Some nights were filled with meticulous renderings of their anniversary dinner at Le Panorama, the Hôtel des Mille Collines’ top-floor restaurant. A small candlelit table against the window, where they looked out onto the distant purple silhouette of Mount Mikeno in the setting sun. He and Agathe began with escargot de Bourgogne. Garlic butter dripped down her chin, making her skin glisten; Elizaphan wiped it away with his thumb. Later it was chateaubriand for him, confit de canard for Agathe. Dessert was bavarois au cassis shared between them. They finished a bottle of wine and two café crèmes before going downstairs to Stan’s Bar, to drink cocktails and dance to music that was far too young for them.
There was also the afternoon they played tennis with the middle-aged couple from England. The man was in frozen-food storage and this was a second honeymoon of sorts. His wife, he explained, wanted to see the mountain gorillas, the ones Dian Fossey had found, but they’d been warned away from the area by the travel bureau. Agathe spoke far better English than he did, and on the court there was more conversation than play, which seemed to please the Englishman’s wife, who showed little interest in the game. Afterward, they shared lunch and drinks at the Pool Bar, before the Britons set off to explore the city.
In his dreams their time was carefree: leisure without concern. It was only as morning approached that trepidation invaded. It appeared as a dimming in Agathe’s eyes, as if a cloud had settled over her, blocking out the sun. At which point, as if a deaf man miraculously cured, Elizaphan was flooded with voices. But they were neither his nor Agathe’s, nor those of the other hotel guests. Rather, they were the rabid utterances of Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines, warning all who listened that blood would soon be spilled.
Elizaphan took a seat in the rear of the bus. Below his feet, a discarded newspaper lay bloated in the melting slush. Already he’d become disenchanted with winter’s snow. When the first flakes had drifted through November’s sky, he’d stood on the sidewalk out front of his apartment and gazed upward in amazement. The mechanics from the transmission shop came out of the garage and laughed at him in a good-natured way. But when December brought the first ground-covering blanket, they paid no attention as he ran his fingers along the pavement and touched them to his lips. Now Elizaphan saw the snow for what it was: an impediment, turning the city salty and grey, disrupting it at whim.
He leaned his head against the window, the pane cold against his skin. The snowploughs that had run throughout the night had blocked in cars parked along the roadside. Here and there hurried commuters worked at digging out their automobiles, the vapour of their breath disappearing quickly in the wind. It was still early, but even when the sun finally climbed into the sky, there would be only a hint of its presence above the slate-grey clouds. It was like an angry hand, Elizaphan thought, pushing an icy pillow down over their faces.
He returned his gaze to the interior of the bus and began to count the passengers. Including himself, there were seventeen people. This was something he found himself doing more often now. Whenever he was in an enclosed space, he counted the bodies and tried to calculate how much room they would take up if they were piled close together.
The first time it had happened was at the diner. He’d just carried a tray of clean cups and saucers to the counter at the front, and as he turned to go back to the kitchen, he stopped and let his eyes roam quickly over the dining room. Thirty-six was the number he’d come up with. Add to that the three waitresses, two cooks, the manager and himself: forty-three. With all the tables and chairs removed it would take less than half the diner to accommodate them. Of this he was certain. For Elizaphan had seen far more bodies pushed into an even smaller area than that. Indeed, there had been more in the reception room back in Kibuye.
Eliel Nkongoli, whose face he now saw everywhere, had, like Elizaphan’s son, gone to America to study medicine. But unlike Elizaphan’s son, Eliel had returned to Kibuye. Returned, taken a wife, begun a family and accepted a post at l’Hôpital Murengoru. A pediatrician, he was well liked by both his patients and the hospital staff. He was quick to smile and, it always seemed, even quicker to laugh. Elizaphan liked to imagine that his own son had grown into a man like Eliel, though he knew that it was probably not the case. His and Agathe’s only child had always been a sullen boy, caring but rather downcast.
