Our Lady of the Nile

by Scholastique Mukasonga

  “So, he’s a pagan! I didn’t think there were any left among white folk. What does he want to do with us in his temple?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he wants to sketch our portrait, or photograph us, or film us. Maybe he wants to worship us. It’s funny, don’t you think?”

  “You’re as crazy as he is!”

  “During the long vacation, whenever I have a little money, I go to the French Cultural Center to watch movies. I’ve always wished it were me in the movie, that I were an actress. So we’re going to play goddesses at old whitey’s place. It’ll be just like in the movies.”

  “I’m coming with you, to protect you. I’ll hide a little knife under my skirt to defend us. You never know.”

  The jeep was waiting behind the great Rutare rock. As soon as he saw the girls, Monsieur de Fontenaille greeted them with a grand wave of his bush hat. Veronica noticed that his shaven head shone like the glittering lake at the foot of the mountains. Then a cloud shrouded the sun, the lake stopped shimmering, and Monsieur de Fontenaille put his khaki hat back on.

  “I’ve brought a friend,” Veronica said, “just like I told you. This is Virginia.”

  Monsieur de Fontenaille scrutinized her for a long while.

  “Hello, Virginia,” he said at last. “Welcome. I shall call you Candace, Queen Candace.”

  Virginia had to restrain herself from bursting into laughter.

  “I’m called Virginia, but my real name is Mutamuriza. Call me Candace if you like. The whites have always given us the names they wanted. Virginia, after all, is not one my father chose either.”

  “Let me explain. Candace isn’t a white name, it’s a queen’s name, a black queen’s name, the Queen of the Nile. And you Tutsi are her sons and daughters. Come on, hop in.”

  The jeep shot off, kicking up a shower of grass and mud, then zigzagged between the rocks, following an invisible track. Veronica and Virginia clung to each other to avoid being thrown from the vehicle. They soon passed under the metal arch marking the entrance to the estate, snaked between the rambling coffee bushes and the row of identical maisonettes. “This was where my workers lived,” Monsieur de Fontenaille explained, “back in the days when I thought coffee would make me rich. I was an imbecile but a good boss all the same. Now I house my herders, my warriors, and my ingabo in them. You’ll see soon enough.” The jeep stopped in front of the steps leading into the large villa.

  They entered the living room, with its trophies, and were greeted by a military salute from the servant in white livery and golden epaulettes. Monsieur de Fontenaille motioned to the girls to sit down in the rattan armchairs, and the uniformed fellow placed glasses of orangeade on the coffee table, along with a tray of sweets.

  Monsieur de Fontenaille sat opposite his guests on a sort of bamboo sofa draped with tattered leopard skins. He remained silent for quite a stretch, his head buried in his hands. Finally, his fingers slid down along his face, revealing eyes that shone with such brilliant intensity that Virginia hastened to check she still had the little knife beneath her skirt, while Veronica discreetly signaled to her that they should be prepared to flee. But Monsieur de Fontenaille didn’t fling himself at them; instead, he began to speak.

  He spoke for ages. At times, his voice trembled with emotion, at others it grew deep; sometimes it was no more than a whisper, before suddenly booming out again. He talked on and on about the great secret he would share with them, a secret that concerned them, the secret of the Tutsi. He explained that during their long exodus, the Tutsi had lost their Memory. They retained their cattle, their noble bearing, and their daughters’ beauty, but they had lost their Memory. They no longer knew where they came from, or who they were. But he, Fontenaille, knew where the Tutsi came from, and who they were. How he came to know was a long story, the story of his life. It was his destiny, and he wasn’t ashamed to say so.

  Back in Europe, he had wanted to be a painter, but nobody bought his paintings, and his noble family – he sniggered as he pronounced the word – had long since lost all their money. So he set off for Africa to seek his fortune. He acquired some land, up here in the mountains, where nobody wanted to settle: a large estate where he could grow arabica coffee. He became a plantation owner, a colonist. He grew rich. He enjoyed going on safari in Kenya and Tanganyika. He kept an open house, and despite the impossible roads, guests coming up from the capital made sure not to miss a single one of his receptions, under any circumstances. They would gather in the large living room to drink a lot and talk a lot: the latest gossip from the capital, the animals they’d killed, coffee prices, the unfathomable stupidity of their servants, the natives one could never entirely enlighten, the girls accompanying the guests, or those their host obligingly provided – beautiful girls, Tutsi mainly. “My models,” as Fontenaille explained, for he liked to sketch, painting herders leaning on their long sticks, lyre-horned cattle, young women balancing pointy baskets or jugs on their heads, pretty girls with their hair piled high and held in place by diadems of glass beads. He collected the portraits of those girls who agreed to enter the villa. Their faces fascinated him.

