Baking Cakes in Kigali

by Gaile Parkin

  THAT night, long after the children and Titi had gone to sleep, long after Angel and Pius had retired to bed themselves and Pius had slipped into sleep beside her, Angel remained awake. Most nights, now, she battled to get to sleep, and often she awoke early, hot and perspiring.

  Tonight the air was filled with distant sounds of music and singing followed by loud cheering and applause. Fortunately the Tungarazas’ apartment was at the opposite end of the building from Ken’s, and the two other ground-floor apartments between them afforded some degree of soundproofing—although occasional snatches of discernible lyrics still found their way into the bedroom where Angel half lay, half sat in her wakefulness. She knew that Patrice and Kalisa, the compound’s night security guards, would, as usual, be hosting a party of their own for neighbouring guards in the street outside Ken’s apartment, each of them seeking to outdo the others with their dance moves, all of them humming along when they recognised particular songs.

  A fragment of song—every step you take, every move you make—partly sung, partly shouted by a voice that could have been the CIA’s, now drifted across the night.

  Angel’s thoughts turned to Pius, breathing ponderously at her side. Would he ever treat her like the CIA was treating his wife? Would he ever take a girlfriend from right in their very compound? She did not think so. There had been times in the past when she had had her suspicions about other women—particularly when Pius had been away studying in Germany—but it had never amounted to anything serious. And now some grey was starting to appear in his hair, and his belly was increasingly rounding out above his trousers. For him, their bed had become a place only for sleep, except very occasionally on a Saturday night after he had drunk Primus beer and watched soccer with his friends.

  But eh! these young Rwandan girls were very beautiful! And many were looking for sugar-daddies—especially sugar-daddies who could take them away to better lives in other countries. There were, of course, many beautiful girls where Pius worked. Almost a quarter of the students were girls, and it was well known everywhere that beautiful young students could be a troubling source of temptation to their professors. Their own daughter, Vinas, had caught the eye of Dr Winston Moshi while he was training her to be a teacher, and she had eventually married him. But Pius did not have the direct contact with students that the teaching staff did.

  Only a handful of the professors were women, all of them attractive enough. But she was sure that Pius could never be tempted by one of them, because he had confessed to being afraid of them.

  “Eh!” he had declared, returning home after a meeting one day and shaking his head. “Those lady professors are tough! They all stand together, and they refuse to be ignored or to have their opinions disregarded. I’m telling you, Angel: not all who have claws are lions.”

  That left the secretaries and the female administrative assistants who had offices in the same building as her husband. Would one of these tempt him? On the whole, she thought not. All of the ones she had met had been focused on their families—and on bettering themselves through attending evening classes every night of the week. Angel considered carefully. Pius had always been a serious somebody, and now he carried the responsibility of being a father to five grandchildren. Five! Surely he would not do anything silly or embarrassing?

  And besides, he still loved her dearly, she knew that. Okay, they seemed to have communicated a lot less since losing their daughter, Vinas. But that was to be expected: in addition to Joseph’s three children, she now had Vinas’s two to keep her busy at home and, really, Pius had no choice but to keep himself busy at the university. Under the circumstances, it was only natural that they failed to find the time to sit together and talk things through in the way that they always used to.

  A loud chorus of voices from Ken’s apartment—get your money for nothing—interrupted this line of thought, and she became aware that her face was beginning to radiate heat. Her body—defended by two blankets against the cold night-time air of Kigali’s high altitude—maintained a comfortable temperature, while her head and neck, propped up on a pillow against the bedroom wall, were now beginning to perspire. From a small pile on the floor next to the bed, she picked up one of the Hello! magazines that Sophie had lent her, and began to fan her face with it. The people who appeared in Hello! were well known in England—according to Sophie, although Angel recognised hardly any of them—and the magazine had in most cases paid them money to be photographed and to tell their stories; in some cases the people in the magazine had apparently received a great deal of money if they agreed to tell their story exclusively to Hello! According to Sophie, there were even local versions of Hello! in other countries around the world.

