by Gaile Parkin
“Everything, Baba-Zahara!” She gave him a big smile. “Zahara’s birthday cake will look like an aeroplane! She’ll be so pleased that her father had that idea!”
Dr Binaisa smiled back at Angel. “Yes, it is a very good idea.”
“Let me show you some other cakes here in my album so that you can have a sense of how it will look. See, here, this child had a toy dump truck and he played with it all day long.”
Dr Binaisa examined the photograph. The entire cake was a yellow truck with blue glass windows and fat black tires. The back of the truck was beginning to tip up, and its cargo of M&Ms had started to slide off the back. “Eh! Mama-Grace! This is a very fine cake!”
“Thank you, Baba-Zahara.” Angel smiled and patted her hair. “But I’ll make Zahara’s aeroplane even finer. And see this one here. This was for a teenage girl. Her mother said that girl was always talking on her cell-phone.”
“Eh!” said Dr Binaisa as he admired the cake. It was in the shape of a big cell-phone, dark blue around the sides with a paler blue panel on the top. A square of light grey was the phone’s small screen, bearing the words Happy Birthday Constance like a text message. Smaller squares of pink bore numbers and letters, just like a real cell-phone. “Mama-Grace, this looks real! Eh! And look at this one, here. It’s a microphone—although I don’t know that particular news station. But it looks real!”
Angel beamed. “But wait till you see Zahara’s aeroplane. All the children at the party will love it. And many weeks after the party, the parents of those children will still be talking about the cake that Dr Binaisa ordered for his daughter.”
Dr Binaisa smiled as he imagined that.
“Of course, a cake like that takes much time and much work. It is not a cheap cake, Baba-Zahara. But nobody talks for a long time about a cake that was cheap.”
“You’re right, of course, Mama-Grace,” agreed Dr Binaisa. “So let us plan a cake that Kigali will talk about for many, many weeks.”
IN the early hours of the following morning, Angel awoke with a start to find Pius sitting up in their bed, his breath catching in his throat. He had had a dream, he told her, in which he found himself back at the school on the top of the hill. All the classroom doors were shut, but he seemed to know exactly which room he was looking for. He went to it and opened the door. Desperately searching amongst the ghostly bodies that lay across the wooden benches inside, he at last found the one he was looking for: a small child dressed in the remnants of a decaying khaki T-shirt edged with orange. He squatted down on the bench next to the child’s body and gently turned it over so that he could see the face.
“Angel, it was Joseph. It was our own son!” Pius struggled to get his breath. “He looked at me—his face was white, Angel!—and he said, ‘They shot me, Baba.’ I tried to hold him, but he pulled away from me, and he said, ‘I can’t find Vinas.’ Those were his words, Angel, and they made me panic. I had to find her! I ran from room to room at that school, calling her name, but she wasn’t there …” Pius was breathing like someone who had just run all the way to the top of a very steep hill. “Vinas wasn’t there.”
“Pius, you need to breathe,” said Angel. Taking his right hand, she placed its palm flat against the area between her throat and her breasts, holding it there with her left hand as she flattened her right palm on his chest. “Breathe with me.”
It was the way they had calmed each other throughout their marriage, the one guiding the other until their breaths were equally deep and slow, in and out in such unison that they lost track of which of them was setting the pace.
At last he was able to speak again. “She wasn’t there,” he repeated, sadly now, exhausted.
They settled back down in the bed, and Angel held him tightly, whispering soothing words into his ear. With Pius’s worry of Vinas being lost—of Joseph and Vinas not being in the same place—now running from room to room in her own mind, she had no expectation of sleep. But his breathing took her with him as he slipped into sleep in her arms, and she found him still there when the muezzin’s call from the mosque near the post office woke her before dawn.
DESCENDING THE STEPS that led down to the Chinese shop on Rue Karisimbi in central Kigali, Dr Rejoice Lilimani successfully deflected both a woman intent on selling her some baskets hand-woven from banana-fibre and a man who was urging her to buy one of his small stone carvings of mountain gorillas. She was on the point of entering the shop’s busy and shadowy interior, crammed with shelves of kitchen and household goods, when somebody called her name.
