Blue Gold (24 page)

THE MORNING AFTER
Kayembe brought Fazila to examine Sylvie, Olivier came striding into the cluster of huts carrying something large and pink in his arms. At first glance, Sylvie—outside squatting over the cook fire as she stirred the porridge—thought how strange it was that he was holding a flamingo, like the ones they'd seen years ago when they crossed Lake Tanganyika from the Congo. As he came closer, however, she saw that it wasn't a flamingo at all. It was a frilly, European-style dress, something an actress on TV might wear.

Kayembe and his men were leaving tomorrow for North Kivu, and he had insisted that the marriage take place before they go—just in case Sylvie had any ideas about running. He forbade her from going to the clinic to talk to Doctor Marie. Sylvie would have defied him and gone anyway, but she was worried about what Kayembe might do to Marie and the clinic as punishment.

“Here,” Olivier commanded, holding the dress out to her. She could see the strap of his AK-47 across his chest, and the gun barrel behind his right shoulder. “Put this on. It's for the wedding.” Stubbornly, Sylvie stayed squatting and continued to stir the pot. “Sylvie!” he told her. “Mr. Kayembe sent this for you. Put it on and come with me.”

“I'm making breakfast,” she told him, refusing to meet his eyes—bracing herself for more of his bullying.

But Olivier surprised her by crossing his ankles and plopping down onto the dusty ground across the fire from her, still holding the dress. Sylvie glanced at him. He gave her a look that was almost shy. “You need to put it on,” he said. “I'm to bring you to the church at noon.”

“Is that all he's offering for my bride price?” asked Sylvie resentfully. Back home, the groom had to give the girl's family so many goats, so many cows, pots and pans—all of which could amount to a lot of money. Kayembe was wealthy enough to afford any bride price, but nobody, least of all Olivier, was about to negotiate with him.

“Why are you so ungrateful?” Olivier shot back. “Who do you think you are, to turn up your nose to any man, let alone Mr. Kayembe? I'll tell you who you are—an ugly girl that nobody wants!”

Sylvie wished with all her heart that nobody wanted her—most of all Kayembe—but before she could tell Olivier this, Pascal came out from the hut, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“What's going on?” he asked.

“Sylvie is getting married today,” Olivier told him. “This is the dress she's going to wear.”

Pascal wrinkled his nose at the strange dress. “Will you still live with us, Sylvie?” was all he really wanted to know.

Since yesterday, Sylvie had been practicing hard at feeling nothing. It was the only way she could bear to take another breath, knowing the future that awaited her. But Pascal's question made a familiar panic rise in her stomach. Tonight, she supposed, she must stay with Kayembe. The thought of him touching her sickened her—she could feel the weight of the soldier who raped her; she smelled his diesel smell.

“Don't be stupid, Pascal,” Olivier answered for her. “From now on, Sylvie is going to be Hervé Kayembe's woman. She'll be important,” he added.

Sylvie wondered if Olivier really believed that she would become anything other than Kayembe's slave, or if he was simply trying to convince her to go with him willingly. She gave the porridge a final stir and knocked the spoon on the side of the pot. “Tell Mama and Lucie breakfast is ready,” she told Pascal. After Pascal went into the hut, she spoke softly to Olivier. “I will go with you,” she said, “but you must promise me something first.”

“What's that?”

“That you will look after the family. That you will put them first, before Kayembe. Before anyone. Swear that you'll do it, Olivier. Swear it so that Papa's spirit can hear you.”

Olivier eyed her nervously. Sylvie wasn't sure if he was spooked more by the mention of the spirit world, or of Papa. After a moment, his expression became solemn. “I swear,” he said, and Sylvie believed him. Maybe there was something of her brother left inside him after all.

Standing up from the fire, Sylvie took the dress from Olivier and held it up against her. It had straps—no sleeves—and the top part had wires in it to shape a woman's bosom. Sylvie supposed that some girls might think it was pretty, but the fact that Kayembe had chosen it for her made it hideous. From Olivier's dubious expression, it seemed he agreed.

“We don't have to leave right away,” he told her. “You can eat breakfast first.”

