The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (13) (9 page)

Mma Ramotswe dabbed at Motholeli’s tears. “Oh, my darling,” she said, “you mustn’t cry. Who is this girl, anyway? How can I help you if I don’t know her name?”

“She’s a girl in my class,” said Motholeli. “She’s called Kagiso.”

“There are many Kagisos,” said Mma Ramotswe. “What is her other name?”

“It is Nnunu. Kagiso Nnunu. She’s horrid and I hate her. I hate her more than snakes.”

Mma Ramotswe put an arm around Motholeli’s shoulder. It is
so small, she thought, and fragile, as if too great a hug might break it:
the shoulder of a small person
. And there was the illness, too; the illness that confined her to the wheelchair took its toll elsewhere—made it difficult for the body to grow at the rate that it should.

“It doesn’t help to hate somebody,” she said quietly. “I understand why you want to, but it doesn’t help. Not really.”

Motholeli looked at her incredulously. “But it does, Mma. If you hate somebody hard enough, then they can die.”

Mma Ramotswe caught her breath. Where had the child learned that? Was that the sort of thing that was being peddled around the playground?

“Who said that?” she asked. “Did somebody tell you that?”

Motholeli’s answer came quickly. “The teacher told us. She said that if you hate somebody hard enough then they can die. She said that it can happen.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “But, Motholeli, that is just not true. That is not true. And …” She was about to say that no teacher would express such a thought, but then she stopped herself. Teachers seemed a different breed these days, more like everybody else; when she had been a pupil at the government school in Mochudi, the teacher had been a figure of authority in the village. People respected teachers and listened to what they had to say. She remembered walking with her late father on the road to Pilane when a cart had gone past, a donkey cart, and there had been a man sitting on the back holding a case of some sort and her father had raised his hat as the man passed. She had asked why he had done this, and he had replied that the man was a teacher and he would always raise his hat to a teacher. She did not think that happened today.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am sure, Mma. She said that if you hate somebody then they can die. She told us that. I’m sure about that, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe hesitated. She did not want to further undermine the authority of a teacher—there were enough people doing that anyway—and so she decided to say no more, at least about that side of it.

“But why do you hate this girl, this Kagiso?”

“Because she said I should stay outside in the parking place—in the place for cars. She said I should have my lessons out there.”

Mma Ramotswe was accustomed to receiving shocking confidences, and to receiving them with equanimity; now, however, she gasped. “But why … why would she say something like that, Motholeli? What did she mean?”

“She said that my wheelchair is like a car and that it should not be brought inside the school. She said there is no place for cars inside the school. She said I am just like a car.”

Mma Ramotswe closed her eyes. It was only too easy to imagine a child saying such a thing; children showed endless inventiveness when it came to devising torment for other children. She opened her eyes and made an effort to smile. “That is the silliest thing I have ever heard, Motholeli. It is so silly that … well, I think you should just laugh at that girl. Laugh, and say how silly she is.”

Motholeli remained silent.

“Well?” prompted Mma Ramotswe. “Don’t you think that’s the best thing to do? Don’t you think that would be better than hating her?”

“No. I think it would be better to hate her. Then she might die, and she wouldn’t be able to say these things about me.”

Mma Ramotswe tried another tack. “Would you like me to have a word with the teacher?”

This brought an immediate reaction. “No, Mma. It is not the teacher’s business.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. There was a limit to the extent to which you could fight the battles of children. Down among the
children, in the jungle they inhabited, the word of adults could count for very little. An adult’s reprimand, or punishment, might get a wrongdoer’s attention, but would not necessarily change attitudes, which would revert to their natural state the moment the adult disappeared. No, Motholeli was right: it might not help to take it up with the authorities.

“Well, you think about what I have told you,” Mma Ramotswe said. “And here’s something you can remember. It’s a thing you can say to a person like Kagiso. ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.’ You remember that.”

Motholeli muttered something.

