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

by Tears of the Giraffe(lit)

  She drove on through the morning. By nine o'clock she was passing through Mahalapye, where her father, Obed Ramotswe, had been born. He had moved south to Mochudi, which was her mother's village, but it was here that his people had been, and they were still, in a sense, her people. If she wandered about the streets of this haphazard town and spoke to old people, she was sure that she would find somebody who knew exactly who she was; somebody who could slot her into some complicated genealogy. There would be second, third, fourth cousins, distant family ramifications, that would bind her to people she had never met and among whom she would find an immediate sense of kinship. If the tiny white van were to break down, then she could knock on any one of those doors and expect to receive the help that distant relatives can claim among the Batswana.

  Mma Ramotswe found it difficult to imagine what it would be like to have no people. There were, she knew, those who had no others in this life, who had no uncles, or aunts, or distant cousins of any degree; people who were just themselves. Many white people were like that, for some unfathomable reason; they did not seem to want to have people and were happy to be just themselves. How lonely they must be-like spacemen deep in space, floating in the darkness, but without even that silver, unfurling cord that linked the astronauts to their little metal womb of oxygen and warmth. For a moment, she indulged the metaphor, and imagined the tiny white van in space, slowly spinning against a background of stars and she, Mma Ramotswe, of the No. 1 Ladies' Space Agency, floating weightless, head over heels, tied to the tiny white van with a thin washing line.

  SHE STOPPED at Francistown, and drank a cup of tea on the verandah of the hotel overlooking the railway line. A diesel train tugged at its burden of coaches, crowded with travellers from the north, and shunted oft; a goods train, laden with copper from the mines of Zambia, stood idle, while its driver stood and talked with a railways official under a tree. A dog, exhausted by the heat, lame from a withered leg, limped past. A child, curious, nose streaming, peeped round a table at Mma Ramotswe, and then scuttled off giggling when she smiled at him.

  Now came the border crossing, and the slow shuffling queue outside the white block in which the uniformed officials shuffled their cheaply printed forms and stamped passports and permissions, bored and officious at the same time. The formalities over, she set out on the last leg of the journey, past granite hills that faded into soft blue horizons, through an air that seemed cooler, higher, fresher than the oppressive heat of Francistown. And then into Bulawayo, into a town of wide streets and jacaranda trees, and shady verandahs. She had a place to stay here; the house of a friend who visited her from time to time in Gaborone, and there was a comfortable room awaiting her, with cold, polished red floors and a thatch roof that made the air within as quiet and as cool as the atmosphere in a cave.

  "I am always happy to see you," said her friend. "But why are you here?"

  "To find somebody," said Mma Ramotswe. "Or rather, to help somebody else to find somebody."

  "You're talking in riddles," laughed her friend.

  "Well, let me explain," said Mma Ramotswe. "I'm here to close a chapter."

  SHE FOUND her, and the hotel, without difficulty. Mma Ramotswe's friend made a few telephone calls and gave her the name and address of the hotel. It was an old building, in the colonial style, on the road to the Matopos. It was not clear who might stay there, but it seemed well kept and there was a noisy bar somewhere in the background. Above the front door, painted in small white lettering on black was a sign: Carlo, Smit, Licensee, licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. This was the end of the quest, and, as the end of a quest so often was, it was a mundane setting, quite unexceptionable; yet it was surpris-ing nonetheless that the person sought should actually exist, and be there.

  "I AM Carla."

  Mma Ramotswe looked at the woman, sitting behind her desk, an untidy pile of papers in front of her. On the wall behind her, pinned above a filing cabinet, was a year-chart with blocks of days marked up in bright colours; a gift from its printers, in heavy Bodoni type: Printed by the Matabeleland Printing Company (Private) Limited: You think, we ink! It occurred to her that she might issue a calendar to her own clients: Suspicious? Call the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. You ask, we answer! No, that was too lame. You cry, we spy! No. Not all the clients felt miserable. We find things out. That was better: it had the necessary dignity.

  "You are?" the woman enquired, politely, but with a touch of suspicion in her voice. She thinks that 1 have come for a job, thought Mma Ramotswe, and she is steeling herself to turn me down.

  "My name is Precious Ramotswe," she said. "I'm from Gaborone. And I have not come to ask for a job."

  The woman smiled. "So many people do," she said. "There is such terrible unemployment. People who have done all sorts of courses are desperate for a job. Anything. They'll do anything. I get ten, maybe twelve enquiries every week; many more at the end of the school year."

  "Conditions are bad?"

  The woman sighed. "Yes, and have been for some time. Many people suffer."

  "I see," said Mma Ramotswe. "We are lucky down there in Botswana. We do not have these troubles."

  Carla nodded, and looked thoughtful. "I know. I lived there for a couple of years. It was some time ago, but I hear it hasn't changed too much. That's why you are lucky."

