The Full Cupboard of Life

  He had spoken the words without thinking that a butcher might take such a remark as a slight, as a suggestion that his own meat was much beset by flies. But the butcher did not appear to mind, and he smiled at the metaphor. “There are flies everywhere,” he said. “We butchers know all about that. I would like to find a country without flies. Is there such a place, do you think, Rra?”

  “I have not heard of such a country,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I think that in very cold places there are no flies. Or in some very big towns, where there are no cattle to bring the flies. Perhaps in such places. Places like New York.”

  “Are there no cattle in New York?” asked the butcher.

  “I do not think so,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

  The butcher thought for a moment. “But there is a big green part of the town. I have seen a photograph. This part, this bit of bush, is in the middle. Perhaps they keep the cattle there. Do you think that is the place for cattle, Rra?”

  “Perhaps,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, glancing at his watch. It was time for him to go home for his lunch, which he always ate at noon. Then, after lunch, fortified by a plate of meat and beans, he would drive round to First Class Motors and speak to the Manager.

  MMA MAKUTSI ate her own lunch in the office. Now that she had a bit more money from the Kalahari Typing School for Men, she was able to treat herself to a doughnut at lunchtime, and this she ate with relish, a magazine open on the desk before her, a cup of bush tea at her side. It was best, of course, if Mma Ramotswe was there too, as they could exchange news and opinions, but it was still enjoyable to be by oneself, turning the pages of the magazine with one hand and licking the sugar off the fingers of the other.

  The magazine was a glossy one, published in Johannesburg, and sold in great numbers at the Botswana Book Centre. It contained articles about musicians and actors and the like, and about the parties which these people liked to attend in places like Cape Town and Durban. Mma Ramotswe had once said that she would not care to go to that sort of party, even if she were to be invited to one—which she never had been, as Mma Makutsi helpfully pointed out—but she was still sufficiently interested to peer over Mma Makutsi’s shoulder and comment on the people in the pictures.

  “That woman in the red dress,” Mma Ramotswe had said. “Look at her. She is a lady who is only good for going to parties. That is very clear.”

  “She is a very famous lady, that one,” Mma Makutsi had replied. “I have seen her picture many times. She knows where there are cameras and she stands in front of them, like a pig trying to get to the food. She is a very fashionable lady over in Johannesburg.”

  “And what is she famous for?”

  “The magazine has never explained that,” Mma Makutsi had said. “Maybe they do not know either.”

  This had made Mma Ramotswe laugh. “And then that woman there, that one in the middle, standing next to …” She had stopped, suddenly, as she recognised the face in the photograph. Mma Makutsi, engrossed in the contemplation of another photograph, had not noticed anything untoward. So she did not see the expression on Mma Ramotswe’s face as she recognised, in the middle of the group of smiling friends, the face of Note Mokoti, trumpet player, and, for a brief and unhappy time, husband of Precious Ramotswe and father—not that it had meant anything to him—of her tiny child, the one who had left her after only those few, cherished hours.

  Now, though, Mma Makutsi paged through the magazine on her own, while from within the garage there came the sound of a car’s wheels being taken off. The sounds of wheel-nuts being thrown into an upturned hub-cap was one she recognised well, and was reassuring, in a strange way, just as the sound of the cicadas in the bush was a comforting one. The sounds that were alarming were those that came from nowhere, strange sounds that occurred at night, which might be anything.

  She abandoned her magazine and reached for her tea cup, and it was at that point that she saw the envelope at the end of her desk. She had not noticed it when she came in that day, and it was not there last night, which meant that it must have been put there first thing in the morning. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had opened the garage and the office, and he must have found it slipped under a door. Sometimes customers left notes that way, when they passed by and the garage was closed. Bills were even settled like this, with the money tucked into an envelope and pushed into the office through a crack in the door. That worried Mma Makutsi, who imagined that it would be very easy for money to go missing, but Mr J.L.B. Matekoni seemed unconcerned about it, and said that his customers had always paid in all sorts of ways and money had never been lost.

  “One man used to pay his bills with bags of coins,” he said. “Sometimes he would drive past, throw out one of those old white Standard Bank bags, wave, and drive off. That is how he settled his bills.”

  “That’s all very well,” Mma Makutsi had said. “But that would never have been recommended to us at the Botswana Secretarial College. They taught us there that the best way to pay bills was by cheque, and to ask for a receipt.”

  That was undoubtedly true, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had not cared to argue with one who had achieved the since then unequalled score of ninety-seven per cent in her final examinations at the Botswana Secretarial College. This letter, though, was plainly not a bill. As Mma Makutsi stretched across her desk to pick it up, she saw, written across the front of the envelope: To Mr Handsome, Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.

  She smiled. There was no means of telling who this Mr Handsome was—there were, after all, three men who worked at the garage and it could be addressed to any one of them—and this meant that she would be quite within her rights to open it.

  There was a single sheet of paper inside the envelope, and Mma Makutsi unfolded this and began to read. Dear Mr Handsome, the letter began. You do not know who I am, but I have been watching out for you! You are very handsome. You have a handsome face and handsome legs. Even your neck is handsome. I hope that you will talk to me one day. I am waiting for you. There is a lot we could talk about. Your admirer.

