“Submitting, then, Mma Makutsi.”
“Good,” said Mma Makutsi. “Now then. Let’s see.” She returned to the letter. “The report indicates…That’s very good wording, Mma. It is very professional. The report indicates that your husband is not seeing a lover but is seeing another woman—” She broke off. “No, Mma, you cannot say that. That will give quite the wrong impression.”
“Read on, Mma Makutsi.”
“Seeing another woman who is a teacher. Oh, I see, Mma. I see what you’re saying. We could investigate further, but we think that any man who is studying for a mathematics examination is unlikely to be having an affair at the same time. For this reason, we do not recommend further surveillance.”
Mma Makutsi put down the letter. “That is a very good letter, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe reached out to recover the piece of paper. “I’m glad you approve of it, Mma,” she said.
“But why is he studying mathematics?” asked Mma Makutsi.
“People do, Mma. They are always studying things. You can never tell what people will get up to.” People took up entirely innocent pursuits, she pointed out. She remembered a similar case, where a husband suspected of conducting an affair was in fact receiving instruction in the Roman Catholic faith. She now reminded Mma Makutsi of that case. “Remember that man who lived near the hospital, Mma? He was not having an affair at all but was thinking of becoming a Roman Catholic.”
Mma Makutsi remembered the case. “People are always joining churches,” she said. “This church, that church. They like the singing in one place and they go there. Then they hear there is better singing in another place, and off they go to that one. Or there is a better preacher—one with a louder voice—and they say, ‘He is the one now.’ And off they go to listen to him. That’s how it works, Mma.”
Mma Makutsi could see the wisdom of all that. Phuti had a cousin who was a good example of that, having been, in the space of a single year, a Baptist as well as an Anglican, and had now joined a small congregation of people who believed not that the end was coming—as some people did—but that it had actually come, and we had simply failed to notice it. But this situation had a particular smell to it, she thought. It was the smell, and that was something that was sometimes difficult to put into words. “There’s one thing worrying me here, Mma,” she mused. “Why has he not told his wife? She obviously doesn’t know where he is going—he can’t have told her, Mma.”
“Perhaps he wants her to think he’s going somewhere else,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But does it matter? It’s nothing to do with us why he should want to study mathematics.”
“Oh, I know that,” said Mma Makutsi. “It’s just that I think there’s something odd going on, Mma Ramotswe. We’re not seeing everything there is to be seen. Something else is happening.”
Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. “Possibly. But I don’t see what it has to do with us.”
Mma Makutsi went to her desk and sat down, and at that moment, from down at floor level, almost inaudible, but just to be made out, came a tiny voice. Mathematics, Mma? Do you believe that?
Mma Makutsi looked up sharply.
“Did you say something, Mma Ramotswe?”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “No, Mma. I did not. I thought I heard something, though. I thought it was you.”
“It was not me,” said Mma Makutsi. She looked down at her shoes. There was silence. If there had been a voice, and if it had said something about mathematics, it had nothing more to say now. She transferred her gaze to Mma Ramotswe.
“Mma Ramotswe,” she said. “I have been thinking. Would you mind if I took over that case—if you’ve finished with it, of course.”
Mma Ramotswe was surprised. “I don’t think there’s much else to be done,” she said. “We’ve told her that her suspicions as to her husband—or her hopes, perhaps—are unfounded. What else is there to do?”
“I think that man is up to something,” said Mma Makutsi.
“But that’s got nothing to do with us. All we were asked to do was to find out whether he was having an affair. We have said that we do not think that he is.”
“I still think that man is up to something. And all I’m asking is to be allowed to do a bit more digging about.”
Mma Ramotswe was doubtful. “But we can’t bill the client any longer,” she said. “She paid for the answer to a single question. Now she has that, and there can’t be any more bills. The case is closed, Mma.”
Mma Makutsi shook her head. “This is nothing to do with billing anybody. This is just to find out for the sake of getting to the truth.” She paused, reaching for a small pile of papers on her desk. She shuffled these, putting the larger ones on the bottom of the pile and the smaller on the top. Mma Ramotswe wondered whether this was some system of filing that had yet to be explained to her—some system advocated, for all she knew, by the Botswana Secretarial College, and faithfully implemented by that college’s most faithful graduate and disciple. Or was it the simple desire for order that many of us had, in greater or smaller measure? Although there were some people, of course, who did not have it at all, and who lived their lives with small things and big things jumbled up and who were, when all was said and done, happy…She looked at Mma Makutsi across the room and smiled. We were all different, she thought, and it was important to remind oneself of that. It was important, too, to imagine what it must be like to be another person. That was a simple thing to do, and its effect could be salutary. Mma Makutsi came from Bobonong; she had battled to get where she had got; she saw things in a way that somebody who came from Bobonong and who had struggled against the odds would see them. And she did all of that rather well; she performed the task of being Mma Makutsi with considerable distinction—with ninety-seven per cent, really.
And now she was saying something, and Mma Ramotswe had to concentrate.
“Sometimes the truth can’t be put on anybody’s bill,” Mma Makutsi pronounced, and then continued, “but it’s still important to get to it, Mma—to get to the truth behind all the…all the things that cover up the truth.” She moved the papers again, and then put them to the side of her desk.
Now Mma Ramotswe did not hesitate. “If that’s what you want to do, Mma, I can’t see any harm in it, although I must say I don’t think you are going to find anything. I don’t want to discourage you, but…”
“I shall find what I shall find,” said Mma Makutsi. “Clovis Andersen says that, you know. He says: You will find what you will find. I can show it to you, if you like, Mma. It’s in chapter eight, if my memory serves me correctly.”