“It’s so dangerous for Tutsi now,” Jean Patrick said. He looked at Coach and slid the card toward him. From the darkness, now complete, cicadas trilled a warning.
“Yego. You are right.” Coach’s hand hovered above the card as he held Jean Patrick’s gaze. Then he slid the card back. “I threw this in the fire. You watched it burn. Do you understand?”
Jean Patrick touched the edge of his Hutu card. “Yes. I understand.” He palmed the card. “Thank you.”
“Hide it very carefully. Never use it again unless…” Coach left the sentence unfinished. He did not have to ask if Jean Patrick understood this last thing, and Jean Patrick did not have to answer that he did.
AFTER DINNER, JEAN Patrick sat on his bed with Uncle’s gift on his lap, a framed photograph of Paul Ereng winning gold in the eight hundred at the 1988 Olympics. Ereng, a Kenyan middle-distance runner, had come out of nowhere, surprising the world with his win. How Uncle had managed to find the picture, Jean Patrick had no idea. The photographer had caught him just before he crossed the finish line a half step in front of another runner. On Ereng’s face was an expression of ecstatic pain, an expression Jean Patrick believed he mirrored in the best of his races. You have to suffer until suffering becomes an old friend, Telesphore had said on the day he came to Jean Patrick’s class, and Jean Patrick had tucked the words inside his heart.
Jean Patrick recognized Uncle’s handiwork in the ironwood frame. In two diagonal corners he had carved a runner. They were stick figures, but Jean Patrick saw his own high, stretched-out kick. In a third corner was a running shoe, complete with a tiny Nike swoosh. A note tacked to the backing said, Never forget we are your #1 fans. We love you. Jean Patrick knew how difficult it must have been for Uncle to commit those three words to paper.
Jean Patrick turned the picture over, pried the nails loose that held the backing to the frame, and inserted the Hutu card behind it. In the morning, he would ask Coach for some glue so he could fasten it securely. If it ever came to that—if he needed the card in a hurry—the frame’s destruction would be a necessary price to pay.
A flash of brightness startled Jean Patrick awake. Coach stood by the light switch dressed to run; a pair of Nikes dangled from his fingers. “I have a course mapped out, about ten kilometers, lots of long hills for intervals. The level of pain will please you.”
“You’re running with me?” Jean Patrick threw off the covers.
“I have trained for it.” Coach set the shoes on the floor. “I figured you needed new ones. Lots of room for your toes.” He tossed a bag onto the bed. “Courtesy of our government.”
Jean Patrick removed a tracksuit, iridescent blue. His fingers slid across the satiny fabric as he lifted it from the bag. On the back of the jacket was a Rwandan flag. He let out a low whistle. It was the most beautiful jacket he had seen in his life.
SUNRISE CAUGHT THEM as they crested the first hill and approached the Junior Military Officers’ School. The guard at the gates saluted, and Coach returned a clipped salute. “What are you gawking at?” he asked Jean Patrick.
“He saluted you, and you saluted him back like a soldier.”
Coach waved off a fly. “I do some training, teach a few courses.”
“You’re in the army?”
“I was for many, many years. Not now.”
Jean Patrick expected something further, but Coach just forced the pace harder.
They turned onto the main road and let gravity take them down the hill. Jean Patrick unzipped his jacket. The brisk morning tingled his skin. They ran past National University. In a few days, this would be his home.
At the bottom of the hill was a checkpoint. A group of guys with machetes on their belts loitered by the soldiers. When they noticed Jean Patrick, they stopped their bantering to stare.
“Relax,” Coach said. “Just act calm.” The soldier waved them through. Jean Patrick felt the stares at his back like a layer of cold sweat.
“Who are those guys?”
“Interahamwe. A government youth militia. I told you—don’t worry.” Coach turned down a narrow dirt lane and grinned wickedly. “Now comes the fun.”
The road climbed sharply among large houses with tiled roofs. Tall trees shaded the route. Jean Patrick’s lungs burned.
