The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Now that she had resolved to talk to Mma Makutsi about the Molapos, the decision seemed to relieve her of the anxiety that had been building up around the case. And there were other everyday things to occupy her time and her mind, including the shopping. Men might believe that food appeared miraculously in the kitchen, but women, Mma Ramotswe included, knew better than that. They could hardly forget that there was a lot of trudging around shops to be done, and the choosing of this item rather than that one, which sometimes involved squeezing things to determine ripeness, or sniffing them to gauge freshness. This, she had noticed, was not something that men tended to do; they did not squeeze things in shops.

  She decided that she would do some shopping and at the same time collect the mail, a task usually performed by Mma Makutsi. Letters were placed by the post office in serried banks of private boxes, each opened by the owners with small keys entrusted to them by the postal authorities. She could check her box, and the box rented by Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, before going on to the nearby shops. Then, if she felt in the mood – and that morning she thought she did – she could have a cup of coffee at the Equatorial and watch what was happening around the market stalls – which was always something interesting if one enjoyed people-watching, which she did.

  Her walk from the post boxes to the supermarket took her directly past the premises of the Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon. As she approached, she saw that Mma Soleti was standing in the doorway, looking out at the concourse. Mma Ramotswe hesitated. She had not come up with any further advice for Mma Soleti and she felt vaguely guilty that she had not been able to offer her more comfort when she had received her threat. But what could she do? It probably really was best to ignore things like that, as the issuer of such a threat wanted a reaction and might lose interest if the victim did nothing. Yet if you were on the receiving end of hatred, inaction might seem a rather weak response. People wanted others to do something; to express their outrage, and not merely to say, as Mma Ramotswe had said, that they should let it be.

  She took a deep breath and steeled herself. It would be easy to stick to the other side of the concourse and thus avoid Mma Soleti, but she could not do that. She would do her duty, which was to speak to her and find out whether anything else had happened. If another threat had been sent, then it might provide some clue as to the motives of the sender; or, of course, it might not, and in that case her advice would have to be the same.

  The beautician had seen her and beckoned to her from her doorway. Mma Ramotswe waved back and began to make her way over towards the salon. Greetings were exchanged before Mma Soleti said, ‘You should come inside, Mma – it is too hot to stand outside.’

  Mma Ramotswe looked up at the sky. ‘The rains will be here any day, Mma. We shall not have to wait long now.’

  ‘It is still too hot,’ said Mma Soleti. ‘And besides, there is something I need to talk to you about, Mma.’

  Mma Ramotswe followed her into the salon. All the devices of Mma Soleti’s trade – the creams and oils, the astringents and the unguents – were laid out neatly on trays, and at the foot of the treatment couch a pristine white towel had been folded and placed ready for use. But there was no sign of any customers.

  Mma Ramotswe knew, from experience, how tact was required when one commented on the slow pace of another’s business. And so she chose her words carefully. ‘It’s good to have time to get everything ready, isn’t it, Mma?’ she said. And then added, ‘I’m sure you’ll be busy later on.’

  Mma Soleti gestured for her guest to sit down. ‘There have been no clients for three days, Mma. Three days! I have been here every morning at eight to open up. I have stayed until one minute past five each day, and there have been no clients – not one, Mma.’

  Mma Ramotswe made a sympathetic clicking sound. She remembered such days in the first months of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’s existence. She remembered the leaping of the heart when it looked as if somebody might enter the door, a potential client, and then the awful sense of let-down when the passer-by proved to be just that – a passer-by.

  ‘And it’s not because they don’t need beauty treatments,’ continued Mma Soleti, before adding, with some solemnity, ‘I believe that the need has never been greater.’

  Mma Ramotswe puzzled as to the meaning of this last remark. Were people looking worse than before? Had there been some sudden and terrible deterioration in the general standard of looks – a widespread communal sagging of chins and stomachs? Was it something to do with the temperatures being endured in this late part of the hot season – an endemic drying out of skin and a melting of muscle into pools of flab?

  Mma Soleti made a frustrated gesture towards her stacks of supplies. ‘What’s the use of all this expensive stuff, Mma, if there is nobody to apply it to?’

  ‘That is a great pity, Mma,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘This beautiful salon and no clients… It is a great shame.’ She paused. ‘Do you think people are holding on to their money? Is it to do with that?’

  Mma Soleti was shaking her head vigorously. ‘No, it has nothing to do with money. It is because of the rumours that are being spread.’

  ‘Rumours about your salon, Mma?’

  ‘Yes. People are saying some very wicked things about my salon. Would you go to a beauty salon that everybody said bad things about?’

  Mma Ramotswe said that no business could survive a whispering campaign. At the back of her mind was a precise example, but what was it? It took a moment or two, but then she remembered. ‘That restaurant,’ she said. ‘The one that everybody used to say was so good. The one that had that very traditionally built chef.’

  Mma Soleti looked confused. ‘What has this got to do with restaurants, Mma?’

  ‘I was thinking of another business that had this problem, Mma. It was a restaurant out on the road to Molepolole. Somebody said that they were serving dogs as beef. They said they were going out at night and catching people’s dogs. The next day the dogs would be on the menu, but not as dogs, of course. Now they were cattle.’

