The Good Husband of Zebra Drive Read Online Free PDF Page A

number of cousins I have. Up in Bobonong. Cousins, cousins, cousins.”
    â€œThat 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.
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œDon’t worry, Rra,” she said. “But what hospital is this?”
    â€œMochudi, 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?”
    â€œExactly,” 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.
    â€œHow is the hospital?” she asked. “I have heard that you have a lot of new things there. New beds. New X-ray machines.”
    â€œWe have all of that,” said Tati Monyena. “The Government has been very generous.”
    â€œIt is your money,” chipped in Mma Makutsi from behind his chair. “When people say that the Government has given them this thing or that thing, they are forgetting that the thing which the Government gave them belonged to the people in the first place!” She paused, and then added, “Everybody knows that.”
    In the silence that followed, a small white gecko, one of those albino-like creatures that cling to walls and ceilings, defying gravity with their tiny sucker-like toes, ran across a section of ceiling board. Two flies, which had landed on the same section, moved, but languidly, to escape the approaching danger. Mma Ramotswe’s gaze followed the gecko, but then dropped to Mma Makutsi, sitting defiantly below. What she said might be true—in fact, it was self-evidently true—but she should not have used that disparaging tone, as if Tati Monyena were a schoolboy who needed the facts of public finance spelled out for him.
    â€œRra Monyena knows all that,