  'You preferred the old Africa?"

  Carla looked at her quizzically. This was a political question, and she would need to be cautious.

  She spoke slowly, choosing her words. "No. Not in the sense of preferring the colonial days. Of course not. Not all white people liked that, you know. I may have been a South African, but I left South Africa to get away from apartheid. That's why I went to Botswana."

  Mma Ramotswe had not meant to embarrass her. Her question had not been a charged one, and she tried to set her at her ease. "I didn't mean that," she said. "I meant the old Africa, when there were fewer people without jobs. People had a place then. They belonged to their village, to their family. They had their lands. Now a lot of that has gone and they have nothing but a shack on the edge of a town. I do not like that Africa." Carla relaxed. "Yes. But we cannot stop the world, can we? Africa has these problems now. We have to try to cope with them."

  There was a silence. This woman has not come to talk politics, thought Carla; or African history. Why is she here?

  Mma Ramotswe looked at her hands, and at the engagement ring, with its tiny point of light. "Ten years ago," she began, "you lived out near Molepolole, at that place run by Burkhardt Fischer. You were there when an American called Michael Curtin disappeared in mysterious circumstances."

  She stopped. Carla was staring at her, glassy-eyed. "I am nothing to do with the police," said Mma Ramotswe, hurriedly. "I have not come here to question you."

  Carla's expression was impassive. "Then why do you want to talk about that? It happened a long time ago. He went missing. That's all there is to it."

  "No," said Mma Ramotswe. "That is not all there is to it. I don't have to ask you what happened, because I know exactly what took place. You and Oswald Ranta were there, in that hut, when Michael turned up. He fell into a donga and broke his neck. You hid the body because Oswald was frightened that the police would accuse him of killing Michael. That is what happened."

  Carla said nothing, but Mma Ramotswe saw that her words had shocked her. Dr Ranta had told the truth, as she had thought, and now Carla's reaction was confirming this.

  "You did not kill Michael," she said. "It had nothing to do with you. But you did conceal the hotly, which meant that his mother never found out what happened to him. That was the wrong thing to do. But that's not the point. The point is that you can do something to cancel all that out. You can do that thing quite safely. There is no risk to you."

  Carla's voice was distant, barely audible. "What can I do? We can't bring him back."

  "You can bring an end to his mother's search," she said. "All she wants to do is to say goodbye to her son. People who
have lost somebody are often like that. There may be no desire for revenge in their hearts; they just want to know. That's all."

  Carla leaned back in her chair, her eyes downcast. "I don't know... Oswald would be furious if I talked about..."

  Mma Ramotswe cut her short. "Oswald knows, and agrees," "Then why can't he tell her?" retorted Carla, suddenly angry, "He did it. I only lied to protect him."

  Mma Ramotswe nodded her understanding. "Yes," she said "It's his fault, but he is not a good man. He cannot give any thing to that woman, or to anybody else for that matter. Such people cannot say sorry to another. But you can. You can meet this woman and tell her what happened. You can seek her forgiveness."

  Carla shook her head. "I don't see why... After all these years..."

  Mma Ramotswe stopped her. "Besides," she said. 'You are the mother of her grandchild. Is that not so? Would you deny her that little bit of comfort? She has no son now. But there is a..."

  "Boy," said Carla. "He is called Michael too. He is nine, almost ten."

  Mma Ramotswe smiled. "You must bring the child to her, Mma," she said. "You are a mother. You know what that means. You have no reason now not to do this. Oswald cannot do anything to you. He is no threat."

  Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet and walked over to the desk, where Carla sat, crumpled, uncertain.

  'You know that you must do this," she said.

  She took the other woman's hand and held it gently. It was sun-specked, from exposure to high places and heat, and hard work.

  'You will do it, won't you, Mma? She is ready to come out to Botswana. She will come in a day or two if I tell her. Can you get away from here? Just for a few days?"

  "I have an assistant," said Carla. "She can run the place."

  "And the boy? Michael? Will he not be happy to see his grandmother?"

  Carla looked up at her. "Yes, Mma Ramotswe," she said. "You are right."

  SHE RETURNED to Gaborone the following day, arriving late at night. Her maid, Rose, had stayed in the house to look after the children, who were fast asleep when Mma Ramotswe arrived home. She crept into their rooms and listened to their soft breathing and smelled the sweet smell of children sleeping. Then exhausted from the drive, she tumbled into her bed, mentally still driving, her eyes moving behind heavy, closed lids.

  She was in the office early the following morning, leaving the children in Rose's care. Mma Makutsi had arrived even earlier than she had, and was sitting efficiently behind her desk, typing a report.

  "Mr Letsenyane Badule," she announced. "I am reporting on the end of the case."

  Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. "I thought that you wanted me to sort that out."

