The Miracle at Speedy Motors

CHAPTER FIVE COULD ONE REND THE HEART IN TWO?

HOW, Mma Ramotswe asked herself, do you put together the story of a life when you don’t know the very beginning—who your parents were?

She looked past Mma Makutsi’s unattended desk, out through the window and onto the branches of the acacia tree outside. It was the morning following the conversation with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni in which they had discussed the absurd demands of Mma Makutsi’s uncle, and she was by herself. Mma Makutsi would be in the office that morning, but only later on: she had arranged with Mma Ramotswe to come in at eleven, after the delivery van had delivered her new bed.

“A new bed?” Mma Ramotswe had asked. “That is very good.”

She spoke without thinking why it should be particularly good to receive a new bed, but a moment’s subsequent thought justified the comment. Many people, she felt, did not have a good night’s sleep, and this was often because they did not have a good bed. And if you did not have a good night’s sleep, it showed in the way you behaved towards others. Some of her clients, she thought—the irritable or irascible ones—probably did not have a good bed, and would have been much improved by a night or two in a more comfortable place; not that she could tell them that, of course.

She imagined the scene. “I think I know the answer to your problem, Rra,” she would say. “It is in your bed. That is where the answer lies.”

Such advice would not be well received, and could well be misinterpreted. The client might take it as a disparaging reference to a wife or husband, for example, and it could be awkward explaining that the solution lay in the mattress rather than in any person upon the mattress. Mind you, that was often the case too, she suspected, but she could not say that either.

Mma Ramotswe sighed and took a sip from her cup of bush tea. She had been obliged to make the tea herself, in the absence of Mma Makutsi, and this brought home to her the implications of Mma Makutsi’s marriage, if it ever took place. Her assistant had spontaneously assured her that becoming Mrs. Phuti Radiphuti would make no difference to her career, and that she had every intention of continuing to work as an associate detective, but Mma Ramotswe wondered about this. She did not doubt the sincerity of Mma Makutsi’s assurance—Mma Makutsi would never lie to her—but she wondered whether the distractions involved in being married to a man with a large furniture store would simply prove too much for her assistant. And if that were to be the case, then who would make the tea in the agency? And who would collect the mail, and do the filing, and answer the telephone? And who would go out to buy doughnuts from the Lucky Chance Tuck Shop round the corner on Friday mornings, when they treated themselves?

There were so many respects in which Mma Makutsi would be missed—not only in those practical ways, but in ways connected with the moral support she gave Mma Ramotswe and in the inspiration which so often flowed from their casual discussion of a troubling case. Mma Makutsi tackled problems from a slightly different angle than did Mma Ramotswe, and asked slightly different questions. That perspective often led to a solution, and cut short the time which Mma Ramotswe would otherwise have spent on a case. It would be sorely missed, as would the tea and the doughnuts, and all the rest.

Now, for instance, in the absence of Mma Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe was having to work out for herself how she might approach the case of Mma Sebina, with her hidden past and her unknown relatives. If Mma Makutsi had been there, she might well have said something which would trigger a productive line of inquiry. But she was not, and there was no point in speculating what she might have said. Or was there?

Mma Ramotswe closed her eyes for a moment and imagined her assistant at her desk.

“Now then, Mma Makutsi,” she muttered. “What do we have here? We have Mma Sebina, who now knows that her mother was not her mother and her father was not her father. So that means that—”

“Wait a moment, Mma,” said the imaginary Mma Makutsi. “All you know, Mma Ramotswe, is that the late mother told somebody that she was not the mother. Does that mean we can say for sure that Mma Sebina was not the daughter of that lady? Does it really mean that, Mma?”

It was an unexpected question, but it made Mma Ramotswe pause. She had often taken Mma Makutsi to task for assuming things too readily, and now here was her assistant accusing her of exactly the same thing.

Her eyes still firmly shut, Mma Ramotswe spread her hands in a gesture of acceptance. “You’re quite right, Mma,” she said. “It is possible that the mother—that is, the lady who was known as the mother—was really the mother after all and was lying when she told that other lady that she was not. That is possible, I think.”

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “No, Mma,” she said. “You have misunderstood me. Perhaps the lady who said that the other lady said that thing—perhaps that is the lady who was making up the story. That is what I meant.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “Why, of course! A real mother would not lie about such a matter, particularly when she was very ill and would shortly be called to account for all her lies, if she had any. She would not lie then, even if she had been a liar before, would she?”

