The Eternal Audience of One

by Rémy Ngamije

  Eugene and Immaculée could have become minor land barons in Rwanda. Their families had vast tracts of farmland in the south of the country near the Burundi border. But one cannot take land with one when Clio decides a page must be turned and a chapter must be closed. What one takes are the closest kin, in minibuses across the border into Tanzania under cover of darkness, paying bribes here and there in Rwandan francs and US dollars, praying the convoy is not ambushed by gangs of ethnically motivated ill-doers. Eugene and Immaculée went from landowners in Rwanda to lessees in Tanzania and then, eventually, Namibia. Their matchbox apartment never ceased to give them painful pangs at the memory of an airy house with endless banana plantations surrounding it. Eugene held a minor post as a technician in the Ministry of Communication while Immaculée, like many of the Rwandan wives, had to find forced passion in housewifery despite her teaching background.

  César and Solange were the next to arrive, the couple being the subject of numerous jokes about owning a four-by-four that had never seen a dirt track in its useful life. The vicissitudes of fate had made it so that the two of them were abroad when the bloodletting started in their home country. They had considered it imprudent to go home. Luckily for them, Namibia was hungry for engineers and César’s services secured him a work permit. Solange, like Therése and Marie Chantal, found comfort in attending to household chores, crocheting, and volunteering at church events. In the lounge César and Solange had to be accommodated on the first round of garden chairs. Solange was reserved while César was animated, full of stories of road-building tender irregularities and angry contractors as Chinese companies chewed into profit margins in the construction industry.

  “Mais, these Chinese have everyone running scared,” he said. “The cost of a project will be, what, forty million? Everyone will quote for thirty and thirty-five. The Chinese will say they can do it for twenty. Who does the client go for? The Chinese work every day, they only pause for their new year. The rest of the time they are working. But nobody can see past that twenty million dollars they can pocket to buy some new cars. Nobody is talking about all of the local firms that are suffering. It is a massacre.”

  “That is not good.” Adrien had been steadily working his way through a couple of the green bottles that did more for Windhoek’s popularity than all of the country’s ambassadors combined.

  “It will all come down soon, I am telling you.”

  “We all know how it goes,” said Olivier. “First you have colonialism which comes with slavery. Then you have liberation and independence. After that comes forgiveness and then development money. With that comes the race to the top. Those who are quick on the uptake crowd out all of the positions at the top. Once you have reached that stage then you have two types of citizens: the Havefricans and those who are not. Then what happens? We all know here.” Olivier’s statement ushered in another bout of reminiscing.

  The door bell chimed again. On his way to open the gate, Séraphin ran through the guest list in his head, reading it silently, with running commentary, like a doomed Capulet invitation. Everyone was here, weren’t they? Adrien, Sonia, Angelo and Nikita—remind Angelo to act proper; Olivier and Marie Chantal with Credence, Clement and Valentin; Eugene and Immaculée—make sure Uwimana is not feeling lonely; Cesar and Solange—the family without children and, therefore, the most secretly pitied. So who could this be?

  Espoir, Claudine and Thierry.

  Séraphin took a deep breath.

