The Double Comfort Safari Club - By Alexander McCall Smith Page 0,49

table and were examining the menu that Herbert Mateleke unburdened himself.

“You know something, Mma Ramotswe?” he began. “I am not a happy man.”

“But …”

He held up a hand. “Let me explain, Mma. I am a person who is always telling other people that they must rejoice and love the Lord. Alleluia, alleluia! That is what I am always saying. And when I see people who are happy, I say, ‘Alleluia! You are living in goodness and light!’ But all the time, Mma, inside me there is just an unhappiness and …”—he paused, staring straight into Mma Ramotswe’s eyes—“… and doubt.”

For a moment she said nothing. She knew that reverends sometimes had doubts about what they professed to believe, and that this could not be easy for them. It would be like telling somebody all the time to do something that one would not do oneself. But was she the person to address his doubts? Surely he should go and speak to somebody who knew something about these matters—another reverend, perhaps, or a teacher of theology. Of course, there were all sorts of other doubts … doubts about marriage? Was saying that one had doubts a way of saying that one was thinking of leaving one’s spouse? Mma Ramotswe was not sure; these days there were so many ways of describing unpleasant things and making them sound quite pleasant. Nobody ran away from their responsibilities any more—they were said to have gone off to find themselves. Nobody dismissed anybody from their job any more—they let them go. What if they said, “But I do not want to go!” The only reply would be, “But I’m still going to let you!” It showed what nonsense these silly expressions were—at least Setswana did not have them: words in Setswana meant exactly what they said.

“I am worried about my wife,” Herbert Mateleke blurted out. “I have started to doubt her.”

Mma Ramotswe looked down at the tablecloth. He was doubting her? But he was the one who was meant to be having the affair! Or was this a part of the modern business of turning everything on its head, of making bad sound good and good sound bad, or at least very dull?

At last she asked, “Why is this, Rra? Why are you doubting her?”

Her question was clear enough, but he appeared to need some time to answer it. When the answer came, however, it was unambiguous. “I think that she is seeing another man.”

Mma Ramotswe could not conceal her surprise. This was not the way she had thought the encounter would go. She should be trying to find out whether he was having an affair, and now here was he about to ask her—and she was sure the request would not be long in coming—to find out whether Mma Mateleke was seeing somebody.

He was staring at her. “You look surprised, Mma. I suppose I can understand.”

She gathered her thoughts. “Yes, I am a bit surprised, Rra. I cannot deny that.”

He sighed. “That’s the trouble, isn’t it? If I went to anybody and said, ‘Do you realise that my wife is having an affair?’ they would be very surprised. They would say, ‘But she is a very respectable lady, Rra. She is that well-known midwife. And you are a part-time reverend.’ And so on. That is what they would say.”

Mma Ramotswe asked him why he thought Mma Mateleke was seeing somebody. Did he have any proof? She was trying to remember what Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had told her. Something about a car and the Lobatse Road. The Lobatse Road was not a good place to conduct an affair; it was far too busy. Now some small, out-of-the-way road, some road that wandered away to a distant cattle post, or off into the Kalahari until it disappeared in the sand, that road would be the place for a lovers’ meeting.

He shook his head. “I have no proof. I have no letters filled with kisses and things like that. But I have seen her talking to a man. I saw her outside the Botswana Book Centre one day. She was talking to a man.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “But that is nothing, Rra! Many women talk to men. They may know a man from work, or something like that. Yes, maybe she knew him from work.”

Herbert Mateleke shook his head. “She is a midwife, Mma, as you know. Men do not have babies. Yet.” He hesitated. “Although there are many men these days who want to have babies, I