“There are worse things to do on a Sunday,” she said. “It is better to be doing those spiritual things than sitting idly at home or in some shebeen somewhere, drinking.”
He agreed. “You’re right, Mma. I was not criticising this man and his church. But I would say, though, that he seemed to do quite well out of it all.”
Mma Ramotswe’s antennae homed in on this. Africa was full of prophets who had done well out of their prophecy. Other places, too, had the same problem—not just Africa. She had discovered a wonderful English word for which there seemed to be no precise Setswana equivalent—charlatan. She savoured the sound of it—charlatan. It seemed to describe a certain sort of person very accurately, she thought. Was this man, this Flat, a charlatan?
“My customer told me that they were very happy in the church,” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni said. “He said that the Reverend Flat Ponto had converted a very rich woman to the church and that she had given him a car for use in his ministry.”
Mma Ramotswe groaned. It was a familiar story. Rich women, it seemed, made the same mistake time and time again: whether they were ensnared by a natty dancer or a smart dresser or a minister who had invented his own church, the aim of the man was always the same—to part the rich woman from as large a proportion of her funds as possible before her family or friends were able to intervene. She had seen this happen on more than one occasion, and it never ended well. Oh, there were stories where the scheming man was exposed in time, but those were only stories. In real life it did not happen that way. The man got the money and the woman was left high and dry.
“And you’re sure this lady was Poppy?” she asked.
He nodded. “That’s what my customer said.”
Mma Ramotswe groaned again. “And the car? Was it…” She hesitated. You should not be prejudiced against one sort of car, because cars are innocent—they know no better. But it was no use beating about the bush. “Was it a Mercedes-Benz?”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not need to respond; she saw the answer in his eyes.
“It was,” he said. “A new one, too.”
Mma Ramotswe rolled her eyes. “Oh, the foolishness of women,” she muttered. “I mean, the foolishness of some women.”
“And men,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “There are some very foolish men.”
She said that he was right. Foolishness was something that afflicted men and women equally. Neither sex had the monopoly of wisdom, she said, although on balance she thought that women might perhaps have just a little bit more sense than men. But only a little bit, and it was not a point that she would care to make, normally, as Mma Ramotswe liked men, just as she liked women, and did not think it helpful to put a wedge between them. People were people first and foremost, she felt, and it was only after you had judged them as people that you should notice whether they were wearing a skirt or trousers, not that that was grounds for distinction these days.
She looked up. “Have you ever seen a man wearing a skirt, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni?” she asked.
His face registered his puzzlement. “I have not seen that, Mma. And why would a man want to wear a skirt? What’s the point of that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Men sometimes do strange things, of course.” She was certain of that, at least; the strangeness of human behaviour was something of which anybody following her calling would be only too well aware. Anything, it seemed, was possible, such was human ingenuity in the pursuit of its goals. Mma Potokwane had once expressed views on this, saying that nothing would ever surprise her when it came to human nature. She remembered her friend’s words. “People are very odd, Mma Ramotswe. They think odd thoughts and they do odd things. You can never be sure with people.” Mma Potokwane was right, as she almost always was. She knew these things because she had been a matron for so long and had looked after children in whose lives, in the background, was almost every conceivable human disappointment and tragedy.
He shrugged. “If they want to wear ladies’ clothes,” he said, “then I suppose they should be allowed to do so.” He shook his head. “Although I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re underneath a car fixing it. Overalls are the answer, Mma, for that sort of thing—for both men and women. Overalls.”
Overalls, thought Mma Ramotswe. Was that the answer to all these issues that people were worrying away at—issues of who was a man and who was a woman? If we all were to wear overalls, would that argument simply go away? It would be nice to think that it would, as Mma Ramotswe wanted people to be happy in whatever way they needed to be happy, but somehow she doubted whether the provision of overalls for everybody was really the answer.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MONDAY, NOTHING; TUESDAY, NOTHING
THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED this conversation with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni were unusually quiet ones in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.
“Something will turn up,” said Mma Makutsi, as she stared idly out of the office window. “It always does, I find.”
Seated at her desk, Mma Ramotswe looked at the empty pages of her diary. Monday, nothing; Tuesday, nothing; and so on, stretching out to an indeterminate future. “People often say that business is either famine or feast,” she said. “And I think that’s right, Mma Makutsi.”
“It definitely is,” said Mma Makutsi. “Phuti says that it’s the same in the furniture business. One moment everybody is desperate to buy beds and sofas and so forth. Then, the next day, nothing. No sales. It’s as if everybody who could possibly want a bed or a sofa has got one. And you think, Is this the end of the business?”
Mma Ramotswe did not like to say that this was exactly the question that had occurred to her. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency did not make a great deal of money. Indeed, at the end of most months, when the books were examined and outgoings subtracted from sums received, the resulting profit, if any, was minuscule. That did not matter too much, of course, as long as salaries were covered; they had no rent to pay, the office being attached to the premises of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, which was owned by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. If one had to have a landlord, then there was a very good case for having one’s husband as one’s landlord.
“Somebody will knock on the door,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Somebody will come in and say that her husband is spending too much time in the office with his secretary, or the petty cash is disappearing in a mysterious way, or their daughter is seeing a suspicious boyfriend who won’t give anybody his real name and insists on simply being called Joe.”
Mma Makutsi laughed at that, remembering a case where that was exactly what had happened, and she and Mr. Polopetsi had discovered that Joe, as he called himself, was wanted by the police on several charges of handling stolen property. “I think you are right, Mma,” she said. “Any moment now a new client will turn up.”