  The television room is a large rectangular room with a light brown carpet which spreads out and splashes from corner to corner. It has waist-high shelves containing tightly packed regiments of original Disney video cassettes that have all been watched into photographic memory, and an assortment of TDK cassette tapes which contain taped western, thriller, science fiction and action films, and Wrestlemania and Royal Rumble matches. For the most part, the contents of the video cassettes are evenly spread to showcase the tastes of a Hollywood-crazy household that does not believe in wasting precious tape on romances and dramas. However, here and there can be seen the scars of spitefulness which find ever-creative ways to make themselves felt: Pride And Prejudice resentfully taped over an oft-watched recording of The Negotiator; The Matrix outgunned by an embittered taping of The Notebook. Gone With The Wind blowing The Fifth Element from a cassette tape, a move so vile, so underhand, so careless, its consequences were as unpredictable as the shooting of an Austro-Hungarian duke in a small Serbian town. It was The Fifth Element’s taping-over that launched the already querulous teenage storms that raged through the house into all-out warfare as favourite films and music videos found themselves replaced by indiscriminate recordings of Olympic badminton matches, Spanish telenovelas, Teletubbies re-runs, and, to show the malevolence of which humanity was capable, hours and hours of CNN reports on inches of tape that used to house the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon collections. It was, however, recognised that the violation of the original Star Wars trilogy would represent a total abandonment of all moral reason and an inevitable drive towards mutually-assured destruction and so, thankfully, the trilogy remained. The acrimony of recordings was so poisonous the threat of physical violence could only be avoided by Guillome purchasing a DVD player. The immortality and inviolability of the discs brought a welcome peace to the house, but it was the costs of re-acquiring lost films which finally brought the warring parties to roundtable discussions about how far pocket-money could stretch.

  In the present day, the television room’s shelves are stocked and burgeoning with carefully negotiated purchases of vintage Bruce Lee films, the entire repertoire of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s mafioso tales, and the hallowed limited special edition Lord of The Rings box set which requires a considerable portion of the lunar cycle to be watched in its entirety.

  The television room was the most neutral place for a group of Rwandan children too young to engage in the complex politicking and scab-picking of history. Angelo, Nikita, Credence, Clement, Valentin, Uwimana, Yves and Éric sat squeezed into the couches. The conversations that issued from their lips sparked and sputtered, dying as the tectonic nature of the differing personalities and the undercurrents of their lives made it hard to find common ground. Despite their parents’ closeness, it was hard for the assembled children to be united by the same bonds of trauma and loss which made the elders a room away so loquacious. They spoke shyly to each other, in English, like new acquaintances who had just met at a café. Yves and Éric did their best to drive conversation but, eventually, the vocal communication would ebb and, as one, fingertips would blaze away at cellphone keyboards as friends, near and far away, provided more stimulating and sincere points of connection. Besides the age differences, there were issues of class to contend with. Séraphin, Yves and Éric were private school royalty; the rest attended public schools. Though unspoken, the difference made itself felt in cagey conversations about immediate futures which could divulge information about a family’s inability to cater for a child’s academic ambitions.

  “How is school, Uwi?” Yves asked. The youngest in the group, at fifteen, Uwimana was also the quietest.

  “It’s okay,” she replied.

  “What grade are you in now?”

  “Ten.”

  “I hated grade nine. The maths was hard. I spent too much time playing basketball to take it seriously, though,” Yves said, hoping his offering of an academic weakness would provide an incision into the taciturn mood from which some sort of conversation could flow.

  “All of the subjects are okay.”

  “Cool.”

  Credence said, “You didn’t play on the same team as Séra, did you?”

  “No, I was in the junior team. Séra was in the senior team.”

  “Of course,” said Credence. “Man, St. Luke’s kids always came to play ball in the newest kicks, decked out from head to toe in all of the best brands, and we would still wash them when the whistle blew.” A small laugh rippled through the group. St. Luke’s was known
for many things but athletic endeavour was not one of them.

  “Not Séra’s year, though,” said Yves. “Those guys jammed serious ball. Remember that time you guys came to play on our court? Creed, didn’t you have your ankles snapped?”

  “No!” Credence shot back. “Séra nearly got me, but I recovered just in time. But you’re right. Séra’s year played ball. Guys even gave themselves nicknames.”

  “Blame the And 1 mixtapes.”

  “What did Séra call himself again?” Clement asked.

  “Knots and Crossovers,” Credence and Yves said together.

  “You called yourself Slip-N-Slide, Creed,” said Valentin. Yves barked out a laugh and Credence smiled.

  “Man, you couldn’t show up to a court without a name. It was like a username today—some people didn’t even know other people’s real names.”

