Part 1 (2/2)

Mma Ramotswe was thoughtful. ”So we are all brothers and sisters, in a sense?”

”We are,” said Mma Makutsi. ”We are all the same people. Eskimos, Russians, Nigerians. They are the same as us. Same blood. Same DNA.”

”DNA?” asked Mma Ramotswe. ”What is that?”

”It is something which G.o.d used to make people,” explained Mma Makutsi. ”We are all made up of DNA and water.”

Mma Ramotswe considered the implications of these revelations for a moment. She had no views on Eskimos and Russians, but Nigerians were a different matter. But Mma Makutsi was right, she reflected: if universal brotherhood-and sisterhood-meant anything, it would have to embrace the Nigerians as well.

”If people knew this,” she said, ”if they knew that we were all from the same family, would they be kinder to one another, do you think?”

Mma Makutsi put down the magazine. ”I'm sure they would,” she said. ”If they knew that, then they would find it very difficult to do unkind things to others. They might even want to help them a bit more.”

Mma Ramotswe was silent. Mma Makutsi had made it difficult to go on, but she and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had taken the decision and she had no alternative but to break the bad news.

”That is all very interesting,” she said, trying to sound firm. ”I must read more about Dr Leakey when I have more time. At the moment I am having to spend all my time on working out how to keep this business going. The accounts are not good, you know. Our accounts are not like those accounts you see published in the newspapers-you know the ones, where they have two columns, income and expenditure, and the first is always bigger than the second. With this business it is the other way round.”

She paused, watching the effect of her words on Mma Makutsi. It was difficult to tell what she was thinking, with those gla.s.ses.

”So I am going to have to do something,” she went on. ”If I do nothing, then we shall be put under judicial management or the bank manager will come and take the office from us. That is what happens to businesses that do not make a profit. It is very bad.”

Mma Makutsi was staring at her desk. Then she looked up at Mma Ramotswe and for a moment the branches of the thorn tree outside the window were reflected in her gla.s.ses. Mma Ramotswe found this disconcerting; it was as if one were looking at the world as seen by another person. As she thought this, Mma Makutsi moved her head, and Mma Ramotswe saw, for a moment, the reflection of her own red dress.

”I am doing my best,” said Mma Makutsi quietly. ”I hope that you will give me a chance. I am very happy being an a.s.sistant detective here. I do not want to be just a secretary for the rest of my life.”

She stopped and looked at Mma Ramotswe. What was it like, thought Mma Ramotswe, to be Mma Makutsi, graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College with 97 percent in the final examination, but with n.o.body, except for some people far away up in Bobonong? She knew that Mma Makutsi sent them money, because she had seen her once in the Post Office, buying a postal order for one hundred pula. She imagined that they had been told about the promotion and were proud of the fact that their niece, or whatever she was to them, was doing so well in Gaborone. Whereas the truth was that the niece was being kept as an act of charity and it was really Mma Ramotswe supporting those people up in Bobonong.

Her gaze s.h.i.+fted to Mma Makutsi's desk, and to the still-exposed picture of Dr Leakey holding the skull. Dr Leakey was looking out of the photograph, directly at her. Well Mma Ramotswe? he seemed to be saying. What about this a.s.sistant of yours?

She cleared her throat. ”You must not worry,” she said. ”You will still be a.s.sistant detective. But we will need you to do some other duties as well when we move over to Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni needs help with his paperwork. Half of you will be a secretary, but half of you will be an a.s.sistant detective.” She paused, and then added hurriedly, ”But you can call yourself a.s.sistant detective. That will be your official t.i.tle.”

For the rest of the day, Mma Makutsi was quieter than usual. She made Mma Ramotswe her afternoon tea in silence, handing the mug over to her without saying anything, but at the end of the day she seemed to have accepted her fate.

”I suppose that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's office is a mess,” she said. ”I cannot see him doing his paperwork properly. Men do not like that sort of thing.”

Mma Ramotswe was relieved by the change of tone. ”It is a real mess,” she said. ”You will be doing him a very good service if you sort it out.”

”We were taught how to do that at college,” said Mma Makutsi. ”They sent us one day to an office that was in a very bad way, and we had to sort it out. There were four of us-myself and three pretty girls. The pretty girls spent all their time talking to the men in the office while I did the work.”

”Ah!” said Mma Ramotswe. ”I can imagine that.”

”I worked until eight o'clock at night,” went on Mma Makutsi. ”The other girls all went off with the men to a bar at five o'clock and left me there. The next morning, the Princ.i.p.al of the College said that we had all done a very good job and that we were all going to get a top mark for the a.s.signment. The other girls were very pleased. They said that although I had done most of the tidying they had had the more difficult part of the job, which was keeping the men from getting in the way. They really thought that.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. ”They are useless girls, those girls,” she said. ”There are too many people like that in Botswana these days. But at least you know that you have succeeded. You are an a.s.sistant detective and what are they? Nothing, I should think.”

