Small Country

by Gaël Faye

  “Yes, Maman.”

  “Are you asleep, my darling?”

  “Yes, I was asleep…”

  Maman’s voice was thick as an old soak’s.

  “I love you, my baby, you know that?”

  “Yes, Maman. I love you, too.”

  “I thought about you, when I was over there. I thought about you so much, my little sweetheart.”

  “Me too, Maman, I thought about you.”

  “And your cousins, did you think about them? Those kind girls you used to have such fun with?”

  “Yes, I thought about them.”

  “That’s good, that’s good…”

  Then, after a short silence:

  “Do you remember your cousins?”

  “Yes.”

  “When I arrived at Auntie Eusébie’s house, they were the ones I saw first. Lying on the living-room floor. For three months. D’you know what a body looks like, after three months, my baby?”

  “…”

  “It looks like nothing at all. Except rottenness. I wanted to hold them in my arms, but I couldn’t, they trickled through my fingers. I gathered them up. Piece by piece. They’re in the garden now, where you used to enjoy playing. Underneath the tree, the one with the swing. Do you remember? Answer me. Tell me you remember. Tell me.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “But in the house there were still those four stains on the floor. Huge stains where they had lain for three months. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed with water and a sponge. But the stains wouldn’t go. There wasn’t enough water. I had to find some in the neighborhood. So I searched in the houses. I should never have gone inside those houses. There are some things you should never see in your lifetime. But that’s what I had to do, to get some water. Once I’d finally managed to fill a bucket, I went back and carried on scrubbing. I scraped the ground with my nails, but their skin and blood had soaked into the cement. Their smell clung to me. A smell that will never leave me. No matter how much I wash myself, I am dirty, I smell of their death, still. And those three stains in the living room were Christelle, Christiane, and Christine. And the stain in the hall was Christian. And I had to remove all traces of them before Aunt Eusébie returned. Because you have to understand, my poppet, a mother mustn’t see the blood of her children in her own house. So I scrubbed, I scrubbed those stains that will never go. They stayed there, in the cement, in the stone, they stayed…I love you, my treasure…”

  And, leaning over Ana, Maman carried on narrating her dreadful story in a long breathless whisper. I pulled my pillow over my head. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to hear anything. I wanted to curl up inside a mouse-hole, hide away in a den, protect myself from the world beyond our street, I wanted to lose myself in happy memories, to be inhabited by gentle novels, to live deep inside books.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, the first rays of sunlight knocked at the windows. It wasn’t yet six o’clock and the heat was already overwhelming. A heavy thunderstorm was brewing. I opened my eyes, Maman was breathing noisily, stretched out on Ana’s mattress, her feet hanging off the end of the bed, still dressed in her washed-out pagne and brownish shirt. I shook my sister to wake her up. She was exhausted. The two of us struggled to get ready in silence. I pretended I hadn’t heard anything the night before. Maman was still asleep when Papa drove us to school.

  I came home to find her on the barza, gazing in the direction of the wasps’ nest. Her eyes were red and her hair disheveled. Bubbles rose in her glass of beer on the stool opposite. I greeted her without waiting for a reply.

  We ate supper earlier than usual. The sky was threatening, the air saturated with humidity, and the heat unbearable. Papa and I were shirtless. I was squishing mosquitoes against my soup bowl: they were gorged on blood. We could hear bats flying over the house. They were leaving the kapok trees in the city center for a night raid on the papaya trees by the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Ana kept nodding off, unable to keep her eyes open, exhausted by her broken night. Beyond the glass door of the living room, in the darkness, I could see Maman’s mournful figure, so still, on the terrace sofa.

  “Gaby, go and turn on the outside light,” instructed Papa. The small signs of kindness he showed Maman were a comfort to me. He still loved her. I pressed the switch, the light blinked several times, and then Maman’s face appeared. Expressionless.

