The Miracle at Speedy Motors

CHAPTER NINE MMA RAMOTSWE GOES TO MOCHUDI, THAT PLACE SHE KNOWS SO WELL

THE NEXT MORNING, when Mma Makutsi and Mma Ramotswe looked at one another across their desks, each felt herself to be the bearer of a heavy burden: each woman wanted to talk to the other, to seek advice and reassurance, but neither wanted to raise the subject of her distress. Mma Ramotswe thought of Mma Makutsi, She has not slept well, and now she is tired; something is preying on her mind; she can never hide it. And Mma Makutsi thought of Mma Ramotswe, Something is worrying her too. I can always tell. When Mma Ramotswe is worried, it is written on her face, in very big letters.

For a few minutes they both pretended that all was well. Mma Makutsi, who had collected the mail from the post box, slit open the letters before putting them on her employer’s desk. “There is nothing interesting,” she said. “These are all bills, I think, Mma. That one is the water bill. And that one is the telephone bill. It is a day of bills. It is not a day of cheques.”

Mma Ramotswe gazed at the envelopes. She always paid her bills promptly, but this morning she simply left them where they were, to be attended to later. Mma Makutsi, watching her, decided to speak. “I hope you don’t mind my saying it, Mma, but you are sad. There is something that is making your heart very heavy.”

Mma Ramotswe looked up. “And you too, Mma. We are both sad today.”

For a moment or two nothing further was said. Then Mma Ramotswe rose from her desk and shut the door into the garage. She turned and faced her assistant, who was looking at her expectantly.

“There is nobody out there to hear us, Mma Ramotswe,” Mma Makutsi said. “There is just Charlie and the other one—and Mr. Polopetsi, of course. Nobody else.”

Mma Ramotswe made a silencing gesture, raising a finger to her lips. How easily could Mr. Polopetsi be misread. “Mr. Polopetsi,” she whispered. “Mr. Polopetsi.”

Mma Makutsi glanced at the door, as if she half expected Mr. Polopetsi to be listening on the other side, his ear stuck to the keyhole.

“Mr. Polopetsi?”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Those letters,” she said, her voice still lowered. “Those threatening letters.” She paused. She had not intended to voice her suspicions to Mma Makutsi but now she felt that she had to. “He wrote them. It was Mr. Polopetsi.”

Mma Makutsi let out a cry of surprise. Immediately she put a hand to her mouth in a gesture that was halfway between incredulity and shock.

“Yes,” Mma Ramotswe continued, glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the garage. “When we were in the van I took his coat for him and another letter dropped out of his pocket. He said that he had picked it up and was going to give it to me, but he was very evasive. I could tell that what he said was not true.”

Mma Makutsi’s eyes showed her disbelief. “Surely not. Surely not him.”

Mma Ramotswe would have liked to agree. Surely it could not be the mild, inoffensive Mr. Polopetsi, but how could she ignore the evidence of her own eyes? “Well, the letter was in his pocket.”

Mma Makutsi shook her head. It was impossible, she argued. Mr. Polopetsi was simply not a man to write a threatening letter to anybody. “It would be like…be like being threatened by a…by a rabbit, Mma. Yes, by a rabbit. Rabbits do not write threatening letters.”

Mma Ramotswe had to smile at Mma Makutsi’s turn of phrase. Her assistant sometimes said extraordinary things, but every now and then she made some remark that described a situation beautifully. This was such a one. Mr. Polopetsi a rabbit…of course he was. But even if a rabbit were to write a threatening letter, might one not be frightened? After all, how was one to know that the letter came from a rabbit?

“I don’t know, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I think that it was him, but I can’t think why he should have done it. Why? What have we done to harm Mr. Polopetsi?”

Mma Makutsi shrugged, her initial surprise fading into indifference. She herself had not been frightened by that ridiculous letter, and if this was the problem that was worrying Mma Ramotswe, then Mma Ramotswe’s trouble was a minor one when compared with her own. “Ask him,” she said. “Just ask him whether he wrote them. See what he says.”

Of course Mma Ramotswe had thought of this, but she felt that she could not challenge Mr. Polopetsi directly, no matter how damning the evidence against him seemed. She explained this to Mma Makutsi, reminding her that Mr. Polopetsi had already been wrongly accused once in his life—and had suffered imprisonment for it—so that she could not take the risk of making a second, possibly false, accusation. It was likely, she thought, that he was the writer of the letters, but it was still far from certain, and there was a difference between the likely and the certain. “How would he feel, Mma? How would he feel if he was telling the truth and I came up to him and accused him? How would he feel?”