  “But most of the names were dumb,” Clement said. “I was Clemedia until I found out it was a venereal.” Another ripple of laughter.

  “Yeah, and then you tried to make it sound okay by saying it was because your game was so infectious,” Yves said.

  “Hey,” said Clement, “I was young, handsome and innocent. Now I’m only handsome.”

  “Right,” said Valentin. “Everyone knows Creed was the draft version, you were the revision, and on the third try they finally perfected me.”

  “Listen to this guy,” said Angelo.

  On the television screen, which possessed technology capable of making reality clearer, sharper and richer than it could possibly be, the sports highlights from the past year were playing. Scenes from a stadium in Soweto where a soccer player in a black uniform with a skull and crossbones dribbled his opponent in frenzied circles, looping the ball through his legs and running a few short strides before pulling up quickly, standing on the ball, and then running back to his initial starting point.

  “Iyoooooooh! It’s diski time!”

  Rows of Pakistani cricket fans waved their hard hats in a cricket stadium. Panting cyclists laboured up the Alpe d’Huez. They were followed by a muscular black woman smacking a tennis ball which blurred with speed as it bounced past the reach of a taller, hapless, pale-skinned woman. The woman turned to the crowd and roared, biceps curled, veins popping against her dark skin as the victory of the moment unleashed a primal roar into the manicured Wimbledon grounds.

  “She looks like a man,” Éric said aloud.

  “Really? Then why don’t you look like her?” said Uwimana.

  There was an intake of breath. Faces looked up from flickering screens.

  “That was cold,” said Credence, clutching his throat.

  “I say,” said Angelo, “what’s cooler than being cool?”

  “Ice cold!” said everyone together.

  “Éric, you’re going to leave it like that?” asked Angelo. “Ek sal nie los nie! Clap back. And fast.”

  Valentin jumped off the sofa, hopped to where Éric was sitting and got down on his knees, slapping the carpet with exaggerated haste. “One! Two! And three! It’s all over! It’s all over! I cannot believe it! Uwi has won Monday night’s Raw!”

  Uwimana’s rapacious rebuttal was met with an indignant silence from Éric. As the youngest and shortest brother, when Éric looked at his elder siblings he could not help but feel like the odd one out. He was lighter than both of them, and shorter, and widening in the middle despite being an avid soccer player. He had long eyelashes which further feminised his cherubic face. He longed to have Yves’ long, angular face which looked pensive at all times, or Séraphin’s majestic frown which made his paternity unquestionable since he looked exactly like Guillome. Éric was all soft angles and feelings of delayed arrival in the world. His brothers seemed to have gotten all of the good bits. Séraphin was old enough to remember life in Rwanda and their hasty departure while Yves could pick out hazy images of their arrival in Kenya. Éric’s memory only stretched as far as his dusty and bullied years in kindergarten in Namibia. Even in memory he felt alienated from his family; there was a fine sheen of trauma he could not claim affinity to, a great happening for which he had been absent. It showed in his father, his mother, and in Séraphin, and it had traces in Yves. But in him it was totally absent. He felt torn, not Rwandan enough to be Rwandan but not Namibian either.

  “Screw you guys,” he said in a huff.

  “Man, Éric, you’re being had, bro!” said Valentin.

  Just then the door bell rang. The group got to their feet, shuffled out of the television room, passing through the dining room, and into the lounge, where they greeted each other’s parents. When the greetings were concluded they all trooped back to the television room, this time with Thierry and Séraphin added to their number. Not finding seats, Séraphin grabbed two chairs from the dining room, passing one to Thierry, who placed it on the opposite side of the room so that he and Séraphin sat facing each other. Séraphin asked everyone what they wanted to drink. Juice and cool drink were the expected and received plebeian responses. Thierry broke the pattern with a patrician response, asking for still water.

  “Err, yeah, we have tap water. Would you like ice with it? I put a bottle of water in the fridge earlier but it might not be cold enough,” said Séraphin.

