The Miracle at Speedy Motors

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Mma Ramotswe’s musings were interrupted by the sound of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck returning. She could always tell when he came back, as the truck’s engine had a particular note to it—a whining sound that he insisted was quite normal but seemed to her to be an indication of mechanical trouble of some sort. And Charlie thought so too, as he had raised it with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni at tea one morning and had been told that there was nothing wrong.

  “I think you are in denial, Boss,” Charlie had said.

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked puzzled. “Denial? What am I denying? You’re the one who’s in denial, Charlie. What about those exams you have to take if you are to finish your apprenticeship? What about those?”

  “I will do those exams some day, Boss. They will still be there.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni said, “Then you will never finish your apprenticeship. You will be the oldest apprentice in the country. In fact, you will be a retired apprentice eventually.”

  Charlie ignored this. “There is something wrong with your truck, Rra. I can hear it. Even Mma Ramotswe can hear it, and she is just a woman.”

  Mma Ramotswe had let that pass; there was no point in engaging with Charlie on these matters, she thought. And Charlie was right about the truck and its engine sound. There was something wrong, even if Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni seemed unwilling to face it.

  The engine was switched off and the whining stopped. A few moments later Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni put his head round the door. “Wonderful rain, Mma Ramotswe. You should see the storm drains up near Maru-a-Pula—they were like a big river. Like the Limpopo itself. That much water.”

  She nodded. “It is very good. Maybe we’ll have a good season this year.”

  “We can hope.”

  She looked at her husband, noticing that his shirt was wet and was sticking to his skin. There was something strange about his manner; something almost elated. Was he just pleased about the rain, she wondered, or was there something else? “You must dry yourself off, Rra,” she said. “You shouldn’t stand around in wet clothes.”

  “Rain harms nobody,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And I am not that wet. Just a little.”

  There was still something about him, something she could not put her finger on. The apprentice had told her that he had rushed off to start an important car and now he was back, looking as if something nice had happened to him.

  “Where have you been, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni? You are looking very happy, I think.”

  He smiled. “I have been to help somebody with his car. It would not start and he had to get somewhere in a hurry. I managed to get it started.”

  She waited for further explanation, but none came.

  “Whose car?”

  He frowned. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not like to be quizzed: “I am not one of your suspects,” he had protested once. “You must not talk to me with your detective shoes on.”

  “One of my customers,” he said.

  “I see.” She fixed him with her gaze, and he shifted on his feet.

  “He is a doctor.”

  She did not lower her gaze. “Dr. Moffat? You’ve been helping Dr. Moffat?”

  “No,” he said. “Not him. Another doctor.” He paused, and then suddenly moved across the room, picked up the client’s chair, moved it to the front of Mma Ramotswe’s desk, and sat down.

  “There is something we need to talk about,” he said, leaning forward in the chair. “It is very important.”

  Mma Ramotswe felt her heart miss a beat. Something very important. He was ill; that was it. And yet there was this look about him, this look of excitement. If he was ill, then surely he would look despondent.

  She remembered suddenly what Dr. Moffat had told her when he had treated Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni for depression a few years earlier. “Sometimes this illness comes with periods of elation,” he had said. “A person can feel very excited, very cheerful. He can rush round on all sorts of wild schemes, thinking he can conquer the world. You have to watch for that.”

  She had never seen that in Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, but now she found herself wondering whether this was what was happening. She tried to keep her voice steady as she told him that she was ready to listen; he could tell her whatever it was that he needed to tell her.

  He looked her in the eyes. “I went to see this doctor,” he said.

  He could take a long time to tell a story. Often there was a lot of background information before he got started. She would be patient. “Yes. The one with the car that wouldn’t start? You went to see him.”

  “He is a good man,” he went on. “He was a doctor up in Selebi-Phikwe, at the mines, but now he is retired. He is living just outside town. Near David Mgang’s place. Out that way.”

