A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

by Gil Courtemanche

  “Take some pictures, Monsieur Lamarre. Don’t be shy. They’ll like it. Every time someone takes pictures or movies of them, a little hope of help to come is born. Anyway, they’ll die before they realize that no capital city in the world cares about them.”

  The young diplomat was sweating more than his clothes could take. He had an irresistible urge to vomit, which, mortified, he did in full view of a flock of laughing children as soon as he emerged from Pavilion B. His visit to the morgue, whose air-conditioning system was not working, did nothing to calm his gut. It was not so much the smell of death issuing from the dozen bodies there, as the odour of life beginning to rot. He asked Valcourt to take the pictures for him and left to vomit again.

  Brother Cardinal was reposing on a gurney completely naked. A bullet had pierced his forehead and two others had lodged near his heart. The killers, who knew how to shoot, had murdered him calmly, without wasting their ammunition. The man bore no other sign of violence. Petty thieves or discontented workers were supposed to have killed him. Valcourt took three pictures as Lamarre had asked: one for the embassy, one for the Rwandan police and another for the French secret service, which was what Madame the Consul, informed of Cardinal’s death on the tenth hole at the Kigali Golf Club, had ordered Lamarre to produce. The inquiry would be put in the hands of the French because the Rwandan police could not be trusted. And above all, she made it clear, if the embassy said nothing to anyone, the news might spread fastest and farthest through undesirable rumours.

  Valcourt found Madame Lamarre under the fig tree while her husband changed his clothes. Gentille was swimming with their new daughter. The diplomat’s wife seemed particularly interested in the sexual customs of Africans as she had heard them reported. Valcourt reassured her. She was in no danger, especially in her condition. But yes, White women were attractive to Black men, just as, he had been told, the reverse was true. If he himself had a Black wife, that was a matter of chance rather than a passion for the other colour. As for knowing whether these Blacks with their asses so firm and their breasts so pointed were “better” (this was the term she used) than Whites, he couldn’t say. And the prostitutes? He explained that here, if you valued life, masturbation was better. And the child?

  “Do you believe in the Immaculate Conception?”

  Valcourt called justin, the pool attendant, who wore his young Apollo anatomy and his glistening skin gloriously, the way others wear their clothes. This young lady, Valcourt told him, in her delicate condition was in need of special attention, not only company, for her husband was working long hours, but also physical relaxation, perhaps even some vigorous massages of which justin had the secret, he’d heard. Justin declared himself at Madame’s service and Madame felt a great shiver sweep through her. She hated the enormous belly separating her from the supple, muscular body parading before her. A river of perspiration wet her thighs. Her already heavy breasts quivered, tingled and hardened till they hurt. Valcourt took his leave. He had agreed to meet Lamarre in the hotel lobby. They were going to François Cardinal’s village.

  Justin, whose stiffened penis was almost popping through his tiny bathing suit, was already tasting his vengeance. One day, a little drunk with sunshine and beer, he had confided in Valcourt. Every time he fucked a White—and there were so many of them walking around with their uncertain bodies and their hidden lusts, their fascination with the barbarous, powerful negro—every time, he was getting even for being a pool attendant and mere lust object for the boss ladies. He was getting even, too, for being Black. He behaved with the White women the way they hoped and dreamed he would, like a brutish animal, as if he were not really human. They screamed like animals, reduced to his level at last, and begged for more, as if they wanted him to humiliate them even further, turn them into pure unsated flesh, emptied of all mind and all dignity. And it was then, when they were begging for a second humiliation, that real vengeance came. He said no. They could try all they liked, come to his shack at the pool, pester him at his room, promise him money or visas for all the havens of the West, he would turn them down. Around his pool they would lie on their plastic deckchairs, frustrated, jumpy, unsatisfied and bad-tempered because for a few minutes they had known the power of a dark force that now, always smiling, carried on with his humble pool attendant’s work, respectfully attending them. Compared to this country’s violence, justin’s vengeance was rather gentle, although Valcourt was impressed by its refinement and psychological cruelty. He never lost an opportunity to contribute to the young man’s war effort. However, justin had concealed the real measure of his hatred. He had AIDS. When worried ladies demanded that he put on a condom, he would brandish a forged HIV negative certificate.

