Alexander Smith: The Double Comfort Safari Club

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni took a piece of cloth from his pocket and wiped his hands. It was a habit he had, as a mechanic, stemming from the days when he had used lint in the garage and was always removing grease. Now it had become a nervous gesture, almost, like straightening one’s cuffs or wiping one’s brow.

“Yes,” he said, meeting the other man’s gaze. “This is far from everywhere, although…” He hesitated. He did not want to be rude, but he could not let the bad driving he had witnessed go unremarked upon. “Although this is a busy road, isn’t it? And quite a dangerous one, too, with all the bad driving one sees.”

There was silence, but only a brief one. There was birdsong, from an acacia tree behind the fence that ran along the edge of the road; the sound of the bush. There was always birdsong.

Mr. Ntirang did not drop his eyes when he spoke, nor did he look away. “Oh, yes, Rra. Bad driving! There are some very bad drivers around. People who cannot drive straight. People who go from one side of the road to the other. People who drink while they drive-not driving after you’ve been drinking, but driving while you’re drinking. There are all of these things.” He turned to Mma Mateleke. “Aren’t there, Mma?”

Mma Mateleke glanced at her watch. She did not seem particularly interested in this conversation. “Maybe,” she said. “There are many instances of bad behaviour, but I do not think that we have time to talk about them right now.” She turned to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Could you take a look, Rra, and see what is wrong with this car of mine?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni moved towards the car and opened the driver’s door. He would never mention the fact to Mma Mateleke, but he did not like her car. He found it difficult to put his finger on it, but there was something about it that he distrusted. Now, sitting in the driver’s seat and turning the key in the ignition, he had a very strong sense that he was up against electronics. In the old days-as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni called everything that took place more than ten years ago-you would never have had to bother very much about electronics, but now, with so many cars concealing computer chips in their engines, it was a different matter. “You should take this car to a computer shop,” he had been tempted to say on a number of occasions. “It is really a computer, you know.”

The ignition was, as Mma Mateleke had reported, quite unresponsive. Sighing, he leaned under the dashboard to find the lever that would open the bonnet, but there was no lever. He turned to unwind the window so that he could ask Mma Mateleke where the lever was, but the windows, being electric, would not work. He opened the door.

“How do you get at the engine on this car?” he asked. “I can’t see the lever.”

“That is because there is no lever,” she replied. “There is a button. There in the middle. Look.”

He saw the button, with its small graphic portrayal of a car bonnet upraised. He pressed it; nothing happened.

“It is dead too,” said Mma Mateleke, in a matter-of-fact voice. “The whole car has died.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni climbed out of the car. “I will get it open somehow,” he said. “There is always some way round these things.” He was not sure that there was.

Mr. Ntirang now spoke. “I think that it is time for me to get on with my journey,” he said. “You are in very good hands now, Mma. The best hands in Gaborone, people say.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was a modest man, but was clearly pleased with the compliment. He smiled at Mr. Ntirang, almost, if not completely, ready to forgive him his earlier display of bad driving. He noticed, though, an exchange of glances between Mma Mateleke and Mr. Ntirang, glances that were difficult to read. Was there reproach-just a hint of reproach-on Mma Mateleke’s part? But why should she have anything over which to reproach this man who had stopped to see that she was all right?

Mr. Ntirang took a step back towards his car. “Goodbye, Rra,” he said. “And I hope that you get to the bottom of this problem. I’m sure you will.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni watched as the other man got into his car and drove off. He was interested in the car, which was an expensive model, of a sort that one saw only rarely. He wondered what the engine would look like, mentally undressing the car. Mechanics did that sometimes: as some men will imagine a woman without her clothes, so they will picture a car engine without its surrounding metal; guilty pleasures both. He was so engaged in this that Mr. Ntirang was well on his way before Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni realised that the red car was being driven back to Gaborone. Mma Mateleke had said, quite unambiguously, that Mr. Ntirang had been on his way to Lobatse, and Mr. Ntirang had nodded-equally unambiguously-to confirm that this was indeed true. Yet here he was, driving back in the direction from which he had come. Had he forgotten where he was going? Could anybody be so forgetful as to fail to remember that they were driving from Gaborone to Lobatse, and not the other way round? The answer was that of course they could: Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni himself had an aunt who had set out to drive to Serowe but who had turned back halfway because she had forgotten why it was that she wanted to go to Serowe in the first place. But he did not think it likely that Mr. Ntirang was liable to such absent-mindedness. It was his driving style that pointed to this conclusion-he was a man who very clearly knew where he was going.

MMA MATELEKE may not have been endowed with great mechanical knowledge, but her assessment that there was no life left in her engine proved to be quite correct.

“You see,” she said, as they settled down to the trip back to Gaborone, her car travelling behind them like a half-welcome hitchhiker, its front wheels hoisted up on the back of the towing truck, “you see, I was right about the engine. Dead. And what am I going to do now, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni? How am I going to cope with no car? What if somebody starts to have a baby, and I have to wait for a minibus to come along? And the minibus says, ‘We’re not going that way, Mma, but we can drop you nearby.’ What then? You can’t say to a mother, ‘Please wait, Mma, until I get a minibus that is going near you.’ You can’t say that because I can tell you one thing, Rra, that I’ve learned over the last fifteen years. One thing. And that thing is that you cannot tell a baby when is the right time to come into this world. That is something the baby decides.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni listened politely. He knew that Mma Mateleke had a tendency to talk at great length; indeed, he could always tell when Mma Ramotswe had been to see her friend because she inevitably came back not only exhausted but also disinclined to say very much. “Mma Mateleke has done all my talking for me today,” she once said. “I cannot say anything more until tomorrow. Or maybe the day after that. It has all been said.”

Mma Mateleke looked out of the window. They were passing a road that led off to the west, one of those rough, dirt roads that was more holes than surface, but which had served people and cattle, as well as the occasional wild animal, year after year. It had served, and would continue to do so until it was washed away in some heavier-than-usual rainy season, and people would forget that anybody ever went that way. “That road,” observed Mma Mateleke, “goes to a place where there is a woman I know well, Rra. And why do I know this woman well? Because she has had fifteen children, can you believe it? Fifteen. And fourteen of them are still here-only one is late. That one, he ate a battery, Rra, and became late quite quickly after that. He was not right in the head.”