Tea Time for the Traditionally Built People Read online

  Mr. Molofololo, who had been following the exchange with interest, now interrupted. “Would the players know, do you think, Rops?”

  Rops looked thoughtful. “No, probably not. The boys do not read the front part of the newspaper. They read the sports news, and by the time they have finished reading about football their eyes are too tired to read the other pages.”

  Mr. Molofololo laughed. “They are football players, you see, Mma Ramotswe. And the heads of football players are usually just full of football. They do not have any space for other thoughts.” He paused, looking appreciatively at Rops. “Except for Rops, of course. Rops is not like that.”

  Rops looked pleased with the compliment, and he gave a mock bow in the direction of Mr. Molofololo. “I do my best,” he said.

  “And it is very good,” said Mr. Molofololo quickly. He gestured for Rops to sit down again, and then he indicated to an aide that he should take Puso out of the room. “Take the boy to the dressing room,” he said. “He can watch the players getting ready.”

  Puso, star-struck silent but beaming with pleasure, was led away while Mma Ramotswe and the two men settled themselves around a table.

  “Now, Rops,” Mr. Molofololo began, “I have told Mma Ramotswe about our problems. What I haven't told her is that you and I have talked and talked and talked and we have never got anywhere nearer a solution than when we started out. That's true, isn't it?”

  Rops nodded his agreement. “We have, Boss. I agree with you in one thing. We have not been doing as well as we should. But I do not agree with you when you say that we have a traitor in the team. Who is this man? Can you point him out to me?”

  This seemed to irritate Mr. Molofololo, who sat forward in his seat and began to drum his fingers on the table. “I am the one. It is me. Me. If I could point him out to you, then we would not be where we are today. We would have dealt with him. And I wouldn't have had to go to a detective agency to get help. No, I cannot point to the traitor because I do not know who he is. But that does not mean that he is not there.”

  For a moment nobody spoke. Rops frowned, as if he was trying to disentangle Mr. Molofololo's message; Mma Ramotswe was silent because she was wondering about the significance of the words I am the one. It is me. It was as if he had suddenly decided to confess to being the traitor himself, which did not make sense. So what did I am the one mean, then?

  Mma Ramotswe broke the silence. “Excuse me, Rra,” she said. “You said I am the one. What did you mean, Rra?”

  Mr. Molofololo looked at her as if she had raised an irrelevance. “What did you say I said, Mma?”

  “You said I am the one.”

  He looked at Rops, who shrugged. Then he turned back to Mma Ramotswe. “I don't think I did, Mma. We were talking about finding this man who is letting the team down. We are looking for the jackal who has crept into the herd wearing the clothes of a goat. That is what we're talking about.”

  Mma Ramotswe made a gesture of acceptance. “Very well, Rra. Let us talk about that.” She turned to face Rops. “Rra Thobega: Have you ever seen any of the players do anything that made you suspicious?”

  Rops shook his head vehemently. “Never. Everybody plays with one-hundred-per-cent commitment. Commitment, Mma. Commitment.”

  “Then why are we losing?” interjected Mr. Molofololo.

  “Because somebody has to lose,” said Rops.

  Mma Ramotswe thought this quite a reasonable thing to say. In any game where two teams were trying to win, one would be disappointed; that was the nature of competitive games. And there were, she imagined, teams that were not very good and would therefore lose consistently.

  Mr. Molofololo, however, was not so impressed. “Yes,” he said. “Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. But when you have a strong team like ours, then you do not expect it to be the one who will always lose, do you? We should win some games and lose others. That is the way these things work, I believe.”

  Mr. Molofololo stared at Rops, as if daring him to contradict such obvious logic. But the captain merely shrugged, looked at his watch, and announced that it was time for him to go to the dressing room and marshal the team.

  “Then we must go and find our seats,” said Mr. Molofololo, standing up and straightening his tie. “I shall get somebody to fetch your little boy up from the dressing room, Mma, and bring him to our seats. We are all sitting together in my special place. You will have a good view from there.”