  As she fanned the perspiration on her face, Angel considered a Rwandan version of the magazine. It would be called Muraho! of course, but who would feature in it? There was the current Miss France, who had been born in Kigali to a Rwandan mother and a French father; she would look good on the cover. And then there was Cecile Kayirebwa, the singer who was famous throughout the world. But neither of those Rwandans lived in the country. Perhaps the magazine would focus on the big people who lived here—Angel had never seen anybody who looked ordinary or poor in Hello!—people like Ministers and Ambassadors. Mrs Wanyika would surely accept a high fee to give Muraho! exclusive access to her silver wedding anniversary party.

  Angel’s hand froze suddenly in its fanning action and she gave an involuntary shudder. The story about the Wanyikas’ party would surely have to include a photograph of the cake, and Mrs Wanyika would definitely not miss the opportunity to point out that it had been made by a fellow Tanzanian. Angel’s name would be linked—nationally!—with poor taste. Her business would be ruined!

  Several high-pitched voices—night fever, night fever—slipped into the bedroom through the louvered windows, and Angel re-commenced her fanning, now soothing not just the heat of her face but also the turmoil in her head. Eh! A professional somebody must be very, very careful of bad publicity, especially in a place where a story that you were telling somebody could be repeated on the other side of town even before you had finished telling it.

  After a few moments of frenzied fanning, her hand slowed a little as a new idea came to her. Perhaps—one day—there would be a special article about Angel Tungaraza in Muraho! magazine. There would be photographs from her album of some of her very best cakes. The whole family would be shown in their best outfits, grouped artistically in the living room and giving their widest smiles for the professional photographer that would be sent by the magazine. There would also be pictures of Angel at work in her kitchen, beating eggs into a bowl, and at her work table with her icing syringe and her Gateau Graffito pens.

  Sleep eventually tucked itself around her as she settled—still smiling—into the comforting possibilities offered by this new idea.

  WEDGED UNDERNEATH THE back of the Tungarazas’ apartment, where the hill sloped away beneath the building, was the office of Prosper, whose job it was to manage such matters as supervising the compound’s security guards, collecting rents and overseeing the general upkeep of the building—roles that Prosper filled, it had to be said, with only token commitment. It therefore came as no surprise to Angel when, having descended the stairs into the compound’s yard and knocked on the door to Prosper’s office loudly enough to wake the heaviest of sleepers, she received no reply.

  She went back up the stairs to the ground floor of the building and left through the front entrance. On the street corner outside, she found Modeste and Gaspard, the day security guards. They had just bought a pineapple from a woman who was now hoisting her basket of pineapples, bananas and avocados back on to her head and moving on down the hill.

  Angel greeted the guards and then, ignoring Gaspard—who spoke only French and Kinyarwanda—addressed Modeste in Swahili.

  “Modeste, where is Prosper?”

  “He is not here, Madame.”

  “Yes, he is not here. Will you bring him here fo
r me?”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  “Thank you, Modeste. Tell him I’m waiting at his office.”

  Modeste set off up the hill, his tall, skinny frame breaking into a slow trot. Angel knew where he was going. On most days Prosper could be found two streets up, at a small roadside bar furnished with two plastic tables and a few plastic chairs. If ever Angel went past there and she and Prosper acknowledged each other with a wave, she knew that he would come to her apartment later to assure her that his sole purpose in going to that bar had been to warn its patrons about the evil of drink. He would insist on showing her the very verse in his Bible that he had been reading to the patrons at the very moment that Angel had waved to him. But his hands would shake, and his eyes would be red, and his words would smell of Primus.