  There were some big houses out there, thought Mma Ramotswe. This doctor had done well for himself. But she did not say that; she just said, “Out there. I know that place.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “He has a nice place out there. His wife is late, but he has a son and his son’s wife living with him, and there are many grandchildren. All in that house.”

  “They must be happy,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is a good thing to have one’s grandchildren around you when you have finished working. You can see the results of all your hard work then.”

  He nodded, and then became silent. It was as if he was thinking about the grandchildren, and the rewards of hard work.

  “So?” said Mma Ramotswe gently.

  The verbal nudge seemed to focus him again. “Yes,” he said. “After I had got the car going, the doctor asked me whether I had a wife.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded encouragingly. “And you said?”

  “I said, Yes, I have a wife.”

  “I am relieved,” she said.

  “And then he asked me whether I had any children. And I said there were no children of our own, but that we had the two foster children, and they were like a son and a daughter. I told him that Motholeli was in a wheelchair but that she was doing well. And then…”

  She was watching him. Now his eyes seemed to light up with pleasure.

  “And then?”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni leaned forward again. She noticed that the moisture from the rain had penetrated the cap of the pen which he had been carrying in his pocket so that the ink had run into the fabric of his shirt. That would be a difficult stain to remove; she would have to soak the shirt.

  “And then he asked me what was wrong with her and I told him. I told him what they had said at the hospital, that there had been…”

  He stumbled on the term, as if to utter it brought pain. Transverse myelitis of the spinal cord, leading to paralysis. She had looked at those words on the doctor’s letter so many times; she knew them so well. They were the words in which the sentence had been delivered; the sentence that meant that Motholeli would be in her wheelchair for the rest of her life.

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni repeated the name of the condition slowly, forcing his tongue round the awkward syllables. Then he sat back. “And he said that he had seen cases of that before.”

  Mma Ramotswe was non-committal. “I see. He knew about it.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded his head eagerly. “Then he said something very strange, Mma—something very exciting. He said, ‘I have dealt with cases like that. I have dealt with them satisfactorily.’ Those were his exact words. That is what he said.”

  She did not move. “Satisfactorily?”

  “Yes, satisfactorily. That very word.” He paused, watching the effect of what he was saying. Mma Ramotswe was quite still. “Then he said—remember he is a doctor, Mma—then he said, ‘You bring that child to me and I can get her to walk again.’ That is what he said, Mma Ramotswe. That is what he said. I am not making it up, I promise you. I can get her to walk again. I am telling the truth.”

  Of course you are telling the truth, thought Mma Ramotswe. And then she muttered, “Oh,” and then, “Oh,” again, and closed her eyes. She wanted Motholeli to walk again—she would have given anythin
g for that. But they had been told in the clearest terms by the doctors at the Princess Marina Hospital that this would never happen precisely because it could not happen. Dr. Moffat had explained it to them too, when she had raised it while having tea with his wife. He always spoke quietly, so quietly that people had to strain to catch what he was saying, but she had heard every word of what he had said on that occasion. “Once the infection has done its damage to the spinal cord, there is nothing that can be done. It is like a rope that has been cut in two. I’m sorry.”

  And she had said, “But can you not tie a rope together again?” She had said, “A rope can be mended.”

  “Then it is not like a rope,” he said. “It is different.”

  Mrs. Moffat had taken her hand, for comfort, and they had sat there in silence for a while. Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands, human hand in human hand, could help, could make the world seem less broken.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MMA RAMOTSWE GOES TO MOCHUDI, THAT PLACE SHE KNOWS SO WELL

  THE NEXT MORNING, when Mma Makutsi and Mma Ramotswe looked at one another across their desks, each felt herself to be the bearer of a heavy burden: each woman wanted to talk to the other, to seek advice and reassurance, but neither wanted to raise the subject of her distress. Mma Ramotswe thought of Mma Makutsi, She has not slept well, and now she is tired; something is preying on her mind; she can never hide it. And Mma Makutsi thought of Mma Ramotswe, Something is worrying her too. I can always tell. When Mma Ramotswe is worried, it is written on her face, in very big letters.

