Our Lady of the Nile

by Scholastique Mukasonga

  During the heavy rains of November, there was a landslide that carried away all before it – banana trees, houses and their inhabitants – as well as cut off the road that led to the lycée for several weeks. That’s when Frida was seized with bouts of nausea, vomiting, and dizziness. She refused to touch the almost daily bulgur in the refectory, and would only eat the corned beef from the French Embassy. The fiancé had been alerted and managed, though nobody knew how, to send her a whole box of it. She wanted her best friends to taste some, but they were wary. Goretti discretely got hold of one of Frida’s empty cans and went to ask Monsieur Legrand, the French teacher with the guitar, what kind of food this might be. Monsieur Legrand explained that it came from a great white bird that was force-fed until it grew ill. Then people ate its illness. All the girls found that disgusting. Only Immaculée, Gloriosa, Modesta, and Godelive agreed to try some, at Frida’s insistence. Their verdict: it was rather soft, and looked like earth, or rather, Goretti said, like the grass that fills a cow’s belly and which the Batwa crave after a cow is killed. At any rate, it was real white food, and when it came to white food, they much preferred Kraft cheese and Sister Bursar’s deep red corned beef.

  It was clear to everyone that Frida was with child, indeed she didn’t try to hide it. She was proud to be pregnant, despite the shame it would bring on her family, what with her not being married.

  “His Excellency, my fiancé, wants a boy, he’s only had girls till now: me, I’ll be having a boy.”

  “So, he’s got other women then?” suggested Gloriosa.

  “No, he doesn’t, not at all,” Frida said to reassure herself. “They’re either dead or he rejected them.”

  “And how do you know you’ll have a boy?”

  “Balimba took every precaution this time. He went to consult a great soothsayer in the forest. It cost him a fortune. The soothsayer told him that to cheat the curse his enemies had cast on him, and which made him father only girls, he should wed a girl from the other side of a lake beneath the volcanoes, for the evil spell of the Zairian poisoners would be useless against her. He gave Balimba all the necessary talismans to beget a boy, all the dawa whose secrets he knew, for him and for me. I have to wear a belt of pearls and seashells around my belly. It’s to have a boy. My fiancé is sure I’ll give birth to a boy.”

  “You should ask Father Herménégilde to bless your belly,” said Godelive, “I think he, too, knows every prayer to have babies, or above all, not to have them.”

  Frida’s condition soon worsened, she didn’t want to get up, and she complained about agonizing stomach pains. Mother Superior grew anxious and appalled at having to house a pregnant girl in her lycée whose marriage had yet to be celebrated according to the sacraments of the Church. “It’s a sin, it’s a sin,” she repeated to Father Herménégilde, who tried in vain to calm her nagging scruples: “They’re engaged, dear Mother, they’re engaged; and I’ll receive Frida at confession, I will absolve her.” Yet Mother Superior couldn’t stop her lamentations: “But, Father, have you considered the other innocent pupils? The lycée of Our lady of the Nile will turn into a home for teenage mothers. Oh, the scandal! The scandal!”

  Mother Superior sent message after message to the ambassador, begging him to fetch Frida right away, each time exaggerating the urgency and gravity of her state a little more. Balimba finally dispatched a powerful Land Rover, which managed to drive along tracks hitherto considered impassible to any vehicle, and succeeded in reaching the lycée and taking Frida back to Kigali.

  News of Frida’s death plunged the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile into considerable disarray. Mother Superior decreed a week of mourning to pray for Frida’s soul, and at the end of it, on Sunday, the whole school went on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Nile so she might shelter that poor little soul beneath her great mantle of mercy. Father Herménégilde decided to give a Mass every morning that week, to the same end. Each class had to attend, one after the other. And the presence of the senior class was of course compulsory at every one. In his funeral oration, Father Herménégilde suggested in passing that the deceased had sacrificed her purity and her youth for the sake of the majority people. Yet neither he nor Mother Superior could hide a certain relief. After all, the drama hadn’t occurred within the lycée. Frida’s death, as regrettable as it was, put an end to the scandalous example set by tolerating the presence of a pregnant pupil at the school. Allusions to a possible divine punishment having been visited upon the sinful girl were prudently woven into Mother Superior’s consoling words to the pupils, and above all in Father Herménégilde’s endless moral reflections in religion class.

