HE ARRIVED shortly after four, driving up in his blue garage bakkie with TLOKWENG ROAD SPEEDY MOTORS painted on the side. He was wearing his mechanic’s overalls, which were spotlessly clean, and ironed neatly down the creases. She showed him the tiny white van, parked beside the house, and he wheeled out a large jack from the back of his truck.
“I’ll make you a cup of tea,” she said. “You can drink it while you look at the van.”
From the window she watched him. She saw him open the engine compartment and tap at bits and pieces. She saw him climb into the driver’s cab and start the motor, which coughed and spluttered and eventually died out. She watched as he removed something from the engine—a large part, from which wires and hoses protruded. That was the heart of the van perhaps; its loyal heart which had beaten so regularly and reliably, but which, ripped out, now looked so vulnerable.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni moved backwards and forwards between his truck and the van. Two cups of tea were taken out, and then a third, as it was a hot afternoon. Then Mma Ramotswe went into her kitchen and put vegetables into a pot and watered the plants that stood on the back windowsill. Dusk was approaching, and the sky was streaked with gold. This was her favourite time of the day, when the birds went dipping and swooping through the air and the insects of the night started to shriek. In this gentle light, the cattle would be walking home and the fires outside the huts would be crackling and glowing for the evening’s cooking.
She went out to see whether Mr J.L.B. Matekoni needed more light. He was standing beside the little white van, wiping his hands on lint.
“That should be fine now,” he said. “I’ve tuned it up and the engine runs sweetly. Like a bee.”
She clapped her hands in pleasure.
“I thought that you would have to scrap it,” she said.
He laughed. “I told you anything could be fixed. Even an old van.”
He followed her inside. She poured him a beer and they went together to her favourite place to sit, on the verandah, near the bougainvillaea. Not far away, in a neighbouring house, music was being played, the insistent traditional rhythms of township music.
The sun went, and it was dark. He sat beside her in the comfortable darkness and they listened, contentedly, to the sounds of Africa settling down for the night. A dog barked somewhere; a car engine raced and then died away; there was a touch of wind, warm dusty wind, redolent of thorn trees.
He looked at her in the darkness, at this woman who was everything to him—mother, Africa, wisdom, understanding, good things to cat, pumpkins, chicken, the smell of sweet cattle breath, the white sky across the endless, endless bush, and the giraffe that cried, giving its tears for women to daub on their baskets; O Botswana, my country, my place.
Those were his thoughts. But how could he say any of that to her? Any time he tried to tell her what was in his heart, the words which came to him seemed so inadequate. A mechanic cannot be a poet, he thought, that is not how things are. So he simply said:
“I am very happy that I fixed your van for you. I would have been sorry if somebody else had lied to you and said it was not worth fixing. There are people like that in the motor trade.”
“I know,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But you are not like that.”
He said nothing. There were times when you simply had to speak, or you would have your lifetime ahead to regret not speaking. But every time he had tried to speak to her of what was in his heart, he had failed. He had already asked her to marry him and that had not been a great success. He did not have a great deal of confidence, at least with people; cars were different, of course.
“I am very happy sitting here with you …”
She turned to him. “What did you say?”
“I said, please marry me, Mma Ramotswe. I am just Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, that’s all, but please marry me and make me happy.”
“Of course I will,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“A literary confection. …
There is no end to the pleasure.”
—The New York Times Book Review
THE NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY
Volume 1
Millions of readers have fallen in love with the traditionally built, eminently sensible, and cunning proprietor of the only ladies’ detective agency in Botswana.
TEARS OF THE GIRAFFE
Volume 2
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is growing, and in the midst of solving her usual cases—from an unscrupulous maid to a missing American—sensible and cunning detective Mma Ramotswe ponders her impending marriage, promotes her talented secretary, and finds her family suddenly and unexpectedly increased by two.
MORALITY FOR BEAUTIFUL GIRLS
Volume 3
While trying to resolve some financial problems for her business, Mma Ramotswe finds herself investigating the alleged poisoning of a government official as well as the moral character of the four finalists of the Miss Beauty and Integrity contest. Other difficulties arise at her fiancé’s Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, as Mma Ramotswe discovers he is more complicated than he seems.
The mysteries are “smart and sassy … [with] the power to amuse or shock or touch the heart, sometimes all at once.”
—Los Angeles Times