“What was that?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

“I was practising it, Mma. ‘Sticks and stones may …’ ”

“May break my bones,” prompted Mma Ramotswe. “But words will never hurt me.”

Watching the child’s reaction, her solemn contemplation of what had been said, Mma Ramotswe felt some satisfaction that she seemed to be getting through to her. That was the beauty, she thought, of those little sayings, those proverbs that children could learn and use to help them through life. That one came from somewhere else—she had read about it when she was a child herself—but there were plenty of old Botswana sayings that did the same thing, that gave you little rules for getting through life, for coping with its disappointments and sorrows. And did it matter, she wondered, whether they were true or not? Words
could
hurt you, and hurt you every bit as badly as sticks and stones. So that saying was wrong; but that was not the point. The point was that if it made you better, made you braver, then it was doing its work. The same thing was true, Mma Ramotswe thought, of believing in God. There were plenty of people who did not really believe in God, but who wanted to believe in him, and said that they did. Some people said that these people were foolish, that they were hypocritical, but Mma
Ramotswe was not so sure about that. If something, or somebody, could help you to get through life, to lead a life that was good and purposeful, did it matter all that much if that thing or that person did not exist? She thought it did not—not in the slightest bit.

BY THE TIME
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck drew into the driveway of the house on Zebra Drive, its headlights describing a wide arc across Mma Ramotswe’s garden, illuminating the mopipi tree and the flourish of bougainvillea, the children were asleep and Mma Ramotswe was herself sprawled dozing on the sofa, her feet up on a cushion, a newspaper spread across her stomach. The sound of the truck dispelled tiredness, and she rapidly sat up, folded the newspaper neatly, and slipped back into her comfortable, flat-heeled house shoes. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s dinner, a mutton stew rich in grease and lentils, sat warm and secure in the lower drawer of the oven. It was her dinner too, as she had held back from eating with the children so that she could sit down with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and recount to him the momentous events of that day. She had planned exactly what she would say, starting with an invitation to guess who had walked in the door that morning. He would never guess, of course, and so she would tantalise him with snippets of information until, almost casually, she would let drop the name of Clovis Andersen. And then she would tell him everything: Mr. Andersen’s plans; what he had said to her and Mma Makutsi; what Mma Makutsi had said to him; what she had said to Mma Makutsi after Mr. Andersen had gone and what Mma Makutsi had said to her. No detail would be spared.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni came into the house and tossed the keys of his truck on to a table. “There are some people,” he began, “who should not be allowed on the road. Maybe they shouldn’t even be allowed to walk anywhere, either. Maybe we should hang a large
sign around their neck saying
Very Dangerous
, or
No Sense
, or something like that.”

Mma Ramotswe spoke soothingly. “You have been on the Lobatse Road, Rra. It always makes you cross.”

“The road itself is not the problem,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, stretching out his arms to dispel an incipient cramp. “It is the people who use the road. There was one man, you know, who came up behind me, and although he couldn’t possibly see what was coming—we were right on the brow of a hill and there were lines on the road warning you not to overtake—in spite of that, he just pulled past me. And then there was this big Botswana Defence Force lorry coming the other way and it was full of soldiers, I think, and the driver of that had to go right over on to the verge and kicked up a big cloud of dust and little stones flying all over the place, and one of those stones comes—
zing
—and makes a little crack in my windscreen. And this stupid man just drives on like a … like a … like an ostrich.”

“Like an ostrich?”

“You know what I mean, Mma. You know how ostriches run, and how they go this way and that, swerving around. Anyway, he was lucky that he didn’t make that Defence Force driver go right off the road because that would have put him in big trouble. It would be like declaring war, Mma. You don’t declare war on the Botswana Defence Force.”

Mma Ramotswe agreed that such a thing would be unwise. “I’m very sorry to hear about these stupid people on the road,” she said. “I’m sorry that we still have such people in these modern days.”

“Yes,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And so am I.” He sniffed at the air. “Is that mutton stew, Mma? Is that what I can smell?”