  The storm broke in the night, torrential rain drumming on the corrugated roof. The cracked road in our impasse was transformed into a giant pond. Water engulfed the rivulets and gutters. Lightning streaked the sky and lit up our room, tracing Maman’s silhouette over Ana’s bed. She had woken her up to tell her the story of the stains on the ground all over again. Her voice was frightening. Hollow. The stench of alcohol on her breath traveled across the room, reaching me. When Ana didn’t answer her questions, Maman shook her violently before apologizing and babbling sweet nothings into her ear. Outside, an army of flying termites bustled hysterically around the white neon lights.

  We’re alive. They’re dead. Maman couldn’t abide this idea. She wasn’t as crazy as the world that surrounded us. I didn’t hold it against her, but I was afraid for Ana. Every night, from then on, Maman insisted on exploring the land of nightmares with her daughter. I had to rescue Ana, to rescue us. I wanted Maman gone, for her to leave us in peace, to spare us from the horrors she had experienced so that we could still dream and hold out hope in life. I didn’t understand why we had to suffer with her.

  I went to find Papa to tell him what had been happening. I lied, exaggerating Maman’s brutality to make him react. When he confronted her about it, he was uncompromising and ferocious. The argument deteriorated as Maman rediscovered the kind of vigor we thought had disappeared. She was transformed into a fury, foaming at the mouth, her eyes bulging. She ranted and raved, insulting us in every language, accusing the French of being responsible for the genocide. She lunged at Ana, grabbing her by the arms and shaking her like a palm tree.

  “You don’t love your mother! You prefer these two Frenchmen, your family’s murderers!”

  Papa tried to rescue Ana from Maman’s clutches. My sister was traumatized. Maman’s nails were digging into her flesh, tearing at her skin.

  “Help me, Gaby!” Papa called out.

  I couldn’t move, I was rooted to the spot. One by one, Papa prized apart Maman’s fingers. But no sooner had he succeeded in making her let go than she spun round, seized an ashtray from the coffee table, and hurled it at Ana’s face. There was a gash above my sister’s eyes, with blood oozing from it. Everything seemed disjointed and momentarily suspended in time. Then Papa carried Ana out to the car and rushed her straight to hospital. I escaped to the Combi and waited for darkness to fall, before venturing back into the house. By the time I returned, Maman had vanished into the night. Papa and Jacques spent whole days scouring the city for her, telephoning her family, her friends, the hospitals, the police stations, the morgues. To no avail. I felt guilty for wishing her gone. I was a coward, as well as being selfish. I wanted to make a fortress of my happiness and a chapel of my innocence. I wanted life to leave me intact, whereas Maman, risking her own life, had sought out her relatives at the gates of hell. She would have done the same for Ana and me, without a second’s hesitation. I knew that. I loved her. And now that she had disappeared with her wounds, she left us nursing ours.

  27

  Dear Christian,

  I waited for you during the Easter holidays. Your bed was made up, next to mine. I’d pinned up a few pictures of footballers above it. I’d made some room in my wardrobe, so you could keep your clothes and ball in there. I was ready to welcome you.

  You’re not coming.

  There are lots of things I never had time to tell you about. Take Laure, for instance, I realize I never told you about her. She’s my fiancée. She do
esn’t know it yet, but I’m planning on asking her to marry me. Very soon. Once peace is here. Laure and I talk to each other with letters. Letters sent by airplane. Paper-storks flying between Africa and Europe. It’s the first time I’ve fallen in love with a girl. It’s a funny feeling. Like a fever in your belly. I don’t dare tell my friends about it, they’d only make fun of me. They’d say I’m in love with a ghost. Because I haven’t even seen this girl yet. But I don’t need to meet her to know I love her. Our letters are enough for me.

  It’s taken me a long time to write to you. I’ve been very busy recently, trying to stay a child. I’m worried about my friends. They’re drifting further away from me every day. They argue about stuff that’s meant for grown-ups, they invent enemies and reasons for fighting. My father was right to stop Ana and me from getting mixed up in politics. Papa looks tired. He seems absent. Distant. He’s built up some heavy armor for himself, so the evil glances off him. But I know that deep down he’s as soft as the pulp of a ripe guava.

  Maman never returned from visiting you. She left her spirit in your garden. Her heart is cracked. She has grown mad, like the world that took you away.

