I stood at the back door straining my eyes and ears and tried to understand what it was. I was scared that a soldier might be stealing our eggs. My chest grew tight with worry.
The sound came again. Creak. I saw nothing. In the dark the yard existed only in a palette of grey. Creak, came the sound. Creak.
I held my breath and wrapped my arms around myself to stave off the cold and fear. Squinting harder, I saw a flash of colour on the ground – shiny and red – Fabrice's shoes!
I breathed out and relaxed my arms.
Fabrice must be tending the chickens, I told myself, feeling foolish that I'd thought it was something more. I clapped for Romeo, who dashed in, and banged the backdoor shut.
17
I woke the next morning, not to the sound of the cockerel, but to Fabrice clattering pans in the kitchen. I looked at my watch: it was quarter to seven. I had overslept. I hadn't heard Joseph whistling through the garden, or his boots slapping against his calves. The mysterious events of the previous night came back to me. Why had Fabrice been in the chicken coop at such a late hour?
I went to feed Romeo, who was sniffing round the back door, keen to get out. I opened it, and out he ran.
In the kitchen I ate my two small green bananas and two slices of toast, which tasted of charcoal and warm butter. Then I took my bath, dressed and joined Mother at the table, even though I'd already eaten. Fabrice brought her sausages and tomatoes.
“You've forgotten the egg,” said Mother.
“Sawree, Madame. No eggs today. The chickens no lay.”
I understood then that Fabrice had been checking on the chickens because something was wrong with them. I thought it very brave and kind of him to come away from home in the dark, with the threat of soldiers all around, just to check on the chickens so that Mother might have eggs for breakfast.
“Can I have money for eggs from market?” he asked. I could hear Romeo yapping in the yard.
Mother was looking for her purse when Sebazungu came into the living room without knocking. Fabrice returned to the kitchen.
“Sebazungu, what is it?” asked Mother sharply.
“Madame, it is no good,” he said. “The chickens, they are dead.”
“What?” Mother said, as if she didn't believe him.
“Come, Madame, you'll see.”
Mother, Sebazungu and I went out to the coop. The chickens, headless and mangled, were sprawled about the place. Romeo was gnawing on one. The jackals must have killed them. There was something oddly compelling about the sight: it gave me the same feeling as when the butterflies had died – thrill and regret.
“The coop, it wasn't closed properly,” said Sebazungu, showing Mother the lock. “It was not forced.”
I realized immediately that Fabrice must have failed to close it properly in the dark. I felt bad for him. Mother stood quietly for a moment, looking at the dead chickens, then she said to me, “Arthur, get Fabrice.”
I didn't want Fabrice to see the dead chickens he'd been caring for, but Mother gave me one of her looks that I knew meant “hurry up”, so I went and got him from the kitchen.
“Eh, Madame,” said Fabrice when he saw the chickens. “So sawree.”
“Fabrice” – Mother was using the voice she used to talk to me when she was disappointed at something I'd done – “how could you tell me the chickens hadn't laid, but not tell me the chickens were all dead?”
“I'm sawree.”
“Fabrice, tell me what happened.”
Fabrice said nothing.
“You didn't check the coop this morning, did you? You didn't know the chickens were dead.”
“No, Madame.”
“Why not?”
Again, Fabrice said nothing.
After a while, when nobody had said anything and everyone was staring at the chickens, Mother began nodding her head. The expression of clarity on her face told me she'd found the answer to her question.
“You knew there were no eggs to be collected.”
Fabrice looked at his shiny red shoes.
“You took the eggs and left the coop open, didn't you?”
Mother nodded some more, as if it all made sense – which it might have done to her, but it didn't to me. I didn't understand why she was accusing Fabrice of stealing the eggs. Didn't she know that he had been here in the night looking after the chickens? Words welled inside me – it felt as if they might burst out like hatching chicks.
“You needed money. Did you take the eggs to feed your family or to sell?”
