Alexander McCall Smith - No 1 LDA 2 - Tears of the Giraffe

by Tears of the Giraffe(lit)

  It was one of the other unsuccessful girls who explained it to her. She, too, had gone to interviews and been unlucky.

  "It is men who give out these jobs, am I right?" she had said.

  "I suppose so," said Mma Makutsi. "Men run these businesses. They choose the secretaries."

  "So how do you think men choose who should get the job and who shouldn't? Do you think they choose by the marks we got? Is that how you think they do it?"

  Mma Makutsi was silent. It had never occurred to her that decisions of this nature would be made on any other basis. Everything that she had been taught at school had conveyed the message that hard work helped you to get a good job.

  "Well," said her friend, smiling wryly, "I can tell that you do think that. And you're wrong. Men choose women for jobs on the basis of their looks. They choose the beautiful ones and give them jobs. To the others, they say: 'We are very sorry. All the jobs have gone. We are very sorry. There is a world recession, and in a world recession there are only enough jobs for beautiful girls. That is the effect of a world recession. It is all economics.'"

  Mma Makutsi had listened in astonishment. But she knew, even as the bitter remarks were uttered, that they were true. Perhaps she had known all along, at a subconscious level, and had simply not faced up to the fact. Good-looking women got what they wanted and women like her, who were perhaps not so elegant as the others, were left with nothing.

  That evening she looked in the mirror. She had tried to do something about her hair, but had failed. She had applied hair-straightener and had pulled and tugged at it, but it had remained completely uncooperative. And her skin, too, had resisted the creams that she had applied to it, with the result that her complexion was far darker than that of almost every other girl at the college. She felt a flush of resentment at her fate. It was hopeless. Even with those large round glasses she had bought herself, at such crippling expense, she could not disguise the fact that she was a dark girl in a world where light-coloured girls with heavily applied red lipstick had everything at their disposal. That was the ultimate, inescapable truth that no amount of wishful thinking, no amount of expensive creams and lotions, could change. The fun in this life, the good jobs, the rich husbands, were not a matter of merit and hard work, but were a matter of brute, unshifting biology.

  Mma Makutsi stood before the mirror and cried. She had worked and worked for her 97 percent at the Botswana Secretarial College, but she might as well have spent her time having fun and going out with boys, for all the good that it had done her. Would there be a job at all, or would she stay at home helping her mother to wash and iron her younger brothers' khaki pants

  The question was answered the next day when she applied for and was given the job of Mma Ramotswe's secretary. Here was the solution. If men refused to appoint on merit, then go for a job with a woman. It may not be a glamorous office, but it was certainly an exciting thing to be. To be secretary to a private detective was infinitely more prestigious than to be a secretary in a bank or in a lawyer's office. So perhaps there was some justice after all. Perhaps all that work had been worthwhile after all.

  But there was still this problem with the chickens.

  "SO, MMA Makutsi," said Mma Ramotswe, as she settled herself down in her chair in anticipation of the pot of bush tea which her secretary was brewing for her. "So I went off to Molepolole and found the place where those people lived. I saw the farmhouse and the place where they tried to grow the vegetables. I spoke to a woman who had lived there at the time. I saw everything there was to see."

  "And you found something?" asked Mma Makutsi, as she poured the hot water into the old enamel teapot and swirled it around with the tea leaves.

  "I found a feeling," said Mma Ramotswe. "I felt that I knew something."

  Mma Makutsi listened to her employer. What did she mean by saying that she felt she knew something? Either you know something or you don't. You can't think that you might know something, if you didn't actually know what it was that you were meant to know.

  "I am not sure..." she began.

  Mma Ramotswe laughed. "It's called an intuition. You can read about it in Mr Andersen's book. He talks about intuitions. They tell us things that we know deep inside, but which we can't find the word for."

  "And this intuition you felt at that place," said Mma Makutsi hesitantly. "What did it tell you? Where this poor American boy was?"

  "There," said Mma Ramotswe quietly. "That young man is there. "

  For a moment they were both silent. Mma Makutsi lowered the teapot onto the formica tabletop and replaced the lid.

  "He is living out there? Still?"

  "No," said Mma Ramotswe. "He is dead. But he is there Do you know what I am talking about?"

  Mma Makutsi nodded. She knew. Any sensitive person in Africa would know what Mma Ramotswe meant. When we die, we do not leave the place we were in when we were alive. We are still there, in a sense; our spirit is there. It never goes away. This was something which white people simply did not understand. They called it superstition, and said that it was a sign of ignorance to believe in such things. But they were the ones who were ignorant. If they could not understand how we are part of the natural world about us, then they are the ones who have closed eyes, not us.

  Mma Makutsi poured the tea and handed Mma Ramotswe her mug.

  "Are you going to tell the American woman this?" she asked "Surely she will say: 'Where is the body? Show me the exact place where my son is.' You know how these people think She will not understand you if you say that he is there somewhere but you cannot point to the spot."

