How to Raise an Elephant

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Fanwell made a gesture of hopelessness. “But what would you do, Mma Makutsi? If you take that elephant away from him, what would you do with it? Sell it? You can’t sell elephants these days. They are protected. There is a government department somewhere…”

  “The Department of Elephants,” suggested Mma Ramotswe, smiling.

  “It will not be called that, Mma,” said Fanwell, missing the irony. “The Wildlife Department is in charge of all the wild animals—elephants, lions, giraffes. They are all looked after by the Department of Wildlife.”

  “We should speak to Charlie,” said Mma Makutsi. “We should go round there right now and sort this out. It’s no good just thinking of it.”

  Mma Ramotswe asked how matters had been left with Charlie.

  “We heard his story,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, “but we didn’t discuss what could be done about the elephant.”

  “We were too shocked,” said Fanwell.

  “Too shocked,” echoed Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And we didn’t know then what that friend of his was planning to do. I think he’s deceiving Charlie.”

  Fanwell was uncertain. “Is it our business?” he asked. “If Charlie wants to do these things, then—”

  He did not finish. Mma Makutsi was adamant that it was their business. “If we don’t do something, we’ll find that we’re the ones left holding the elephant,” she said. “I know what Charlie is like. He will be thinking: Good, an elephant! today, and then tomorrow, if his friend does not turn up for some reason, he will be thinking: How am I going to get rid of this elephant?”

  Mma Ramotswe thought that Mma Makutsi was probably right. There had been many occasions in the past when they had been obliged to clear up some mess left by Charlie. They could remain uninvolved if they discovered somebody else was looking after an elephant—such an elephant would be none of their business—but there was a sense in which any elephant in Charlie’s keeping was their problem, or would soon become just that. If somebody else was looking after an elephant…somebody responsible, somebody experienced, somebody who knew about the needs of orphans, whether human or otherwise…Mma Potokwane. Of course. Mma Potokwane, matron of the Orphan Farm (for human orphans, admittedly); pillar of competence and unflappability; concealer of a heart of pure gold…

  “Mma Potokwane!” Mma Ramotswe blurted out.

  Mma Makutsi looked puzzled. “Mma Potokwane?” she asked. “An elephant?”

  “She is a large lady,” said Fanwell.

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni laughed, only to be silenced by a reproachful stare from both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi.

  “I think I should go and have a word with Mma Potokwane,” said Mma Ramotswe. “She is the—”

  Mma Makutsi tumbled to the plan. “Of course,” she said. “She is the one to advise us about orphans. May I come too, Mma?”

  “It would be very useful,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We may have to make plans, and you should be involved in those, Mma.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni asked if they should do anything right then.

  “Not just yet, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The time to act will come, but it is not just yet.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  GOVERNMENT CHERRIES

  THEY DROVE OUT in the tiny white van, bumping along the final section of dirt road that led to the gates of the Orphan Farm. Both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi were in good spirits—high spirits, even—as they considered their mission to Mma Potokwane.

  “You know, Mma Makutsi,” Mma Ramotswe said, “I’ve asked Mma Potokwane for some very unusual favours in the past.”

  “You’ve asked for favours?” exclaimed Mma Makutsi. “It’s the other way round, Mma! She’s the one who has asked for favours. Big favours. Borrowing your husband for all sorts of reasons. That’s a very big favour in my view, Mma Ramotswe. If somebody came along and asked me if they could borrow Phuti, I would give them a very direct response.”

  “No? You’d say no, Mma?”

  “Of course I would. You cannot lend your husband to the first person who comes along and asks to borrow him. You say to them, ‘Get your own husband. Find your own man to fix your kitchen sink or whatever. Don’t come round to me and try to take my husband.’ That’s what I’d say, Mma. Straightaway. I’d say that.”

  “But she has always returned him in good time,” Mma Ramotswe pointed out. “After he has fixed the pump or sorted out whatever needed sorting out, he is always returned to me—like a library book that’s been read—just like that.”

  Mma Makutsi was not convinced. “That’s all very well, Mma, but I am sure there are many cases where somebody has lent her husband, and then the husband has not returned. Men are like that, Mma. If they find a place where the food is better, or there is more beer, they often stay there. They say to their wife that she does not understand him, and never has, and then they say, ‘And the food is better here.’ And so, the man never comes back. There is a big danger of that, Mma Ramotswe. It is a very big danger in this town these days. There are some wicked women about.”

  “You’re not saying that Mma Potokwane is a wicked woman, are you, Mma?”

  “I am certainly not saying that, Mma. I would never accuse Mma Potokwane of stealing husbands, or even of borrowing them and keeping them too long.”

  “No, Mma, I see.”

  “No, all I’m saying is that if we’re counting the favours, then you are very much in credit, Mma. It is you who have done the favours for Mma Potokwane and the Orphan Farm. It’s you who fixed their pump—through your husband, of course. It’s you who fixed that minibus she uses to take the children about the place—once again, through your husband. So all the favours are stacked up on your side.”

