Mma Ramotswe said that she thought that unlikely. But even as she downplayed Mma Makutsi’s suggestion, she remembered that innocent people did go to jail. It did not happen very often, especially in Botswana, with its careful judiciary and its largely honest police force, but there were always exceptions and she knew of several law-abiding men who had ended up being wrongfully convicted of an offence. Honest men…she did not know of any honest women who had been convicted of things they had not done, but there was always a first time. And for a few moments she imagined herself in an ill-fitting prison outfit, cutting grass along the side of a road in a working party, perhaps, while along the road drove the righteous and the respectable. And she imagined one car in particular driving past and slowing down so that the driver could get a good look at the convicts, and she would look up from her scythe and see none other than Violet Sephotho at the wheel, staring at her with an expression that would be a mixture of pity and intense satisfaction. That would be hard to bear—far harder than any shame at the fall from respectability, or any anger at the wrongfulness of conviction. It would be unbearable, she decided, and she felt a rush of relief as she reminded herself that this was fantasy, that it had not happened, and that it was highly unlikely ever to occur, even if Charlie really was planning to do something illegal with the van. No, surely he would not do that—not Charlie, whom she had known for years now, and who was maturing at long last. Not him. And yet, and yet…how many victims of the bad behaviour of others ever imagined that the person they trusted would behave badly towards them, would let them down? None of them, she suspected, and that conclusion made her ask herself whether she should have insisted that Charlie give a fuller explanation of why he wanted the van.
She arose from her chair and made her way to the window, through which she could look out over the small stretch of cleared bush at the back of the garage; it was here that she parked the van under the shelter of an acacia tree. Now, the van was just moving away and it was too late to run after Charlie, demanding further details.
“Too late?” asked Mma Makutsi.
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “He’ll be all right. I trust Charlie.” She did—to an extent. In the essentials, Charlie was a good young man. His fecklessness—and fecklessness is never the fault of a young man, in the same way as a tendency to bite or chew things is never the fault of a puppy—was improving, and anyway did not detract from the goodness of his soul. That, Mma Ramotswe thought, was what counted: the goodness of the soul. She knew that people sneered at that idea—especially now, when it was unfashionable to talk about such things, but she still believed that we all had a soul. And how could one not believe in such a thing, given that it was so obvious when we looked into the eyes of others and we were able to understand what they were feeling, without a single word being uttered? Or when we were walking in the bush and heard the sound of cattle bells, and looked up and saw the sky over Botswana, and felt the wind against our cheek? Of course there was a soul; of course there was.
Mma Makutsi sniffed—the doubtful sniff this time. “You believe him, Mma? I don’t,” she said.
* * *
—
MMA RAMOTSWE and Mma Makutsi were busy for the rest of the morning and neither noticed the passage of time. Mma Makutsi went off to collect the mail—in her own car—and when she returned, shortly after twelve, she reported to Mma Ramotswe that she was sure she had seen Charlie in the white van. “He was driving somewhere,” she said, adding, “very fast.” She paused, and gave Mma Ramotswe a meaningful look. If you lent your van to somebody like Charlie, then could you expect anything but that he push the engine to the maximum?
“I didn’t have the time to look closely,” she continued. “Whoosh! He was gone. Just like that, Mma. Whoosh!”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. She suspected that there was a considerable amount of exaggeration in the report of this sighting. She felt tempted to quote Clovis Andersen, who said, if she recalled correctly: Never overstate what you see. Just report—don’t embellish. If you see a husband you are observing holding the hand of a young woman, do not say that you saw him kissing her. It never helps a case to try to make it stronger with hyperbole.
Hyperbole…Mma Ramotswe had been delighted to make acquaintance with that word, which she had never encountered before. She had a good vocabulary in English—as well, of course, as her natural command of her mother tongue, Setswana—and she had a small and shaky understanding of Zulu, acquired from a friend in her schooldays. But even with her excellent English, there were occasional words that sent her to the dictionary, and hyperbole had been one of them. She liked the sound of the word, with its sharply rising consonant at the beginning and its round vowels at the end. This was a word that could be shouted out at the top of one’s lungs, if one wished. It would also be a good name for a favourite cow, she thought, or even for a child—a girl, she thought, as it would hardly suit a boy.
