Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (21 page)

The whole business, she thought as she made her way round the side of the President Hotel, was a complete waste of time. She and Mma Ramotswe would talk to these football players, with their ridiculous schoolboy-ish nicknames, and at the end of it all they would be none the wiser. Or they might be a little wiser in that they would have learned a bit more about the silliness of men's games, but they would not be wiser in their search for Mr. Molofololo's traitor.

The square in front of the President Hotel, a large, well-used pedestrian thoroughfare known as the Mall, was more crowded than usual. The end-of-the-month pay-day had fallen a few days ago, and the effect of the sudden injection of money into pockets was still being felt. All along the square, which ran from the government offices at one end to the bank offices at the other, small traders had set up their stalls. There were sellers of crudely made sandals, the shoes laid out before them in rows; dressmakers, with
their racks of voluminous dresses; purveyors of traditional medicines, with their little piles of twisted roots and strips of bark; sellers of carvings and wooden salad bowls; hawkers of cheap sunglasses and perfumes. Business was being done—but not a great deal, as this spot seemed to provide for as many social as commercial opportunities. Questions were being asked about relatives and colleagues; marriages were being discussed and planned; complaints about the doings of officials and officialdom were being shared, and expanded; and, of course, news was being conveyed of distant cattle. There was a lot happening.

Mma Makutsi would have preferred to wander the length of the Mall, stopping to chat to people she recognised, but saw that she was already a few minutes late for her appointment. So, with the sinking heart of one obliged to perform an unwelcome task, she climbed up the open staircase that graced the front of the President Hotel and made her way onto the shaded verandah.

The hotel would become busy at lunch time, but now only a few of the tables were occupied. At one, a smartly dressed woman sat alone, a magazine on the table in front of her. She was on edge, Mma Makutsi noticed, with the nervous look of one who is expecting to meet somebody important—somebody she was keen to impress, perhaps. From time to time she looked at a small mobile phone on the table; looked longingly, thought Mma Makutsi. Oh, my sister, Mma Makutsi said under her breath. Oh, my sister, I am sorry. He is not going to come, is he?

Mma Makutsi's gaze moved on. A middle-aged couple, visitors wearing large floppy hats, sat at a table poring over a tourist guide. Mma Makutsi smiled; so many people read these guides when they might have been looking around them and seeing the place they were reading about. It was the same with cameras: visitors spent so much time peering through the viewfinders of their cameras that they never looked at the country they were photographing. The couple lowered their books, though, and looked at
her, smiled; her own smile grew wider. That was better. What does the book say about me? she wondered.
Look out for Mma Makutsi. She is the fiancée of Mr. Phuti Radiphuti, and you should look out for him too
.

The brief reverie ended. There he was—there was no doubt about it—Mr. Oteng Bolelang, midfield attacker, sitting at a table near the verandah parapet, pointedly looking at his watch.

“I am very sorry to be late, Rra,” she said, as she sat down at the table. “But as Mma Ramotswe says, it is better to be late than to be
the
late.”

Oteng Bolelang looked at her in puzzlement. “What is this? Who is this Mma Ramotswe?”

He spoke with an unusually high-pitched voice, which caught Mma Makutsi unawares. She had imagined that footballers—and especially midfield attackers—would speak with deep, masculine voices. This man, however, spoke with a rather thin, reed-like voice, the voice of a bird, she thought, or the voice of one of those thin dogs howling at the top of its register.

“Mma Ramotswe is the woman who owns the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency,” she said. “That is who she is.”

Oteng gave a shrug. “I do not know her.” His tone was peevish.

Mma Makutsi smiled pleasantly. “Well, maybe one day you will meet her, Rra. She has asked me, though, to speak to you. You will know that Mr. Molofololo wants you all to speak to us.”

“He told us that,” said the footballer. “He thinks that we have nothing better to do than to talk to wo … talk to people.”

Women, thought Mma Makutsi. That is what you were about to say, but you stopped yourself. You do not like women, I think, Rra. You do not like us.

“I am sure that you are very busy, Rra,” she said. “You told me on the telephone that you are a salesman. What do you sell?”