  “I don’t drink tap water.” Curious eye contact ping-ponged between the rest of the company as they mused about this new, light-skinned creature who did not drink water from a tap.

  “Well, we don’t buy water, so unless you want juice or something, I won’t have anything else to offer you,” said Séraphin.

  “What kind of juice you got?”

  “Grape, apple, granadilla, and fruit cocktail.”

  “Is it organic?”

  “Say what?” said Credence under his breath.

  Séraphin ran a hand over his short hair and said, “I don’t know. It’s juice, man. It comes in a box. The box is recyclable. That’s good enough for most of us.”

  “Grape it is then.”

  “Cool. Be right back.” Séraphin walked out of the television room, then did an about turn and popped his head back in. “Snacks? We have chips, pretzels, popcorn, peanuts and raisins. That good?” Assent was murmured around the room.

  “You got any dried fruit?” asked Thierry. “I don’t eat the rest of that stuff.”

  “Nah, sorry, man.”

  “Ait,” said Thierry, “it’s cool, man.” He sat back in his chair.

  It took a while for Séraphin to load a couple of trays with drinks and to pour the snacks into plastic bowls that could be passed around. Still water and dried fruit, he thought to himself. Clearly Thierry had forgotten where he was. When he walked back into the television room he set the trays down on the coffee table and let everyone help themselves.

  “This is a blend, yeah?” asked Thierry.

  “What?” said Séraphin.

  “I mean, this isn’t just grape, right? Like, it’s mixed with something else?”

  “It said grape on the box.”

  “I guess it’s cool.”

  As Séraphin sat down Yves raised his eyebrows at his brother and let his eyes flick at Thierry. Séraphin raised his in response: Yeah, this dude is hella awkward, they said.

  “So,” Séraphin said, beaming, “what’s new, Angelo?”

  “The usual,” Angelo replied. “School, sweat, and stress.”

  “How’s the music thing going?”

  “It ain’t easy, man. But I have some hustles going, some new mixes I hope will sell.”

  “Hopefully not the house nonsense you made last time,” said his sister Nikita.

  “There was a song that was eight minutes long,” added Valentin. “And the beat only kicked in after five minutes.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” said Angelo with a trace of hurt in his voice.

  “It was worse,” said Yves calmly. “Angelo, you know we’ve supported every mixtape you’ve made, but that house CD could’ve had you shipped out of the country for violating the constitution.”

&nbs
p; “That mix was fire.”

  “It was,” said Nikita. “It burned my eardrums. Medical aid said it doesn’t cover any injuries sustained while supporting people’s music careers.”

  “Ouch,” said Clement.

  “Let’s lay off the music thing,” Séraphin said. “How’re your studies, Creed?”

  “Okay. Just hope I can get a scholarship next year so I can study in South Africa.”

  “Sweet,” said Séraphin. “Where’re you thinking of applying?”

  “Pretoria, Rhodes, Johannesburg, Cape Town – wherever I can get in.”

  “You’re doing chemistry, right?” asked Angelo.

  “Yeah,” replied Credence. “Third year. It would be cool to do my Honours somewhere else, though.”

  “Pretty sure if your marks are good you’ll be able to get something,” said Séraphin. “Those places are always looking for foreign students to make up their diversity quotas. Get the marks and you’re in.”

  “Getting in is okay. It’s the fees that kill us.”

  A series of nods bobbed up and down the room. All of them were studying at the local university so they saw each other on a regular basis, even though they did not hang out or share social circles. Séraphin was the only one who was studying abroad. The issue of fees was a constant thorn in the sides of families with university-going children. After Credence’s comment Séraphin had the good grace to avoid the subject.

  “What year are you in now, Clem?” Séraphin asked.

  “Half of second and half of third,” Clement replied. “Got a couple of courses to re-do but it’s going well.”

  “Nice. And you, Angelo?”

  “Going to finish that degree any minute now,” said Angelo. Nikita let out an audible snort before returning her attention to her phone.