There was nothing downcast about Eliel. Quite the opposite. He was gregarious, fun loving. A quality he brought back with him from America. Many was the time that he invited the hospital staff, and not just the doctors, but the nurses and custodians as well, to his house overlooking Lake Kivu to eat and drink and dance late into the night. He called them his Yankee Barbecues. Agathe always refused to go, and forbade Elizaphan from accepting the invitations. She did not approve of Eliel’s kind.
But Elizaphan admired him, if from a brief distance. For he also recognized the danger in such a man. Eliel Nkongoli, at times, spoke too freely and put too much trust in supposed friendships. Elizaphan could see in the eyes of his co-workers what Eliel could not. Behind their smiles and laughter was the old stain of resentment. And when, one afternoon, while sharing a coffee in the doctors’ lounge, the young pediatrician expressed his ambitions—“You watch, Dr Misago, one day I will be prefect of Kibuye. Then, my friend, you will see things change”—it was as if a hand had reached out and put a mark upon his forehead.
Elizaphan rang the bell, deciding to walk the rest of the way. The bus had grown crowded and he no longer wished to count the bodies.
On the sidewalk, Elizaphan stood for a moment, letting the wind bite at his face. He looked around. The size of the city still overwhelmed him. A sprawling web that knew no bounds. And here, near the financial heart of the metropolis, the buildings ascended like glass mountains into the mean sky, their gold and silver mirrored panes reflecting the displeasure of above. Only once before had he been in a city of such immensity: Paris, when he was a medical student. But in many ways not even Paris measured up to the audacity of Toronto. Paris was a hive, restricted by its history and culture. Toronto was far too young, too naive to know such restrictions. And Kigali, Kibuye—they were stunted by things far more horrible.
He began to walk, careful not to slip on the ice beneath his feet. He took cautious, mincing steps, his arms held out slightly from his sides to keep his balance. And as he did so, he thought of the rain and the mud and that first camp at Bwakira. And of Agathe.
The rebels came, as everyone knew they would. To empty out the camp, they said, to send people home. The rains came with them, turning the ground treacherous. One minute it was like greedy hands clutching at feet and legs, the next like water on a marble floor. Behind the high walls of the central compound, the peacekeepers hid from the rain, and from the soldiers on the outside, who tightened the fences until those inside could no longer move, just sink into the quagmire. On the second day, those near to the gates were pulled through, kicked and beaten and told to return to their homes. On the third, the soldiers started shooting and the panic erupted. The peacekeepers barricaded themselves. The fences began to fall. The soldiers threw hand grenades and fired their machine guns into the throng. People ran madly, screaming, crying, trying to find the holes in the wire. Those that fell were trampled down and swallowed by the mud. Agathe let go of Elizaphan’s hand, slipped to the ground. And he watched as she disappeared into the earth, before he turned and fled.
Eliel Nkongoli had brought his wife and daughters to Elizaphan’s house. They followed a route that took them along the shores of Lake Kivu, thus avoiding the checkpoints that had been set up on the roadways. Elizaphan was standing in his kitchen, listening to the RTLM radio announcer warning everyone to stay in their homes. The president was dead and curfews were in effect across the entire country. He could hear Agathe crying in the lounge. It was then that he saw first one, and then another child being pushed over the wall and into his back garden. Then came Eliel’s wife, followed by Eliel himself. He was not smiling.
Eliza
phan turned off the radio and went out into the yard. It was a beautiful spring day, the sky high, blue and cloudless. A slight breeze came in from the lake and the scent of the bougainvillea Agathe so carefully tended sweetened the air. The only hint of anything wrong was the fear in Eliel’s eyes. He gathered his daughters close to him and waited for Elizaphan to speak. But it was Mrs Nkongoli who spoke first.
“Dr Misago,” she said, her voice clear and matter-of-fact. “Will you help us?”
Before Elizaphan had the chance to answer, Agathe appeared on the doorstep. Her eyes were red but dry, and when she spoke, it was in a tone that chilled the warm spring air.
“Send those cockroaches away,” she said. “They deserve what is coming.”
When Elizaphan turned onto Bond Street the wind all but disappeared. He no longer felt its touch, but its voice sounded in his ears, like that of the ocean in a shell: an echo of the past.
