Tears of the Giraffe

  She stopped. She had not intended it, and yet it was too late now. She did not consider Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to be dull; he was reliable, and he was a mechanic, and he would be an utterly satisfactory husband. That is what she had meant; she did not mean to suggest that he was actually dull.

  Mma Ramotswe stared at her. “To a what?” she said. “I am very lucky to be engaged to a what?”

  Mma Makutsi looked down at her shoes. She felt hot and confused. The shoes, her best pair, the pair with the three glittering buttons stitched across the top, stared back at her, as shoes always do.

  Then Mma Ramotswe laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I know what you mean, Mma Makutsi. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is maybe not the most fashionable man in town, but he is one of the best men there is. You could trust him with anything. He would never let you down. And I know he would never have any secrets from me. That is very important.”

  Grateful for her employer’s understanding, Mma Makutsi was quick to agree.

  ‘That is by far the best sort of man,” she said. “If I am ever lucky enough to find a man like that, I hope he asks me to marry him.”

  She glanced down at her shoes again, and they met her stare. Shoes are realists, she thought, and they seemed to be saying: No chance. Sorry, but no chance.

  “Well,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Let’s leave the subject of men in general and get back to Mr Badule. What do you think? Mr Andersen’s book says that you must have a working supposition. You must set out to prove or disprove something. We have agreed that Mma Badule sounds bored, but do you think that there is more to it than that?”

  Mma Makutsi frowned. “I think that there is something going on. She is getting money from somewhere, which means she is getting it from a man. She is paying the school fees herself with the money she has saved up.”

  Mma Ramotswe agreed. “So all you have to do is to follow her one day and see where she goes. She should lead you straight to this other man. Then you see how long she stays there, and you speak to the housemaid. Give her one hundred pula, and she will tell you the full story. Maids like to speak about the things that go on in their employers’ houses. The employers often think that maids cannot hear, or see, even. They ignore them. And then, one day, they realise that the maid has been hearing and seeing all their secrets and is bursting to talk to the first person who asks her. That maid will tell you everything. You just see. Then you tell Mr Badule.”

  “That is the bit that I will not like,” said Mma Makutsi. “All the rest I don’t mind, but telling this poor man about this bad wife of his will not be easy.”

  Mma Ramotswe was reassuring. “Don’t worry. Almost every time we detectives have to tell something like that to a client, the client already knows. We just provide the proof they are looking for. They know everything. We never tell them anything new.”

  “Even so,” said Mma Makutsi. “Poor man. Poor man.”

  “Maybe,” Mma Ramotswe added. “But remember, that for every cheating wife in Botswana, there are five hundred and fifty cheating husbands.”

  Mma Makutsi whistled. “That is an amazing figure,” she said. “Where did you read that?”

  “Nowhere,” chuckled Mma Ramotswe. “I made it up. But that doesn’t stop it from being true.”

  IT WAS a wonderful moment for Mma Makutsi when she set forth on her first case. She did not have a driving licence, and so she had to ask her uncle, who used to drive a Government truck and who was now retired, to drive her on the assignment in the old Austin which he hired out, together with his services as driver, for weddings and funerals. The uncle was thrilled to be included on such a mission, and donned a pair of darkened glasses for the occasion.

  They drove out early to the house beside the butchery, where Mr Badule and his wife lived. It was a slightly down-at-heel bungalow, surrounded by pawpaw trees, and with a silver-painted tin roof that needed attention. The yard was virtually empty, apart from the pawpaws and a wilting row of cannas along the front of the house. At the rear of the house, backed up against a wire fence that marked the end of the property, were the servant quarters and a lean-to garage.

  It was hard to find a suitable place to wait, but eventually Mma Makutsi concluded that if they parked just round the corner, they would be half-concealed by the small take-out stall that sold roast mealies, strips of fly-blown dried meat and, for those who wanted a real treat, delicious pokes of mopani worms. There was no reason why a car should not park there; it would be a good place for lovers to meet, or for somebody to wait for the arrival of a rural relative off one of the rickety buses that careered in from the Francistown Road.

