dirty oil over there. You can take it over to the special dump for burning. You can take the spare truck.”
“I will do that now,” said the apprentice.
“And don’t pick up any girls in the truck,” warned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “You remember what I told you about the insurance.”
The apprentice, who had been already walking away, suddenly stopped in his tracks, guiltily, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew immediately that this was precisely what he had been planning to do. The young man had made a moving statement, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had been touched by what he had said, but some things obviously never changed.
A few hours later, as the sun climbed up the sky and made shadows short and even the birds were lethargic, when the screeching of the cicadas from the bush behind Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors had reached a high insistent pitch, the butcher drew up in his handsome old Rover. He had had the time to reflect on what Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had told him, and he now spoke angrily of First Class Motors, with whom he intended to have no further dealings. Only shame, the shame of being a victim, prevented him from returning there to ask for his money back.
“I shall do that for you, Rra,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I feel responsible for what my brother mechanics have done to you.”
The butcher took Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s hand and shook it firmly. “You have been very good to me, Rra. I am glad that there are still some honest men left in Botswana.”
“There are many honest men in Botswana,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I am no better than anybody else.”
“Oh yes you are,” said the butcher. “I see many men in my work and I can tell…”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni cut him short. This was clearly a day for excessive compliments, and he was beginning to feel embarrassed. “You are very kind, Rra, but I must get on with my work. The flies will be settling on the cars if I don’t look out.”
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:
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.
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