“Excuse me, Mma.” It was not Mma Makutsi’s voice, but another voice altogether, and Mma Ramotswe opened her eyes with a start. Mr. Polopetsi, the general assistant at the garage and their occasional helper in the agency, was standing in the door, framed by the morning sunlight, an empty mug in his hand.

“I heard you talking,” he said. “And I knocked. Like this. Knock, knock. But you did not hear me. You were busy talking to…to…”

His embarrassment was evident, and Mma Ramotswe, although herself embarrassed to have been found talking to herself, sought to reassure him.

“To Mma Makutsi,” she said. “I was talking to Mma Makutsi, Rra.”

Mr. Polopetsi glanced at Mma Makutsi’s empty desk. “I see.”

Mma Ramotswe laughed. “No, she is not there, Mr. Polopetsi. There is no Mma Makutsi. I was thinking of what I would say to her, you see. I was imagining that we were talking to one another. But she is not there…as you can see,” she ended lamely.

“No, she is not there,” said Mr. Polopetsi, advancing towards the teapot. “That is correct. She is not there, Mma.”

“Exactly,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But I closed my eyes to imagine that she was there, because I needed to know what she would think about something.”

“I see,” said Mr. Polopetsi as he filled his mug with tea from Mma Ramotswe’s teapot. “But who is this lady who has no mother?”

Mma Ramotswe looked at the man standing before her and watched him take a sip of his freshly poured tea. There was something vulnerable about Mr. Polopetsi that always made her feel slightly sorry for him. But she liked him, and indeed had liked him from the time when they had first met in those inauspicious circumstances almost two years previously. Mma Ramotswe had inadvertently knocked him off his bicycle when she was driving to Tlokweng in her tiny white van. She had picked him up, driven him home, and arranged for the repair of the buckled bicycle wheel. After that, she had persuaded Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to take him on as an assistant in the garage—a role in which he had quickly showed his worth. Since then, if there was not enough work for him in the garage, he had helped in the agency, not on major cases—if any of their cases could be called major, which was doubtful—but on small inquiries, particularly on those which required a man rather than a woman. Mma Ramotswe could not go into a bar, for example, without attracting attention, whereas a slight man like Mr. Polopetsi could slip into a bar virtually unnoticed.

“The lady without a mother is a new client,” she explained. “Her name is Mma Sebina. She is an orphan.”

“We are all orphans,” said Mr. Polopetsi. “I am an orphan. And you too, Mma Ramotswe, you are an orphan.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “Yes, I suppose we are. But it is different for us. We know who our late parents were. This lady is not sure who they were, and that is what she wants me to find out.”

Mr. Polopetsi blew across the rim of his mug to cool the tea. A small wisp of steam was caught in a beam of sunlight from the window, then vanished. “I suppose that is something we all want to know,” he said reflectively. “Have you noticed how people seem very interested in these family things when they get older? Sixty is when it starts. That is when they really want to know who were their parents’ parents and the parents of those ones before them. Right, right back to Chief Sechele’s days.” He paused, sipping at his tea. Mma Ramotswe noticed how he puckered his lips when he sipped; like a bushbuck drinking from the water, she thought. But perhaps we were all like some animal or another, not just Mr. Polopetsi, who looked so much like one of those timid creatures one saw in the bush at the side of the road, ready to dart off into the undergrowth. And of course she had run him down, just as people sometimes ran small antelope down on the bush roads.

“Mind you,” continued Mr. Polopetsi, “mind you, I can understand why people want to find these things out. If you’ll be joining the ancestors, it’s useful to know who the ancestors are before you meet them.”

Mma Ramotswe stared at him in surprise. Mr. Polopetsi was a modern man, who had been a pharmacy assistant. He knew about chemicals and the like, and here he was talking about the ancestors. Usually if educated people believed in such things they were discreet about it. It was not fashionable to go on about the ancestors in public.

She decided to ask him directly. “Do you think that it’s true, Rra? Do you think that the ancestors are up there, waiting for us?”

Mr. Polopetsi looked into his mug. Mma Ramotswe watched him and suppressed an irreverent thought. It was as if he was searching for ancestors there, in his mug of bush tea.

“The ancestors,” he began portentously. “The ancestors…”

She waited for him to continue, but he was silent, as if defeated by the sheer weight of the topic, or of the ancestors, perhaps.

