The Good Husband of Zebra Drive tn1lda-8

by Alexander McCall Smith

  He looked at Mma Ramotswe. One of the things he was ashamed of was thinking that she could ever take up with another man, that she would leave him. He had tried to put those ideas out of his head because he knew that they were both unfounded and unfair. Mma Ramotswe would never deceive him—he knew that—and yet somewhere in the back of his mind those unsettling thoughts lurked, nagging, insistent. And then there had been that photograph. He had tried not to think about it, but he found that he just could not help it; try not to think of something and see how hard it is, he thought. There was Mma Ramotswe with another man, and the man had his arm about her. The camera had recorded it and he had found it. How could he not think about that?

  Mma Ramotswe was buttering a piece of bread. She cut the bread into two pieces and popped one of them into her mouth. When she looked up from her task, she saw that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was staring at her, with that look that he sometimes had, a slightly sad, confused look. She swallowed; a crumb tickled. “Is there something wrong?” she asked.

  He shook his head, in false denial, and turned away, embarrassed. “No, nothing is wrong.” But then he thought, But there is something wrong. There is.

  He closed his eyes. He had decided to say something because he could not keep this within him any longer. But he was unable to look at her while he spoke. “Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “Would you ever leave me?”

  She had not anticipated anything like that. “Leave you?” she asked incredulously. “Leave you, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni?” And oddly, inconsequentially, she thought: Leave you to go where? To Francistown? To Mochudi? Into the Kalahari?

  He kept his eyes closed. “Yes. For another man.”

  He opened his eyes slightly, just to catch a glimpse of the effect of his words. What he had said surprised even himself, and he wondered what effect it would have on Mma Ramotswe.

  “But of course not,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am your wife, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. A wife does not leave her husband.” She paused. That was not true. Some wives had to leave their husbands, and she had done precisely that when she had broken up with her first husband, Note Mokoti. But that was different. “Of course I would never leave you,” she went on. “I have no interest in other men. None at all.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni opened his eyes. “None?”

  “No. Only you. You are the one. There is no man like you, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. There is no man who is as good, as kind.” She stopped and reached out to take his hand. “That is well known, by the way.”

  He could not meet her gaze. He felt so ashamed of himself; but he was also touched by what she had said—for a man might easily imagine himself unloved—and he did not think it was untrue. But there was still that photograph.

  He rose to his feet, gently pushing away her hand, and went across the room to pick up the small canvas bag which he sometimes took with him to the garage. He took out an envelope and felt within it for the photograph.

  “There is this,” he said. “There is this photograph. It was in the camera. That office camera.”

  He pushed the photograph over the table towards her. Frowning, she picked it up and examined it. She looked puzzled at first—he was watching her expression closely, with anxiety, with dread—but then she smiled. Her smile struck him as callous, hurtful; that she should smile at, make light of such a thing as this. He felt doubly betrayed.

  “I had forgotten about that,” she said. “But now I remember. Mma Makutsi took it shortly after we had bought the camera. It was taken outside the shop where we bought it. You know that place, just outside the Mall. Look, there is that bit of wall at the back.”

  He glanced at where she was pointing. “And that man?”

  “I have no idea who he was,” she said.

  His voice was barely a whisper. “You do not even know his name?”

  “No. And I don’t know hers either.”

  “Whose?”

  “Hers. The woman in the picture. The woman who looks like me. Or so Mma Makutsi told me. They ran that shop, you see, those two people. And Mma Makutsi whispered to me while we were buying the camera, Look, Mma, that lady is your double. And I suppose she did look a bit like me, and when we mentioned it, they thought so too. They laughed, and so we decided to try the camera out. We took that photograph, and forgot about it.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni reached out and took the photograph. He peered at it. The woman looked like Mma Ramotswe, it was true; but on closer examination, of course it was not her. Of course not. The eyes were different; just different. He put down the photograph. He had been blind. Jealousy, or was it fear, had made him blind.

  “You were worried,” she said. “Oh, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, I can understand now. You were worried!”

  “Only a little bit,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “But now I am not.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked at the photograph again. “It’s interesting, isn’t it,” she said. “It’s interesting how we can look at things and think we see something, when it really isn’t there at all.”

  “Our eyes deceive us,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He was feeling waves of relief, like that relief which follows a flood in a dry land after rains, sudden, complete, overwhelming; he felt that, but could not find the words for his emotions, and so he said again, “Our eyes deceive us.”

