Pagan Babies

by Elmore Leonard

  Once out of the Land Cruiser Laurent straightened the jacket of his combat fatigues and removed his beret. Approaching the yard he could identify the music now coming from the rectory, the voice of Ziggy Marley and the song “One Good Spliff,” one you heard at Le Piano Bar of the Hotel Meridien in Kigali, Ziggy coming to the part, “Me and my younger sisters we take a ride.” Chantelle now stood with the priest, the tray and the Johnnie Walker on the table that was without color from standing always in the yard, the bottle sealed, Laurent noted, before he said to the priest:

  “Father, I am very sorry to tell you news from your brother. Your mother has died in hospital. Your brother said tell you the funeral is two days from now.”

  The priest wore a T-shirt that said nine inch nails—the perfect drug across his chest. He nodded twice, very slow about it.

  “I appreciate your coming, Laurent.”

  That was all he said. Now he was looking off at the church or the sky, or the hills across the way, a haze resting on the high meadows.

  Laurent remembered something else the brother had told him. “Yes, and he said tell you your sister has permission to attend the funeral from . . . someplace where she is. I couldn’t hear so good with the rain.” Laurent waited.

  This time the priest seemed engaged by his thoughts and wasn’t listening. Or, didn’t care about the sister.

  Chantelle said, “His sister, Therese, is in a convent,” and continued in her language, Kinyarwanda, telling Laurent the sister was a member of the Carmelite order of nuns who were cloistered and had taken the vow of silence; so it appeared. Therese had to be given permission to come out and attend the funeral. Laurent asked if the priest would also attend. Chantelle looked at the priest before saying she didn’t know. Laurent told her his own mother had died in hospital, and began to tell how the Interahamwe, the Hutu thugs, came into the ward with spears made of bamboo—

  Chantelle put her finger to her lips to silence him, then took the priest’s arm to give him comfort, the touch of someone close.

  Laurent heard her say, “Terry,” her voice a murmur, “what can I do?”

  Calling him by his Christian name—someone who must be more to him than a housekeeper. Who would hire a woman with only one arm to cook and clean? Chantelle was very smart-looking, even more attractive than the whores in the bar of the Mille Collines, women known for their beauty, many of them killed because of it.

  Laurent told himself to be patient, Johnnie Walker wasn’t going anywhere. Give the priest time to accept his mother’s death, someone close to him but far away in America. He would be used to death close by, there in the church, less than one hundred meters away. Was he staring at the church, or in his mind staring at nothing? Or was he listening to Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers now doing “Beautiful Day,” Ziggy’s Jamaican voice drifting over the hills of western Rwanda. Laurent became aware of his body moving oh so slightly and made himself stand still, before the priest or Chantelle would notice.

  The priest was turning to walk away, but then stopped and looked back at Laurent.

  “You know a young guy named Bernard? A Hutu, wears a green checkered shirt, sometimes a straw hat?”

  It took Laurent by surprise, thinking the priest was grieving the death of his mother.

  “I know of him, yes. He came back from Goma, the refugee camp. Those relief people, they don’t know the good guys from the bad guys. The RPA comes, the Hutus run, and the relief people give them blankets and food. Yes, I know him.”

  “He tells everybody he took part in the genocide.”

  Laurent nodded. “So did most of the ones he tells.”

  “He admits he killed people. In the church.”

  “Yes, I hear that.”

  “Why don’t you pick him up?”

  “Arrest him? But who saw him kill people? The ones who were there are dead. Where is a witness to come before the court? Listen, RPA soldiers hear of a person like Bernard, they want to take him in the bush and shoot him. But if they do, they the ones are arrested. Two soldiers have been tried and executed for killing Hutu suspects. All we can do is keep our eyes on him.”

  “But if a man, not a soldier,” the priest said, “sees the one who murdered his family and takes revenge . . .”

  The priest waited and Laurent said, “I would sympathize with him.”

  “Would you arrest him?”

