The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe (27 page)

“In South Africa?” asked Mma Potokwane. “Not our police—the ones over the border?”

Mma Ramotswe nodded.

“It is very difficult for them,” said Mma Potokwane. “Some of them are honest—maybe many of them—but there are some who are real
skellums.
” She used the word that was popular over the border: a
skellum
was malevolent; there was no reasoning with a
skellum.

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I really only know one of them. He is quite senior now, I think. He is a good man.”

Mma Potokwane was interested. “He is the one who used to be over at Mmbabtho in the old days? The one you told me about?”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “His mother is from here. The father was born over there, but he is Setswana-speaking. He is over in Johannesburg now.”

Mma Potokwane sipped at her tea. “I know that man's wife. She's from Tlokweng. You say he's senior now?”

“Yes,” answered Mma Ramotswe. “He's a police colonel now. But he's the same old Billy Pilane to me. You never change the way you look at people, you know. Your friend can become president, even, but to you he'll just be your friend.”

“As long as your friend doesn't change,” cautioned Mma Potokwane. “There are some people who change as they become more important. Imagine if …” She paused. She had entertained a possibility that was too horrible to contemplate.

Mma Ramotswe was interested. “If what, Mma?”

“Imagine if Violet Sephotho became president.”

It was a possibility too painful to contemplate. “We should not think about such things,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“No, we should not.”

Mma Potokwane wiped her lips with a blue handkerchief she had tucked into the sleeve of her blouse. “Your problem, Mma, is that you cannot be dishonest. You have always been like that.”

Mma Ramotswe said nothing, but Mma Potokwane was right; she could not be dishonest.

“So here you have a client who is using you, Mma. He is not telling you the truth.”

“No, he is not.”

“But you still feel you must tell him that you have found out what he already knows?”

“Yes, because if I don't, he will tell the authorities that every step has been taken to find out the identity of this Lakshmi lady.”

“He will then ask the authorities to exercise their discretion in her favour as an unidentifiable person,” said Mma Potokwane.

Mma Ramotswe agreed. “I think that is what he wants to do.”

“While all the time,” went on Mma Potokwane, “he knows exactly who she is.”

Mma Ramotswe could not think of that as anything but dishonest, and yet, and yet… “It isn't her fault,” she said. “Lakshmi is only here because of her violent husband.”

“That's right.”

“So,” continued Mma Ramotswe, “is there nothing we can do for her?”

“We could keep quiet,” suggested Mma Potokwane. “Or rather,
you
could keep quiet. You could say nothing. You could say that you have found out nothing.”

“But then I'd be misleading our own government people,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Or at least I'd be part of a plot to mislead them.”

They both saw the problem, and were both silent for a few minutes. Then Mma Potokwane spoke. “Go and see him,” she said. “Go and speak to them—Mr. Sengupta and Lakshmi. Tell them that you know everything and that you cannot continue to be involved in the case. That way you will not be doing anything illegal. You will not be misleading our own officials.”

Mma Ramotswe considered this. What Mma Potokwane proposed sounded reasonable enough: she had no duty to report the crimes of others—simply being a citizen did not impose on you a duty to turn in everybody who was up to no good. Certainly, if she were ever to find out about anything really serious—a murder or something of that sort—she would go straight to the police, but this was … what was it? It was a misleading of the authorities by one who was desperate; by one who was faced with persecution by both an abusive husband and corrupt police officers. What chance did an ordinary woman have against such a combination? To whom could such a person turn for justice?

That last question remained with her as she drove home from her trip to the supermarket and her meeting with Mma Potokwane. She imagined what it must feel like to be falsely accused of a crime.
She imagined what it must be like to be terrified of going home. The world was a hard enough place as it was—how much harder it must be to have nobody to turn to, no friends, no allies, and only a cousin who was prepared to take you in and do the things that sometimes needed to be done if the weak were to be given shelter, if some semblance of fairness was to be achieved in a world that often paid no more than lip service to the idea of justice. The world was not perfect—it never had been and never would be; it was full of pitfalls and problems, of fear, of regrets and of bitter tears. Here and there, though, there were tiny points of light, hard to see at times, but there nonetheless, like the welcoming lights of home in the darkness. The flames that made these lights were hard to ignite, but occasionally, very occasionally, we found that we had in our hands the match that could be struck to start one of these little fires.

A
T FIRST
Charlie did not take his change of duties well.

“A secretary?” he asked. “Me, Mma? A secretary?”

Mma Ramotswe had urged Mma Makutsi to be gentle in her approach. They had discussed the matter and decided that since there really was so little for Charlie to do it made sense for him to take some of the secretarial burden off Mma Makutsi. Now, as they explained to him the basis of his future employment in the agency, Mma Ramotswe could not help but notice that Mma Makutsi was showing every sign of satisfaction.

“Not a real secretary, of course,” Mma Makutsi said pedantically. “The profession of secretary normally calls for attendance at the Botswana Secretarial College. It also requires examinations. So you'll be a sort of para-secretary, Charlie.”

Charlie's mouth dropped open. “A para-secretary?”

Mma Makutsi warmed to her theme. “Yes, you'll have heard about paramedics, Charlie. They're the people who give first aid before you get to hospital. Then a real doctor takes over.” She smiled. “Or a real secretary—in the case of a para-secretary.”

Charlie glowered. “Mma Ramotswe,” he muttered, “you said that I could be a detective … You promised—”

Mma Makutsi interrupted him. “No, she did not promise. She said that she would
try
to find things to keep you busy, Charlie.
Try to.
And she did try, and now there are no more things for you to do as a detective.” She paused. “But when one door closes, another opens. That other door, as it happens, is marked
Secretary
, or
Para-secretary
perhaps.”