  The uncle was excited, and lit a cigarette.

  “I have seen many films like this,” he said. “I never dreamed that I would be doing this work, right here in Gaborone.”

  “Being a private detective is not all glamorous work,” said his niece. “We have to be patient. Much of our work is just sitting and waiting.”

  “I know,” said the uncle. “I have seen that on films too. I have seen these detective people sit in their cars and eat sandwiches while they wait. Then somebody starts shooting.”

  Mma Makutsi raised an eyebrow. “There is no shooting in Botswana,” she said. “We are a civilized country.”

  They lapsed into a companionable silence, watching people set about their morning business. At seven o’clock the door of the Badule house opened and a boy came out, dressed in the characteristic uniform of Thornhill School. He stood for a moment in front of the house, adjusting the strap of his school satchel, and then walked up the path that led to the front gate. Then he turned smartly to the left and strode down the road.

  “That is the son,” said Mma Makutsi, lowering her voice, although nobody could possibly hear them. “He has a scholarship to Thornhill School. He is a bright boy, with very good handwriting.”

  The uncle looked interested.

  “Should I write this down?” he asked. “I could keep a record of what happens.”

  Mma Makutsi was about to explain that this would not be necessary, but she changed her mind. It would give him something to do, and there was no harm in it. So the uncle wrote on a scrap of paper that he had extracted from his pocket: “Badule boy leaves house at 7 A.M. and proceeds to school on foot.”

  He showed her his note, and she nodded.

  “You would make a very good detective, Uncle,” she said, adding: “It is a pity you are too old.”

  Twenty minutes later, Mr Badule emerged from the house and walked over to the butchery. He unlocked the door and admitted his two assistants, who had been waiting for him under a tree. A few minutes later, one of the assistants, now wearing a heavily bloodstained apron, came out carrying a large stainless steel tray, which he washed under a standpipe at the side of the building. Then two customers arrived, one having walked up the street, another getting off a minibus which stopped just beyond the take-out stall.

  “Customers enter shop,” wrote the uncle. “Then leave, carrying parcels. Probably meat.”

  Again he showed the note to his niece, who nodded approvingly.

  “Very good. Very useful. But it is the lady we are interested in,” she said. “Soon it will be time for her to do something.”

  They waited a further four hours. Then, shortly before twelve, when the car had become stiflingly hot under the sun, and just at the point when Mma Makutsi was becoming irritated by her uncle’s constant note-taking, they saw Mma Badule emerge from behind the house and walk over to the garage. There she got into the battered Mercedes-Benz and reversed out of the front drive. This was the signal for the uncle to start his car and, at a respectful distance, follow the Mercedes as it made its way into town.

  Mma Badule drove fast, and it was difficult for the uncle to keep up with her in his old Austin, but they still had her in sight by the time that she drew into the driveway of a large house on Nyerere Drive. They drove past slowly, and caught a glimpse of her getting out of the car and striding towards the sh
ady verandah. Then the luxuriant garden growth, so much richer than the miserable pawpaw trees at the butchery house, obscured their view.

  But it was enough. They drove slowly round the corner and parked under a jacaranda tree at the side of the road.

  “What now?” asked the uncle. “Do we wait here until she leaves?”

  Mma Makutsi was uncertain. “There is not much point in sitting here,” she said. “We are really interested in what is going on in that house.”

  She remembered Mma Ramotswe’s advice. The best source of information was undoubtedly the maids, if they could be persuaded to talk. It was now lunchtime, and the maids would be busy in the kitchen. But in an hour or so, they would have their own lunch break, and would come back to the servants’ quarters. And those could be reached quite easily, along the narrow sanitary lane that ran along the back of the properties. That would be the time to speak to them and to offer the crisp new fifty pula notes which Mma Ramotswe had issued her the previous evening.

