Charlie’s eyes had been shut, but now he opened them and stared at his hands. The interruption to his agonised display was the signal for Mma Makutsi to get up from her desk and cross to the young man’s side. “Here,” she said, reaching down to pull him to his feet. “Take my hand.”
Charlie complied somewhat sheepishly and was soon standing at Mma Makutsi’s side. He brushed at the dust on his overalls.
“Now you can sit down and get your breath back,” said Mma Makutsi. “Then we can talk about the future calmly.”
“There is no future,” muttered Charlie. “I’m finished.”
Mma Makutsi led him to her chair. He hesitated; he had once been found sitting in her chair while she was out of the office, and there had been a terrible row: grease from his overalls, she had said, would ruin the upholstery. But now that was not mentioned: it was not a time for concern about grease and the stains that grease brought. “You sit down right there,” said Mma Makutsi. “I’ll make you a mug of tea.”
This was another first.
Charlie sunk his head in misery. “I have to go home now,” he muttered. “There’s nothing for me to do here.”
Mma Makutsi shook her head. “Losing your job is not the end,” she said. “They taught us that at Botswana Secretarial College. Losing your job is a challenge. That’s what they said. It’s a challenge to go and get something better.”
Charlie said nothing.
“Mma Makutsi’s right,” said Mma Ramotswe gently. “There is always something else. It may take a little time, but somebody who wants to work will always find something.”
“Such as?” grunted Charlie.
“There are jobs in the paper,” said Mma Makutsi brightly. “There are jobs at the labour exchange. There are always people looking for intelligent young men like you.”
Charlie looked up. “But you said I was stupid—remember?”
Mma Makutsi drew back. “When did I say that?” she snapped. “When did I call you stupid?”
Charlie shrugged. “Many times, Mma. All the time, in fact.” He paused. “Three days ago, for instance. You said I was stupid when I asked you whether Itumelang was talking yet. Remember? You told me that babies of six months cannot talk, and then you laughed and called me stupid.”
Mma Makutsi made light of the accusation. “But I was only joking, Charlie. Don’t be so stu—” She stopped herself, but not in time.
“There,” said Charlie. “You see. You still think I’m stupid.”
Mma Ramotswe decided that it was time to intervene. “I don’t think there’s much point in talking like this,” she said. “Sometimes people say things they don’t really mean. It’s the way they talk, Charlie, surely you should know that by now.”
“And you too, Mma Ramotswe,” said Charlie. “You think I’m stupid too.”
“I do not, Charlie,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You’re not stupid. You have a very good brain in your head—if only you’d use it …”
“There you go,” said Charlie. “You think I’ve got no brain.”
“I didn’t say that,” protested Mma Ramotswe. “All I said was, I wish you’d use your brain. That’s all.”
“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “We’re on your side, Charlie. So is Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.”
“Then why did he fire me?” asked Charlie. “If he’s on my side, why did he get rid of me?”
“There’s no money,” said Mma Ramotswe. “A business can’t keep people on if there’s not enough money coming in. It’s hard, but that’s the way it is.”
Charlie listened in silence. He had not touched the tea that Mma Makutsi had made him, and Mma Ramotswe reminded him of it. “Don’t let your tea get cold, Charlie. You should drink it. It will make you feel better.”
Charlie looked down at the mug that Mma Makutsi had placed on the table beside him. For a moment or two he did nothing, but then, quite suddenly, he swept the mug off the table with a sharp sideways motion of his arm. The tea sprayed out, some of it splashing his overalls.
Mma Makutsi shrieked.
“I don’t need tea if I’m going to die,” muttered Charlie as he rose to his feet and began to leave the room.
Mma Ramotswe caught her breath. “Charlie!”