She turned and looked back up towards the road from which the steps descended. Crowds of Saturday-morning shoppers weaved their way past the cars that were parked on the unsurfaced verge, while behind them packed minibus-taxis raced along the road in the direction of the post office, on their way to the central minibus station on Rue Mont Kabuye.
Seeing no one who was paying her the slightest bit of attention—apart from the man with the stone gorillas, who was beginning to descend the steps towards her in the belief that she had changed her mind about making a purchase—the doctor turned and entered the shop.
She heard her name again: “Dr Rejoice!”
She stepped out of the shop and looked up the steps again, and as she did so the man with the stone gorillas paused in his descent and looked back down at her hopefully.
“Who is calling Dr Rejoice?” she asked, a look of puzzlement furrowing her brow.
“It’s me,” said a voice. “Here I am.”
The doctor became aware of a movement to her left, where scores of brightly-coloured plastic goods—enormous bowls, basins, dustbins and wash-baskets—lined the landing at the bottom of the steps outside the doorway into the shop. Above a purple dustbin a hand waved a piece of white tissue. Dr Rejoice took a step forward and peered around the dustbin into the patch of shade in which Angel sat on a tiny wooden stool.
“My dear! Hello! What are you doing sitting there?”
“Hello, Dr Rejoice.” Angel smiled as she dabbed at her face with the tissue that had attracted the doctor’s attention. “You didn’t see me!”
“How was I to guess that you were sitting behind a purple plastic dustbin?” laughed Dr Rejoice. “Are you okay, my dear?”
“Oh, I’m fine, really. I was inside the shop when I began to feel hot like someone had thrown a blanket over my head, so I had to come outside. They brought me a stool to sit here in the shade till I feel better.”
“Then let me ask them to bring a stool for me, too. I’ll sit with you a few minutes.” Dr Rejoice went into the shop, returning moments later with a man carrying a plastic chair. He put it down next to Angel.
“Murakoze cyane!” Dr Rejoice thanked him in Kinyarwanda as she sat down. Then she addressed Angel. “Now tell me, my dear. Are you simply flashing, or are you ill?”
“Oh, I’m fine, really, Dr Rejoice. I’m just flashing. But I’m happy to see you, because I want to thank you. You sent me a new customer.”
“Oh, yes, and you made a delicious cake for her! I was at the party for her brother Emmanuel.”
“Odile is such a nice girl,” said Angel. “I’m very happy that I met her because she’s going to teach my girls about the virus.”
“She’ll do an excellent job,” Dr Rejoice assured her.
“She’s encouraged me to learn about it, too,” said Angel. “I’ll go and spend some time at that place where she works, and I’ll speak to the people who go there. My son would have been like them, Dr Rejoice. He was positive, but then he got shot. I never warned him about it when he was a child. I didn’t even know about it then. None of us did. It was only later, as others around us began to get sick and die, that we learned what it was and what to call it. So when Joseph brought his children to us in Dar from their home in Mwanza, and he told us that AIDS had come to his house, then I knew that we were going to lose him. It sliced through my heart like a machete, Dr Rejoice. I felt somehow that I had failed him as a mother because I hadn’t w
arned him.”
“Eh, my dear!”
“Now my heart will stop beating if I fail my grandchildren, too. As a grandmother, it’s my job to be wise. But how can I be wise if I don’t educate myself about this disease that’s infecting people in every country on our continent?”
“You are very wise to think that way, my dear. Next time you’re at the clinic I’ll give you some information to take home to read.”
“Thank you, Dr Rejoice. You know, I’m not even going to wait for next time when one of the children is sick. I’ll come to the clinic to fetch that information on Monday.”
“I’ll leave it with the nurse at reception in case I’m busy when you come. You know how crazy it is there! I hope we can get another doctor soon; it’s too much to expect just one doctor to treat all the students and all the staff and all their dependents. Now, what did you come here to buy, my dear? I’ve come for an extra blanket because some members of my family are coming to visit from Nairobi. I don’t want you to go inside and feel again like someone has thrown a blanket over your head. Would you like me to shop for you?”