Fabrice continued to say nothing. It was as though he'd forgotten how to speak. I wondered if he too was feeling the pain of words welling inside him.
“Get Joseph,” said Mother to Sebazungu.
I looked at my watch: it was after eight o'clock. Joseph would be at home, sleeping.
“And Fabrice – tidy up this mess.”
Fabrice had almost finished clearing the dead chickens by the time Sebazungu arrived with Joseph in the pickup.
“Joseph, what happened here?” asked Mother.
Poor Joseph looked as if the last thing in the world he wanted to do was say what had happened – but, not being one to disobey, he began to tell the story. Sebazungu translated for Mother. I wasn't sure if Mother trusted Sebazungu to translate any longer, but she had no choice.
“He says, Fabrice came in the night to take the eggs.”
I didn't want to believe that Fabrice had stolen the eggs, but Sebazungu's translation was correct. I understood.
“He says Fabrice needed the money.”
Fabrice held his head low like one of the pecking hens; Sebazungu stood with his chest out like our rooster used to do.
“He says something disturbed Fabrice. He didn't lock the coop.”
I was the disturbance: I had let out Romeo and banged the door. I was responsible for the death of the chickens and Fabrice being in trouble. That felt terrible.
“Very well,” said Mother. “Everyone return to work, and I will decide what to do.”
Mother spent the morning weeding, deep in thought. I sat guiltily in the yard doing the sums she had given me, with Romeo at my feet. At lunchtime she came in and went to the kitchen, where I overheard her say to Fabrice:
“I can't have a thief working in my home. You know that. I must ask you to leave immediately.”
I was stunned. Fabrice had been working on the plantation since Father was a boy. Mother couldn't ask him to leave. When she returned to the living room, I wanted to tell her that it was my fault the chickens were dead. Fabrice was simply trying to feed Beni. If Mother had given him the loan he'd asked for in the first place, then he wouldn't have had to take the eggs.
“Arthur, Fabrice has been very bad,” she said.
I wanted to say “They're only eggs” to defend Fabrice, but Mother's mind was made up.
“Eggs,” she said, “are the thin edge of the wedge.”
I had no idea what that meant – nor did I care. Mother, as far as I was concerned, had gone too far. But she was about to go further.
“I don't want you mixing with Fabrice's family any more. Do you understand? No seeing Beni. Ever again.”
Mother might as well have told me that I was never to eat again.
I went to my bedroom and slammed the door.
18
Listening to the rain clattering on the tin roof, I read in the local paper of children dying on Nyiragongo from mazuku – pockets of carbon monoxide. I didn't wash, do my lessons or play with Romeo. Mostly I sat on my bed and thought about Beni and how one day we might be able to release our butterfly at the crater. Mother would leave a tray of tinned meat and fruit outside my door and try to talk to me, but I'd eat almost nothing and refuse to listen. I wasn't interested in anything she had to say, and I certainly didn't want to see her.
Since Mother had banned me from seeing Beni, I'd developed a fever and a cough. I was exhausted, and one morning my stomach began to churn. I had to get to the bathroom but, dete
rmined not to leave my room until Mother had gone outside, I waited and waited until I heard the back door close.
I got to the toilet just in time. When I peed, hot liquid burned out of me, and my willy was covered in sores. Without thinking, I went straight outside to Mother, who was picking rhubarb.
“Arthur,” she said, and I took her by the hand and led her to the house. She didn't resist.
“Oh my,” she said when she looked down the loo. The bowl was splattered with greenish-brown poo, and the water was red with blood. I took down my shorts and showed her my sores.
“Good God!” she said. “Let's get you to bed.” She pulled up my shorts and took me to my room, where she tucked me in.
“I'll call Dr Sadler,” she said, and went to the living room.
An hour or so later Dr Sadler arrived. I was reading my book in bed, learning about “pinning” – a way of securing a dead butterfly to a board with a pin through its thorax. I thought I'd like to try it with the butterflies I'd killed, and so I made little notes in the margins.
