In the Time of Five Pumpkins, page 7
Mma Ramotswe was loyal. “Of course,” she said.
“I found him a bit loud, Mma. Some people have loud voices. He is one. I am not saying it is his fault. I am not saying that.”
Mma Ramotswe waited.
“It’s just that I have been surprised,” Mma Makutsi went on, “that we have had two questionable men come into the agency within a short time. There was Mr. Excellence Modise, and now there is this Mr. Freddie Mogorosi. This is very surprising, Mma. Why are there so many men like that coming to our door, I wonder.” She paused. “But be that as it may, Mma, I sensed that this Mr. Freddie Mogorosi was not a person one would trust. He is not the sort of person one would choose to be with, if you see what I mean.”
Mma Ramotswe frowned. “You mean you would not choose to be with him if you were…if you were a lady? Is it that sort of thing, Mma?”
They both knew what they were talking about. There were some men who made women feel uncomfortable because their manner was suggestive, or even leering. These were men who might make unwelcome advances, believing, as some of them did, that women found them irresistible. It was a sad category of men, made up of people who had never really been popular with women and who never would be. Yet such men had to be dealt with firmly, and told that they were not to make women feel uncomfortable through their talk and their posturing. In her professional life, Mma Ramotswe had occasionally had to deliver such a lecture to such a man, and on one occasion had even had to invoke the help of Mma Potokwane to get the message across. Mma Potokwane was a woman who knew how to handle men, and was always happy to come to the defence of any woman who was being pestered by a badly behaved one.
But it transpired that this was not the issue with Mr. Freddie Mogorosi. “I do not think that this Mogorosi is one of these ladies’ men,” said Mma Makutsi. “Men who are like that often dress in a particular way. They look at you from the side of their eyes. They stand too close to you—that sort of thing.”
“And he was not like that?”
“No. He didn’t get too close. And he didn’t use any familiar language.”
“So, what was it, Mma?”
Mma Makutsi hesitated. It was hard to find the words to express a feeling of disquiet, or a tingle at the back of the neck, but there was usually no mistaking it when you felt such things. And in this case, of course, there had been the warning that had come from her shoes. That had been unambiguous, but it was not the sort of thing you could talk openly about. If you said, “My shoes said to me…” then people would look at you and shake their heads; they would whisper among themselves; they would conclude that there was something wrong with you. And of course, there was no question of the shoes actually talking—not in reality, because shoes were inanimate objects, which suggested that any idea she had of the shoes talking was just that, and no more—an idea in her mind, an impression. And yet, and yet…she was not making anything up: she had heard what the shoes had said, and it accorded with her own impression of Mr. Freddie Mogorosi.
Mma Ramotswe was looking at her with that quizzical, reflective look that she employed when she was thinking hard about something. “Tell me, Mma Makutsi,” she said at last, “you didn’t get any advice from…” And at this point, she looked down at Mma Makutsi’s shoes.
Mma Makutsi pursed her lips. “If my shoes had an opinion, Mma,” she said, “I think it would be exactly the same as mine—in this case at least.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. Nothing had been said, though, of the reason for Mr. Mogorosi’s visit, and now she asked Mma Makutsi about that. Had Mr. Freddie Mogorosi brought a car in for repair? Mma Makutsi replied that she thought he had, but she was not certain. She had formed the opinion, though, that he and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni were on friendly terms. “I could see that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not share my misgivings about Mogorosi,” she said. “He was smiling at him, Mma. I think that they were becoming big friends.” She shook her head in disapproval, and then added, “Not that this is any of my business, Mma.”
There was shopping to be done, and they said goodbye. Mma Ramotswe did not linger, and within twenty minutes she had bought all the groceries, paid for them, and was on her way home in her white van. It was almost dusk now, and the sky was copper-red over the Kalahari to the west. Each evening, she thought, we are reminded of how fortunate we are to live in this country, with all its displays of nature. We are reminded by these flaming sunsets, which make the sky red with fire, even if we sometimes do not even notice them. The familiar beauty of the world frequently goes unnoticed because we have other things to think about—and she was thinking now of Mma Makutsi’s account of the visitor whom she had missed. If Mr. Freddie Mogorosi was as good a friend of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni as Mma Makutsi seemed to suggest he was, then why had she never heard of him? There had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation, she told herself, because she and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had never kept any secrets from one another—as far as she knew, that is. There was no reason he would wish to conceal a friendship—once again, as far as she knew. That was how it should be between husband and wife, she felt: a man and a woman should endow each other with all their worldly goods and with all the secrets of their heart. That, she thought, lay at the heart of marriage—along with a willingness to do one’s share of the washing-up, laughing at each other’s jokes, and a resolution, on the husband’s part, to clean the bath after each use. Those things might sound unimportant, but they were actually central to a good and lasting marriage. That, she told herself, had always been well known.
