(2/15) Tears of the Giraffe

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She stopped herself, but he did not mind.

  “I know that Zebra Drive is more comfortable,” he said. “And it would be better for them to be looked after by you.”

  They walked back to the children, together, companionably.

  “I’m going to marry this lady,” announced Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “She will be your mother soon.”

  The boy looked startled, but the girl lowered her eyes respectfully.

  “Thank you, Mma,” she said. “We shall try to be good children for you.”

  “That is good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We shall be a very happy family. I can tell it already.”

  Mma Ramotswe went off to fetch her tiny white van, taking the boy with her. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni pushed the girl’s wheelchair back to the old truck, and they drove over to Zebra Drive, where Mma Ramotswe and Puso were already waiting for them by the time they arrived. The boy was excited, rushing out to greet his sister.

  “This is a very good house,” he cried out. “Look, there are trees, and melons. I am having a room at the back.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni stood back as Mma Ramotswe showed the children round the house. Everything that he had felt about her was, in his mind, now confirmed beyond doubt. Obed Ramotswe, her father, who had brought her up after the death of her mother, had done a very fine job. He had given Botswana one of its finest ladies. He was a hero, perhaps without ever knowing it.

  While Mma Ramotswe was preparing lunch for the children, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni telephoned the garage to check that the apprentices were managing to deal with the chores with which he had left them. The younger apprentice answered, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew immediately from his tone that there was something seriously wrong. The young man’s voice was artificially high and excited.

  “I am glad that you telephoned, Rra,” he said. “The police came. They wanted to speak to you about your maid. They have arrested her and she has gone off to the cells. She had a gun in her bag. They are very cross.”

  The apprentice had no further information, and so Mr J.L.B. Matekoni put down the receiver. His maid had been armed! He had suspected her of a great deal—of dishonesty, and possibly worse—but not of being armed. What was she up to in her spare time—armed robbery? Murder?

  He went into the kitchen, where Mma Ramotswe was boiling up squares of pumpkin in a large enamel pot.

  “My maid has been arrested and taken off to prison,” he said flatly. “She had a gun. In a bag.”

  Mma Ramotswe put down her spoon. The pumpkin was boiling satisfactorily and would soon be tender. “I am not surprised,” she said. “That was a very dishonest woman. The police have caught up with her at last. She was not too clever for them.”

  MR J.L.B. Matekoni and Mma Ramotswe decided that afternoon that life was becoming too complicated for both of them and that they should declare the rest of the day to be a day of simple activities, centred around the children. To this end, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni telephoned the apprentices and told them to close the garage until the following morning.

  “I have been meaning to give you time off to study,” he said. “Well, you can have some study time this afternoon. Put up a sign and say that we shall reopen at eight tomorrow.”

  To Mma Ramotswe he said: “They won’t study. They’ll go off chasing girls. There is nothing in those young men’s heads. Nothing.”

  “Many young people are like that,” she said. “They think only of dances and clothes, and loud music. That is their life. We were like that too, remember?”

  Her own telephone call to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency had brought a confident Mma Makutsi to the line, who had explained to her that she had completed the investigation of the Badule matter and that all that required to be done was to determine what to do with the information she had gathered. They would have to talk about that, said Mma Ramotswe. She had feared that the investigation would produce a truth that would be far from simple in its moral implications. There were times when ignorance was more comfortable than knowledge.

  The pumpkin, though, was ready, and it was time to sit down at the table, as a family for the first time.

  Mma Ramotswe said grace.

  “We are grateful for this pumpkin and this meat,” she said. “There are brothers and sisters who do not have good food on their table, and we think of them, and wish pumpkin and meat for them in the future. And we thank the Lord who has brought these children into our lives so that we might be happy and they might have a home with us. And we think of what a happy day this is for the late mother and the late daddy of these children, who are watching this from above.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni could add nothing to this grace, which he thought was perfect in every respect. It expressed his own feelings entirely, and his heart was too full of emotion to allow him to speak. So he was silent.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SEAT OF LEARNING

  THE MORNING is the best time to address a problem, thought Mma Ramotswe. One is at one’s freshest in the first hours of the working day, when the sun is still low and the air is sharp. That is the time to ask oneself the major questions; a time of clarity and reason, unencumbered by the heaviness of the day.

  “I have read your report,” said Mma Ramotswe, when Mma Makutsi arrived for work. “It is a very full one, and very well written. Well done.”

  Mma Makutsi acknowledged the compliment graciously.

  “I was happy that my first case was not a difficult one,” she said. “At least it was not difficult to find out what needed to be found out. But those questions which I put at the end—they are the difficult bit.”

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe, glancing down at the piece of paper. “The moral questions.”

  “I don’t know how to solve them,” said Mma Makutsi. “If I think that one answer is correct, then I see all the difficulties with that. Then I consider the other answer, and I see another set of difficulties.”

  She looked expectantly at Mma Ramotswe, who grimaced.