  Laurent said, looking into the priest’s eyes, “I would report I made a search and was not able to find him.”

  The priest, nodding his head, held Laurent’s gaze, then turned and was walking away when Laurent remembered the letter. He said, “Father,” bringing the letter from his pocket, “I have this, also from your brother.” Chantelle took the envelope from him and brought it to the priest, again resting her hand on his arm, Laurent watching them: the priest looking at the envelope and then speaking to his housekeeper, his hand going to her shoulder, Laurent watching the familiar way they touched each other.

  3

  * * *

  CHANTELLE RETURNED TO THE TABLE as the priest continued toward the house.

  “He invites you please to have a drink.”

  “Is he coming back?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  She sounded tired.

  “With ice,” Laurent said, approaching the table. “He surprised me talking the way he did. I thought he was looking at the church, the death of his mother reminding him of the dead inside.”

  They used English now, Laurent’s first language.

  “He wants to bury them,” Chantelle said, “but the bourgmestre, the same person who told the Hutu militia to go in and kill them, said no, it must stay the way it is, a memorial to the dead.” She handed Laurent his drink. “Explain that to me if you can.”

  “He calls it a memorial,” Laurent said, “and you think the bourgmestre, Mr. Shiny Suit, is sorry now, look, he’s showing remorse. But I think he keeps the dead in the church so he can say, ‘Look what we did,’ proud of it. You were here that time, in the church?”

  “I tried to be here, but no, I was in Kigali,” Chantelle said, “all day listening to the radio for news. The disc jockey tells the Hutus to perform their duty, go out in the streets and kill. He gives them such information as, ‘Tutsis are in the Air Burundi office on Rue du Lac Nasho. Go and kill them. Tutsis are in the bank on Avenue de Rusumo.’ Like the radio has eyes. I hear the disc jockey say militia are needed out in the country in different communes, and he names this one where my family lives.”

  “You must have been worried about them.”

  “Of course, but I didn’t come here in time.”

  “What about the priest? Where was he?”

  “Here,” Chantelle said, pouring herself a drink over ice, “while you were in Uganda or you would be dead or missing part of you. Yes, Fr. Dunn was here, but earlier that day he was in Kigali visiting the old priest, Fr. Toreki, in the hospital, his heart failing him. In only two more weeks he’s dead. Fr. Toreki was here forty years, half his life, when he died. This day Fr. Dunn is visiting they also hear the radio telling Hutu militia to go out to the communes. Fr. Toreki tells Fr. Dunn, go home and bring everyone he can find to the church, because the church has always been a place of safety. So now as many as sixty or seventy are inside, more frightened than ever in their lives. Fr. Dunn, on the altar, is at the most sacred part of the Mass, the Consecration, elevating the Host. At this moment they come in the church screaming ‘Kill the cockroaches!’ the inyenzi, and they begin killing everyone, even the babies, until no one is spared. The ones who try to run out have no chance. Some of the women they brought outside and raped, the butchers taking turns before killing them. Can you imagine it? Fr. Dunn, on the altar, watching his people being put to death.”

  Laurent said, “He didn’t try to stop them?”

  “How? What could he do? At Mokoto, the monastery, the priests walked away and a thousand were murdered.”

  Laurent would have to think about it. He held o
ut his glass and she poured whiskey into it, Laurent saying that he thought it was here in the church she was mutilated.

  “On the way here,” Chantelle said, “worried to death for my mother and father, also my sister. They lived not in the village but on a farm in the hills where my father kept his herd of cows.” Chantelle shook her head, her voice becoming quiet as she said, “No one has seen them or knows where their bodies are. They could be stuffed down a latrine or buried in a mass grave on the side of the road. I do believe my sister could be one of the dead still in the church. I look at the skull faces—is this Felicité or an old king of Egypt found in a tomb?”

  “You were on your way here,” Laurent said, prompting her.