  It was the tales told about the Tutsi that convinced him. That they weren’t Negroes: one only had to look at their noses, and the reddish gleam of their skin. But where did they come from? The mystery of the Tutsi ate away at him. He’d gone and questioned the old bearded missionaries. He’d read everything there was to read on the subject. Nobody agreed on anything. One said the Tutsi came from Ethiopia, another that they were black Jews of some kind, or emigrant Copts from Alexandria, perhaps Romans who’d gotten lost, maybe cousins of the Fula or the Maasai, Sumerian survivors of Babylon, some even said they’d come all the way from Tibet, true Aryans. Fontenaille swore to himself that he’d find out the truth.

  When the Hutu kicked out the head Mwami of Rwanda and began to massacre the Tutsi, with the help of the Belgians and the missionaries, he understood how urgent it was that he fulfill the promise he’d made to himself. It would now be his life’s mission. The Tutsi would disappear, of that he was certain. Here they would eventually be exterminated, while those who had gone into exile would ensure their own people’s decline through interbreeding. All that could be saved was the legend, the legend that was the truth. So he neglected his friends and abandoned the plantation. He learned to decipher hieroglyphs. He attempted to study Coptic and Ge’ez. He tried to speak Kinyarwanda with his servant. But he was clearly no scholar, or anthropologist, or ethnologist. All those books, all those studies, led nowhere. For he was an artist, intuition and inspiration were his only guides, and they took him much further than all these scholars with their erudition. So he decided to continue his research in the field, in Sudan and in Egypt. There he saw the goddess’s temple before it was swallowed by the desert, and he saw the pyramids of the black pharaohs, the steles of the Candace queens by the Nile. That’s where he found the proof he sought. Those faces carved in stone were the same as those he had sketched. All his doubts were gone. It was like an epiphany. The empire of the black pharaohs, that was exactly where the Tutsi came from. Chased off by Christianity, by Islam, by desert barbarians, they undertook the long trek to the source of the Nile, which they believed to be the land of the Gods who, by virtue of the river, bestowed plenty. They had kept their cows, their sacred bulls, and their noble bearing, their daughters had kept their beauty. But they had lost their Memory.

  He, Fontenaille, was now going to fulfill his mission. He had abandoned everything for her. He had rebuilt the goddess’s temple, and the pyramid of the black pharaohs. He had painted the goddess, and Candace, the queen. “And you,” he said, “because you are beautiful, because you look like them, you will get your Memory back, thanks to me.”

  Monsieur de Fontenaille led them to his workshop. With some difficulty, they weaved their way through the stacks of boxes of drawings. There, on an easel, was a sketched portrait.

  “But that’s you, Veronica,” said Virginia.

  “Yes,�
�� said Monsieur de Fontenaille. “That is indeed our goddess, but you’ll see her better in her temple.”

  The walls were hung with reproductions and photographs of frescoes, bas-reliefs, and steles depicting black pharaohs on their thrones; gods with falcon heads, jackal heads, crocodile heads; goddesses crowned with solar discs and cattle horns. Monsieur de Fontenaille paused before a large map of the River Nile. Veronica noticed that none of the place-names on it matched those she had read in her geography book.

  “That’s Philae, the temple of the Great Goddess,” explained Monsieur de Fontenaille. “And there, that’s Meroë, capital of the Kush, the empire of the black pharaohs, of the Candace; capital of a thousand pyramids. I’ve been there for you, the Tutsi, and I found you there. Here, I’ll show you.”

  He handed her a sheet from one of the boxes.

