The Miracle at Speedy Motors

CHAPTER EIGHT AS IF THE WORLD ITSELF WAS BROKEN

WHEN MMA RAMOTSWE arrived back at the office, having dropped Mr. Polopetsi off at his home, there was no sign of Mma Makutsi. The office door was unlocked, and the younger apprentice said that Mma Makutsi and Charlie had dashed off together to deal with something that had been left out in the rain. They had not said when they would be back.

“And Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Has he been washed away too?”

The apprentice thought this very funny. “He went off in his truck. He said that there was a car, an important car, that would not start because of the rain, and he went to fix it. There are some cars that do not like all this rain, Mma. You see, the water can get in the distributor—you know what a distributor is, do you, Mma? It is the part that sends the electricity to the—”

“Yes, yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Women know about distributors these days. But why has everybody gone off like this? What if a client were to come here?”

The apprentice shook his head. “There have been no clients, Mma. I have not seen any, and I have been here all the time except when I went off to the shops for some meat.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. She had spoken to people about the importance of not leaving the business unattended, but nobody, it seemed, listened. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni heard what she had to say, perhaps, but was such a kind man that he would often disappear at the drop of a hat if one of the customers of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors was in any sort of trouble. Mma Potokwane, of course, knew this full well, and would not hesitate to impose upon him to fix anything that went wrong at the orphan farm, but there were others as well, presumably including this person who had summoned him in the middle of the thunderstorm purely because his car would not start.

She sighed again. It was no use thinking about it and getting hot under the collar because whatever she said she would never be able to change the way people were. Of course she believed in the possibility of change; she had seen many who had become better people from a single experience or from the example of another, but that change was in the big matters, change in the outlook of the heart. It was not change in the little things of life, such as leaving the business unattended—those were things which never changed.

The rain had now eased off and the sky in the east, which had been dark purple with the storm, was now light again, although there was still cloud, great banks of it, white now, touched gold by the sun, and a rainbow too, arched over the land and dipping down like a pointer to the horizon somewhere beyond Mochudi.

The apprentice, standing beside her, suddenly tugged excitedly at the sleeve of her dress. “Look, Mma Ramotswe! Look!”

She looked in the direction in which he was pointing and immediately saw what he had seen. Flying ants. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the air was filling with flying ants, rising up from their secret burrows in the rain-softened ground, gaining altitude on beating wings, dipping down again. It was a familiar sight following the rains, one of those sights that took one back to childhood no matter what age one was, and brought to mind memories of chasing these ants, grabbing them from the air, and then eating them, for their peanut-butter taste and crunchiness.

“Go and catch some,” she said to the apprentice.

He handed her the spanner he was holding and rushed out in the last few drops of rain to snatch at the termites, a boy again. He caught some easily, and de-winged them before stuffing them into his mouth. Above him there were other, hungrier dangers for the ants; a flock of swifts, materialising from nowhere, had swept in and were dipping and swooping over their aerial feast. The apprentice looked up at the birds and watched them, and smiled; and she smiled back. What does it matter, she thought, if businesses are left unattended, if people are not always as we want them to be; we need the time just to be human, to enjoy something like this: a boy chasing ants, a dry land drinking at last, birds in the sky, a rainbow.

She stayed at the office for half an hour or so, enough time to brew herself a pot of red bush tea and to set her thoughts in order. The accidental discovery of the letter in the van had shocked and disturbed her. Mr. Polopetsi’s explanation of having found the letter in the garage was feasible enough, but there had been something about the manner in which he had made these protestations that did not ring true. He had hesitated, and when people hesitated it meant that either they were lying or they were thinking about your reaction to what they were about to say. But if she gave Mr. Polopetsi the benefit of the doubt and decided that he was hesitant merely because he feared her reaction to his explanation, she still had to answer why he would have harboured this fear. There was nothing wrong in what he had done—picking up a letter addressed to her and pocketing it with a view to passing it on later; so why should he have been furtive? It did not make sense, and that meant that he must have written the letter himself. It was an appalling conclusion—one that made her sit quite still, her head in her hands, even letting her cup of bush tea get cold, as she pondered the enormity of what she had inadvertently discovered: she had an enemy in the heart of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, somebody whom she had trusted. And what had she done to deserve that? She could not answer that question. Pick as she might over all her dealings with the seemingly innocuous Mr. Polopetsi, she could not think of a single thing that she had done which would justify his enmity; not one thing. But then she thought: enmity does not require an unjust act to bring it into existence; sometimes simple envy is quite enough. Envy extended its tentacles into the chambers of the human heart, strangled what it found. Mr. Polopetsi was a poor man who had suffered great injustice—now he had so very little, while she had so much. That was what must have turned him. There might be an explanation for his behaviour, then, but that was very different from there being an excuse.