“I'm not hungry,” she replied.

As she carried the dress into the hut to change, she told herself that when Kayembe touched her after the wedding, she would go inside of herself, the way Mama did when she didn't want to face the truth about Papa. Then it would be only her body that Kayembe took. She would never give him her true being, the self that from now on she would keep locked away so down deep that Kayembe would never reach her.

 

OLIVIER INFORMED THEM
that Mama, Pascal, and Lucie were not invited to the wedding, but no one protested. In spite of Sylvie's fancy dress, even little Lucie seemed to understand that there was nothing to celebrate, and, since Kayembe's visit, Mama had withdrawn to the place in her mind where she believed that Papa was still alive. “Patrice won't approve,” she said when she saw Sylvie in the long pink dress, forgetting all about the firm grasp she'd held on reality just two nights before, when she'd told Pascal that Papa was gone to the other side. “We must wait for your father to come.”

By mid-morning, Sylvie could delay no longer. She set out with Olivier, tripping over the billowing skirt as she walked toward the far side of the old marketplace, where they were to meet Kayembe at a small church. The bodice was too big for her—it cut into her underarms and the straps kept slipping. Olivier slowed his pace to match hers as she fumbled to lift the hem of the dress out of the red dust, her plastic thongs slapping against the soles of her feet. He, too, seemed in no hurry. She wondered where his thoughts were leading him, and decided to take a risk to find out.

“Olivier,” she said. “Why do we never talk about Papa?”

Olivier gave her a startled look, then let out a short laugh. “Mama talks about him all the time.”

“But we never do.”

“There's nothing to say,” he shrugged. He fell into a brooding silence.

Sylvie thought,
No, there is too much to say
. She'd always been afraid to ask what he saw at the school the day Papa was killed, but somehow today she felt brave enough to hear it.

“Tell me about how he died,” she said, after a few more paces.

“You know how he died. He was shot.”

“By the Mai-Mai?”

“You know it was the Mai-Mai.”

“Did you see it?

Olivier looked away sharply and didn't reply.
That's it
, Sylvia thought.
He's closed the door
. Then he surprised her.

“Yes.”

“What did you see?”

“Stop this.”

“You'll feel better if you tell me,” she said, because it was true, and because she needed to know—needed to lock the picture of Papa's last moments inside her, deep down with her true self. “Where was he? Where were you?”

“I was outside, playing football with the junior boys.”

“And Papa?”

“Inside with the older grades. Teaching French, I think. They were reciting poetry.”

Sylvie could see him—Papa at the head of the class, his shirt and tie, his dark-rimmed glasses, his hand waving to mark the rhythm of the poem.

“How did they come, the soldiers?” asked Sylvie. “In a truck?”

Olivier shook his head. “Out of nowhere, they were all around, walking through the grass, coming from all directions.”

“What did you do?”

“I yelled for Papa, and I ran into the school to tell him.”

“What happened next?”

“Papa told the kids to get out of the school, but the soldiers were already coming in both doors.” Sylvie pictured it, the single room of the cinder block schoolhouse, the two doors, one at either end of one long wall. “The doors were blocked. Some kids tried to climb out a back window. They shot them.” Sylvie pictured this, too. Probably her friends were among the dead. She wondered which ones.

Olivier kept talking, as though a dam had burst and his memories were spilling out. “Papa gathered the kids behind him, with his arms out, like this.” He held his arms out straight from his body. “He asked the commander what he wanted. The commander said they came for him, because he was making trouble with the miners.”

“What did Papa say?”

“I can't remember.”

But Sylvie could imagine what Papa told the commander, that it was his moral duty to help protect the miners and their families against soldiers like him. Did he know about the foreign mining companies, driving the Congolese off their plots? Did he know the Mai-Mai were working for them? He must have.

“Then what happened?” she asked.

“They made us go outside, all of us. Papa said not to worry, they wouldn't hurt us if we did what they said. But everyone was crying.”

She saw Papa, herding the children out through the doors into the playing field, comforting them, when he must have known he was about to die.

“Did he die quickly?”

“Stop asking so many questions,” he said.

