Morality for Beautiful Girls tn1lda-3

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I am looking for Motlamedi Matluli,” she said. “I have been told she lives here.”

  One of the students giggled. “Yes, she lives here,” she said. “Although I think that she would like to live somewhere a bit grander.”

  “Like the Sun Hotel,” said another, causing them all to laugh.

  MMA MAKUTSI smiled. “She is a very important girl, then?”

  This brought forth more laughter. “She thinks she is,” said one. “Just because she has all the boys running after her she thinks she owns Gaborone. You should just see her!”

  “I would like to see her,” said Mma Makutsi simply. “That is why I am here.”

  “You will find her in front of her mirror,” said another. “She is on the first floor, in room 114.”

  Mma Makutsi thanked her informants and made her way up the concrete staircase to the first floor. She noticed that somebody had scribbled something uncomplimentary on the wall of the staircase, a remark about one of the girls. One of the male students, no doubt, had been rebuffed and had vented his feelings in graffiti. She felt annoyed; these people were privileged—ordinary people in Botswana would never have the chance to get this sort of education, which was all paid for by the Government, every pula and thebe of it—and all they could think of doing was writing on walls. And what was Motlamedi doing, spending time preening herself and entering beauty competitions when she should have been working on her books? If she were the Rector of the university she would tell people like that to make up their minds. You can be one thing or the other. You can cultivate your mind, or you can cultivate your hairstyle. But you cannot do both.

  She found room 114 and knocked loudly on the door. There were sounds of a radio within and so she knocked again, louder this time.

  “All right!” shouted a voice from within. “I’m coming.”

  The door was opened and Motlamedi Matluli stood before her. The first thing that struck Mma Makutsi about her was her eyes, which were extraordinarily large. They dominated the face, giving it a gentle, innocent quality, rather like the face of those small night creatures they called bush babies.

  Motlamedi looked her visitor up and down.

  “Yes Mma?” she asked casually. “What can I do for you?”

  This was very rude, and Mma Makutsi smarted at the insult. If this girl had any manners, she would have invited me in, she thought. She is too busy with her mirror which, as the students below had predicted, was propped up on her desk and was surrounded by creams and lotions.

  “I am a journalist,” said Mma Makutsi. “I am writing an article about the finalists for Miss Beauty and Integrity. I have some questions I would like you to answer.”

  The change in Motlamedi’s attitude was immediately apparent. Quickly, and rather effusively asking Mma Makutsi in, she cleared some clothes off a chair and invited her visitor to sit down.

  “My room is not often this untidy,” she laughed, gesturing to the piles of clothes that had been tossed down here and there. “But I am just in the middle of sorting things out. You know how it is.”

  Mma Makutsi nodded. Taking the questionnaire out of her briefcase, she passed it over to the young woman who looked at it and smiled.

  “These questions are very easy,” she said. “I have seen questions like this before.”

  “Please fill them in,” asked Mma Makutsi. “Then I would like to talk to you for a very short time before I leave you to get on with your studies.”

  The last remark was made as she looked about the room; it was, as far as she could make out, devoid of books.

  “Yes,” said Motlamedi, applying herself to the questionnaire, “we students are very busy with our studies.”

  While Motlamedi wrote out her answers, Mma Makutsi glanced discreetly at her head. Unfortunately the style in which the finalist had arranged her hair was such that it was impossible to see the shape of the head. Even Lombroso himself, thought Mma Makutsi, might have found it difficult to reach a view on this person. Yet this did not really matter; everything she had seen of this person, from her rudeness at the door to her look of near-disdain (concealed at the moment when Mma Makutsi had declared herself to be a journalist), told her that this woman would be a bad choice for the post of Miss Beauty and Integrity. She was unlikely to be charged with theft, of course, but there were other ways in which she could bring disgrace to the competition and to Mr Pulani. The most likely of these was involvement in some scandal with a married man; girls of this sort were no respecters of matrimony and could be expected to seek out any man who could advance her career, irrespective of whether he already had a wife. What sort of example would that be to the youth of Botswana? Mma Makutsi asked herself. The mere thought of it made her feel angry and she found herself involuntarily shaking her head with disapproval.

  Motlamedi looked up from her form.

  “What are you shaking your head about, Mma?” she asked. “Am I writing the wrong thing?”

  “No, you are not.” Her reply came hurriedly. “You must write the truth. That is all I am interested in.”

  Motlamedi smiled. “I always tell the truth,” she said. “I have told the truth since I was a child. I cannot stand people who tell lies.”

  “Oh yes?”

  She finished writing and handed the form to Mma Makutsi.

  “I hope I have not written too much,” she said. “I know that you journalists are very busy people.”

  Mma Makutsi took the form and ran her eye down the responses.

  Question 1: Africa has a very great history, although many people pay no attention to it. Africa can teach the world about how to care for other people. There are other things, too, that Africa can teach the world.

  Question 2: It is my greatest ambition to work for the benefit of other people. I look forward to the day when I can help more people. That is one of the reasons why I deserve to win this competition: I am a girl who likes to help people. I am not one of these selfish girls.