  Angel went back down the stairs and waited in the yard outside Prosper’s office. It was not a beautiful yard. The last of the builders’ rubble still lay in one corner, in a pile partially concealed behind the trailer that had carried Angel’s gas oven behind the family’s red microbus on its journey from Dar es Salaam to Kigali. The red soil of the yard was bare. Sophie and Catherine had once suggested that the compound’s residents should get together and try to make the yard more beautiful by planting grass and flowers there; but, really, those girls from England did not understand the most important feature of a yard on this continent: a yard without plants was a yard without snakes. Angel had not yet seen a snake in Kigali, but she knew that not seeing something with her own eyes was no proof that it was not in fact there. The yard was a safe place for the children to play, and that was surely the most important consideration.

  Wedged under the ground floor of the building alongside Prosper’s office were four more rooms. One of these accommodated the Electrogaz cash-power meters for each apartment, nestled in an alarmingly haphazard tangle of wires and cables that Angel feared could kill a person more quickly than the venom of any snake. Bizarrely—for their apartment was on the ground floor—the meter controlling the Tungarazas’ electricity supply was one of the highest on the wall, and reaching it to key in the numbers on the receipt from the Electrogaz office required the use of the ladder that was kept in the room for that very purpose. Under no circumstances would Angel allow Pius to rest the metal ladder across the tangle of wires and climb it to replenish their electricity supply, a task that would have been difficult enough without the potential of death by electrocution, requiring as it did three hands: one to hold the slip bearing the numbers; one to key those numbers in; and one to hold a flashlight—for the room had no lighting and the ink on the slip was never bold and clear. Angel did not know how Modeste managed to achieve this task at all—let alone complete it with his life intact—but he was happy enough to attempt it for the reward of a few francs.

  Another of the rooms under the building housed the water meters that had been installed just one month earlier, and that now made it possible for the compound’s owner to present a bill for water to each of the apartments. The next room was nothing more than an empty space defined by three walls and open across the front. This would apparently house the diesel-powered generator for the compound that had been promised but had not yet materialised. Finally, tucked underneath Ken Akimoto’s flat at the far end of the building was a room which housed toilet facilities for Prosper and the guards.

  Angel heard her name being called from above where she stood. Looking up, she saw Amina leaning over the small balcony of the apartment just above her own.

  “Angel! What are you doing there?”

  “Hello, Amina. I’m waiting for Prosper.”

  “Prosper? Have you sent Modeste for him?”

  “Yes. He should be here soon.”

  “Safiya’s waiting for the girls to come and do homework.”

  “They’ll be there soon, Amina. While I’m here they’re at home with Benedict. He’s still sick with malaria. Titi has taken Moses and Daniel to play with their friends down the road, so the girls must stay with Benedict until I’ve finished with Prosper.”

  “Oh, okay. Come and look at TV with me if you can this evening. Vincenzo has a late meeting.”

  “Thanks, Amina. I’ll come if I can. Eh, here is Prosper now!”

  Prosper was making his way unsteadily down the stairs into the yard.

  “Madame Tungaraza!” he declared, extending his hand and shaking Angel’s hand enthusiastically. “I’m sorry to have delayed you. There was some urgent business outside the compound that I had to attend to.”

  “Eh, Prosper! You are always a very busy somebody,” said Angel with a smile. “But I can see that you don’t have your Bible with you today, so it wasn’t God’s business that you were attending to.”

  Prosper glanced at Angel uncertainly as he unlocked the door to his office. “Madame! You should not have waited for me in the yard! I could have come to your apartment. But come in, come in.”

  “Thank you, Prosper,” said Angel, following him into the gloomy little room that accommodated a table and one wooden chair, “but in my apartment the business is cakes. Your office is the place for compound business. No, no, Prosper, that chair is yours. I’m happy to stand. I must be quick because I have a sick child at home.”

  Prosper seated himself behind the table and attempted to convey an air of efficiency by rearranging the file, the notebook, the ballpoint pen and the Bible that lay upon it.

  “Now, Prosper,” said Angel, taking two pieces of paper from where her kanga was tied at her waist, unfolding them, and placing them on the table for Prosper to look at. “I’ve come about these.”

