IT TOOK EVERYBODY some time to settle down after the incident with the cobra. The apprentices, convinced that they had played a vital role in dealing with the snake, were full of themselves for the rest of the day, embroidering the truth at every opportunity as they told the story in detail to every caller at the garage. Mr Polopetsi, the new employee whom Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had taken on at the garage—on the understanding that he could also help out, when required, in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency—heard all about it when he arrived an hour or so later. He had been sent by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to collect tyres from a depot on the other side of town, a job which often required a long wait. Now, returning in the truck which was used for garage business, he was regaled with an account of the event by Charlie, who this time was careful to mention the presence of the manager of the Mokolodi Game Reserve, even if only in a supporting role.

“Mma Makutsi was very lucky,” he said once Charlie had finished the tale. “Those snakes strike like lightning. That quick. You cannot dodge them if they decide to strike.”

“Charlie was too quick for it,” said the younger apprentice. “He saved Mma Makutsi’s life.” He paused, and then added, “Not that she thanked him for it.”

Mr Polopetsi smiled. “I am sure that she is very grateful,” he said. “But you boys should remember that nobody is too quick for a snake. Keep out of their way. I saw some very bad snake-bite cases when I was working at the hospital. Very bad.” And he remembered, as he spoke, the woman who had been brought in from Otse; the woman who had been bitten by a puff-adder when she had rolled over in the night and disturbed the fat, languid snake that had slid into her one-room hut for the warmth. He had been on duty in the pharmacy and had been standing outside the entrance to the emergency department when she had been carried out of the government ambulance, and he had seen her leg, which had swollen so much that the skin had split. And then he had heard the next day that she had not lived and that there were three children and no father or grandmother to look after them; he had thought then of all the children there were in Africa who now had no parents and of what it must be like for them, not to have somebody who loved you as your parents loved you. He looked at the apprentices. They did not think of things like that, and who could expect them to? They were young men, and as a young man one was immortal, no matter what the evidence to the contrary.

At a garage there is no time for thinking such thoughts; there is work to do. Mr Polopetsi unloaded the new tyres, with their pristine treads and their chalk markings; Mr J.L.B. Matekoni attended to the delicate task of adjusting the timing on an old French station wagon—a car he did not like, which always went wrong and which in his view should have been given a decent burial a long time ago; and the two apprentices finished the servicing of Bishop Mwamba’s well-behaved white car. Inside the adjoining office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi shuffled papers about their desks. They had very little real work to do, as it was a slack period for the agency, and so they took the opportunity to do some filing, a task in which Mma Makutsi took the lead, on account of her training at the Botswana Secretarial College.