Angel laughed. “Thank you, Dr Rejoice, but I’m fine now, really. I’ll come in with you. I need to buy another mixing bowl for my cakes, because my orders are increasing.” Angel looked at her watch and started to get up from the tiny stool, using the arm of Dr Rejoice’s plastic chair for leverage. “My husband has gone to the market for our weekly groceries. He always manages to get a better price than I do. He says I’m unable to concentrate only on the price of the sweet potatoes that I want because I look at the seller and I think about the work that she has done to clear the land and to plant the seeds and to harvest the sweet potatoes, and I know that she has children to feed. My husband says that as soon as you look at the seller, the seller is going to get more from you. He says that you must ignore the seller and see only what she is selling.”
“Your husband sounds like an economist,” said Dr Rejoice with a smile. “Are you sure he doesn’t work for the World Bank?”
Angel laughed. “Eh! If he worked there he wouldn’t need to negotiate a fair price; he’d have money to waste. But let’s go in now. I must be waiting for him outside the German butchery when he’s finished at the market.”
IN the afternoon, Angel looked forward to some peace and solitude. Titi had already taken the boys to play with their friends who lived down the road, and the girls were busy dressing up for Zahara’s birthday party. Pius had gone to his office to send some emails, but he would be back shortly to take the girls—and Zahara’s aeroplane cake—to the party. From there he would go straight to a colleague’s house to watch soccer on TV.
Angel had borrowed a Nigerian video from the wife of one of Pius’s colleagues. Such videos were generally unsuitable for children, and she had been warned that this one was particularly full of witchcraft, adultery, betrayal and vengeance. An afternoon alone in the apartment with a good film was exactly what she needed.
“Are you ready, girls?” she called. “Baba will be here very soon and you know he doesn’t like to wait.”
The girls came out of the bedroom looking so pretty in their party dresses that tears began to prick the back of Angel’s eyes. Grace was tall, with long thin arms and legs that seemed to have little more than bone in them. Her skinny neck seemed barely able to support her head, yet she was fit and strong. Neat cornrows controlled her long hair, ending today in pale blue ribbons that matched her blue and white dress. Angel noticed that there was an even greater distance between the hem of her dress and the lace tops of her white socks than the last time she had worn the outfit. Was this child ever going to stop growing?
Though just a year younger, Faith was a good deal shorter and much rounder. She liked to keep her hair short, and this could make her cheeks appear rather chubby. While Grace looked like a girl on the verge of blossoming into a beautiful young woman, Faith still looked very much like a child. Her lilac and pink party dress stretched tight across her belly.
Physically, the two girls could never be mistaken for sisters. But even though they had barely known each other until they had suddenly found themselves part of the same household a year ago, they had become closer friends than many sisters that Angel knew. In fact, all five children got on well with one another—which was rather a relief, as it would have been very awkward if there had been problems between the two sets of siblings. Benedict was a bit of a worry, though: he was still struggling to find his niche in his new family. He was closer in age to the girls than he was to the younger two boys, and while he found much of his brothers’ play somewhat childish, he did not share his sisters’ interests either. This made him a rather lonely child, and Angel suspected that his frequent bouts of illness were at least in part a way of calling some attention to himself. Not that he pretended to be ill (Angel was sure of this, and Dr Rejoice always took his symptoms seriously), but perhaps he was simply more susceptible to germs because he did not feel emotionally strong.
“I wish Safiya could come with us to Zahara’s party,” said Faith. “I wish she could see Zahara’s lovely cake.”
“She’ll see the photo of the cake in Mama’s photo album later on,” said Grace. “And maybe Mama-Zahara will take photos at the party. Safiya can see those, too.”