  “It’s your portrait. I did it based on the rough sketches I made at the pilgrimage. And now I’ll set it next to this photo I took at Meroë. It shows Isis, the Great Goddess, spreading her wings to protect the kingdom. Her breasts are bared. Look closely at her face, it’s your own, to the last detail. Someone did your portrait in Meroë three thousand years ago. This proves it.”

  “But I wasn’t around three thousand years ago, I don’t have wings, and the kingdom is gone.”

  “Just wait and see, you’ll soon understand. Now we must go to the temple.”

  “Veronica,” said Monsieur de Fontenaille, “when you came to the temple for the first time, you probably didn’t take in my fresco well. Look closely at the faces of the young women bringing offerings to the Great Goddess, don’t you recognize some of them?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Virginia, “the third one there, that’s me! And the one just in front of her is Emmanuella, who was in her final year a couple of years ago. And there’s Brigitte, who’s in tenth grade. It’s like he’s painted every Tutsi in the lycée.”

  “Well, I’m not there.”

  “You’re not in the procession because you’re the chosen one. Turn around and you’ll see,” said Monsieur de Fontenaille.

  There on the back wall, the face of the Great Goddess was indeed that of Veronica. Only the eyes were strangely large.

  “You see,” said Monsieur de Fontenaille, “last Sunday, I had ample time to observe you closely. Then I corrected the face of the goddess so it really looks like yours. Now you can no longer deny it: you are Isis.”

  “I am no such thing. I don’t like you making fun of me. And it’s dangerous to mock the spirits of the dead. The abazimu might turn on you, and their vengeance is often cruel.”

  “Don’t be upset. Soon you’ll understand. Follow me, the tour’s not over yet.”

  They exited the temple and climbed up to the ridge. A few long-horned cows were grazing on the slope, watched by young herders. On a nearby hill lay the enclosure where the cattle returned every evening. The dome of the main hut, with its artistically plaited tuft, rose above the encircling corral of shrubs. “See,” said Monsieur de Fontenaille, “if the Tutsi were to disappear, I would at least save their cows, the inyambo. Perhaps it was a bull like that one there, a sacred bull, who led them as far as here.” At the summit, in the midst of a thicket of old trees, like a slice of forest, stood a pyramid, taller and more tapering than the one erected by the Belgians at the source of the Nile. “That’s where I made excavations,” he explained. “The elders said it was the grave of a queen, Queen Nyiramavugo. So I ordered a dig and we found a skeleton, pearls, pottery, and copper bracelets. I’m no archaeologist. I didn’t want the Queen’s remains ending up in a museum, behind glass. So I had them fill in the trench and build this pyramid on top of it. Queen Nyiramavugo has a sepulcher befitting a Candace queen. Come here, Virginia, since from now on you, too, are queen, Queen Candace. Make whole the chain of time once again. Now everything is in place. The temple, the pyramid, the sacred bull. And I’ve rediscovered Isis and Candace, as beautiful as the day the world was formed. The ending will be as the beginning. That is the secret. Isis has returned to the spring. I have the secret, the secret, the se …”

  Monsieur de Fontenaille seemed to be having great difficulty containing the exaltation that overwhelmed him, his hands shook, his throat was tight. To calm down, he went and sat on a rock a little way away, and spent a long while contemplating the rolling mountains that seemed to soar to infinity beneath the clouds.

  “I don’t think he even sees the same landscape as we do,” said Veronica. “He probably fills it with goddesses, Candace queens, and black pharaohs. It’s like a movie playing in his head, but now he wants flesh-and-blood actresses, and that’s us.”

  “The Tutsi have already acted in white men’s B movies, or in their craziness, you should say, and we suffered for it. I don’t want to play Queen What’s-Her-Name. I want to get back to the lycée. Come on, let’s tell him to drive us back.”

  As the young women drew near, Monsieur de Fontenaille seemed to awaken from a deep sleep.

  “The rain’s coming,” said Veronica. “It’s late, you have to drive us back to the path.”

  “I’ll take you. Don’t worry, no one will see you. But next Sunday, I’ll be waiting for you. It’ll be the big day. Much better than the pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Nile.”

  It was Immaculée who found Veronica splayed at the bottom of the dormitory stairs.

  “Help! Help! Veronica’s dead, she fell, she’s not moving.”

