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.
She turned the corner of the house and saw the man crouched before the old brick-encased boiler. Such boilers were common features of older houses, which had no electricity, and of course they were still necessary out here, where there was no power apart from that provided by the generator. It would be far cheaper to heat the household’s water in such a boiler than to use the diesel-generated current. And here was the boiler being stoked up with wood to make hot water for the morning baths.
The man saw her approaching and stood up, wiping his khaki trousers as he did so. Mma Ramotswe greeted him in the traditional way and he replied courteously. He was a tall man in his early forties, well-built, and he had strong, good-looking features.
“You are making a good fire there, Rra,” she observed, pointing to the glow that came from the front of the boiler.
“The trees here are good for burning,” he said simply. “There are many of them. We never lack for firewood.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “So this is your job?”
He frowned. “That and other things.”
“Oh?” The tone of his remark intrigued her. These “other things” were clearly unwelcome. “What other things, Rra?”
“I am the cook,” he said. “I am in charge of the kitchen and I make the food.”
He looked at her defensively, as if expecting a response.
“That is good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is a good thing to be able to cook. They have got some very fine men cooks down in Gaborone. They call them chefs and they wear peculiar white hats.”
The man nodded. “I used to work in a hotel in Gaborone,” he said. “I was a cook there. Not the head cook, but one of the junior ones. That was a few years ago.”
“Why did you come here?” asked Mma Ramotswe. It seemed an extraordinary thing to have done. Cooks like that in Gaborone would have been paid far more, she assumed, than cooks in the farmhouses.
The cook stretched out a leg and pushed a piece of wood back into the fire with his foot.
“I never liked it,” he said. “I did not like being a cook then, and I do not like it now.”
“Then why do it, Rra?”
He sighed. “It is a difficult story, Mma. To tell it would take a long time, and I have to get back to work when the sun comes up. But I can tell you some of it now, if you like. You sit down there, Mma, on that log. Yes. That is fine. I shall tell you since you ask me.
“I come from over that way, by that hill, over there, but behind it, ten miles behind it. There is a village there which nobody knows because it is not important and nothing ever happens there. Nobody pays attention to it because the people there are very quiet. They never shout and they never make a fuss. So nothing ever happens.
“There was a school in the village with a very wise teacher. He had two other teachers to help him, but he was the main one, and everybody listened to him rather than the other teachers. He said to me one day, ‘Samuel, you are a very clever boy. You can remember the names of all the cattle and who the mothers and fathers of the cattle were. You are better than anybody else at that. A boy like you could go to Gaborone and get a job.’
“I did not find it strange that I should remember cattle as I loved cattle more than anything else. I wanted to work with cattle one day, but there was no work with cattle where we were and so I had to think of something else. I did not believe that I was good enough to go to Gaborone, but when I was sixteen the teacher gave me some money which the Government had given him and I used it to buy a bus ticket to Gaborone. My father had no money, but he gave me a watch which he had found one day lying beside the edge of the tarred road. It was his prize possession, but he gave it to me and told me to sell it for money to buy food once I reached Gaborone.
“I did not want to sell that watch, but eventually, when my stomach was so empty that it was sore, I had to do so. I was given one hundred pula for it, because it was a good watch, and I spent that on food to make me strong.
“It took me many days to find work, and my money for food would not last forever. At last I found work in a hotel, where they made me carry things and open doors for guests. Sometimes these guests came from very far away, and they were very rich. Their pockets were full of money. They gave me tips sometimes, and I saved the money in the post office. I wish I still had that money.
“After a while, they transferred me to the kitchen, where I helped the chefs. They found out that I was a good cook and they gave me a uniform. I cooked there for ten years, although I hated it. I did not like those hot kitchens and all those smells of food, but it was my job, and I had to do it. And it was while I was doing that, working in that hotel, that I met the brother of the man who lives here. You may know the one I am talking about—he is the important one who lives in Gaborone. He said that he would give me a job up here, as Assistant Manager of the farm, and I was very happy. I told him that I knew all about cattle, and that I would look after the farm well.
“I came up here with my wife. She is from this part, and she was very happy to be back. They gave us a nice place to live, and my wife is now very contented. You will know, Mma, how important it is to have a wife or a husband who is contented. If you do not, then you will never have any peace. Never. I also have a contented mother-in-law. She moved in and lives at the back of the house. She is always singing because she is so happy that she has her daughter and my children there.
“I was looking forward to working with the cattle, but as soon as I met the brother who lives up here, he asked me what I had done and I said that I had been a cook. He was very pleased to hear this and he said that I should be the cook in the house. They were always having big, important people up from Gaborone and it would impress them if there was a real cook in the house. I said that I did not want to do this, but he forced me. He spoke to my wife and she took his side. She said that this was such a good place to be that only a fool would not do what these people wanted me to do. My mother-in-law started to wail. She said that she was an old woman and she would die if we had to move. My wife said to me: ‘Do you want to kill my mother? Is that what you are wanting to do?’