  THE GAME BEGAN. For Mma Ramotswe the first few minutes were reasonably interesting, as Mr. Molofololo gave her a running commentary on who was who and how many goals they had scored-or failed to score-over the last season. He knew each of the players intimately, she thought; in fact, it rather reminded her of the way her late father, Obed Ramotswe, had known the cattle that made up his herd. He had known the strengths of each beast-its potential to grow, its lineage, its ability to withstand drought, and so on. Mr. Molofololo was like that with his players, and she expected at any moment that he would launch into a discussion of how to breed football players, but he did not; that would perhaps be taking it a bit too far.

  For the first fifteen minutes or so, it seemed to her that nothing much was happening. The Kalahari Swoopers got possession of the ball and lost it from time to time to the Township Rollers. Then they got it again, and the action switched back where it had been before they lost possession. Then everything changed again.

  “How are we doing?” she asked Mr. Molofololo at one point. And he replied, “Nothing is happening yet, Mma. You must be patient. This is not like cooking.”

  She wondered whether to take objection to that remark, but decided not to. It was not just that Mr. Molofololo was the client, and one should not offend clients; there was something strange about Mr. Molofololo, something that she could not quite put her finger on. He had a tendency to make remarks that were just a little bit disconcerting-as if he was thinking about something quite different, or as if he saw a dimension to an issue that you did not.

  Mma Ramotswe settled into her seat and watched the match unfold. From time to time Mr. Molofololo became animated and shouted out encouragement; at other times he groaned and sank his head in his hands. And others in the audience were behaving in a similar way as the fortunes of the match flowed this way and that. It was all new to Mma Ramotswe, and she reflected on how strange it was that things like this-football matches, with all their passion and complexity-had been taking place right under her nose in Gaborone and she had known so little about them.

  Puso seemed to follow exactly what was happening. He was sitting next to Mr. Molofololo, and the great man occasionally leant over and discussed a point of tactics with him. At half-time, when the players went off the field and the Botswana Defence Force band marched out onto the field to play, Mma Ramotswe asked Puso how the match was going.

  “Not very well,” Puso said. “The Swoopers are going to lose, I think. Unless Quickie Chitamba can do something.”

  “Quickie Chitamba? Who is this Quickie Chitamba?”

  Puso looked at Mma Ramotswe with the condescending tolerance of one explaining something to another who cannot possibly understand. This was men's business, he seemed to be saying. “Quickie Chitamba is a striker, Mma. It is his job to score goals.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. She understood that goals were the object of the whole exercise, but could not any player score a goal?

  “And the goalkeeper has to stop that, doesn't he?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Puso replied. “And we have a very good goalkeeper, Mma.”

  “We?”

  Puso explained again. “Our team. Swoopers. The goalie is Big Man Tafa. He is a very good goalie.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “I see. Being a big man must be a good thing if you are a goalkeeper. Big Man Tafa must block the mouth of the goal.”

  Puso shook his head. “Except he is very small, Mma.”

  “Big Man Tafa is small?”

  “Yes,” said Puso. “He is
very small, Mma. But he is also a very good goalkeeper.”

  Mma Ramotswe was silent. She was learning a great deal about football in a very short time. She was learning about possession of the ball, about strikers and their doings, about big men who were really small; and there would be more to learn no doubt during the second half.

  They returned to their seats, the band marched off, and the match began once more. Mma Ramotswe noticed that the teams were now playing in different directions and that the pace of play seemed to have increased. The crowd, that seemed to have swelled for the second half, was even more vocal, and shouts in both English and Setswana were directed forcefully towards players who were thought not to be playing too well. And then, quite unexpectedly, a goal was scored and half the stadium erupted in a roar of triumph.

  Mma Ramotswe was not sure exactly what happened, but there was no doubt amongst the Swooper supporters that the goal was Big Man Tafa's fault. And Mr. Molofololo, who had been watching the second half in silence, now turned to Mma Ramotswe and said, “See, Mma? We are going to lose now. Again. We're going to lose again.”

  “But there is still time for us to score a goal,” said Mma Ramotswe soothingly.