“But what if he thinks that you suspect him but aren’t saying anything? Won’t that be every bit as bad, Mma Ramotswe?”

“I don’t believe he thinks that.”

Mma Makutsi was not convinced. “If you like, Mma,” she said, “I can ask him for you. It won’t be so hard for him if he thinks that I am the one who suspects him. I am not his boss—I am just an associate detective.” She hesitated and Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment that she was going to raise the subject of promotion. It was bound to come up sooner or later and could easily occur in the midst of a discussion of something quite unconnected, such as the guilt, or innocence perhaps, of Mr. Polopetsi.

“No,” said Mma Ramotswe hurriedly. “I don’t think so, Mma.” She had been standing beside Mma Makutsi’s desk during this conversation, and now she went back to her own chair and sat down. Now that she had confessed what was troubling her, she felt concern for Mma Makutsi. Sometimes her assistant was moody for no particular reason, but she did not think that this was one of those occasions. “And you, Mma Makutsi,” she said. “What about you? There is something troubling you, isn’t there?”

MMA RAMOTSWE LISTENED in silence to the tale of woe that came tumbling out. Mma Makutsi described the purchase of the bed—“such an unusual bed, Mma, with its heart-shaped headboard and its double-thickness mattress.” She listened as Mma Makutsi told her of the failed attempt to get the bed through the door and the realisation that it would have to be taken elsewhere, perhaps to Phuti’s house, which was altogether larger and more accommodating.

“If only I had phoned him and told him,” she said, her voice heavy with misery. “If only I had done that, Mma. He would have sent one of his trucks to pick it up and store it safely. But no, I didn’t do that. I just left it there, Mma, although I knew as well as anybody that it was the beginning of the rainy season. Oh, I am a very stupid woman, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe raised a hand. “Stop, Mma Makutsi. You cannot say that. You are not a stupid woman. Would a stupid woman have got ninety-seven per cent? Would she?”

Mma Makutsi looked doubtful. Mma Ramotswe was right about ninety-seven per cent: it was not the mark of a stupid woman. “Well, I was thoughtless on that occasion—put it that way, Mma. I just didn’t think.”

“Anybody can forget something, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We are human, after all.”

That, thought Mma Makutsi, was true. We were all human, even Mma Ramotswe herself, who was so kind and understanding and so quick with her forgiveness; even Mma Ramotswe could forget things and make mistakes. Her marriage to Note Mokoti had been a mistake, a big mistake, and there was that time she hit the tree when she was trying to park her tiny white van, and the occasion when she had put the wrong piece of paper in an envelope and sent a letter intended for person A to person B. That had been an unfortunate mistake, as in the letter to person A she had said that she thought it was person B who was stealing from the petty cash in person A’s office; very unfortunate, but very effective, as person B, alarmed at the discovery of his misdeeds, had immediately run away. That had sorted out the problem, but it was a mistake nonetheless.

Remembering the mistakes, Mma Makutsi smiled.

“Why are you smiling?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Do you not agree with what I said about mistakes?”

“Oh, I do agree,” said Mma Makutsi. “I agree with you, Mma. It’s just that I was thinking about…” She hesitated for a moment before continuing, “I was thinking about your mistakes.”

Mma Ramotswe was not offended. “I have made many of those,” she said. “I have made some very bad mistakes. I cannot hide that fact.”

“Do you remember that letter?” asked Mma Makutsi. “The one in which you said—”

Mma Ramotswe sank her head in her hands. “Oh no, Mma! Please do not remind me of that. I feel all hot and bothered when anybody reminds me of that.”

“But it had a good result anyway,” said Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Yes, sometimes mistakes can be a good thing. You might be in town and you mean to go into one shop and you go into another. And then you find a very old friend in that other shop. Or you meet the person you’re going to marry—something like that.”

Mma Makutsi thought about this. There were so many decisions we made that at the time seemed very minor matters, but that could change the whole shape of our lives. “Yes, Mma, you are right. In my case, if I had not forgotten my pencil box at school and gone back for it one afternoon, we would not be sitting here today. That little decision to go back and fetch it changed my life.”

Mma Ramotswe was interested. The gloom that had descended on the office seemed to have lifted now, and it seemed that they were getting back to normal; this meandering conversation had restored their spirits, and a cup of red bush tea would do the rest. “Tell me about it, Mma. Tell me what happened, while you are putting on the kettle.”

