The Kalahari Typing School for Men

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “What I’m really wanting to find out,” went on Mma Ramotswe, “is whether you’re happy in your … in yourself. Are you getting what you want out of life?”

  Mma Makutsi thought for a moment. “I’m not sure what I want out of life,” she said after a while. “I used to think that I would like to be rich, but now that I’ve met some rich people I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Rich people are just people,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have not met a rich person yet who isn’t just the same as us. Being happy or unhappy has nothing to do with being rich.”

  Mma Makutsi nodded. “So now I think that happiness comes from somewhere else. It comes from somewhere inside.”

  “Somewhere inside?”

  Mma Makutsi adjusted her large spectacles. She was an avid reader and enjoyed a serious conversation of this sort, in which she would be able to bring up snippets that she had garnered from old issues of the National Geographic or the Mail and Guardian.

  “Happiness is found in the head,” she said, warming to the subject. “If the head is full of happiness, then the person is definitely happy. That is clearly true.”

  “And the heart?” ventured Mma Ramotswe. “Does the heart not come into it?”

  There was a silence. Mma Makutsi looked down, tracing a pattern with her finger on a dusty corner of her desktop. “The heart is the place where love happens,” she said quietly.

  Mma Ramotswe took a deep breath. “Would you not like to have a husband, Mma Makutsi?” she said gently. “Would it not make you happier to have a husband to look after you?” She paused and then added, “I was just wondering, that’s all.”

  Mma Makutsi looked at her. Then she took off her glasses and polished them with a corner of her handkerchief. It was a favourite handkerchief of hers—with lace at the edges—but now it was threadbare from so much use and could not last much longer. But she loved it still and would buy another one just like it when she had the money.

  “I would like to have a husband,” she said. “But there are many beautiful girls. They are the ones who are getting the husbands. There is nobody left over for me.”

  “But you are a very good-looking lady,” said Mma Ramotswe stoutly. “I am sure that there are many men who will agree with me.”

  Mma Makutsi shook her head. “I do not think so, Mma,” she said. “Although you are very kind to say that to me.”

  “Perhaps you should try to find a man,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Maybe you should be doing a bit more about it if no men are coming your way. Try to find them.”

  “Where?” asked Mma Makutsi. “Where are these men you are talking about?”

  Mma Ramotswe waved a hand in the direction of the door, and of Africa outside. “Out there,” she said. “There are men out there. You have to meet them.”

  “Where exactly?” asked Mma Makutsi.

  “In the middle of the town,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You see them sitting about at lunchtime. Men. Plenty of them.”

  “All married,” said Mma Makutsi.

  “Or in bars,” said Mma Ramotswe, feeling that the conversation was not taking the turn she had planned for it.

  “But you know what they are like in bars,” said Mma Makutsi. “Bars are full of men who are looking for bad girls.”

  Mma Ramotswe had to agree. Bars were full of men like Note Mokoti and his friends, and she would never wish anybody like that on Mma Makutsi. It would be far better to be single than to become involved with somebody who would only make you unhappy.

  “It is kind of you to think of me like this,” said Mma Makutsi after a while. “But you and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni mustn’t worry about me. I am happy enough, and if there is going to be somebody for me, then I am sure that I shall meet him. Then everything will change.”

  Mma Ramotswe grasped at the opportunity to bring the conversation to an end. “I’m sure that you are right,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” said Mma Makutsi.

  Mma Ramotswe busied herself with a sheaf of papers on her desk. She felt saddened by the air of defeat which seemed to descend upon her assistant whenever the conversation turned to her personal circumstances. There was no real need for Mma Makutsi to feel like this. She might have had difficulties in her life until now—certainly one should not underestimate what it must be like to grow up in Bobonong, that rather dry and distant place from where Mma Makutsi had come—but there were plenty of people who came from places like that and made something of their lives in spite of their origins. If you went through life thinking, I’m just a local girl from somewhere out in the bush, then what was the point of making any effort? We all had to come from somewhere, and most of us came from somewhere not particularly impressive. Even if you were born in Gaborone, you had to come from a particular house in Gaborone, and ultimately that meant that you came from just a small patch of the earth; and that was no different from any other patch of the earth anywhere else.

  Mma Makutsi should make more of herself, thought Mma Ramotswe. She should remember who she was—which was a citizen of Botswana, of the finest country in Africa, and one of the most distinguished graduates of the Botswana Secretarial College. Both of those were matters of which one could be justly proud. You could be proud to be a Motswana, because your country had never done anything of which to feel ashamed. It had conducted itself with complete integrity, even in times when it had to contend with neighbours in a state of civil war. It had always been honest, too, without that ruinous corruption that had shamed so many other countries in Africa, and which had bled away the wealth of an entire continent. They had never stooped to that, because Sir Seretse Khama, that great man whom her father had once greeted personally at Mochudi, had made it clear to every single citizen that there was to be no taking or giving of bribes, no dipping into money that belonged to the country. And everyone had listened to him and obeyed this precept because they could recognise in him the qualities of chiefly greatness which his forebears, the Khamas, had always possessed. Those qualities could not be acquired overnight, but they took generations to mature (whatever people said). That was why when Queen Elizabeth II met Seretse Khama, she knew immediately what sort of man he was. She knew because she could tell that he was the same sort of person as she was: a person who had been brought up to serve. Mma Ramotswe knew all this, but she sometimes wondered whether people who were slightly younger—people like Mma Makutsi—were aware of what a great man the first president of Botswana had been and of how he had been admired by the queen herself. Or would it mean anything to her? Would she understand?

