Valcourt’s eyes roamed over every centimetre of the big, now desolate garden. Well, he was home, he said to himself. He looked around at his empty house like a widower coming home alone after burying his wife. The pain and sadness were numbed. He felt neither anger nor bitterness. Not even despair. Worse, inside himself, dig as he might, he could find only a void. An absolute void. Gentille had given meaning to this landscape. Now it was his turn to try and give it one.
Zozo was looking at him and it was not a dream or a mirage. Only his lips were smiling. His huge black eyes were looking at Valcourt with the desolate sadness of beaten dogs. Why, why had Valcourt come back? To retrace Gentille’s steps from the moment a sergeant of the presidential guard had separated her from him.
“Monsieur Bernard, I don’t know anything. I only know she’s dead.”
Valcourt knew that already, he had never been under any illusions. But he explained that he couldn’t go back to Canada until he’d found out exactly how she died.
He inquired after friends. He knew the replies but did it out of respect for their memory. He who was alive had to hear each of their names and the word “dead” after it. He would say a name and Zozo would reply “dead.” This way they were commemorating the funerals of some thirty people, including all of Madame Agathe’s girls. Victor?
“Victor,” said Zozo, laughing, “would be pleased to receive customers at his restaurant.”
Victor hugged Valcourt, holding him for many seconds on his broad chest, as though Valcourt were the survivor and not himself. Then he put his two hands on his friend’s shoulders and squeezed them almost roughly.
“You’re a man, Valcourt. There aren’t many who’d have the courage to come back and revisit the darkest moments of their life.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she? D’you know how? D’you know who? ”
“Yes, she’s dead, Émérita’s mother told me, but I don’t know how.”
“And the sergeant? ”
“I don’t know. Come and eat. You’ll forgive me, I don’t have fish or beer. But I have eggs, beans, tomatoes and South African champagne.”
Victor recounted his life-saving operations the way one recounts camping adventures or fishing trips. He laughed about each of the problems he’d overcome and made fun of his fears. He protested vigorously when Valcourt praised his courage. He’d only done what any man with a little money would have done in his place. To Zozo, who also expressed bountiful admiration, he replied soberly that he was not a hero, he was a Christian.
“Will you help me find out what happened to Gentille? ” Valcourt asked. Victor nodded, turning away his eyes.
With a bottle of champagne in his hand, Valcourt went up to room 312. The bed was no longer there. He lay down on the balcony and listened to the silence, which was ruffled just barely once in a while by the barkings of dogs. No shouting, no laughing, no human sound except occasionally a motor. A warm wind and a shower enveloped the city. The birds lowered their heads and wrapped their wings closer. Valcourt huddled against the wall.
In the morning he went up to Rundo, which was already being called the town of widows and orphans. Out of two hundred men, around fifty had survived, most of whom had fled to Zaïre because killers had made all those widows and orphans. Six hundred. The Hutu and Tutsi widows had got together and decided to divide up the homeless children. Marie had taken in three, two of whom were boys she showed to Valcourt. Their father, a neighbour and good friend, had killed her husband. “They were close friends with my eldest … and children aren’t responsible for our crimes.” He gave her a little money. She asked him to find help to rebuild the school. Like Victor and Zozo, she told him that Gentille was dead, but she didn’t know where or how. He left to go back to Kigali.
He found a more or less intact mattress and a few bedclothes in the litter scattered through the abandoned hotel and took them out under the fig tree. Lying around on the floor in his old room were some clothes that had been his. He picked them up and discovered Essais by Camus, the other book which, along with the Éluard, had been his entire library. The first pages of this La Pléiade edition had been torn out, probably because the fine paper made good toilet paper. He smiled at the thought. The book now began at page 49: “I no longer wish to be happy now, just to be aware.”