  The uncle wanted to accompany her, and Mma Makutsi had difficulty persuading him that she could go alone.

  “It could be dangerous,” he said. “You might need protection.”

  She brushed aside his objections. “Dangerous, Uncle? Since when has it been dangerous to talk to a couple of maids in the middle of Gaborone, in the middle of the day?”

  He had had no answer to that, but he nonetheless looked anxious when she left him in the car and made her way along the lane to the back gate. He watched her hesitate behind the small, whitewashed building which formed the servants’ quarters, before making her way round to the door, and then he lost sight of her. He took out his pencil, glanced at the time, and made a note: Mma Makutsi enters servants’ quarters at 2:l0 P.M.

  THERE WERE two of them, just as she had anticipated. One of them was older than the other, and had crow’s-feet wrinkles at the side of her eyes. She was a comfortable, large-chested woman, dressed in a green maid’s dress and a pair of scuffed white shoes of the sort which nurses wear. The younger woman, who looked as if she was in her mid-twenties, Mma Makutsi’s own age, was wearing a red housecoat and had a sultry, spoiled face. In other clothes, and made-up, she would not have looked out of place as a bar girl. Perhaps she is one, thought Mma Makutsi.

  The two women stared at her, the younger one quite rudely.

  “Ko ko,” said Mma Makutsi, politely, using the greeting that could substitute for a knock when there was no door to be knocked upon. This was necessary, as although the women were not inside their house they were not quite outside either, being seated on two stools in the cramped open porch at the front of the building.

  The older woman studied their visitor, raising her hand to shade her eyes against the harsh light of the early afternoon.

  “Dumela, Mma. Are you well?”

  The formal greetings were exchanged, and then there was silence. The younger woman poked at their small, blackened kettle with a stick.

  “I wanted to talk to you, my sisters,” said Mma Makutsi. “I want to find out about that woman who has come to visit this house, the one who drives that Mercedes-Benz. You know that one?”

  The younger maid dropped the stick. The older one nodded. “Yes, we know that woman.”

  “Who is she?”

  The younger retrieved her stick and looked up at Mma Makutsi. “She is a very important lady, that one! She comes to the house and sits in the chairs and drinks tea. That is who she is.”

  The other one chuckled. “But she is also a very tired lady,” she said. “Poor lady, she works so hard that she has to go and lie down in the bedroom a lot, to regain her strength.”

  The younger one burst into a peal of laughter. “Oh yes,” she said. “There is much resting done in that bedroom. He helps her to rest her poor legs. Poor lady.”

  Mma Makutsi joined in their laughter. She knew immediately that this was going to be much easier than she had imagined it would be. Mma Ramotswe was right, as usual; people liked to talk, and, in particular, they liked to talk about people who annoyed them in some way. All one had to do was to discover the grudge and the grudge itself would do all the work. She felt in her pocket for the two fifty pula notes; it might not even be necessary to use them after all. If this were the case, she might ask Mma Ramotswe to authorise their payment to her uncle.

  “Who is the man who lives in this house?” she said. “Has he no wife of his own?”

  This was the signal for them both to giggle. “He has a wife all right,” said the older one. “She lives out at their village, up near Mahalaype. He goes there at weekends. This lady here is his town wife.”

  “And does the country wife know about this town wife?”

  “No,” said the older woman. “She would not like it. She is a Catholic woman, and she is very rich. Her father had four shops up there and bought a big farm. Then they came and dug a big mine on that farm and so they had to pay that woman a lot of money. That is how she bought this big house for her husband. But she does not like Gaborone.”

  “She is one of those people who never likes to leave the village,” the younger maid interjected. “There are some people like that. She lets her husband live here to run some sort of business that she owns down here. But he has to go back every Friday, like a schoolboy going home for the weekend.”