  Prosper glanced at the pages. “Yes, Madame, these are bills for water. It is a new thing. I myself put a letter under every door one month ago to say that bills for water were going to start coming.”

  “Mm-hmm. But what I want to ask is, how are you calculating these water bills?”

  “There are meters, Madame. The meters tell us how much water an apartment has used. They are new.”

  “Yes, I know about these new meters, Prosper. And I also know the story about Mr Akimoto’s meter. I heard the story from his own mouth. I know that he came to you yesterday, and he asked you to show him his meter in the room down here that is always locked. And I know that when you showed him his meter, the needle was busy going round and round, even though nobody was in Mr Akimoto’s apartment, and nobody was using his apartment’s water then.”

  Prosper’s eyes did not meet Angel’s. “That was a mistake, Madame. We were looking at the wrong meter.”

  Angel persisted. “But that meter had the same number as Mr Akimoto’s apartment. How can we know that there has not been the same kind of mistake with our bills?”

  “Madame, I assure you,” said Prosper, trying now to assert his authority by meeting Angel’s eyes, “after we found that mistake yesterday, I myself checked every bill and every meter. There are no more mistakes.”

  “Then, Prosper, please look at these two bills and help me to understand.” Angel moved around the desk and stood over Prosper so that she was not blocking the light from the doorway—for the office had neither electric lighting nor a window—and so that he could not look up directly into her eyes. The smell of Primus threatened to overwhelm her. “First, this is the bill for my family. See here, Prosper, it says 15,000 francs.”

  “Yes, I see that; it is clear. I myself wrote that number there,” said Prosper.

  “And now this one. This is the bill for Sophie and Catherine. It says here 30,000 francs.”

  “Yes,” said Prosper. “It is all very clear. What is it that you need me to explain, Madame?”

  “I am confused, Prosper,” said Angel, laying the two bills side by side on the table. “In my apartment we are eight. Eight! We all wash, we all use the toilet, we cook for eight people, we wash clothes and sheets and towels for eight people. But in that other apartment they are two. Two! How can it be right that two people use twice as much water as eight people? How can it be right that two peo
ple must pay twice as much as eight people?”

  Prosper shifted his chair sideways, and by twisting his body around, managed to look up at Angel. The expression on his face implied that she was a foolish woman who understood nothing. “Madame, of course they must pay more!”

  Angel held his gaze. “Because why?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “Because, Madame, they are Wazungu.”

  “Eh!” cried Angel, looking at Prosper as if he had shocked her to the core. “Those girls are not Wazungu, Prosper!”

  “Madame?” It was Prosper’s turn to register shock and confusion. “They are not Wazungu?”

  “No, Prosper. They are volunteers!”

  “Volunteers?”

  “Yes, volunteers. A volunteer is not a Mzungu. A volunteer does not earn a Mzungu’s salary. A volunteer cannot pay what a Mzungu can pay. Those girls can look like Wazungu, Prosper, but they are not.”

  “Eh!” said Prosper, picking up the bill for Sophie and Catherine’s apartment and examining it carefully. Then he looked up at Angel, who was still towering above him. “They are not Wazungu?”

  Angel shook her head.

  Prosper thought for a while, and then he asked, “How much does Madame think volunteers can pay?”

  “I think they can pay 5,000 francs,” suggested Angel, having agreed upon the sum with Sophie and Catherine the previous evening.

  “Okay,” said Prosper, and he took his pen and altered the amount on the bill. “I did not know, Madame. I thought they were Wazungu.”

  “Thank you, Prosper.” Angel reached inside her brassiere and removed several banknotes. “Here’s the money for my bill. I’ll give this other bill to Sophie and Catherine. I think they can pay 5,000 francs each and every month. Please explain that to the meter.”

  “Yes, Madame. See, I myself have signed here on your bill to say that you have paid.”