How to Raise an Elephant

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I think it is more important, Rra,” she replied, “to make sure that you and your future spouse have the same interests. That’s more important than things like noses.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni waited for her to explain.

  “You see,” she continued, “if one person in the marriage is interested only in cattle, or cars, or whatever it is, then it will be very important that the other person is not going to get too bored when they talk to one another. There are some marriages where the wife goes to sleep the moment the husband opens his mouth—I have seen that happen, Rra.”

  “And the other way round, of course,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Although it was fashionable to run men down, he did not think that this discrimination was fair. Mma Makutsi, he thought, was a little bit too ready to write men off, although Mma Ramotswe never did that herself.

  And she was not going to do it now. “Yes,” she said. “And the other way round. There are some men who go to sleep when their wives are talking. That happens too, Rra.”

  Raised voices were heard once more, briefly, and then they subsided into silence. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni spoke quietly now, although there was no possibility that their conversation would carry over to next door.

  “I hope that they are not going to fight every day,” he said.

  Mma Ramotswe agreed. “I fear that things might not be”—she searched for the correct expression—“might not be quite right over the fence.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, having a few minutes previously pulled on his shoes—his old, oil-spattered garage veldschoen that he refused to trade in for a newer pair—was now ready for his breakfast. He looked at his watch. Fanwell, his junior mechanic and ex-apprentice, would already be on duty in the garage, ready to deal with any early customers, but he did not like to leave him single-handed for too long. And yet what was Mma Ramotswe hinting at here? Neighbours were important, as troublesome relations with any neighbour could cast a shadow over anybody’s life. It was rule no. 1, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni told himself, to remain on good terms with neighbours—even in the face of difficult or even provocative behaviour over the garden fence. Mind you, he admitted, there were other candidates for that rule no. 1 status, including the rule that you should be ready to say sorry when sorry was required. Or the rule that you did not tell a lie to get yourself out of trouble. The wisdom behind that last rule proved itself time and time again: lies created a sticky spider’s web that quickly enmeshed those who uttered them. A single lie was rarely enough to conceal the truth, but soon had to be topped up with supplementary lies to confirm the original, until eventually the whole edifice of concealment and distortion toppled over.

  He gave Mma Ramotswe a searching look. “In what way, Mma, are things…What did you say? ‘Not quite right?’ In what way, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe did not like to gossip, but the neighbours’ behaviour here—the shouting at such a volume that it was inevitable that others would hear—surely justified her voicing her concerns to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

  “I think they may not be on normal terms with each other,” she said.

  It sounded odd—even to her as she said it—and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was made no wiser by this remark.

  “Normal terms?” he asked. “What are normal terms, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe now used a traditional Setswana expression that covered very neatly this sort of situation without spelling things out too explicitly. “I think they may not be under the same blanket, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. That is what I think.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni shrugged. “Well, that’s not surprising, surely. Would you expect somebody who is calling another an anteater to want to share a blanket? Can you imagine, Mma, what it would be like to share with an anteater?”

  “It is not just because of what we have heard,” she said, lowering her voice. “It’s because…” She pointed vaguely towards the fence. “It’s because there is no double bed, Rra. When I watched their things being taken in, I saw that there was no double bed. I noticed that.”

  She felt slightly ashamed to be telling him this; ashamed that she had been the sort of person who looked out for such things. And ashamed, too, because she had forgotten her earlier resolve not to talk about what she had seen. Of course, if you talked only to your husband, perhaps that did not count…

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. “So we have got neighbours who are at war,” he said. “Not at war with us, but with each other.”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “I suppose we can live with that,” he said. “We keep out of it. As long as they shout at each other and not at us.”

  “I do not like shouting,” said Mma Ramotswe, a note of sadness in her voice. She liked to think of Zebra Drive as being a haven of peace. The wider world was as the wider world so often was—consumed with all sorts of arguments about all sorts of things—and she wanted Zebra Drive to be an exception to that. So far, it had been, but now that seemed to be imperilled.

  She turned away from the window. It was time to make Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s breakfast. There were some husbands who made their own breakfast. Not only that, there were some husbands these days who made their wife’s breakfast as well. She had read that this was the case in progressive households, where new men did their share—and more, sometimes—of the household tasks. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, though, was not a new man. He was a traditional man who was not much use in the kitchen, and who would probably be unable to make his own breakfast even if he tried. Should she try to make a new man out of him? Should she show him how to make breakfast and then suggest that he might care to put his new-found skill to good use?

  She looked at him and smiled. There were some men you could imagine being reformed in this way, but she did not think it likely with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. And yet that did not matter too much, she told herself. He worked longer hours than she did, in conditions that were far less comfortable than hers. She had her desk and her comfortable office chair. She never had to crouch underneath an inspection platform while oil dripped onto her face. Nor did she have to struggle with bolts that had been stripped so that their nuts would not travel down the wrecked thread. He had to do all that—and more. And for all his old-fashioned approach to life, he was a kind and considerate man who had never said a cross word to her and never would. Nor did he think of himself and his creature comforts, as new men might be tempted to do. He had few possessions—look at his shoes, those awful old boots that no new man would dream of wearing. Look at his shirt, which although washed clean and neatly ironed, told the story of his daily struggles with machinery.

