“No engine noise. But if these guys show up and we don’t give Uncle the chance to go back and forth in his mind, maybe the two of us can persuade him. If not, he’ll make sure everyone else goes. At the very least, we can get the rest of the family to safety.”
“I don’t think Auntie will ever leave without Uncle.”
“True. Another reason I think we can persuade him.”
“What about you?”
Roger shook a cigarette from his pack. “My fight is here. What I’ve trained for—my Olympics. And you? Do I have to put a gun to your head?”
“If you did, you would have to use it. I won’t go. I have too much at stake.”
“If they kill you, you can’t run. If you are alive, in Burundi, you have a chance.”
“They can’t hurt me; I’m too well known. Habyarimana can never let it happen because he wants to look good for the West. As I told you, he needs me.”
They walked quickly. Smoke from Roger’s cigarette fanned out behind him. “It is likely,” Roger said, “your friend Habyarimana won’t be around to help you.”
“What are you saying?” Jean Patrick said.
“You should keep up with Kangura if you want to predict the future. They do quite well, much better, even, than the umupfumu with his sizzled spit and chicken entrails. They said Habyarimana would die in March.”
“So you see? It’s April already, and he is alive and well.” Despite his effort to control it, Jean Patrick’s voice came out shrill.
Roger stopped and took Jean Patrick’s wrists. “I have to leave you here. If I can’t change the date, is there any way you can come on Wednesday?”
“I will do my best,” Jean Patrick said, but in his heart he knew he would not.
Ahead of them, the familiar trail reached toward the compound, worn from years of traffic. Their lives, their world, were here. Every morning, fishermen went out to the lake, and women and children went to the fields. Hutu or Tutsi, they fetched water, gathered firewood, balanced loads on their heads. In the evening, they padded along paths up the ridge or down into the valley with bare and dusty feet. They cooked, ate, drank beer, and scolded children. In the darkness, men and women lay together and created new life. This was the dance of Rwanda. Jean Patrick could not let himself believe that this dance, as familiar as the beat of his heart, would suddenly end. And how could they leave it behind?
Roger stubbed out his cigarette and flicked it into the bush. He put his arms around Jean Patrick, and they held each other. How strange, Jean Patrick thought, to be looking down at his older brother’s face. With his eyes, he traced the square, strong jaw, the scar that ran the length of his cheek, the thin and wiry beard. He committed them firmly to memory.
“In the meantime,” Roger said, “take very good care of yourself.”
“Always. And you the same.”
Although Jean Patrick was well trained in tracking movement in the forest, it was not long before his brother’s form melted into the tree shadows he had stepped from.
A ROARING SOUND invaded Jean Patrick’s sleep. He bolted up, unsure where he was. Then he felt Zachary beside him, heard the warm, rhythmic breath he knew as intimately as his own. Slowly the walls gained form from darkness. The roar became rain on the metal roof, the familiar song. Worn out from all his tossing and turning, he nestled against Zachary and sank into a pleasant dream of the past, his family around him, even Papa.
When he next awoke, Zachary’s hand touched his shoulder. “Are you up?”
“Yes, Little Brother.”
“I’m going to pray now. Will you come?”
Jean Patrick took his hand. Quietly they felt their way down the hall and through the front room. The front door sighed open. They stepped out into the wet air, somewhere between mist and drizzle, the sky past night but not yet dawn. Hand in hand, they walked the path to the hut where they had slept all those years, and Jean Patrick with Roger before that.
Zachary lit a lantern. He had transformed the hut into a shrine. The bookshelf served as an altar, an image of the sacred Virgin flanked by two candles. A painting hung on the wall, and Jean Patrick brought the light closer to inspect it. Two lambs, one black and one white, drank from a stream. Orchids and lilies grew along the banks, and creatures—birds or angels—floated in an amethyst sky. In the blocky, primitive shapes, Jean Patrick saw a child’s view of heaven.
“Did you paint this? It looks like paradise.”