“I’m going to die,” repeated Charlie. “Soon soon. You’ll see.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
PILATES WITH CAKE
MMA POTOKWANE, matron of the Orphan Farm, and substitute mother, over the years, to almost eight hundred children, each of whose young life had had such a bad beginning, took most things in her stride. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had once remarked that she was the only woman in Botswana who could be struck by lightning and make the lightning blow a fuse. “And I wouldn’t want to be the lion who tried to eat her,” he had added. “That lion would learn a lesson, I think.” An exaggeration, of course, but Mma Potokwane had certainly never let the world put obstacles in her path. She had survived the intrusions of bureaucrats, and the indifference and selfishness of those who, having made their money, refused to share it. She had begged and borrowed and scraped in order to provide for the orphans in her care, and prided herself on the fact that none of them, none at all, had gone out into the world without knowing that they were loved and that there was at least one person who wanted them to make something of their lives—one person who believed in them.
“Maybe I can’t give them everything they need,” she once said to Mma Ramotswe, “but at least they know that I have tried.”
And Mma Ramotswe, who was well aware of the heroic efforts that Mma Potokwane made, had replied, “They know that, Mma. They definitely know that.”
As did many others. Everybody now was aware of the scheme that Mma Potokwane had cooked up with Mr. Taylor at Maru-a-Pula School to give orphans what amounted to the best education available in Botswana. The children chosen for that scheme had done every bit as well as the pupils who came from backgrounds of comfort and privilege, and had gone on to train for jobs that would otherwise have been way beyond their wildest dreams. A child who had nothing, who had been passed from pillar to post among struggling relatives, or who had not even had such relatives and had been completely abandoned because there was no grandmother to shoulder the burden—something that went against every fibre of Botswana traditions—such a child might find himself or herself training as a scientist, a doctor, an agronomist. And in the audience at such a graduation would be sitting Mma Potokwane in pride of place, in a sense—even if she were not physically there.
It was mainly for this determination that Mma Ramotswe admired her friend. But it was also for her wisdom, which had shown itself time and time again. It was this wisdom that had helped her so much during Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s illness or at those times when Mma Makutsi had been unsettled or demanding. It was this wisdom that had helped her in cases where she had found herself pursuing a line of enquiry that seemed to be getting nowhere; a question from Mma Potokwane, perhaps on the surface somewhat opaque, had turned her in a direction that had ultimately proved fruitful.
THAT AFTERNOON, with the painful memory of Charlie’s outburst still fresh in her mind, she left the office early in order to go out to the Orphan Farm. She liked the drive, which took her along dusty back roads that twisted this way and that around people’s houses and yards, past small islands of scrubland that had survived encroachment and were now claimed by itinerant herds of cattle. The cattle picked their way through thorn and acacia scrub, making a living somehow, prized by somebody for whom they represented the hard-earned savings of a lifetime. She sometimes slowed down to look at these cattle and judge the state they were in. Her late father had always done this; he could not drive past cattle without stopping and commenting on how well or how badly they were doing. He might say something about the cattle’s ancestors, if he recognised some handed-down characteristic that only a cattle man would know about: a way of holding the head; unusual markings; a special shape to the hump of a Brahmin bull. These meant nothing to those who did not know c
attle, but were there to be read by those who did.
Now, as she made her way out to see Mma Potokwane, she stopped the van for a few moments to gaze at a cow that was standing under an acacia tree chewing the cud, her calf at her side. She imagined that her father was in the van beside her, and she could hear his voice as clearly as if he had been there. The cow was thin, he said, but would put on weight when the rains came and there was grass again, rather than only hardened earth; and after that her calf would grow as it should and the owner would be content. And then he said something about the place where the rain-bearing clouds came from, and she did not hear it properly because the voices of late people were hard to make out sometimes and there were many of them wanting to talk to us, and the sound became like the sound of a swarm of bees, or the chatter of birds in the high branches of a mopani tree; not like words at all, but reminders nonetheless of how we shared the world with people who were no longer with us, but were in that other Botswana that cannot be seen, to which each of us would go in due course, when our time came, as it surely would.
