Jean Patrick tried to shut his eyes, but every thud of a weapon drove them open. He had no free hand to cover his ears. Some Tutsi cried out, some begged for life, some died in silence, not even a hand raised against the blows. He held his breath against the reek of blood and petrol, the fetid monkey refuse, until he thought he would faint. With the first air he drew, he vomited onto his chest. The tree shook, and twigs and leaves rained down. Through the crisscrossed branches, two killers stared directly at him.
“Eh! That’s just a monkey. Leave it.”
“Let’s get it down. Let’s grill it.”
“Here we are, bellies full from Tutsi cows, and you want to grill a monkey? Muturage! Let’s go.”
“Me, I’m going to catch him.” The man took a grenade from his belt and yanked the pin. He drew back his arm. In the torchlight, his ash-caked face gleamed ghostlike, transformed by blood hunger into a profane shape. Jean Patrick coiled himself into a spring, drew himself into his center. If you remain calm, your mind will tell your body what to do.
“Igicucu! Are you crazy? Don’t move!” The second killer grabbed his friend’s hand in both of his. “It’s us you’ll kill like that—forget the fucking monkey.” He yanked the grenade away and threw it after a young boy and a woman dodging among the trees, sprinting for their lives. The blast sent them flying into the night’s embrace.
Trees bent and shook. A rain of leaves, wood, earth, and flesh fell. The world expanded and contracted, resonant, swinging on its hinges. Jean Patrick’s head became a struck bell.
Stillness returned, and the attackers hurried off after the few Tutsi who had managed to flee. The shrieks of whistles faded. Bodies lay scattered on the ground, caught in the last stunned moment of flight. Life flowed away beneath them, sweet and dark, seeking the earth. Jean Patrick waited to descend until his arms were too tired to hold him. He did not know which way to go; his choice was random. Behind him, a survivor begged for a sip of water, but he did not turn back.
TWENTY-SEVEN
A BIBLICAL RAIN FELL as Jean Patrick slogged through the marsh. When the killers came, he sank into the muck and papyrus. He felt rather than saw the others hiding beside him. They were all ghosts—the hunters and the hunted—invisible to the living.
Blood soaked his bandages. He had tied his foot to his leg to keep them going in the same direction, but the bandage was too tight, and his ankle pulsed and swelled. Vultures circled, and clouds of flies fed. A vapor of death, oily and cloying, rose from the umunyeganyege palms and clung to his hair and skin.
Jean Patrick waded and crawled, hid and waited and crawled again, until fatigue and dizziness forced him to rest. At night, when the killers went home, he slunk into the forest to dry. Sometimes a few refugees gathered together to share what food they had. Jean Patrick lost track of when one day ended and another began. Only the chants of the killers, coming and going, told him. He licked droplets from leaves, drank swamp water polluted with rotting corpses. He found wild fruit, dug up roots and grubs, and put them in his mouth though he was not hungry. Only death was hungry now. Urupfu rurarya ntiruhaga. Death eats and is never full.
THE KILLERS FOUND a group of Tutsi and dragged them from the reeds, a mama and children, one a young baby. Jean Patrick was close enough to reach out and touch them. They slumped in silence and waited for the blows. Not even the baby wailed. Death had long since eaten their voices.
AT SOME POINT, while he slept, the rain had ended, the stars emerged from hiding. Jean Patrick knew from the trembling hint of light around him that dawn approached, but no bird sang it into the sky. He checked his ankle. The previous night, a grandmother had rested beside him. Before lying on the ground to sleep, she had collected some leaves from the bush and, with a rock, pounded them into a poultice for his wound. He thought it had helped. The pain, at least, was less, and the murky discharge had stopped. In the distance, a dog barked, and then another. After tightening the cloth, Jean Patrick limped back toward the swamp. Around him, others emerged from the trees, a procession of shades.
A young boy came up beside him and whispered good morning. “Mwaramutse ho.”
“Mwaramutse,” Jean Patrick said. The boy slipped his hand into Jean Patrick’s. “Are you alone?”
The boy nodded, and then he was gone. Soon the sun came out. It shone, indifferent, on the killers and on those who waited to be killed.