  “There is only ten minutes,” said Mr. Molofololo. “We are finished, Mma. Finished.”

  He spoke in such dejected tones that Mma Ramotswe's heart went out to him. He was like a little boy she thought; this great man was like a little boy who had been beaten in some juvenile game of stones. She almost said to him, It's just a game, you know, but something stopped her. It was true that it was just a game, but for these people caught up in it, it seemed to be much more than that. It was more like a battle for life or death.

  Defeat by one goal would have been bad enough, but there was more to come. With only a couple of minutes to go, the Township Rollers pressed home an advantage and broke through the Swoopers' defences. There was a flurry of activity and shouts from the crowd. Then another ball sailed past Big Man Tafa and the Township Rollers' supporters became ecstatic. Mr. Molofololo made a gesture of disgust and turned away.

  “So is Big Man the traitor?” asked Mma Ramotswe gently.

  Mr. Molofololo looked at her in surprise. “Big Man? Certainly not. He has allowed a couple of goals to get past him, but you can't save everything. This isn't like cooking, Mma.”

  Again the reference to cooking, and again Mma Ramotswe bit her tongue. She had had enough of football, she thought, and it occurred to her that she should politely inform Mr. Molofololo that she would not be able to take on the case. But if she did that, then there would be no fee, and with prices rising as they were, the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency could not afford to be choosy about which cases it took on and which it did not. Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors provided a reasonable income for the family, but children were expensive, whether they were one's own or whether they were foster children like Puso and Motholeli. At the end of each month there was never very much money left over, although Mma Ramotswe was aware of how fortunate she was when compared with others. She thought of Fanwell, who gave every pula of his modest apprentice's salary to his grandmother. Compared with him, her position was comfortable indeed.

  And there was another reason why she felt that she should resist the temptation to resign from the case. Mma Ramotswe had always appreciated a challenge, and although she had not been a private detective for all that long, she had never once turned down a case because she felt that it was too complicated. The world of football might be an alien one, but she had entered all sorts of unfamiliar surroundings in the course of her career and had been undaunted by them. She would have to learn a little bit more about football-she accepted that-but it appeared that she had a perfect domestic tutor on hand for that: Puso. He knew all about strikers and the like, and she would learn from him. No, she would remain on the case; there would be no resignation.

  Mr. Molofololo went down to the dressing room after the match and took Puso with him, while Mma Ramotswe waited in the car. The crowd was now leaving the Stadium, and she caught snippets of conversation as people walked past. Why was Big Man on the wrong side of the goal? Did you see that? To which the reply, cut tantalisingly short, was Yes, you know what I think… What do you think? Mma Ramotswe asked herself. She would have loved to run past the two fans and ask them: Do you think he did not save those goals deliberately? Whose side do you think he was really on?

  After about ten minutes, Puso reappeared with Mr. Molofololo. The owner of the Kalahari Swoopers looked extremely downcast, and his conversation on the way to drop them off at Zebra Drive was virtually monosyllabic.

  “Bad,” he said. “Very bad.”

  “I'm sorry, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I was very much hoping that you would win. But maybe the Township Rollers are just playing very strongly these days. Maybe they deserved to win.”

  “No.”

  “Oh well, perhaps things will be better at the next game. You never know.”

  “Won't,” snapped Mr. Molofololo.

  After that, Mma Ramotswe was silent. Then, as the driver brought the large car to a halt outside the house on Zebra Drive, she spoke to Mr. Molofololo again. She reminded him that when he had first come to see her they had spoken of her being given a list of all the names of the players, along with their addresses. Could Mr. Molofololo provide that?

  “Yes.”

  Mma Ramotswe opened the car door. “We have had a very good afternoon, Rra. Thank you very much for that. And Puso…”

  Puso took his cue and thanked Mr. Molofololo for allowing him to watch the game. This produced a rather better response, and an offer to take the boy to the match that the Swoopers would play the following weekend. Would he like that?

  The boy looked pleadingly at Mma Ramotswe, who nodded. “I would like that very much, Rra,” he said. “Thank you.”