  Mma Soleti’s eyes widened. ‘That is a very wicked thing to do,’ she said. ‘I’m glad that I never went to that place.’

  Mma Ramotswe found it hard not to laugh. ‘Hold on, Mma,’ she said. ‘You’ve fallen into the same trap as everybody else. You believed a rumour.’

  ‘But you said —’

  ‘No, Mma, I said that those poor people whose business collapsed were the victims of a made-up story.’

  Mma Soleti wrinkled her nose. ‘I would not like to eat dog,’ she said.

  ‘Some people like it,’ observed Mma Ramotswe. ‘I would not like to eat dog either, but then you know, some people do.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Mma Soleti. ‘Dogs are meant to be our friends, and you shouldn’t eat your friends.’

  ‘As a general rule, you should not,’ said Mma Ramotswe. She sensed that the conversation was drifting – just as it sometimes did when she was in discussion with Mma Makutsi, who might suddenly start talking about what happened in Bobonong or at the Botswana Secretarial College, or something of that sort, while all the time you were hoping to talk about the matter in hand.

  ‘What have they been saying about your salon, Mma?’

  The question brought pain. ‘It is very unkind,’ said Mma Soleti. ‘And it’s untrue too. They say that I put the wrong cream on somebody and her face came off – actually peeled right off. That is what they have all been saying.’ She waited for the enormity of the defamation to sink in before she continued. ‘Your face can’t peel off, Mma. It isn’t possible. People who know about faces will know that.’

  Instinctively, Mma Ramotswe raised a hand to her cheek as if to reassure herself that it was still there. There would be a lot to peel off in her case, not that there was any danger of that ever happening – if Mma Soleti were to be believed.

  ‘I heard the story from the woman who sells vegetables over on the other side of the road,’ Mma Soleti went on to exp
lain. ‘She said that she heard it from two different people. They both said, “Don’t ever go to that place – there is a woman now who has no face left because of her.” That is what she said, Mma. She said that she was only telling me about it because she thought I should know what people were saying.’

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head in disbelief. ‘People can be very foolish,’ she said. ‘They believe everything they hear; they don’t ask themselves whether it can be true.’

  ‘And then I have a daughter, Mma, as you might know,’ continued Mma Soleti. ‘She came home from school crying. She said that there were girls whispering the same story to each other, looking at her and sniggering. The children said that somebody had found this woman’s face in a bucket. She was very upset.’

  ‘This is very bad, Mma,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘But I don’t think you should leap to any conclusions.’

  ‘I have not leapt to any conclusions,’ retorted Mma Soleti. ‘All that I am saying is that it is the same person – it is the same person who sent me the feather. That is the person who has started this wicked rumour about my salon.’ She looked at Mma Ramotswe defiantly. ‘There can be no doubt about that, Mma.’

  ‘That is a conclusion, Mma,’ ventured Mma Ramotswe, thinking of what Clovis Andersen said in the very first chapter of The Principles of Private Detection. He wrote: You wouldn’t leap on to the first bus or train that came along without knowing its destination, would you? Find out the evidence first, examine the possibilities, and then see if you have grounds to draw a conclusion. It was sound advice – like all the advice that Clovis Andersen offered in his book. What a nice man he was, too, thought Mma Ramotswe nostalgically. And to think that she and Mma Makutsi had actually met him, had sat with him drinking tea – a man who had written a book had sat talking to them and had been so courteous in his manner. That was what Americans were really like, she reflected. Not some of the Americans you saw on the cinema screens who were always shouting at people and chasing one another in cars – not those Americans, but the Americans like Clovis Andersen who listened politely and spoke without shouting.

  Sensing that her version of events was doubted, Mma Soleti issued a challenge. ‘Well, who else could it be, Mma?’

  Mma Ramotswe suggested that the rumour might not have been started deliberately. ‘These stories can start in all sorts of ways,’ she said. ‘Somebody may think they’ve heard something, or may hear half a story and then decide it ends in such and such a way. They may not know that they’re spreading a rumour; they may think it is true, Mma.’

  Mma Soleti gave a snort. It was only too clear to her. ‘It is the same person, Mma. It is that person who sent me the feather. I am very sure of it.’

  Mma Ramotswe had to admit that it was a possibility, but when pressed to come up with a suggestion as to how to identify the author of Mma Soleti’s misfortunes, she could only think of a list of enemies. It was not a very novel idea, she had to admit, but it could throw up something useful.

  Mma Soleti received the suggestion thoughtfully. ‘I am not a lady with many enemies, Mma,’ she said. ‘But I shall try to think.’

  ‘It is not always easy to know our enemies,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘I think that is because enemies are often enemies for no real reason, and so we do not think they exist.’

  ‘But all the time they are there?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Soleti had already reached for a pad of paper. ‘I had an enemy at school,’ she said. ‘It was when we were very young – maybe seven or eight. There was a girl who hated me for some reason. She used to creep up behind me and pinch me. I was very upset by it.’

  ‘That is quite understandable,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘Has she continued to be your enemy?’