  “But our hearts do not,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  A silence followed this remark. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni thought, simply, Yes. But Mma Ramotswe thought: Is that really so, or does it merely sound right?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE PROPER PLACE OF MERCY

  IT SEEMED TO MMA RAMOTSWE that a rather unusual, and unsettling, period had come to an end. If one believed those columns in magazines about the stars—and she had never understood how people could imagine that the stars had anything to do with our tiny, distant lives—then some heavenly bodies somewhere must have moved into a more favourable alignment. Perhaps the good planets had drifted from their normal position—which was directly above Botswana, and particularly above Zebra Drive, Gaborone, Botswana—and had now made their way back. For everything seemed to be in the process of satisfactory resolution. Mma Makutsi no longer spoke of resignation and seemed quite content with her new, vaguely defined post of associate detective; Charlie was back in the fold, the unfortunate No. 1 Ladies’ Taxi Service no longer in existence, and, as a matter of tact, no longer mentioned, even by Mma Makutsi; Mr J.L.B. Matekoni seemed to have lost interest in conducting enquiries and had had his ridiculous anxieties laid to rest. Everything, in fact, seemed to have settled down; which was exactly the way Mma Ramotswe liked it to be. The world was full of uncertainty, and if the life of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, together with the lives of those associated with those two concerns, were all on an even keel, then at least some of that uncertainty was held at bay.

  The world, Mma Ramotswe believed, was composed of big things and small things. The big things were written large, and one could not but be aware of them—wars, oppression, the familiar theft by the rich and the strong of those simple things that the poor needed, those scraps which would make their life more bearable; this happened, and could make even the reading of a newspaper an exercise in sorrow. There were all those unkindnesses, palpable, daily, so easily avoidable; but one could not think just of those, thought Mma Ramotswe, or one would spend one’s time in tears—and the unkindnesses would continue. So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one’s own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their own solution?

  Yet one had to be careful in thinking about such matters. It was easy to dream, but daily life, with its responsibilities and problems, was still there, and in Mma Ramotswe’s case at least one pressing matter was still on her mind. This was her enquiry into the affairs of the hospital at Mochudi, and those three unexplained deaths. Or were they unexplained? It seemed to Mma Ramotswe
that a perfectly credible explanation had been offered in each case. Ultimately we all died from heart failure, one way or another, even if there were all sorts of conditions which precipitated this. The hearts of these three had simply stopped because they could no longer breathe—or so claimed the medical reports they had shown her. And if everybody knew why these three patients were finding it difficult to breathe, then surely that was the end of the matter? Did they know that? It was hard for Mma Ramotswe to decide, because the doctors, it seemed, could not agree. But then there would always be disputes by experts as to why one thing happened and another did not. Even mechanics did this, as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had often demonstrated. He would shake his head over the work of other mechanics who had attended to cars before they were brought to him. How could anybody have thought that a particular problem was a transmission problem when it was so clearly to do with something quite different, some matter of rods and rings and all the other complicated bits and pieces which made up the innards of a car?

  Mma Ramotswe felt helpless in the face of medical uncertainty. It was not for her to make a pronouncement about why somebody died, and if that was the case, as it undoubtedly was, then she felt that all that she could do here was to exclude, if possible, some non-medical factor, something unusual that had resulted in three people all becoming late at the same time of the week and in the same bed. It was for this reason that she decided that the only thing to do—indeed the final thing that she intended to do in this particular investigation—would be to go to the hospital on a Friday at ten o’clock, which was one hour before the incidents had taken place, and to find out if there was anything to be noticed. One would have thought that the hospital authorities, and in particular Tati Monyena, would have thought of doing something like this, but then it had often struck Mma Ramotswe that people who were in the middle of things just did not pick up what might be glaringly obvious to those outside. She often saw things which other people missed—a fact which rather bemused her; that is why I have found my calling, she said to herself; I am called to help other people because I am lucky enough to be able to notice things. Of course, she knew where that particular ability came from—its roots were back in those early years under the tutelage of her cousin, who trained her to keep her eyes open, to notice all the little things that were happening when one did something as simple as go for a walk in the bush. Here, along the path, would be the tracks of the animals that had passed that way; there were the tiny prints of a duiker, the skittish miniature buck with its delicate miniature hooves; there were the signs of the labours of the dung beetle, pushing its trophy, so much bigger than itself, leaving those marks in the sand. And there, look, somebody had come this way while he was eating and had thrown the maize cob down on the ground, not all that long ago because the ants had not yet come to take possession of it. The cousin had an eye for these things, and the habit had been engrained in Mma Ramotswe’s mind. At the age of ten, she had known by heart the number plate of virtually every car in Mochudi and had been able to say who had driven in the direction of Gaborone on any morning. “You have eyes like mine,” said the cousin. “And that is a good thing.”

  Tati Monyena had responded enthusiastically to Mma Ramotswe’s suggestion that she should visit the ward that Friday. “Of course,” he said. “Of course. That is a very good idea, Mma. I shall give you a white coat if I can find one which is…” He had stopped himself, but Mma Ramotswe knew what he had been going to say, but had not, was if I can find one big enough. She did not mind. It was a good thing, in her view, to be of her particular construction, even if the manufacturers of white hospital coats failed to make adequate provision for the needs of those of traditional build.

  “That will be fine,” she responded quickly. “I will not get in the way. I will just watch.”

  “I shall tell the staff,” he said. “You have my full authority. Full authority.”

