To the Land of Long Lost Friends

by Alexander McCall Smith

  The discussion with Mma Makutsi had not changed her view that if a man liked to eat meat, then you would have to be gentle in getting him to change his views. You should not say, “No more meat!” as some people argued you should do. Rather, you should work at it slowly, showing him that there were many other delicious meals he might enjoy. There were all sorts of pasta—the supermarket where she did her shopping was full of these things, and there were any number of sauces you could add. And then, when you served meat you might cut down on the size of the servings in such a way that the man might not notice—until it was too late. Then, when only a sliver of beef appeared on his plate, you might say, “Is it worth bothering with such a thin piece of meat?” and answer your own question firmly, saying, “No, it would be simpler if we had just the vegetables,” and then change the subject quickly so that he would have no time to argue the point. And the next day would be a day for pasta, with no sign of beef in the sauce, but with plenty of tomatoes, which, being red, were of a colour that men tended to like.

  That night, though, dinner was composed of beef and pumpkin, even if there was less beef than usual, and rather more pumpkin. As they sat down to the meal, Mma Ramotswe said grace, which she sometimes missed when the children were not at the table.

  “We think of our brothers and sisters who have nothing,” she said. “We think of people who have lost what little they have. We think of those who go to bed hungry tonight. Let us not forget those brothers and sisters as we sit down to our meal.”

  She had been looking down at her plate as she spoke the grace, and now she looked up as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni raised his eyes and muttered, “Amen.” Then he said, “Those are good words, Mma. It is good to think of those who are not as fortunate as we are.”

  “It is, Rra,” she said. “We need to remind ourselves from time to time of our good fortune.”

  “And think of the many men who do not get much meat,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, looking down at his plate.

  Mma Ramotswe was silent at first, but then she said, “This is very good pumpkin, Rra. It was the best they had in the supermarket. The biggest, I think. There was enough for three days.”

  “It’s these agricultural scientists,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “They’re developing new varieties of pumpkins all the time.”

  Normally, she might have replied to that. Pumpkins were a subject of some interest to her, but that evening her own words, the words of the grace she had uttered just a few moments ago, came back to her. We think of our brothers and sisters…She thought of Calviniah, and of their conversation over lunch, under that tree, with the doves in its branches. Our brothers and sisters…There were some people who laughed at religion, who said it was all about nothing, a nonsense dreamed up by the superstitious and the fearful, but that, really, was what it was about. It was about love and friendship rather than about selfishness and suffering. Calviniah, an old friend, was her sister; just as much as her half-sister down in Lobatse, or Mma Makutsi, or the woman who sold oranges on the roadside outside Tlokweng, or the woman who read the news on Botswana television, the woman who was far too thin by traditional Botswana standards, but who had a very pretty face that made men get up close to the television to see more of it. All of these people, known and unknown, obscure and renowned, were her sisters. And their brothers were her brothers too: the man you saw outside the Princess Marina Hospital, who had pustules all over his skin, the man who stood guard in the supermarket to stop people from sampling the food as they pushed their trolleys down the aisles, the prisoner she had seen staring despondently out of the police truck as he was taken to the magistrates’ court for sentencing—all of these were her brothers, with all that brotherhood entailed.

  She sighed. It was hard sometimes, because some of the people who were meant to be your brothers and sisters were difficult people, dirty in some cases, selfish and calculating in others, even smelly, but they were still your brothers and had to be treated as such. There were no exceptions; you were not told, You must love your neighbour—provided, of course, that he is presentable and not too noisy and does not drink or smell or wipe his nose on his sleeve…You were told, You must love your neighbour. And then, just as you managed that, you were given the even more difficult instruction, You must love your enemies. That was a hurdle at which many people fell, because one thing was always abundantly clear: your enemies did not love you. But you had to grit your teeth and love them, even if your enemy was somebody like Violet Sephotho, with her husband-stealing and her nakedly self-centred ambitions. If she were to go to Trevor Mwamba himself, who had been the Bishop of Botswana, and say to him, “Do I really have to love Violet Sephotho?” he would incline his head and say, “I’m afraid you must, Precious.” And she would do it for Bishop Mwamba, she would try to love even Violet, although she would not pretend it would be easy. At the same time, of course, that might be just too much of a request to make of Mma Makutsi. Mma Ramotswe would not like to have to say to her, “Violet Sephotho is your sister, Mma,” because the reaction she should expect would not be a positive one.

  Calviniah…Calviniah was her sister, and at lunch she had made a request of her. It was not uttered as a request—not in words that were normally used for asking—but the intention behind it was as clear as if it had been spelled out.

  She looked at Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Calviniah,” she said. “The woman who was at the wedding.”

  “The one you thought was late?”

  “Yes. That lady. I had lunch with her.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “What did you have?” He looked at his plate again. “Meat?”