She left the cow and calf; they would be there, she imagined, in exactly the same place when she came back; there was no reason for them to move, just as there was often no reason for any of us to move, if we only thought about it. We could stand under trees too, and look about us, and think about things. Not only could we do that, she thought, but we should. It was called meditation—she knew that—but she did not consider that we needed a special word for standing under a tree and thinking. People had been doing that well before meditation was invented. There were many things, she reflected, which we had been doing as long as anybody could remember and which had suddenly been taken up by fashionable enthusiasts and given an unnecessary new name. Mma Ramotswe had been invited to a Pilates class in a local church hall; it would be of great benefit to her, she had been told. But when she had gone to the class and seen what Pilates was, she had realised that she did not need to pay fifty pula a session to do the things that she had been doing for years anyway: lifting and pushing and stretching your muscles was nothing new; she did all of these things when she worked in her garden, and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did Pilates too, when he fiddled about under cars or struggled to mend a bit of old machinery at the Orphan Farm. In his case he was doing what might be called Pilates with Cake, as Mma Potokwane unashamedly bribed him to undertake the repairs for which she would otherwise have to pay.
Mma Ramotswe was now only minutes away from the gate that marked the entrance to the Orphan Farm. The farmlands were protected by a cattle grid that clattered in protest as she drove over it. And then there was the painted sign that said: Please remember that children live here—drive carefully. She had often thought that she might erect such a sign on Zebra Drive, warning drivers that people lived there and asking them to drive with consideration. But drivers would pay no attention, she feared, because they always seemed to be in such a hurry. There was no real reason to be in a hurry, when one came to think about it; important people, she had noticed, did not walk fast, but seemed to amble, and if they were not in a hurry when they had all those things to do and to worry about, then why should the rest of us imagine that we needed to be in any sort of rush?
She drew up beside the tree under which she always parked when she came to see Mma Potokwane, and sounded her horn, as she always did to notify the matron of her arrival. This worked, and Mma Potokwane’s window was flung open and a hand emerged, beckoning her in.
By the time Mma Ramotswe had reached the verandah of Mma Potokwane’s office, the matron had appeared at the doorway to welcome her. “So, Mma Ramotswe, you always come at a convenient time. As it happens, I have just put on the kettle and I baked a cake this very morning.”
“You know my weakness,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You know that I cannot resist your fruit cake.”
“And your husband is as bad,” said Mma Potokwane with a smile. “Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni will fix anything if you offer him a piece of fruit cake. My husband can no longer be bribed with such offers. I cannot make him do things any more.”
Mma Ramotswe laughed. “It is a very bad situation when we can no longer get our husbands to do what we want them to do.” She paused, and became serious. “Of course there are also those times when they do something that you don’t want them to do. Those times are also difficult.”
Mma Potokwane knew immediately that this was what Mma Ramotswe had come to talk about. Her friend did not always visit her for a specific reason, but when she did, it did not take Mma Potokwane long to work out what it was.
“So,” began Mma Potokwane. She stared at Mma Ramotswe with astute eyes. “So Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has done something—am I right, Mma?”
Mma Ramotswe did not beat about the bush. “He’s fired Charlie.”
This was unexpected news for Mma Potokwane. The two apprentices had been at the garage for so long now that it was difficult to imagine how it would be without them.
“Charlie’s the good-looking one. Isn’t he?” she asked. “The one who’s always getting into trouble.”
“That’s him,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The other one is Fanwell. He’s completed his apprenticeship exams now and so he’s a sort of assistant mechanic—something like that. Charlie never wrote his exams. He’s still an apprentice—or was, should I say.”
