Honorine nodded. “That’s good. You should leave this place now and not come back. The Hutu Power students terrorize us night and day. We’ve banded together for safety, but I don’t know how long it can last. I was stupid to think I could go out by myself.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “As you see.”
“Come—I’ll walk with you.”
She grabbed his arm. “Nkuba, we are gupfa uhagaze, the walking dead.”
Jean Patrick wanted to comfort her, to tell her this was not so, but the lie would not pass his lips. He accompanied her past the rows of rooms, past doors, like his own, hanging off hinges or missing altogether.
She stopped beside a room. Inside, the shadows of students moved. “Will you come in? We can make you some tea.”
Jean Patrick touched his cheek to hers. “I should get back,” he said. “May God keep you safe.” It seemed an empty phrase.
A CRUDE BARRIER of rocks and tree limbs blocked the trail that led from the woods to the road, manned by a citizen patrol. One was a fellow student who waited tables at the Ibis. “Hey, my friend,” he called to Jean Patrick. They shook hands. “I’m glad to see you’re well.”
“Yes—thanks to God. And you, too—it’s good to see you on patrol.”
A ragged man demanded Jean Patrick’s papers and examined them with a puzzled look. Jean Patrick remembered the day at the arboretum, the man with the bloodied club holding his card upside down. “Here,” Jean Patrick said, pointing at the word Tutsi. “Hu-tu.”
“OK,” the man said. “You can pass.”
“Lord bless us,” the waiter said. He switched to French then so the man would not understand. “This fine fellow would much rather slit my Tutsi throat than stand here with me, but in these times we do what we can, huh?” He waved Jean Patrick through.
JEAN PATRICK COULD see through the slit in the gate that Coach was not in. One last time he called out to Jolie. “It’s me, Jean Patrick. Can you let me in?” The windows glared at him, dark and empty. The wall surrounding the house had grown a crown of broken bottles.
Blood from his cut palm seeped through the makeshift bandage of his shorts. He turned to leave but then did not leave. If he waited long enough, Coach must come. Just as he made up his mind to go, he saw Jolie trundling up the road, arms wide to balance two baskets of food. He ran to help her.
“Your coach is not here,” she said. She walked forward, eyes on the road.
“Let me carry these.” He took the baskets from her.
“I can’t let you in.”
“Grandmother, when will he be back?”
“Inshyanutsi!” she said. “Someday your nosiness will kill you.” But she smiled when she unlocked the gate. “You look like a drowned bush rat. Come and dry off for a minute.”
Jean Patrick followed her into the yard. “Are you cross with me?” he asked.
“I am angry with all Tutsi for killing our president. You have destroyed everything good in our country.”
“Grandmother, I am not a killer. I am the same person I was two weeks ago, last month, last year.” Though this was a lie. He had been turned upside down, shaken, emptied out. They walked into the house, and he gave her the baskets, one handle stained with his blood.
“What happened?” Jolie removed the bandage and inspected his hand, holding it in her gnarled fingers.
“I slipped. On campus there is broken glass everywhere.”
After lighting the fire, Jolie sat him at the table and brought a towel. Then she went to the cookhouse and came back with a steaming bowl filled with a potion of grasses. She cleaned off his hand and bound it with a cloth soaked in the pungent liquid. “I’ll get your clothes for you.” She took the ring of house keys from the hook and unlocked the door to the room where he used to sleep, emerging with shorts and a sweat suit, an older pair of running shoes, a T-shirt, a sweater that was now too small for him. She pulled the door to and locked it. “You can change your clothes in the bathroom.” She cackled, conspiratorial. “Take one of your coach’s old ponchos to keep you dry. He’ll never notice its absence.”
When he came from the bathroom, there was fruit on the table, a bowl of soup, a piece of bread and margarine, a cup of cyayi cyayi, the lemony brew Jolie always nursed him with when he was tired or sick. “Eat quickly. You’ll have to leave soon,” she said.
He ate hungrily. “Jolie, your food still melts my heart.” Through the window he watched the weather. He listened for Coach’s car. Not even the whistle of a bird broke the rain’s monotonous song.