  “It is not easy for me either,” the older woman said. “Just because I am a bit older than you does not mean that I have the answer to every dilemma that comes along. As you get older, in fact, you see more sides to a situation. Things are more clear-cut at your age.” She paused, then added: “Mind you, remember that I am not quite forty. I am not all that old.”

  “No,” said Mma Makutsi. “That is just about the right age for a person to be. But this problem we have; it is all very troubling. If we tell Badule about this man and he puts a stop to the whole thing, then the boy’s school fees will not be paid. That will be the end of this very good chance that he is getting. That would not be best for the boy.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “I see that,” she said. “On the other hand we can’t lie to Mr Badule. It is unethical for a detective to lie to the client. You can’t do it.”

  “I can understand that,” said Mma Makutsi. “But there are times, surely, when a lie is a good thing. What if a murderer came to your house and asked you where a certain person was? And what if you knew where that person was, would it be wrong to say: ‘I do not know anything about that person. I do not know where he is.’ Would that not be a lie?”

  “Yes. But then you have no duty to tell the truth to that murderer. So you can lie to him. But you do have a duty to tell the truth to your client, or to your spouse, or to the police. That is all different.”

  “Why? Surely if it is wrong to lie, then it is always wrong to lie. If people could lie when they thought it was the right thing to do, then we could never tell when they meant it.” Mma Makutsi, stopped, and pondered for a few moments before continuing. “One person’s idea of what is right may be quite different from another’s. If each person can make up his own rule …” She shrugged, leaving the consequences unspoken.

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You are right about that. That’s the trouble with the world these days. Everyone thinks that they can make their own decisions about what is right and wrong. Everybody thinks that they can
forget the old Botswana morality. But they can’t.”

  “But the real problem here,” said Mma Makutsi, “is whether we should tell him everything. What if we say: ‘You are right; your wife is unfaithful,’ and leave it at that? Have we done our duty? We are not lying, are we? We are just not telling all the truth.”

  Mma Ramotswe stared at Mma Makutsi. She had always valued her secretary’s comments, but she had never expected that she would make such a moral mountain out of the sort of little problem that detectives encountered every day. It was messy work. You helped other people with their problems; you did not have to come up with a complete solution. What they did with the information was their own affair. It was their life, and they had to lead it.

  But as she thought about this, she realised that she had done far more than that in the past. In a number of her successful cases, she had gone beyond the finding of information. She had made decisions about the outcome, and these decisions had often proved to be momentous ones. For example, in the case of the woman whose husband had a stolen Mercedes- Benz, she had arranged for the return of the car to its owner. In the case of the fraudulent insurance claims by the man with thirteen fingers, she had made the decision not to report him to the police. That was a decision which had changed a life. He may have become honest after she had given him this chance, but he may not. She could not tell. But what she had done was to offer him a chance, and that may have made a difference. So she did interfere in other people’s lives, and it was not true that all that she did was provide information.

  In this case, she realised that the real issue was the fate of the boy. The adults could look after themselves; Mr Badule could cope with a discovery of adultery (in his heart of hearts he already knew that his wife was unfaithful); the other man could go back to his wife on his bended knees and take his punishment (perhaps be hauled back to live in that remote village with his Catholic wife), and as for the fashionable lady, well, she could spend a bit more time in the butchery, rather than resting on that big bed on Nyerere Drive. The boy, though, could not be left to the mercy of events. She would have to ensure that whatever happened, he did not suffer for the bad behaviour of his mother.

  Perhaps there was a solution which would mean that the boy could stay at school. If one looked at the situation as it stood, was there anybody who was really unhappy? The fashionable wife was very happy; she had a rich lover and a big bed to lie about in. The rich lover bought her fashionable clothes and other things which fashionable ladies tend to enjoy. The rich lover was happy, because he had a fashionable lady and he did not have to spend too much time with his devout wife. The devout wife was happy because she was living where she wanted to live, presumably doing what she liked doing, and had a husband who came home regularly, but not so regularly as to be a nuisance to her. The boy was happy, because he had two fathers, and was getting a good education at an expensive school.

  That left the Mr Letsenyane Badule. Was he happy, or if he was unhappy could he be made to be happy again without any change in the situation? If they could find some way of doing that, then there was no need for the boy’s circumstances to change. But how might this be achieved? She could not tell Mr Badule that the boy was not his—that would be too upsetting, too cruel, and presumably the boy would be upset to learn this as well. It was probable that the boy did not realize who his real father was; after all, even if they had identical large noses, boys tend not to notice things like that and he may have thought nothing of it. Mma Ramotswe decided that there was no need to do anything about that; ignorance was probably the best state for the boy. Later on, with his school fees all paid, he could start to study family noses and draw his own conclusions.

  “It’s Mr Badule,” Mma Ramotswe pronounced. “We have to make him happy. We have to tell him what is going on, but we must make him accept it. If he accepts it, then the whole problem goes away.”

  “But he’s told us that he worries about it,” objected Mma Makutsi.

  “He worries because he thinks it is a bad thing for his wife to be seeing another man,” Mma Ramotswe countered. “We shall persuade him otherwise.”