  Justin did massage her—for he did know something about massage—after sitting her down on a small stool because it was unwise, in her condition, for her to lie on her stomach on the massage table. He began with her neck, shoulders and shoulder blades, on which he worked effectively and conscientiously, with each movement of his fingers pushing aside the shoulder straps of her voluminous dress and ample bra, which slipped down to her waist. She rose several centimetres and let her clothes fall to the floor. The man pressed against her back and just above her nape she felt an enormous penis thrusting into her hair. Two big hands were kneading her breasts so vigorously they began to squirt milk. She wanted to speak but couldn’t, except to say, “Take me,” in a hoarse, animal voice that was shaped also by sharp, shooting pains from inside her sweat-bathed belly. Justin picked her up by the armpits, lifted her and pushed her to the wall, against which she leaned with her hands and head. With a single brusque, violent movement he entered her the back way. Never had anyone touched or caressed this part of her body, even by accident. Muscles exploded, cried out. Her belly struck the wall. The greater the pain or the pleasure, for they were one and the same, the faster and more often she repeated, “Deeper, deeper.” After long minutes when she expected to faint a hundred times over, she screamed as one does only before death, paralyzing the young man, who had never heard such a rending cry. He sat her on the little stool. She was seized with cramps, daggers driving through her belly. A stream of viscous fluid started to flow from her vagina and the contractions began. Marie-Ange gave birth in the shack, attended by a Médecins Sans Frontières doctor who came every day to do his hundred lengths in the pool. He cut the umbilical cord with a Swiss Army knife that a major benefactress of the Red Cross had left with justin to remember her by.

  When Jean Lamarre returned from Mugina with Valcourt around eleven that night, he was a father and cuckold, both for the rest of his days. But the worst was not having even settled in his first posting abroad before fearing he’d be recalled to Ottawa and confined to consular information or the Mongolia section before he could enjoy his first villa, his first gardener, or his first cook, which are today—short of being able to influence the course of history—the foremost pleasure for a diplomat representing a country like Canada in Rwanda.

  François Cardinal had not been murdered by ordinary petty thieves, or by Tutsi rebels—another version suggested to him by Lisette, the consul, when Lamarre went to see her on the way back to the hotel. Along with Valcourt he had tried to reason with her but she was not in the mood to listen to anyone bringing her disagreeable facts. Her golf tournament had been a disaster. She had been humiliated even by the consul of Tanzania and a secretary at the embassy in Kenya. It was really not the time to bring up the possibility of a diplomatic incident, or worse, a review of the long-standing friendship between Canada and Rwanda. In any event, the inquiry had been entrusted to the special services of the presidency, meaning the French secret service, competent people who would be sure to get at the truth. For the moment, if anyone in Canada asked who had killed Brother Cardinal, the authorities would reply, “Thieves or rebels.”

  By telephone, Valcourt told a friend in Canadian television that they were very strange thieves because they had left over 150,000 Rwandan francs on the mantel-
piece, the pay that the brother was going to distribute to the members of the egg producers’ co-operative that he ran. As for the Tutsi rebel hypothesis, that was completely hare-brained. The brother was taking in Tutsi refugees fleeing from the North (the president’s region), where they were terrorized by massacres. No, Cardinal had been killed by soldiers, in broad daylight, because his co-operative was a threat to the near-monopoly of a nephew of the president over the egg trade in the capital, or because he was taking in Tutsis, or both. Valcourt knew why he had been killed, but it was not the stuff of news bulletins. Cardinal was working for the dignity of men, for sharing of the land’s riches, for tolerance. In the eyes of the law governing this country, these were three offences deserving of the death penalty.