  Mma Makutsi finished reading and then folded the letter up and put it back in the envelope. People did send such notes to one another, she knew, but the senders usually made sure that the letters were picked up by those for whom they were intended. It was strange that this person, this admirer, whoever she was, should have put the letter under the door without giving any further clue as to which Mr Handsome she had in mind. Now it was up to her to decide who should get this letter. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni? No. He was not a handsome man; he was pleasant-looking in a comfortable sort of way, but he was not handsome, in that sense. And anyway, whoever it was who had left the letter had no business in sending a letter like that to an engaged man and she, Mma Makutsi, would most certainly never pass on a letter of this nature to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, even if it had been intended for him.

  It was much more likely, then, that the letter was intended for the apprentices. But which one? Charlie, the older apprentice, was certainly good-looking, in a cheap sort of way she thought, but the same could probably be said of the younger one, perhaps even more so, when one considered the amount of hair gel that he seemed to rub on his head. If one were a young woman, somebody aged perhaps seventeen or eighteen, it is easy to see how one would be taken in by the looks of these young men and how one might even write a letter of this sort. So there was really no way of telling which of the young men was the intended recipient. It might be simpler, then, to throw the letter in the bin, and Mma Makutsi had almost decided to do this when the older apprentice walked into the room. He saw the envelope on the desk before her and, with a typical lack of respect for what is right, peered at the writing on the envelope.

  “To Mr Handsome,” he exclaimed. “That letter must be for me!”

  Mma Makutsi snorted. “You are not the only man around here. There are two others, you know. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and that friend of yours, that one with the oil on his hair. It could be for either of them.”

  The apprentice stared at
her uncomprehendingly. “But Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is at least forty,” he said. “How can a man of forty be called Mr Handsome?”

  “Forty is not the end,” said Mma Makutsi. “People who are forty can look very good.”

  “To other people who are forty maybe,” said the apprentice, “but not to the general public.”

  Mma Makutsi drew in her breath, and held it. If only Mma Ramotswe had been here to listen to this; what would she have done? She certainly would not have let any of this pass. The effrontery of this young man! The sheer effrontery! Well, she would teach him a lesson, she would tell him what she thought of his vanity; she would spell it out … She stopped. A better idea had materialised; a wonderful trick that would amuse Mma Ramotswe when she told her about it.

  “Call the young one in,” she said. “Tell him I want to tell him about this letter you have received. He will be impressed, I think.”

  Charlie left and soon returned with the younger apprentice.

  “Charlie here has received a letter,” said Mma Makutsi. “It was addressed to Mr Handsome and I shall read it out to you.”

  The younger apprentice glanced at Charlie, and then looked back at Mma Makutsi. “But that could be for me,” he said petulantly. “Why should he think that such a letter is addressed to him? What about me?”

  “Or Mr J.L.B. Matekoni?” asked Mma Makutsi, smiling. “What about him?”

  The younger apprentice shook his head. “He is an old man,” he said. “Nobody would call him Mr Handsome. It is too late.”

  “I see,” said Mma Makutsi. “Well, at least you are agreed on that. Well, let me read out the letter, and then we can decide.”

  She opened the envelope again, extracted the piece of paper, and read out the contents. Then, putting the letter down on the table, she smiled at the two young men. “Now who is being described in that letter? You tell me.”

  “Me,” they both said together, and then looked at one another.

  “It could be either,” said Mma Makutsi. “Of course, I now remember who must have put that letter there. I have remembered something.”

  “You must tell me,” said the older apprentice. “Then I can look out for this girl and talk to her.”

  “I see,” said Mma Makutsi. She hesitated; this was a delicious moment. Oh, silly young men! “Yes,” she continued, “I saw a man outside the garage this morning, first thing. Yes, there was a man.”

  There was complete silence. “A man?” said the younger apprentice eventually. “Not a girl?”

  “It was for him, I think,” said the older apprentice, gesturing at the younger one. And the younger one, his mouth open, was for a few moments unable to talk.

  “It was not for me,” he said at last. “I do not think so.”

  “Then I think that we should throw the letter into the bin, where it belongs,” said Mma Makutsi. “Anonymous letters should always be ignored. The best place for them is the bin.”

  Nothing more was said. The apprentices returned to their work and Mma Makutsi sat at her desk and smiled. It was a wicked thing to have done, but she could not resist it. After all, one could not be good all the time, and occasional fun at the expense of another was harmless. She had told no lies, strictly speaking; she had seen a man walking away from the garage, but she had recognised him as one who did occasionally take a shortcut that way. The real sender of the letter was obviously some young girl who had been dared to write it by her friends. It was a piece of adolescent nonsense which everybody would soon forget about. And perhaps the boys had been taught some sort of lesson, about vanity certainly, but also, in an indirect way, about tolerance of the feelings of others, who might be a bit different from oneself. She doubted if they had learned the latter lesson, but it was there, she thought, visible if one bothered to think hard enough about it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  INSIDE THE HOUSE OF HOPE

  MMA RAMOTSWE surveyed the House of Hope. It was a rather grand name for a modest bungalow which had been built in the early seventies, at a time when Gaborone was a small town, inching out from the cluster of buildings around Government Headquarters and the small square of shops nearby. These houses had been built for government employees or for expatriates who came to the country on short-term contracts. They were comfortable, and were large by the standards of most people’s houses, but it seemed ambitious to use them for institutions, such as the House of Hope. But there was no choice, she imagined: larger buildings simply were not available, least of all to charities, which would have to scrimp and save to meet their costs.