  Mma Ramotswe raised the mug to her lips, watching her secretary as she spoke. This was an astute woman, she thought. She understood exactly how the American woman would think, and she appreciated just how difficult it could be to convey these subtle truths to one who conceived of the world as being entirely explicable by science. The Americans were very clever; they sent rockets into space and invented machines which could think more quickly than any human being alive, but all this cleverness could also make them blind. They did not understand other people. They thought that everyone looked at things in the same way as Americans did, but they were wrong. Science was only part of the truth. There were also many other things that made the world what it was, and the Americans often failed to notice these things, although they were there all the time, under their noses.

  Mma Ramotswe put down her mug of tea and reached into the pocket of her dress.

  "I also found this," she said, extracting the folded newspaper photograph and passing it to her secretary. Mma Makutsi unfolded the piece of paper and smoothed it out on the surface of her desk. She gazed at it for a few moments before looking up at Mma Ramotswe.

  "This is very old," she said. "Was it lying there?"

  "No. It was on the wall. There were still some papers pinned on a wall. The ants had missed them."

  Mma Makutsi returned her gaze to the paper.

  "There are names," she said. "Cephas Kalumani. Oswald Ranta. Mma Soloi. Who are these people?"

  "They lived there," said Mma Ramotswe. "They must have been there at the time."

  Mma Makutsi shrugged her shoulders. "But even if we could find these people and talk to them," she said, "would that make any difference? The police must have talked to them at the time. Maybe even Mma Curtin talked to them herself when she first came back."

  Mma Ramotswe nodded her head in agreement. "You're right," she said. "But that photograph tells me something. Look at the faces."

  Mma Makutsi studied the yellowing image. There were two men in the front, standing next to a woman. Behind them was another man, his face indistinct, and a woman, whose back was half-turned. The names in the caption referred to the three in the front. Cephas Kalumani was a tall man, with slightly gangly limbs, a man who would look awkward and ill at ease in any photograph. Mma Soloi, who was standing next to him, was beaming with pleasure. She was a comfortable woman-the archetypical, hardworking Motswana
woman, the sort of woman who supported a large family, whose life's labour, it seemed, would be devoted to endless, uncomplaining cleaning: cleaning the yard, cleaning the house, cleaning children. This was a picture of a heroine; unacknowledged, but a heroine nonetheless.

  The third figure, Oswald Ranta, was another matter altogether. He was a well-dressed, dapper figure. He was wearing a white shirt and tie and, like Mma Soloi, was smiling at the camera. His smile, though, was very different.

  "Look at that man," said Mma Ramotswe. "Look at Ranta."

  "I do not like him," said Mma Makutsi. "I do not like the look of him at all."

  "Precisely," said Mma Ramotswe. "That man is evil."

  Mma Makutsi said nothing, and for a few minutes the two of them sat in total silence, Mma Makutsi staring at the photograph and Mma Ramotswe looking down into her mug of tea. Then Mma Ramotswe spoke.

  "I think that if anything bad was done in that place, then it was done by that man. Do you think I am right?"

  "Yes," said Mma Makutsi. "You are right." She paused.

  "Are you going to find him now?"

  "That is my next task," said Mma Ramotswe. "I shall ask around and see if anybody knows this man. But in the meantime, we have some letters to write, Mma. We have other cases to think about. That man at the brewery who was anxious about his brother. I have found out something now and we can write to him. But first we must write a letter about that accountant."

  Mma Makutsi inserted a piece of paper into her typewriter and waited for Mma Ramotswe to dictate. The letter was not an interesting one-it was all about the tracing of a company accountant who had sold most of the company's assets and then disappeared. The police had stopped looking for him but the company wanted to trace its property.

  Mma Makutsi typed automatically. Her mind was not on the task, but her training enabled her to type accurately even if she was thinking about something else. Now she was thinking of Oswald Ranta, and of how they might trace him. The spelling of Ranta was slightly unusual, and the simplest thing would be to look the name up in the telephone directory. Oswald Ranta was a smart-looking man who could be expected to have a telephone. All she had to do was to look him up and write down the address. Then she could go and make her own enquiries, if she wished, and present Mma Ramotswe with the information.

  The letter finished, she passed it over to Mma Ramotswe for signature and busied herself with addressing the envelope. Then, while Mma Ramotswe made a note in the file, she slipped open her drawer and took out the Botswana telephone directory. As she had thought, there was only one Oswald Ranta.

  "I must make a quick telephone call," she said. "I shall only be a moment."

  Mma Ramotswe grunted her assent. She knew that Mma Makutsi could be trusted with the telephone, unlike most secretaries, who she knew used their employers' telephones to make all sorts of long-distance calls to boyfriends in remote places like Maun or Orapa.

  Mma Makutsi spoke in a low voice, and Mma Ramotswe did not hear her.

  "Is Rra Ranta there, please?"

  "He is at work, Mma. I am the maid."

  "I'm sorry to bother you, Mma. I must phone him at work. Can you tell me where that is?"

