Mma Ramotswe decided that it was time to abandon this discussion, interesting though it was. “We shall have to think a bit more about this case,” she said. “But perhaps not right now. I would like to tell you about what I found out this morning.”
* * *
—
MMA RAMOTSWE TOLD THEM about her attempt to visit Nametso in the diamond-sorting office. She described the security consultant—“He was a security guard, really, but you know how everybody has become a consultant these days”—and she told them what he had revealed about Nametso. “He said that she now has a Mercedes-Benz, but she parks it elsewhere, not in the parking place she used to have.”
“It’s best to put a car like that in a safe place,” said Charlie. “If you put it in a public parking place, then bang, some lady comes and reverses into you.”
Mma Makutsi glared at him. “Some lady, Charlie? Why do you say some lady? Is it because you think we women can’t drive safely? Is that what you think?”
Charlie made a conciliatory gesture. “I only said ‘some lady’ because I do not want to use sexist language, Mma Makutsi. If I said ‘some man,’ then you would come and say to me, ‘Why are you always talking about men, what about ladies?’ And so I say ‘some lady’ and you jump up and down and say, ‘Why are you picking on ladies?’ ”
“You’re not fooling me, Charlie,” snorted Mma Makutsi. “You said ‘some lady’ because you think it is always ladies who are bumping into other cars in car parks. That is what you think.”
Mma Ramotswe was staring at the ceiling. Over the last twelve months, she had bumped her van into two other cars, both of them in parking places. She had done no real damage, and the owners of the two cars in question had been understanding. One of them was a woman, and she had said to Mma Ramotswe, “Don’t you worry, Mma. I’m always bumping into other cars myself.” It was best, perhaps, not to mention that now, she thought.
And Mma Makutsi was thinking of how Phuti had come back from the Double Comfort Furniture Store one day recently and told her that his secretary had come into the office in tears because she had bumped into a furniture van in the off-loading bay at the back of the building. “He should not have been there, Rra,” she said. “He normally comes at eleven in the morning. This was at nine. What was he doing there? It’s his fault, Rra.”
And yet Mma Ramotswe had read that women were safer drivers than men, and these stories were both unfair and inaccurate. It was young men who caused many of the accidents—young men like Charlie, who only wanted to go fast and show off to people in the back seat. They were the bad drivers, not women. That was well known. Indeed, it was probably the sort of thing that Seretse Khama himself might have said.
“It doesn’t really make much difference,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It seems to me that it is a reasonable explanation to say that she does not want her Mercedes-Benz to be damaged. But—and it’s a big but, I think—the real question is this: Where does a young woman like that get a Mercedes-Benz?”
Mma Makutsi looked thoughtful. “Diamonds, Mma.”
Nobody spoke for a good minute or so. Illicit activities in relation to diamonds was a sensitive subject in Botswana: the authorities took precious-stone offences extremely seriously.
At last, Mma Ramotswe spoke. “Are you suggesting she’s been stealing from her employer?” she asked. “That’s a very serious matter, Mma Makutsi.”
Mma Makutsi defended herself. “I am not accusing anybody of stealing anything,” she said. “All that I am saying, Mma, is this: If you work each day with very valuable things—small things—and then you start driving a Mercedes-Benz, what are people to think?”
“They would think that you’re removing some of the diamonds,” said Charlie. “They would think that you are selling these diamonds and have saved up to buy a Mercedes-Benz.”
Mma Makutsi nodded. Further possibilities were occurring to her. “And if you have a Mercedes-Benz, would you want the people you work with to see you arriving for work in it? I do not think you would.”
“No!” exclaimed Charlie. “No, you would not, Mma Makutsi. You are one hundred per cent right—not ninety-seven per cent, ha ha, but one hundred per cent right. You would not want people in the office to think you had been stealing diamonds and buying a Mercedes-Benz.” He waited for his moment. He watched. He could come up with deductions every bit as significant as any of theirs. They thought he was just a man, and that men were hopeless at these things—far too clumsy in their way of looking at the world, thinking only of cars, girls, soccer; things like that. Mind you, he said to himself, I am one of those men who think about cars, girls, and soccer; but not all the time; there were times when he thought of other things. And now, unbidden, into his mind there came the image—and the smell—of a good Botswana steak, a T-bone that gave you something to gnaw on when you had eaten all the rest. He thought about food rather a lot, he had to confess. But so did women. Listen to the way they went on about clothes—and babies too. Women loved babies. They also loved shoes, he had noticed; especially Mma Makutsi, who had many pairs now, green, blue, red—all those colours, inside and outside; and bows and pieces of coloured glass, heart-shaped and stuck on the toe. Why would you have a piece of coloured glass on the toe of your shoe? What was the point of that? No man would do something like that, because men had better things to do, Charlie thought, than stick pieces of glass on their shoes.
Oh, there was so much unfairness in the way women thought about men. It was true, he conceded, that men had treated women unfairly in the past, but now things were stacked the other way and women were exacting their revenge. This is what you get for making us stay at home and stopping us from doing the things you thought it was your right to do; this is what you get. Well, yes; well, yes, but what will happen to all those young boys who grow up and find there’s nothing for them to do? Charlie had sometimes wondered about that.
Women said that men were a big problem for them. Charlie had heard them saying just that. Now he thought: You are a big problem for us, because maybe you are a bit smarter than we are. Maybe that is true. But men could still do some things; men were still of some use. Women thought they were the only ones who could work out what was what; well, he would show them.
“So what does this person do, Mma Ramotswe? Mma Makutsi? Any ideas? Let me tell you: She says to herself, I will park round the corner so that nobody thinks I have stolen any diamonds. They will think I have walked to work because I do not have that much money.” He drew breath. “That’s what she would have said to herself, I think.”
The end of Charlie’s explanation was greeted by silence. Charlie thought: They do not like a man who can think for himself; that is what they think. They would prefer it if a woman came up with a good conclusion like mine. They would say, “Exactly, Mma,” and “How right you are,” just because she was a woman and all women will agree with everything that other women say. That is the way they work. That is the way they unite against us.