Mma Ramotswe shivered. The rain had lowered the temperature and the office was cool and dark. The sky had darkened again, grey shading into cloud-white; the sun had disappeared. She was alone in the office now, with only the apprentice outside, and, in the distance, the sound of cars moving through flooded sections of the road, some with their headlights still on from the storm. The absence of sun disconcerted her; it was as if the country was suddenly out of favour, deserted by its constant daytime companion.

She tried to work, making a list of the names she had been given by the woman in Otse—the names of Mma Sebina senior’s friends in Gaborone. The act of writing these down brought home to her that the investigation was posing a fundamental dilemma: whether or not to believe the client. This was one of the most difficult situations that somebody in her position could face. If the client was lying—for whatever reason—then the whole premise upon which inquiries were based could be false. And in this case it looked as if any time spent on meeting and talking to the friends of Mma Sebina’s mother would be wasted. There would be more point, she thought, in trying to persuade Mma Sebina to come to terms with the fact that her mother really was her mother. That is what Mma Ramotswe felt she should do, although she wondered why she should do it. Of course the answer to that was that Mma Ramotswe was there to help people, and anybody who was actively denying that her mother was her mother surely needed some help.

She set aside the list and looked up at the ceiling. The place where rainwater had previously penetrated the roof was now damp again. It was not something to worry about unduly; rain was so infrequent in Botswana that a leaky roof simply was not a problem. And if the water stained the ceiling board, then it would merely add to the many other marks up there—the places where insects had died, the sites of struggles between flies and geckos, the tiny battlegrounds. A dripping of water was a flood of biblical proportions for the creatures of the ceiling, but nothing of any importance to the people below.

Mma Ramotswe’s musings were interrupted by the sound of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck returning. She could always tell when he came back, as the truck’s engine had a particular note to it—a whining sound that he insisted was quite normal but seemed to her to be an indication of mechanical trouble of some sort. And Charlie thought so too, as he had raised it with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni at tea one morning and had been told that there was nothing wrong.

“I think you are in denial, Boss,” Charlie had said.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked puzzled. “Denial? What am I denying? You’re the one who’s in denial, Charlie. What about those exams you have to take if you are to finish your apprenticeship? What about those?”

“I will do those exams some day, Boss. They will still be there.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni said, “Then you will never finish your apprenticeship. You will be the oldest apprentice in the country. In fact, you will be a retired apprentice eventually.”

Charlie ignored this. “There is something wrong with your truck, Rra. I can hear it. Even Mma Ramotswe can hear it, and she is just a woman.”

Mma Ramotswe had let that pass; there was no point in engaging with Charlie on these matters, she thought. And Charlie was right about the truck and its engine sound. There was something wrong, even if Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni seemed unwilling to face it.

The engine was switched off and the whining stopped. A few moments later Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni put his head round the door. “Wonderful rain, Mma Ramotswe. You should see the storm drains up near Maru-a-Pula—they were like a big river. Like the Limpopo itself. That much water.”

She nodded. “It is very good. Maybe we’ll have a good season this year.”

“We can hope.”

She looked at her husband, noticing that his shirt was wet and was sticking to his skin. There was something strange about his manner; something almost elated. Was he just pleased about the rain, she wondered, or was there something else? “You must dry yourself off, Rra,” she said. “You shouldn’t stand around in wet clothes.”

“Rain harms nobody,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And I am not that wet. Just a little.”

There was still something about him, something she could not put her finger on. The apprentice had told her that he had rushed off to start an important car and now he was back, looking as if something nice had happened to him.

“Where have you been, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni? You are looking very happy, I think.”

He smiled. “I have been to help somebody with his car. It would not start and he had to get somewhere in a hurry. I managed to get it started.”

She waited for further explanation, but none came.

“Whose car?”

He frowned. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not like to be quizzed: “I am not one of your suspects,” he had protested once. “You must not talk to me with your detective shoes on.”

“One of my customers,” he said.

“I see.” She fixed him with her gaze, and he shifted on his feet.

“He is a doctor.”

She did not lower her gaze. “Dr. Moffat? You’ve been helping Dr. Moffat?”

“No,” he said. “Not him. Another doctor.” He paused, and then suddenly moved across the room, picked up the client’s chair, moved it to the front of Mma Ramotswe’s desk, and sat down.