Full and warm, he let his eyes shut. Dozing off, he dreamed he heard the gate swing open, the clink of a key in the lock. When he started awake, he was smiling.
“You better go now,” Jolie said. She held a cracked green poncho and a sack with Jean Patrick’s wet clothes. She gave him a second sack. “Put the rest of your dry clothes in here.”
“When can I come back? When will Coach be here?”
She hastened him toward the door. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since…” The sentence hung in the air, unfinished.
“I have to speak to him. He’s my one hope to help my family,” he said. “To help me.”
“He will find you when he can. He cares for you.”
“How will he find me?” He did not want to say where he was. “My room at the dorm was destroyed. I can’t go back there anymore.”
“You have to trust him,” she said. She unlocked the front door. “He will come for you.”
Jean Patrick touched his cheek to hers before stepping out into the wet. Trust Coach? If Coach told him that tomorrow the sun would rise in the east, it seemed to Jean Patrick there was a fifty-fifty chance it would rise in the west.
TWENTY-FIVE
BEA’S BELLY WAS SOFT AND WARM. Jean Patrick lay on the couch with his ear against it, listening to the secret sounds. The voice of RTLM that came from Niyonzima’s office was like fingers scraped across a blackboard.
“Do you think there’s a baby inside?”
Hutu, when you see people gathering in schools and churches, this is not good at all, because there are Inyenzi-Inkotanyi among them. You must take action against them.
“Eh! I don’t know.”
Bea’s head bent over his, and he wound a plait of hair about his finger. “I say yes. I say it’s a boy.” He examined the cut on his palm; it was healing.
Bea kissed her teeth and pushed him away. “Why not a girl? What’s wrong with a girl?”
Go after those Inkotanyi. Blood flows in their veins as it does in yours. All those who sympathize with both sides, they are ibyitso. They will pay for what they have done.
She pressed her hands to her ears. “How long do we have to endure this?” She rose from the couch and paced.
Jean Patrick had no answer. A span of time marked only by the count of the dead on RTLM.
Niyonzima had finally made contact with Uwimana, and Jean Patrick had spoken with him. He closed his eyes and imagined life and love coursing through the wires. Although Niyonzima called every day, connections were unpredictable, the distance from Butare to Cyangugu no longer measurable by any method Jean Patrick understood. His family had not come to Gihundwe, and Jean Patrick could only hope they were safe in Burundi. People inside the school were starving. Some had died. Angelique could not keep up with the sick, the wounded, more coming every hour.
A slate sky promised rain. Claire’s children played in the yard, soft laughter rising and falling. Jean Patrick reached out to Bea with both his hands. “Come back. I want to touch you again.”
“I cannot sit still.”
Who could? But what was there to do besides sit still? Go for another run, read another book, play igisoro, write a letter. Soon enough, there would be no one left to write. Jean Patrick heard the name of the baker and the jeweler from Cyangugu announced on RTLM. Then a teacher from primary school. All Tutsi will perish. They will disappear from the earth. We will kill them like rats. He buried his face in his hands.
Ineza came into the room. She was knitting a shawl, a blue and green one, for a niece in London. She sat beside them. Slowly the scarf swallowed the colorful skeins, and Jean Patrick imagined it growing and growing, becoming a bright path of wool and color for them to walk on, all the way across the ocean.
LIGHT LEFT THE sky. A new voice on RTLM took the place of the old. This particular announcer was famous for her rapid-fire delivery. How else could she get it all in, leave time for the music, the reports, live, from the roadblocks? At least the deaths of his mother, his uncle and aunt, his brothers and sisters, had not come to Jean Patrick through the mouthpiece of Hutu Power. At least he had that.
Now the Interahamwe were setting fire to churches filled with Tutsi. Niyonzima shook his head. “The clever planning of these extremists chills me to the bone. They call everyone to the churches and…” He swallowed a word. “It’s like sweeping dead banana leaves into a pile to burn them more easily.” Jean Patrick knew the word he had not said. It was schools.
Muhutu, here are more ibyitso helping the Inkotanyi: Uwimana and his wife, Angelique. He’s headmaster at Gihundwe. Those not yet finished off have crawled inside there. His school is swarming with snakes. Do your work. Clean the house.