  The lycée girls had just sat down at the refectory tables, but they rushed over to the staircase. Virginia got there first and leaned over Veronica.

  “Nonsense. She’s not dead, she’s not dead, she fainted, she fell down the stairs and banged her head on a step.”

  “Must’ve had one too many,” said Gloriosa. “She must’ve gone to Leonidas’s bar. She’s scared of nothing, that girl. Shameless. The boys bought her a few drinks, and she didn’t say no.”

  “Maybe she’s been poisoned,” said Immaculée. “There are way too many jealous girls in this place.”

  Sister Gertrude, who doubled as a nurse, fought her way through the throng of girls.

  “Move back, give her some air. Help me carry her to the infirmary.”

  Sister Gertrude took Veronica’s shoulders and Virginia lifted her legs, shoving a suddenly helpful Gloriosa out of the way: “Don’t you dare touch her!”

  They laid Veronica on the metal bed in the infirmary. Virginia wanted to stay and watch over her friend, but Sister Gertrude asked her to leave and shut the door. A small group of girls waited outside for the Sister’s diagnosis. Sister Gertrude eventually opened the door and declared:

  “It’s nothing, just a bout of malaria, I’ll deal with it. She mustn’t be disturbed, there’s nothing more for you to do here.”

  Sleep eluded Virginia. What had happened to Veronica? What had that madman de Fontenaille done to her? Virginia didn’t dare imagine. The whites here thought they could do anything – they were white. Virginia reproached herself for refusing to accompany her friend. The two of them would have defended themselves; she had her little knife and would have convinced Veronica to flee before it was too late. As soon as the wake-up bell sounded, while the others washed and the Sisters attended morning Mass, Virginia slipped off to the infirmary. Veronica was sitting on the bed, her face deep in a large bowl. As soon as she saw her friend, she put the bowl down on the bedside table: “You see,” she said. “Sister Gertrude’s been taking good care of me, she gave me some milk.”

  “What happened to you? Tell me before Sister gets back.”

  “It’s tricky, like waking from a bad dream, a nightmare. I don’t know if what I’m about to tell you actually happened. The whites are worse than our poisoners. So I went to the meeting place, at the rock. The jeep was waiting for me, but it wasn’t Fontenaille at the wheel. It was a young guy, a Tutsi obviously, probably one of those he calls his ingabo. In the living room was that servant with the gold braid, holding his tray of orange juice. He told me to drink it. The jui
ce tasted funny. Fontenaille entered, draped in a white cloth with one shoulder bare.

  “ ‘Your friend didn’t come?’

  “ ‘No, she’s sick.’

  “ ‘Too bad, that’s her loss, she won’t discover her Truth.’

  “I can’t recall what happened to me next. It was like I had no more free will, like I no longer belonged to myself. There was something, someone, in me, stronger than me. I saw myself in the temple. I was like the painted women on the wall. I don’t know who undressed me. My breasts were bare and I was wrapped in see-through gold fabric. But I felt no shame. It was like a dream you can’t wake from, and I saw myself in this dream. Around me, the fresco warriors had stepped off the wall. They didn’t really look like intore. All they wore were these cropped shorts, and they carried lances and large cowhide shields. I’ve no idea whether their hair had been straightened, or whether they were wearing wigs. Now I think they were the warriors Fontenaille was talking about. I felt like I was in a movie. Fontenaille made me sit on the throne and placed the hat with the large horns on my head. I saw him as if through a fog, sweeping his arms about and speaking incomprehensible words like the priest at Mass. I can’t remember what occurred after that. I lost consciousness. Maybe I fell from the throne. I don’t remember anything. When I came to my senses, I was in the jeep. It was the young servant who was driving. I was wearing my uniform again – someone must have put it on me. He dropped me very close to the lycée, telling me, ‘Try to walk in without drawing attention. Take care of yourself, and not a word to anyone. But have a good look in your bra, there’s bound to be something in there for you.’ I managed to make my way upstairs. Inside my bra I found ten thousand-franc notes. I hid them in my suitcase. But as I came back down, everything started to spin, and I fell.”

  “And he didn’t do anything to you?”

  “No, he didn’t touch me. He’s not like the other whites, who only want to fling you into bed. What he wants is to play out his crazy notions. I’m his Isis.”