The Double Comfort Safari Club

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She found Hansi in his travel and safari office, sitting at his desk, engaged in a telephone conversation that entailed frequent and expressive hand gestures. He cast his eyes upwards when she came in, implying to her that it was a difficult client on the line, and then he signalled for her to sit down.

  “Yes, yes,” he said into the phone. “Yes, I am not saying that you are not entitled to a refund. What I am saying is that the refund must come from the tour operator and not from this office. That is what I am saying.”

  There was an angry crackle from the other side, and the conversation came to an end. Hansi laid the receiver back in its cradle and looked apologetically at Mma Ramotswe. “Not my fault, Mma. I cannot guarantee that everybody sees a leopard. You know how secretive those creatures are, looking out at us from their hiding places and laughing …”

  Mma Ramotswe smiled. “It is the same with me, Hansi. I have clients sometimes who think that I have guaranteed a miracle. They can be very difficult.”

  “Perhaps we should be in simpler jobs, Mma Ramotswe. Ones where we are the clients and can make complaining telephone calls to other people.” He paused. “Not that I can ever see you complaining, Mma. You are too kind. Nobody would take your complaints seriously. They would say, Oh, very funny, Mma Ramotswe! So you are very happy then. Thank you.”

  “I am not always kind,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I can get cross, the same as everybody else.”

  Hansi looked doubtful. “I do not think so,” he said. “But let us not talk about people like that person on the phone to me just then. It is very good to see you, Mma—is there any reason for this visit, or is it just time for tea?”

  “I want to go to Maun,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  Hansi raised an eyebrow. “You, Mma? You want to go on a safari?”

  “Of course not. But I need some information for a case I’m working on. I need to find out about somebody who works up there. A person whose name I do not know who works in a camp that also has a name I do not know.”

  Hansi listened. “If you do not know either of those things, I do not know how I can help.”

  She explained that there was a clue. “The name of the camp is something to do with a bird, or possibly an animal.”

  Hansi thought for a moment. “If it’s a bird,” he said, “then it must be Eagle Island. It’s also called Xaba-Xaba, but people find difficulty saying x, and so they decided to call it Eagle Island. That must be the camp.”

  “That is all I need to know. That, and their telephone number.”

  “There isn’t an ordinary telephone at the camp,” said Hansi. “They have a satellite phone, I think, but they usually use the radio. But you can speak to their office in Maun. They can get in touch with them.”

  She asked about the camp, and he gave her further details. He had been there once himself, on a trip that the owners of the camp had organised for tour agents. “I have never been so comfortable in my life,” he said. “Never. And they were very good to us.”

  “I have heard as much,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There was a certain Mrs. Grant who also thought that.”

  “I met the manager,” Hansi went on. “I am sure that he will help you in your inquiry, whatever it is. And I also know one of the guides there. He is a very good man. He is called Mighty, and he can look at the ground and tell you about all the animals that have passed that way since, oh, five days ago. He reads the ground like a book. If he saw your footprints he would say, Lady of …”

  “Of traditional build,” supplied Mma Ramotswe.

  “Exactly. Lady of traditional build. She went by here five hours ago. Heading north.”

  “They are very clever, those people, Hansi.”

  Hansi nodded. “Sometimes I worry, though. I worry about who will be learning those skills in the next generation. Are there apprentices? Are there people learning how to track?”

  Mma Ramotswe frowned as she thought of the apprentices at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. She could not imagine Charlie and Fanwell tracking animals through the bush, although she could just see them tracking cars. Four-door saloon, heading south, third gear. Or, more likely, Car full of girls, going that way, two hours ago.

  Hansi made tea, and they continued to chat for half an hour or so. They enjoyed each other’s company, although their circumstances were very different. He came from the opposite end of the country, from Ghanzi, in the far west, on the other side of the Kalahari, a dry place that had just enough vegetation to make it good land for cattle, as long as they were grazed thinly enough on the brittle veld. It was a landscape of browns and ochres, of dust and copper-red sunsets, of rickety windmills turning above marginal boreholes, sucking the land for water somewhere deep down.

  Hansi’s father was one of a tribe of Afrikaaners that had trekked there in the nineteenth century and had stayed. They were tough people, burned dry by the sun, leather-hard in their determination to eke out a living from the land, followers of a Calvinist church, a long way from their Dutch roots—so long a way as to have become African in their souls. This father of his had produced Hansi by a local woman, a Motswana, and then disowned his tiny son, sending the woman away with a pittance. Hansi knew who he was, and knew his farm, but knew too that he was not welcome there. Yet he was, for some complex reason, proud of this farmer who denied him, and of his lineage, and spoke of his father with the same air of pride as Mma Ramotswe spoke of hers. She thought, though, If I could speak to that man and tell him how much his son loves him, and shake him until he acknowledged this love and how stupid he was to turn his heart against it. If I could speak to him … But some of us cannot see love, she said to herself, even when it is there, right before us, asking us to invite it in.

  After her conversation with Hansi, Mma Ramotswe returned to the office. There she found Mr. Polopetsi sitting in Mma Makutsi’s chair. “Just trying it, Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “And it is important to have somebody here to answer the telephone.”

