Tati Monyena walked with her to the ward, and introduced her again to the nurses she had already met. One smiled when she saw Mma Ramotswe in her white coat. Another looked at her in astonishment, and then frowned and turned away. They were busy, though, and had no time to speak to her. There was a man in a bed near the window who was breathing heavily, making a sound which was like that of gravel being walked upon. One of the nurses took his pulse and adjusted his pillow. There was a small framed photograph on the table beside him, left by a relative no doubt, a reminder, a little thing for a very ill person to have with him on his journey, along with all those other memories that make up the life of a man.
For the first little while, Mma Ramotswe felt like the intruder she was. It was an almost indecent feeling—that one was watching something that one should not be watching, like looking at another person in a moment of great privacy, but that feeling wore away as she stood by a window and watched the nurses at work. They were matter-of-fact in their manner: drugs were given, temperatures taken, entries made on charts. It was like an office, she thought, with its series of small tasks to be methodically carried out. That nurse over there, she thought, the one with the glasses, would be Mma Makutsi herself. And that young man who brought in the drugs trolley and who made some muttered comment to one of the nurses could be Charlie, and the drugs trolley, with its well-oiled, silent wheels, his Mercedes-Benz.
After three quarters of an hour, when she had begun to feel tired, Mma Ramotswe drew a chair over to the place where she had been standing. It was near a bed occupied by a silent, sleeping man. He had tubes inserted into his arms, and wires disappearing into the sleeve of his nightgown. He slept regardless, his face composed, peaceful, all pain, if he had been experiencing it, forgotten. She watched him and thought of her father, Obed Ramotswe, and of how he met his end, in just such a bed, and of how it had seemed to her at the time that a whole Botswana had died with him. But it had not. That fine country, with its good people, was still there; it was there in the face of this elderly man with his head upon that pillow and the sunlight, the warm, friendly sun of Africa, slanting through the window and falling upon him now in his last days.
She shifted in her chair and looked at her watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. The nurses, or some of them, would surely have their tea soon; but not today, perhaps, when they all seemed to be so busy. She closed her eyes for a moment, in comfortable drowsiness, feeling the sun from the window on her face. Eleven o’clock.
The double swing doors at the end of the ward were opened, and a woman in a light green working dress, the uniform of the hospital’s support staff, bent down to put a doorstop in place. Behind her was a floor-polishing machine, a big, ungainly instrument like an over-sized vacuum cleaner. The woman glanced at Mma Ramotswe as she pushed her floor polisher in, and then she bent down and switched it on. There was a loud whining sound as the machine’s circular pad rubbed at the sealed concrete of the floor, and a smell of polish too, from some automatic dispenser attached to the handle. This was a well-run hospital, thought Mma Ramotswe; and a well-run hospital would also be battling against dirt on floors. That was where the invisible enemies were, was it not?—the armies of germs waiting for their chance.
She watched the woman fondly. She was a traditionally built cleaning lady doing an important, but badly paid job. There was no doubt that a number of children would be dependent on that job, on the money that it brought for their food, their school clothes, their hopes for a future. And here was this solid, reliable woman doing her job, as women throughout Botswana would be doing their various jobs at that very moment; her floor polisher whirring, its long electrical cable trailing behind it and out of the door into the corridor.
She was Mma Ramotswe, and she noticed things. She noticed the length of the cable, and all its coils, and she wondered whether there were not places in the ward where the polisher might be plugged in. Surely that would be easier, and would mean that this long cable could not threaten to trip people up in the ward or in the corridor. That would be far more sensible.
She looked about her. The ward was full of plugs, one at the head of each bed. And into each of these plugs there were fitted the lights, the injection pumps, the appliances that helped the patients to breathe…
She rose to her feet. The cleaning woman had now almost drawn level with her and they had exchanged a friendly glance, followed by a smile. She approached the woman, who looked up from her work and raised an eyebrow in enquiry before she bent down and switched off the polisher.
“Dumela, Mma.”
The greeting was exchanged. Then Mma Ramotswe leaned forward and whispered to her urgently. “I must talk to you, Mma. Please can we go outside and talk? I won’t keep you for long.”
“What, now?” The woman had a soft, almost hoarse voice. “Now? I am working now, Mma.”
“Mr Monyena,” said Mma Ramotswe, pointing in the direction of Tati Monyena’s office. “I am doing something for him. I am allowed to speak to anybody in working hours. You need not worry.”
The woman nodded. The mention of Tati Monyena’s name had reassured her, and she pushed her polisher to one side and followed Mma Ramotswe out of the ward. They went outside, to sit on a bench beneath a tree. A goat had strayed into the hospital grounds and was nibbling at a patch of grass. It watched them for a few moments and then returned to its task of grazing. It was becoming hot again. The cleaner said, “This is the end of winter.”
They sat down. “Yes, winter is over now, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. Then she said, “I noticed that you have a long cable on your polisher, Mma. It goes right out of the ward and into the corridor. Wouldn’t it be easier to connect it to one of the plugs inside each ward?”
The cleaner picked up a twig from the ground at her feet and began to twist it. She was not nervous, though; that would have shown, and it did not.
“Oh yes,” she said. “That’s what I used to do. But then they told me not to. I was given very strict instructions. I should not use any of the plugs in the ward.”
Mma Ramotswe felt herself swaying. It was as if she was about to faint. She drew a deep breath, and the swaying feeling went away. Yes. Yes. Yes.
“Who told you, Mma?” she asked. It was a simple question, but she had to struggle to get it out.
“Mr Monyena himself,” said the cleaner. “He told me. He called me into his office and went on and on about it. He said…” She paused.
“Yes? He said?”
“He said that I was not to talk about it. I’m sorry I forgot. I did tell him that I would not talk about it. I shouldn’t be talking to you, Mma. But…”
“But I have his full authority,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“He is a kind man, Tati Monyena,” said the cleaner. And then, after thinking for a moment, she added, “He is my cousin, you know.”
Which makes you mine, thought Mma Ramotswe.
SHE WALKED BACK to Tati Monyena’s office, divested of her white coat, which she carried slung over her right arm. He was in, his door ajar, and he welcomed her warmly.
“It’s lunch time,” he said breezily, rubbing his hands together. “Well timed, Mma Ramotswe! We can have some lunch in the canteen. They do very good food, you know. Cheap, too.”
“I need to talk to you, Rra,” she said, putting the coat down on the chair before his desk.
He patted his stomach. “We can talk over lunch, Mma.”
“Privately?”
He hesitated for a moment. “Yes, if that is what you want. There is a special table at one end that we can use. Nobody will disturb us.”
They walked in silence to the canteen. Tati Monyena tried to make casual conversation, but Mma Ramotswe found herself too involved in her own thoughts to respond very much. She was trying to make sense of something, and the sense was not apparent. He knew, she thought; he knew. But if he knew, then why ask her? An outside whitewash—that was what he wanted.