Mma Makutsi rose from her desk and filled the kettle at the sink in the corner of the room. It was a story that she had told others countless times, but had not related to Mma Ramotswe. “I had left my pencil box behind and could not do my homework. I was sixteen then and I was just about to sit my Cambridge, so it was very important that I did lots of work. So I turned round and began to walk back towards the school. It was a hot day, Mma, I remember that. It was really hot.

“It took me about half an hour. When I reached the school, it was quiet. You know how schools are when everybody has gone home. There is a smell of chalk and just that silence, silence, nothing.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. Silence, silence, nothing. Yes, that was it.

“I was worried that the classroom doors would be locked, but they were not. In those days we didn’t worry about locking, did we, Mma? Nobody locked anything in Botswana. The whole country had no locks on it.”

Again Mma Ramotswe nodded. The whole country had no locks on it. Mma Makutsi was right; she often expressed herself in an unusual way, but she was right. The whole country had no locks on it; yes, that was true, and we loved one another then. We still do, of course, Mma Ramotswe thought, but it is different. Perhaps there was not so much love as there was in those days. Perhaps our love was running out.

Mma Makutsi stood beside the kettle, watching it. A watched kettle… thought Mma Ramotswe, but did not give voice to the proverb. Mma Makutsi liked to question proverbs and would point out that of course watched kettles did boil—eventually.

They were back in Bobonong. “I went into the classroom,” Mma Makutsi continued, “and I found my pencil box. Then, as I was leaving, one of the teachers came in. She was surprised to see me, and at first I think that she thought I was stealing something. But when I told her that I had just come in to fetch my pencil box she understood. She was a nice teacher, that one; I had always liked her.

“She had an envelope in her hand and she took a leaflet out of it. ‘I have just received this,’ she said. ‘It is from the Botswana Secretarial College. They are writing to us about a scholarship they have set up—for half the fees. The principal is from up here, from Bobonong, and she wants a bright girl from this school to apply, somebody whose work is very neat.’

“It took me a few moments to realise that she was suggesting me. Nobody had ever thought before that I could win something, and now this teacher was saying that I could be the girl who got that scholarship. My heart was like this, Mma, big like this. I was very happy.”

Mma Ramotswe was touched by this story. “You must have been very happy, Mma. And you won that scholarship?”

Mma Makutsi nodded. “Yes, I won it. And my family paid the other half of the fees. They sold some animals to do it. They sold some goats.”

Mma Ramotswe knew what that meant. The sale of cattle, of goats, inevitably took a family closer to the edge of survival; it was a serious matter. “They must have been very proud of you, Mma. And they must be proud too, now that you are engaged to a man like Phuti Radiphuti…”

She had meant to be reassuring, but it was the wrong thing to say; one had to be so careful with Mma Makutsi, who could so readily take things the wrong way. The younger woman’s face crumpled. “But what are we going to do, Mma Ramotswe?” she wailed. “Phuti is coming back from Serowe in a couple of days. He has been up there on business. What am I to do when he comes back? I cannot face him and tell him that I have destroyed our expensive new bed. I cannot face him, Mma Ramotswe. What will he think of me?”

Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment. Phuti seemed to her to be an understanding man; surely he would not be vindictive about the loss of a bed. But then, men were unpredictable; even outwardly mild men could suddenly become unreasonable. She pointed to the teapot. “First things first, Mma,” she said. “Tea helps us to think things through.”

They sat with their cups of tea. Mma Ramotswe took a sip of red bush, and Mma Makutsi raised her cup of ordinary tea to her mouth, anxiously, unenthusiastically.

“I could tell him,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I could do it. If you are too embarrassed, then let me tell him. That is the simplest solution.”

“Oh, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “If you would do that…I know that I am being a coward, but if you would do that.”

“It is not cowardice to be weak,” said Mma Ramotswe. She stopped herself. That was not quite what she had intended to say, but Mma Makutsi seemed either not to have noticed or not to have taken offence, so Mma Ramotswe left it at that.

RARELY HAD Mma Ramotswe’s life been quite so complicated, but at least she knew what to do about it. The next morning, after sending a message to Mma Makutsi through Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to the effect that she would be in late that day, or perhaps even not at all, she drove her tiny white van along Zebra Drive, out into the traffic of Mobutu Drive, and headed for Mochudi, on the old road. That was the road she knew well, the road she had travelled so many times before, as a child, as a young woman, and now, although still the same person in many respects, as an established and well-known citizen, the wife of a much-admired mechanic, the owner of a business with a staff of two and a half (if one counted Mr. Polopetsi). Mr. Polopetsi…It saddened her just to think about it. But that, she supposed, was often the case with anonymous letters: they came from somebody one knew, and when they were signed, as they often were, A Friend, that was indeed the case.