  Mma Ramotswe smiled at the explanation. She understood: Mr. Polopetsi would never get promotion as long as Mma Makutsi was there; it was understandable, then, that he might wish to enjoy the thought of being in her position.

  “The lady whose chair that is,” she said, “is a very determined lady. You know that, don’t you, Rra?”

  Mr. Polopetsi nodded ruefully. “She is a very strong lady.”

  “And I’m afraid that she is showing no signs of giving up her job,” Mma Ramotswe went on. “Which means …”

  Mr. Polopetsi interrupted her. “I know, Mma. There is no chance for me.” He paused and looked up, hoping to read encouragement in Mma Ramotswe’s expression. “I just wondered whether poor Radiphuti’s accident will make any difference. I thought that maybe with him being crippled now, she would need to stay at home.”

  “I don’t think that he would like you to say that he is crippled,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He has lost a leg—or a bit of a leg—but they will fix him up with something and he will be able to walk. Maybe more or less the same as before.”

  Mr. Polopetsi said that he was pleased to hear this, and Mma Ramotswe thought that he meant it, even if the implication of this news was that Mma Makutsi would stay at her post. She wished she could do more for this mild and inoffensive man, who was always so willing to take on new tasks and who never complained. A great wrong had been done him, she felt, in his imprisonment for the consequences of an error that was not of his making, and in the past she had entertained thoughts of clearing his name. But no longer; it was too long ago and it would be an impossible task. Now he should concentrate on forgetting that nightmare, which she thought was exactly what he was doing. But it would still be a help to give him some scrap of status to hang on to …

  “I’ve been thinking, Rra.” She had not—not strictly so—as the thought had just popped into her mind a few seconds ago. “I’ve been thinking about your position.”

  He looked at her with that long, hopeful stare that he often used—rather like the mute gaze of a
dog that wants his master to feed him.

  “Yes,” she went on, now thinking quickly. “You know that this is a small business. We do not make much money, and the share we put in of the wage that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni pays you is very small. You know that?”

  He inclined his head slightly. “I know that, Mma. And I am very grateful.”

  It was typical of him, she thought. Others would resent this arrangement, but he accepted it.

  “So we cannot really give you more money. We would like to, but we cannot.”

  “I know that, Mma. And you must not worry. My wife is helping in a shop now, and she is getting some money too. We are luckier than many. I am not complaining.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “You do not complain, Rra. You are very good that way. But what I’ve been thinking about is this. We could give you a new title. I thought that we might call you …” She hesitated. She had thought of Operations Manager, but she knew that Mma Makutsi would object to that. So it would have to be Consultant. That was the word people used to describe the jobs of those who really had no fixed role, and sometimes nothing at all to do. “How about Consultant Detective?” she asked.

  Mr. Polopetsi said nothing.

  “It is a very good title,” Mma Ramotswe encouraged him.

  He shook his head. “It is kind of you, Mma. But I am happy as I am. You do not have to find a name for me just to make me feel better.”

  “But …”

  “No, Mma. I do not need that. I am happy to do the work I do. Maybe one day things will change for me, but I do not fret too much about that. I am happy right now. I like fixing cars, you see, and I like doing some work for you too. So what do I lack? I have enough food now. My children are not hungry. They are learning well at school. This is a good country, our Botswana. So why do I need to be a consultant?”

  She could not answer, and so she simply looked at him, and he looked back at her. Everything was perfectly understood.

  Then he said, “While you were out, there was a telephone call for you. I took it. It was that lady who is your friend, that Mma Mateleke. She said, Could Mma Ramotswe meet me for tea tomorrow morning at ten o’clock? Riverwalk. That café she goes to. I said that I would ask you and that I would phone her and let her know.”

  Mma Ramotswe wondered if her friend was in trouble. She had looked ill at ease in church on Sunday, and the thought had crossed her mind that something was troubling Mma Mateleke. Domestic disputes, perhaps? She remembered the story that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had told her—about rescuing Mma Mateleke’s car from the Lobatse Road. He had said something about strange behaviour from some man who drove past, but he had not said much more than that, and she had been cooking at the time rather than listening. Was something going on in the Mateleke household? She would find out, no doubt, at the Riverwalk Café tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.

  She stopped. Why was it called Riverwalk? Where was the river? The Notwane was nowhere in sight. And the walk?

  CHAPTER NINE

  RULE 32

  IT WAS VERY FORTUNATE that when Mma Ramotswe arrived at the Riverwalk Café the next morning she was able to get the table that she wanted. This was in the middle, but also on the edge. This was the best place to be, she thought, because it afforded a good view of the car park as well as of the small market that sprang up each morning to sell brightly coloured garments, necklaces, and a seemingly endless supply of carved wooden hippos. Mma Ramotswe had wondered who bought these carvings, as the stalls never seemed to do any business when she was there; the occasional visitor, perhaps, who felt the need for a hippo; the traveller buying a last-minute present for those left at home—unnecessary purchases, perhaps, but tokens of love that were never unnecessary, never pointless. She had bought a wooden hippo herself one day, only a small one, on impulse, when she had walked past a stall and seen the look of resignation on the stallholder’s face. It had not been expensive, and she had not attempted to bargain as the seller expected her to do, but had paid the price asked without demur. The stallholder had cheered up, and Mma Ramotswe had remarked that perhaps business might improve. “There is always somebody to buy something,” she said. Yes, she thought, including a somebody who bought a wooden hippo for which she had no real use just because she was soft-hearted.