Before the announcer reached the end of her list, Niyonzima had dialed the phone.
“I’m here,” Jean Patrick said into the receiver.
“It’s so good to hear your voice,” Uwimana said. The greeting Jean Patrick had heard all the years of his childhood. “I will tell you quickly. Interahamwe came yesterday. They said all Hutu were free to leave. They told me to send them out, and they would be safe. I gave everyone the choice. Many refused to go. They say, ‘We have lived together, we will die together.’ I cannot play God, deciding who lives and who dies. I asked Angelique to go, but she will not.” In the background, whistles and chants joined in a frenzied beat. The line crackled. “Jean Patrick, are you there? They’ll break through soon.”
“I’m here.”
“I have no news of your family. I’m sorry. I prayed they would come, but as it turns out, I could not have protected them. Angelique wants you to know she loves you. To both of us, you have been a son.”
“And you have been father and mother to me.”
Terrified screams, as close as Jean Patrick’s ear. “They’re inside now. Let me hear your voice one more time.”
“May God protect you,” Jean Patrick said. “Ndagukunda cyane. I love you very much.”
“And you. May Imana walk with you—run with you—always. We’ll meet again.”
“We will.”
A hissing filled the earpiece, as if the connection had been cut, but then Jean Patrick heard, “Are you still there? Can you hear me?”
“Yes, I’m here; I can hear you.”
“Remember: they can kill our bodies, but they can never kill our spirits.” Then dead air.
Jean Patrick pressed the phone to his chest. He could not put the receiver back in its cradle, could not hear the final click. He remembered his first day at Gihundwe, when he had looked out at Saint Kizito and joy had filled him. “Ndishimye,” he had whispered. I am happy. He remembered that the sun’s geometry had combined with his angle of vision to give the appearance of light flowing from the saint’s arms, as if Imana’s blessings emanated directly from the shining black skin.
JEAN PATRICK’S OWN cry awoke him, his calf in a knot. Pain knifed through his leg, but when he bolted upright, his hamstring seized. He stuffed his fist into his mouth to keep from crying out. It was as if his muscles, so unused to days without running, had rebelled, found a life of their own. Breathe into your belly. Send your breath through your body, Coach used to say, in that other life. Gently, Jean Patrick kneaded the tangled fibers, as his coach used to do. No one stirred in the house. Rain, eternal, slogged across the roof.
He had to flee. The decision was fully formed before he knew it was there. When the line to Cyangugu was cut, so was Jean Patrick’s chance of finding his family alive in Rwanda. Surely, if he tried, he would be caught and killed. To the south, the mountains of Burundi rose like a beacon. If Roger’s plan had gone forward, he would find his family with Spéciose. If not, at least he would survive. The thought sent a chill through his body, but from this day forward, the only way left to help those he loved was to save himself.
He would leave in the morning. He would ask Bea to go, but if she would not, he would go alone. She was Hutu. She would be safe. But the killing was a cancerous growth that soon enough would spread to Butare. Soon the machete would fall on his head. Better to run like a dog than die like a dog. But what if Bea was pregnant? He could not leave her, unmarried, carrying his child. He would give it another day. Maybe two or three. Surely he had that much time. Surely, by then, the West would give the UN troops the help and the weapons they needed.
THEY SAT AT the dining room table—Jean Patrick, Bea, Niyonzima, and Ineza—tea steaming before them. Day had once more dragged itself from night’s belly. It is the Tutsi who are burning down their own houses! They want to lure the Hutu there. Then they will trap them and kill them.
Ineza silenced the radio. “A moment’s peace,” she said.
“I have decided to try for Burundi,” Jean Patrick said. He looked at Niyonzima. “Will you allow Bea to come with me?”
“We are modern here,” Bea said. “You can ask me directly, and the answer is no. I will not crawl through the marsh like some kind of swamp animal, and I will not leave my family.”