  Canadian television simply announced the brother’s death, and noted that while the murder was difficult to explain it had probably been committed by thieves. Thus is life recounted, compressed into capsules and composed by people far away, ignorant but without ill will, who, sitting at their computers, do not differentiate between a settling of accounts among bikers and a political assassination in Rwanda. A dead man is a dead man.

  Since the coming of Gentille, in the manner of all historical watersheds, Valcourt had passed in a matter of seconds from a world of doom and gloom to a universe of beauty without the slightest trouble, as if he had learned to navigate among all the countries of man. He took no pride in it, only felt that he was luckier than others.

  In his notebook he wrote, “I’m emerging from another horror. It’s not this death that’s horrible but the deceit constructed around it, a way of officially denying Cardinal. This man is a hero, and his country is going to treat him purely as a wretched victim of a barbarous, anonymous act. And I come in here where Gentille is sleeping with Cyprien’s daughter. I’ll lie down beside her in a few minutes. She’ll wake up, I know. And we’ll make love, quietly so as not to wake the little girl. And after, I’ll sleep, like all happy men. But in my sleep there’ll be as many nightmares as ecstasies.” And that night, for the second time in his life, he made love with Gentille.

  The next morning Lamarre brought a long face and a dragging step to the breakfast buffet. It was not being cuckolded that was getting him down; he didn’t know about that yet. Or his new fatherhood, which he was quite indifferent to, except for thinking its timing pretty bad. He’d never wanted to be a father and couldn’t understand how, in spite of all the precautions they’d taken, Marie-Ange had got pregnant. Probably a forgotten pill. Women are so absent-minded.

  A patient and methodical civil servant, Jean Lamarre was at thirty following a precise, realistic career plan, because his modest ambition more or less matched his capacity to rise through the ranks. A few years in Africa in a country that caused no problems, like Rwanda. Return to Ottawa as section head. Then consul in a small Asiatic country (he loved Chinese food) and finally cultural attaché in Paris, having to choose among all those invitations to cocktail parties, book launches, exhibition openings and first nights.

  But sitting across from Valcourt, who was talking happily about his new daughter while swilling a big Primus and putting away three fried eggs with bacon and sausage as if he hadn’t eaten for days, Lamarre knew his still non-existent career was hanging by a thread. Lisette, the skilled tactician, pleading her absence and lack of knowledge of the case, had wakened him at six in the morning to place a great responsibility in his hands, an indication of her confidence in him: he was to write the report on Brother Cardinal’s death. The minister, who had heard worrisome rumours about the identity of the murderers and hoped they were untrue, was waiting for his report.

  Lamarre sat staring at the scrambled eggs congealed on his plate, saying nothing. He pushed a nervous fork around in the yellow mash.

  “You see, I have to write the report on Brother Cardinal’s death. And I’d like to know …”

  “No, you wouldn’t really like to know that Cardinal was fighting with what little he had against great injustices. You don’t want to know, and even less write, that members of the president’s entourage probably ordered his death. You don’t want to know, you want to get out of this looking good. I understand and I feel for you. But you won’t get away with it. The dead we hide away turn into ghosts and come back to haunt us. You’re screwed. Another victim of this shitty country. If you tell the truth, your career’s down the drain. If you back the version the minister wants so his chummy relations with Rwanda can carry on as before, I’ll get after you. All we both know will be published one of these days in a Canadian or Belgian or French publication. I swear it. I’ll be after you. I’ll be a thorn in your side. You’ll be my enemy number one. About the murderers I can’t do anything, I have no weapons, I’m hopeless on that score, but little accomplices like you, I can fight with words. Monsieur Lamarre, you’re an enemy I can handle.”