  Mma Ramotswe was a royalist, of course. She admired monarchs, as long as they were respectable and behaved in the correct way. She admired the king of Lesotho, because he was a direct descendant of Moshoeshoe I, who had saved his country from the Boers and who had been a good, wise man (and modest, too—had he not described himself as the flea in the blanket of Queen Victoria?). She admired the old king of Swaziland, King Sobhuza II, who had had one hundred and forty-one wives, all at the same time. She admired him in spite of his having all those wives, which, after all, was a very traditional approach to life; she admired him because he loved his people and because he consistently refused to allow the death penalty to be exacted, always—with only one exception in his long reign, a most serious case of witchcraft murder—granting mercy at the last moment. (What sort of man, she wondered, could coldly say to another who was begging for his life: no, you must die?) There were other kings and queens, of course, not just African ones. There was the late queen of Tonga, who was a very special queen, because she was so fat. Mma Ramotswe had seen a picture of her in an encyclopaedia, and it had covered two pages, so wide was the queen. And there was the Dutch queen, of whom she had seen a photograph in a magazine, enigmatically described in the caption below the picture as the Orange Queen. And indeed she had been wearing a dark orange outfit and two-tone orange-and-brown shoes. Mma Ramotswe thought that she might like to meet that queen, who looked so cheerful and smiled so warmly (and wh
at, she wondered, was this House of Orange in which this queen was said to live?). Maybe she would come to Botswana one day, in her two-tone shoes perhaps; but one should not hope too much. Nobody came to Botswana, because people just did not know about it. They had not heard. They just had not heard.

  Mma Makutsi might do well to reflect on the example of this Orange Queen, with her pleasant smile and self-evidently optimistic outlook. She should remind herself that even if she did come from Bobonong, she had put that behind her and was now a person who lived in the capital, in Gaborone itself. She should also remind herself that even if she thought that her complexion was too dark, there were plenty of men who were very happy with women who looked that way rather than those pallid creatures one sometimes saw who had made their skins look blotchy with lightening creams. And as for those large glasses which Mma Makutsi wore, there might be some who would find them a little bit intimidating, but many other men simply would fail to notice them, in much the same way as they failed to notice what women were wearing in general, no matter what efforts women made with their clothing.

  The trouble with men, of course, was that they went about with their eyes half closed for much of the time. Sometimes Mma Ramotswe wondered whether men actually wanted to see anything, or whether they decided that they would notice only the things that interested them. That was why women were so good at tasks which required attention to the way people felt. Being a private detective, for example, was exactly the sort of job at which a woman could be expected to excel (and look at the success of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency). That was because women watched and tried to understand what was going on in people’s minds. Of course there were some men who could do this—one thought immediately of Clovis Andersen, author of The Principles of Private Detection, Mma Ramotswe’s well-thumbed copy of which occupied pride of place on the shelf behind her desk. Clovis Andersen must be a most sympathetic man, Mma Ramotswe thought; more like a woman, in many ways, with his advice to study people’s clothing carefully. (There are many clues in what people wear, he wrote. Our clothes reveal a great deal about us. They talk. A man who wears no tie does not dress that way because he has no tie—he probably has an appreciable number of ties in his wardrobe at home—he is wearing no tie because he has chosen to do so. That means that he wishes to appear casual.) Mma Ramotswe had found that a puzzling passage and had wondered where it was leading. She was not sure what one could deduce from the fact that a man wished to appear casual, but she was sure that, like all the observations of Clovis Andersen, this was in some way important.

  She looked up from her desk and glanced at Mma Makutsi, who was busying herself with the typing of a letter which Mma Ramotswe had drafted, in pencil, earlier on. We must try to help her, she thought. We must try to persuade her to value herself more than she does at present. She was a fine woman, with great talents, and it was absurd that she should go through life thinking less of herself because she had no husband. That was such a waste. Mma Makutsi deserved to be happy. She deserved to have something to look forward to other than a bleak existence in one room in Old Naledi; a room that she shared with her sick brother, and into which no light came. Everybody deserved more than that, even in this unlucky world, a world which had brought such rewards to Mma Ramotswe but which seemed to be grudging in its appreciation of Mma Makutsi. We shall change all that, thought Mma Ramotswe, because it is possible to change the world, if one is determined enough, and if one sees with sufficient clarity just what it is that has to be changed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LEARN TO DRIVE WITH JESUS

  L IFE AT Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors (and, indeed, at the No. 1

  Ladies’ Detective Agency) was returning to normal. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had resumed his old practice of coming in to work shortly before seven in the morning, and would already be prostrate on his inspection board shining a torch up into a car’s underbelly by the time the two apprentices arrived at eight o’clock. Their contract of apprenticeship stipulated that they should work eight hours a day, with time off for study every three months, but Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had given up expecting them to comply with this. Certainly they arrived at eight and left at five, which made nine hours each day, but from this total there was deducted an hour for lunch, and two tea breaks of forty-five minutes each. It was the tea breaks that were the problem, but any attempt to insist on a far shorter break had been met with sullen resistance. Eventually he had given up; he was a generous man and did not like conflict.

