A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali (27 page)

Zozo arrived while he was reading. He was bringing a small bowl of spicy soup, a roast chicken and two bottles of champagne. He told Valcourt how his whole family had died. He knew each one’s wounds and the names of all the killers. A cousin had survived. He had helped her and they were going to be married in his native parish of Nyamata. Another small miracle, said Zozo: he, Béatrice (his future wife), Victor and several others had been saved by Hutus. Valcourt pictured the roof of the church pierced by a thousand killer stars.

“I’ll stay till your wedding.”

“You mustn’t … Victor asked me to give you this. Someone turned it over to him the other day, just after you left.”

It was a school workbook, like the ones Valcourt used to have in elementary school nearly fifty years before. A blue cover, fifty pages or so lightly lined in blue and with a pink vertical line indicating the margin. On the last three lines of page one, a title: “The Story of Gentille After Her Wedding.” The words lined up obediently, like fine lacework made of tall loops and steady, round curves. Valcourt recognized this writing. It was his mother’s and his four sisters’, the airy, fragile hand that Québécois nuns had taught and that had been learned by all the young Rwandan girls who, like Gentille, had gone to Butare’s Social Service School. He could imagine the sparkling red, green or blue stars and the pink and blond cherubs that the sisters a fixed to recognize the quality of the work. To write as gracefully as that, one had to do it patiently, with one’s head slightly bent, in a kind of meditational state before the words one was writing.

Chapter Thirteen

April 10

I do not know who I am writing to, but I know why.
Yesterday I married a man whom I love as I never
thought it possible to love. Today I am shut up in a
little room in Sergeant Modeste’s house. I am writing
to tell of the death (for I am going to die) of an ordinary young woman. I do not have political ideas, I do
not belong to any party. I have no enemies that I know
of, except perhaps the many men I have said no to. I
have the long body of a Tutsi and the determination of
a Hutu. I look at myself and know I’m a good mixture.
And if all the bloods mixing in my veins have not made
sicknesses for me, maybe it’s because they can get along
together. I am not anyone’s enemy. I am Gentille,
daughter of Jean-Damascène, a generous, upright man.
I am the wife of Bernard Valcourt, who taught me love
while teaching me the words of love, and I am the
adoptive mother of Émérita. I shall never see my husband again, I know. To su port me in what is to come,
what I have left is my daughter’s breathing as she
sleeps in my arms, and words I never stop reading, and
transcribe here the better to explain.

I am daughter of a lake
Which has not dimmed
… At absurd rapes I laugh
I am still in flower

April 11

Yesterday Modeste came after his family was asleep.
His wife is jealous. He wanted to protect me, he said. A
Tutsi woman in his section had been raped by ten of
his soldiers. Then they did even worse. Her anus was
perforated with a big stick, her nipples were cut off.
Modeste doesn’t want that to happen to me, that’s why
he’s keeping me here although his wife is jealous and is
making trouble for him. But to thank him I could be
nice, I could be
gentille
. He doesn’t even know that’s
my name. I don’t want to be raped, I don’t want to be
hurt. I opened my legs. He didn’t even want me to
undress. He entered me without a word and did his
business. I know he’ll come back tomorrow and I’ll
open my legs again without protesting so he won’t beat
me, so I can stay here. Because I’m hidden here.

April 12

He came back before the end of the morning with more
horror stories. He’s not bad-looking, he has a fine body.
He always wants to have me right away. It will be
another rape, I know, but why is there never anything
but humiliation and submission? I wanted to caress
him the way Bernard taught me to, not to caress
him
,
but to close my eyes and bring back memories with the
tips of my fingers. He treated me like a whore and
didn’t even look at me although I was all naked.
Someone, someday, reading these lines, if that ever
happen, will surely never understand why a woman
being raped would rather get pleasure from it. I
don’t have a choice. Every time he appears, I know.
I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to defend myself. I
don’t want him to be rough with me and tear me. But
I know he’s going to plant his penis in me. Since I’m
going to die, I’d rather my rapist remind me of my husband and give me pleasure. I know it’s ridiculous. This
time he was in less of a hurry and pawed my breasts
and my buttocks. Not a single memory came back. I’m
ashamed not to want to resist, but I still want to live.

April 13

His wife came. She’s even thinner than I am, you’d
think she was a Tutsi. She’s very jealous. I want to
steal her husband, she told me, and she won’t let me do
it. Her two brothers came with her. They hurt me.
When they had finished with me I was bleeding from
everywhere. Émérita was screaming. Modeste came in
the night to have me. He saw the blood and left without
saying anything. One rape less. He must have thought
I had my period.

April 14

Bernard, why did you have me discover what a mysterious, secret garden the body is, a garden for exploring endlessly without ever finding the beginning or
the end? Why did you teach me desire, and also the
ecstasy of creating the other’s climax? A few days ago
I was a thousand points of pleasure, a thousand
musical notes transformed into a hymn by your fingers,
your lips, your tongue. Today I’m only two dirty,
stinking little holes they keep trying to make bigger.
For them I do not have eyes, or breasts, or thighs. I
do not possess cheeks or ears. And I am certain they
do not even feel pleasure. They empty themselves,
relieve themselves the way one urinates or d … (I
can’t write that word), sweating because one has held
it in too long. Most of all, why did you teach me pure
pleasure, the kind that takes us to a world owing
nothing to love or desire, a world of pure chemistry,
cells dilating and exploding, a universe of sharp
smells, skins rubbing, hair matting with sweat,
nipples hardening, quivering, the blood boils so hard.
Bernard, to you I’ll admit, I like sex, or “fucking” as
you say when you’re playing the cold, callous male.
Every time the door opens and Modeste comes in, he
mounts me like I’m a bale of hay. I’m not human any
more. I have no name and even less soul. I’m a thing,
not even a dog that gets stroked or a goat that gets
protected and then eaten with gusto. I’m a vagina.
I’m a hole. Éluard, dear Éluard, I’m glad I have you
so I know I’m not alone and so I can say what I’m
living through.