“So I have had to be the cook in this place, and I am still surrounded by cooking smells when I would rather be out with the cattle. That is why I am not contented, Mma, when all my family is very contented. It is a strange story, do you not think?”
HE FINISHED the story and looked mournfully at Mma Ramotswe. She met his gaze, and then looked away. She was thinking, her mind racing ahead of itself, the possibilities jostling one another until a hypothesis emerged, was examined, and a conclusion reached.
She looked at him again. He had risen to his feet and was closing the door of the boiler. Within the water tank, an old petrol drum converted for the purpose, she heard the bubbling of heating water. Should she speak, or should she remain silent? If she spoke, she could be wrong and he could take violent exception to what she said. But if she held back, then she would have lost the moment. So she decided.
“There’s something that I’ve been wanting to ask you, Rra,” she said.
“Yes?” He glanced up at her briefly, and then busied himself again with the tidying of th
e wood stack.
“I saw you putting something into the food yesterday. You didn’t see me, but I saw you. Why did you do it?”
He froze. He was on the point of lifting up a large log, his hands stretched around it, his back bent, ready to take the weight. Then, quite slowly, his hands unclasped and he straightened himself up.
“You saw me?” His voice was strained, almost inaudible.
Mma Ramotswe swallowed. “Yes. I saw you. You put something in the food. Something bad.”
He looked at her now, and she saw that the eyes had dulled. The face, animated before, was devoid of expression.
“You are not trying to kill them, are you?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came.
Mma Ramotswe felt emboldened. She had made the right decision and now she had to finish what she had begun.
“You just wanted them to stop using you as a cook, didn’t you? If they felt that your food tasted bad, then they would just give up on you as a cook and you could get back to the work that you really wanted to do. That’s right, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“You were very foolish, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You could have harmed somebody.”
“Not with what I used,” he said. “It was perfectly safe.”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “It is never safe.”
The cook looked down at his hands.
“I am not a murderer,” he said. “I am not that sort of man.”
Mma Ramotswe snorted. “You are very lucky that I worked out what you were doing,” she said. “I didn’t see you, of course, but your story gave you away.”
“And now?” said the cook. “You will tell them and they will call the police. Please, Mma, remember that I have a family. If I cannot work for these people it will be hard for me to find another job now. I am getting older. I cannot …”
Mma Ramotswe raised a hand to stop him. “I am not that sort of person,” she said. “I am going to tell them that the food you used was bad, but that you could not tell it. I am going to tell the brother that he should give you another job.”
“He will not do that,” said the cook. “I have asked him.”
“But I am a woman,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I know how to make men do things.”
The cook smiled. “You are very kind, Mma.”
“Too kind,” said Mma Ramotswe, turning to go back towards the house. The sun was beginning to come up and the trees and the hills and the very earth were golden. It was a beautiful place to be, and she would have liked to have stayed. But now there was nothing more to do. She knew what she had to tell the Government Man and she might as well return to Gaborone to do it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AN EXCELLENT TYPE OF GIRL
IT HAD not been difficult to identify Motlamedi as unsuitable for the important office of Miss Beauty and Integrity. There were three further names on the list, though, and each of them would have to be interviewed for a judgement to be made. They might not be so transparent; it was rare for Mma Makutsi to feel sure about somebody on a first meeting, but there was no doubt in her mind that Motlamedi was, quite simply, a bad girl. This description was very specific; it had nothing to do with bad women or bad ladies—they were quite different categories. Bad women were prostitutes; bad ladies were manipulative older ladies, usually married to older men, who interfered in the affairs of others for their own selfish ends. The expression bad girl, by contrast, referred to somebody who was usually rather younger (certainly under thirty) and whose interest was in having a good time. That was the essence of it, in fact—a good time. Indeed there was a subcategory of bad girls, that of good-time girls. These were girls who were mainly to be found in bars with flashy men, having what appeared to be a good time. Some of these flashy men, of course, saw themselves as merely being one of the boys, which they thought gave them an excuse for all sorts of selfish behaviour. But not in Mma Makutsi’s book.
At the other end of the spectrum, there were good girls. These were girls who worked hard and who were appreciated by their families. They were the ones who visited the elders; who looked after the smaller children, sitting for hours under a tree watching the children play; and who in due course trained to be nurses or, as in Mma Makutsi’s case, undertook a general secretarial training at the Botswana Secretarial College. Unfortunately, these good girls, who carried half the world upon their shoulders, did not have much fun.