Jean Patrick had not slept since pain awoke him. Only his jagged energy, nothing useful to do with it, kept him moving. Before daybreak, he had gone for a run to untangle his head, keeping to the bush, barefoot like the muturage he was, the country boy. More than once, he had to stop and rub out his calf. The answer that came to him in the night did not change. With or without her, he had to flee. What good would he be to her or his unborn child if he was dead?
“Don’t be a fool. You must go,” Ineza said. Her knitting needles clicked. The green-blue wave of scarf unfurled toward the floor.
Niyonzima took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then put his glasses on again. “Maybe there is something I can do.” He looked at Ineza. “If I can get travel passes for the three of you, will you go?”
The knitting needles stopped. “That is a silly question, my husband.”
“And you, Bea?” Niyonzima’s voice was cajoling. “It won’t be for long. It can’t be. This insanity must stop soon. Burundi is not so far away. Or Tanzania.”
Bea went to the window and drew back the curtain, as if she would find her answer written in the patterns the rain made on the glass. She glanced up toward the soggy sky. Then she came back and hugged her mother and her father. “Dadi, you won’t go?”
He held up his cane. “I am too old and tired to run. My voice is needed here, for whatever good it will do.”
“Mama? You won’t come with us?”
Ineza put down her knitting and took Bea’s hands in hers. “It will just be for a little while. For us, please, go.”
For a minute, Jean Patrick thought she would refuse again. The pain in her face made him regret that he had asked. But then she said, “All right. I will go.”
Niyonzima clapped and got up from the table. “Please tell Claire to bring me coffee. I need to clear my head.” He disappeared into his office.
Bea wandered into the living room and slumped onto a chair. A single cry heaved her shoulders. Ineza went to her. “Come,” she said. “Let’s go and see our beautiful garden.”
“Mama, it’s raining.”
“We’ll just stand beneath the roof and look out.” She helped Bea to her feet. With their arms around each other, they walked to the door. Then Ineza opened the door, and Jean Patrick smelled the wet grass, the bracing morning air.
INEZA HAD PUT on her painting clothes—a huge shirt, mottled with color, that she was lost inside. Bea came from her room in her pagne of planets and stars, malachite
bracelets on her wrists. “Mama wants to paint us today.” Her fingers trailed along the wall, and the bracelets jangled.
Niyonzima opened his door. “There is no more long-distance service, and no further travel permits will be issued. From now on, no Rwandan can leave the country.” He limped to his chair. “But I think if I go in person to the police station and offer the chief a very fat bribe, he will take it. I’ve known him a long time.” He leaned forward, hands folded on top of his cane. “Let me call Jonathan and see if he will drive me.”
JEAN PATRICK LEANED on the gate and watched Jonathan’s car slip and slide before gaining traction. The four silhouettes behind the steamy glass strained visibly as if they willed the struggling imodoka forward—Jonathan and Niyonzima in front, Ineza and Claire in back. After they disappeared, Jean Patrick stood in the rain and let the water streak down his skin, a baptismal shower.
This time, he told himself, Imana would hear them. Niyonzima knew the game of Rwandan politics; he had been around it long enough. He wouldn’t ask Jonathan to come out in this storm if he had not been certain of success.
“You’ve lost your mind,” Bea said when he came back inside.
“Say it again.” Jean Patrick gathered her close, felt her heartbeat against his wet shirt.
“Eh? You really have.” She struggled free. “I’m soaked now.”
“I want to hear the sound of your voice, that’s all.” He kissed her head, her two eyes, her nose, and then her mouth. “Come lie down with me. Who knows when we can be alone again.”
“Only a minute. I don’t think I can stay still.”
Jean Patrick led Bea to her room, the need to have her beside him, skin against skin, so strong he could barely breathe. He closed the door. Rain drummed on the roof. The wind in the trees made a sound like the plucked string of inanga. He held the flat of his palm to her belly. “Is a baby inside?”
“Ko Mana—you ask every ten minutes.” She sighed. “I don’t know. Everything is off balance. Not even my own body makes sense anymore.”
“No. Nothing makes sense. Except you.” The room breathed softly around them. He guided her to the bed, undid the gold knots of her buttons, and kissed her breasts. “Will this hurt him?”
Running the Rift Page 32