The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

our sister’s husband is really a lion, then he will smell the goat and he will go into the cage to eat it. Then the trap will close on him and we shall know.’ ”
    â€œAnd is that what happened?”
    â€œYes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And once he was in the trap, the new husband showed that he really was a lion. He began to roar, and they saw that his teeth were like the teeth of a lion. They saw all this, Mma, and they knew. The girl, of course, was upset, but I think she got over it, once her brothers had chased her husband away.”
    â€œIt was best to have discovered it,” said Mma Makutsi. “I could not live with the uncertainty of not knowing if my husband was a lion. Could you, Mma? Could you live with uncertainty like that?”
    Mma Ramotswe could not. “It is best for a woman to know her husband’s weak points right at the beginning. All men have their weak points—although they try to pretend that they do not have any, they are always there. But if you know about them in advance, then you can deal with them. It is the hidden weak points that are the problem.”
    They were both silent for a while. Itumelang looked up at his mother, and made his slight gurgling sound. Mma Makutsi was wondering about Phuti’s weak points. There was his stammer, of course, and there was also his artificial foot and ankle—the result of that accident with the delivery truck. But although one might think of these as weak points, they were not weaknesses. Weak points were things that had
happened
to him. Weaknesses were character flaws, and Phuti had none of those.
    The mention of weak points had Mma Ramotswe thinking about her own husband. Did Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni have any weaknesses? He had been a bit indecisive in taking so long over their engagement, but that indecisiveness was probably a result of his simply not being forceful enough, which was a rather attractive quality, she thought. There were more than enough forceful men about, and a man who did not try to force his will on others was a refreshing change. As far as the other common vices went, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had none of those: he did not drink much—other than the occasional beer—and he was never selfish. He did not gamble, nor did he look at other women, although that did not mean that other women did not look at him; Mma Ramotswe had seen them, and imagined the thoughts going through their heads:
Now there’s a nice, gentle-looking man
 … Oh yes, she could just hear those thoughts, but they did not worry her unduly because she understood how those who did not have the company of a good man, who had been saddled with a bad or indifferent one, with one who never paid them much attention or showed them any affection—she could understand how such women might lay eyes on a man like Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and dream. She did not begrudge such women their dreams. And it was a compliment to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni that women should think such things about him, and usually the women who thought these things did not go on to flirt with him or anything like that. Except sometimes, and in those rare cases Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was always polite and would make a pointed reference to something his wife had said or done, and thatwas usually enough to put a stop to that. Unless you were somebody like Violet Sephotho, of course; she was shameless and would, if anything, be encouraged if mention were made of a wife. Mma Makutsi had many stories to tell of Violet’s husband-stealing activities, including one occasion when she had flirted with a new husband
at his wedding.
Fortunately, the new mother-in-law had witnessed this and had managed to seat Violet next to an uncle who was a lay preacher and whose only topic of conversation was the Bible.
    â€œThat is a very good way of dealing with somebody like Violet Sephotho,” Mma Makutsi had said, chuckling at the recollection. “That uncle would have