HE COULD NOT have taken Bea through this; even she could not have withstood it. He thought of her eyes, their obsidian shine. What was the green basaltic mineral? Yes! Olivine, mineral of the sea. Jean Patrick had never seen the sea, but he envisioned it now, green waves lapping a warm shore. Something in his heart told him Bea lived. This kept him going. For himself, he could have slipped into the filth and slept forever.
THERE WAS A photograph. He must have been about three. Mama and Papa tall as trees. Jacqueline a baby in Mama’s arms, pink ribbon tied around her head. A bundle of pink and white, skin the color of ironwood, little red shoes. A church function? He thought so. The girls in lacy white dresses, white veils flowing from pearled crowns. All these cousins he couldn’t name, who were probably now dead, crowded together. He and Roger in little suits, holding hands, such serious, grown-up faces. Mama wore a pearl necklace, a long satiny shawl. Papa had on a tie with silver moons, flashes of gold. Jean Patrick couldn’t remember what had happened to the picture. If he had it now, he would swallow it. A glowing ember inside him, a sign of life.
Night fell. The vultures slept. Jean Patrick crawled from the water like a prehistoric creature that had sprouted prehensile digits. He staggered to the bushes, found a hole, and hid within it. When dawn broke, he did not return to the swamp. The forest was dangerous in daylight, but he could not stand the mud’s stench any longer: the sharp-edged palm fronds, the bodies he fell over, soft, swollen, and decomposing. He wanted to be dry for just one more hour, and so he let himself sink back into the sleep of the dead.
“Lieutenant, look at the snake we found crawling in the brush.” Hands in Jean Patrick’s armpits jerked him from sleep, pulled him from his hole. He struggled, slipped free. The hands caught him again, stood him up. It was day, a gentle drizzle. “It’s a tall one. And strong.” The hands held him firm, squeezed him.
An officer strolled over, shirt untucked from his pants, round belly protruding. Jean Patrick couldn’t believe his good fortune; it was the soldier from the Cyarwa checkpoint. “It’s me, Lieutenant,” he said. “Mr. Olympics.” He extended his hand, but the lieutenant did not take it. “Remember? Rutembeza is my coach.”
The lieutenant took Jean Patrick’s chin and twisted his head from side to side. “Aye! Look what we’ve caught!” His eyes were empty, as if everything human had spilled from them. “We can’t kill this cockroach here. I’ll take him to the major.” He laughed and poked at Jean Patrick. “Your Olympic coach, eh? Your Rutembeza.”
Jean Patrick shook his head to clear it. He was missing a connection, a conclusion he needed to come to.
With the butt of his rifle, the lieutenant prodded Jean Patrick toward a truck. “If you run, I can catch you now. If not, I can shoot you.” He laughed, then shoved Jean Patrick into the bed and slammed the tailgate shut. Jean Patrick struggled to a sitting position and tightened the wrap against his foot. If he could slip from the truck unnoticed at a stop, maybe he could run.
“Hey, Mr. Olympics, you almost made it, huh?” The lieutenant pointed to the mountains, close, blue, and shimmering. “Only a few more kilometers to the border. Oh. I almost forgot.” He leapt into the bed of the truck. A swift, graceful movement for such a fat man. He tied Jean Patrick’s hands behind his back.
They banged along the muddy road, bodies sprawled across it: women naked from the waist down, a man with a single shoe, the other placed neatly beside him, two small children curled in an embrace. Littered belongings scattered in the wind, hung from tree limbs. Identity cards fluttered like dying butterflies. Interahamwe sat on couches and fancy chairs in the ope
n air. Women walked with televisions in their arms, carried stereos, clothing, and cooking pots. Men balanced sheets of corrugated metal on their heads. A child ran with a toy giraffe clutched to his chest. Wild dogs tore at the dead. Jean Patrick’s head kept hitting the rear window. No Olympics now, he thought. Then, inexplicably, he laughed. And then he slept again.
HE WAS JARRED awake with the cessation of motion. When he opened his eyes, Coach stared down at him. His ankle pulsed beneath the bandage. He shook his head to clear the fog.
“I’ll take care of him.” Coach opened the tailgate and helped Jean Patrick down. He took him to a jeep and pushed him inside.
“Eh, Major. Why don’t you leave it in this truck? It stinks.”