  Mma Makutsi looked at the kettle. It was a very hot day, and she wondered if they would offer her tea. Fortunately the older maid noticed her glance and made the offer.

  “And I’ll tell you another thing,” said the younger maid as she lit the paraffin stove underneath the kettle. “I would write a letter to the wife and tell her about that other woman, if I were not afraid that I would lose my job.”

  “He told us,” said the other. “He said that if we told his wife, then we would lose our jobs immediately. He pays us well, this man. He pays more than any other employer on this whole street. So we cannot lose this job. We just keep our mouths shut …”

  She stopped, and at that moment both maids looked at one another in dismay.

  “Aiee!” wailed the younger one. “What have we been doing? Why have we spoken like this to you? Are you from Mahalaype? Have you been sent by the wife? We are finished! We are very stupid women. Aiee!”

  “No,” said Mma Makutsi quickly. “I do not know the wife. I have not even heard of her. I have been asked to find out by that other woman’s husband what she is doing. That is all.”

  The two maids became calmer, but the old one still looked worried. “But if you tell him what is happening, then he will come and chase this man away from his own wife and he might tell the real wife that her husband has another woman. That way we are finished too. It makes no difference.”

  “No,” said Mma Makutsi. “I don’t have to tell him what is going on. I might just say that she is seeing some man but I don’t know who it is. What difference does it make to him? All he needs to know is that she is seeing a man. It does not matter which man it is.”

  The younger maid whispered something to the other, who frowned.

  “What was that, Mma?” asked Mma Makutsi.

  The older one looked up at her. “My sister was just wondering about the boy. You see, there is a boy, who belongs to that smart woman. We do not like that woman, but we do like the boy. And that boy, you see, is the son of this man, not of the other man. They both have very big noses. There is no doubt about it. You take a look at them and you will see it for yourself. This one is the father of that boy, even if the boy lives with the other one. He comes here every afternoon after school. The mother has told the boy that he must never speak to his other father about coming here, and so the boy keeps this thing secret from him. That is bad. Boys should not be taught to lie like that. What will become of Botswana, Mma, if we teach boys to behave like that? Where will Botswana be if we have so many dishonest boys? God will punish us, I am sure of it. Aren’t you?”

  MMA MAKUTSI looked thoughtful when she returned to the Austin in its shady parking pl
ace. The uncle had dropped off to sleep, and was dribbling slightly at the side of his mouth. She touched him gently on the sleeve and he awoke with a start.

  “Ah! You are safe! I am glad that you are back.”

  “We can go now,” said Mma Makutsi. “I have found out everything I needed to know.”

  They drove directly back to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Mma Ramotswe was out, and so Mma Makutsi paid her uncle with one of the fifty pula notes and sat down at her desk to type her report.

  “The client’s fears are confirmed,” she wrote. “His wife has been seeing the same man for many years. He is the husband of a rich woman, who is also a Catholic. The rich woman does not know about this. The boy is the son of this man, and not the son of the client. I am not sure what to do, but I think that we have the following choices:

  (a) We tell the client everything that we have found out. That is what he has asked us to do. If we do not tell him this, then perhaps we would he misleading him. By taking on this case, have we not promised to tell him everything? If that is so, then we must do so, because we must keep our promises. If we do not keep our promises, then there will be no difference between Botswana and a certain other country in Africa which I do not want to name here but which I know you know.

  (b) We tell the client that there is another man, but we do not know who it is. This is strictly true, because I did not find out the name of the man, although I know which house he lives in. I do not like to lie, as I am a lady who believes in God. But God sometimes expects us to think about what the results will be of telling somebody something. If we tell the client that that boy is not his son, he will be very sad. It will be like losing a son. Will that make him happier? Would God want him to be unhappy? And if we tell the client this, and there is a big row, then the father may not be able to pay the school fees, as he is doing at present. The rich woman may stop him from doing that and then the boy will suffer. He will have to leave that school.

  For these reasons, I do not know what to do.”