  Mma Ramotswe understood what Mma Makutsi meant, but she was still slightly embarrassed to be facing Mma Potokwane with the request she was about to make. Yes, there was an important element of reciprocity in her relationship with Mma Potokwane, but if you set up imaginary scales and put fixing the pump or the minibus on one pan and an elephant on the other, there was no doubt in her mind as to which way the scales would tip.

  They parked the van in its usual place, under an acacia tree not far from Mma Potokwane’s office. As Mma Ramotswe switched off the engine, she heard a voice call out from a stand of fruit trees a short distance away.

  “I am over here, Mma. I’m picking guavas.”

  They made their way to where Mma Potokwane, her skirts tucked into a pair of large green bloomers, had climbed into a guava tree to harvest the fruit.

  “You must be very careful up there,” called out Mma Ramotswe. “You must be careful not to fall.”

  Mma Potokwane reached for a guava and tossed it down into a small tarpaulin spread out on the ground below.

  “I shall come down now,” she said. “I have picked almost all the fruit on this tree.”

  Her descent was an elegant one for somebody so large as Mma Potokwane. And within not much more than a few moments, she was standing before them, extracting her skirt from its temporary constraints, and smiling broadly at her visitors.

  “You wouldn’t have expected to see me in a tree, would you?” she asked.

  “No, I did not expect that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But there is no reason why you shouldn’t climb a tree, Mma.” She thought, though, that there were very good reasons why people like Mma Potokwane—and like herself, for that matter—should not climb trees. Traditionally built people were not designed for tree-climbing, unless, of course, the tree was particularly strong, with boughs in a position to support their weight. A baobab tree was perhaps the best tree for a traditionally built person to climb, as these trees, with their immense girth, could support the weight of an elephant. Their branches, though, were high up off the ground and there would be the small matter of scaling the great trunk—an impossible task, she thought. For a moment she pictured Mma Potokwane high
up in the branches of a baobab tree, her skirts tucked in, waving to those below. She heard her calling, “Mma Ramotswe! Mma Ramotswe! Come up and join me…”

  Mma Potokwane’s voice brought her back to reality. “Except that it’s a very stupid thing for a person like me to do,” the matron said. “If you are traditionally built like me—like us, Mma—then if you fall out of a tree it is a big fall. You hit the ground with considerable force.”

  “You try to avoid falling out of the tree, then, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi.

  “Indeed you do, Mma Makutsi. Falling out of a tree is one of those things in life that you should certainly try to avoid.” She chuckled. “You cannot go through life wrapped up in cotton wool, but you can avoid taking unnecessary risks. Play it safe—that’s what I say, Mma Makutsi. Play it safe.”

  Mma Makutsi nodded her agreement. “I am always playing it safe, Mma Potokwane. I am very reluctant to take any risks—and Phuti is the same. He is Mr. Softly-Softly most of the time.” She thought of risks she had taken recently, and found it difficult to call any to mind. Of course, she had an advantage over most people in that regard—she had shoes that would warn her of any untoward danger. She knew that this sounded absurd—possibly even deluded—and yet she had heard them as clearly as if somebody had been right there with her, whispering advice. And there had been more than one occasion when an intervention by her shoes had averted unpleasantness or even physical danger—as when they had seen a cobra on her bedroom floor and had warned her of the lurking peril.

  Snakes in the wrong place, of course, could be a nightmare. In the hot weather, when the sun beat down on the land like a hammer, even snakes, cold-blooded sun-worshippers though they were, could find the heat outside too much and would slither into the house for the cool of the cement floor. They liked bathrooms, which were often the coolest rooms in a house, and they liked to lie under the bath itself or around the base of a laundry basket, or, as had occurred in the house of one of Mma Makutsi’s friends, in the bowl of the toilet itself, half submerged in the water. That was a situation too terrible to contemplate, although her friend had lived to tell the tale. She herself had not been bitten, but an aunt of hers had, a lady of generous proportions who had not even noticed at first and had only realised that something was wrong when she stood up and discovered the snake still attached to her, its fangs stuck in her flesh. Fortunately, it had not been a poisonous snake, and there had been no ill effects, at least of a physical nature. The psychological consequences of such an episode, though, could be profound. And then, of course, there was that man down in Lobatse whose bed had been invaded by a python and who had, in his half-awake state, imagined that what was wrapped around his right leg was his wife’s leg rather than the coils of a large constrictor. He, too, had survived unscathed—on a physical level.

  Mma Potokwane, having now invited them into her office, led them along the rough path that ended up at her verandah. “I have just baked a fruit cake, as it happens,” she said. “I imagine that you ladies will have a slice.”

  “We have been looking forward to that, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe, adding, “That is not why I come to see you, Mma Potokwane. I know that there is often a slice of your delicious cake awaiting me, but even if there were not, I would still come to see you.”

  “Although perhaps not quite so often,” quipped Mma Makutsi.

  Mma Potokwane laughed. “I know, Mma Ramotswe.” She paused. “Although we often have a favour to ask of our friends when we go to see them. That is only human. If I come to see Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni it is not always just for the pleasure of his company—much as we all enjoy that, of course—but it is also to ask him to do something.”

  “That is what men are for, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “If they weren’t good at fixing things, I’m not sure we would really need them.”