  “You may have it easy here,” he had warned them on more than one occasion, “but don’t think that all bosses are like this. When you finish your apprenticeship—if you finish—then you’ll have to find another job, a real job, and you’ll learn all about it then.”

  “Learn about what, boss?” asked the older apprentice, smiling conspiratorially at his friend.

  “About the working world,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “About what it’s like to be kept really hard at it.”

  The older apprentice rolled his eyes in mock horror. “But you’ll keep us on here, won’t you, boss? You couldn’t do without us, could you?”

  The arrival of Mma Makutsi as acting manager of the garage had brought about a change, even if the long tea breaks survived. She had quickly shown that she would take no nonsense from the two apprentices, and they had rapidly abandoned their slovenly ways. Mma Ramotswe had been unable to work out what lay behind the change, so dramatic was it; she had assumed that it was something to do with working for a woman, which may have encouraged them to show what they could do, but she had eventually thought that it was something deeper than that. Certainly the two boys had wanted to impress her, but it seemed, too, that she had instilled in them a real pride in their work. Now, with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni back in the garage, both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi were anxious to see whether the change would prove to be permanent.

  “Those two boys are much better,” remarked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni shortly after his return. “They’re still a bit lazy, which is probably just their nature, and they still talk endlessly about girls, which may also be their nature, come to think of it. But I think that their work is much neater … much less … less …”

  “Greasy?” prompted Mma Ramotswe.

  “Yes,” agreed Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “That’s it. They used to be so messy, as you know, but now that’s all changed. And they’re also not so brutal with the engines. They seem to have learned something while I was away.”

  And there were further changes—changes of which Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni as yet had no inkling. It was Mma Ramotswe, in fact, who first became aware that something had happened, and she sought confirmation from Mma Makutsi before she made any remark to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Mma Makutsi was astonished; she had been too busy to have noticed, she remarked in her defence, otherwise she would surely have picked up something like that. Now, after she had spoken discreetly to Charlie, the elder of the two apprentices, she was able to confirm Mma Ramotswe’s suspicions.

  “You’re right,” she said. “The younger one has heard about the Lord. And he was the one who was by far the worst with the girls—always going on about them, remember—and now there he is, joined up to one of those marching churches. The Lord told him to do it, Charlie said. He’s surprised, too. He’s very disappointed that he doesn’t seem to be too keen to talk about girls anymore. Charlie doesn’t like that.”

  The news was passed on to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who sighed. These apprentices were a mystery to him, and he looked forward to the day when they would be off his hands, if that day were ever to come. Life had become much more complicated for him, and he was not sure whether he liked it that way. In the past it had been simple: he had been alone at the garage and had only himself to worry about. Now there were Mma Makutsi, the two apprentices, and Mma Ramotswe, and that was even before one took into account the two orphans whose fostering he had arranged. That had been a very rash act on his part, although it was not one which he really regretted. The children were so hap
py staying in Mma Ramotswe’s house on Zebra Drive that it would have been churlish beyond measure to begrudge them that. But, even then, to go from being responsible for one person, himself, to being responsible for seven was a step which might daunt any man, no matter how broad his shoulders.

  While Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni imagined that he was responsible for others, they imagined that they were responsible for him. Mma Makutsi, for example, had taken her role within the garage with immense seriousness. She had changed the system of bookkeeping and had improved the flow of cash; she had conducted a full inventory of stock and had listed all spare parts held in the storeroom, and she had sorted out the fuel receipts, which had been allowed to get into a terrible state. All of this was an achievement, she knew, but she was still worried. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency did not make a large profit, even if it did at least make some money. The garage did better, but the apprentices’ wages were a major drain on that side of the business. If they wanted to prosper, particularly when bank charges were going up, they would just have to find more business, or—and this she found an intriguing possibility—they would have to diversify. It had been a challenge to take on responsibility for a garage; why not take on something else as well? For a moment she felt quite dizzy, contemplating the possibility of a sprawling business. Factories, farms, stores—all of these were possible if one only tried. But where would one start? The marriage of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency to Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors had been a natural development, following on the engagement of the owners of the two concerns; finding something entirely new might be rather more difficult.

  The idea came to Mma Makutsi one morning when she was preparing a cup of bush tea. Mma Ramotswe was out shopping and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had driven off to look at a car which he had offered to sell on behalf of an old client. It was not much of a car, he had told her, but he regarded himself as responsible for his clients’ cars from birth to death, so to speak, as an old-fashioned doctor would see his patients through life’s journey. She took the freshly brewed tea into the garage workshop, where the two apprentices were sitting on a couple of upturned oil drums, watching a thin stray dog nose about the entrance to the garage.