Mma Potokwane looked thoughtful. “He’s fired him for a good reason, I suppose? These days you can’t get rid of people just like that, you know. There is one of the cooks I’d dearly love to replace—a very lazy woman—but I know that if I tried to do that, there would be letters from lawyers, and a tribunal, and money to pay, and so on. Everybody would say: That Mma Potokwane goes round firing people left, right, and centre. You know how people are, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe explained why Charlie had to go. “I don’t think that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was looking for an excuse,” she said. “The garage has not been making much money recently and there hasn’t been enough work. I think that this really is the case.”
Mma Potokwane shook her head sadly. “We had to do the same thing last year,” she said. “We had one too many men working on the farm. We couldn’t sell enough produce to justify his salary. I was very unhappy about it, but we had no choice, I’m afraid.”
“Charlie took it very badly,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He burst into tears and then …”
“Yes, Mma?”
“Then he said something about dying.”
Mma Potokwane sat back in her chair. “Ah,” she said. “They do that.”
“Who does it?”
“Teenagers. They often say things like that.”
“It made me very anxious,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“But they rarely do anything about it,” went on Mma Potokwane.
“Charlie isn’t really a teenager,” pointed out Mma Ramotswe.
“Not technically, Mma, but men can be teenagers until well into their twenties. I have read all about that.” She paused. “And seen it too.”
“Well, he is very sad,” said Mma Ramotswe. “So sad that I want to do something for him.”
Mma Potokwane now reached forward to cut the cake that her secretary had placed on a large plate on her desk. She cut two slices—a large one for herself, and a slightly larger piece for Mma Ramotswe.
“You do not have to give me the biggest piece,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“But I do,” said Mma Potokwane. “I have to give a good-sized piece of cake to a woman who is my guest. That is the rule.”
Mma Ramotswe toyed with the cake on her plate. Mma Potokwane noticed this and it told her that Mma Ramotswe was really troubled. “I’m going to give him a job,” she blurted out.
Mma Potokwane’s eyes opened wide with surprise. “Charlie? Employ Charlie?”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “There will always be some small piece of work to do in the agency.”
Mma Potokwane was incredulous. “For clients? But what will they think when they see you’ve put a young man like that onto their case
?”
Mma Ramotswe shrugged. “He will be in the background.”
Mma Potokwane answered her own question. “I can tell you what they’ll think, Mma. They’ll say to themselves: we could get somebody like him just by going into some bar and picking the first young man we see. That’s what they’ll say, Mma Ramotswe. And then your business will become a joke.”
“But—”
Mma Potokwane ignored her friend’s attempt to defend herself. “I think you’re making a big mistake, Mma. Your own business barely makes any profit—you’ve told me that yourself. What if it has another mouth to feed? You’ll go bankrupt, Mma. You and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, and then where will you be?”
Mma Ramotswe said nothing for a few moments, and Mma Potokwane might well have concluded that her point had been taken to heart. But then she came up with her plan. “I know that we have very little money in my business account,” she said. She paused. Somewhere outside, a go-away bird uttered its plaintive cry. “But you are forgetting, Mma, that I have many cattle.”
It was now Mma Potokwane’s turn to lapse into silence. This was dangerous territory; in Botswana, cattle mattered above all things: one did not talk lightly about disposing of a herd one had inherited, and even if Mma Ramotswe had sold a number of cows in order to set up her business, those that had been sold had soon been replaced by calves. Now, with good management and prudence, her herd was considerably larger than it had been. That did not mean, though, that cattle should be sold for so risky a venture as employing Charlie; nobody would see the merits in that.
Mma Ramotswe decided to anticipate Mma Potokwane’s objections. She knew these would come—and would be forcibly expressed unless she dealt with them in advance. “I know you disapprove,” she said. “And I understand why.”
Mma Potokwane struggled with conflicting views. Mma Ramotswe was her friend and could not be allowed to do anything unwise without at least being warned in advance. On the other hand, her cattle were her affair, and if she chose to use them to help somebody—even Charlie—then she should be allowed to do that. She closed her eyes. “They are your cattle, Mma. They are not mine. So you should do what you think is the right thing.”