Zozo arrived while he was reading. He was bringing a small bowl of spicy soup, a roast chicken and two bottles of champagne. He told Valcourt how his whole family had died. He knew each one’s wounds and the names of all the killers. A cousin had survived. He had helped her and they were going to be married in his native parish of Nyamata. Another small miracle, said Zozo: he, Béatrice (his future wife), Victor and several others had been saved by Hutus. Valcourt pictured the roof of the church pierced by a thousand killer stars.
“I’ll stay till your wedding.”
“You mustn’t … Victor asked me to give you this. Someone turned it over to him the other day, just after you left.”
It was a school workbook, like the ones Valcourt used to have in elementary school nearly fifty years before. A blue cover, fifty pages or so lightly lined in blue and with a pink vertical line indicating the margin. On the last three lines of page one, a title: “The Story of Gentille After Her Wedding.” The words lined up obediently, like fine lacework made of tall loops and steady, round curves. Valcourt recognized this writing. It was his mother’s and his four sisters’, the airy, fragile hand that Québécois nuns had taught and that had been learned by all the young Rwandan girls who, like Gentille, had gone to Butare’s Social Service School. He could imagine the sparkling red, green or blue stars and the pink and blond cherubs that the sisters a fixed to recognize the quality of the work. To write as gracefully as that, one had to do it patiently, with one’s head slightly bent, in a kind of meditational state before the words one was writing.
Chapter Thirteen
April 10
I do not know who I am writing to, but I know why. Yesterday I married a man whom I love as I never thought it possible to love. Today I am shut up in a little room in Sergeant Modeste’s house. I am writing to tell of the death (for I am going to die) of an ordinary young woman. I do not have political ideas, I do not belong to any party. I have no enemies that I know of, except perhaps the many men I have said no to. I have the long body of a Tutsi and the determination of a Hutu. I look at myself and know I’m a good mixture. And if all the bloods mixing in my veins have not made sicknesses for me, maybe it’s because they can get along together. I am not anyone’s enemy. I am Gentille, daughter of Jean-Damascène, a generous, upright man. I am the wife of Bernard Valcourt, who taught me love while teaching me the words of love, and I am the adoptive mother of Émérita. I shall never see my husband again, I know. To su port me in what is to come, what I have left is my daughter’s breathing as she sleeps in my arms, and words I never stop reading, and transcribe here the better to explain.
I am daughter of a lake
Which has not dimmed
… At absurd rapes I laugh
I am still in flower
April 11
Yesterday Modeste came after his family was asleep. His wife is jealous. He wanted to protect me, he said. A Tutsi woman in his section had been raped by ten of his soldiers. Then they did even worse. Her anus was perforated with a big stick, her nipples were cut off. Modeste doesn’t want that to happen to me, that’s why he’s keeping me here although his wife is jealous and is making trouble for him. But to thank him I could be nice, I could be gentille . He doesn’t even know that’s my name. I don’t want to be raped, I don’t want to be hurt. I opened my legs. He didn’t even want me to undress. He entered me without a word and did his business. I know he’ll come back tomorrow and I’ll open my legs again without protesting so he won’t beat me, so I can stay here. Because I’m hidden here.
April 12
He came back before the end of the morning with more horror stories. He’s not bad-looking, he has a fine body. He always wants t
o have me right away. It will be another rape, I know, but why is there never anything but humiliation and submission? I wanted to caress him the way Bernard taught me to, not to caress him, but to close my eyes and bring back memories with the tips of my fingers. He treated me like a whore and didn’t even look at me although I was all naked. Someone, someday, reading these lines, if that ever happen, will surely never understand why a woman being raped would rather get pleasure from it. I don’t have a choice. Every time he appears, I know. I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to defend myself. I don’t want him to be rough with me and tear me. But I know he’s going to plant his penis in me. Since I’m going to die, I’d rather my rapist remind me of my husband and give me pleasure. I know it’s ridiculous. This time he was in less of a hurry and pawed my breasts and my buttocks. Not a single memory came back. I’m ashamed not to want to resist, but I still want to live.