  Mma Makutsi looked doubtful, but was relieved that Mma Ramotswe had taken charge again. No lies were to be told, and, if they were, they were not going to be told by her. Anyway, Mma Ramotswe was immensely resourceful. If she believed that she could persuade Mr Badule to be happy, then there was a good chance that she could.

  BUT THERE were other matters which required attention. There had been a letter from Mrs Curtin in which she asked whether Mma Ramotswe had unearthed anything. “I know it’s early to be asking,” she wrote, “but ever since I spoke to you, I have had the feeling that you would discover something for me. I don’t wish to flatter you, Mma, but I had the feeling that you were one of these people who just knew. You don’t have to reply to this letter; I know I should not be writing it at this stage, but I have to do something. You’ll understand, Mma Ramotswe—I know you will.”

  The letter had touched Mma Ramotswe, as did all the pleas that she received from troubled people. She thought of the progress that had been made so far. She had seen the place and she had sensed that that was where that young man’s life had ended. In a sense, then, she had reached the conclusion right at the beginning. Now she had to work backwards and find out why he was lying there—as she knew he was—in that dry earth, on the edge of the Great Kalahari. It was a lonely grave, so far away from his people, and he had been so young. How had it come to this? Wrong had been done at some point, and if one wanted to find out what wrong had occurred, then one had to find the people who were capable of doing that wrong. Mr Oswald Ranta.

  THE TINY white van moved gingerly over the speed bumps which were intended to deter fast and furious driving by the university staff. Mma Ramotswe was a considerate driver and was ashamed of the bad driving which made the roads so perilous. Botswana, of course, was much safer than other countries in that part of Africa. South Africa was very bad; there were aggressive drivers there, who would shoot you if you crossed them, and they were often drunk, particularly after payday. If payday fell on a Friday night, then it was foolhardy to set out on the roads at all. Swaziland was even worse. The Swazis loved speed, and the winding road between Manzini and Mbabane, on which she had once spent a terrifying half hour, was a notorious claimant of motoring life. She remembered coming across a poignant item in an odd copy of The Times of Swaziland, which had displayed a picture of a rather mousy-looking man, small and insignificant, under which was printed the simple legend The late Mr Richard Mavuso (46). Mr Mavuso, who had a tiny head and a small, neatly trimmed moustache, would have been beneath the notice of most beauty queens and yet, unfortunately, as the newspaper report revealed, he had been run over by one.

  Mma Ramotswe had been strangely affected by the report. Local man, Mr Richard Mavuso (above) was run over on Friday night by the Runner-up to Miss Swaziland. The well-known Beauty Queen, Miss Gladys Lapelala, of Manzini, ran over Mr Mavuso as he was trying to cross the road in Mbabane, where he was a clerk in the Public Works Department.

  That was all that the report had said, and Mma Ramotswe wondered why she was so affected by it. People were being run over all the time, and not much was made of it. Did it make a difference that one was run over by a beauty queen? And was it sad because Mr Mavuso was such a small and insignificant man, and the beauty queen so big, and important? Perhaps such an event was a striking metaphor for life’s injustices; the powerful, the glamorous, the fêted, could so often with impunity push aside the insignificant, the timorous.

  She nosed the tiny white van into a parking space behind the Administration Buildings and looked about her. She passed the university grounds every day, and was familiar with the cluster of white, sun-shaded buildings that sprawled across the several hundred-acre site near the old airfield. Yet she had never had the occasion to set foot there, and now, faced with a rather bewildering array of blocks, each with its impressive, rather alien name, she felt
slightly overawed. She was not an uneducated woman, but she had no BA. And this was a place where everybody one came across was either a BA or BSc or even more than that. There were unimaginably learned people here; scholars like Professor Tlou, who had written a history of Botswana and a biography of Seretse Khama. Or there was Dr Bojosi Otloghile, who had written a book on the High Court of Botswana, which she had bought, but not yet read. One might come across such a person turning a corner in one of these buildings and they would look just like anybody else. But their heads would contain rather more than the heads of the average person, which were not particularly full of very much for a great deal of the time.

  She looked at a board which proclaimed itself a map of the campus. Department of Physics that way; Department of Theology that way; Institute of Advanced Studies first right. And then, rather more helpfully, Enquiries. She followed the arrow for Enquiries and came to a modest, prefabricated building, tucked away behind Theology and in front of African Languages. She knocked at the door and entered.

  An emaciated woman was sitting behind a desk, trying to unscrew the cap of a pen.

  “I am looking for Mr Ranta,” she said. “I believe he works here.”

  The woman looked bored. “Dr Ranta,” she said. “He is not just plain Mr Ranta. He is Dr Ranta.”

  “I am sorry,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I would not wish to offend him. Where is he, please?”

  “They seek him here, they seek him there,” said the woman. “He is here one moment, the next moment, he is nowhere. That’s Dr Ranta.”

  “But will he be here at this moment?” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am not worried about the next moment.”

  The woman arched an eyebrow. “You could try his office. He has an office here. But most of the time he spends in his bedroom.”

  “Oh,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He is a ladies’ man, this Dr Ranta?”