Kalahari Typing School for Men (2 page)

“Cars speak about people,” he had once explained to her. “They tell you every thing you need to know.”

It had struck Mma Ramotswe as a strange thing to say, but Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had gone on to illustrate his point with a number of telling examples. Had she ever seen the inside of the car belonging to Mr. Motobedi Palati, for example? He was an untidy man, whose tie was never straight and whose shirt was permanently hanging out of his trousers. Not surprisingly, the inside of his car was a mess, with unattached wires sticking out from under the dashboard and a hole underneath the driver’s rseat—so that dust swirled up into the car and covered everything
with a brown layer. Or what about that rather intimidating nursing sister from the Princess Marina Hospital, the one who had humiliated a well-known politician when she had heckled him at a public meeting, raising questions about nurses’ pay that he simply could not answer? Her car, as one might expect, was in pristine condition and smelled vaguely of antiseptic. He could come up with further examples if she wished, but the point was made, and Mma Ramotswe nodded her head in understanding.

It was Mma Ramotswe’s tiny white van that had brought them together. Even before she had taken it for repair at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, she had been aware of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, as a rather quiet man who lived by himself in a house near the old Botswana Defence Force Club. She had wondered why he was by himself, which was so unusual in Botswana, but had not thought much about him until he had engaged her in conversation after he had serviced the van one day, and had warned her about the state of her tyres. Thereafter she had taken to dropping in to see him in the garage from time to time, exchanging views about the day’s events and enjoying the tea which he brewed on an old stove in the corner of his office.

Then there had come that extraordinary day when the tiny white van had choked and refused to start, and he had spent an entire afternoon in the yard at Zebra Drive, the van’s engine laid out in what seemed like a hundred pieces, its very heart exposed. He had put every thing together and had come into the house as evening fell and they had sat together on her verandah. He had asked her to marry him, and she had said that she would, almost without thinking about it, because she realised that here was a man who was as good as her father, and that they would be happy together.

Mma Ramotswe had not been prepared for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to fall ill, or at least to fall ill in the way in which he had
done. It would have been easier, perhaps, if his illness had been one of the body, but it was his mind which was affected, and it seemed to her that the man she had known had simply vacated his body and gone somewhere else. Thanks to Mma Silvia Potokwane, matron of the orphan farm, and to the drugs which Dr. Moffat gave to Mma Potokwane to administer to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, the familiar personality returned. The obsessive brooding, the air of defeat, the lassitude—all these faded away and Mr. J.L.B. Mate koni began to smile again and take an interest in the business he had so uncharacteristically neglected.

Of course, during his illness he had been unable to run the garage, and it had been Mma Ramotswe’s assistant, Mma Makutsi, who had managed to keep that going. Mma Makutsi had done wonders with the garage. Not only had she made major steps in reforming the lazy apprentices, who had given Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni such trouble with their inconsiderate way with cars (one had even been seen to use a hammer on an engine), but she had attracted a great deal of new customers to the garage. An increasing number of women had their own cars now, and they were delighted to take them to a garage run by a lady. Mma Makutsi may not have known a great deal about engines when she first started to run the garage, but she had learned quickly and was now quite capable of carrying out service and routine repairs on most makes of car, provided that they were not too modern and too dependent on temperamental devices of the sort which German car manufacturers liked to hide in cars to confuse mechanics elsewhere.

“What are we going to do to thank her?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “She’s put so much work into the garage, and now here you are back again, and she is just going to be an assistant manager and assistant private detective once more. It will be hard for her.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni frowned. “I would not like to upset her,”
he said. “You are right about how hard she has worked. I can see it in the books. Everything is in order. All the bills are paid, all the invoices properly numbered. Even the garage floor is cleaner, and there is less grease all over the place.”