April 13
His wife came. She’s even thinner than I am, you’d think she was a Tutsi. She’s very jealous. I want to steal her husband, she told me, and she won’t let me do it. Her two brothers came with her. They hurt me. When they had finished with me I was bleeding from everywhere. Émérita was screaming. Modeste came in the night to have me. He saw the blood and left without saying anything. One rape less. He must have thought I had my period.
April 14
Bernard, why did you have me discover what a mysterious, secret garden the body is, a garden for exploring endlessly without ever finding the beginning or the end? Why did you teach me desire, and also the ecstasy of creating the other’s climax? A few days ago I was a thousand points of pleasure, a thousand musical notes transformed into a hymn by your fingers, your lips, your tongue. Today I’m only two dirty, stinking little holes they keep trying to make bigger. For them I do not have eyes, or breasts, or thighs. I do not possess cheeks or ears. And I am certain they do not even feel pleasure. They empty themselves, relieve themselves the way one urinates or d … (I can’t write that word), sweating because one has held it in too long. Most of all, why did you teach me pure pleasure, the kind that takes us to a world owing nothing to love or desire, a world of pure chemistry, cells dilating and exploding, a universe of sharp smells, skins rubbing, hair matting with sweat, nipples hardening, quivering, the blood boils so hard. Bernard, to you I’ll admit, I like sex, or “fucking” as you say when you’re playing the cold, callous male. Every time the door opens and Modeste comes in, he mounts me like I’m a bale of hay. I’m not human any more. I have no name and even less soul. I’m a thing, not even a dog that gets stroked or a goat that gets protected and then eaten with gusto. I’m a vagina. I’m a hole. Éluard, dear Éluard, I’m glad I have you so I know I’m not alone and so I can say what I’m living through.
April 15
Modeste asked me why all Tutsis thought they were superior to Hutus and why they wanted to eliminate them from the earth. No one believes I’m a Hutu. I don’t know what to reply to these stupid questions. He told me he didn’t like killing but had no choice. Either he killed the enemies and their friends or he’d be killed. It’s as simple as that in his mind. He’s afraid of dying, so he kills, he kills in order to live. Today he did a lot of killing. He seems pleased with his work. He did a raid on Holy Family Church with some militiamen. Although the priests protested, they killed around thirty cockroaches. That’s what he calls them. He never says “Tutsis.” He asked me if I was still bleeding and I told him yes. He doesn’t want a bleeding hole. I felt like telling him I had breasts, hands and a mouth that could give him as much pleasure as my bleeding little hole. I didn’t. But I know I will. I have to get some pleasure out of dying. Later his wife came. She’s not so bad. The child can’t live here, she told me. Her sister, who is sterile and unhappy, will look after Émérita. Émérita left, but first she kissed me on the cheek. I touch my cheek to feel her with me still. I have no husband any more. I have no child any more.
Nothing have we sown that is not ravaged
April 16
Sunday. That means I’ve been married a week. They don’t kill on Sundays, it seems. The house was full of relatives and friends talking and having fun. I could hear the neighbours laughing and calling to each other from house to house. Modeste came, looking a bit ashamed. His wife thinks he’s in love with me and he has to prove to her he’s not, then as well there are militiamen who say he’s protecting a Tutsi hooker and keeping her for himself. He has to prove he’s not to them too. He opened the door and they all came in, his wife first, and she spat in my face. They didn’t even ask me to undress. They know I’m beautiful but they’re not interested in that. They don’t want to look, they want to get inside. The first was enormous and completely drunk. He picked me up with one arm and laid me on the little table so my legs dangled and he could stay standing, without ever leaning on me. “They’re dirty, the Tutsis, they have to be washed.” And he stuck his beer bottle in my vagina. That caused a big burst of laughter. I stopped counting at ten. I watched Modeste watching. None of them pulled down their pants, nobody touched me, but all of them looked at me while they banged away and forced and ejaculated. Modeste had his turn last. He couldn’t get it up. Everyone laughed at him. I’m tired and now I’m sure I’m going to die.