  This brought a swift rebuttal from Mma Ramotswe. “No, Mma,” she said, “you cannot say that. Men are not as bad as some women say they are. They are different—yes—they do not see things in the right way sometimes, but they are still nice to be around.” She paused for a moment. Mma Ramotswe was charitable, but even so, there were one or two men she considered to be beyond the pale. These were men whom one would avoid, if at all possible, rather than seek to confront. So she qualified her remark with, “I mean most men are nice to be around, even if there are one or two who…”

  She saw that Mma Makutsi was watching her, and she knew Mma Makutsi was only too aware of whom she was thinking—Note Mokoti, the man she had once been married to. Mma Ramotswe had been much younger then, and the things we do in youth should not be laid too readily at our door, but even so, she had reproached herself one hundred times for allowing her head to be turned by that trumpet-playing wastrel; that selfish, preening charmer; that silver-tongued abuser…She stopped herself. She had forgiven him; she had made that supreme, conscious effort to forgive the man who had fractured her young heart and who had almost broken her spirit too, and it was wrong for her now to think about him in these terms. Hate was a welcoming host and would always encourage you to join its parties. So whenever she thought about Note, rather than dwell on the painful memories around him, she would deliberately think of something else. And what better to think of, when one is trying not to think of one man, than another man? If the man you were trying not to think about was a bad man—as Note unquestionably was—then the antidote was to think about a good man—and there were plenty of men lining up to be thought about. Her father, for example, the late Obed Ramotswe; that kind, good man who stood for everything that Botswana stood for—decency and honesty being the main values that underpinned the country. Yes, and why not? It was fashionable to pour scorn on patriotism; she had heard people do that—and even go so far as to laugh at the Botswana flag—but she would never, never do that. Those values—the values her daddy had taught her—were still there and she would never be ashamed to talk about them.

  So, her father was one man she could think about when wanting to cancel memories of Note. And then there was Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, the man she had married after she had finally got rid of Note. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was the best of men, as everybody who had any dealings with him quickly discovered. And her old friend Bishop Mwamba was a good man, and Seretse Khama, of course, and Professor Tlou, who had written that history of Botswana and who had been so wise, and Dr. Moffat, who had run the hospital at Mochudi and had looked after and comforted so many, and Mma Makutsi’s husband, Phuti Radiphuti, who was so protective of the interests and welfare of his staff at the Double Comfort Furniture Store. And Mma Potokwane’s husband too—not that they saw much of him, as he was very much what Mma Potokwane herself described as a “background husband.” And Fanwell, now that she came to think of it—he was a nice young man, and if he had been a bit feckless in the past, then that was almost certainly because of Charlie’s influence. Even Charlie himself, although he still had a lot to learn; his heart was in the right place, she was sure of it, as was apparent from this business he had got himself into with the orphan elephant. Charlie would not have thought it through before acting, but the impulse to help had been there, and he deserved full credit for that.

  Mma Ramotswe’s thoughts were interrupted by Mma Potokwane, who remarked as they entered her office, “Oh, there are plenty of no-good men. I have been thinking of keeping a list of the no-good men of Botswana and publishing it, price eighty pula, and worth every thebe. This would be a list of all the scoundrels—all the drinkers and boasters and idle men. It would have a picture of each of these men, perhaps, and a few lines about their typical habitat…”

  “Like one of those bird books,” exclaimed Mma Makutsi. “Or those wildlife guides that tell you where you can find certain animals. Sand veld. Mopani forest. And so on.”

  “It would be a very dangerous list,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Some of the men would surely claim to be on it by mistake.”

  “There would be wha
t we call a margin of error,” said Mma Makutsi. “At the Botswana Secretarial College…”

  Oh no, thought Mma Ramotswe. The Botswana Secretarial College again…

  “At the Botswana Secretarial College,” Mma Makutsi continued, “one of the professors…”

  Not professors, thought Mma Ramotswe.

  “One of the professors was a big expert on the margin of error. He used to tell us, always allow for a margin of error. If you allow for a margin of error, then you will never find yourself wishing, Oh, if only I had allowed for a margin of error. So, allow for it.”

  Mma Potokwane invited them to sit down while she switched on the kettle and took the cake tin off a shelf.

  “As I told you,” she said, “I have been busy baking. I made four cakes yesterday: one for myself—and you, of course—and then three for the housemothers. We have three birthdays this week, one after the other, three of the housemothers, and so I have to make a cake for each of them. It is a tradition we have here at the Orphan Farm.”

  “Perhaps you should be like the Queen over in England,” said Mma Makutsi. “I was reading in a magazine that she has two birthdays—her real birthday, and then an official birthday that comes at a more convenient time. The housemothers’ official birthdays could be staggered that way.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. She was an admirer of the Queen, who she thought was just like Mma Potokwane—one of those people who were single-minded in the performance of their duties. Such people just went on and on doing what was expected of them. The Queen went round opening things and shaking hands with people; Mma Potokwane spent her days chasing people up to support the orphans, to donate surplus food, to pass on children’s clothes and trainers, to find jobs for the children once they were grown up and ready to leave school. She never took no for an answer; she never gave up.