  No, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is perfect as he is, she thought. And then she thought: I shall give him extra bacon this morning—two more rashers than she usually allowed. And an extra egg too, because eggs were full of iron, she believed, and iron was just the sort of thing that men who were not new men might be assumed to enjoy. Men clearly needed iron because…well, because they just did.

  She gave him his breakfast, which he polished off quickly and with evident enjoyment.

  “You have been very kind to me, Mma,” he said, as he handed back his empty plate. “All these years, you have been kind to me.”

  She basked in the tenderness of this unexpected tribute, and thought: Those poor people over the fence—had they ever tried this? Had they ever said to one another the sort of thing that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had just said to her, out of the blue? Could one suggest to them that they try it, rather than calling one another anteaters—and worse? She pondered that, and as she did so, she suddenly heard, or thought she heard, the voice of her father, Obed Ramotswe, saying to her, “Precious, remember this: the business of your neighbours is their business.” It was not him, of course, for he was late, and when we hear the voices of late people, we are only hearing an echo. It was true that the world was full of echoes, but those echoes were of our own making, and reminded us, perhaps, of what we should
try not to forget.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A1 EXCELLENT FINE

  WHEN HE CAME INTO the office that morning, Charlie, having greeted Mma Makutsi perfunctorily, said to Mma Ramotswe, “There is something that I would like to ask you, Mma.”

  From behind her desk, Mma Makutsi sniffed loudly. She had several sniffs at her disposal: one, the basic sniff, was purely functional, designed to clear the nose; another was the sniff of doubt, a sniff that carried a message of scepticism as to what had just been said; and then there was the sniff of disapproval, an unmistakably negative sniff, leaving those at whom it was directed in no doubt at all as to Mma Makutsi’s feelings.

  This was the sniff of disapproval, and prompted a sideways look from Charlie. Mma Makutsi stared pointedly at the papers on her desk in front of her.

  “I said good morning,” Charlie muttered. “You heard me, didn’t you, Mma Ramotswe?”

  Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. Charlie’s greeting of Mma Makutsi had been offhand, but she did not think it had been deliberately rude. Young men often sounded rude even when they were intending to be polite—it was something to do with their difficulties in doing more than one thing at a time: occasionally they were too preoccupied to hear remarks addressed to them. Either that, or they heard what was being said and tried to respond, but did not give sufficient attention to their response. That, she thought, was what had happened here.

  “Perhaps you mumbled,” said Mma Ramotswe. It was a gentle reproof, but it was enough to provoke a spirited rebuttal from Charlie.

  “I didn’t mumble, Mma. I said good morning loud and clear.” He paused. “There are some people who need to get their ears washed out, I think.”

  Mma Makutsi shot him a stern look. “There is nothing wrong with my ears, Charlie. I can hear perfectly well. When people say good morning in the correct, polite fashion, I can always hear them when they do that. Interesting, isn’t it?”

  Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat. “I am sure that we all wish one another a very good day,” she said. “But tell me, Charlie: What is it you want to ask me?”

  Charlie, who had been standing a little way away from Mma Ramotswe’s desk, now came closer. Lowering his voice in what could only have been an attempt to prevent Mma Makutsi from overhearing, he said, “I was hoping to borrow your van this morning, Mma. Just until lunch time. Then I will bring it back to you.”

  Mma Makutsi sniffed. This was a sniff somewhere between the sniff of doubt and the sniff of disapproval. Reacting to this, Charlie said, “I shall definitely bring it back by two this afternoon, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe occasionally lent Charlie the tiny white van. She had done this when he was helping a friend move house, a friend whom Charlie had described in glowing terms. “He is one of those people who always helps others, Mma,” he said. “He was a big figure in the Boy Scout movement too. He was at the scout meetings every week, Mma, every week, doing all sorts of good deeds.”

  She had tried not to smile.

  “No, Mma,” Charlie insisted, “I am not making this up. He helped a lady find her false teeth when she dropped them in a ditch. He was the one who found them. It was almost in the papers.”

  This had brought a burst of laughter from Mma Makutsi, who had been listening to the conversation. “How can anybody lose their false teeth in a ditch?” she asked. “What was this lady doing there? Eating her breakfast? And how can something be ‘almost in the papers’? Either it is in the papers or it is not.”

  Charlie had put up a spirited defence of his friend. “You may think I’m lying, Mma Makutsi, but it’s true. She might have been going somewhere and maybe she tripped up and lost her teeth. These things can happen, you know.” He paused. “I am just telling you one of the good things he has done.”