They walked on for several paces. Olivier kept his head turned away from her.
He's crying
, she realized. Then, abruptly, he stopped walking and turned to her. His eyes were a little wild, as though he didn't know where to look, and he was breathing heavily. Tears streaked his face and sweat dotted his forehead. He was remembering, reliving—Sylvie recognized the signs. She touched his arm.

“What is it?” she asked. “What are you seeing?”

“I didn't have a choice!” he cried, suddenly a child again. “Papa said so!”

“About what?”

She saw him struggling to speak, but the words seemed to choke him. She stepped closer so that she was looking up into his wet face and gripped his arms with her hands.

“Olivier, whatever it is, you have to say it,” she told him. “You have to get it out.”

Under her steady gaze, Olivier's eyes became ghostly calm.

“It was me, Sylvie,” he said at last, in barely more than a whisper. “I shot him. They put the rifle in my hands, and they made me shoot him, or they said they would shoot me.”

The odd thing was that Sylvie wasn't really shocked, or even surprised. She should have guessed that Olivier bore a scar far worse than hers—from his moods, from the way he used words to wound her. From what she knew about the Mai-Mai, and their inhuman cruelty. Of course Papa would have told him he had no choice—because Papa wouldn't have wanted him to live his whole life under a cloud of guilt.

Olivier put his face in his hands and began to sob. Sylvie squeezed his arms to let him know that she didn't hate him, that somehow the truth had made them brother and sister again. They stood like that in the middle of the path for what seemed like a long time, with passing people casting curious looks at the boy soldier, weeping, and the scarred girl in the frilly pink dress that was too big for her. But Sylvie didn't care if they stared. Her mind was clear, and she was strong. She knew what they had to do.

 

INSTEAD OF CONTINUING ON
to the church, where Kayembe was waiting for them, Sylvie and Olivier went to the clinic. The waiting area was crowded with mothers holding crying babies in their laps. A man was sleeping sitting upright on one of the wooden benches, crutches propped beside him. Neema, at the admitting desk, laughed out loud when she saw Sylvie's dress.

“Do you think you are a movie star now?” she said, “just because of that video?”

Olivier threw Sylvie a doubtful look. “These are your
friends
?” he asked.

“Where is Doctor Marie?” demanded Sylvie, ignoring Neema's laughter. “It's urgent!”

At the commotion, Doctor Van de Velde came out from the back, holding his stethoscope. “I can't hear myself think!” he said crossly. He gave Sylvie a baffled look, taking in her dress. Then he saw the rifle over Olivier's shoulder. “Hey, no weapons in here!” he barked.

“This is my brother,” explained Sylvie. Then she told Olivier, “Give them the rifle!”

Olivier hesitated, reluctant to give it up, but he let the strap of his AK-47 slide off his shoulder and handed the gun over to Doctor Van de Velde, who dangled it by the strap, as though it was a bomb about to go off. Marie came out from the back with a patient and took in the bizarre scene—Sylvie's pink frills, Doctor Van de Velde holding the AK-47 at arm's length.

“What on earth is going on?” she asked.

The words tumbled out of Sylvie, about the wedding
—about Kayembe's threat to burn the clinic down. Marie listened with anger, Doctor Van de Velde and Neema with alarm.

“You're not marrying that monster, Sylvie!” exclaimed Marie.

“No, she's not,” said Olivier, speaking for the first time. “That's why we're here. We need your protection.”

Sylvie smiled at him, so happy to have her brother returned to her. But at the mention of trouble, one by one the patients in the waiting area—including the man with the crutches, who was now wide awake—stood up and left. Neema looked like she wanted to join them, but she stayed.

“He's threatened you, too, hasn't he?” Sylvie asked Marie.

Marie gave a quick nod, avoiding Doctor Van de Velde's hawk-like gaze. But she couldn't escape his anger.

“Do you mean to tell me that tin-plated thug has been making threats against this clinic?” he bellowed. “Why didn't you say something?!”

Sheepishly, Marie explained. “Everybody said Kayembe was leaving for Kivu. I hoped Sylvie would be gone for Canada before he came back.”