  Mma Ramotswe did not answer the question. “She’s unhappy.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni waited. If a woman was unhappy, in his experience this could mean that there was a badly behaved man in the background. That was not always the case, but it was often so.

  “She has a daughter,” Mma Ramotswe continued. “She works as a diamond sorter.”

  “She won’t be unhappy about that,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “That’s a very good job. Lots of people would give anything for that job.”

  “I know that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The daughter must be pleased. But I don’t think it’s anything to do with the job.”

  “Illness?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Is she sick?”

  “No, I don’t think it’s that. The daughter has become very unfriendly towards her. Calviniah cannot understand why.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni finished the last piece of meat on his plate. “Children can break your heart,” he said. “I knew a man whose son did not speak to him for ten years. Then he came home and expected his father to give him money. After ten years of silence.”

  “Why?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Why would you not speak to your father for ten years?”

  “An argument over cattle,” replied Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. He smiled. “Cattle never argue over people, but people always argue over cattle.”

  “I think Calviniah was asking for help,” she said. “I think she wants me to do something.”

  “You could speak to her, I suppose,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

  “I could. But she might just tell me to mind my own business. People don’t like outsiders to interfere in their private family business.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni said that he understood that.

  “But I still have to do something,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And there’s another thing…” She mentioned Poppy, the woman who had lost all her money.

  “Money lost is money lost,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Then he said, “Poppy?”

  “Yes. She was at school with us in Mochudi. She went to Francistown.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni pushed his empty plate across the table. “I know about that woman.”

  Mma Ramotswe frowned. “There will be many Poppies. It is a popular name.”

  “No, it is the sam
e one,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “She had a big store up in Francistown. There would not be two Poppies who had a store.”

  Mma Ramotswe asked him whether he knew how she had lost her money.

  “She met a man,” he said. “He was called Flat. That was his name; it was not a nickname. Flat Ponto. He used to work in the motor trade. He was quite a good mechanic, but he had a reputation for being lazy. You know how it is with some people—they’re good at what they do, but they don’t do enough of it.”

  Mma Ramotswe laughed. “I’ve known people like that, Rra. If people had batteries, then you might think that theirs needed charging. Not enough energy.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked down at his plate again. “Perhaps they’re not getting enough meat, you know. Sometimes that’s the explanation.”

  There was silence.

  “Meat has lots of iron in it,” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni continued. “Iron makes your muscles strong. It gives you the energy you need to do things.” He paused. “I’m not saying that’s always the explanation, but I think that in some cases—some cases, Mma—that might be what’s happening.”

  “Possibly,” said Mma Ramotswe, looking straight ahead. “But this man she met…the mechanic, the iron-deficient one…”

  “He became very religious,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “He joined one of those marching churches, but I think he found all that marching a bit too much.”

  “Perhaps it required too much energy,” remarked Mma Ramotswe. “And this poor man, with his iron problem, couldn’t keep up.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “Something like that happened, I expect. Anyway, you know what he did? He started his own church. He called it the Church of Christ, Mechanic.”

  Mma Ramotswe’s eyes opened wide with astonishment. “What a strange name, Rra. What did he mean?”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni shrugged. “He was not trying to be funny, Mma. He thought that it was a good name. He thought that Jesus would have been a mechanic if there had been cars. He was a carpenter, you see.”

  “I know that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And this church of his—did anybody join?”

  “Oh, yes. There were many people who joined. Two hundred, I heard.”

  Mma Ramotswe thought for a few moments. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose. I don’t think that God really cares what church you belong to. I think it’s much the same to him whether you are Christian or Jewish or Muslim. He listens to everybody, I think.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni thought that she was right. He was not a man with a very sophisticated theology, and there were times when he had his serious doubts. But when all was said and done he thought that there was something beyond us, something other than the human, and that if you closed your eyes and thought about this thing long enough you could hear its voice within you. That was enough for him.

  “One of my customers goes to his church,” he went on. “He is very pleased with it. He said that they have a big braai every Sunday lunch time, with lots of sausages. They go to the Notwane River in the rainy season, otherwise they have their picnic near the dam. And they sing hymns while they eat the sausages. He says it is very spiritual. That’s the word he used, Mma—spiritual. They do the baptism in the river or the dam. They put them right under the water, still wearing their clothes.”

  She pictured the scene. She saw a river and the sinners being led into the water and being submerged, and all the time the people on the banks would be singing and eating sausages. She smiled.

  “There are worse things to do on a Sunday,” she said. “It is better to be doing those spiritual things than sitting idly at home or in some shebeen somewhere, drinking.”

  He agreed. “You’re right, Mma. I was not criticising this man and his church. But I would say, though, that he seemed to do quite well out of it all.”