  It’s taken me a long time to write to you. I was listening to a host of voices telling me so many different things…My radio told me that the Nigerian football team—the one you were supporting—won the Africa Cup of Nations. My great-grandmother told me that the people we love don’t die as long as we keep thinking about them. My father told me that on the day men stop waging war on one another, it will snow over the tropics. Madame Economopoulos told me that words hold more truth than reality. My biology teacher told me that the earth is round. My friends told me that we have to choose which side we’re on. My mother told me that you’re sleeping for a long time, wearing the football shirt of your favorite team.

  But you, Christian, you won’t tell me anything ever again.

  Gaby

  28

  Sprawled on the tiled floor of the terrace, with her felt-tip pens and coloring pencils scattered around her, Ana was drawing cities on fire, armed soldiers, blood-splattered machetes, torn flags. The smell of crepes filled the air. Prothé was cooking with the radio on full blast. The dog was sleeping peacefully at my feet. He woke from time to time, to chew his paw in a frenzy. Blow flies buzzed around his muzzle. Sitting in Maman’s favorite spot on the terrace, I was reading The Boy and the River by Henri Bosco, lent to me by Madame Economopoulos. I heard the metal chain on the gates coming loose. I rose to my feet to see five men heading up the path. One of them had a Kalashnikov. He was the one who told us to come out of the house. He gave his orders from behind his gun. Prothé raised his arms in the air, and Ana and I copied him. The men made us kneel down with our hands behind our heads.

  “Where’s the boss?” asked the man with the Kalashnikov.

  “He’s traveling in the north of the country for a few days,” said Prothé.

  The men stared at us. They were young, and some of them looked familiar: I had probably seen them at the kiosk.

  “You, Hutu, where d’you live?” the man went on, addressing Prothé.

  “I’ve been living here for the past month,” said Prothé. “I sent my family back to Zaire, because of the violence. I sleep over there now,” he added, pointing to the small metal hut at the bottom of the garden.

  “We don’t want any Hutus in the neighborhood,” said the man with the Kalashnikov. “Get it? We’ll let you lot work here in the daytime, but at night you go back home.”

  “I can’t go back to my district, Chief, my house has been burned down.”

  “Don’t complain. You’re lucky to be alive. Your boss is French and, like all French, he prefers Hutus. But this is not Rwanda, and they’re not going to lay down the law here. We’re the ones who decide.”

  He walked over to Prothé and pushed the barrel of his weapon into our cook’s mouth.

  “So by the end of the week, either you clear out, or we’ll take care of you. As for you two, make sure you tell your father we don’t want any Frenchies in Burundi. You’ve killed us off in Rwanda.”

  Before removing his weapon from Prothé’s mouth, the man spat on him. Then he signaled to the rest of the group with a jerk of his head and they left. We waited a long time before getting to our feet. Afterward, we sat on the steps of the house. Prothé didn’t say anything. He looked crushed, staring at the floor. Ana started drawing again, as if nothing had happened.

  “Gaby,” she asked eventually, looking up at me, “why did Maman accuse us of having killed our family in Rwanda?”

  I had no answer to give my little sister. I had no explanation for the deaths of some and the hatred of others. Perhaps this was what war meant: understanding nothing.

  Sometimes, my thoughts turned to Laure. I wanted to write to her, but then I gave up on the idea. I didn’t know what to say, everything seemed so muddled up. I was waiting for things to improve, and then I could tell her all about it in a long letter to make her smile, like before. But for the time being, our country was like a barefoot zombie walking over sharp stones, its parched tongue hanging out. We had grown used to the idea of dying at any moment. Death was no longer something distant and abstract. It was the banal face of our everyday existence. Living with this kind of clarity laid waste to what was left of our childhood.

  Lockdown operations were increasing in Bujumbura. From dawn until dusk, explosions echoed through the neighborhood. The nights shone red with the glow of fires sending up thick smoke above the hills. We were so accustomed to the sound of machine-gun fire and the rattle of automatic weapons that we didn’t bother sleeping in the hallway anymore. Lying on my bed, I could admire the spectacle of tracer bullets in the sky. In another time and another place, I’d have mistaken them for shooting stars.

