“So, Mma Ramotswe, what is Mr. Andersen to do?”

“I do not know, Rra. All that I know is that he is sad in his heart.” She touched her chest. “That is the place where his sadness is. Right there. And I do not think that it is ever very easy to deal with sadness in that part of the body.”

He nodded his assent to that comment. “You are right, Mma. It is very difficult.”

“But I shall do my best to cheer him up,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have invited him to come to the office tomorrow to discuss some of our cases. He was very happy to be invited—I think that he has nothing to do all day while the library lady is building libraries. And he is here for three weeks, Rra, which is a long time when you have nothing to do.” She paused. “Except to be sad. Three weeks of sadness is a long time, I think.”

It was, reflected Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Three weeks of sadness was a long time, by any standards, but it would be particularly long when one was far from home in a strange country, when everybody else would have their friends and family about them and would seem so occupied with their own lives. In such circumstances you might easily forget who you were, and how you once were happy. He almost expressed these thoughts to Mma Ramotswe, but did not do so, inhibited, perhaps, by the feeling that he was just a mechanic, not a poet or a philosopher, and that on the lips of mechanics such words might sound false or contrived, and certainly not as authentic as anything they might say on the subject of gearboxes, or fuel systems, or any of those other matters in respect of which he knew he stood on far firmer ground.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE THIS WAY UP BUILDING COMPANY

GRACE MAKUTSI, Dip. Sec. (97%), did not accompany her husband, Mr. Phuti Radiphuti (of the Double Comfort Furniture Store), to his next meeting with Mr. Clarkson Putumelo, the proprietor of the This Way Up Building Company. This was not because she was indifferent to the design of the house that Mr. Putumelo was to build for them—she was extremely interested in that—but because she felt that she had not forgiven the builder his rudeness towards her and would avoid being in his presence until such time as he changed his attitude. That, she knew, was unlikely; in Mma Makutsi’s opinion, attitudes were qualities with which one was born, and the likelihood of their being changed was, sadly, remote.