“Before you came, I drove around looking for the steepest hills,” Coach said. He swept his hand across an expanse of rolling summits. “Today you have an easy day, a jog to see the scenery. Starting tomorrow, you’ll do your intervals here. Hills in the morning, track in the afternoon. Resistance and endurance. Speed will come later, after you build your base.”
“Where are we?”
“Cyarwa Sumo,” Coach said.
“Eh! I have a friend who lives here.”
Coach wiped the sweat from his forehead. “A friend?” From the expression on his face, Jean Patrick might just as well have said, I am Nkuba, King of Heaven.
“A geologist from America. He’s teaching at National University, and he rented a house here.” Jean Patrick paused to catch his breath. “I thought maybe I could take his class.”
“Did you say geology?” Coach grimaced. “What good is that?”
IT WAS NOT yet light when Jean Patrick awoke. He dressed in the dark and tucked the paper with Jonathan’s address into the pocket of his track pants. He nearly collided with Jolie on her way to the kitchen with a kettle.
“Sorry,” she said. “I nearly burned you.”
Jean Patrick took his shoes from the mat by the door. “Grandmother, I was at fault.”
The old woman clucked. “Do you think you can go out so, no thought of curfew? If the crooks don’t get you first, the soldiers will shoot you.” She laughed at her joke.
“I’ll be all right. I know how to hide. Can you let me out?”
Jolie removed the ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked the front door. “Imana bless us,” she said. Jean Patrick stepped into the bracing air. She padded behind him in her flip-flops. “If muzehe wakes before sunrise and finds you gone, I’ll say you stole the keys and let yourself out.” She gave a throaty singsong and unlocked the gate.
“Yego, Grandmother. I did that.”
JEAN PATRICK BEAT the dawn to the Cyarwa Sumo checkpoint, so he turned down a dirt lane to pass the time until daylight. Leaning against a signpost for the National University arboretum fields, he wondered what they were. He found a goat trail among them where he would not be seen. At the top he made out a small hut, and he chose this as his goal.
He took off his shoes and climbed, easy until he found his footing, then digging in until the effort burned his thighs. With each arm stroke, his jacket released a ssshhh like falling rain. The slope’s steepness took his breath. He reached the hut simultaneously with the sun’s arrival. Hands on knees, he caught his breath and watched the soldiers, tiny as ants at the bottom of the hill. The fields were filled with pungent, colorful crops he could not identify.
“Mwaramutse,” a voice rang out. A wizened grandfather leaned against the door of the hut. Smoke from his pipe wound a blue ribbon about his head. He motioned to two chairs, one with a cup of tea, a knife, and a block of wood beside it. “Why are you running so? Please sit down.” The old man sat and took up his knife. An animal head took shape in the wood.
“I’m training, Grandfather. I’m going to run in the Olympics for Rwanda.”
“The Olympics? Imana bless you!” A scent of wood and smoke rose from his skin. Inside the hut, pots clanged, a baby cried, a woman sang a soothing tune.
“Is this your land?”
“I’m only the guard.” The old man chuckled. “Aye-yay-yay! In all the years I’ve lived, I have never seen a human come up a hill like that.” He drew a deep draft from his pipe. “Will you take tea?”
“Next time, Grandfather.” Jean Patrick shook the guard’s hand.
How pleasant it would be to linger and drink some tea, he thought as he ran back down. He jogged toward the checkpoint, taking deep breaths to cal
m the thudding of his heart.
“I REMEMBER YOU from yesterday,” the soldier at the checkpoint said, jostling Jean Patrick’s elbow. He popped a piece of gum into his mouth. “Your coach says you’re our next Olympic hero.” He inspected Jean Patrick’s papers and thumped him on the back. “Run with a cheetah’s legs,” he said.
“I will do my best, muzehe.”
JEAN PATRICK MUST have missed a turn. Now he started up an unfamiliar path, stopping beside a tree to get his bearings. The tree’s strange geometry had caught his attention, three equal trunks split from a single base. At the top of the road a blue metal roof crowned a long ocher building. A series of smaller trails snaked through slopes dotted with well-groomed homes.