  He was there to greet her when she arrived. He had been watching from his window, she thought, which suggested to her a certain anxiety on his part. That was interesting, but not really significant. This whole issue was not one which a hospital administrator would like; it had required an unsettling enquiry, it made people uneasy; there were far more important things to do. And of course there was probably a personal factor, as there so often was. Mma Ramotswe had asked about and had discovered that the next promotion for Tati Monyena would be to the post of Chief Administrator, a post which was already occupied by somebody else. But the woman who was in that post was also ambitious and there was a job in the Ministry of Health in Gaborone itself for which people thought she was the obvious candidate. That job was in the hands of a long-serving incumbent who was only eighteen months away from retirement and a return to a comfortable brick house he had built for himself in Otse. The last thing that Tati Monyena would want would be all these desirable changes to be disturbed by an administrative hiccup, a scandal of some sort. So of course the poor man would be looking out of his window and waiting for the arrival of the woman who was to put this whole awkward matter to bed, whose word would be final. Nothing untoward, she would say in her report. The end.

  He greeted Mma Ramotswe outside and led her to his office. She saw a white coat on the chair. “For me?”

  “Yes, Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “It might be…it might be a slightly tight fit, I’m afraid. But it will mean that you will be unobtrusive. It’s amazing how easy it is to wander about a hospital with a white coat on. Nobody will ask you what you’re doing. You can do what you like.”

  He said this with a smile as he handed the coat to her. As she slipped it on, though, his words lingered. Nobody will ask you what you’re doing. You can do what you like. If, for any reason, there was a mischief-maker in the hospital, then the way would be wide open for such a person to do what he liked. The thought had a strangely chilling effect. It would take a particular sort of evil, she imagined, to prey on patients in a hospital; but such things happened—the unimaginable did occur. Fortunately she had never encountered it, but perhaps that innocence of experience would inevitably be shattered if one was a detective, which, after all, she claimed to be. But I’m not that sort of detective, she told herself; not that sort…

  In her white coat, tight at the arms, she remembered how on another occasion, at the very beginning of her career, she had impersonated a nurse to deal with the bogus father of Happy Bapetsi. That had worked, and the greedy imposter, who had claimed to be Happy’s father, had been sent to Lobatse whence he had come, Mma Ramotswe’s denunciations ringing in his ears. That had been a simple investigation, though, requiring no more than the wisdom of Solomon, and she had always had a clear idea of what she had to say, the lines she had to deliver. Her current circumstances were of course very different. She had no idea what she was going to say or do, or indeed of what she was looking for. She was searching for something unusual, something which had occurred at the same time on three Fridays, but she could not imagine what this might be. When she had asked the staff in the ward if anything special happened at that time of the morning, and on Fridays in particular, they had looked blank. “We have our tea round about then,” one said. She had seized at this. Would nobody be looking after the patients while the nursing staff gossiped over a cup of tea? Her question had been anticipated. “We take turns to have tea,” somebody else had quickly assured her. “Always. Always. This means that there is always somebody on duty. Always. That is the rule.”

  Tati Monyena walked with her to the ward, and introduced her again to the nurses she had already met. One smiled when she saw Mma Ramotswe in her white coat. Another looked at her in astonishment, and then frowned and turned away. They were busy, though, and had no time to speak to her. There was a man in a bed near the window who was breathing heavily, making a sound which was like that of gravel being walked upon. One of the nurses took his pulse and adjusted his pillow. There was a small framed photograph on the table beside him, left by a relative no doubt, a reminder, a little thing
for a very ill person to have with him on his journey, along with all those other memories that make up the life of a man.

  For the first little while, Mma Ramotswe felt like the intruder she was. It was an almost indecent feeling—that one was watching something that one should not be watching, like looking at another person in a moment of great privacy, but that feeling wore away as she stood by a window and watched the nurses at work. They were matter-of-fact in their manner: drugs were given, temperatures taken, entries made on charts. It was like an office, she thought, with its series of small tasks to be methodically carried out. That nurse over there, she thought, the one with the glasses, would be Mma Makutsi herself. And that young man who brought in the drugs trolley and who made some muttered comment to one of the nurses could be Charlie, and the drugs trolley, with its well-oiled, silent wheels, his Mercedes-Benz.

  After three quarters of an hour, when she had begun to feel tired, Mma Ramotswe drew a chair over to the place where she had been standing. It was near a bed occupied by a silent, sleeping man. He had tubes inserted into his arms, and wires disappearing into the sleeve of his nightgown. He slept regardless, his face composed, peaceful, all pain, if he had been experiencing it, forgotten. She watched him and thought of her father, Obed Ramotswe, and of how he met his end, in just such a bed, and of how it had seemed to her at the time that a whole Botswana had died with him. But it had not. That fine country, with its good people, was still there; it was there in the face of this elderly man with his head upon that pillow and the sunlight, the warm, friendly sun of Africa, slanting through the window and falling upon him now in his last days.