  For a few minutes they both pretended that all was well. Mma Makutsi, who had collected the mail from the post box, slit open the letters before putting them on her employer’s desk. “There is nothing interesting,” she said. “These are all bills, I think, Mma. That one is the water bill. And that one is the telephone bill. It is a day of bills. It is not a day of cheques.”

  Mma Ramotswe gazed at the envelopes. She always paid her bills promptly, but this morning she simply left them where they were, to be attended to later. Mma Makutsi, watching her, decided to speak. “I hope you don’t mind my saying it, Mma, but you are sad. There is something that is making your heart very heavy.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked up. “And you too, Mma. We are both sad today.”

  For a moment or two nothing further was said. Then Mma Ramotswe rose from her desk and shut the door into the garage. She turned and faced her assistant, who was looking at her expectantly.

  “There is nobody out there to hear us, Mma Ramotswe,” Mma Makutsi said. “There is just Charlie and the other one—and Mr. Polopetsi, of course. Nobody else.”

  Mma Ramotswe made a silencing gesture, raising a finger to her lips. How easily could Mr. Polopetsi be misread. “Mr. Polopetsi,” she whispered. “Mr. Polopetsi.”

  Mma Makutsi glanced at the door, as if she half expected Mr. Polopetsi to be listening on the other side, his ear stuck to the keyhole.

  “Mr. Polopetsi?”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Those letters,” she said, her voice still lowered. “Those threatening letters.” She paused. She had not intended to voice her suspicions to Mma Makutsi but now she felt that she had to. “He wrote them. It was Mr. Polopetsi.”

  Mma Makutsi let out a cry of surprise. Immediately she put a hand to her mouth in a gesture that was halfway between incredulity and shock.

  “Yes,” Mma Ramotswe continued, glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the garage. “When we were in the van I took his coat for him and another letter dropped out of his pocket. He said that he had picked it up and was going to give it to me, but he was very evasive. I could tell that what he said was not true.”

  Mma Makutsi’s eyes showed her disbelief. “Surely not. Surely not him.”

  Mma Ramotswe would have liked to agree. Surely it could not be the mild, inoffensive Mr. Polopetsi, but how could she ignore the evidence of her own eyes? “Well, the letter was in his pocket.”

  Mma Makutsi shook her head. It was impossible, she argued. Mr. Polopetsi was simply not a man to write a threatening letter to anybody. “It would be like…be like being threatened by a…by a rabbit, Mma. Yes, by a rabbit. Rabbits do not write threatening letters.”

  Mma Ramotswe had to smile at Mma Makutsi’s turn of phrase. Her assistant sometimes said extraordinary things, but every now and then she made some remark that described a situation beautifully. This was such a one. Mr. Polopetsi a rabbit…of course he was. But even if a rabbit were to write a threatening letter, might one not be frightened? After all, how was one to know that the letter came from a rabbit?

  “I don’t know, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I think that it was him, but I can’t think why he should have done it. Why? What have we done to harm Mr. Polopetsi?”

  Mma Makutsi shrugged, her initial surprise fading into indifference. She herself had not been frightened by that ridiculous letter, and if this was the problem that was worrying Mma Ramotswe, then Mma Ramotswe’s trouble was a minor one when compared with her own. “Ask him,” she said. “Just ask him whether he wrote them. See what he says.”

  Of course Mma Ramotswe had thought of this, but she felt that she could not challenge Mr. Polopetsi directly, no matter how damning the evidence against him seemed. She explained this to Mma Makutsi, reminding her that Mr. Polopetsi had already been wrongly accused once in his life—and had suffered imprisonment for it—so that she could not take the risk of making a second, possibly false, accusation. It was likely, she thought, that he was the writer of the letters, but it was still far from certain, and there was a difference between the likely and the certain. “How would he feel, Mma? How would he feel if he was telling the truth and I came up to him and accused him? How would he feel?”

