her, Rra?”
“Yes.” He turned around and gestured to a section of the car park immediately behind him. “That is where she used to park her car. Every day, she would park in the same place—right over there.”
Mma Ramotswe followed his gaze. “Used to, Rra? Is she no longer working here?”
“Oh, yes, she is still working here. If you have a job as a diamond sorter, you don’t give that up too readily, I can tell you.”
“I don’t suppose you do,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But now she’s parking somewhere else? Or is she coming into work by bus, maybe?”
He turned back to face her. “No, nothing like that. She’s still driving in. You mentioned the Village earlier on. That is where she lives. You know those flats near the university?”
She did. “They aren’t too far from my business.” She bit her tongue. She had not intended to reveal what she did; it could only complicate matters.
It was too late. “Your business, Mma? What business is that?”
“I work in an office,” Mma Ramotswe said vaguely. “Not a big office—just a couple of people. But tell me, Rra: Why is Nametso not parking here any longer?” She assumed that it was a shade issue, and felt that here at least was something on which she and Nametso would agree—too much concrete and too little respect for trees. Our natural umbrellas, she thought. That’s what trees were: our natural umbrellas.
But this was not the reason. The security guard thought for a moment, and then, with what Mma Ramotswe thought was a rather condescending smile, gave his answer: “Envy, Mma. You know what envy is. It is our big problem here, although we don’t like to talk about it. Envy.”
Mma Ramotswe looked at him in surprise. “Envy, Rra?” She could not work out what he meant. Envy? Of what, and on whose part? Were there some people who did not have a parking place who would be envious of those who did? That was possible, she thought—just. But there did not seem to be a shortage of parking places attached to the building—in fact, judging from the many empty spaces, there seemed to be rather too many. And that’s what happens, she thought grimly, if you cut down all your trees.
The security guard spoke patiently, as if explaining something elementary to a person who might not be expected to grasp a simple enough matter. This made Mma Ramotswe feel momentarily annoyed: there was a certain sort of man—usually an older man—who still harboured an old-fashioned attitude towards women. Women, they thought, had to have things explained to them by men. It was hard to believe that there were still men who took that view, even when women had fought back so successfully and exploded the nonsense behind it. Yet such men still existed, as Mma Makutsi had once said, because they were weak within themselves.
“If you know that you’re not very good at something,” she had said. “If, for example—and I am just giving an example here, Mma; I am not talking about any particular man—if you are a bit unintelligent in the head…” That was an expression that Mma Makutsi used from time to time; an odd expression, thought Mma Ramotswe, because where else could one be unintelligent but in the head? And yet it had a certain charm to it, and she had found herself using it once when hearing from Mma Potokwane of a man who had decided to clear a patch of land by fire and had succeeded in burning down his neighbour’s house. “That man is a bit unintelligent in the head,” she had said to Mma Potokwane, who had vigorously agreed. “And in other places too,” the matron had said. “Unintelligent all over the place, Mma, but yes, certainly very unintelligent in the head.”
“If you are unintelligent in the head,” Mma Makutsi continued, “and you are a man—and I am not saying that all men are unintelligent in the head, Mma Ramotswe…”
“I know that, Mma Makutsi. I didn’t think you were saying that.”
“Because there are some women who talk like that, Mma. Some of them—you know, these ladies who are fed up with men and are saying to us that men are finished—those ladies who, incidentally, Mma, often do not have husbands, I might point out…”
Mma Ramotswe was not sure of the relevance of that. It was possible to have a husband, she thought, and at the same time be able to identify and criticise bad male