“Martha, how are you?” he asked.
“I'm not great with sickness.” Mother let out a high-pitched laugh. “But when I saw his… well you know… I thought it must be something serious.”
“I'm sure he's fine.”
They went into the bathroom, where Dr Sadler said, “I'll take a sample.” Mother let out a noise that sounded as if she might be sick, then the toilet flushed.
“All in a day's work,” said Dr Sadler, laughing, and they came into my room. “How's the patient? Any words today?”
I put down my book.
Dr Sadler placed his hand on my forehead, breaking our silent agreement of never touching.
“Looks like he's got a fever.”
I coughed.
“And a cough. Have you had itchy feet, Arthur?”
I nodded: I'd been scratching them for days.
“And a bad stomach.”
“Plus the other thing,” said Mother, waving her hand at my crotch.
“Arthur, may I take a look?”
“I'll leave you boys to it,” Mother said, and I took down my shorts.
“Uh-huh,” said Dr Sadler, taking a look. “OK, you can pull them back up.” He scribbled something on his pad of paper and asked: “What's the book?” I showed him the front cover.
“African Butterflies. Very nice.” Dr Sadler tore the piece of paper from the pad and went to look at my butterfly farm on the window seat.
“It looks like you know a thing or two about butterflies.” He was examining my butterfly and the crimson-tip chrysalis that hung from a single silk thread. It was the shape of a conical shell I'd seen by the lake.
“Maybe you'll be a lepidopterist when you grow up,” he said. I didn't know what a lepidopterist was, but I decided I'd look it up in the dictionary once he had gone.
“You know, a hatching chrysalis reminds me of the night you were born.”
I wondered how Dr Sadler knew anything about the night I was born: Mother had been alone. He took a seat on the corner of my bed.
“It was a wet night. I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday.”
I wanted to tell him he was wrong: it had been a bright, moon-filled night – Mother had told me.
“I was sitting on my veranda watching the rain pour off the roof when someone started banging on the big gates at the bottom of my garden. It was clear even before my nightwatchman was out of bed that someone was in trouble.
“I collected my bag, got in the car and switched the headlights and the wipers on before the gates even opened. It was Simon: he was soaked to the skin. I realized immediately that your Mother must be in labour.
“‘Doctor, doctor,’ he said, and got in the car. ‘Madame in trouble. Baby in trouble.’” Dr Sadler mimicking Simon's loud voice and poor English made me laugh: for a moment I forgot I didn't believe his story.
“We drove through the night in the rain up to the plantation. The road was full of mud and the tyres kept slipping. There were times when Simon had to get out and push and I thought we'd never get there.
“In the end we made it, but that was the easy bit. Next we had to find our way in the dark from the house to the edge of the forest through the fields, which were also full of mud.
“When we got to the clearing, your Mother was in a bad way. You were stuck – neither in nor out – a bit like a half-hatched butterfly in its chrysalis. Sebazungu was with her, doing everything he could to keep her calm, but after several hours up there alone even he was beginning to panic.
“Your Mother was delirious. She kept saying ‘the elephants’ – ‘that witch’. In the end I had to give her some medicine to calm her down.”
I wanted to stop Dr Sadler and tell him about the stampeding elephants – the elephants that Mother had been trying to warn off because the nightwatchmen had been drinking and not doing their job properly. I wanted to tell him that the elephants had fled because of Mother's screaming. And remind him about the witch who lived up on the mountain. But my fever had taken all my strength, and even trying to grunt my frustration proved too much.
“We managed to build a tipoy, a sort of stretcher, out of sacks and fallen branches, and we carried your mother down the hill and through the fields in the rain. By the time we got to the house, she was barely conscious. I was sure she was unable to give birth alone, so I had no choice but to risk the car journey back to town and on to the hospital in Goma.” Dr Sadler paused, took in a deep breath and mopped his brow before going on.
