always having tea, as far as he could work out. There was the first cup, served shortly after they arrived in the office in the morning, and then there was the ten o’clock cup, which was sometimes taken at nine thirty in the hot weather. That was followed by the tea which was brewed at eleven thirty (the mid-morning tea), and of course there was tea immediately after lunch and again at three in the afternoon. He thought it was a good thing that the red bush tea contained no caffeine, or Mma Ramotswe would surely find it difficult to get to sleep at night, with all that caffeine in her system. Yet Mma Makutsi drank ordinary tea, which had ample quantities of caffeine in it, he believed; indeed he thought that this might explain why she was sometimes so tetchy with the apprentices, especially with Charlie. Mind you, anybody might be forgiven for being irritated by Charlie, with his constant boasting and that endless silly chatter about girls; even one with no caffeine at all in his system could find himself snapping at such a young man.

“Her engagement? That is a long story.” He laughed, but stopped himself quickly. His own engagement had not been exactly brief. It had lasted for some years and had only been brought to a successful conclusion when Mma Potokwane had somehow managed to stand with Mma Ramotswe before that improvised altar on the orphan farm. He did not regret that day for one moment, and the memory of it was unquestionably a warm one; but the length of the preceding engagement perhaps precluded his passing comment on the length of time for which Mma Makutsi and Phuti Radiphuti were engaged.

So he said, “Not that engagements should not be a long story, Mma. It is better, is it not, to be sure of the person you are marrying before you marry. That is what I have always thought.”

Mma Ramotswe suppressed a smile, remembering how she had almost resigned herself to a date never being set for their wedding. If Mma Potokwane owed Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni a great deal for all that he had done for her by way of fixing things, then she herself owed a heavy debt of gratitude to the orphan farm matron for managing to cajole her husband into marriage. But that, she thought, was what so much of life was like: we allowed one another something for some service or favour, sometimes for something done a long time ago, even before our birth; debts to parents, debts to ancestors.

“No,” Mma Ramotswe agreed. “One does not want to marry too quickly. Nor too slowly, perhaps…But Mma Makutsi did not say that Phuti Radiphuti was refusing to name a day. He has done that now.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked puzzled. “So what can the problem be? If they have decided on a day—”

“The day is not the issue. It is the bogadi.”

“Ah!” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni understood now. Bogadi, or lobola, was the dowry that the Radiphutis would have to pay to Mma Makutsi’s people. This would have to be negotiated before the formal agreement between the families would bring the marriage into existence.

After Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had said, “Ah,” there was a brief silence. Then he continued, firstly by saying “Ah” again, and then, “Eight cattle. Maybe nine.”

Mma Ramotswe appeared to consider this for a moment. “Some people might say six head of cattle for a lady like Mma Makutsi. I am not saying that she is not pretty—I think she is—but—”

“It depends on the light,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. He spoke seriously, and did not intend his remark to be barbed: it really did depend on the light, he thought. Strong sunlight, especially when it came from such an angle that it glinted off Mma Makutsi’s glasses, was not flattering. But when the light was weaker—at dusk, for example—then her high cheekbones stood out in an interesting way. He had noticed that and had even once mentioned the fact to Mma Ramotswe, who had said nothing, but had looked at him in a way which suggested that he should return to working on his cars. Women did not like men to discuss the appearance of other women, although they liked to do so themselves, he had noticed; and no woman would object to a man’s discussing her own appearance, in complimentary terms of course.

Mma Ramotswe was loyal. “Mma Makutsi is pretty in every light, I think. When I said ‘but,’ I was about to say that there are some people who think that her glasses are too big.”

“I am one of those,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Are big glasses more powerful than small glasses? I do not think so: it is what is in the glass that counts, not how much glass there is.” He paused. “But her eyes are quite big, aren’t they? Have you seen them, Mma Ramotswe? They are big, like the eyes of a kudu.”

Mma Ramotswe felt uncomfortable at the direction the conversation was taking. She had not intended that they should get into such a detailed discussion of Mma Makutsi’s appearance, and she decided that it was time to return to the subject of the dowry.