“It is.” Zachary’s countenance took on the innocence of a child. “For so long this vision came to my eyes. I think there was a similar painting at Gihundwe where we used to pray with Papa.” Jean Patrick couldn’t remember. Certainly, it hadn’t been there when he went to school. “I miss this place when I’m at Kibuye.” Zachary talked in low tones, as if speech would disturb some sleeping spirit. “It’s the best place for me to worship, the place I feel closest to God.”
Strange, Jean Patrick mused, how a person’s traits passed from one generation to the next. Papa had a gift for science, but he could also turn his passion into lyric phrases on the page. As if these two halves had unraveled, the scientific side had passed to Jean Patrick and the artist to Zachary.
Papa’s Bible lay open on the altar to the Acts of the Apostles, and Jean Patrick read. And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father. No, Jean Patrick thought. Zachary will never leave this place, not even if Uncle commands him.
IN ALL DIRECTIONS, a stream of colors looped through the trails, people from the hills coming down to church. Most of their bright clothes were not new, but had been saved for Easter: hemmed, mended, scrubbed in Omo, and pressed with a hot charcoal iron. Sunlight dappled the road, but the ground had not yet dried, pulling at their feet as if it did not want to let them go. Jean Patrick watched Bea, strolling ahead with the women. The girls chittered beside them, dashed in and out. They wound flowers they had picked through the ribbons in their hair. Jacqueline whispered something into Bea’s ear. When Bea threw her head back to laugh, the single feather in her hat shivered.
Jean Patrick walked between Zachary and Uncle Emmanuel, hand in hand. Feeling his uncle’s callused palm in his, it occurred to him that Uncle had long ago lost all recollection that Jean Patrick, Roger, and Zachary were not his blood sons. And then Jean Patrick realized that he, too, had long ago stopped making any such distinction.
ON THE WAY back from church, Jean Patrick asked Bea if she would walk with him a little farther. “I want to show you something of Gashirabwoba, something of where I come from.” Together they walked down the wide dirt roads where paths plunged into the valley or rose dizzily into the hills. He showed her where his cousins lived, where he had raced Roger and honed the power in his legs, the stubbornness of his mind. Stopping beside a runneled trail into the bush, he pointed. “And that is where I finally beat him,” he said. “Far, far up there.”
Bea laughed and brushed his hand. “Shall we put up a shrine?”
“After my gold medal, we will do so.” Jean Patrick wished he could take her in his arms and tell her about Roger, but the heaviness in his heart was not a burden he would share.
As if she had read his mind, Bea asked, “This famous Roger—he couldn’t come home for Easter? Kenya is not so far off.”
“We should get back, eh?” he said.
He had stopped again, this time to point out the eucalyptus grove where meetings were held, when a group of boys in Hutu Power garb walked by, RTLM blaring from a hulking radio one of them carried. On the third or the fourth or fifth there will be a little something here in Kigali. You will hear the sound of bullets or grenades exploding. Was there no rest from the station’s fool nonsense? Not even on the day of the resurrection?
EVERYONE FROM THE neighboring hills came to the house to eat. They crowded together at the table or sat with a plate on a chair. Children spread out across the floor. Mukabera came with Olivette and her new husband. Olivette’s belly was already
swollen; by the time Jean Patrick came home at the end of the term, there would be a naming ceremony to attend.
Angelique and Uwimana flanked Jean Patrick; Fulgence and his family sat like royalty beside Uncle at the head of the table. The center of the table was piled with a feast: grilled fish, crispy sambaza, stews with cabbage and tomato and bits of chicken and goat meat. There were bowls of ibitoki bigeretse kub’ibishyimbo, the green bananas and beans that Uncle always piled high on his plate.
Bea dove into the center of commotion as if she had always been there, cleft from the same country clay. Jean Patrick wished he could just watch her, just eat, joke with his family. But trouble bunched under his skin. He could not sweep it away, not even for this one afternoon.
AFTER DINNER, JEAN Patrick and Bea walked with Uwimana and Angelique to their car. The clouds had scattered, and the earth, hardened. With a tenderness that made him ache, Jean Patrick watched Uwimana’s long-familiar rolling gait, his round body, the expression on his face as if he were always listening for something essential and was afraid he would miss it.
Angelique whispered in Jean Patrick’s ear, “I hope next time we see you, you will be man and wife. You must not let this wonderful woman go.”