“Fridges,” said Oteng. “Fridges and freezers.”

“That is very important in a hot country,” observed Mma Makutsi. “Where would we be without fridges?”

“We would still be in Botswana,” said Oteng, looking again at his watch.

You are a very rude man, thought Mma Makutsi.

“Tell me, Rra. What is wrong with the team? Why is it always losing?”

Oteng looked at her as if he had been asked a completely unexpected question. “That is a very strange question,” he said.

“Why is it strange?”

“Because it's so obvious that nobody should have to ask it.”

She waited for him to continue, but he did not, turning instead to catch the attention of the waiter who was hovering near the door. “I need coffee,” he said.

Mma Makutsi was not going to let him derail her, and she repeated her question, adding, “It may be obvious to you, Rra. But it is not obvious to me. The Swoopers used to win—now they lose. How would you explain that?”

“The goalie,” said Oteng. “If the other side scores goals, then it is because the goalie lets them in. It is Big Man's fault.”

Mma Makutsi listened carefully. “He's letting goals in?” she asked. “He does that deliberately?”

Oteng burst out laughing—a superior, contemptuous laugh. “No,” he said. “It's much simpler than that. It's his eyesight.”

The waiter came to the table and Oteng ordered coffee. Almost as an afterthought, he asked Mma Makutsi whether she would like some too.
You are very, very rude
, she said to herself.

“What is wrong with his eyesight?” she asked.

“He needs glasses,” Oteng said. “You can't have a goalie in glasses. It would look odd.”

Mma Makutsi thought for a moment. “How do you know that he can't see very well? Has he told you?”

Oteng laughed again. “Big Man Tafa doesn't speak to me much. He's jealous of me, of course. I'm a midfield attacker, you know.”

Mma Makutsi nodded. “I have heard that.”

“I saw him trip over something once,” he said. “He didn't see it. I'm sure of it. And I threw him something once in the dressing room—just to test him. I threw him a pencil. I said,
Here, Big Man, catch this
. And he couldn't see it.”

“So that's the reason why the team isn't doing well?”

Oteng hesitated for a moment. “Maybe.”

Mma Makutsi raised an eyebrow. “There are other reasons, Rra?”

The high voice increased in volume, becoming shriller as it did so. “Molofololo doesn't help. He keeps changing things. He changes tactics. He changes practice times. He changed all our kit when he got some new sponsor. We wanted to talk to him about that, but he won't listen—the problem is that the sponsor pays for us to wear these things. He changed the club's telephone number and then changed it back again. You change things and everybody gets mixed up.”

The coffee arrived, and Oteng became taciturn. Mma Makutsi tried a few more questions but felt that she was getting nowhere. She too became silent. She did not offer to pour a second cup.

“You have been very helpful, Rra,” she said.

“Pleasure,” he said.

IT WAS UNUSUAL
for Mma Ramotswe to play any role in the running of the garage. She saw, though, Mr. Polopetsi and the younger apprentice leaning against the side of a car; she saw that Fanwell was drinking a cold drink out of a can and Mr. Polopetsi
was fiddling with what looked like a transistor radio—and she decided that Fanwell could be spared.

“You don't look very busy,” she said as she joined them. “Are you fixing radios now, Rra?”

Mr. Polopetsi laughed. “This radio is almost finished,” he said. “My wife said that we should throw it out, but I am trying to save it.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at the apprentice. “And you, Fanwell?”

“I have done all my work, Mma.” He gestured to the car behind him. “This was much easier than we thought. All I had to do was …”

She did not need an explanation. Since things were so slack, she said, Mr. Polopetsi could look after the garage and her office for a few hours, could he not? And Fanwell could come with her. “You can drive my new van, Fanwell,” she said, dangling the keys in front of him. “And you can help me with something.” She did not need to say what it was; a look sufficed.

Fanwell was particularly pleased to drive the van. “This is very good, Mma,” he said as they pulled out into the traffic. “Listen to that engine. It is like a bee.
Bzz bzz
. Like a very happy bee.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. “My old van made such interesting noises,” she said. “Sometimes I thought that the engine was talking to me.”