“That’s all right. By now, I am used to the reek.” Coach climbed into the driver’s side. He turned the key in the ignition, put the jeep in gear, and headed up the road. “Jean Patrick, amakuru?”
Jean Patrick couldn’t help it. He smiled at the question. “I am well, Coach. And you?”
“Me, I’m not so well.” Coach’s face was drawn and hard. His uniform smelled of blood, and blood stained his jacket, his pants. “You should have listened. This one time, you should have done as I told you.” What was it Coach had told him? Jean Patrick couldn’t remember now. “I went to find you in your room, to take you somewhere, but you had disappeared. Jolie told me you came to the house. I knew where you’d gone, but I couldn’t fetch you there.” He regarded Jean Patrick. “Why did you disobey me?”
Jean Patrick thought it was sadness hiding in the creases around Coach’s eyes. Sadness and weariness. He said, “Coach, did you know Daniel is dead?”
“I heard it on the radio.”
“That house … where I was.” He refused to say Bea’s name to Coach. “Do you know what happened?”
“Yes.”
“Were you there when…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. Could not make it real.
“No. But I told them if they found you to bring you to me. Even then, I could have helped you.”
“But it wasn’t you.”
“No.”
“They would not have brought me anywhere. They would have killed me.” Jean Patrick grasped his thigh and moved his leg; it had fallen asleep. “Do you think someone could have escaped?”
“No. It’s not possible.”
All things were possible. Jean Patrick would not believe otherwise.
“I will have to kill you now,” Coach said.
“I know,” Jean Patrick said.
COACH TOOK HIM to the arboretum fields. With the rains, the crops had burst into life. Coach opened the door, and the sweet, clean fragrance hit Jean Patrick, so vibrant it was painful.
“What happened to your foot?” Coach kneeled and tightened the bandage.
“I cut it when I went over a wall. On the bottles.” He twisted to show Coach his palm, and the rope burned his wrists. “My hand, too.”
“The stigmata.”
“Yes.”
“Can you run?”
“I think so. I’m not feeling very strong, but if I have to run, I will do it.” A half smile. “You know me.”
“Yes, Jean Patrick. I do.” Coach’s hand lingered on Jean Patrick’s foot. “I’ll give you one chance. If you make it, you’ll be on your own again.”
“You won’t untie me?”
“No. That, I could not explain if they catch you.” A truck whinnied up the road, sliding in the mud. “Get out. You need to be quick.” The truck came closer. At least, if he did not make it, he would be running when he left this world. Coach pulled him out of the jeep and stood him up. “Go! Go! Go!” He pushed him.
Jean Patrick struggled to remain upright. The truck was close enough for him to hear the soldiers’ voices. He didn’t need to look to know the cargo. With strength he pulled from the air, he sprang forward, an awkward, bumbling gait. If he could stand the pain and zigzag, he might make it.
“Next time we meet will be Atlanta,” Coach called after him. “For the Olympics.”
The crack of the shot came at once from far away and inside his head. Falling took forever, a feeling of release. He had time to wonder at the course of the pain, traveling simultaneously upward from his ankle and down from his skull, to anticipate its coming together like two rivers colliding. For a second, he swam. And then he drowned.
BOOK FOUR
THE FAR SIDE OF THE EARTH
Umuntu asiga ikimwirukaho ariko ntawusiga ikimwirukamo.
You can outdistance that which is running after you,
but not what is running inside you.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Gihanga, Burundi
THE MAN WAS VISIBLE from far off in the bright morning as he climbed the trail. He walked quickly, head down, face shaded by a dark cap. He hefted a large pack, and his arms kept time with his legs in a way that branded him as a soldier. There was something teasingly familiar about his way of moving, but at this distance, it was hard to tell. Jean Patrick felt his heart quicken, but after so much disappointment, he was wary of its sting. Behind the soldier, a trail of red dust billowed and swirled.
Jean Patrick had been working in the garden when the man caught his attention. From the hours spent weeding, his ankle pulsed. He limped to the edge of the plot and watched carefully for some small, definitive gesture, something that would tell him that this once, he had been right to believe, that Imana had indeed turned his ear in Jean Patrick’s direction.
