“No,” said the first Dr Komoti. “I have a surgery down near the railway station. My brother …”
“I work up that way,” said the other Dr Komoti, pointing vaguely to the north. “Anyway, you can look at the garden as much as you like, mother. You just go ahead. We can make you a mug of tea.”
“Ow!” said Mma Ramotswe. “You are very kind. Thank you.”
IT WAS a relief to get away from that garden, with its sinister undergrowth and its air of neglect. For a few minutes, Mma Ramotswe pretended to inspect the trees and the shrubs—or what could be seen of them—and then, thanking her hosts for the tea, she walked off down the road. Her mind busily turned over the curious information she had obtained. There were two Dr Komotis, which was nothing terribly unusual in itself; yet somehow she felt that this was the essence of the whole matter. There was no reason, of course, why there should not be twins who both went to medical school—twins often led mirrored lives, and sometimes even went so far as to marry the sister of the other’s wife. But there was something particularly significant here, and Mma Ramotswe was sure that it was staring her in the face, if only she could begin to see it.
She got into the tiny white van and drove back down the road towards the centre of town. One Dr Komoti had said that he had a surgery in town, near the railway station, and she decided to take a look at this—not that a brass plate, if he had one, would reveal a great deal.
She knew the railway station slightly. It was a place that she enjoyed visiting, as it reminded her of the old Africa, the days of uncomfortable companionship on crowded trains, of slow journeys across great plains, of the sugarcane you used to eat to while away the time, and of the pith of the cane you used to spit out of the wide windows. Here you could still see it—or a part of it—here, where the trains that came up from the Cape pulled slowly past the platform on their journey up through Botswana to Bulawayo; here, where the Indian stores beside the railway buildings still sold cheap blankets and men’s hats with a garish feather tucked into the band.
Mma Ramotswe did not want Africa to change. She did not want her people to become like everybody else, soulless, selfish, forgetful of what it means to be an African, or, worse still, ashamed of Africa. She would not be anything but an African, never, even if somebody came up to her and said “Here is a pill, the very latest thing. Take it and it will make you into an American.” She would say no. Never. No thank you.
She stopped the white van outside the railway station and got out. There were a lot of people about; women selling roasted maize cobs and sweet drinks; men talking loudly to their friends; a family, travelling, with cardboard suitcases and possessions bundled up in a blanket. A child pushing a home-made toy car of twisted wire bumped into Mma Ramotswe and scurried off without an apology, frightened of rebuke.
She approached one of the woman traders and spoke to her in Setswana.
“Are you well today, Mma?” she said politely.
“I am well, and you are well too, Mma?”
“I am well, and I have slept very well.”
“Good.”
The greeting over, she said: “People tell me that there is a doctor here who is very good. They call him Dr Komoti. Do you know where his place is?”
The woman nodded. “There are many people who go to that doctor. His place is over there, do you see, where that white man has just parked his truck. That’s where he is.”
Mma Ramotswe thanked her informant and bought a cob of roasted maize. Then, tackling the cob as she walked, she walked across the dusty square to the rather dilapidated tinroofed building where Dr Komoti’s surgery was to be found.
Rather to her surprise, the door was not locked, and when she pushed it open she found a woman standing directly in front of her.
“I am sorry, the doctor isn’t here, Mma,” said the woman, slightly testily. “I am the nurse. You can see the doctor on Monday afternoon.”
“Ah!” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is a sad thing to have to tidy up on a Friday evening, when everybody else is thinking of going out.”
The nurse shrugged her shoulders. “My boyfriend is taking me out later on. But I like to get everything ready for Monday before the weekend starts. It is better that way.”
“Far better,” Mma Ramotswe answered, thinking quickly. “I didn’t actually want to see the doctor, or not as a patient. I used to work for him, you see, when he was up in Nairobi. I was a nurse on his ward. I wanted just to say hallo.”
The nurse’s manner became markedly more friendly.
“I’ll make you some tea, Mma,” she offered. “It is still quite hot outside.”
Mma Ramotswe sat down and waited for the nurse to return with the pot of tea.
“Do you know the other Dr Komoti?” she said. “The brother?”
“Oh yes,” said the nurse. “We see a lot of him. He comes in here to help, you see. Two or three times a week.”
Mma Ramotswe lowered her cup, very slowly. Her heart thumped within her; she realised that she was at the heart of the matter now, the elusive solution within her grasp. But she would have to sound casual.
“Oh, they did that up in Nairobi too,” she said, waving her hand airily, as if these things were of little consequence. “One helped the other. And usually the patients didn’t know that they were seeing a different doctor.”
The nurse laughed. “They do it here too,” she said. “I’m not sure if it’s quite fair on the patients, but nobody has realised that there are two of them. So everybody seems quite satisfied.”
Mma Ramotswe picked up her cup again and passed it for refilling. “And what about you?” she said. “Can you tell them apart?”
The nurse handed the teacup back to Mma Ramotswe. “I can tell by one thing,” she said. “One of them is quite good—the other’s hopeless. The hopeless one knows hardly anything about medicine. If you ask me, it’s a miracle that he got through medical school.”
Mma Ramotswe thought, but did not say: He didn’t.
SHE STAYED in Mafikeng that night, at the Station Hotel, which was noisy and uncomfortable, but she slept well nonetheless, as she always did when she had just finished an enquiry. The next morning she shopped at the OK Bazaars and found, to her delight, that there was a rail of size 22 dresses on special offer. She bought three—two more than she really needed—but if you were the owner of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency you had to keep up a certain style.
She was home by three o’clock that afternoon and she telephoned Dr Maketsi at his house and invited him to come immediately to her office to be informed of the results of her enquiry. He arrived within ten minutes and sat opposite her in the office, fiddling anxiously with the cuffs of his shirt.
“First of all,” announced Mma Ramotswe, “no drugs.”
Dr Maketsi breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness for that,” he said. “That’s one thing I was really worried about.”
“Well,” said Mma Ramotswe doubtfully. “I’m not sure if you’re going to like what I’m going to tell you.”
“He’s not qualified,” gasped Dr Maketsi. “Is that it?”