But as she drove along the Mochudi Road, passing each land-mark—that tiny rural school with the stony yard and the crumbling whitewash; that normally dry river course, now with a muddy trickle of water from the previous day’s rain; that graveyard just off the road with its tiny shelters, umbrella-like, above each grave, so that the late people down below might be protected from the sun—as she drove along this road with all its memories, she put out of her mind the things that had been worrying her. For out here, out in the acacia scrub that stretched away to those tiny island-like hills on the horizon, the concerns of the working world seemed of little weight. Yes, one had to earn a living; yes, one had to work with people who might have their little ways; yes, the world was not always as one might want it to be: but all of that seemed so small and unimportant under this sky. The important thing, and really the only thing, Mma Ramotswe told herself, is that you are breathing and that you can see Botswana about you; that was the only thing that counted. And any person, no matter how poor he might be, could do that. Any woman might drive her tiny white van along this road and feel the warm breeze on her face. That was the important thing.

And now, coming into Mochudi, the place where she was born, she followed the road that led round the back of the hill which overlooked the village. There was a choice of trees under which to park, and she picked the one that looked the shadiest. Then, without asking herself why she should be here and why she should seek out that place at the edge, where the rock stopped and there was several hundred feet of tumbling nothing in front of you, she made her way over to that place and looked down. This was where she had come with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni when he had been recovering from his depressive illness—his sadness as he now called it—and they had sat together. This was where, many years before, she had played with her friends as a child, daring each other to go closer to the edge, risking the ire of the teacher who had banned them from going anywhere near the void. This was where she could sit and hear the sound of the cattle bells drifting up from below. This was where she could always find peace.

She sat, doing nothing, staring out over the plain below. If, when viewed from above like this, our human striving could seem so small, then why did it not appear like that when viewed from ground level? And as she thought this, she allowed her mind to turn to the problems in hand. The question of Mr. Polopetsi was the most serious of these, she felt, but here, in this light, he was no problem. If envy had driven him to write what he had written, then there was a very simple remedy for that. Love. She would tell him that she was sorry that he had been hurt into writing those letters. She would promote him. So that solved that.

Then there was Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and his determination to take Motholeli to Johannesburg. Of course it was hopeless: this doctor, whoever he was, had no business raising Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s hopes like that. There was nothing that could be done for Motholeli—that had been made quite clear by the doctors at the Princess Marina when they had done their scan. They had shown her the results and pointed to the place they thought was responsible. They said that if there had been a tumour, which could be operated upon, it would have shown. But there was nothing. A diagnosis by elimination, they explained: there had been damage caused by infection, by something nobody could see. They had been firm in their view that this was the explanation, and so too had they been firm in their view that Motholeli would never walk. That had to be accepted, and this doctor was simply raising hopes that would have to be dashed. And when she had probed, and got Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to admit it, she had uncovered the doctor’s motivation: money. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had not revealed how he would pay, but here, on this rock, payment seemed not to be the issue. Let him do what he wished. If he wanted to take Motholeli to Johannesburg, then he should be allowed to do so. What was the point of striving to stop somebody from doing something when the sky was as large as this and when you could see, on the dry land stretching out below, the first touches of green from the rains?

And Mma Makutsi and her bed? That was simple; hardly a problem at all. She should tell Phuti Radiphuti the truth, because that was what he was owed; but the truth would include the fact that Mma Makutsi was afraid to speak to him about what she had done. Mma Sebina and her lies? Simple too: she must be treated as if she was telling the truth, because that was what she thought it was. Everything, in fact, was very clear, and very untroubling. In such a way might worries be lifted, allowing them to float up of their own accord, float up off one’s shoulders and disappear into the high sky of Botswana, so empty, so white, that it made one feel dizzy simply to look at it.

She rose to her feet and for a moment felt unsteady. It would be so easy to fall, she thought, to go over the edge in that moment of disorientation that can come when you suddenly stand up and the blood rushes from the head. But the feeling passed, and she was steady enough as she took one last look at the land down below, the piece of this earth that she knew so well. Then she picked her way across the rocks to the place where the tiny white van was parked, got into it, and began the drive back to Gaborone. The landmarks of her journey earlier that day would repeat themselves in the opposite order: graveyard, riverbed, whitewashed school, home. The wrong order for a journey, thought Mma Ramotswe, and smiled.