  “A friend drove me, a Hutu friend. He said there would be no problem, he would speak for me. But we came to cars stopped at a roadblock and everyone had to show their identity cards. If you were Tutsi you were ordered out of the car. There was nothing my friend could say to protect me. I was taken from his car into the forest where already people from other cars were waiting, some with their children clinging to them.” Chantelle paused, she cleared her throat. “The Hutus, most of them were boys from the streets of Kigali, but now they were Interahamwe, they were in charge and they were all drunk, with no control of themselves. Now they came to us with machetes and clubs spiked with nails, masus, and no one could believe they were going to kill us standing as we were in the forest, away from the road. People began to scream and plead for their lives, mothers trying to shield their children. The Hutus were also screaming, and laughing, too, in a state of excitement as they began to hack with their machetes like we were stalks of bananas. I raised my arm to protect myself from the blade . . .” Chantelle paused again; this time she sipped her drink, closing her eyes for a moment. She said, “This one took hold of my hand and struck as I tried to pull away, my arm extended.” She said, “I can see his face,” and paused again. “When I fell I was in the crowd of people and others, killed or dying, fell on top of me. It was night and in a frenzy of killing, they didn’t make sure we were all dead. For a long time I lay there without moving.”

  “Did they rape you first?”

  “No, but others they did, fucked them like dogs.”

  “You could have bled to death,” Laurent said.

  “I was wearing strands of beads I twisted around my arm.”

  “Still . . .” Laurent said.

  “Listen, I know of a woman in Nyarubuye, where a thousand or more were killed, who hid beneath dead bodies more than a week. She would come out at night to find water and food and in the morning return to chase away the rats and bury herself again among the dead. I was very lucky, the friend of mine, the Hutu, found me and brought me back to Kigali to the home of a doctor. He was also Hutu but, like my friend, not an extremist. The doctor closed my wound and let me stay a few days. After that I was able to hide at Mille Collines because I knew the manager, a man who saved hundreds of people’s lives. He was hiding even wives of government officials, Hutu men in power whose wives were Tutsi. When it was safe, the Hutu cowards running from your army, I came here again to look for my family.” Chantelle’s slim shoulders moved in the undershirt, a shrug. “And, I stayed to assist the priest.”

  “To keep his house with one hand,” Laurent said.

  She looked toward the rectory. The music had stopped some time ago, but there was no sign of the priest. “You want to believe I go to bed with him, even if you have no way to know if it’s true.”

  “You do or you don’t,” Laurent said, “it means nothing to me. What I don’t see is what he’s doing here, why he stays when he performs only some duties of a priest. All the time he’s here, he offers Mass when he feels like it? The reasons I’ve heard people say—he has to save the Communion wafers because the nuns who made them for the old priest are dead. Or he drinks the altar wine with his supper.”

  He saw Chantelle smile in a tired way.

  She said, “Do you believe that?”

  “Tell me what to believe.”

  “He said Mass Christmas, always Easter Sunday. He’s a good man. He plays soccer with the children, he reads stories to them, takes their picture . . . Why do you want to find fault?”

  “That’s his purpose here, to play with children?”

  She said, “You ask so many questions,” shaking her head in that tired way and looking toward the house again.

  “Don’t you think,” Laurent said, “he’s different to other priests you know?”

  “In what way?”

  “He doesn’t hold himself above you, with the answer to everything, all of life’s problems.”

  It seemed to be something she believed, looking at him now like she was making up her mind finally to tell the truth about him. But all she said was, “He came to assist the old priest.”

  Laurent said, “Yes . . . ?” not letting go.

  “Now Fr. Dunn carries on his work.”

  Laurent said, “He does?” with a tone he could see annoyed her, not wanting to talk about her priest. Still, Laurent pressed her. “You say he came here . . . But wasn’t he sent by the religious order, the one the old priest belonged to? I don’t think I heard the name of it.”

  “The Missionary Fathers of St. Martin de Porres,” Chantelle said, “the same name as the church.”

  “And they assigned him to this place?”

