Alexander Smith - The Double Comfort Safari Club

“We live in Gaborone, Mma. My father had a bottle store-you may know the one, over by the supermarket. Yes, that one. People used to call it a gold mine, and I wondered why they did that when it was a store and not a mine. Then, when I got a bit older, I knew that they were talking about how much money the store made, which is true. My father made quite a bit of money. Then he died. That is often the way it works, Mma Ramotswe: a man makes a lot of money and then he dies before he has the time to enjoy the fruits of his labour.

“My poor father would have liked to have enjoyed his money. I said to him, ‘Daddy, you are an old man now, and an old man does not have to work. You have earned the right to sit in the sun now. You are entitled to count your cattle.’ He thought about this, but he was worried about looking after the bottle store. ‘You have a good manager,’ I said. ‘He can run the store for you and you can retire. That is the way to do it.’ I did not want to run the bottle store, Mma, because I was studying biology and I wanted to work in a laboratory. You understand that, I think, Mma Ramotswe. I have heard people talking about you. They say that you are a lady who understands everything.

“My father listened to my advice. He was sad that I did not want to take over the bottle store, as it would have given him great pleasure to see a big sign above the store saying Kereleng and Son. But he wanted me to be happy and to do the things that I wanted to do, and so he put the manager in charge. ‘He is a very good businessman,’ he said to me. ‘I shall not be surprised to find out after a year that I have not one bottle store, but two. Perhaps even three!’

“I said, ‘I am very happy for you, my daddy. Now you can go back to the village and talk to all the old men there. You will have a lot to talk about after all these years.’

“He went back to the village, Mma Ramotswe, and I got a job in the Ministry of Agriculture, in their laboratory. I was very happy doing that work, and my father was very happy out in the village. He wrote to me every two weeks and told me what he and his friends were talking about. Which was not very much, Mma-you know how old men are. They always talk about the same things and tell the same stories many times. Do you remember when we had that drought, the bad one? Do you remember that man who brewed the beer that made everybody sick? Do you remember…

“He was very happy. But then, Mma, he became late. It was very sudden. He was talking with his friends and he just fell off his chair. It was a good way to leave, and he had had a good life. I was sad, of course, but I knew that he would have a good place in heaven, and that made it easier to bear. I was in charge of all his affairs, and went to see the manager of the bottle store. He yelled and wailed when I told him that my father was late. ‘What is to happen now?’ he cried. ‘Oh, what is to happen?’

“I said to him, ‘What do you mean-what is to happen? What do you mean?’

“He looked away. He would not meet my eyes. Then he said, ‘Nothing. I did not mean to say that. It is just that when one is very sad all sorts of meaningless words come out. I did not mean to say anything but that I am sad. I am very sad, Rra.’

“I thought no more about it, but when I went round to the bottle store a few days later, I found that it was closed. There was a woman hanging about, Mma, and I recognised that she was one of the people who worked in the store. I said to her, ‘What is happening here?’ And she said, ‘The manager has run away. There are some people over there who say that he is in Mahalapye now. I am waiting for my wages. Please pay me.’

“I am afraid that the manager had stolen most of the takings, Mma. For six months or more he had been taking money out of the till. When my father became late he feared that there would be people who would come and look at the accounts-lawyers and accountants-and so he ran away. I was left with some money, as the store itself was worth quite a lot, but it was not nearly as much as I would have got had the manager not been a thief.”

MR. KERELENG sat back in his chair.

“So now you want me to find this manager of yours,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Have you been to the police?”

Mr. Kereleng looked surprised. “No, I do not expect you to find him,” he said. “You see, that was only Part One of my story. There is another part, which is called Part Two.”

“Excuse me, Rra,” said Mr. Polopetsi. “Would you like some tea? This is a very long story, and you might like some tea to drink while you are telling it to us.”

Mr. Kereleng said that he would like tea, and for her part Mma Ramotswe was pleased that Mr. Polopetsi had offered to make it. It was interesting, she thought; some men are more modern than you think they are.

I WAS ANGRY with the manager, as you can expect, and I did try to find him. However I soon realised that there was very little I could do, as he had gone over the border to South Africa. Once people do that, Mma, then they are lost. If you are chasing anybody, catch them before they get to the border or you will never catch them. You may as well chase smoke rising from a fire.

“I put the money I had left into the bank, as I thought that I would buy a house. Then I could settle down and find a wife and start a family. It would be a very good life. But the way it worked out was the other way round-I found a lady first, before I found the house.

“Let me tell you about this lady. She is a very beautiful lady-one of the most beautiful ladies in Botswana. And it is not just me who says that-it is everybody. Anybody who meets that lady says the same thing. She could be Miss Botswana twice over, if you ask me.

“I met her at a hotel. There was a jazz concert, and I was there with some friends. This lady and some of her friends joined us-we had a very good time. She knew who I was, I think, because she had heard about our bottle store, as everybody had. I told her that I had sold the bottle store. She was interested in that. She asked me where I had put the money-only joking, she said. But I told her anyway-I said that I had put it in the Standard Bank. She laughed and said that the bank was always the safest place to put money, and that people who put their money under their beds were asking for trouble. She said that an aunt of hers had put two thousand pula under her mattress and had left it there for a year. When she went back, she discovered that the money had been eaten by ants, and there were only a few scraps of paper left.

“I saw this lady the following day, and we went for a drink in a different hotel. Then the next day we went to have a meal at the Sun Hotel. She liked that place, as she said it was very sophisticated. I said to her, ‘Anywhere you like, I like.’ And she said, ‘We are very well suited-maybe we can live together. You did say that you were thinking of buying a house.’ I told her that I was, and she suggested that we go and look for a house together. I could not believe my luck: here I was, going off to choose a house with one of the most glamorous ladies in Botswana, and I a scientific officer (second class) in the government laboratories. I thought that I was a very lucky man.

“We went to an agent. He showed us a house that was very bad-it had no bath, and there was a big stain on the kitchen floor. He said that he could not see this stain, but it was certainly there, as if a cow had been slaughtered right there. The next house, though, was better, and we both liked it. It was for sale at a very good price because the owner had gone to live in Francistown and needed to get rid of it quickly. I managed to knock another ten thousand pula off the price, and that was it. I had a house.

“This lady was very pleased. She was making me feel very proud and happy and when she said, ‘It would be safer to put the house in my name,’ I did not bother to ask why. I had read that this is what people sometimes did-they put the house in their wife’s name so that if the bank came chasing after them they would not be able to take the house away. I went to see an attorney and we had everything fixed up. We were very pleased. ‘We can have many children now,’ said this lady, ‘because we have somewhere to put them all.’