She glanced discreetly at the man sitting in the chair in front of her desk, the man whom Mma Makutsi had spotted arriving and whom she had ushered into the office. He was well dressed, in a suit and tie, and his shoe laces, she noticed, were carefully tied. That was a sign of self-respect, and such evidence, together with his open demeanour and confident articulation, made it clear that this was not a distant cousin on the scrounge. Mma Ramotswe relaxed. Even if a favour was about to be asked for, it would not be one which would require money. That was something of a relief, given that the income of the agency over the past month had been so low. For a moment she allowed herself to think that this might even be a paying case, that the fact that the client was a cousin would make no difference when it came to the bill. But that, she realised, was unlikely. One could not charge cousins.
The man smiled at her. “Yes, Mma. We are cousins. Distant ones, of course, but still cousins.”
Mma Ramotswe made a welcoming gesture with her hands. “It is very good to meet a new cousin. But I was wondering…”
“How we are related?” the man interrupted. “I can tell you that quite simply, Mma. Your father was the late Obed Ramotswe, was he not?”
Mma Ramotswe nodded in confirmation: Obed Ramotswe—her beloved Daddy—the man who had raised her after the death of the mother she could not remember; Obed Ramotswe, the man who had scrimped and saved during all those hard, dark years down the mines and who had built up a herd of cattle that any man might be proud of. Not a day went past, not a day, but that she thought of him.
“He was a very fine man, I have been told,” said the visitor. “I met him once when I was much younger, but we had left Mochudi, you see, and we were living down in Lobatse. That is why we did not meet, you and I, even though we are cousins.”
Mma Ramotswe encouraged him to continue. She had decided that she liked this man, and she felt slightly guilty about her initial suspicions. You had to be careful, some people said; you had to be, because that was how the world had become, or so such people argued. They said that you could no longer trust people, because you did not know where other people came from, who their people were; and if you did not know that, then how could you trust them? Mma Ramotswe saw what was meant by such pronouncements, but did not agree with this cynical view. Everybody came from somewhere; everybody had their people. It was just a bit harder to find out about them these days; that was all. And that was no reason for abandoning trust.
Their visitor took a deep breath. “Your late father was the son of Boamogetswe Ramotswe, was he not? That was your grandfather, also late?”
“That was.” She had never known him, and there were no pictures of him, as was usually the case with people of that generation. Nobody knew any more how they looked, how they dressed. All that was lost now.
“And he had a sister whose name I cannot remember,” the man went on. “She married a man called Gotweng Dintwa, who worked on the railways back in the Protectorate days. He was in charge of a water tower for the steam trains.”
“I remember those towers,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They had those long canvas pipes hanging down from them, like an elephant’s trunk.”
The man laughed. “That is what they were like.” He leaned forward. “He had a daughter who married a man called Monyena. He was your father’s generation and they knew one another, not very well, but they knew one another. And then this Monyena went to Johannesburg and was thrown in jail for not having the right papers. He came back home to his wife and settled near Mochudi. That is where I come in. I am that man’s son. I am called Tati Monyena.”
He uttered the last sentence with an air of pride, as a storyteller might do at the end of a saga when the true identity of the hero is at last revealed. Mma Ramotswe, digesting the information, allowed her gaze to move off her guest and out of the window. There was nothing happening outside the window, but you never knew. The acacia tree might be still, its thorny branches unmoved by any breeze, with just the pale blue sky behind them, but birds landed there and watched, and moved, and led their lives. She thought of what had been told her—this potted story of a family that had shared roots with her own. A few words could sum up a lifetime; a few more could deal with a sweep of generations, whole dynasties, with here and there a little detail—a water tower, for instance—that made everything so human, so immediate. It was a distant link indeed, and she was as closely connected to him as she was to hundreds, possibly thousands of other people. Ultimately, in a country like Botswana, with its sparse population, everybody was connected in one way or another with virtually everybody else. Somewhere in the tangled genealogical webs there would be a place for everybody; nobody was without people.
Mma Makutsi, who had been listening from her desk, now decided to speak. “There are many cousins,” she said.
Tati Monyena turned round and looked at her in surprise. “Yes,” he said. “There are many cousins.”
“I have so many cousins,” Mma Makutsi continued. “I cannot count the number of cousins I have. Up in Bobonong. Cousins, cousins, cousins.”
“That is good, Mma,” said Tati Monyena.
Mma Makutsi snorted. “Sometimes, Rra. Sometimes it is good. But I see many of these cousins only when they want something. You know how it is.”
At this, Tati Monyena stiffened in his chair. “Not everybody sees their cousin for that reason,” he muttered. “I am not one of those who…”
Mma Ramotswe threw a glance at her assistant. She might be engaged to Phuti Radiphuti now, but she had no right to speak to a client like that. She would have to talk to her about it, gently, of course, but she would have to remonstrate with her.
“You are very welcome, Rra,” Mma Ramotswe said hurriedly. “I am glad you came to see me.”
Tati Monyena looked at Mma Ramotswe. There was gratitude in his eyes. “I haven’t come to ask a favour, Mma,” he said. “I mean to pay for your services.”
Mma Ramotswe tried to hide her surprise, but failed, as Tati Monyena felt constrained to reassure her once more. “I shall pay, Mma. It is not for me, you see, it’s for the hospital.”
“Don’t worry, Rra,” she said. “But what hospital is this?”
“Mochudi, Mma.”
That triggered so many memories: the old Dutch Reformed Mission Hospital in Mochudi, now a Government hospital, near the meeting place, the kgotla; the hospital where so many people she knew had been born, and had died; the broad eaves of which had witnessed so much human suffering, and kindness in the face of suffering. She thought of it with fondness, and now turned to Tati Monyena and said, “The hospital, Rra? Why the hospital?”
His look of pride returned. “That is where I work, Mma. I am not quite the hospital administrator, but I am almost.”
The words came quickly to Mma Ramotswe. “Associate administrator?”
“Exactly,” said Tati Monyena. The description clearly pleased him, and he savoured it for a few moments before continuing, “You know the hospital, Mma, don’t you? Of course you do.”
Mma Ramotswe thought of the last time she had been there, but put that memory out of her mind. So many had died of that terrible disease before the drugs came and stopped the misery in its tracks, or did so for many; too late, though, for her friend of childhood, whom she had visited in the hospital on that hot day. She had felt so powerless then, faced with the shadowy figure on the bed, but a nurse had told her that holding a hand, just holding it, could help. Which was true, she thought later; leaving this world clasping the hand of another was far better than going alone.