  “But what if he thinks that you suspect him but aren’t saying anything? Won’t that be every bit as bad, Mma Ramotswe?”

  “I don’t believe he thinks that.”

  Mma Makutsi was not convinced. “If you like, Mma,” she said, “I can ask him for you. It won’t be so hard for him if he thinks that I am the one who suspects him. I am not his boss—I am just an associate detective.” She hesitated and Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment that she was going to raise the subject of promotion. It was bound to come up sooner or later and could easily occur in the midst of a discussion of something quite unconnected, such as the guilt, or innocence perhaps, of Mr. Polopetsi.

  “No,” said Mma Ramotswe hurriedly. “I don’t think so, Mma.” She had been standing beside Mma Makutsi’s desk during this conversation, and now she went back to her own chair and sat down. Now that she had confessed what was troubling her, she felt concern for Mma Makutsi. Sometimes her assistant was moody for no particular reason, but she did not think that this was one of those occasions. “And you, Mma Makutsi,” she said. “What about you? There is something troubling you, isn’t there?”

  MMA RAMOTSWE LISTENED in silence to the tale of woe that came tumbling out. Mma Makutsi described the purchase of the bed—“such an unusual bed, Mma, with its heart-shaped headboard and its double-thickness mattress.” She listened as Mma Makutsi told her of the failed attempt to get the bed through the door and the realisation that it would have to be taken elsewhere, perhaps to Phuti’s house, which was altogether larger and more accommodating.

  “If only I had phoned him and told him,” she said, her voice heavy with misery. “If only I had done that, Mma. He would have sent one of his trucks to pick it up and store it safely. But no, I didn’t do that. I just left it there, Mma, although I knew as well as anybody that it was the beginning of the rainy season. Oh, I am a very stupid woman, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe raised a hand. “Stop, Mma Makutsi. You cannot say that. You are not a stupid woman. Would a stupid woman have got ninety-seven per cent? Would she?”

  Mma Makutsi looked doubtful. Mma Ramotswe was right
about ninety-seven per cent: it was not the mark of a stupid woman. “Well, I was thoughtless on that occasion—put it that way, Mma. I just didn’t think.”

  “Anybody can forget something, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We are human, after all.”

  That, thought Mma Makutsi, was true. We were all human, even Mma Ramotswe herself, who was so kind and understanding and so quick with her forgiveness; even Mma Ramotswe could forget things and make mistakes. Her marriage to Note Mokoti had been a mistake, a big mistake, and there was that time she hit the tree when she was trying to park her tiny white van, and the occasion when she had put the wrong piece of paper in an envelope and sent a letter intended for person A to person B. That had been an unfortunate mistake, as in the letter to person A she had said that she thought it was person B who was stealing from the petty cash in person A’s office; very unfortunate, but very effective, as person B, alarmed at the discovery of his misdeeds, had immediately run away. That had sorted out the problem, but it was a mistake nonetheless.

  Remembering the mistakes, Mma Makutsi smiled.

  “Why are you smiling?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Do you not agree with what I said about mistakes?”

  “Oh, I do agree,” said Mma Makutsi. “I agree with you, Mma. It’s just that I was thinking about…” She hesitated for a moment before continuing, “I was thinking about your mistakes.”

  Mma Ramotswe was not offended. “I have made many of those,” she said. “I have made some very bad mistakes. I cannot hide that fact.”

  “Do you remember that letter?” asked Mma Makutsi. “The one in which you said—”

  Mma Ramotswe sank her head in her hands. “Oh no, Mma! Please do not remind me of that. I feel all hot and bothered when anybody reminds me of that.”

  “But it had a good result anyway,” said Mma Makutsi.