“I can tell you, Arthur, I've never felt so alone as I did that night driving with your mother in the back seat, Sebazungu beside her and Simon next to me. I don't think any of us spoke the entire way. Maybe we thought if we all concentrated hard enough on getting through, the rain might disappear and your mum would be OK. But by the time we crossed the border and arrived at the hospital she was barely with us. I was convinced that neither of you would make it. But you came out fighting. Sadly your Mother took several weeks to improve.”
I wanted to tell Dr Sadler that he was mistaken. But perhaps, I thought tentatively, there had been no elephants after all. Perhaps Mother had lied or imagined everything. And where had Father been during all of this?
“So there it is, Arthur, the story of your birth. I'm sure you've heard it all before, but it's not often I get a chance to talk about it.” He got up and went to the door. “I had better give this prescription to your mum,” he said, waving the little piece of paper. He went to the lounge, where I heard him say: “Looks like a good old-fashioned case of schistosomiasis.”
“Schistosomiasis?” said Mother. It sounded like she'd been told I was going to die. I wondered if that was the case. Was my disease something deadly? Dr Sadler had forgotten to say.
19
Father came home that night and told me my disease wasn't deadly. He said that if I took my medicine, I'd be better within a week – and I was. But being better didn't stop me from being angry with Mother. When she asked me in the lounge how I was, I simply turned my back on her, took down the dictionary and searched for “lepidopterist”. The definition I found felt as familiar as reading my own name.
Lepidopterist /lɛpɪˈdɒptərɪst/ n. a person who studies or collects butterflies and moths.
Over the next few months I read it over and over in my head, forming the words with my tongue: “A person who studies or collects butterflies and moths.” That was me! I was already a lepidopterist. Dr Sadler had given me hope. One day I would leave Mother and the plantation and study butterflies wherever I chose. And maybe, I thought, closing the dictionary and putting it back on the shelf, just maybe, I'd take Beni with me.
One Friday in April, when I was imagining Beni and I living together, surrounded by brightly coloured butterflies, Romeo sneaked into my bedroom. He cowered down on his haunches next to my butterfly farm and inched his muzzle forward. I looked into the farm, and there, in the corner, lay my beloved butterfly – dead.
I don't know how much time passed before I finally managed to scoop up the butterfly, but the sun was low and the birds were quiet. Its velvet wings gently tickled my palms, and I could see its hairs and veins in minute detail. I felt a terrible sense of guilt for not having managed to release it at the crater.
When I was certain no one was watching, particularly Mother, I took my butterfly to the garden and buried it next to Monty. I placed a buddleia flower on the mound of earth and shed my final tear.
Later that evening Mother, Father and I went to the hotel. Father told me a ceasefire had been agreed and we were going to celebrate with a “slap-up meal by the pool”. I didn't feel much like celebrating. I could think only of my butterfly buried underground.
Mr Umuhoza showed us to our table, where I positioned my book so that as many people as possible might see it and think that I was a lepidopterist. At eleven years old I felt certain I could pass as a grown up. That was until Mother said: “Arthur, how many times do I have to tell you, not at the table?”
I turned to Father, but he simply shrugged and tried to catch the waiter's eye. Mother took my book and put it in her handbag, saying: “You can have it after dinner, but not before.”
We were given plates by the waiter and pointed to the patio by the pool, where the buffet table was laden with every nice thing you could imagine. Seeing that table cheered me up a little.
There was a table for bread, cheese and cold meat, and one for starters, soups and salads. There was another one for potatoes – chipped, baked, mashed and roasted – and one for other vegetables. There were five different sorts of meat and fish dishes, and a chef who was barbecuing sausages, steaks and goat brochettes. But, best of all, there were two separate tables for puddings: cheesecake, triple-chocolate cake, pineapple mousse, ice cream in ten different flavours, coconut tart and fruit salad with fruits I'd never seen before. I didn't know where to start.
The Flower Plantation Page 14