The Full Cupboard of Life

Botswana Secretarial College, although she always listened politely when Mma Makutsi sounded off about such matters. Most people had something in their lives that was particularly important to them, and she supposed that the Botswana Secretarial College was as good a cause as any. What was it in her own case, she wondered? Tea? Surely she had something more important than that; but what? She looked at Mma Makutsi, as if for inspiration, but none came, and she decided to return to the subject later, in an idle moment, when one had time for this sort of unsettling philosophical speculation.

Now, the morning’s dictation finished and the letters duly signed, Mma Ramotswe arose from her desk, leaving Mma Makutsi to address the envelopes and find the right postage stamps in the mail drawer. Mma Ramotswe glanced out of the window; it was precisely the sort of morning she appreciated-not too hot, and yet with an empty, open sky, flooded with sunlight. This was the sort of morning that birds liked, she thought; when they could stretch their wings and sing out; the sort of morning when you could fill your lungs with air and inhale nothing but the fragrance of acacia and the grass and the sweet, sweet smell of cattle.

She left the office by the back door and stood outside, her eyes closed, the sun on her face. It would be good to be back in Mochudi, she thought, to be sitting in front of somebody’s house peeling vegetables, or crocheting something perhaps. That’s what she had done when she was a girl, and had sat with her cousin, who was adept at crocheting and made place mat after place mat in fine white thread; so many place mats that every table in Botswana could have been covered twice over, but which somebody, somewhere, bought and sold on. These days she had no time for crocheting, and she wondered whether she would even remember how to do it. Of course, crocheting was like riding a bicycle, which people said that you never forgot how to do once you had learned it. But was that true? Surely there were things that one might forget how to do, if enough time elapsed between the occasions on which one had to do whatever it was that one had forgotten. Mma Ramotswe had once come across somebody who had forgotten his Setswana, and she had been astonished, and shocked. This person had gone to live in Mozambique as a young man and had spoken Tsonga there, and had learned Portuguese too. When he came back to Botswana, thirty years later, it seemed as if he were a foreigner, and she had seen him look puzzled when people used quite simple, everyday Setswana words. To lose your own language was like forgetting your mother, and as sad, in a way. We must not lose Setswana, she thought, even if we speak a great deal of English these days, because that would be like losing part of one’s soul.

Mma Makutsi, of course, had another language tucked away in her background. Her mother had been a speaker of Ikalanga, because she had come from Marapong, where they spoke a dialect of Ikalanga called Lilima. That made life very complicated, thought Mma Ramotswe, because that meant that she spoke a minor version of a minor language. Mma Makutsi had been brought up speaking both Setswana, her father’s language, and this strange version of Ikalanga, and then had learned English at school, because that was how one got on in life. You could never even get to the Botswana Secretarial College if you spoke no English, and you would certainly never get anywhere near ninety-seven per cent unless your English was almost faultless, like the English that schoolteachersused to speak.

Mma Ramotswe had more or less forgotten that Mma Makutsi spoke Ikalanga until one day she had used an Ikalanga word in the middle of a sentence, and it had stuck out.

“I have hurt my gumbo,” Mma Makutsi had said.

Mma Ramotswe had looked at her in surprise. “Your gumbo?”

“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “When I was walking to work today, I stepped into a pothole and hurt my gumbo.” She paused, noticing the look of puzzlement on Mma Ramotswe’s face. Then she realised. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Gumbois foot in Ikalanga. If you speak Ikalanga, your foot is your gumbo.”

“I see,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is a very strange word. Gumbo.”

“It is not strange,” said Mma Makutsi, slightly defensively. “There are many different words for foot. It isfoot in English. In Setswana it islonao, and in Ikalanga it isgumbo, which is what it really is.”

Mma Ramotswe laughed. “There is noreal word for foot. You cannot say it is really gumbo, because that is true only for Ikalanga-speaking feet. Each foot has its own name, depending on the language which the foot’s mother spoke. That is the way it works, Mma Makutsi.”

That had ended the conversation, and no more was said of gumbos.

These, and other, thoughts went through Mma Ramotswe’s head as she stood outside the office that morning, stretching, and allowing her mind to wander this way and that. After a few minutes, though, she decided that it was time to get back into the office. Mma Makutsi would have finished addressing the letters by now, and she wanted to tell her about yesterday’s visit to the House of Hope. There was a lot to be said about that, and she thought it would be useful to discuss it with her assistant. Mma Makutsi often came up with very shrewd observations, although in the case of Mr Bobologo no particular shrewdness was required to work out what his motives were. And yet, and yet… One could not say that he was an insincere man. He was patently sincere when it came to bar girls, but marriage, perhaps, was another matter. Mma Makutsi might have valuable insights into this, and this would help clarify the situation in Mma Ramotswe’s mind.

Mma Ramotswe opened her eyes and started to make her way back into the office. She was intercepted in the doorway, though, by Mma Makutsi, who looked anxious.

“There is something wrong,” Mma Makutsi whispered to her. “There is something wrong with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Back there.” She gestured towards the garage. “There is something wrong with him.”

“Has he hurt himself?” Mma Ramotswe always dreaded the possibility of an accident, particularly with those careless apprentices being allowed to raise cars on ramps and do other dangerous things. Mechanics hurt themselves, it was well-known, just as butchers often had parts of fingers missing, a sight which always made Mma Ramotswe’s blood run cold, although the enthusiasm of the butchers for their great chopping knives-the guilty blades, no doubt-seemed undiminished.

Mma Makutsi set her mind at rest. “No, there has not been an accident. But I saw him sitting in the garage with his head in his hands. He looked very miserable, and he hardly greeted me when I walked past him. I think something has happened.”

This was not good news. Even if there had been no accident, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s recovery from his depressive illness was recent enough to make any apparent drop in mood a cause for concern. Dr Moffat, who had treated Mr J.L.B. Matekoni during his illness-with the assistance of Mma Potokwane, it must be recalled, who had taken Mr J.L.B. Matekoni in hand and made him take his pills-had warned that these illnesses could recur. Mma Ramotswe remembered his very words: “You must be watchful, Mma Ramotswe,” the doctor had said, in that kind voice he used when he spoke to everybody, even to his rather ill-tempered brown spaniel. “You must be watchful because this illness is like a dark cloud in the sky. It is often there, just over the horizon, but it can blow up very quickly. Watch, and tell me if anything happens.”

So far, the recovery had seemed complete, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had been as equable and as constant as he always had been. There had been no sign of the lassitude that had come with the illness; no sign of the dark, introspective brooding which had so reduced him. But perhaps this was it coming back. Perhaps the cloud had blown over and had covered his sky.

Mma Ramotswe thanked Mma Makutsi and made her way into the garage. The two apprentices were bent over the engine of a car, spanners in hand, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was sitting on his old canvas chair near the compressor, his head sunk in his hands, just as Mma Makutsi had seen him.

“Now then, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” said Mma Ramotswe breezily. “You seem to be thinking very hard about something. Can I make you a cup of tea to help you think?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked up, and as he did so Mma Ramotswe realised, with relief, that the illness had not returned. He looked worried, certainly, but it was a very different look from the haunted look he had developed during the illness. This was a real worry, she thought; not a worry about shadows and imaginary wrongs and dying; all those things which had so tormented him when he was ill.

“Yes, I am thinking,” he said. “I am thinking that I have dug myself into a mess. I am like a potato in…” He stopped, unable to complete the metaphor.

“Like a potato?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

“Like a potato in a…” He stopped again. “I don’t know. But I have done a very foolish thing in involving myself in this business.”

Mma Ramotswe was perplexed, and asked him what business he meant.