Fanwell glanced at her. “Yes, Mma. I think I understand how you feel.”

She returned his glance. A year ago she would never have imagined that either of the young men—Charlie or Fanwell— would understand such feelings. They liked speed and noise and loud music; they liked talking about girls and bars and football teams. Now it was different, and she realised how easy it is to misjudge the young, to imagine that they share none of the more
complex emotions that shape our lives as we grow older. Well, they do, she said to herself; they have those feelings too, and suddenly they become capable of seeing them in others.

“Thank you, Fanwell,” she said. “I miss that van. I miss it here.” She touched her chest, where her heart was.

He said nothing for a moment, but then half turned to face her.

Mma Ramotswe tapped his shoulder before he could say anything. “You must watch the road while you're driving, Rra. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni says that most accidents happen when people are eating or trying to do something else while they drive.”

“I'm watching. I just wanted you to remember, Mma, what I said yesterday. I said that I couldn't guarantee anything. I might not be able to fix your van.”

She knew that, and reassured him that she did not expect a miracle. But as they approached Harry Moloso's scrapyard, she found her heart beating noticeably faster. It was only two days since the van had been towed away, and she did not imagine that there was much that could have happened to it in that time. Yet it was possible. The van might already have been crushed in one of those machines that transformed a car body into a cube of compressed metal. That would be hard to bear—to see a tiny white cube where once there had been a living van.

“There's Harry Moloso's place,” said Fanwell, pointing at an untidy-looking yard with a corrugated-tin fence. “See it? It's a big place—it stretches all the way back there. Full of old cars, tractors, trucks—everything.”

They stopped at the gate, which was controlled by an elderly security guard in a khaki uniform. He came over and listened while Fanwell explained who they were and the nature of their errand. A barrier was raised—a gum-pole painted in red and white stripes—and they were in the yard.

“It is like the elephants' graveyard,” said Fanwell. “You know that place where elephants go to die. All those white bones. Here it is the skeletons of cars.”

Fanwell was drawing up beside the office, a small breeze-block construction painted in lime green and with a large sign attached.
Harry Moloso, Mr. Metal Magnet. Metal Resurrection-Miracles Daily
.

“He calls himself Mr. Metal Magnet,” said Fanwell, pointing to the sign. “That is a good name for a scrap merchant.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled weakly. She was gazing around the yard, looking for the tiny white van. At the back of the yard there were several old buses, wheel-less and listing heavily, their windows gaping holes; there were things behind them that she could not see from where she was standing. The tiny white van could easily be concealed there.

They walked up to the half-open door of the office.

“Ko, ko!”
Mma Ramotswe called out.

A voice came from within. “I'm in here. Come in, Mma.”

They pushed at the door, which moved back on protesting hinges. For a rich man, as everybody said Harry Moloso was, he had not spent much money on his office. Here and there on the floor, some in small pools of oil, were engine parts, wrenched from old engines, wires and pipes, like discarded innards; elsewhere there were piles of papers, of trade directories and spare parts manuals, unfiled letters. It was like Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's office in the old days, before she and Mma Makutsi had jointly tackled it, but considerably worse than that.

“Dumela
, Rra,” began Mma Ramotswe. “You are Harry Moloso?”

The man sitting on a bench seat salvaged from an old car rose to his feet when they entered. He had been reading a newspaper, which he now folded and tossed down on a desk.

“I am Harry Moloso himself,” he said. He looked at Fanwell and winked. “And you're the young man who works with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, aren't you? You've been round for spares recently I think.”

“I brought an old van round,” said Fanwell. “I brought it along with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.”

Harry Moloso nodded. “Of course you did. A funny old white van. Ancient. Belonged to some fat lady, you said—suspension was shot on one side.”

Mma Ramotswe did not look at Fanwell. “Traditionally built,” she whispered, just loud enough for the young man to hear.

Harry Moloso heard too. “Yes, they built them very well in those days.”

Mma Ramotswe said nothing. Yes, they built vans
and
people well in those days.

“This lady is wanting to buy it back, Rra,” said Fanwell.

Harry Moloso looked surprised. “Back? It was yours was it, Mma?”