April 17
Modeste came with a cup of coffee and a piece of bread. He said he was sorry but I had to understand. If he hadn’t given me, worse things could have happened to me. He saved my life and he wants me to be grateful. Worse things? Yes, for example, having my breasts cut off with a machete, my forehead slashed, my hands split between the fingers, and then being left, as they’ve done with all the others. As he has done with all the others, all the enemies. I’m alive and he wanted me to say thank you. In a few days all the Tutsis will be dead. Then I told him I was even deader than the corpses, I could smell my stinking death coming from my guts through all my pores. I think I raised my voice and he hit me.
Sweet future, I am this pierced eye
This open belly and these nerves in tatters
I who am the object of worms and ravens
April 18
I am in earth instead of on earth Bernard, I’m speaking to you and I see you listening. I know you don’t hold it against me that I’ve looked for pleasure in my pain. But I haven’t been able to guide them to the paths I discovered with you. They don’t hear me. I don’t speak their language. I don’t live on the same planet. I know they’ll kill me when I get to stink of all the smells of all their foul penises. If I can’t get any pleasure from this slow walk toward death, I might as well run out into the sun and die from one machete slash. In a few minutes I’m going to leave this house with this workbook and Éluard, freer than I ever thought I’d be, because now, Bernard, I’m already dead.
We shall not grow old together
This is the day
Too much: time is overfull
My love so light now has the weight of torture
Gentille left the wretched little room she had been kept in and found the house empty.
After walking for several minutes in the Sodoma district where Modeste lived, she saw a roadblock guarded by some laughing militiamen. She no longer had enough strength to walk. She sat in the middle of the dirt road then lay down, pulling up her dress and spreading her legs, preparing to receive the last indignity. This is where she would die. But Gentille no longer had the beauty that had driven men wild with desire ten days earlier. She was only a mass of bruises and swellings now. The two militiamen who came to look reacted with distaste. The younger, who could not have been more than sixteen, bent down and tore her shirt-dress, then ripped off her bra. Only her breasts had been spared. They stood up, pointed and firm, like an accusation and a contradiction. The boy gave two quick strokes with his machete and Gentille’s breasts opened like red pomegranates. The militiamen dragged the young woman to the side of the road and left her there.
Émérita’s mother, who had not ceased operating her bordello a few metres away, heard h
er moaning in the long grass and brought her inside to one of the little green-stuccoed rooms. In another room, the old battle-axe was hiding Doctor Jean-Marie who, with respect and affection, was attending to all the girls in the district. He was a good Tutsi. With a few dressings still left to him and ordinary thread, he tried to repair the damage, but he was giving Gentille only a short time to live. She was shivering with fever and racked by a terrible cough and he had nothing left but aspirins. Émérita’s mother read Valcourt’s name on the flyleaf of the book of works by Paul Éluard. She tore out the leaf, put it in an envelope and sent one of the young militiamen at the roadblock to find Victor, Valcourt’s friend. Gentille and Victor had a long conversation and Gentille gave Victor the blue workbook. Victor knelt and prayed for a long time at her bedside, then left and went back to the Mille-Collines. Gentille was dead.
Chapter Fourteen
Later that evening, Valcourt went down to Victor’s with Zozo. Beer had arrived from Uganda, and beef. The exiles of 1963 and 1972, or their children, were coming back in droves. The richest were arriving aboard trucks filled with produce and setting themselves up in abandoned shops, not worrying about the possible return of their owners. The peasants, traditional herders, were returning with their herds which were ravaging the few fields that had not been harvested. All these people spoke English and behaved as if they’d never left the country, which was now theirs again. There was room. The BBC was saying that nearly two million Hutus had fled to Zaïre before the lightning-fast advance of the Tutsi troops, five hundred thousand to Tanzania, and the number of dead was estimated at nearly a million. Half the inhabitants of the country had vanished, either dead or in flight. Two months to empty a country.
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali Page 21