“I think that they are with us,” she said. “They are all around us. What they have done. Their voices. The memories they have left us. All of that is there.”

He looked up sharply, with the air of one to whom a major discovery is announced, an annunciation. “That is a very good way of putting it,” he said. “That is very good, Mma. Yes, indeed. That is how I shall think of it in the future.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled modestly. She was not sure if she had said anything very significant; in fact, she felt that what she had said did not really address the question of whether the ancestors were there or not, in the sense that being there meant actual existence. She had not answered that question directly; in fact, she had not answered it at all. But if what she had said to Mr. Polopetsi was at all helpful, then she was pleased with that.

“But getting back to this Mma Sebina and her problems,” she said. “She thinks that she was looked after by a lady who was not her mother. Now that lady is late and she says that there are no relatives she knows of on that side. That is very unusual, of course, as everybody has relatives. But apparently that lady and her husband had none, or none that they ever mentioned.”

“So now she is alone?”

“It looks like it.”

For a few moments they were both silent as they contemplated Mma Sebina’s situation. In a country like Botswana, it was almost inconceivable to be completely alone, to have no family. What would it be like to have nobody? Such loneliness was hard to imagine.

Mr. Polopetsi took a final sip of his tea and put his mug down on Mma Makutsi’s desk. He would not have dared to do that if Mma Makutsi had been there, thought Mma Ramotswe, but why should he not avail himself of the nearest surface? It was not as if Mma Makutsi owned her desk; it belongs to me, thought Mma Ramotswe, and I could give him permission if I wanted to.

“You must find people for her,” said Mr. Polopetsi. “That is what you must do, Mma Ramotswe.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. “I know that, Rra. That is what she asked me to do. That is why she came here.”

He nodded encouragingly.

“But I’m not sure how I should begin,” she went on. “The person who must know where she comes from is the lady who acted as mother. But how do you ask a question of someone who is late? Especially if that person had no relatives herself?”

Mr. Polopetsi looked out of the window. “But she must have had somebody, even if she didn’t know. She must have come from somewhere. Somebody must know something about her.”

That was true, conceded Mma Ramotswe. But did it take them any further in their inquiry? They were not trying to trace the relatives of that woman herself; it was Mma Sebina’s relatives they were looking for.

Mr. Polopetsi agreed. “But if we find people who knew something about her—the late mother who wasn’t the real mother—then we could find out whether she ever said anything about her daughter. We could find out if anybody remembered the baby arriving. After all, if a baby suddenly comes to a house and the lady of that house has not been seen to be pregnant, people will ask: Where is this baby from? That is what they will ask. Babies do not come out of thin air.”

That was true, thought Mma Ramotswe. But then she thought that perhaps it was not. There were plenty of people who came out of thin air; they turned up in our lives and we accepted them without question. Even you, Mr. Polopetsi, she thought, even you. You came into our lives out of thin air. I did not see you before I knocked you down. You came out of thin air, which is exactly how I put it to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni when he asked me how I had managed to knock you off your bicycle. “He came out of thin air,” I said.

She did not say anything of that. Instead, she looked at her watch and said, “I think you should work on this case with me, Rra. If the garage is not very busy Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni will not mind.”

Mr. Polopetsi glanced through the door into the garage workshop beyond. “There is not much going on through there,” he said. “If you give me just an hour or so, I shall finish doing one or two things through there. Then I shall be ready.”

Mma Ramotswe agreed. He could have the hour in the garage, and then they would go off to the small village south of Gaborone where Mma Sebina had started her life’s journey, or where she might have started it. While Mr. Polopetsi busied himself with his remaining garage chores, Mma Ramotswe tackled the morning’s filing, a task normally performed by Mma Makutsi. She could have left it, of course, for Mma Makutsi to do when she came in later, but she had nothing else to do and it would be interesting, she decided, to see whether she would be able to adapt herself to the system which Mma Makutsi used; she would have to do this if the new Mrs. Phuti Radiphuti ended up working in the Double Comfort Furniture Shop rather than in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, as was perfectly possible.