One hill is as good as another, he thought. He tied his jacket around his waist and began his intervals. Passersby turned their heads, children chased after him, goats scurried out of his way. Jean Patrick did high steps and butt kicks, forcing the cadence until he tasted tin on his tongue. Light streamed through the eucalyptus, melted into a luminous haze. By his third interval, he had to grit his teeth and half close his eyes to reach the end. In his wake, a chorus of dogs sounded an alarm. The goal was in sight when a gate opened directly in his path and startled him from his meditative state.
“Quickly! Come inside.” A hand pulled him into the yard. The gate closed with a screech behind him. “Are you hurt?” The lilt of the woman’s voice remained in the air like the first chord of a song. She locked the gate and slipped the key ring onto her wrist. The world jolted into focus, and an involuntary shudder passed through him. She looked as surprised as he, her eyes bright and round like a startled bushbuck.
“Did someone hurt you?” she asked again. “Come in the house. No one will search for you here.” Her disheveled hair fell to her shoulders. Her clothing hung slightly askew, as if she had hastily thrown on her pagne and the shawl that draped nearly to her feet.
“I don’t understand.” Jean Patrick felt suddenly naked. “I thought you needed help.” He fumbled with his jacket. “I thought maybe your husband—maybe something bad happened.”
The woman hid her mouth with her hand. A sound between a sneeze and a laugh escaped. “Mana yanjye, you thought that? And here I thought someone was chasing you.”
“No, madam.”
“You looked like you were in terrible pain.”
“No, madam. I was running.”
“Because you wanted to? A jogger? Ko Mana!” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Beneath her shawl she wore a pagne patterned with orange suns and pink-ringed planets. Gold zigzags of lightning streaked across the fabric.
“A runner,” Jean Patrick corrected. “I’m training.” Outside the gate, a crowd of children chattered. He could see the bottoms of their dirty legs, their broken flip-flops.
“You have a fan club,” the woman said. “I heard the dogs, and when I saw you, I assumed some thugs were on your heels.” She gathered her shawl around her. “It wouldn’t have been the first time.”
“And what if I had been a thief?” Jean Patrick said, stepping close. “What if you invited me into your home and I robbed you?”
She motioned toward the children who dashed back and forth against the gate. “You wouldn’t have gotten far. My neighbors are very tough; they would have caught you and dragged you back.”
Jean Patrick couldn’t guess her age. At first he had thought her twenty-four or twenty-five, but in the sunlight, her features took on a schoolgirl look. Behind her, he glimpsed a garden and a yard thick with fruit trees. A heady perfume of flowers came from her skin. He did not want to leave. He could have rested beside her and watched her pagne ripple about her feet until the waxed suns crossed the cloth sky.
Inside the house, dishes clattered and a radio clicked on. A woman’s voice called out, “Bea, where are you?” A door banged. Two children, a girl and a boy, exploded through the opening, skin shiny with Vaseline. Bea opened her shawl and enfolded them like a bird taking her chicks beneath a wing. Jean Patrick’s heart sank.
“I’m just coming,” she called. She took the keys from her wrist and unlocked the gate. “Well, be safe, then,” she said to Jean Patrick. She pushed the gate open, exposing a well-muscled calf. The little boy perched on her feet and rode her steps.
What could Jean Patrick do but thank her and walk into the morning through the space the children made for him? Bea. Beatrice. The blessed one.
He readjusted his jacket and jogged toward the next hill. It was useless. The girl called Bea had knocked the wind out of him. For the first time since a calf cramp had felled him on the day Rutembeza became his coach, Jean Patrick gave up. All the way back, her face remained in front of him. He could have placed a palm on her high cheekbones, felt her sun-warm skin, the color of strong tea, traced the almond slant of her eyes with a finger.
Coach’s front door opened before Jean Patrick could knock. “We’re safe,” Jolie whispered. “Muzehe doesn’t know.” She pointed to his muddy Nikes. He removed them to give to her. “What happened? Tief chase you through the swamps?”
“No, Grandmother. I ran through the reeds myself.”
She chortled. “Give me your dirty things, and I’ll wash them.”