“It is, Rra. There is a big pot waiting for you—for us—in the oven. It will be ready after you have washed your hands. And while
we are eating, I can tell you of a very strange thing that happened to me today. Or happened to both of us, should I say. To Mma Makutsi and me.”

He went through to the bathroom to wash his hands, but they continued their conversation down the corridor. The children were never disturbed by the sound of voices and would sleep through even the most animated conversation elsewhere in the house.

“So something happened,” he called out. “You found out some big important bit of information? You won a big prize—ten thousand pula? You saw a lion under your desk?”

She laughed. “These are all quite possible developments, Rra.” For a moment she imagined Mma Makutsi suddenly whispering across the office, “Don’t make any sudden movements, Mma, but I think there is a lion under your desk. I think I can see its tail.” And she would reply, “I shall take what action is necessary, Mma Makutsi, but we really should finish dictation first …”

There came the sound of splashing water, and then the gurgle of the basin draining. “So what was it?” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni asked. “You had a visitor?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“What did you say, Mma?”

She raised her voice. “I said yes, Rra. We had a visitor, but you will never, never guess who it was. Not in a year of guessing. Not even then, with twenty, fifty guesses a day; even then you would never get it.”

There was a momentary silence at the other end of the corridor. A tap was run again, and then there came the sound of the towel roller turning. “Well, Rra,” Mma Ramotswe went on. “Try to guess. I’ll give you one clue: he is very important.”

“That man who wrote that book of yours. What is his name? That Chlorine Andersen, or whatever he’s called.”

“Clovis, not Chlorine.”

“Him?”

She sounded crestfallen. “Yes, Rra. How did you know?”

He came back into the room, wiping his hands on the sides of his khaki trousers. “I guessed. You said that I would never guess, and so I chose the most unlikely name I could think of. And that was that man, Clovis Andersen. That’s how I did it, Mma. Simple.”

OVER A LARGE HELPING
of mutton stew, Mma Ramotswe narrated the story of her extraordinary meeting with Clovis Andersen. It was the same story that Mma Makutsi had, just an hour or so earlier, told Phuti Radiphuti; but more accurate, perhaps, in Mma Ramotswe’s telling of it than in that of her assistant. Mma Makutsi had a tendency to embellish stories for dramatic effect, or at least to tell the tale from her own perspective. In her version, then, Clovis Andersen had introduced himself first to her, rather than to Mma Ramotswe, had been facing her desk when he sat down, and had addressed almost all of his remarks to her. But in this, surely, she could be forgiven; for who among us does not see the world as turning towards him or her rather than towards others? The weather is weather in so far as it affects
us;
great events are great events in that they have an impact on
our
lives; life, in short, was to be judged by what it had in store for Mma Makutsi, or for those within her immediate circle. This was neither solipsism nor selfishness—Mma Makutsi was actually quite generous; rather, it was a matter of
perspective
. It was a universe made up of several key institutions, principal among which was the Botswana Secretarial College and all that it represented (the motto of the college being
Be Accurate
). Then there was the Double Comfort Furniture Store, to which she was now firmly attached as the wife of its managing director (and the motto of that concern was
Be Comfortable
); the Government of Botswana, its ministers and permanent secretaries;
and finally the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and its owner and founder, Mma Ramotswe. This was her world, and these were the bodies to which she was unswervingly loyal.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni listened with interest to the story that Mma Ramotswe told, only interrupting her occasionally for clarification of some salient point.

“Out of the blue?” he asked. “He came out of the blue? Just like that?”

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. She had not told him about her dream; there would be an opportunity to discuss that later. “He came into the office and, believe it or not, Rra, to begin with Mma Makutsi and I had no idea of who he was. He was a stranger, obviously, but that was all we could tell. And there are so many strangers about these days, there was no reason why we should know; he could have been anyone.”

“But do they not have a photograph of him on the cover of his book?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I thought that they put photos of authors on books. So that you know what you’re going to get.”