She got up and walked over to the battered filing cabinet that stood halfway between her desk and the desk occupied by Mma Makutsi. They would have to replace that cabinet, which had been acquired right at the beginning, when the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was first set up. They had been in her first office then, that small breeze-block building in the shadow of Kgale Hill, where those insolent chickens had wandered in and pecked at the floor around one’s toes; such silly creatures, with their tattered combs and their scruffy leg feathers like tiny pantaloons. The filing cabinet had been virtually the first piece of office furniture then; there had not even been a proper desk for Mma Makutsi, who had been obliged to make do with a table that had been used for making tea on in the Water Affairs office but had been sold as surplus to requirements. They had entertained such high hopes, then, for their little agency, and had so quickly abandoned those hopes when no clients turned up for week after week. And the filing cabinet then was empty, quite empty, as they had received no letters from anybody and had no papers to file. Eventually, in desperation, Mma Makutsi had filed a tattered circular which somebody had slipped through the door. That circular, Mma Makutsi had told her the other day, was still there, as a reminder of how slow things had been and of how great things may come from moments of nothingness. Perhaps we should all do that, thought Mma Ramotswe. Perhaps we should all keep a few things, a few mementoes, to remind us of what we used to be, just in case we forgot. If I ever became really rich, she thought, rich enough to own a Mercedes-Benz, what would I keep of the tiny white van to remind me of what I used to drive? The steering wheel—perhaps inserted into the Mercedes-Benz by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni in place of its grand new wheel, just to remind me? She smiled at the thought.

She pulled on the handle of the filing cabinet’s top drawer. It was stiff and would not budge. She pulled at it again, this time lifting it slightly; she remembered that this drawer was a difficult one and could get stuck. There was still no movement, and so she tried the drawer below, the one which Mma Makutsi had labelled Concluded Affairs. It was such a strange label for a filing drawer; as if the drawer contained the love letters, the keepsakes, of a crowded personal past. If she managed to get Concluded Affairs to open, then perhaps its upstairs neighbour, Current Investigations, might be more obliging.

When Concluded Affairs stubbornly refused to open, it occurred to Mma Ramotswe that the filing cabinet was locked. This conclusion brought mixed emotions. On the one hand, it said a great deal for Mma Makutsi’s attentiveness and sense of responsibility that she should lock a filing cabinet which contained a great deal of highly personal information. There were letters from clients in those drawers, letters in which they revealed some of their most intimate concerns—suspicions of adultery, thoughts about the character of others, stories of intrigue and bad behaviour. All of that would have been a godsend to a blackmailer, or even a gossip. So it was a wise precaution to lock it all away.

But then she thought: it would have been helpful if Mma Makutsi had told her that the filing cabinet was locked and, moreover, where the key was kept. What if Mma Makutsi were out of the office—as she was now—and Mma Ramotswe needed to make a sudden reference to a current investigation or even a concluded affair? What then?

She turned round and looked down at Mma Makutsi’s desk. There were two drawers in this desk. Mma Ramotswe knew that one of these was used for the storage of such things as rubber bands and paper clips. The other was, she thought, a more personal drawer, into which Mma Makutsi tucked things such as those lace handkerchiefs for which she had a particular fondness. If the key was stored anywhere in the office, then that, she thought, would be where it was.

Feeling slightly furtive, Mma Ramotswe moved to the other side of the desk and gingerly opened the top drawer. It, at least, was unlocked, and slid open easily. She looked down. There was a bottle of aspirin—Mma Makutsi had a tendency to headaches at the height of the hot season—a folded handkerchief, a metal bottle opener with a picture of Table Mountain etched on the shaft, and a photograph. She reached down and picked up the photograph. It was Phuti Radiphuti, standing in front of a door, his arms folded, self-consciously posed. He looked so serious, so self-important, that Mma Ramotswe could not help but smile. And then she laughed; not in an unkindly way, because she liked Phuti, and she was not a person to laugh at another. It was just so odd, that position of his: What on earth could have possessed Phuti Radiphuti to strike such a ridiculous pose?

Then Mma Makutsi came into the room. She was carrying a brown paper bag in her hands: doughnuts. The fat from the doughnuts had seeped through the paper; round tracings of grease. When she saw Mma Ramotswe with the photograph of Phuti Radiphuti, she stood quite still, her eyes moving from the photograph to Mma Ramotswe’s face, caught in its smile, and then back down to the photograph.

THE DOUGHNUTS, of course, were a sign: doughnuts on Friday were normal, but doughnuts purchased on any other day meant that Mma Makutsi felt that she needed cheering up. And that particular morning, cheering up was exactly what was required.