  "He is at the University. He goes there every day."

  "I see. Which number there?"

  She noted it down on a piece of paper, thanked the maid, and replaced the receiver. Then she dialled, and again her pencil scratched across paper.

  "Mma Ramotswe," she said quietly. "I have all the information you need."

  Mma Ramotswe looked up sharply, "Information about what?"

  "Oswald Ranta. He is living here in Gaborone. He is a lecturer in the Department of Rural Economics in the University. The secretary there says that he always comes in at eight o'clock every morning and that anybody who wishes to see him can make an appointment. You need not look any further."

  Mma Ramotswe smiled.

  "You are a very clever person," she said. "How did you find all this out?"

  "I looked in the telephone directory," answered Mma Makutsi. "Then I telephoned to find out about the rest."

  "I see," said Mma Ramotswe, still smiling. "That was very good detective work."

  Mma Makutsi beamed at the praise. Detective work. She had done the job of a detective, although she was only a secretary.

  "I am happy that you are pleased with my work," she said, after a moment. "I have wanted to be a detective. I'm happy being a secretary, but it is not the same thing as being a detective."

  Mma Ramotswe frowned. "This is what you have wanted?"

  "Every day," said Mma Makutsi. "Every day I have wanted this thing."

  Mma Ramotswe thought about her secretary. She was a good worker, and intelligent, and if it meant so much to her, then why should she not be promoted? She could help her with her investigations, which would be a much better use of her time than sitting at her desk waiting for the telephone to ring. They could buy an answering machine to deal with calls if she was out of the office on an investigation. Why not give her the chance and make her happy?

  "You shall have the thing you have wanted," said Mma Ramotswe. "You will be promoted to assistant detective. As from tomorrow."

  Mma Makutsi rose to her feet. She opened her mouth to speak, but the emotion within her strangled any words. She sat down.

  "I am glad that you are pleased," said Mma Ramotswe. "You have broken the glass ceiling that stops secretaries from reaching their full potential."

  Mma Makutsi looked up, as if to search for the ceiling that she had broken. There were only the familiar ceiling boards, fly-tracked and buckling from the heat. But the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel itself could not at that moment have been more glorious in her eyes, more filled with hope and joy.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AT NIGHT IN GABORONE

  ALONE IN her house in Zebra Drive, Mma Ramotswe awoke, as she often did, in the small hours of the morning, that time when the town was utterly silent; the time of maximum danger for rats, and other small creatures, as cobras and mam-bas moved silently in their hunting. She had always suffered from broken sleep, but had stopped worrying about it. She never lay awake for more than an hour or so, and, since she retired to bed early, she always managed at least seven hours of sleep a night. She had read that people needed eight hours, and that the body eventually claimed its due. If that were so, then she made up for it, as she often slept for several hours on a Saturday and never got up early on Sunday. So an hour or so lost at two or three each morning was nothing significant.

  Recently, while waiting to have her hair braided at the Make Me Beautiful Salon she had noticed a magazine article on sleep. There was a famous doctor, she read, who knew all about sleep and had several words of advice for those whose sleep was troubled. This Dr Shapiro had a special clinic just for people who could not sleep and he attached wires to their heads to see what was wrong. Mma Ramotswe was intrigued: there was a picture of Dr Shapiro and a sleepy-looking man and woman, in dishevelled pyjamas, with a tangle of wires coming from their heads. She felt immediately sorry for them: the woman, in particular, looked miserable, like somebody who was being forced to participate in an immensely tedious procedure but who simply could not escape. Or was she miserable because of the hospital pyjamas, in which she was being photographed; she may always have wished to have her photograph in a magazine, and now her wish was to be fulfilled-in hospital pyjamas.

  And then she read on, and became outraged. "Fat people often have difficulty in sleeping well," the article went on. "They suffer from a condition called sleep apnoea, which means that their breathing is interrupted in sleep. Such people are advised to lose weight."

  Advised to lose weight! What has weight to do with it? There were many fat people who seemed to sleep perfectly well; indeed, there was a fat person who often sat under a tree outside Mma Ramotswe's house and who seemed to be asleep most of the time. Would one advise that person to lose weight? It seemed to Mma Ramotswe as if such advice would be to
tally unnecessary and would probably simply lead to unhap-piness. From being a fat person who was comfortably placed in the shade of a tree, this poor person would become a thin person, with not much of a bottom to sit upon, and probably unable to sleep as a result.

  And what about her own case? She was a fat lady-traditionally built-and yet she had no difficulty in getting the required amount of sleep. It was all part of this terrible attack on people by those who had nothing better to do than to give advice on all sorts of subjects. These people, who wrote in newspapers and talked on the radio, were full of good ideas as to how to make people better. They poked their noses into other people's affairs, telling them to do this and do that. They looked at what you were eating and told you it was bad for you; then they looked at the way you raised your children and said that was bad too. And to make matters worse, they often said that if you did not heed their warnings, you would die. In this way they made everybody so frightened of them that they felt they had to accept the advice.