There was no doubt that Motlamedi was not a good girl, but was there any possibility, Mma Makutsi now glumly asked herself, that any of the others might prove to be much better? The difficulty was that good girls were unlikely to enter a beauty competition in the first place. It was, in general, not the sort of thing that good girls thought of doing. And if her pessimism were to prove justified, then what would she be able to say to Mr Pulani when he came to her for her report? It would not be very useful to say that all the girls were as bad as one another, that none of them was worthy of the title. That would be singularly unhelpful, and she suspected that she would not even be able to put in a fee note for that sort of information.
She sat in her car with the apprentice and looked despairingly at her list of names.
“Where to now?” asked the apprentice. His tone was surly, but only just so; he realised that she was, after all, still Acting Manager, and both he and his colleague had a healthy respect for this remarkable woman who had come to the garage and turned their working practices upside down.
Mma Makutsi sighed. “I have three girls to see,” she said. “And I cannot decide which one to go to next.”
The apprentice laughed. “I know a lot about girls,” he said. “I could tell you.”
Mma Makutsi cast a scornful glance in his direction. “You and your girls!” she said. “That’s all you think of, isn’t it? You and that lazy friend of yours. Girls, girls, girls …”
She stopped herself. Yes, he was an expert in girls—it was well-known—and Gaborone was not such a large place. There was a chance, probably quite a good chance, that he actually knew something about these girls. If they were bad girls, as they almost certainly were, or, more specifically, good-time girls, then he would probably have encountered them on his rounds of the bars. She signalled for him to draw over to the side of the road.
“Stop. Stop here. I want to show you this list.”
The apprentice drew in and took the list from Mma Makutsi. As he read it, he broke into a smile.
“This is a fine list of girls!” he said enthusiastically. “These are some of the best girls in town. Or at least three of them are the best girls in town. Big girls, you know what I mean, big, excellent girls. These are girls that we boys are very appreciative of. We approve of these girls. Oh yes! Too much!”
Mma Makutsi’s heart skipped a beat. Her intuition had been right; he had the answer to her quest and now all that she had to do was to coax it out of him.
“So which girls do you know?” she asked. “Which are the three you know?”
The apprentice laughed. “This one here,” he said. “This one who is called Makita. I know her. She is very good fun, and she laughs a lot, especially when you tickle her. Then this one, Gladys, my, my! Ow! One, two, three! And I also know this one here, this girl called Motlamedi, or rather my brother knows her. He says that she is a very clever girl who is a student at the university but she doesn’t waste too much time on her books. Lots of brains, but also a very big bottom. She is more interested in being glamorous.”
Mma Makutsi nodded. “I have just been speaking to that girl,” she said. “Your brother is right about her. But what about that other girl, Patricia, the one who lives in Tlokweng? Do you know that girl?”
The apprentice shook his head. “She is an unknown girl that one,” he said, adding quickly, “But I am sure that she is a very charming girl, too. You never know.”
Mma Makutsi took the piece of paper away from him and tucked it into the pocket of her dress. “We are going to Tlokweng,??
? she said. “I need to meet this Patricia.”
They drove out to Tlokweng in silence. The apprentice appeared to be lost in thought—possibly thinking about the girls on the list—while Mma Makutsi was thinking about the apprentice. It was very unfair—but entirely typical of the injustice of the relations between the sexes—that there was no expression quite like good-time girl that could be applied to boys like this ridiculous apprentice. They were every bit as bad—if not worse—as the good-time girls themselves, but nobody seemed to blame them for it. Nobody spoke of bar boys, for example, and nobody would describe any male over twelve as a bad boy. Women, as usual, were expected to behave better than men, and inevitably attracted criticism for doing things that men were licensed to do with impunity. It was not fair; it had never been fair, and it would probably never be fair in the future. Men would wriggle out of it somehow, even if you tied them up in a constitution. Men judges would find that the constitution really said something rather different from what was written on the page and interpret it in a favour of men. All people, both men and women, are entitled to equal treatment in the workplace became Women can get some jobs, but they cannot do certain jobs (for their own protection) as men will do these jobs better anyway.
Why did men behave like this? It had always been a mystery to Mma Makutsi although latterly she had begun to glimpse the makings of an explanation. She thought that it might have something to do with the way in which mothers treated their sons. If the mothers allowed the boys to think that they were special—and all mothers did that, as far as Mma Makutsi could make out—then that encouraged boys to develop attitudes which never left them. If young boys were allowed to think that women were there to look after them, then they would continue to think this when they grew up—and they did. Mma Makutsi had seen so many examples of it that she could not imagine anybody seriously challenging the theory. This very apprentice was an example. She had seen his mother come to the garage once with a whole watermelon for her son and she had seen her cut it for him and give it to him in the way in which one would feed a small child. That mother should not be doing that; she should be encouraging her son to buy his own watermelons and cut them up himself. It was exactly this sort of treatment which made him so immature in his treatment of women. They were playthings to him; hewers of watermelon; eternal substitute mothers.