“There is something we need to talk about,” he said, leaning forward in the chair. “It is very important.”

Mma Ramotswe felt her heart miss a beat. Something very important. He was ill; that was it. And yet there was this look about him, this look of excitement. If he was ill, then surely he would look despondent.

She remembered suddenly what Dr. Moffat had told her when he had treated Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni for depression a few years earlier. “Sometimes this illness comes with periods of elation,” he had said. “A person can feel very excited, very cheerful. He can rush round on all sorts of wild schemes, thinking he can conquer the world. You have to watch for that.”

She had never seen that in Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, but now she found herself wondering whether this was what was happening. She tried to keep her voice steady as she told him that she was ready to listen; he could tell her whatever it was that he needed to tell her.

He looked her in the eyes. “I went to see this doctor,” he said.

He could take a long time to tell a story. Often there was a lot of background information before he got started. She would be patient. “Yes. The one with the car that wouldn’t start? You went to see him.”

“He is a good man,” he went on. “He was a doctor up in Selebi-Phikwe, at the mines, but now he is retired. He is living just outside town. Near David Mgang’s place. Out that way.”

There were some big houses out there, thought Mma Ramotswe. This doctor had done well for himself. But she did not say that; she just said, “Out there. I know that place.”

“Yes,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “He has a nice place out there. His wife is late, but he has a son and his son’s wife living with him, and there are many grandchildren. All in that house.”

“They must be happy,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is a good thing to have one’s grandchildren around you when you have finished working. You can see the results of all your hard work then.”

He nodded, and then became silent. It was as if he was thinking about the grandchildren, and the rewards of hard work.

“So?” said Mma Ramotswe gently.

The verbal nudge seemed to focus him again. “Yes,” he said. “After I had got the car going, the doctor asked me whether I had a wife.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded encouragingly. “And you said?”

“I said, Yes, I have a wife.”

“I am relieved,” she said.

“And then he asked me whether I had any children. And I said there were no children of our own, but that we had the two foster children, and they were like a son and a daughter. I told him that Motholeli was in a wheelchair but that she was doing well. And then…”

She was watching him. Now his eyes seemed to light up with pleasure.

“And then?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni leaned forward again. She noticed that the moisture from the rain had penetrated the cap of the pen which he had been carrying in his pocket so that the ink had run into the fabric of his shirt. That would be a difficult stain to remove; she would have to soak the shirt.

“And then he asked me what was wrong with her and I told him. I told him what they had said at the hospital, that there had been…”

He stumbled on the term, as if to utter it brought pain. Transverse myelitis of the spinal cord, leading to paralysis. She had looked at those words on the doctor’s letter so many times; she knew them so well. They were the words in which the sentence had been delivered; the sentence that meant that Motholeli would be in her wheelchair for the rest of her life.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni repeated the name of the condition slowly, forcing his tongue round the awkward syllables. Then he sat back. “And he said that he had seen cases of that before.”

Mma Ramotswe was non-committal. “I see. He knew about it.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded his head eagerly. “Then he said something very strange, Mma—something very exciting. He said, ‘I have dealt with cases like that. I have dealt with them satisfactorily.’ Those were his exact words. That is what he said.”

She did not move. “Satisfactorily?”

“Yes, satisfactorily. That very word.” He paused, watching the effect of what he was saying. Mma Ramotswe was quite still. “Then he said—remember he is a doctor, Mma—then he said, ‘You bring that child to me and I can get her to walk again.’ That is what he said, Mma Ramotswe. That is what he said. I am not making it up, I promise you. I can get her to walk again. I am telling the truth.”

Of course you are telling the truth, thought Mma Ramotswe. And then she muttered, “Oh,” and then, “Oh,” again, and closed her eyes. She wanted Motholeli to walk again—she would have given anything for that. But they had been told in the clearest terms by the doctors at the Princess Marina Hospital that this would never happen precisely because it could not happen. Dr. Moffat had explained it to them too, when she had raised it while having tea with his wife. He always spoke quietly, so quietly that people had to strain to catch what he was saying, but she had heard every word of what he had said on that occasion. “Once the infection has done its damage to the spinal cord, there is nothing that can be done. It is like a rope that has been cut in two. I’m sorry.”

And she had said, “But can you not tie a rope together again?” She had said, “A rope can be mended.”

“Then it is not like a rope,” he said. “It is different.”

Mrs. Moffat had taken her hand, for comfort, and they had sat there in silence for a while. Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands, human hand in human hand, could help, could make the world seem less broken.