And she had been able to use it on occasion too, which was an additional bonus when it came to newly discovered words. She had tried it on Mma Potokwane, casually suggesting that reports of a large snake that had frightened residents of Tlokweng village involved hyperbole. “People are always making small snakes into large snakes,” she said. “And innocent grass snakes all become black mambas too, Mma. People are given to hyperbole in these matters, Mma Potokwane.”
But Mma Potokwane had taken it in her stride. “There is no hyperbole, Mma Ramotswe,” she retorted. “I saw the snake myself, and I am not one to exaggerate. It was two metres long, at the very least. And it was a mamba. I know those snakes. It was a mamba—not a hyperbole.”
“I would not like to be bitten by a hyperbole,” muttered Mma Ramotswe. She could not stop herself; she had to say this, although more or less immediately she regretted it.
“They are very dangerous, Mma,” said Mma Potokwane.
Now, on hearing Mma Makutsi’s report, she said, “That’s a bit of hyperbole, Mma. My van cannot go whoosh. It is a very slow van.”
Mma Makutsi stared at her through her new glasses, adjusting their position on her nose as she did so. “I am not a hyperbole, Mma. He was driving fast. You know how Charlie is.” She paused. “And where is he, Mma? He has been away for hours now. He said he would not be long—but where is he? I am just asking, Mma—that is all I’m doing. I am not criticising you in any way—I’m just asking where Charlie is and wondering when he will come back.”
Charlie eventually returned shortly after two. It was Mma Makutsi who heard the van approaching and rose from her desk to look through the window.
“He’s parking now, Mma,” she reported. “Now he’s getting out and he’s looking at the van. I wonder why he’s doing that, Mma? Surveying the damage, perhaps?”
Mma Ramotswe joined her at the window. She saw that Charlie had moved to the other side of the van and was bending down to examine something, possibly the near-side front wheel. Then he straightened up, walked to the back of the van, and examined something there.
“He might have scraped it,” said Mma Makutsi. “You remember how he scraped Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck once? You remember that? And he said that the scrape had been caused by lightning, but it hadn’t of course. You remember?”
“It’s very easy to scrape against something,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Let those who have never scraped a car throw the first stone, Mma.”
“I am not throwing any stones,” retorted Mma Makutsi. “I am just saying that if it were my van, Mma, then I would be out there, checking the van for scrapes and bangs and such like.”
“Do you think so, Mma?”
Mma Makutsi nodded. “I will come with you, Mma. Just to check up.”
They went outside and made their way over to the acacia tree and the van. Charlie saw them coming, and waited for them nonchalantly, his hands in his pockets. “I am back now,” he called as they approached him.
“Is everything al
l right, Charlie?” asked Mma Ramotswe. She did not want to be seen examining the van too obviously, but she did shoot a glance in the vehicle’s direction. Mma Makutsi was less reticent; she moved over to stand beside the van and peered down at the open loading area at the back.
Charlie watched Mma Makutsi nervously. “Everything is A1 excellent fine,” he said.
Mma Makutsi looked up. “A1 excellent fine, Charlie? That sounds very good. No lightning strikes this time?”
Charlie ignored this. “My friend was very grateful to you, Mma,” he said to Mma Ramotswe. “He said you are very kind and will certainly go to heaven when you die—which he hopes is not for a long time yet, of course.”
“What did you transport?” asked Mma Makutsi, peering again at the loading area. “It must have been something rather heavy.”
Charlie frowned. “Personal effects, Mma Makutsi. And they were just average heavy.”
Mma Makutsi reached out to rub the metal surface of the tailgate. “This bit,” she said, “I don’t know what you call it—this bit here.”
“Tailgate,” said Charlie, glancing at Mma Ramotswe.
“Yes,” continued Mma Makutsi. “This tailgate is a bit bent, Charlie. Or am I imagining something? Can you see it, Mma Ramotswe? If you come over here and take a look, you’ll see that the whole tailgate seems to be a bit bent.” She paused. “Not that I’m accusing anybody of anything—least of all you, Charlie.”
Mma Ramotswe joined Mma Makutsi at the rear of the van. She could see what the other woman meant—the tailgate appeared to have buckled slightly. She turned to Charlie. “Did something happen, Charlie? I think that Mma Makutsi may be right. This bit is bent, see? Look, see the way it goes down there and then comes up again.”
Charlie struggled to look unconcerned. “An old van always has irregularities, Mma. Even a new one sometimes is not quite straight.”