As he walked, he glanced up at St Michael’s Hospital, an enormous facility encompassing an entire city block. The sight of it made l’Hôpital Murengoru, and its three cinderblock storeys, seem insignificant by comparison. He paused a moment, having caught sight of two doctors casually chatting in the entranceway. One, a clipboard held against his chest, was leaning against a door frame laughing at something the other had said. And in that moment, Elizaphan found himself back in Kibuye, walking Eliel and his family past the Interahamwe barricade and on into the foyer of the hospital.
The corridors of l’Hôpital Murengoru were crowded with people, many of whom Elizaphan did not recognize. In among them he saw the faces of patients he had once treated, but when he met their terrified eyes they quickly looked away. He led Eliel down the main corridor and up the stairs to his own office on the second floor. This too he found occupied by strangers. He shooed them out into the hallway and told the Nkongolis to remain there, and not open the door to anyone. At this, Eliel’s youngest daughter began to cry, so Elizaphan rooted through the drawers of his desk to find the packet of sweets he kept as a special treat for himself. He gave one to each of the girls and handed the remainder over to Mrs Nkongoli. Then he made to leave, but she took hold of his arm before he passed through the door.
“You will come back for us, Dr Misago,” she said.
Elizaphan looked to Eliel, who offered him but a weak semblance of his customary smile.
“Of course, Mrs Nkongoli,” Elizaphan said. “I will see what this is all about and then I shall return. I promise.”
Outside, the mob at the barricade had grown. Among them now Elizaphan saw familiar faces. Doctors and nurses, all of whom had shared food and laughter with Eliel Nkongoli at his Yankee Barbecues. They stood side by side with the bare-chested, machete-wielding young men of the Interahamwe.
One, a nurse, still wearing her pale blue uniform, and who had helped Eliel to run his fledgling pediatric wing, came up to Elizaphan and placed her hand gently on his forearm.
“Thank you so much, doctor,” she said in a happy voice.
“For what?” asked Elizaphan.
She looked at him and laughed: “Why for bringing the cockroaches to us. Now we don’t have go ferret them out.”
A second young nurse came over then and stood beside Elizaphan.
“Yes, Dr Misago,” she said, her smile mirroring that of the first. “And as soon as the prefect arrives we can be rid of them for good.”
The steps leading to the doors of the cathedral were already cleared of snow and coarse salt had been laid down to prevent them from icing over. Elizaphan bent down and retrieved a large granule, then touched it to the tip of his tongue. As he held it there, it began to burn.
After the prefect arrived at l’Hôpital Murengoru, he’d stood on the hood of a truck and given a rousing speech, brandishing a pistol in one hand, and in the other a masu. He brought with him other armed men, who formed a protective phalanx around the truck. With each denunciation, the crowd cheered, thrusting their arms into the air, displaying to the sky the machetes and clubs and hammers and stones clenched in their fists. There was an air of festivity and the anticipation of mad feasting. Near the front, two nuns, their pressed hands raised aloft, began to sing. A celebratory hymn soon taken up by others. As the crowd began to surge forward through the gates and into the courtyard of the hospital, Elizaphan slipped away, the hymn still playing in his ears.
The door of the cathedral opened and a young priest, a novice to look at him, stepped out into the cold morning. Seeing him, Elizaphan pushed the rock of salt to the back of his tongue and swallowed it. The priest smiled and started down the stairs. He lifted the hem of his cassock so as not to stain it with salt. When he reached the bottom, Elizaphan saw that he had a wide, innocent face, his cheeks already rosy from the chill. On his chin there was a small razor nick, a tiny patch of scabbed blood.
“The start of a lovely day,” he said, offering a short, sarcastic laugh. “Have you come for early Mass?”
Elizaphan did not respond.
The priest looked at his watch. “It’ll be starting in about twenty minutes. You’re welcome to come in now, if you like. Get yourself out of the cold.”
“I helped to bury them, Father,” Elizaphan said flatly.
“I beg your pardon?” replied the priest.