  She hesitated before saying, “What difference does it make how he came here?”

  Laurent believed he had her in a corner. He said, “You look tired,” and motioned to the table.

  They sat across from each other, Chantelle with her hand cupping the stump of her mutilation. The light was fading now, the air filling with the sound of insects and the sight of dark specks against the sky, bats swooping into the eucalyptus trees.

  She said, “You sound like a policeman with your questions. I can tell you only that Fr. Dunn came or was sent here because the old priest, Fr. Toreki, was his uncle, the brother of his mother who died.”

  Laurent said, “Oh?” It seemed to interest him.

  “Every five years,” Chantelle said, “Fr. Toreki would go home to America to preach and raise money for his mission. And each time he would stay with Fr. Dunn’s family, doing this ever since Terry was a small boy.”

  Now Laurent was nodding. “So during these visits the old priest was able to brainwash the boy with stories of Ah-fri-ca, how he lived among savages who painted their faces and killed lions with a spear.”

  Chantelle said, “Do you want to talk or listen?”

  Laurent gestured with the glass in his hand saying, “Please,” inviting her to go on.

  “During these years,” Chantelle said, “he and Fr. Toreki became very close and would write letters to each other. He didn’t brainwash him, he showed Fr. Dunn the boy how to be the kind of man he was, to care for people and their lives.”

  Laurent nodded, keeping his mouth shut.

  “Fr. Dunn said it was his mother who pressed him to be a priest, saying how proud she would be, as any mother would.”

  Laurent, nodding again, said, “Yes, I understand that about mothers.”

  “His,” Chantelle said, “went to Mass and Holy Communion every morning of her life, six o’clock, and Fr. Dunn was there also when he was old enough, serving as the altar boy. Fr. Dunn said his mother was very religious, each day praying for him to become a priest.”

  Laurent watched the housekeeper raise her glass to sip the whiskey, taking time to look at whatever was in her mind. Taking forever.

  Laurent said, “And so he did, hmmm? He grew up and became a priest.” He waited while the housekeeper remained with her thoughts, her hand idly fingering the stump of her arm.

  She said, “Yes, the time came that he went to a seminary in California to study. The place was the St. Dismas Novitiate. I saw it printed on paper he keeps, St. Dismas, the African saint who was crucified with Our Lord. From that place he came here only two or three weeks before the killing began.
”

  Now it was Laurent who paused to put this in his mind and look at it.

  “You’re certain he was made a priest.”

  “He told me himself, yes.” Now, because Laurent was silent but continued to stare at her, she said, “He doesn’t lie to me, if that’s what you think. He has no reason to.” She said, “What am I to him? I wouldn’t hurt him even if I could.”

  It was in Laurent’s mind to wonder again, what was this relationship between the housekeeper and the priest? It seemed something more than sharing the same bed, even if that was true.

  He said, “You talk to each other.”

  “Of course.”

  “About what he thinks?”

  “He tells me things and I listen,” Chantelle said.

  “And you tell him things?”

  “I try to protect him.”

  “From what?”

  She took her time to say, “Thinking too much.”

  “I thought he used Mr. Walker for that.”

  “He doesn’t drink because he’s here or doesn’t want to be here, he drinks because it gives him pleasure. He told me the reason he knows he is not alcoholic, he’s never been tempted to try banana beer.”

  “Does he tell you you have beautiful eyes?”

  “He tells me of bodies found near Ruhengeri, this time tourists who came to see the gorillas, hacked to pieces, the genocide beginning again.”

  “They were staying at the Hotel Muhabura,” Laurent said, “and went out for a walk—as you say, tourists, visitors. We don’t call that genocide.”

  “But it begins again.”

  “Or you could say it keeps going,” Laurent said, “but as incidents, unrelated atrocities.”

  “Whatever you want to call it,” Chantelle said, “it’s going to happen soon in this village.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He tells me.”

  “But how does he know?”

  “They tell him, in Confession.”

  4