Mma Ramotswe shrugged. “I don’t think it matters,” she said. “It still works, does it?”
Charlie stepped forward, brushing Mma Makutsi aside as he closed the tailgate. “It still works,” he said. “Look.”
Mma Ramotswe hesitated. It was clear to her what had happened: Charlie and his friend had overloaded the van with whatever they were transporting—perhaps a heavy sofa. They had rested the sofa on the tailgate while they decided how to manoeuvre it into the van, and the weight had caused the buckling. It was entirely excusable damage—the sort of thing that could happen to anybody who underestimated the strain that an object could place on a surface. Who had not done that sort of thing at some point in their lives? And yet one part of her thought that Charlie should not get away with it. If he had confessed to what had happened, nobody—not even Mma Makutsi—would have been able to make much of it. But he had not confessed, and in one view he should be confronted with the damage and told to apologise. But now, she thought, was not the time. Mma Makutsi would make a big thing of it, and there was no call, she felt, to do that.
“That’s fine,” she said. “Let’s not worry. It’s too hot to be standing out here.”
Charlie breathed out in relief. “I have bought you a box of chocolates,” he said to Mma Ramotswe. “They are to thank you for lending me the van.” He reached inside the van for a small box of chocolates and handed it to Mma Ramotswe.
“You don’t need to do this, Charlie,” she said. “But these are very nice. I like these chocolates.”
Mma Makutsi peered at the box. “You need to be careful of those, Mma Ramotswe,” she said. “They are very full of calories, those chocolates. I have read about them in a health magazine. They said, ‘These chocolates are very full of calories—thousands and thousands of calories—and are best avoided by healthy people.’ I am just telling you what the magazine said, Mma. I am not saying that I think you shouldn’t eat them. I’m not saying that.”
Mma Ramotswe opened the box. “Would you like one yourself, Mma?”
Mma Makutsi hesitated, and Mma Ramotswe saw at once that she was torn.
“One won’t do you any harm, Mma. Two might—but not one.”
Mma Makutsi reached for a chocolate. “You’re quite right, Mma Ramotswe. One chocolate is always going to be all right.”
They went inside. Charlie had agreed to work in the garage that afternoon, so they did not see him in the office. And he was still working there when Mma Ramotswe left the office shortly before five. As she drove home, she sniffed the air. There was a strange smell, and it seemed to be inside her van. She opened a window, and the smell largely disappeared. But not altogether, and when she pulled up outside her house on Zebra Drive, she got out and peered into the back of the van. There was definitely a smell, but there was no sign of where it was coming from. What was it? A musty smell—an unfamiliar smell. The smell of an old sofa, perhaps—one that had had numerous cups of tea and beer spilled on it in the course of its career. Perhaps, she thought; but then she thought, perhaps not.
CHAPTER FIVE
ALL NEEDS FOODSTUFFS AND HOUSEHOLD GOOD
MMA MAKUTSI accompanied Mma Ramotswe on her visit to Blessing Mompati the following morning. They had closed the office, leaving a note on the door saying Back After Lunch, God Willing. That qualification was Mma Makutsi’s idea. “It doesn’t matter if you believe in God or not,” she said. “Saying ‘God willing’ is a good idea anyway—it shows that you’re not taking anything for granted.”
“I never do,” Mma Ramotswe assured her. “I never take anything for granted.”
“Just as well,” said Mma Makutsi. “Anything can happen, Mma Ramotswe. You could have a heart attack, for instance. Just like that. We could be driving off to these people we’re going to see and halfway there, maybe even as we approach their house, you might have a heart attack.”
“Oh, I hope not,” began Mma Ramotswe. “I don’t—”
Mma Makutsi did not let her finish. “I’m not saying this will happen, Mma—God forbid! It’s just that it sometimes does happen. People are driving along and suddenly they feel a pain in their arm. You know that the pain is often in the arm first, Mma Ramotswe? People think it will be in the middle of their chest, where the heart is, but no, it can be in the arm. A very strong pain.”
“I’ve heard that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “People say—”
Again, she was cut short. “I’ve said to Phuti Radiphuti that if he ever gets a pain in his arm, he must tell me immediately. I said, ‘Don’t assume it’s a pulled muscle. Let the doctor decide that.’ ”
“Very wise, Mma.”