For luck, Jean Patrick touched the gold cross. “It is most certainly my wish.”
They said good-bye at the bus stop, where Uwimana had parked. Jean Patrick held Bea’s hand and watched the car bump and rattle toward the main road. If Roger was right, who among them would be safe? Would Uwimana, who had more than once been called icyitso? Would Bea’s own mother, who could easily be taken for Tutsi? He pulled Bea close. “Are you glad you came?”
“Yes.” She leaned her head against his chest. “So much.”
“You’re not angry with me anymore?”
“Eh? For what?”
“For kidnapping you against your will.” Bea shook her head. Jean Patrick took her hand and placed his gift inside it. “Open it.” He wished for a sudden splash of sun to glint from the gold, as it had done in the shop, but that did not happen.
Bea held the necklace, the delicate chain turning. “You are always buying me gifts.”
“Not always: only twice.”
She held it out to him, and he fastened it around her throat.
“I saw the necklace when I was home at Christmas, and I knew instantly how well it would fit right here.” He touched the shadow where her collarbones came together. Such a miracle, this thing we call life, he thought, feeling the rise and fall of her breath against his finger.
Quickly he kissed her. She kissed him back, and he savored the salt and spice of her mouth, the sweetness of tea on her tongue. He took her hand and led her back toward the house.
Their lives were only starting. How could they be wrenched apart? How could any of them be picked up suddenly, cast down somewhere else, over mere politics that should not concern them? For his part, no matter what happened, he would be safe. He had bartered a future with his legs and his sweat and his pain.
IN THE MORNING, Jean Patrick took Bea to the bus stop in a slanting rain. He held Mama’s parasol above their heads. Bea held her sandals in her hand. Jean Patrick also walked barefoot, and with every step he sank to his ankles. The earth released his feet with a loud sucking sound.
“Are you tired?” Bea said. “You’re not talking—it’s not the Nkuba I know.”
“You also are not talking.”
“Did you run this morning?”
“Aye! In such a storm?” But he had, setting out in darkness, seeking the grass, the drier paths in the forest, pulling his feet high in the places where mud nibbled at his legs with swampy lips. Only when he ran, when every fiber in his body strained to propel him forward, could he sort out these problems that went round and round in his head. “Even for one day I will miss you,” he said.
“Me, also—I will miss you.”
Jean Patrick was about to kiss her, hidden by the umbrella, when a loud horn stopped him. A truck idled beside them, and Uwimana’s head poked out from the window. “I was hoping to find you,” he shouted. “In this rain I thought you could wait in the truck.”
Jean Patrick and Bea climbed in, raindrops pooling on the seat. They squeezed together in the cab. Uwimana kept the engine idling, and steamy warmth surrounded them. Bea’s internal heat spread across Jean Patrick’s thigh. He had barely slept, and now he couldn’t keep his eyes from closing. Indirimbo za buracyeye, Rwanda’s soothing morning music, hummed softly on the radio. A river flowed on the road. Tails of water arced from tires of passing cars. The bus lumbered up the grade like a great beast, two round eyes of headlights glaring through the deluge.
Jean Patrick took Mama’s parasol, and he and Bea ran across the road. “I’ll meet you at the stop tomorrow when you come in,” she said. Her fingers touched the cross at her neck, and Jean Patrick smiled.
Jean Patrick ran back to Uwimana’s truck and climbed in. “I would offer you a ride home,” Uwimana said, “but soon I would be stuck, and we would both be pushing.” He turned up the radio. “I love this music more than any other. It always reminds me of my childhood.” He hummed along.
“Me, too. We had a plug-in radio, and when I was small, I thought the singers were somehow inside it. I thought they had slipped in through the wire.” Jean Patrick smiled at the memory. “I kept that radio forever, even though we had no electricity in Gashirabwoba.”
Uwimana chuckled. “I remember.”
“Aye!” Jean Patrick slapped his knee. “Now that I think of it, that radio still sits on a shelf in Zachary’s room. Maybe someday electricity will come and they can use it again.”
Neither of them moved. A fresh onslaught of rain hit the windshield. Uwimana turned the wipers on, turned them off again. “You can stay here,” he said, “until this storm eases.”