  Lamarre pleaded. He didn’t deserve to be harassed. Valcourt, full now, shook his head as he sipped a strong espresso. He understood Lamarre’s distress. He was even sorry for him. Choosing between the rigours of truth and the shame of mendacity is not easy. He was sorry to have to threaten him but could not do otherwise. The young diplomat had not touched his scrambled eggs. When he got up to go to his room and write his report, he walked with heavy steps and his back bowed as though he had aged thirty years in two days.

  The report he wrote conformed to the preliminary conclusions drawn by the French secret service: Brother François Cardinal had been murdered by thieves who were perhaps Tutsi rebels. The embassy and also the Department of External Affairs endorsed this version, which was circulated throughout Canada. Valcourt succeeded in having an article about it published in Belgium. This did nothing to a fect Lamarre’s career. Three days after their conversation, Lamarre left the hotel for his villa, his houseboy, his cook and his gardener.

  Even emptied of her baby, Marie-Ange definitely did not attract him any more, which was not of too much concern to her, for she was now trying out the gardener, thinking all the while of justin. The young couple were not seen again in diplomatic circles or restaurants. Lamarre watched kung fu videos and his wife fucked the staff, striving to attain the ecstasy and abandon to which justin had transported her. She had pursued the young man, who rejected her scornfully every time.

  Five weeks after the couple’s arrival in Rwanda, she was taken to the Belgian physician who had been following her since the childbirth. She was HIV positive. She began to scream. When she stopped screaming, after clawing the doctor in the face, she hissed, “I’ll kill him!” She did nothing of the kind, of course. Justin kept on transferring his country’s death to White women until his own death. Lamarre, with an eye still on his career, and perhaps compassionately, organized Marie-Ange’s return to Canada mere days after the inevitable announcement. Nadine, she who was conceived in a parking lot and ejected in a tiny shack, he kept with him. He became a father by obligation, and then for pleasure. Through the child, who became the only object of his attention, he discovered a side of life that he had totally denied himself: silly, spontaneous laughter, funny faces, nursery rhymes, anxiety over the first fever when a child turns as red as a glowing ember. To redeem himself in his own eyes, he wrote a second report, more hypothetical than the first, in which he spoke of rumours going round in Cardinal’s village that pointed at soldiers or presidential henchmen as the killers. He sent this report directly to the minister’s office, saying nothing to his superior, who had sent a fax praising the work of her French colleagues over this distressing incident and was patting herself on the back for having closed the case so quickly, with good relations between the countries involved kept intact. Lamarre was no longer interested in playing politics or planning a career. He would be satisfied to be a good father, a dull one perhaps but a present and respectful one. And when he lay on the hard, damp grass in front of his little villa above the Kigali Night and gazed at the stars, this uncontemplative man felt light as he had never done before, certain of having found an o
ccupation that was right for him, and he kissed his sleeping daughter and went to bed with a modicum of self-esteem.

  When Valcourt learned of Marie-Ange’s illness and departure, he realized how little he still understood about this country he had thought he could explain to people, or about the contagion at work here. Justin, the pool boy, had infected Marie-Ange. And it was he, Valcourt, who had thrust her into justin’s arms. Around the pool, sex was just a game. As if unconsciously he had led Marie-Ange to sex with justin, who admitted without shame or remorse that he was giving White women back an illness that had been inflicted on Black men. Valcourt didn’t spend even a second trying to convince the young man of his error and idiocy. He simply told him that if he saw him lure another woman to his shack he would tell the whole truth to the hotel manager who, with all his contacts in the government, would certainly succeed in having him clapped in prison.

  He told the entire story to Gentille, who was less shocked than he feared she would be. She reproached him only (was it really a reproach?) for having hastened a meeting that would have happened anyway, since this woman was “a gift woman,” to use her expression. Feeling responsible nevertheless, he had to make his thinking clear to her.

  “You see, each country has a colour, a smell, and also a contagious sickness. In my country the sickness is complacency. In France it’s arrogance, and in the United States it’s ignorance.”