  “And he turned water into beer at somebody’s wedding?” said Mma Makutsi. “And walked across the dam—on top of the water? Just a few things like that?”

  Mma Ramotswe had ended that contretemps by giving Charlie permission to use the van, and had done so on two occasions since then: on one to take a relative to hospital, and on another to take a supply of animal food out to his uncle’s cattle at the height of the last drought. That had been an errand of mercy of which no person in Botswana would disapprove. At a time of drought, the tragedy of starving cattle touched something very deep in the national psyche and it would be unthinkable not to help another to save a herd.

  Now she asked, “What for, Charlie? What do you need the van for?”

  Charlie hesitated. From behind him he thought he could hear the faintest of sniffs, but perhaps it was just the breeze against the fly-screen gauze.

  “It’s to help a friend move something.”

  Mma Ramotswe waited, but when no further explanation was forthcoming, she asked, “What does your friend want to move?”

  Charlie said, “I’ll put petrol in, Mma. I’ll put ten litres in. That will be more than I’ll use, but I don’t mind. You can keep the extra, Mma.”

  “That’s not what I asked you, Charlie. I asked you what your friend wants to move.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Just something, Mma. He hasn’t told me exactly what it is.”

  This was too much for Mma Makutsi. “He hasn’t told you? Oh, Charlie, you’re being very naïve. Do you know what that word means? It means you are being very stupid.”

  He glared at her. “I am not being nave,” he retorted.

  “Naïve,” said Mma Makutsi. “It’s naïve. And that is what you’re being.” She shook her head. “You’re exactly the sort of person they’re talking about at airports, Charlie. At airports they say, ‘Do not carry anything for people you don’t know.’ That’s what they say. And you know what they’re talking about? I’ll tell you: bombs, Charlie.”

  Charlie laughed. “Bombs, Mma? I can tell you—I am not going to be moving bombs in Mma Ramotswe’s van. Ha!”

  “I didn’t say you were going to put a bomb in the van,” snapped Mma Makutsi. “I said that was what foolish people do. They agree to carry something for somebody they meet at an airport and then they find they’ve been carrying a bomb. And they are very sorry, I can tell you.”

  Charlie laughed again. “You say they’re very sorry, Mma Makutsi. But how can you be sorry if you’re blown up? You won’t be around to feel sorry about anything. You’ll be blown up.” He paused. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that, you being a detective.”

  “Do you think I don’t know what happens when you’re blown up, Charlie? What I meant—and I’m sorry you’re finding it a bit hard to grasp—is that those people are very sorry when they are caught carrying these bombs. That is before the bombs have exploded, you see. They are caught and then they say, ‘Oh, I’m very sorry—I didn’t know that the parcel had a bomb in it.’ That’s when they are sorry.”

  Mma Ramotswe felt it was time to bring the discussion to an end. Mma Makutsi and Charlie could argue for hours once they got going, and she did not want that. So she said, “You can borrow the van, Charlie, but be careful with it, please.”

  He thanked her effusively. “You’re very kind, Mma Ramotswe. You’re kinder than…” He glanced at Mma Makutsi and then quickly looked away. “You’re kinder than some other people.”

  A final shot came from Mma Makutsi. “Make sure they don’t hand you a bomb, Charlie. That’s all I’d say to you. Look at the thing your friend asks you to carry before you carry it—not after.”

  Mma Ramotswe reached for the van’s keys from her drawer and handed them to Charlie. He put them in his pocket and, with a polite nod to both of them, left the office.

  “What’s he up to, Mma?” asked Mma Makutsi.

  Mma Ramotswe shrugged. “Helping a friend out, I think. Perhaps taking somebody somewhere. These young people move about a lot—they’re always getting a new room in somebody’s house. And then they have to take all their t
hings—their sound systems and…and…” She struggled to remember the sorts of things that people of Charlie’s age possessed.

  “Clothes,” said Mma Makutsi. “They have lots of clothes these days. Even young men. Lots of clothes. Trainers and so on.”

  Mma Ramotswe smiled. “Would you like to be that age again, Mma Makutsi?”

  Mma Makutsi shook her head. “I would not, Mma. I would hate to have to worry about what other people thought of me. You know, they all worry about that—all the time. I heard a programme on the radio about it. They were talking about anxiety in young people. They said that it’s a big problem these days. They’re all anxious.”

  “But we—”

  Mma Makutsi was confident. “We have stopped being anxious, Mma. Now we say to ourselves, ‘What is going to happen is going to happen.’ And once you say that to yourself, you stop being anxious.”

  “I hope so,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Though, now you come to mention it, I worry about Charlie. I worry that things will go wrong for him because he is a young man and he doesn’t always think things through as carefully as he should.”

  “Do you think he’s going to do something foolish with your van, Mma? Such as carrying stolen goods in it?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Because if he did that,” Mma Makutsi continued, “you could be in serious trouble, Mma. You could go to prison.”