It was not that the day had started badly; it had not. Mma Makutsi had awoken in a state of excitement, as one does when one has been vouchsafed a satisfying dream or when the day ahead brings the prospect of some numinous event. As she stretched out in her rather small and uncomfortable bed—the lumps in her mattress had always been in the wrong place—she reflected on how that coming night she would be sleeping in the unimaginable luxury of the new bed. She looked at her watch and saw that it was time to get up, which was not a chore, not that morning. She would have a lukewarm shower—the heating system never managed more than a few degrees of boost above the prevailing temperature—and then she would prepare her breakfast. They had promised to deliver the new bed early, and she wanted to be ready for them when they came. Delivery men could be awkward about moving existing furniture, and they would need at least a cup of strong tea and a sandwich before agreeing to stack her old bed and mattress against the back wall. The food would be ready when they arrived, and then…she closed her eyes in bliss.

The men came at the appointed time; one man driving a top-heavy blue van, the other in the passenger seat counting out the plot numbers as they made their way down Mma Makutsi’s dusty road. When she saw them, she went out to the gate and waved them down.

“I am the person,” she called out. “It is my bed.”

The van came to a halt and the men got out. Civilities were exchanged. Had she slept well? She had. Had they? They too had slept well. Then the opening of the back door of the van and the manoeuvring out of a great plastic-wrapped object. There was a wind, a small wind blowing tiny eddies of dust, and it caught the edge of the transparent plastic wrapping and made it flap. I am filled with pride, Mma Makutsi thought. I am filled with pride.

The men carried the bed through the gate and into Mma Makutsi’s yard, where they propped it up against the front wall. The large object seemed to dwarf the house; a big bed for a small house, thought Mma Makutsi.

“Very beautiful,” said the driver as he began to cut at the plastic wrapping. “One of the most beautiful beds in Botswana.”

“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “That’s why we chose it, Rra.”

The two men tugged at the last remaining shreds of plastic. The large velvet heart was now revealed, although it was not yet in position, but was tied to the base of the bed. With a deft movement, the men detached it and stacked it next to the base of the bed.

“There is a bed in there already,” said Mma Makutsi. “I wondered if you could move it for me?”

The men glanced at one another. “There is always another bed,” the driver’s assistant said.

The driver frowned. “We can help you, Mma. Don’t worry.”

They went inside and Mma Makutsi showed them her bed. With the sheets and blankets taken off, it was a sad, dejected thing. The men, though, were businesslike; there was no time for emotion in the bed-moving business. It took them no more than a few minutes to unscrew the legs and manhandle the base out into the back yard. Then, dusting their hands, they returned to the new bed and began to carry it towards the door. Mma Makutsi watched in pride and pleasure. She would have to get new sheets, she decided, to do justice to this luxurious acquisition.

“This bed won’t go through the door,” the driver said. “Look, Mma. It is too big.”

Mma Makutsi gave a start. “But it must fit, Rra,” she said. “They wouldn’t make a bed that won’t fit.”

The driver laughed. “Don’t be too sure of that, Mma,” he said. “I have seen many people buy furniture that is too big for their houses. We see that all the time, don’t we?”

His assistant nodded. “Remember those chairs, Boss? Remember those people who lived in that very small house and they bought those great big chairs?”

The driver laughed again. “They were small people too,” he said. “I can never understand why small people think they need big furniture.”

Mma Makutsi stepped forward to examine the bed. It stood, sideways on, against the door and was clearly a foot or so too large to fit in.

“The only way would be to take the roof off,” said the driver. “I have seen that done before.”

“I cannot take the roof off,” snapped Mma Makutsi. “I am only a tenant here. I cannot take the roof off.”

The driver shrugged. “It is too late to take this bed back,” he said. “We are under strict instructions: never bring anything back. I’m sorry about that, Mma.”

“Then please move the bed to the side there,” said Mma Makutsi. “I will speak to my fiancé about it.”

They moved the new bed to the side of the house and put the old bed back. Then they began to take their leave. “I’m sorry,” said the driver. “It is a fine bed, but…” He made a gesture with his hands, a gesture that was somewhere between a denial of further responsibility and an indication of sympathy.

Mma Makutsi watched them leave. She was at a complete loss as to what to do. It was difficult to see what could be done to make the bed fit, short of sawing it in two and making a couple of single beds out of it—but what would happen to the heart?

Could one rend the heart in two? One could not. And it was at that point that the idea came to her: she would buy some doughnuts.