Chapter Five
The Weaker Brethren
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni worked late at the garage that evening, with the result that by the time he arrived back home at Zebra Drive, Mma Ramotswe had already prepared their dinner. She had decided on sausages, pumpkin, and green beans—a meal that she knew he liked and that was easy enough to prepare. There were some evenings that seemed right for complex recipes, and others that were more suited to a simple dish of meat and vegetables, it all being a question of energy. This evening was one of the latter.
“That is a very good smell, Mma,” he said as he came through the kitchen door. “I was hoping that tonight would be a night for sausages.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “You have been working very hard, Rra. Sausages are very good for building up strength.”
He went off to wash his hands. It was the lot of mechanics to have greasy hands, and giving them a good scrub at the end of the day was a familiar ritual. He had stressed to his apprentices the need to remove grease if one wanted to avoid problems with one’s skin, but it had been an uphill battle—particularly with Charlie. He had known mechanics who had ended up with hands so cracked and rough that shaking hands with them was like grasping sandpaper—“You don’t want to end up like that when you are older, Charlie,” he said.
He could tell that Charlie was unmoved by the warning, as the young man simply shrugged and said, “Ya, ya.” That was typical of young people, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. They said ya, ya and then did nothing. They thought that the things that happened to older people would never happen to them—and yet they would. You could be saying ya, ya one moment and the next you were fifty and you had rough hands. Life had a way of happening rather quickly.
Mma Ramotswe put his dinner on the table in front of him. “I will say grace, Rra,” she said.
She bowed her head. The house was quiet, as the children were away at a school function. It was just the two of them—Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.
“We are grateful for the food that is on our table,” she said. “There are many who do not have good food like this. We think of them, and hope that one day these brothers and sisters will have good things too.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni said, “Amen”—prematurely, as Mma Ramotswe had intended to add a few further observations, but now did not do so. She remembered Mma Makutsi, who had once explicitly qualified her wishes for the sustenance of others with the words “provided they are deserving of such benefits.” That was not in the normal spirit of things, thought Mma Ramotswe, but she did not pursue the matter with Mma Makutsi, who occasionally said things that, on reflection, she admitted she did not mean. Mma Makutsi was not unkind, nor was she unsympathetic. At the same time, when it came to those whom Mma Ramotswe sometimes described as the “weaker brethren,” she had been known to express the opinion that they would do well to pull their socks up. “We could all sit about and say how unfair the world is,” she said, “but where does that get us, Mma? The answer, as often as not, is nowhere.”
Mma Ramotswe acknowledged that there was some truth in that, but at the same time, she said, we had to remember that there were people who were doing their best, and still getting nowhere. That might not be their fault, she said, and if one could give them a hand up, then why not? Had not Mma Makutsi herself been helped by members of her family who had gone so far as to sell livestock in order to help her to get to the Botswana Secretarial College? “Not that I’m saying you’ve forgotten that, Mma Makutsi,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It’s just that sometimes we need to remind ourselves about how we got to where we’ve got. Just a suggestion, Mma.”
Now, grace having been said, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was tackling his sausages and pumpkin with vigour.
“Mma Makutsi tells me,” Mma Ramotswe began, “that you had a visitor today. She said that he came in for tea.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had a mouth full of sausage, and so it took a few moments for him to reply. “Yes, Mma,” he said. “Freddie Mogorosi called in. We drank a cup of tea together out under the tree—it was too hot inside, I thought.”
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It was very hot, Rra.”
“I don’t think you’ve met him,” continued Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.
Mma Ramotswe was quick to say that she thought she had not. “I wondered if I had heard the name somewhere,” she went on. “But I don’t think I have.”
“No,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Perhaps not.” He paused for a moment as he contemplated the remaining portion on his plate. Then he muttered, “It all goes so quickly.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “Life? Or…”
“Sausages and pumpkin. Things that you particularly like to eat.”
“Ah.”
“Mind you,” he said. “Life too.”
She nodded her agreement. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni occasionally commented on how mechanics could not be expected to have views on the more complex issues of life, but she felt, and had pointed this out to him, that he was being unduly modest in that regard. Mechanics were every bit as sensitive as other people—perhaps even more so. They understood, because they had to. They listened—to engines and to the people who relied on machines—which was every single one of us—and, at the end of the day, they coaxed the malfunctioning or inert back to life. That required a particular sort of feeling, one that mechanics, in her experience, often had. She would not hear a disparaging word about mechanics.