  Mma Soleti shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen her for many years. But she might still be —’

  Mma Ramotswe cut her short. ‘No, Mma. We are not looking for an enemy from back then. Usually people forget the enemies they had as children. Sometimes they become good friends.’

  Mma Soleti had thought of somebody. ‘There is a neighbour,’ she said. ‘She says that my children stole her paw-paws. That is not true, but I can see that she still thinks it.’

  Mma Ramotswe was doubtful. ‘Those little arguments between neighbours are usually not enough to make somebody do something like this. Can you not think of somebody who has a really good reason to dislike you enough to want to harm you?’

  Mma Soleti looked up at the ceiling. ‘Maybe,’ she said, rather distantly.

  Mma Ramotswe waited.

  ‘There is that woman,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Which woman?’ asked Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Soleti assumed an expression of disgust. ‘The one who says that I stole her husband.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘And where did she get that idea from, Mma?’

  ‘It was what happened,’ said Mma Soleti. ‘But he was ready to be stolen, Mma.’

  Chapter Eleven

  The Nothing Vacuum Cleaner

  That evening Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, garagiste saviour of countless marginal vehicles, husband, foster father and citizen of Botswana, enrolled at a community improvement course hosted by the University of Botswana. The course was not at the forefront of the university’s offerings to the people of Gaborone; more prominent on that list were popular courses in the History of Post-Independence Botswana, in the Flora and Fauna of the Kalahari, and in the Management of the Domestic Budget. Those were in the top rank in terms of popularity and acclaim; below that were second-ranking courses in Personal Self-Presentation, Managing the Small Business, and First Aid. Finally came the course on which Mr J. L. B. Matekoni had embarked: How to Be a Modern Husband (Level 1). There was no Level 2 of that course, although it had been talked about and the organisers had promised that it would be offered if demand was there.

  The Modern Husband course was held in one of the old classrooms, away from the large buildings that had sprung up in the later phases of the university’s development. The old buildings were redolent of the city in its more comfortable days, when structures tended to grow outwards rather than upwards. Low squat buildings, painted uniformly white and shaded by wide eaves, were linked to one another by walkways shielded from the sun and, more rarely, from downpours of rain by arched tin roofs. Now the students sat through their lectures in the greater comfort of new lecture theatres, leaving the old classrooms for the occasional use of less popular subjects and, as in this case, outside courses.

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni felt slightly awkward as he parked his aged green truck in the parking lot outside the classrooms. He had every right to be there – as a taxpayer, and a scrupulously conscientious one at that, he paid for at least some of all this, and as a prospective member of a university-hosted evening class he was, in a sense, a student. In spite of this, though, he felt that this was not his world. This was the world of the new Botswana, of the young people who would go on to do things that he would never have dreamed of doing – to be lawyers and accountants, and even doctors, now that the medical school had been opened. In his day, such things had seemed hopelessly remote – the preserve of those who could go off on government scholarships over the border or even overseas. They had not been for somebody like him, the young man from Molepolole who had never dreamed of being anything other than a mechanic.

  But now, as he turned off the ignition and the truck’s engine coughed into silence, he considered how far he had come. He had his own business, a house, a wife, two foster children who gave him joy, and a reasonable balance in a savings account with the Standard Bank. Of these assets, there was no doubt in his mind that the one he valued most was his wife, Precious Ramotswe, daughter of the late Obed Ramotswe of Mochudi, and owner of her own, perhaps somewhat shakier business, the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. He was so proud of her, and he would willingly sacrifice everything – everything – if he were ever required to choose between Mma Ramotswe and all that he possessed. Al
though they had been married for some years now, he could hardly believe his luck in finding somebody like her; he could hardly believe that she had agreed to marry him, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, when he felt that she could have married virtually anybody else in Botswana, had she wanted to. But somehow she had said yes to him, and as a result he had found a happiness that he had never thought was attainable on this side of the great divide that separated those of us who were still alive from those who, being late, were now in a much better place, wherever that was. It was not for him, he thought, to speculate on that location, or even to talk about it. It was somewhere above Botswana, perhaps, or even in Botswana, in those places that you found were special because they somehow felt special: places where you sensed the presence of those who had gone before; some hill with granite rock smoothed by countless rainy seasons; some place of trees and shade where the cattle liked to cluster; some place where there was human silence and you imagined, for some odd reason, that you could actually hear the air.

  It was because he valued Mma Ramotswe so highly that he had now taken this step, encouraged, it must be admitted, by Mma Potokwani – who had always pushed him about for various purposes. It was because he wanted to please the wife he loved and to make her life easier that he sought this advice on how to be a modern husband. And now, looking out of his dusty truck window, he saw that there were several other husbands in need of modernisation sitting in their vehicles, all sent there, no doubt, by their wives, or by friends of their wives, all waiting the ten minutes or so before the class was due to start. It was understandable embarrassment, perhaps, that kept them sitting in their cars rather than standing outside in one of the loose groups that men like to stand about in. Going to a course of this nature was in a way an admission that one needed help, and not everybody wanted to be seen in a throng of the needy.