“Thank you. I’m happy for your company.” Jean Patrick looked over at Uwimana, and Uwimana looked back, a faint, dreamy smile on his lips. An invisible thread bound them together inside the safe island of the cab. Jean Patrick did not want to be the one to break it.
The next morning, it was Jean Patrick’s turn to say good-bye. He pushed open the bus window and waved to his family one last time. “I’ll see you Thursday,” he shouted. Roger had not returned, and so their plan held; he would not have to choose between Bea and his flesh and blood. It was nearly ten o’clock, and although he had eaten some bread and fruit, he had run hard intervals first thing, and already his stomach grumbled. A woman squeezed sideways into the seat beside him, her swollen belly nearly in the aisle. She placed a basket of fruit between them, and a ripe sweetness came through the skins of mangoes and guavas to stir up Jean Patrick’s hunger even more.
By the time the bus stopped in Gikongoro, he couldn’t stand it. Although it was against Rwandan custom to eat in such a public place, he whistled to a hawker and bought an ear of roasted corn. Turning toward the window, he took a bite and chewed slowly.
“Eh-eh,” the pregnant woman chided. “Have you no respect for our ways? You—a grown man—how can you eat so, in front of all of us?”
Jean Patrick slumped in his seat. “I’m very hungry, Mama. I am feeling weak.”
From across the aisle a grandmother called out. “He’s a boy still. And so skinny! Ko Mana—leave him be.”
“We are all hungry,” a toothless old farmer said. “And yet only he is eating.”
The pregnant woman rested her hand on her belly and smiled. “Maybe he is eating for his children.” She turned to him, her face radiant. “Is that what you are doing?”
Jean Patrick had hidden the corn beside him on the seat. “I have no children yet, Mama, but I am hoping to.”
A young woman with a head full of plaits turned toward him. “Do you have umukunzi?” In the crowded bus, everyone’s eyes were on Jean Patrick.
“Yes, I have a sweetheart,” he said. “A very beautiful one.”
“Well, then it is settled,” the grandmother said. She addressed her co
mments to the passengers. “He is eating for the children that are still inside him.” She showed a row of small white teeth.
“Yes, it’s settled,” the pregnant woman said. “He has children inside him that need his food, and also, he is little more than a boy himself.” She prodded Jean Patrick. “Eat well. We won’t scold you anymore.”
She returned her hand to her belly and cocked her head as if listening to her child, hearing its steady, beating heart. Jean Patrick took another bite of his corn. A kernel fell onto his jacket, and he brushed it away. Such a blessing to have life swimming and turning inside you, he thought, readying itself to push out into the world.
AT THE STATION, Jean Patrick didn’t see Bea, and his stomach twisted. He pushed through the crowd, scanning the sea of bright headscarves crowned with basins filled to the brim. There was a small market at the bus stop on Tuesdays, and a row of blankets and stalls had sprouted up beneath the ocher brick walls. The sharp smells of raw meat and fermented fruit greeted his nostrils. One after another, scenarios of disaster went through his mind: Bea was angry again; she had found someone else, a good Hutu boy; she was involved in some politics and had forgotten he was coming. Then he spotted her. She was merely haggling with a woman over a bunch of green bananas. Catastrophe vanished from his mind.
Bea’s back was to him. She wore a purple and red pagne with a design of birds in flight, a yellow shawl tied about her shoulders. Beside her were Ineza’s two market baskets, already full. Bea and the woman’s voices rose and fell in an ancient song that seemed to please them both. Bea won the bananas. The hawker, also victorious, pocketed her coins.
Jean Patrick could have stood and watched in secret for a long time, but as she stooped to pick up her baskets, her gaze fell on him. “Just in time. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to carry all my things without putting these dirty bananas on my head.” Jean Patrick laughed at the thought. He took the heavy stalk from her. “For tomorrow night,” she said. “Mama and Claire have already started cooking. You would think an entire RPF garrison was coming for dinner.” She jangled a set of keys. “I borrowed a car from Dadi’s friend, but first we have to feed Kweli. She’s very cute but also very spoiled, a muzungu dog.”
Running the Rift Page 29