“You are right about life, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni,” she said. “When we are young, they say to us, ‘It’s going to go very quickly,’ and we do not think that this can possibly be true. We think that this is just one of those things that adults say and that as children we know to be false. And then we reach our thirtieth birthday and we say, ‘Well, maybe it is going a bit fast—not very fast, but certainly we can see that it is going.’ And then other birthdays come along and maybe you are just a little bit slower getting up out of your chair than you used to be, and you think, well, perhaps. And then you look about you and you see that there are young people everywhere, and they do not seem to notice you, and that makes you think. And then, before you know it, you find yourself saying, ‘It was different in the old days,’ and you realise that the person you’re talking to was only a child in those old days and doesn’t remember them at all. And then you ask yourself what it was that they said about how time went quickly, and you remember how you did not think it true, but it is, of course, and you feel a bit sad, really, because none of us wants to say goodbye to the place we love, and the people too…”
It was a long speech, and she wondered at the end of it whether she should have said these things. Did we need to be reminded of the fact that one of these days it would be over, or should we just go about our daily business without thinking of that? She was not sure. You should not pretend that the world was different from the way it was, but did it help to think about these things—when you knew that thinking about them could not possibly change any of them?
She pondered this while her own sausages and pumpkin began to get cold on the plate before her. Then she noticed that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had eaten his last sausage and had almost finished his helping of pumpkin, and with that instinct that so many women have, that wonderful caring feeling for those whom they loved, she speared a sausage on her fork and passed it over to him. Then she followed this with the transfer of a spoonful of pumpkin.
He said, “Oh, Mma, you should not give me yours when I have been greedily eating all mine up.”
“Hush,” she said.
He did not protest further.
She asked him, “This Mogorosi, Rra: How did you get to know him?”
His answer was immediate, and simple: “Motor Trades Association.”
“He’s a member?”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “He has that big franchise garage. You know the one. Out on the Molepolole Road. That place where they sell those expensive German cars. That place.”
She had driven past the garage and its showroom many times. She called it Flash Motors, although that, of course, was not its real name. But it was flashy, whichever way you looked at it.
“I’ve met him at meetings sometimes,” he continued. “Also, at big events. You know, sometimes his business has public days where they show a new model and they invite everybody along. I’ve been to one or two of those.”
Her curiosity about Mr. Freddie Mogorosi was largely assuaged. He was simply another of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s motoring contacts. She came across these people from time to time—suppliers of spare parts, other mechanics, and so on, but found it difficult to remember exactly who was who.
“He brought his car in,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “It’s one of their older models. He doesn’t drive a new Mercedes. He prefers an older one. It’s a good car. Those Germans make very good cars. Or, put it this way, there are German machines that make very good cars.” He smiled. “There is a difference, you know. Now they have machines with long mechanical arms, and they cut the steel and put the car together. They are all robots. And the people sit in the office and drink tea and watch while the machines make the cars for them. That is the sort of world we’re living in now, Mma Ramotswe.”
Mma Ramotswe was thinking—not of those factories with their tireless machines, but of the practical issue of why Mr. Freddie Mogorosi, proprietor of one of the largest garages in Botswana, should bring his own car to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni for attention. Surely his own garage, she thought, would have more than enough mechanics to attend to the boss’s car. Of course, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had a considerable reputation as a mechanic—consulting him was perhaps rather like consulting an eminent surgeon—but it still seemed strange that Mr. Mogorosi should look outside his own enterprise when it would be so easy to have the car attended to on his own premises.
She put this to him now, and she could tell that the same thought had occurred to him.
“Yes,” he said. “You are right, Mma. I was a bit surprised that he had brought the car to me for what was really a pretty straightforward service. All I had to do was to change the engine oil and put in a new air filter. There was nothing else to do.”
She frowned. “Did he say anything about it? Did he tell you why he brought the car to you?”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni shook his head. “No,” he said. “He did not. He just said: ‘I’ve brought the car to you.’ He also said that he would like to catch up. Those were his exact words. I’d like to catch up.” He shrugged. “I thought he was a bit lonely. He asked me whether I would go fishing with him. There is a boat that he sometimes uses on the dam. He said he could show me a place where there are some big fish to be caught.”
“And you said you would go?”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “I did. He wants to go on Saturday.”
“I shall make you some sandwiches to take with you,” Mma Ramotswe said.
“That would be good,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, adding, “I don’t think I shall catch anything. I never do.”
She was surprised by this. He had never mentioned fishing. “You never do, Rra? I didn’t know that you went fishing.”
He looked sheepish. “Well, I don’t—not actually. I was just saying that if I ever went fishing—which I don’t, really—I wouldn’t catch anything.”
“You should not be defeatist, Rra. You have just as much chance as anybody else.”
“I think he will catch them,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “He’s good at most things.”
“Really?”
“I mean, he’s the type who looks as if he is good at everything.”
She reflected on this in silence. She did not know Mr. Freddie Mogorosi, but she felt now that perhaps Mma Makutsi was right. Simply hearing about him set alarm bells ringing, even though she had never met him. It was very strange. But perhaps not: once you started to think that things were strange, they could seem even more puzzling, or even disturbing. And so it was best not to think that they were strange in the first place.
She did not think that Clovis Andersen had ever remarked on an issue like this in The Principles of Private Detection—but had he done so, it would have been interesting to see what he thought. On balance, she decided that Clovis Andersen would have found it strange, but perhaps not all that strange.
