The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EVEN A vehicle as reliable as the little white van, which did mile after mile without complaint, could find the dust too much. The tiny white van had been uncomplaining on the trip out to the cattle post, but now, back in town, it was beginning to stutter. It was the dust, she was sure of it.

She telephoned Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, not intending to bother Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, but the receptionist was out to lunch and he answered. She need not worry, he said. He would come round to look at the little white van the following day, a Saturday, and he might be able to fix it there on the spot, in Zebra Drive.

"I doubt it," said Mma Ramotswe. "It is an old van. It is like an old cow, and I will have to sell it, I suppose."

"You won't," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "Anything can be fixed. Anything."

Even a heart that is broken in two pieces? he thought. Can they fix that? Could Professor Barnard down in Cape Town cure a man whose heart was bleeding, bleeding from loneliness?

MMA RAMOTSWE went shopping that morning. Her Saturday mornings had always been important to her; she went to the supermarket in the Mall and bought her groceries and her vegetables from the women on the pavement outside the chemist's. After that, she went to the President Hotel and drank coffee with her friends; then home, and half a glass of Lion Beer, taken sitting out on the verandah and reading the newspaper. As a private detective, it was important to scour the newspaper and to put the facts away in one's mind. All of it was useful, down to the last line of the politicians' predictable speeches and the church notices. You never knew when some snippet of local knowledge would be useful.

If you asked Mma Ramotswe to give, for instance, the names of convicted diamond smugglers, she could give them to you: Archie Mofobe, Piks Ngube, Molso Mobole, and George Excellence Tambe. She had read the reports of the trials of them all, and knew their sentences. Six years, six years, ten years, and eight months. It had all been reported and filed away.

And who owned the Wait No More Butchery in Old Naledi? Why, Godfrey Potowani, of course. She remembered the photograph in the newspaper of Godfrey standing in front of his lew butchery with the Minister of Agriculture. And why was:he Minister there? Because his wife, Modela, was the cousin of one of the Potowani women who had made that dreadful fuss at the wedding of Stokes Lofinale. That's why. Mma Ramotswe could not understand people who took no interest in all this. How could one live in a town like this and not want to know everybody's business, even if one had no professional reason for doing so?

HE ARRIVED shortly after four, driving up in his blue garage bakkie with tlokweng road speedy motors painted on the side. He was wearing his mechanic's overalls, which were spotlessly clean, and ironed neatly down the creases. She showed him the tiny white van, parked beside the house, and he wheeled out a large jack from the back of his truck.

"I'll make you a cup of tea," she said. "You can drink it while you look at the van."

From the window she watched him. She saw him open the engine compartment and tap at bits and pieces. She saw him climb into the driver's cab and start the motor, which coughed and spluttered and eventually died out. She watched as he removed something from the engine-a large part, from which wires and hoses protruded. That was the heart of the van perhaps; its loyal heart which had beaten so regularly and reliably, but which, ripped out, now looked so vulnerable.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni moved backwards and forwards between his truck and the van. Two cups of tea were taken out, and then a third, as it was a hot afternoon. Then Mma Ramotswe went into her kitchen and put vegetables into a pot and watered the plants that stood on the back windowsill. Dusk was approaching, and the sky was streaked with gold. This was her favourite time of the day, when the birds went dipping and swooping through the air and the insects of the night started to shriek. In this gentle light, the cattle would be walking home and the fires outside the huts would be crackling and glowing for the evening's cooking.

She went out to see whether Mr J.L.B. Matekoni needed more light. He was standing beside the little white van, wiping his hands on lint.

"That should be fine now," he said. "I've tuned it up and the engine runs sweetly. Like a bee."

She clapped her hands in pleasure.

"I thought that you would have to scrap it," she said.

He laughed. "I told you anything could be fixed. Even an old van."

He followed her inside. She poured him a beer and they went together to her favourite place to sit, on the verandah, near the bougainvillaea. Not far away, in a neighbouring house, music was being played, the insistent traditional rhythms of township music.

The sun went, and it was dark. He sat beside her in the comfortable darkness and they listened, contentedly, to the sounds of Africa settling down for the night. A dog barked somewhere; a car engine raced and then died away; there was a touch of wind, warm dusty wind, redolent of thorn trees.

He looked at her in the darkness, at this woman who was everything to him-mother, Africa, wisdom, understanding, good things to cat, pumpkins, chicken, the smell of sweet cattle breath, the white sky across the endless, endless bush, and the giraffe that cried, giving its tears for women to daub on their baskets; O Botswana, my country, my place.

Those were his thoughts. But how could be say any of that to her? Any time he tried to tell her what was in his heart, the words which came to him seemed so inadequate. A mechanic cannot be a poet, he thought, that is not how things are. So he simply said:

"I am very happy that I fixed your van for you. I would have been sorry if somebody else had lied to you and said it was not worth fixing. There are people like that in the motor trade."

"I know," said Mma Ramotswe. "But you are not like that."

He said nothing. There were times when you simply had to speak, or you would have your lifetime ahead to regret not speaking. But every time he had tried to speak to her of what was in his heart, he had failed. He had already asked her to marry him and that had not been a great success. He did not have a great deal of confidence, at least with people; cars were different, of course.

"I am very happy sitting here with you…"

She turned to him. "What did you say?"

"I said, please marry me, Mma Ramotswe. I am just Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, that's all, but please marry me and make me happy."

"Of course I will," said Mma Ramotswe.