“We put them in a big hole behind the hospital. Threw dirt on their faces.”
Now the young priest looked nervous. He regarded Elizaphan warily, then cast a quick glance up the steps.
“If you want,” he said, extending a hand to Elizaphan, but withdrawing it before he reached his arm, “we can talk. I could hear your confession.”
“No,” Elizaphan said. “I have nothing to confess to you.”
He turned away then, leaving the priest to stand alone in the cruel morning, and started back along the street, toward the sound of the wind.
SANT’AGNELLO AT DAWN
IT WAS HER IDEA to rent the scooters. She decided on the ferry across, thought it would add a touch of adventure. But the young man in the rental shop shook his head before they’d even finished asking. “Too dangerous,” he said. And when his wife started to argue the point, Stanley Lesser quietly slipped out the door again. He walked partway down the hill to where the road turned back on itself and sat on the low stone wall that overlooked Marina Grande. It would be best, he decided, to let her talk herself out. As for the young man, Stanley was certain that he’d had to deal with Shirley’s type before; he would be able to handle himself.
The guidebook had described Marina Grande as a lively little port with colourful fishing boats and quaint shops and ristorantes, the perfect jumping-off point to visit the rest of the island, but looking down on it, Stanley could see only the bustle. Maybe, he thought, it was the harsh August sun that had bleached away the colour and the charm. He hadn’t imagined it could be so hot, near forty degrees even with the sea breeze. He felt uncomfortably sweaty, and his shirt, the white linen one Shirley had bought for him at Harry Rosen before they left, was wrinkled and sticking to his back. He was glad at least that he’d stood firm about wearing his Bermuda shorts, rather than the matching linen trousers. Shirley said, when she came out of the washroom and saw him wearing them, that he looked too much like a tourist. Stanley had resisted the urge to tell her that they were tourists; it wouldn’t have mattered what they wore.
It was a foolish idea, really: scooters at their age. Stanley had turned sixty-one in May, and Shirley was three years his senior, though to look at them one would think it the reverse, and might indeed imagine the years separating them greater. For Stanley was thin and wispy, and had found a little of the stoop his own father had at his age, while Shirley was still buxom and dyed her hair cornsilk yellow and wore sheer cotton blouses and gold lace sandals. She liked heavy rings on her fingers and dark lipstick, and the idea that riding scooters across Capri might actually be a little dangerous. “If you’re not living,” she always said, “then you might as well already be dead.”
Stanley’s first wif
e was dead. Eight years now, though at times it seemed much longer, and at others not near so long. Shirley’s husband had died, as well, but only two years before. And he had been her second husband; the first she divorced after a year.
Stanley and Shirley had met at, of all places, a mixer. A weekend getaway for lonely widows and widowers, though it wasn’t billed as such. It had been called, if Stanley remembered correctly, the Survivors’ Club—playing rather clumsily on the appeal of a popular television program. He went at the behest of his children, who felt that he had become too isolated. He needed to meet people. He argued that he was happy on his own, but they didn’t believe him. So to allay their concern, and because the reservation had been given as a Christmas gift, he agreed to attend.
The weekend was held at the Sheraton Hotel and Casino in Niagara Falls, and when Stanley checked in he was met by the organizer, a plump young red-headed woman who beamed at him as one who’s never known loss. She pinned a laminated name tag to his lapel after finding his name on the list. After she’d pressed upon him a dun-coloured portfolio with the Survivors’ Club emblem on its cover and explained all the wonderful activities that were planned, he excused himself and made his way to the elevator. He had no intention of participating. And rather than attending the “Wine and Cheese Meet & Greet” and the “Getting to Know One Another Banquet Dinner,” he settled down in his room to watch the cable sports station he did not get at home. At half-past ten and feeling like he might enjoy something other than what was on offer in the mini-bar in his room, he went down to the lounge. It was there that Shirley found him.
“You must be Stanley Lesser,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder.
“Yes,” Stanley said after a moment. “How did you know?” He had left his name tag in his room.
Shirley smiled and pulled out the stool next to him.
“Do you mind?”
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