  Question 3: It is better to be a person of integrity. An honest girl is rich in her heart. That is the truth. Girls who worry about their looks are not as happy as girls who think about other people first. I am one of these latter girls, and that is how I know this thing.

  Motlamedi watched as Mma Makutsi read.

  “Well, Mma?” she said. “Would you like to ask me about anything I have written?”

  Mma Makutsi folded the sheet of paper and slipped it into her briefcase.

  “No thank you, Mma,” she said. “You have told me everything I need to know. I do not need to ask you any other questions.”

  Motlamedi looked anxious.

  “What about a photograph?” she said. “If the paper would like to send a photographer I think that I could let a photograph be taken. I shall be here all afternoon.”

  Mma Makutsi moved towards the door.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But I do not know. You have given me very useful answers here and I shall be able to put them into the newspaper. I feel I know you quite well now.”

  Motlamedi felt that she could now afford to be gracious.

  “I am glad that we have met,” she said. “I look forward to our next meeting. Maybe you will be at the competition … you could bring the photographer.”

  “Perhaps,” said Mma Makutsi, as she left.

  THE APPRENTICE was talking to a couple of young women when Mma Makutsi emerged. He was explaining something about the car and they were listening to him avidly. Mma Makutsi did not hear the entire conversation, but she did pick up the end: “… at least eighty miles an hour. And the engine is very quiet. If a boy is sitting with a girl in the back and wants to kiss her in that car he has to be very quiet because they will hear it in the front.”

  The students giggled.

  “Do not listen to him, ladies,” said Mma Makutsi. “This young man is not allowed to see girls. He already has a wife and three children and his wife gets very cross if she hears that girls are talking to him. Very cross.”


  The students moved back. One of them now looked at the apprentice reproachfully.

  “But that is not true,” protested the young man. “I am not married”

  “That’s what all you men say,” said one of the students, angry now. “You come round here and talk to girls like us while all the time you are thinking of your wives. What sort of behaviour is that?”

  “Very bad,” chipped in Mma Makutsi, as she opened the passenger door and prepared to get in. “Anyway, it is time for us to go. This young man has to drive me somewhere else.”

  “You be careful of him, Mma,” said one of the students. “We know about boys like that.”

  The apprentice started the car, tight-lipped, and drove off.

  “You should not have said that, Mma. You made me look foolish.”

  Mma Makutsi snorted. “You made yourself look foolish. Why are you always running after girls? Why are you always trying to impress them?”

  “Because that’s how I enjoy myself,” said the apprentice defensively. “I like talking to girls. We have all these beautiful girls in this country and there is nobody to talk to them. I am doing a service to the country.”

  Mma Makutsi looked at him scornfully. Although the young men had been working hard for her and had responded well to her suggestions, there seemed to be a chronic weakness in their character—this relentless womanising. Could anything be done about it? She doubted it, but it would pass in time, she thought, and they would become more serious. Or perhaps they would not. People did not change a great deal. Mma Ramotswe had said that to her once and it had stuck in her mind. People do not change, but that does not mean that they will always remain the same. What you can do is find out the good side of their character and then bring that out. Then it might seem that they had changed, which they had not; but they would be different afterwards, and better. That’s what Mma Ramotswe had said—or something like that. And if there was one person in Botswana—one person—to whom one should listen very carefully, it was Mma Ramotswe.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE COOK’S TALE

  MMA RAMOTSWE lay on her bed and gazed up at the whiteboards of the ceiling. Her stomach felt less disturbed now, and the worst of the dizziness had passed. But when she shut her eyes, and then opened them again fairly shortly thereafter, there was a white ring about everything, a halo of light which danced for a moment and then dimmed. In other circumstances it might have been a pleasant sensation, but here, at the mercy of a poisoner, it was alarming. What substance would produce such a result? Poisons could attack eyesight, Mma Ramotswe knew that well. As a child they had been taught about the plants which could be harvested in the bush, the shrubs that could produce sleep, the tree bark which could bring an unwanted pregnancy to a sudden end, the roots that cured itching. But there were others, plants that produced the muti used by the witch doctors, innocent-looking plants which could kill at a touch, or so they were told. It was one of these, no doubt, that had been slipped onto her plate by her host’s wife, or, more likely, put into an entire dish of food, indiscriminately, but avoided by the poisoner herself. If a person was wicked enough to poison a husband, then she would not stop at taking others with him.

  Mma Ramotswe looked at her watch. It was past seven, and the windows were dark. She had slept through the sunset and now it was time for the evening meal, not that she felt like eating. They would be wondering where she was, though, and so she should tell them that she was unwell and could not join them for supper.

  She sat up in her bed and blinked. The white light was still there, but was fading now. She put her feet over the edge of the bed and wriggled her toes into her shoes, hoping that no scorpions had crawled into them during her rest. She had always checked her shoes for scorpions since, as a child, she had put her foot into her school shoes one morning and had been badly stung by a large brown scorpion which had sheltered there for the night. Her entire foot had swollen up, so badly, in fact, that they had carried her to the Dutch Reformed Hospital at the foot of the hill. A nurse there had put on a dressing and given her something for the pain. Then she had warned her always to check her shoes and the warning had remained with her.