Mma Makutsi took off her large spectacles and polished the lenses carefully with the corner of a handkerchief.

”Two of them are married to very rich men,” she said. ”They have big houses over near the Sun Hotel. I have seen them walking about in their expensive sungla.s.ses. The third went off to South Africa and became a model. I have seen her picture in a magazine. She has got a husband who is a photographer for that magazine. He has plenty of money too and she is very happy. They call him Polaroid Khumalo. He is very handsome and well-known.”

She replaced her gla.s.ses and looked at Mma Ramotswe.

”There will be a husband for you some day,” said Mma Ramotswe. ”And that man will be a very fortunate man.”

Mma Makutsi shook her head. ”I do not think there will be a husband,” she said. ”There are not enough men in Botswana. That is a well-known fact. All the men are married now and there is n.o.body left.”

”Well, you don't have to get married,” said Mma Ramotswe. ”Single girls can have a very good life these days. I am single. I am not married.”

”But you are marrying Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” said Mma Makutsi. ”You will not be single for long. You could ...”

”I didn't have to marry him,” interrupted Mma Ramotswe. ”I was happy by myself. I could have stayed that way.”

She stopped. She noticed that Mma Makutsi had taken her spectacles off again and was polis.h.i.+ng them once more. They had misted over.

Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment. She had never been able to see unhappiness and not do something about it. It was a difficult quality for a private detective to have, as there was so much unhappiness entailed in her work, but she could not harden her heart, however much she tried. ”Oh, and there's another thing,” she said. ”I didn't tell you that in this new job of yours you will be described as a.s.sistant Manager of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. It is not just a secretarial job.”

Mma Makutsi looked up and smiled.

”That is very good,” she said. ”You are very kind to me, Mma.”

”And there will be more money,” said Mma Ramotswe, throwing caution aside. ”Not much more, but a little bit more. You will be able to send a bit more up to those people of yours up in Bobonong.”

Mma Makutsi appeared considerably cheered by this information, and there was a zest in the way in which she performed the last tasks of the day, the typing of several letters which Mma Ramotswe had drafted in longhand. It was Mma Ramotswe who now seemed morose. It was Dr Leakey's fault, she decided. If he had not come into the conversation, then she might have been firmer. As it was, not only had she promoted Mma Makutsi again, but she had given her, without consulting Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, a pay raise. She would have to tell him about that, of course, but perhaps not just yet. There was always a time for the breaking of difficult news, and one had to wait for one's moment. Men usually let their defences down now and then, and the art of being a successful woman, and beating men at their own game, was to wait your moment. When that moment arrived, you could manipulate a man with very little difficulty. But you had to wait.

CHAPTER TWO.

A BOY IN THE NIGHT.

T HEY WERE camped in the Okavango, outside Maun, under a covering of towering mopani trees. To the north, barely half a mile away, the lake stretched out, a ribbon of blue in the brown and green of the bush. The savannah gra.s.s here was thick and rich, and there was good cover for the animals. If you wanted to see elephant, you had to be watchful, as the lushness of the vegetation made it difficult to make out even their bulky grey shapes as they moved slowly through their forage.

The camp, which was a semipermanent collection of five or six large tents pitched in a semicircle, belonged to a man they knew as Rra Pula, Mr Rain, owing to the belief, empirically verified on many an occasion, that his presence brought much-needed rain. Rra Pula was happy to allow this belief to be perpetuated. Rain was good luck; hence the cry Pula! Pula! Pula! when good fortune was being celebrated or invoked. He was a thin-faced man with the leathery, sun-speckled skin of the white person who has spent all his life under an African sun. The freckles and sun-spots had now become one, which had made him brown all over, like a pale biscuit put into the oven.

”He is slowly becoming like us,” one of his men said as they sat round the fire one night. ”One day he will wake up and he will be a Motswana, same colour as us.”

”You cannot make a Motswana just by changing his skin,” said another. ”A Motswana is a Motswana inside. A Zulu is the same as us outside, but inside he is always a Zulu. You can't make a Zulu into a Motswana either. They are different.”

There was silence round the fire as they mulled over this issue.

”There are a lot of things that make you what you are,” said one of the trackers at last. ”But the most important thing is your mother's womb. That is where you get the milk that makes you a Motswana or a Zulu. Motswana milk, Motswana child. Zulu milk, Zulu child.”

”You do not get milk in the womb,” said one of the younger men. ”It is not like that.”

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