  I found silence far more nerve-racking than the sound of gunfire. Silence might signal the violence of the knife, or a nocturnal intrusion that caught you unawares. Fear had made itself at home inside my spinal cord, and it wasn’t going anywhere. There were times when I trembled like a small, wet dog shivering with cold. I stayed shut away at home, not daring to venture out anymore. Occasionally, I crossed the street in haste, to borrow a new book from Madame Economopoulos. But I was back in no time, burying myself in the bunker of my imagination. In my bed, deep in my stories, I sought out more bearable realities, and those books—my friends—painted my days with light again. I told myself that one day the war would be over: I would look up from those pages, I would leave my bed and my bedroom, and Maman would be back, in her beautiful flowery dress, her head resting on Papa’s shoulder, and Ana would draw new red-brick houses with chimneys producing puffs of smoke, and fruit trees in the garden and big shiny suns, and the band of brothers would come to find me, so we could all head downriver, like in the old days, on a raft made from the trunk of a banana tree, navigating the Muha as far as the turquoise waters of the lake, before ending the day on the beach, laughing and playing like children.

  But no matter how much hope I held out, my dreams were fettered by reality. The world and its violence were closing in on us a little more each day. Ever since our little gang had decided not to remain neutral, our street was no longer the haven of peace I longed for. My friends and everyone else would end up driving me out of my bunker.

  29

  The city was in lockdown. Gangs were blocking the main roads. Hatred was at large. A new dark day, another one, was dawning in Bujumbura, and everyone was ordered to remain at home. Shut away. Rumor had it that the anger levels of the young Tutsi gangs controlling the town had ratcheted up because, the previous day, rebel Hutus had burned alive some Tutsi students at a gas station, in the interior of the country. The Tutsi gangs had decided to take revenge on any Hutu who dared to go outdoors. Papa had got in supplies for the best part of a week. We were expecting some long days of waiting ahead. Back from stocking up on books round at Madame
Economopoulos’s, I was pouring myself a large glass of milk curds and looking forward to burrowing under the covers to devour my books, when I heard Gino scratching at the kitchen door.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered, as I opened up. “It’s madness to be outside today.”

  “Stop freaking out all the time, Gaby! And hurry, something serious is up.”

  He didn’t want to say any more, so I hastily put on my shoes. I could hear Papa and Ana laughing at cartoons in the living room. I slipped outside noiselessly and followed Gino, who darted ahead. We took a shortcut, climbing over the fence and cutting through the football pitch of the International School. An opening in Gino’s wire fencing meant we could sneak across his garden. I heard the eternal clickety-clack of his father’s Olivetti. We leaped over the gate and took a right toward the far end of the impasse. It was deserted. Heading back up it, there wasn’t a soul about as we passed in front of the closed kiosk, then the cabaret, turning left onto the patch of wasteland. It had become so overgrown you could no longer see the Combi from the road.

  Just as we were about to open the hideout door, I had a bad feeling, something telling me to go back home and escape into the world of my books. But before I could listen to my misgivings, Gino slid open the door.

  Armand was collapsed on the dusty seat of the VW, his clothes covered in blood. Violent sobbing racked his chest. Between two spasms, he let out a high-pitched groan. Frowning, Gino gritted his teeth and flared his nostrils in anger. “His father was ambushed yesterday evening, here on our street. Armand just got back from the hospital. His father died of his wounds today. It’s over.”

  My legs buckled as I tried to grab hold of the headrest on the passenger seat. My head was spinning. Gino headed out of the van with a mean-looking expression and sat on an old tire full of stagnant water. He hid his face in his hands. I was speechless as I stared at Armand, whose tears kept coming, whose clothes were splattered with the blood of his father. A father he feared and revered in equal measure. People had come to murder him in cold blood on our street. In our peaceful haven. My last shred of hope had just vanished. This country was a death trap. I felt like a panicked animal caught up in a great bush fire. The final barrier had been smashed. War had burst in on us.