  The seniors remained shut up in their dorm for a whole day – nobody would have dreamed of forcing them to leave it – and, as custom dictated, set to weeping and wailing as one voice. The clamor of their sobbing filled the lycée, the ceaseless tears proof of the sincerity of their sorrow, a remonstration against Frida’s undeserved fate. All the girls were united in their despair at being women.

  Then the rumors started. What did Frida die of? Why? How? Who had caused her death? The official version made out it was due to complications following a miscarriage. The vehicle driving her back to Kigali must have taken paths that were in poor condition – did the jolts bring it on? In that case, weren’t Mother Superior and the ambassador slightly responsible? Why hadn’t they waited for the track to be reopened? It was just a matter of days. Or else it was that white food, that part of a sick bird’s stomach that Frida gulped down so greedily, that’s what poisoned her and her baby. Many thought she’d obviously been poisoned, but not by the white food, by poisoners, Rwandans no doubt. It was easy to understand: Balimba’s enemies had her trailed to Kigali, then they paid Rwandan poisoners, abarozi; they paid them a fortune, those abarozi, an absolute fortune – they’re prepared to poison anyone if you give them what they ask, it’s their job, they’re much more powerful than the Zairian sorcerers and their dawa. And also, maybe Frida’s ancestors weren’t entirely Rwandan, maybe they came from Ijwi Island, or from Bushi, on the other side of the lake … So, Balimba …

  “What I think,” said Goretti, “is that her own family killed her, without meaning to of course, by making her abort. That’s what would have happened where I’m from. A girl can’t get married if she’s pregnant or has a baby on her back, even if she’s a servant. It brings dishonor and shame on her and her whole family, she’ll draw all kinds of bad luck to them. It’s better if the child never existed. So they found a doctor, a bad doctor, it’s only bad doctors who perform abortions, or maybe a male nurse, or even worse some doula who made her drink a medicine that causes you to abort or kills you … poor Frida! But if what I’m saying is true, Frida’s family is right to be scared, for Balimba will take terrible revenge if he’s convinced Frida was carrying a boy.”

  Ambassador Balimba requested his transfer and got it fast. He was posted as part of the Zairian delegation to the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa. Frida’s father gave up his diplomatic career and threw himself into business. They say he’ll do very well at it …

  “That’s enough,” Gloriosa said. “I think we’ve shed enough tears for Frida. We shall mention it no more, either between ourselves or to others. It’s time we remembered who we are and where we are. We are at the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile, which trains Rwanda’s female elite. We’re the ones who’ve been chosen to spearhead women’s advancement. Let us be worthy of the trust placed in us by the majority people.”

  “Gloriosa,” said Immaculée, “do you think it’s already time for you to give us one of your politician-type speeches? Like we were at a rally? Women’s advancement, well let’s talk about that! The reason most of us are here is for our family’s advancement, not for our own future but for that of the clan. We were already fine merchandise, since nearly all of us are daughters of rich and powerful people, daughters of parents who know how to trade us for the highest price, and a diploma will inflate our worth even more. I k
now that a lot of girls here enjoy this game – it’s the only game in town, after all – and it’s even the source of their pride. But I no longer want to be a part of this marketplace.”

  “Just listen to her,” jeered Gloriosa, “she’s talking like a white girl in the movies, or in those books the French teacher makes us read. Where would you be, Immaculée, without your father and his money? Do you think a woman can survive in Rwanda without her family, first her father’s then her husband’s? You’ve just come from the gorillas. I suggest you go back there.”

  “Ah, good advice,” said Immaculée. “Perhaps I will.”

  Once the week of mourning was over, Frida’s name was tacitly banned by everyone at the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile. Yet it still tormented the seniors, like one of those shameful words you know without recalling where you got it from nor who taught you it, but which you hear yourself saying without having wanted to. If one of the girls made a slip of the tongue and said the forbidden name, all the other girls turned away, pretended they hadn’t heard anything, and began to talk really loudly to cover up, to erase with their pointless chatter, the interminable echo of those two syllables inside their heads. For there was now a shameful secret lying coiled deep within the lycée, and deep within each of the girls, too; remorse in search of a culprit; a sin that could never be purged since it would never be owned. The image must be rejected at all costs: Frida, like that black mirror in which each girl could read her own fate.