“And yet her life is not all that good,” mused Mma Ramotswe. “She is living in that one room over at Old Naledi with a sick brother. I cannot pay her very much. And she has no husband to look after her. She deserves better than that.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni agreed. He would be able to help her by allowing her to continue as assistant manager of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, but it was difficult to see what he could do beyond that. Certainly the question of husbands had nothing to do with him. He was a man, after all, and the problems which single girls had in their lives were beyond him. It was women’s business, he thought, to help their friends when it came to meeting people. Surely Mma Ramotswe could advise her on the best tactics to adopt in that regard? Mma Ramotswe was a popular woman who had many friends and admirers. Was there not something that Mma Makutsi could do to find a husband? Surely she could be told how to go about it?

Mma Ramotswe was not at all sure about this. “You have to be careful what you say,” she warned Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “People don’t like you to think that they know nothing. Especially somebody like Mma Makutsi, with her ninety-seven percent or whatever it was. You can’t go and tell somebody like that that they don’t know a basic thing, such as how to find a husband.”

“It’s nothing to do with ninety-seven percent,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “You could get one hundred percent for typing and still not know how to talk to men. Getting married is different from being able to type. Quite different.”

The mention of marriage had made Mma Ramotswe wonder about when they were going to get married themselves, and she
almost asked him about this but stopped. Dr. Moffat had explained to her that it was important that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni should not be subjected to too much stress, even if he had recovered from the worst of his depression. It would undoubtedly be stressful for him if she started to ask about wedding dates, and so she said nothing about that and even agreed—for the sake of avoiding stress—to speak to Mma Makutsi at some time in the near future with a view to finding out whether the issue of husbands could be helped in any way with a few well-chosen words of advice.

DURING MR
. J.L.B. Matekoni’s illness they had moved the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency into the back office at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. It had proved to be a successful arrangement: the affairs of the garage could be easily supervised from the back of the building, and there was a separate entrance for agency clients. Each business benefited in other ways. Those who brought their cars in for repair sometimes realised that there was a matter which might benefit from investigation—an errant husband, for example, or a missing relative—while others who came with a matter for the agency would arrange at the same time for their cars to be serviced or their brakes to be checked.

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi had arranged their desks in such a way that they could engage in conversation if they wished, without staring at one another all the time. If Mma Ramotswe turned in her chair, she could address Mma Makutsi on the other side of the room without having to twist her neck or talk over her shoulder, and Mma Makutsi could do the same if she needed to ask Mma Ramotswe for anything.

Now, with the day’s post of four letters attended to and filed, Mma Ramotswe suggested to her assistant that it was time for a rcup of bush tea. This was a little earlier than normal, but it was a
warm day and she always found that the best way of dealing with the heat was a cup of tea, accompanied by an Ouma’s rusk dipped into the liquid until it was soft enough to be eaten without hurting the teeth.

“Mma Makutsi,” Mma Ramotswe began after her assistant had delivered the cup of freshly made tea to her desk, “are you happy?”

Mma Makutsi, who was halfway back to her desk, stopped where she stood. “Why do you ask, Mma?” she said. “Why do you ask me if I’m happy?” The question had stopped her heart, as she lived in fear of losing her job and this question, she thought, could only be a preliminary to suggesting that she move on to another job. But there would be no other job, or at least no other job remotely like this one. Here she was an assistant detective and previously, possibly still, an acting garage manager. If she had to go somewhere else, then she would revert to being a junior clerk, at best, or a junior secretary at somebody else’s beck and call. And she would never be as well paid as she was here, with the extra money that came to her for her garage work.

“Why don’t you sit down, Mma?” went on Mma Ramotswe. “Then we can drink our tea together and you can tell me if you are happy.”

Mma Makutsi made her way back to her desk. She picked up her cup, but her hand shook and she put it down again. Why was life so unfair? Why did all the best jobs go to the beautiful girls, even if they barely got fifty percent in the examinations at the Botswana Secretarial College while she, with her results, had experienced such difficulty in finding a job at all? There was no obvious answer to that question. Unfairness seemed to be an inescapable feature of life, at least if you were Mma Makutsi from Bobonong in northern Botswana, daughter of a man whose cattle had always been thin. Everything, it seemed, was unfair.