  They got out of the car and went into the house.

  “I am so happy Mma,” said Puso.

  Mma Ramotswe patted him affectionately on the head. “I can tell that. And I am glad that you are happy, Puso, even if it seems that the Swoopers themselves are not very happy.”

  “Oh, I think they are happy,” said Puso. “I do not think they wanted to win very much.”

  Mma Ramotswe frowned. The little boy was about to go off to his bedroom, but she reached out to grab his arm. “Puso! Why did you say that?”

  The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, I could tell,” he said. “One of them even smiled when the Township Rollers scored that first goal. I saw him.”

  Mma Ramotswe's eyes widened. “He smiled? One of the players?”

  “Yes. I was watching him, and I saw him smile. Then he suddenly stopped smiling, as if somebody had told him he mustn't.”

  Mma Ramotswe stared at Puso. What was that expression that somebody had used the other day, and she had noted down as a very useful thing to say? Out of the mouths of babes… Yes, that was it.

  She tried not to sound too concerned. You had to be careful when getting information from children; you had to be careful that you did not encourage them to embroider things. Clovis Andersen, author of The Principles of Private Detection, had written about that, she remembered. Always be very cautious when getting evidence from children, he advised. Never let the child think that you want a particular answer, because if you do that, the child will make something up in order to oblige. I have been involved in many cases where apparently valuable information from children has proved to be misleading because the child was trying to be helpful. Children, in general, do not have a clear idea of the distinction between what the world is and what we want it to be.

  Clovis Andersen was right about that, as he was about so much, and Mma Ramotswe suspected that Mma Potokwane, with all her experience of children, would concur. One of the children at the orphan farm had happened to witness a burglary in a neighbouring house, and Mma Potokwane had sat with the child while he made the statement to the police. The boy, who was barely seven, had said that the man he saw breakin
g in through the window was Santa Claus. The police had tried to shift him from this, but he was adamant. “It was Santa Claus,” he had said.

  So now, affecting nonchalance, Mma Ramotswe sought to elicit information about the player who had smiled when the opposition had scored a goal. “Oh, I expect he was smiling about something else,” she said. “Perhaps he was remembering a joke, or something like that. I don't think it's very important, anyway.”

  “I don't think he was thinking of a joke,” said Puso solemnly. “He was smiling because the Township Rollers had scored a goal. I'm sure he was, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe shrugged, as if to suggest that the matter was not very important. “Who was he, by the way? Did you see which player it was?”

  Puso scratched his head. “I think it was Quickie Chitamba,” he said. “Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was another man who looked like Quickie.” He paused. “No, I don't think it was Quickie.”

  “Oh well,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  CHAPTER EIGHT. VIOLET SEPHOTHO STARTS WORK

  ON THE MONDAY following the Kalahari Swoopers' ignominious defeat by the Township Rollers, a new employee presented herself for work at Mr. Phuti Radiphuti's Double Comfort Furniture Shop. This was none other than Violet Sephotho, formerly an undistinguished student at the Botswana Secretarial College, where she definitely did not get the eighty per cent that she had claimed at her interview. It was the same Violet Sephotho whom Mma Makutsi had met again at the Botswana Academy of Dance and Movement, the Tuesday evening dance class at the President Hotel, where Violet, determined to belittle someone who had done so much better in the college exams, had shown herself at her most disparaging and condescending.

  It was also the same Violet Sephotho with whom Mma Makutsi had subsequently crossed swords on two occasions. The first of these had been when Mma Makutsi had rather too hastily tendered her resignation to Mma Ramotswe and had gone to an employment agency to find another job, only to discover that the agency was run by Violet. This, of course, gave Violet the opportunity to make snide and cutting remarks about the harshness of the current employment climate to women who were not very prepossessing in their appearance-by which she meant Mma Makutsi herself-and to suggest that perhaps she should look for a job outside Gaborone, in a place like Lobatse, possibly, where standards were not so high. An unfashionable-looking person, she suggested, could find a job in Lobatse even if she could not do so in Gaborone.