  There was a large garden, though, and this had been well-tended. In addition to a stand of healthy-looking paw-paw trees at the back, there were several clusters of bougainvillea and a mopipi tree. A vegetable garden, rather like the vegetable garden which Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had established in Mma Ramotswe’s own yard, appeared to be growing beans and carrots with some success, although Mma Ramotswe reflected that in the case of carrots one could never really tell until one pulled them out of the ground. There were all sorts of insects which competed with us for carrots, and often what appeared from above to be a healthy plant would reveal itself as riddled with holes once pulled out of the soil.

  There was a verandah to the side of the house, and somebody had thoughtfully placed shade netting over the side of this. That would be a good place to sit, thought Mma Ramotswe, and one might even drink tea there, on a hot afternoon, and feel the sun on one’s face, but filtered by the shade netting. And then the thought occurred to her that all of Gaborone, the whole town, might be covered with shade netting, held aloft on great poles, and that this would keep the town cool and hold in the water which people put on their plants. It would be comfortable under this shade netting in summer, and then when winter came, and the air was cooler, they could roll back the shade netting to let in the winter sun, which would warm them, like the smile of an old friend. It was such a good idea, and it would surely not be too expensive for a country that had all those diamonds, but she knew that nobody would ever take it seriously. So they would continue to complain about the hot weather when it was hot and about the cold weather when it was cold.

  The front door of the House of Hope opened immediately into the living room. This was a large room for that style of house, but the immediate and overwhelming impression it gave Mma Ramotswe was one of clutter. There were three or four chairs in the centre of the room—tightly arranged in a circle—and around them there were tables, storage boxes, and, here and there, a suitcase. On the wall, fixed with drawing pins, were pictures ripped from magazines; pictures of families and of mothers and children; of Mother Teresa with her characteristic headscarf; of Nelson Mandela waving to a crowd; and of a line of African nuns, all clad in white, walking down a path through thick undergrowth, their hands joined in prayer. Mma Ramotswe’s eye dwelt on the picture of the nuns. Where was the photograph taken, and where were these ladies going? They looked so peaceful, she thought, that perhaps it did not matter whether they were going anywhere, or nowhere in particular. People sometimes walked simply because walking was an enjoyable thing to do, and better than standing still, perhaps, if that was all you otherwise had to do. Sometimes she herself walked around her garden for no reason, and found it very relaxing, as perhaps it was for those nuns.

  “You are interested in the pictures,” said Mr Bobologo, behind her. “We think that it is important that these bar girls should be reminded of a better life. They can sit here and look at the pictures.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. She was not convinced that it would be much fun for a bar girl, or for anybody else for that matter, to be sitting on one of those chairs in that crowded room, looking at these pictures from the magazines. But then it would be better than listening to Mr Bobologo, she thought.

  Mr Bobologo now came to Mma Ramotswe’s side and pointed in the direction of the corridor that led off the living room. “I will be happy to show you the dormitories,” he said. “We may find some of the bad girls in thei
r rooms.”

  Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. It was not very tactful of him to call them bad girls, even if they were. People rose to the descriptions of themselves, and it might have been better, she thought, to call them young ladies, in the hope that they might behave as young ladies behaved. But then, to be realistic, they probably would not behave that way, as it took a great deal to change somebody’s ways.

  The corridor was tidy enough, with only a small bookcase along one wall and the floor well-polished with that fresh-smelling polish that Mma Ramotswe’s maid, Rose, so liked to use. They stopped outside a half-open bedroom door and Mr Bobologo knocked upon this before he pushed it open.

  Mma Ramotswe looked inside. There were two bunk-beds in the room, both of them triple-deckers. The top bed was just below the ceiling, barely allowing enough space for anybody to fit in. Mma Ramotswe reflected that she herself would never fit in that space, but then these girls were younger, and some of them might be quite small.

  There were three girls in the room, two lying fully clothed on the lower bunks and one wearing a dressing gown, and sitting on a middle bunk, her legs hanging down over the edge. As Mr Bobologo and Mma Ramotswe entered the room, they stared at them, not with any great interest, but with a rather vacant look.

  “This lady is a visitor,” Mr Bobologo announced, somewhat obviously, thought Mma Ramotswe.

  One of the girls muttered something, which may have been a greeting but which was difficult to make out. The other one on the lower bunk nodded her head, while the girl sitting on the middle bunk managed a weak smile.

  “You have a nice house here,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Are you happy?”

  The girls exchanged glances.

  “Yes,” said Mr Bobologo. “They are very happy.”