  The Queen’s Umuzimu

  Leoncia couldn’t wait for Virginia to return home for Easter break. Virginia had always been her mother’s favorite child. After all, they had named her Mutamuriza, “Don’t Make Her Cry.” And now that Virginia was at the lycée – a student! as Leoncia constantly reminded everyone – she was her only pride and joy. Already, she pictured herself accompanying her freshly arrived daughter in her school uniform from enclosure to enclosure greeting everyone who lived on the hill. It would be her glory day! Dressed in her finest wraparound, Leoncia would gauge with either a critical or a satisfied eye just how much respect each neighbor showed her daughter, who would soon return with her diploma, that prestigious Humanities diploma that was awarded so parsimoniously, particularly to girls, and especially Tutsi girls. Even the head of the local Party committee, who always found new ways to harass and humiliate the only Tutsi family on the hill, felt obliged to receive them and to express his congratulations and encouragement, the fulsomeness of which did little to hide the fact he was only doing so out of obligation. Leoncia felt reassured: Virginia was a student, and when you’re a student, so she believed, it’s as if you’re no longer Hutu or Tutsi, but have taken on another “ethnicity”: what the Belgians used to refer to as civilized. Virginia would soon be a primary school teacher, maybe even at the nearby mission school, since that’s where Father Jerome had first noticed how intelligent she was. He eventually convinced Leoncia that Virginia (her eldest daughter! She to whom her brothers and sisters owed their arrival, their uburiza, She who opened their mother’s belly for them, She who had to be a little mother for her brothers and sisters) had another future than that of tilling the land alongside them. “A brilliant future,” he kept saying, “brilliant!” To persuade Leoncia, he suggested that Virginia could even become a nun with the Benebikira Sisters, not as a cook but as a teacher of course, and later progress to Mother Superior and then Mother General, why not. Leoncia preferred to see her daughter find a good husband, a civil servant obviously, with his own Toyota so he could run a trading business. Already, she was calculating Virginia’s dowry. Not just cows. Also cash to build a brick house, the kind whites live in, with a door and padlocks, and a sheet-metal roof she’d see shining in the sun from far off as she worked her field. And they’d no longer sleep on straw, but on mattresses she’d buy from Gahigi at the market; even the children would have their mattresses, one for the three boys, another for the two girls. And she’d have her own parlor to receive family, friends, and neighbors. Especially the neighbors. They’d sit on folding chairs, not mats. And taking pride of place on the table would be the large shiny golden thermos, always full of tea (three liters!) and always hot, awaiting the arrival of Sunday visitors, who would sip the still-warm tea and chatter to each other as they left. “How lucky Leoncia is to have a daughter who has done advanced studies, she’s got a big thermos!”

  It rains in March. And in April, it rains even more. Let it rain! Let it rain! The grain lofts will be full and children’s tummies bulging. During her two-week vacation, Virginia became the “little mother” again, a position that was hers by right of being the eldest. She looked after her brothers and sisters, and carried her mother’s newborn on her back. Leoncia was on vacation too. In the evening, the little ones peppered her with questions, and Virginia regaled them with tales of the wonders of the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile. But it was out in the field that Leoncia truly appreciated her daughter. No, the whites’ lycée hadn’t changed her. She was the first, before sunrise, to hitch up her wraparound and step barefoot into the mud to wield her hoe. She knew how to track the parasites by making her way between the stems of maize, around which the beanstalks attempted to twine themselves, without crushing the younger shoots sown in December. She could tell the young sorghum from the threatening weeds, which she ripped out, leaping between the mounds of earth covering the sweet potatoes. “Now, that’s my daughter!” said Leoncia, “May her name bring her good fortune: Mutamuriza, ‘Don’t Make Her Cry.’ ”

  It was while pulling up the beans that Virginia told her mother she’d go visit Skolastika, her paternal aunt, the next day.