  “We live up here,” said the nurse, holding her hand at chest height. “They live down there. Remember that.”

  Later, it had seemed to her that this was a warning that could apply in more senses than one. Not only did it refer to scorpions and snakes—about which it was patently true—but it could apply with equal force to people. There was a world beneath the world inhabited by ordinary, law-abiding people; a world of selfishness and mistrust occupied by scheming and manipulative people. One had to check one’s shoes.

  She withdrew her toes from the shoes before they had reached the end. Reaching down, she picked up the right shoe and tipped it up. There was nothing. She picked up the left shoe and did the same. Out dropped a tiny glistening creature, which danced on the floor for a moment, as if in defiance, and then scuttled off into the dark of a corner.

  Mma Ramotswe made her way down the corridor. As she reached the end, where the corridor became a living room, the maid came out of a doorway and greeted her.

  “I was coming to find you, Mma,” said the maid. “They have made food and it is almost ready.”

  “Thank you, Mma. I have been sleeping. I have not been feeling well, although I am better now. I do not think that I could eat tonight, but I would like some tea. I’m very thirsty.”

  The maid’s hands shot up to her mouth. “Aiee! That is very bad, Mma! All of the people have been ill. The old lady has been sick, sick, all the time. The man and his wife have been shouting out and holding their stomachs. Even the boy was sick, although he was not so bad. The meat must have been bad.”

  MMA RAMOTSWE stared at the maid. “Everybody?”

  “Yes. Everybody. The man was shouting that he would go and chase the butcher who sold that meat. He was very cross.”

  “And the wife? What was she doing?”

  The maid looked down at the floor. These were intimate matters of the human stomach and it embarrassed her to talk about them so openly.

  “She could keep nothing down. She tried to take water—I brought it to her—but it came straight up again. Her stomach is now empty, though, and I think she is feeling better. I have been a nurse all afternoon. Here, there. I even looked in through your door to see that you were all right and I saw you sleeping peacefully. I did not know that you had been sick too.”

  Mma Ramotswe was silent for a moment. The information which the maid had given her changed the situation entirely. The principal suspect, the wife, had been poisoned, as had the old woman, who was also a suspect. This meant either that there had been an accident in the distribution of the poison, or that neither of these had anything to do with it. Of the two possibilities, Mma Ramotswe thought that the second was the more likely. When she had been feeling ill she imagined that she had been deliberately poisoned, but was this likely? On sober reflection, beyond the waves of nausea that had engulfed her, it seemed ridiculous to think that a poisoner would strike so quickly, and so obviously, on the arrival of a guest. It would have been suspicious and unsubtle, and poisoners, she had read, were usually extremely subtle people.

  The maid looked at Mma Ramotswe expectantly, as if she thought that the guest might now take over the running of the household.

  “None of them needs a doctor, do they?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  “No. They are all getting better, I think. But I do not know what to do. They shout at me a lot and I cannot do anything when they are all shouting.”

  “No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That would not be easy for you.”

  She looked at the maid. They shout at me a lot. Here was another with a motive, she reflected, but the thought was absurd. This was an honest woman. Her face was open and she smiled as she spoke. Secrets left shadows on the face, and there were none there.

  “Well,” said Mma Ramotswe, “you could make me some tea, perhaps. Then, afte
r that, I think you should go off to your room and leave them to get better. Perhaps they will shout less in the morning.”

  The maid smiled appreciatively. “I will do that, Mma. I will bring you your tea in your room. Then you can go back to sleep.”

  SHE SLEPT, but fitfully. From time to time she awoke, and heard voices from within the house, or the sounds of movement, a door slamming, a window being opened, the creaking noises of an old house by night. Shortly before dawn, when she realised that she would not fall asleep, she arose, slipped on her housecoat, and made her way out of the house. A dog at the back door rose to its feet, still groggy with sleep, and sniffed suspiciously at her feet; a large bird, which had been perched on the roof, launched itself with an effort and flew away.

  Mma Ramotswe looked about her. The sun would not be up for half an hour or so, but there was enough light to make things out and it grew stronger and clearer every moment. The trees were still indistinct, dark shapes, but the branches and the leaves would soon appear in detail, like a painting revealed. It was a time of day that she loved, and here, in this lonely spot, away from roads and people and the noise they made, the loveliness of her land appeared distilled. The sun would come before too long and coarsen the world; for the moment, though, the bush, the sky, the earth itself, seemed modest and understated.

  Mma Ramotswe took a deep breath. The smell of the bush, the smell of the dust and the grass, caught at her heart, as it always did; and now there was added a whiff of wood smoke, that marvellous, acrid smell that insinuates itself through the still air of morning as people make their breakfast and warm their hands at the flames. She turned around. There was a fire nearby; the morning fire to heat the hot water boiler, or the fire, perhaps, of a watchman who had spent the night hours around a few burning embers.

  She walked round to the back of the house, following a small path which had been marked out with whitewashed stones, a habit picked up from the colonial administrators who had whitewashed the stones surrounding their encampments and quarters. They had done this throughout Africa, even whitewashing the lower trunks of the trees they had planted in long avenues. Why? Because of Africa.