“This bogadi business,” she said. “I have never been sure about it, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had paid ten cattle for Mma Ramotswe. Was she now offering to give them back? “Those ten cattle I paid,” he began. “Ten good cattle. Fat ones…”

The cattle had certainly been large, sweet-smelling beasts who had been specially fed on bales of lucerne bought at some expense from over the border; they had grown fat and their coats had shone with health. They were a worthy tribute to Mma Ramotswe, and although three had been taken by one of her uncles, and another had been slaughtered for the marriage feast of one of her cousins, those that remained were out at her cattle post and by all accounts doing well.

She made it clear that it was not those cattle she was talking about. The negotiations that had preceded their marriage had been model ones, with her family readily agreeing to what was proposed by the aged uncle who had acted for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. No, that was not the sort of case that concerned her; she was worried about those cases where the husband had great difficulty in finding the means to pay the bride price. People got themselves into debt; they spent money which should have been spent on other things. But most of all she thought that the whole idea made women seem like property—things that could be bought.

“Would it not be better if a man did not have to pay for his wife?” she asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I am not one to disturb old customs unnecessarily, but wouldn’t it be better?”

Rather to her surprise, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was quick to agree. “Yes. It would be better. You pay for a car, you do not pay for a wife.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at him with admiration. “That is a very modern view, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni,” she said, almost adding “for a man,” but not doing so. Men could be modern too, she reminded herself.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni now added something instead. “Of course, you cannot take a wife back as you can take a car back. There is a difference there.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. She was not sure why he had said this or what it meant, but she decided not to seek clarification. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni generally meant well, and was respectful of women—unlike the apprentices.

“What’s worrying me,” she said, “is the negotiations. Did you hear that Mma Makutsi’s uncle has been down in Gaborone?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had not heard this. “Nobody tells me about these matters,” he said. “I did not know that.”

“Well, he has been. He is a very odd-looking man with a broken nose. I caught a glimpse of him when I dropped her off after work one afternoon. He came to the gate.”

“There are some strange people up there,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Bobonong, isn’t it?”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “That is where they are from. Not all people from up there are like that, but sometimes…”

“I wonder how his nose was broken,” mused Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I knew a mechanic once who had a car door slammed on his nose. It was a very bad thing to happen.”

Mma Ramotswe drew in her breath sharply. “On his nose?”

“Yes,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “It was very sore, I think.”

Mma Ramotswe was puzzled. “But how did it happen? Why was his nose in the way?” She could understand how fingers got slammed in car doors, but it would be difficult, she thought, to get one’s nose in the wrong place.

“He was leaning into the car,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And I think that his nose was quite a long one.”

For a moment neither of them spoke. There were many dangers in this world, and the longer one journeyed through life the more one understood how varied these dangers were. That, thought Mma Ramotswe, was why one worried more and more about others: one could imagine the manifold disasters that might befall them. And she did not want anything unpleasant to happen to others; Mma Ramotswe wished ill on nobody. In particular, she would not wish that any man, no matter how long his nose, should suffer indignity and pain on that account.

She brought the conversation back to Mma Makutsi’s uncle. “He is a greedy man, I fear. He has asked for too much.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. “That is exactly what an uncle should not do,” he said. “It makes everything very complicated.”

“Exactly.” Mma Ramotswe paused. “You said eight cattle for Mma Makutsi?”

“That would be about right,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “She is a competent lady. She is educated. And the Radiphuti family can easily afford eight cattle.”

“All of that is true,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But in this case, do you know what he asked for?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni tried to put himself in the position of the uncle from Bobonong. Such a man would be very impressed by the Double Comfort Furniture Shop. He would not know about overheads and bad debts and all the things that sapped the profits of a business. In the mind of an uncle from Bobonong, an uncle with an unsophisticated, broken nose, the owner of a large store would be unimaginably wealthy, and have many cattle. “Twenty?” he ventured. Twenty would be an outrageously large bogadi; far more than Mma Makutsi was worth.

“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. And then, with the air of one disclosing a scandalous fact, “Ninety-seven.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s eyes revealed his surprise. But then he remembered, and he began to smile. A wily uncle indeed; one who had absorbed the salient facts of family history.

“Because…” he began.

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Because.” Then they both laughed.