After a few more steps, the soldier looked up toward the house. He stopped, took a few steps forward, stopped and looked again. Jean Patrick waved to encourage him. Probably he was just Auntie Spéciose’s friend, uncertain about the stranger in her garden. The war that in Rwanda had ignited like a nuclear explosion and been extinguished by the victory of the RPF had continued as a never-ending smolder in Burundi.
The soldier’s pace quickened. He threw his arms in the air and called out, but the wind swept his words away. He took a few more steps and then broke into a run. Jean Patrick heard his own name shouted from the soldier’s lips. He took in the square jaw, the familiar sprinting stride he had spent so much energy chasing. He saw that after so much time spent shutting hope out, he could open his heart and let it hit him full force. He threw down his hoe, picked up his cane, and stepped out into the road.
Jean Patrick and Roger stood in the sunlight and held on to each other, swaying in silence, only the familiar notes of their breathing between them. The words to bring them back across the chasm of so much death had not yet been invented.
“You’re alive! I knew it,” Jean Patrick finally whispered. He stepped back and studied Roger’s face. War had carved a geologic epoch into his skin.
“Me, I also knew you were alive, and I knew that if I did not find you in Rwanda, I would find you here. Still, I can’t believe I am touching you again, flesh and blood.” Roger laid his hands on Jean Patrick’s shoulders. “Everyone else is gone.”
Jean Patrick fought off collapse. In his heart, he had known it. If any of them had been alive, they would have found a way to contact Auntie Spéciose. But until Roger’s words extinguished it, he had nurtured a tiny flicker of belief. “Come to the house. Auntie has gone to the market, and Uncle Damien is at work.” He wiped dirt and sweat from his face and smiled weakly. “He’s a teacher, like Papa.”
“Yes, I remember. He told me when I came—before.” The words that divided Rwandan time in two: before and after. After, only a month’s worth of days.
Jean Patrick said, “When I first saw Auntie from a distance, my heart flew. She resembles Mama so much I thought it was her. It was only when I was nearly face-to-face that I saw I had been mistaken.” One hand on Roger’s shoulder, one hand on his cane, Jean Patrick started toward the house.
“Aye! What happened to you?” Squatting in the dirt, Roger examined the purplish, swollen skin, the jagged scar between ankle and calf. “Did you know the person who cut you? I promise he will face justice, if he is still ali
ve.”
Justice? What was that? “You have found him, my brother. I did it to myself, jumping over a wall.” He took off the felt hat Uncle Damien had given him and ran his fingers across the pink, hairless line above his ear. “This gunshot wound I did not inflict on myself.”
“Eh?” Roger stood. “A bullet? Mana yanjye!”
“Yego. It’s a long story, but we have plenty of time. Come and take something to drink, some nourishment. Wherever you came from, it is a hard journey here.”
THEY SAT AT the tiny table carved by Damien’s hand and drank orange Fanta. Jean Patrick sliced mangoes and papayas, peeled a cucumber and a tomato and sprinkled them with thick granules of salt. “I am ready to hear, if you are ready to tell.”
Roger wiped his fingers on his pants. “I am ready.”
“You went there?”
“Yes.”
“And you are certain?”
“Yes. I talked to Mukabera. She’s the only Hutu neighbor who didn’t run to Zaire with the Interahamwe. My company would have killed her, too, if I hadn’t stopped them. After all we witnessed, there were many angry boys.” Roger looked around. “Is there beer?”
“Spéciose will bring it from the market.”
“I can’t be sure about Mama, Jacqueline, and the girls,” Roger said. “Uncle told Mukabera he was taking them to the church at Ntura. After the killers did their work there, the Interahamwe bolted the doors and set fire to the building. There were few survivors. I posted the names on all the bulletin boards at the camps, and I studied every picture pinned up on them. I have had no word of them. I do not think they walk among the living.”
“And the rest of the family—they were at home?”
Roger placed his hand over Jean Patrick’s. It was rough and callused, as Uncle’s had been. “They were. Mukabera said Uncle died fighting. She found him with an ax still in his hand. She left him with it; it was the one token of respect she could pay. The killers must have left it there for the same reason, but surely it was not long before someone else carried it off.” A fly landed on the table, and Roger flicked it away. “They even killed your little dog. Mukabera said Pili’s body was resting on Zachary’s chest.”
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