“And maybe Safiya is right now taking photos of Kibuye to show you,” suggested Angel, who was herself looking forward to seeing photos of the town on the eastern shore of Lake Kivu: perhaps the lake was less beautiful there than it was at Cyangugu. It was a popular place to go for weekends—as Safiya and her family had done this weekend—only about two hours’ drive almost directly west from Kigali. On very good roads, Vincenzo had said.
Pius arrived back from his office, bringing with him Dr Binaisa, who had escaped from home to the campus, as the busyness and excitement of party preparations had made it difficult for him to concentrate on his students’ essays. Pius had found him there a few hours later, and it made sense to bring him to the apartment to collect the cake and then to deliver him to his own home along with the girls.
When he saw the cake waiting on Angel’s work table, Dr Binaisa let out a low whistle. Appearing to float above the deep blue sky with white clouds that decorated the cake-board was a magnificent grey aeroplane with wings and tail fins. A pale blue window across the front indicated the cockpit, while both sides of the fuselage were lined with oval passenger-windows in the same pale blue. Across the centre of each wing ran a diagonal band bearing narrow stripes of black, yellow and red—the colours of the Ugandan flag—and on either side of the vertical tail fin, written with the red Gateau Graffito pen, were the words Air Zahara. Two rows of candles, five in each row, fanned out from behind the tail within a stream of white icing smoke.
“When you light the candles it will look like the plane’s engines are firing,” explained Angel.
For a moment—but only for a moment—Dr Binaisa was lost for words.
“This is a very fine cake, Mama-Grace,” he managed. “A very fine cake indeed. You know, the day after I placed the order for this cake I began to feel uncomfortable about the price. I told myself it was a lot of money to pay for a cake for a child who is only ten. A girl. I didn’t discuss the price with my wife, of course, because financial matters are not a woman’s concern. And I didn’t want to ask anyone else what they thought about the price, because I didn’t want to appear foolish for having agreed to such a high price. But now that I’m looking at the cake, I’m thinking that Mama-Grace has surely charged me too little for all this work.”
“If just one person comes to me to order a cake because they like this one that Dr Binaisa ordered for his child, then I will not think that I charged too little,” replied Angel.
“I’ll make sure that many come to you, Mama-Grace,” assured Dr Binaisa.
“I’m glad you’re happy, Baba-Zahara. I think this is a cake that will be talked about for many weeks.”
“No, Mama-Grace, you are wrong. It is a cake that w
ill be talked about for many months. But I’m worried that Zahara will love it too much. She won’t want to cut it and eat it.”
Angel laughed. “Baba-Zahara must tell her that it’s a chocolate cake. Eating it will be the best part.”
A few minutes later, after she had seen the cake safely into the red microbus and waved goodbye to everyone, Angel put the Nigerian video into the video machine and settled into a chair with her feet up on the coffee table. She was about to press play on the VCR’s remote control when somebody knocked on the door.
“Karibu!” she called, taking her feet off the table.
But nobody came in. Instead, they knocked again.
“Karibu!” she repeated, more loudly this time. But the person on the other side of the door was either deaf or unable to understand plain Swahili. Angel pushed herself up out of the chair and went to open the door. She was hoping that it would be just a passing beggar or someone intent on trying to sell her something—although it would be unusual for such a person to get past Modeste and Gaspard. Perhaps it was one of those Congolese men who were always trying to sell wooden masks and statues to the Wazungu in the compound. The Egyptian bought things from them quite often, so perhaps Modeste had let one of them in to go up to his apartment; but Angel had never encouraged them herself, so there was really no reason for one of them to be knocking on her door, disturbing her quiet Saturday afternoon. In any case, she hoped it was somebody who was going to go away quickly.
She opened the door to find a woman standing there, someone with whom she had exchanged greetings often, but who had never before knocked on her door.
“Hello, Angel,” said Jenna, the CIA’s wife. “I hope I’m not disturbing you. I saw you saying goodbye to your family outside, so I thought you’d be alone and that it might be a good time to call.”
“You’re not disturbing me,” lied Angel. “You’re welcome, Jenna. Please come in.” She led her guest to the sofa and indicated that she should sit down.