April 15

Modeste asked me why all Tutsis thought they were
superior to Hutus and why they wanted to eliminate
them from the earth. No one believes I’m a Hutu. I
don’t know what to reply to these stupid questions. He
told me he didn’t like killing but had no choice. Either
he killed the enemies and their friends or he’d be killed.
It’s as simple as that in his mind. He’s afraid of dying,
so he kills, he kills in order to live. Today he did a lot
of killing. He seems pleased with his work. He did a
raid on Holy Family Church with some militiamen.
Although the priests protested, they killed around
thirty cockroaches. That’s what he calls them. He
never says “Tutsis.” He asked me if I was still bleeding and I told him yes. He doesn’t want a bleeding hole.
I felt like telling him I had breasts, hands and a mouth
that could give him as much pleasure as my bleeding
little hole. I didn’t. But I know I will. I have to get some
pleasure out of dying. Later his wife came. She’s not so
bad. The child can’t live here, she told me. Her sister,
who is sterile and unhappy, will look after Émérita.
Émérita left, but first she kissed me on the cheek. I
touch my cheek to feel her with me still. I have no
husband any more. I have no child any more.

Nothing have we sown that is not ravaged

April 16

Sunday. That means I’ve been married a week. They
don’t kill on Sundays, it seems. The house was full of
relatives and friends talking and having fun. I could
hear the neighbours laughing and calling to each other
from house to house. Modeste came, looking a bit
ashamed. His wife thinks he’s in love with me and he has
to prove to her he’s not, then as well there are militiamen
who say he’s protecting a Tutsi hooker and keeping her
for himself. He has to prove he’s not to them too. He
opened the door and they all came in, his wife first, and
she spat in my face. They didn’t even ask me to undress.
They know I’m beautiful but they’re not interested in that.
They don’t want to look, they want to get inside. The first
was enormous and completely drunk. He picked me up
with one arm and laid me on the little table so my legs
dangled and he could stay standing, without ever leaning
on me. “They’re dirty, the Tutsis, they have to be washed.”
And he stuck his beer bottle in my vagina. That caused a
big burst of laughter. I stopped counting at ten. I watched
Modeste watching. None of them pulled down their pants,
nobody touched me, but all of them looked at me while
they banged away and forced and ejaculated. Modeste
had his turn last. He couldn’t get it up. Everyone laughed
at him. I’m tired and now I’m sure I’m going to die.

April 17

Modeste came with a cup of coffee and a piece of bread.
He said he was sorry but I had to understand. If he
hadn’t given me, worse things could have happened to
me. He saved my life and he wants me to be grateful.
Worse things? Yes, for example, having my breasts cut
off with a machete, my forehead slashed, my hands
split between the fingers, and then being left, as they’ve
done with all the others. As
he
has done with all the
others, all the enemies. I’m alive and he wanted me to
say thank you. In a few days all the Tutsis will be
dead. Then I told him I was even deader than the
corpses, I could smell my stinking death coming from
my guts through all my pores. I think I raised my voice
and he hit me.

Sweet future, I am this pierced eye
This open belly and these nerves in tatters
I who am the object of worms and ravens

April 18

I am in earth instead of on earth Bernard, I’m speaking to you and I see you listening. I know you don’t hold it against me that I’ve looked for pleasure in my pain. But I haven’t been able to guide them to the paths I discovered with you. They don’t hear me. I don’t speak their language. I don’t live on the same planet. I know they’ll kill me when I get to stink of all the smells of all their foul penises. If I can’t get any pleasure from this slow walk toward death, I might as well run out into the sun and die from one machete slash. In a few minutes I’m going to leave this house with this workbook and Éluard, freer than I ever thought I’d be, because now, Bernard, I’m already dead.

We shall not grow old together
This is the day
Too much: time is overfull
My love so light now has the weight of torture

Gentille left the wretched little room she had been kept in and found the house empty.

After walking for several minutes in the Sodoma district where Modeste lived, she saw a roadblock guarded by some laughing militiamen. She no longer had enough strength to walk. She sat in the middle of the dirt road then lay down, pulling up her dress and spreading her legs, preparing to receive the last indignity. This is where she would die. But Gentille no longer had the beauty that had driven men wild with desire ten days earlier. She was only a mass of bruises and swellings now. The two militiamen who came to look reacted with distaste. The younger, who could not have been more than sixteen, bent down and tore her shirt-dress, then ripped off her bra. Only her breasts had been spared. They stood up, pointed and firm, like an accusation and a contradiction. The boy gave two quick strokes with his machete and Gentille’s breasts opened like red pomegranates. The militiamen dragged the young woman to the side of the road and left her there.