Charlie took a deep breath, seeming to puff up in indignation. “She did—”

“No, she did not,” said Mma Makutsi. “I was here—remember?”

Mma Ramotswe glanced discouragingly at Mma Makutsi. The other woman had many talents, but an ability to deal tactfully with young men like Charlie was certainly not one of them. “I think you should give it a try, Charlie. We can call you a clerk rather than a secretary, if you like.”

Charlie considered this. “Clerk?”

“Under-clerk?” suggested Mma Makutsi.

Again Mma Ramotswe looked across the room sharply. “No, clerk, I think.”

“A clerk is junior to a secretary,” said Mma Makutsi. “A good secretary normally gets paid more than a clerk.”

Charlie frowned. “Is that true, Mma?” he asked Mma Ramotswe. “Is a clerk really junior to a secretary?”

“I'm not sure about these things,” answered Mma Ramotswe. “And I'm not sure whether it matters all that much, Charlie.”

Mma Makutsi intervened. “I can answer that, Charlie. A clerk is definitely junior to a secretary. I have a friend who works in a bank and when they take on school leavers—these are sixteen-year-olds, remember—they call them clerks (fourth class). They have tea in a separate room from the secretaries and they do not get the same annual leave entitlement. They get less.”

“Less tea?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

“No, less leave. They all get the same amount of tea, I think.”

“I am glad to hear that,” said Mma Ramotswe. She had known,
of course, that the reference was to leave rather than to tea, but any diversion to defuse the tension between Mma Makutsi and Charlie was worth making.

Charlie, though, had reached a decision. “If a clerk is junior to a secretary, then I want to be a secretary rather than a clerk. I am fed up with being junior all the time. Apprentice. Assistant detective, and so on. I would prefer to be a secretary, even if it is a job just for women.”

“Para-secretary,” chipped in Mma Makutsi. “And what do you mean
just for women
? Where have you been for the last twenty years, Charlie? Have you not heard that women will no longer put up with that sort of sexist talk?”

“Sex, Mma?” shouted Charlie. “You're talking about sex now? Is that what you want to talk about?”

“Sex
ist
, Charlie. Can't you tell the difference? A sexist is somebody like you—who thinks that women are nothing.”

Charlie turned to appeal to Mma Ramotswe. “I never said that, Mma Ramotswe. You see how she accuses me of saying things I never said. I can't help being a man—it is just what I am. I can't help thinking like a man …”

“I think that para-secretary is too long a description,” said Mma Ramotswe, eager to avoid further escalation of the discussion.

Mma Makutsi offered a compromise. “Assistant secretary, then.”

“Why assistant?” protested Charlie. “If we do not have any secretaries here any more …” He looked at Mma Makutsi and then back at Mma Ramotswe. “If we do not have any secretaries because certain people who used to be secretaries are now something much more important—managing directors, or whatever—then how can I be an assistant secretary? Where is the secretary I'll be assisting, Mma? Where is she?”

Mma Makutsi sighed. “You do not have to have an actual secretary to be assistant to. You are not assistant
to
a secretary—you are
an
assistant secretary. There is a difference. In the army you have assistant generals even if you don't have a general.”

Charlie was not about to let this pass. “I have never heard of that rank. I know somebody who is in the Botswana Defence Force and he has never spoken of assistant generals. You get sergeants and majors and then you get generals. You don't have assistant generals—never!”

Mma Makutsi hooted with laughter. “Sergeants, majors, then generals? Is that how you think it goes, Charlie? One, two, three: three rungs to the ladder. What about captains? Yes, what about captains? And what about colonels? Where are they in your army, Charlie?”

“We do not need to talk about the army,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The army has got nothing to do with detective agencies.” She gave Mma Makutsi a particularly intense look before continuing. “I think that this is settled, now. You could start showing Charlie how the filing cabinet works, Mma.”

For some reason, the prospect of teaching Charlie rather appealed to Mma Makutsi, and she took the young man over to the double filing cabinet on the other side of the room.

“This is the memory of the business, Charlie,” she said. “This is where you will find all the correspondence, all the bills, all the everything. It is all filed away. Any questions?”

“Why?” asked Charlie.

“We file it so that we can retrieve it if we want to find out who wrote what and when,” said Mma Makutsi.

Charlie opened a drawer and peered in. In spite of himself, he was intrigued, and they were soon immersed in a discussion of the filing system that Mma Makutsi had created for the office. From her desk, Mma Ramotswe watched them fondly. At heart, Mma Makutsi and Charlie were probably rather more alike than either would care to admit: they both had the same sort of personality for which there must be a special name in a book somewhere.
Makutsian
, perhaps:
marked by a tendency to be a bit prickly and wear fancy shoes … The sight of them working together, rather than arguing, pleased her. Why can't we all be like that? she thought. Not just this office, these two people, but everyone, everywhere—the whole world? She gazed out of the window. One day, she hoped, peace would break out, and friendship too. It would break out and ripple across the world, ending corrosive enmities and hatreds, bringing men and women together across the globe. Muslims and Christians and Hindus and people who said that there was no God at all. And they would hold hands and hug one another and realise how small we were and how little time we had, and how silly it was to spend that time fighting and arguing and destroying the trust that otherwise exists between people. Oh, let that happen one day, she thought; let that happen. And perhaps it might even start here in Botswana, where there had always been so strong a desire for peace, since the days of that great and generous-spirited man, Seretse Khama, whose example to the world had been such a good one, and even before him. It could start here, in Gaborone itself, rippling out across the acacia-studded bush like one of those warm winds that seem to come from somewhere you cannot see but are strong and insistent. Then it would fan out to all those distant and busy places that might never even have heard of Botswana but would stop and listen and marvel that such a loud message could come from so quiet a country.