  “Of course you must visit your aunt,” said Leoncia. “Why didn’t I tell you before? Skolastika’s not my sister, she’s your father’s sister, you’re both descended from Nyogosenge. You’ve got to stay in your aunt’s good books, that’s what I’ve always said. Curses upon us should she get in a tiff! A paternal aunt is like a threatening storm. If she were to curse you, what would become of us? Skolastika has always brought you good luck, she’ll do the same for your diploma. But you can’t visit your aunt empty handed. What would she think of me? Or your father! Take the hoes, we’ll go make some sorghum beer for Skolastika.”

  The whole day was spent making the sorghum beer without which Virginia couldn’t visit her aunt. Leoncia was concerned. They were all out of amamera, the black sorghum used to make beer, and umusemburo, yeast, and had to ask their neighbors. Some didn’t have any, others clearly didn’t want to give them any. Whatever the outcome, each visit required long exchanges of courtesies. Leoncia tried not to show her impatience. Finally, old Mukanyonga agreed to give them just enough to brew a tiny jugful, following a never-ending monologue about how hard up she was and how tough times were. It doesn’t take long to prepare sorghum beer if you’ve got amamera and umusemburo, but they had to find a calabash to use as a container, and they needed one with an elegantly curved neck, and gracefully rounded, and they had to pick out one of Leoncia’s finely woven baskets to put it in (with a pointy lid), which they decorated with a garland of banana leaves. Then they wrapped the precious gift in a hand towel Virginia had brought back from the lycée, and put it in a little bag.

  The pickup stopped at the Gaseke market. Virginia, who, thanks to her school uniform, had managed to sit next to the driver, waited for the enormous woman whose hot, flabby, flesh had squashed her at every bend to extract herself, whining all the while and wiping away the sweat. The passengers at the back had already jumped out and retrieved their luggage: rolled-up mattresses bound with sisal string, sheet metal, a pair of goats, jerricans full of banana beer or petrol. Boys came running from the row of stalls bunched along one side of the muddy market square to unload drums of palm oil and bags of cement that the Pakistani merchant had been impatiently expecting.

  Virginia walked into the store, bought a bottle of Primus, then spent a long time haggling at the market with an old grouch over a piece of tobacco, which he cut from a long, plaited sp
iral. Finally, she made a beeline for the women sitting on their frayed mats selling golden-brown doughnuts from bowls decorated with red flowers. She bought three of them, watched by a row of kids who sat cross-legged opposite the trader, for as long as the market was open, their eyes bright with craving for these inaccessible delights. Virginia walked down the road that led to the hill where her aunt lived.

  The narrow path followed the ridge, above the slope of cultivated terraces that ran down to marshland planted with maize. All the hills, as far as the eye could see, were similarly terraced, and dotted with low houses, some round, some rectangular, their roofs mostly thatched, a few tiled. Many were hidden beneath thick banana groves, their presence betrayed only by the bluish plumes of smoke that stretched out lazily above the large lustrous leaves. Coffee bushes, planted in neat rows, already hung heavy with their bunches of red berries. A few tufts of papyrus sedge managed to thrive in the swampy hollows, while four black-crowned cranes strutted with carefree elegance, oblivious to the women working their fields.

  On the peak of the highest hill stood the impressive buildings of the mission. The church’s crenellated tower reminded Virginia of a picture in her history book: the fortress in Europe where noble knights once lived, according to Sister Lydwine’s oft-repeated lesson.

  The sun was about to dip beyond the hills when Virginia glimpsed her auntie’s house at the end of the path. Skolastika, who must have recognized her niece’s silhouette from far off, immediately left her field, gathered in her basket the sweet potatoes she’d just unearthed for the evening meal, raced uphill, and prepared to welcome her guest at the entrance to the enclosure before Virginia could get there. Skolastika barely had time to rip up a handful of grass with which to brush the dried earth from her legs and feet, before smoothing down the wraparound she’d hoisted above her calves to work the field. Virginia had removed the basket from the bag and balanced it on her head, as custom demands. “Welcome, Virginia,” said Skolastika. “I knew you were coming, I was informed of it. Last night, the fire began to crackle, sparks dancing above the flames. It was a sign I would receive a visit. So then I spoke the words one must utter at such a moment. ‘Arakaza yizaniye impamba, may my guest not arrive empty handed!’ But I knew very well it was you who was coming. I am Nyogosenge, your paternal aunt. Leoncia had to let you come.”