  Mma Makutsi pursed her lips. "To begin with, I was not brave enough," she said. "But then he came in yesterday and I had to speak to him. If 1 had seen him coming, I could have locked the door and put up a closed sign. But he came in before I could do anything about it."

  "And?" prompted Mma Ramotswe.

  "And I told him about his wife's being unfaithful."

  "What did he say?"

  "He was upset. He looked very sad."

  Mma Ramotswe smiled wryly. "No surprise there," she said. "Yes, but then I told him that he should not do anything about this as his wife was not doing it for herself, but was doing it for her son's sake. She had taken up with a rich man purely to make sure that his son would get a good education. I said that she was being very selfless. I said that it might be best to leave things exactly as they are."

  Mma Ramotswe looked astounded. "He believed that?" she said, incredulously.

  "Yes," said Mma Makutsi. "He is not a very sophisticated man. He seemed quite pleased." "I'm astonished," said Mma Ramotswe. "Well, there you are," said Mma Makutsi. "He remains happy. The wife also continues to be happy. The boy gets his education. And the wife's lover and the wife's lover's wife are also happy. It is a good result."

  Mma Ramotswe was not convinced. There was a major ethical flaw in this solution, but to define it exactly would require a great deal more thought and discussion. She would have to talk to Mma Makutsi about this at greater length, once she had more time to do so. It was a pity, she thought, that the Journal of Criminology did not have a problem page for just such cases. She could have written and asked for advice in this delicate matter. Perhaps she could write to the editor anyway and suggest that an agony aunt be appointed; it would certainly make the journal very much more readable.

  Several quiet days ensued, in which, once again, they were without clients, and could bring the administrative affairs of the agency up to date. Mma Makutsi oiled her typewriter and went out to buy a new kettle, for the preparation of bush tea.

  Mma Ramotswe wrote letters to old friends and prepared accounts for the impending end of the financial year. She had not made a lot of money, but she had not made a loss, and she had been happy and entertained. That counted for infinitely more than a vigorously healthy balance sheet. In fact, she thought, annual accounts should include an item specifically headed Happiness, alongside expenses and receipts and the like. That figure in her accounts would be a very large one, she thought.

  But it would be nothing to the happiness of Andrea Curtin, who arrived three days later and who met, late that afternoon, in the office of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, the mother of her grandson and her grandson himself. While Carla was left alone to give the account of what happened on that night ten years ago, Mma Ramotswe took the boy for a walk, and pointed out to him the granite slopes of Kgale Hill and the distant smudge of blue which was the waters of the dam. He was a courteous boy, rather grave in his manner, who was interested in stones, and kept stopping to scratch at some piece of rock or to pick up a pebble.

  "This one is quartz," he said, showing her a piece of white rock. "Sometimes you find gold in quartz."

  She took the rock and examined it. "You are very interested in rocks?"

  "I want to be a geologist," he said solemnly. "We have a geologist who stays in our hotel sometimes. He teaches me about rocks."

  She smiled encouragingly. "It would be an interesting job, that," she said. "Rather like being a detective. Looking for things."

  She handed the piece of quartz back to him. As he took it, his eye caught her engagement ring, and for a moment he held her hand, looking at the gold band and its twinkling stone.

  "Cubic zirconium," he said. "They make them look like diamonds. Just like the real thing."

  WHEN THEY returned, Carla and the American woman were sitting side by side and there was a peacefulness, even joy, in the older woman's expression which told Mma Ramotswe that what she had intended had indeed been achieved.

  They drank tea together, just looking at one another. The boy had a gift for his grandmother, a small soapstone carving, which he had made himself. She took it, and kissed him, as any grandmother would.

  Mma Ramotswe had a gift for the American woman, a basket which on her return journey from Bulawayo she had bought, on impulse, from a woman sitting by the side of the road in Francistown. The woman was desperate, and Mma Ramotswe, who did not need a basket, had bought it to help her. It was a traditional Botswana basket, with a design worked into the weaving.

  "These little marks here are tears," she said. "The giraffe gives its tears to the women and they weave them into the basket."

  The American woman took the basket politely, in the proper Botswana way of receiving a gift-with both hands. How rude were people who took a gift with one hand, as if snatching it from the donor; she knew better.

  "You are very kind, Mma," she said. "But why did the giraffe give its tears?"

  Mma Ramotse shrugged; she had never thought about it. "I suppose that it means that we can all give something," she said. "A giraffe has nothing else to give-only tears." Did it mean that? she wondered. And for a moment she imagined that she saw a giraffe peering down through the trees, its strange, stilt-borne body camouflaged among the leaves; and its moist velvet cheeks and liquid eyes; and she thought
of all the beauty that there was in Africa, and of the laughter, and the love.

  The boy looked at the basket. "Is that true, Mma?"

  Mma Ramotswe smiled.

  "I hope so," she said.

  The End