  The hippo had lain in a drawer of her desk for several days. Each time she opened it, he had looked out at her through the tiny indentations that were his eyes, as if to reproach her for his waterless exile, and she had wondered what to do with him. She had shown it to Mma Makutsi one morning, and her assistant had looked at her in puzzlement.

  “That is a hippo, Mma Ramotswe. You have a hippo.”

  It had been difficult to contradict. “Yes, it is a small hippo.”

  Mma Makutsi waited expectantly, but said nothing. Mma Ramotswe had hoped that an admiring remark would have been made; then she would have presented it to her. But no such remark was forthcoming.

  “It’s very skilfully carved,” she said at last. “You can even see his eyes. See? Those little marks there—they are the hippo’s eyes.”

  “They are made by machines,” said Mma Makutsi.

  “I do not think so, Mma. This is a work of art. There is a sculptor somewhere who makes these animals.”

  Mma Makutsi shook her head. It was a shake that she gave when she knew that she was on firm ground. “I do not think so, Mma. There is a machine with different buttons. If you press one, then you get a hippo like that. And then there is another button for an elephant, and a giraffe too. They are very clever, these machines.”

  Mma Ramotswe felt a growing irritation. Mma Makutsi could be very dogmatic, and had been known to defend an indefensible position long after she had been shown to be wrong. These were hand-carvings—they were not the product of some ridiculous machine. No machine could make these curves in wood; no machine could put the eyes in exactly the right place. It was impossible. “You’ve seen a picture of such a machine, Mma?” she asked.

  “You do not need to see pictures of things to know about them,” Mma Makutsi answered blandly.

  It had been a pointless discussion, and she had replaced the hippo in the drawer. It was not her fault if Mma Makutsi could not appreciate art, and could not tell the difference between handmade and machine-made objects. Yet as she replaced the hippo, she sneaked a look under its belly. Made in China would have settled the argument in favour of Mma Makutsi, but there was no such label, and she was reassured.

  Later that day she gave the hippo to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I have bought you a present,” she said. “I spotted it at that market at Riverwalk.”

  He took the hippo in his hands and examined it carefully. “It is very beautiful,” he said. “I am very happy with it. It will be a … a treasure.”

  “You’ll see that even the eyes are just right,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Look at how they have made the eyes.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni peered at the hippo. “Very accurate,” he said. “I wonder if they have a machine to help them do that, Mma? Do you think so?”

  Now, sitting at her table in the Riverwalk Café, waiting for her meeting with Mma Mateleke, she let her gaze wander over the nearest stall. There were no carved hippos—fortunately—but clothes: shirts, dresses, and aprons. A breeze caught one of the shirts and filled it with air for a few moments, and she watched it moving, writhing, as if it were worn by a ghost, now a sedately dancing ghost, now the ghost of an agitated contortionist.

  She was watching the shirt when Mma Mateleke arrived. She was late, she explained, because of a baby who had been unwilling to be born. “Sometimes,” she said, “I think that there are some babies who know something about the world. They say, I don’t think I want to go out there!”

  Mma Ramotswe laughed. “Sometimes it is not easy to be born into this world.”

  “But would we prefer it to be otherwise?” asked Mma Mateleke, settling herself into her chair.

  “No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We are very lucky to be alive.”
>
  For a moment Mma Mateleke, who had been smiling, hesitated, her smile fading.

  Mma Ramotswe noticed. “You don’t feel lucky to be alive just now?”

  Mma Mateleke sighed. “It’s better than not being alive, I suppose. But there are times when … well, there are times when …” She did not finish her sentence. The waitress had appeared and they gave their orders, Mma Mateleke having coffee and Mma Ramotswe red bush tea. The waitress scribbled down the order and went off. Mma Ramotswe looked at her friend.

  “You’re unhappy, Mma?”

  Mma Mateleke did not answer immediately. She was seated directly opposite Mma Ramotswe, on the other side of the table, but her eyes were focused elsewhere, looking out into the distance, to the tops of the gum trees lining the road beyond the car park.

  “I am happy sometimes, Mma. Then, at other times, I am not happy.” She looked at Mma Ramotswe, as if searching for confirmation. “I think that is probably how it is for most people.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Yes,” she agreed, “there are times when I am unhappy and times when I am happy. There are more happy times than unhappy ones, I think.”

  “Perhaps,” said Mma Mateleke.

  Mma Ramotswe waited for her to say something more, but the other woman was now looking down at the ground, and did not seem to be ready to add to what she had said. “I think that you are unhappy now,” she said, adding, “even if at other times you are happy.”

  It was not a remark to take the discussion much further—Mma Ramotswe was aware of that—but it seemed to move something within Mma Mateleke. “Oh, Mma Ramotswe,” she said, “I am very unhappy. I am very unhappy with my husband.”