It was only when he removed his track pants and found the directions in his pocket that he remembered Jonathan. He looked at the map. Bumps rose on his arms: a three-trunked tree, an ocher building with a blue metal roof. Most likely, Jonathan could throw a stone from his rooftop and have it land in Bea’s yard.
WITH THE PHONE cord as his tether, Coach circled between bookcase and window and spoke loudly into the receiver. Jean Patrick lingered in the hallway, ears cocked to pick up the conversation, but as soon as Coach noticed him, he stopped and snapped his fingers. “Go and eat,” he said, turning his back. Still trying to overhear, Jean Patrick went into the dining room and took a finger banana from a bowl on the table.
Coach strode in a little while later and pulled out a chair. “How was your workout?” he asked, drumming his fingers on the tablecloth.
“Good. I felt strong.”
Jolie brought omelets sprinkled with onions and tiny red peppers. Coach put two pieces of bread on Jean Patrick’s plate and pushed the tub of margarine toward him. “Eat. You need to build muscle.” He watched Jean Patrick closely, fingers still tapping out a beat.
Jean Patrick’s stomach shouted for food. He could have tipped the plate and shoveled the eggs into his mouth. Instead he cut slowly, dividing them into bites of equal size. Sooner or later, Coach would reveal what occupied his mind.
After Jean Patrick cleaned his plate and set down his knife and fork, Coach’s fingers paused on the tabletop. He regarded Jean Patrick with a pleased, amused expression. “You are racing in Kigali next month,” he said. “You haven’t run an A-standard time in a while; do you think you can do it by then? It’s important.”
A switch flipped open in Jean Patrick’s body, a current of excitement flowing through him. “I can run sub–one forty-five fifty in two weeks. I know it.”
Coach slapped his palm on the table. “That’s the spirit!” His mouth curved into a half smile. “Your Burundi friends will be there.”
“Gilbert and Ndizeye? Those two that beat me?”
“The very same.”
“I wasn’t sure they could still race.”
“Why? Because our Burundi brothers shook off the Tutsi yoke and elected a Hutu president?” The veins in Coach’s temples pulsed. “Of course they can race. Burundi has a democracy now. Like Rwanda. The majority voted, and the majority chose Ndadaye. He is not like the Tutsi oppressors who have governed Burundi since independence. He will allow Tutsi to be free.” He took a breath as if he would continue his tirade, but instead he began drumming again.
Jean Patrick poured tea, stirred in sugar and milk. Bea’s perfume reached his nostrils.
“This event,” Coach said, “is a special occasion to celebrate the implementation of the peace process. Many Westerners
will be there.” His eyes penetrated Jean Patrick’s. “World Championships are in Sweden next year. An A-standard time would qualify you. I want people to know who you are—important people in the international community. So you need to stay sharp. If you go and fall on your face, it will not be good for my reputation or your Olympic chances.”
Blood rushed to Jean Patrick’s head. “World Championships?” A long, low whistle escaped him. “No worry. I can do it.”
Coach aimed his spoon at Jean Patrick’s head. “You have to learn to run smart, so I want you racing with your competition as much as possible. Remember—you represent Rwanda by the grace of the National Olympic Committee and the Rwanda Athletics Federation. It is they who, according to their pleasure, verify your registration for the Olympics. Or not.”
“Coach, that can’t happen. I can run against anyone.”
The spoon clinked against the edge of Coach’s cup. “After the race, there’s going to be a reception at the American Embassy. TV and radio reporters will be there. President Habyarimana will greet you.”
Jean Patrick regarded Habyarimana’s picture, just visible over Coach’s shoulder. Bars of shadow from the half-open shutters turned him into a prisoner looking out from a cell.
“The president knows who I am?”
“Indeed he does.”
“Can Daniel come to the reception?”
“Of course. His father will be there with the Presidential Guard.” Coach traced circles with his spoon. “How about inviting your American friend, the geography professor?”
Geology, Jean Patrick corrected in his head. “That would be great!”
Coach swept crumbs from the tablecloth into his palm and disposed of them on his plate. “I’m going to arrange for you to take his class. It would be nice to have a Westerner who knows you and can tell your success story to his people.”
Running the Rift Page 14