“I am very happy,” said Mma Makutsi miserably. “I am happy with this job. I do not want to go anywhere else.”

Mma Ramotswe laughed. “Oh, the job. Of course you’re happy with that. We know that. And we’re very happy with you. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and I are very happy. You are our right-hand woman. Everybody knows that.”

It took Mma Makutsi a few moments to absorb this compliment, but when she did, she felt relief flood through her. She picked up her teacup, with a steady hand now, and took a deep draught of the hot red liquid.

“What I’m really wanting to find out,” went on Mma Ramotswe, “is whether you’re happy in your … in yourself. Are you getting what you want out of life?”

Mma Makutsi thought for a moment. “I’m not sure what I want out of life,” she said after a while. “I used to think that I would like to be rich, but now that I’ve met some rich people I’m not so sure about that.”

“Rich people are just people,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have not met a rich person yet who isn’t just the same as us. Being happy or unhappy has nothing to do with being rich.”

Mma Makutsi nodded. “So now I think that happiness comes from somewhere else. It comes from somewhere inside.”

“Somewhere inside?”

Mma Makutsi adjusted her large spectacles. She was an avid reader and enjoyed a serious conversation of this sort, in which she would be able to bring up snippets that she had garnered from old issues of the
National Geographic
or the
Mail and Guardian
.

“Happiness is found in the head,” she said, warming to the subject. “If the head is full of happiness, then the person is definitely happy. That is clearly true.”

“And the heart?” ventured Mma Ramotswe. “Does the heart rnot come into it?”

There was a silence. Mma Makutsi looked down, tracing a pattern with her finger on a dusty corner of her desktop. “The heart is the place where love happens,” she said quietly.

Mma Ramotswe took a deep breath. “Would you not like to have a husband, Mma Makutsi?” she said gently. “Would it not make you happier to have a husband to look after you?” She paused and then added, “I was just wondering, that’s all.”

Mma Makutsi looked at her. Then she took off her glasses and polished them with a corner of her handkerchief. It was a favourite handkerchief of hers—with lace at the edges—but now it was threadbare from so much use and could not last much longer. But she loved it still and would buy another one just like it when she had the money.

“I would like to have a husband,” she said. “But there are many beautiful girls. They are the ones who are getting the husbands. There is nobody left over for me.”

“But you are a very good-looking lady,” said Mma Ramotswe stoutly. “I am sure that there are many men who will agree with me.”

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “I do not think so, Mma,” she said. “Although you are very kind to say that to me.”

“Perhaps you should try to find a man,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Maybe you should be doing a bit more about it if no men are coming your way. Try to find them.”

“Where?” asked Mma Makutsi. “Where are these men you are talking about?”

Mma Ramotswe waved a hand in the direction of the door, and of Africa outside. “Out there,” she said. “There are men out there. You have to meet them.”

“Where exactly?” asked Mma Makutsi.

“In the middle of the town,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You see them sitting about at lunchtime. Men. Plenty of them.”

“All married,” said Mma Makutsi.

“Or in bars,” said Mma Ramotswe, feeling that the conversation was not taking the turn she had planned for it.

“But you know what they are like in bars,” said Mma Makutsi. “Bars are full of men who are looking for bad girls.”

Mma Ramotswe had to agree. Bars were full of men like Note Mokoti and his friends, and she would never wish anybody like that on Mma Makutsi. It would be far better to be single than to become involved with somebody who would only make you unhappy.

“It is kind of you to think of me like this,” said Mma Makutsi after a while. “But you and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni mustn’t worry about me. I am happy enough, and if there is going to be somebody for me, then I am sure that I shall meet him. Then everything will change.”

Mma Ramotswe grasped at the opportunity to bring the conversation to an end. “I’m sure that you are right,” she said.

“Perhaps,” said Mma Makutsi.