  Mma Ramotswe’s antennae homed in on this. Africa was full of prophets who had done well out of their prophecy. Other places, too, had the same problem—not just Africa. She had discovered a wonderful English word for which there seemed to be no precise Setswana equivalent—charlatan. She savoured the sound of it—charlatan. It seemed to describe a certain sort of person very accurately, she thought. Was this man, this Flat, a charlatan?

  “My customer told me that they were very happy in the church,” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni said. “He said that the Reverend Flat Ponto had converted a very rich woman to the church and that she had given him a car for use in his ministry.”

  Mma Ramotswe groaned. It was a familiar story. Rich women, it seemed, made the same mistake time and time again: whether they were ensnared by a natty dancer or a smart dresser or a minister who had invented his own church, the aim of the man was always the same—to part the rich woman from as large a proportion of her funds as possible before her family or friends were able to intervene. She had seen this happen on more than one occasion, and it never ended well. Oh, there were stories where the scheming man was exposed in time, but those were only stories. In real life it did not happen that way. The man got the money and the woman was left high and dry.

  “And you’re sure this lady was Poppy?” she asked.

  He nodded. “That’s what my customer said.”

  Mma Ramotswe groaned again. “And the car? Was it…” She hesitated. You should not be prejudiced against one sort of car, because cars are innocent—they know no better. But it was no use beating about the bush. “Was it a Mercedes-Benz?”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not need to respond; she saw the answer in his eyes.

  “It was,” he said. “A new one, too.”

  Mma Ramotswe rolled her eyes. “Oh, the foolishness of women,” she muttered. “I mean, the foolishness of some women.”

  “And men,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “There are some very foolish men.”

  She said that he was right. Foolishness was something that afflicted men and women equally. Neither sex had the monopoly of wisdom, she said, although on balance she thought that women might perhaps have just a little bit more sense than men. But only a little bit, and it was not a point that she would care to make, normally, as Mma Ramotswe liked men, just as she liked women, and did not think it helpful to put a wedge between them. People were people first and foremost, she felt, and it was only after you had judged them as people that you should notice whether they were wearing a skirt or trousers, not that that was grounds for distinction these days.

  She looked up. “Have you ever seen a man wearing a skirt, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni?” she asked.

  His face registered his puzzlement. “I have not seen that, Mma. And why would a man want to wear a skirt? What’s the point of that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Men sometimes do strange things, of course.” She was certain of that, at least; the strangeness of human behaviour was something of which anybody following her calling would be only too well aware. Anything, it seemed, was possible, such was human ingenuity in the pursuit of its goals. Mma Potokwane had once expressed views on this, saying that nothing would ever surprise her when it came to human nature. She remembered her friend’s words. “People are very odd, Mma Ramotswe. They think odd thoughts and they do odd things. You can never be sure with people.” Mma Potokwane was right, as she almost always was. She knew these things because she had been a matron for so long and had looked after children in whose lives, in the background, was almost every conceivable human disappointment and tragedy.

  He shrugged. “If they want to wear ladies’ clothes,” he said, “then I suppose they should be allowed to do so.” He shook his head. “Although I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re underneath a car fixing it. Overalls are the answer, Mma, for that sort of thing—for both men and women. Overalls.”

  Overalls, thought Mma Ramotswe. Was that the answer to all these issues that people were worrying away at—issues of who was a man and who was a woman? If we all were to
wear overalls, would that argument simply go away? It would be nice to think that it would, as Mma Ramotswe wanted people to be happy in whatever way they needed to be happy, but somehow she doubted whether the provision of overalls for everybody was really the answer.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MONDAY, NOTHING; TUESDAY, NOTHING

  THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED this conversation with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni were unusually quiet ones in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

  “Something will turn up,” said Mma Makutsi, as she stared idly out of the office window. “It always does, I find.”

  Seated at her desk, Mma Ramotswe looked at the empty pages of her diary. Monday, nothing; Tuesday, nothing; and so on, stretching out to an indeterminate future. “People often say that business is either famine or feast,” she said. “And I think that’s right, Mma Makutsi.”

  “It definitely is,” said Mma Makutsi. “Phuti says that it’s the same in the furniture business. One moment everybody is desperate to buy beds and sofas and so forth. Then, the next day, nothing. No sales. It’s as if everybody who could possibly want a bed or a sofa has got one. And you think, Is this the end of the business?”

  Mma Ramotswe did not like to say that this was exactly the question that had occurred to her. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency did not make a great deal of money. Indeed, at the end of most months, when the books were examined and outgoings subtracted from sums received, the resulting profit, if any, was minuscule. That did not matter too much, of course, as long as salaries were covered; they had no rent to pay, the office being attached to the premises of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, which was owned by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. If one had to have a landlord, then there was a very good case for having one’s husband as one’s landlord.