“There are many heart attacks,” Mma Makutsi continued. “It is a very common thing these days, when people are eating the wrong sort of food and putting on too much weight.”
She paused. This conversation had started as they placed the notice on the door of the agency and they were now making their way to the white van in its parking place. She glanced at Mma Ramotswe, as if to calculate whether she had put on any recent weight.
“Traditionally built people need to be aware,” she said. “Not you, of course, Mma. You are very healthy. But in general, traditionally built people must be more aware of the risks.”
“I think many of them are,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There are many people, Mma, who are very careful about what they eat and yet they become traditionally built as the years go by. I would not criticise such people, Mma.”
“Of course not, Mma,” protested Mma Makutsi, a picture of injured innocence. “I wouldn’t criticise them—all I would do is say, ‘Be careful.’ That is all.”
“Anyway,” said Mma Ramotswe briskly. “We have written ‘God willing,’ and let’s hope that we are back safely, and in good time.”
“Quite right,” agreed Mma Makutsi. “Although, even if you don’t have a heart attack, Mma, you have to think of the roads. Look at how bad they are these days, with all these drivers rushing around, breaking the speed limit all the
time, Mma. All the time. No wonder there are all those accidents. We’re going on the Lobatse Road, right? That’s a bad place for accidents. People overtake because they’re in a hurry to get down to Lobatse and then there’s an accident.”
“We shall drive very slowly,” Mma Ramotswe said. “My van does not overtake easily. In fact, Mma, it does not overtake at all.” She smiled. “It was even passed by a donkey cart once. And several bicycles.”
That was an exaggeration—indeed a hyperbole. But Mma Makutsi had more to say, and now she sounded a serious note. “That makes it more dangerous. If you don’t have power, then you can’t get out of trouble. That’s what Phuti always says. He likes to have a car that can go faster than other cars on the road for that very reason, Mma.”
“We shall be all right, Mma Makutsi. If a dangerous situation arises, I shall just drive off the road and into the bush. That is the best thing to do. Just leave the road altogether.”
In spite of these dire misgivings, Mma Makutsi was pleased to be accompanying Mma Ramotswe on her mission that morning. Unlike Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who had voiced his doubts about Blessing, Mma Makutsi had not voiced any opposition to Mma Ramotswe’s proposal to respond to the appeal for help. “I am not altogether sure about this, Mma,” she said, “but I can see why you might want to help. I know what it’s like to have no money.”
She did not say this reproachfully, or with any bitterness—it was simply the way things had been. She had come from a poor family in Bobonong—not as poor as some, but hard up by any standards. They had sold livestock to finance her journey to Gaborone and her enrolment in the Botswana Secretarial College, and at the end of every month, when they sent money down to her in Gaborone, she knew that every pula she received had involved a sacrifice by someone up in Bobonong. And not just a sacrifice by her immediate family, but one that was made by more remote relatives—uncles, aunts, and cousins. She was never to forget how the system of wider family responsibility had enabled her to get that ninety-seven per cent and then launch herself upon her career. Not that her troubles had been over that quickly—even after she’d talked herself into the agency, it had been a struggle for Mma Ramotswe to pay her a decent salary out of the agency’s initially tiny takings. Her impecuniosity had persisted until she had been able to earn a bit more from the part-time typing school she set up for men, and then, at last, quite unexpectedly, she had met Phuti Radiphuti at a dance class and all her scrimping and saving had been conclusively and gloriously brought to an end. Phuti was a wealthy man, with his Double Comfort Furniture Store and his large herds of cattle, and their engagement marked the end of penury for Mma Makutsi. Not that she contrived any of that: she and Phuti loved one another, and the match was made without regard to material considerations. When she first got to know him, she was unaware that he was well off and had, in fact, been surprised when she learned the truth. And she had handled the change in her circumstances with tact and consideration. It would have been easy to stop work, but she declined to do that; it would have been tempting for her to over-indulge herself, but again she was careful—even if she had acquired a considerable number of pairs of new shoes and dresses too. Observing this, Mma Potokwane, whose relationship with Mma Makutsi had not always been easy, paid handsome tribute. “She has not allowed all this to go to her head,” the matron pronounced, adding, “Except now and then—but we’re all human, aren’t we, and who among us would not occasionally splash out on some frippery if we had the money to do so?”
How to Raise an Elephant Page 6