Our Lady of the Nile (16 page)

“Follow me. My shepherds will fill your pot with this morning’s milking, then we’ll climb up to the Queen’s tomb so you can carry out your duties to her.”

“Monsieur de Fontenaille,” said Virginia as he made to enter the funereal grove with her, “please don’t be angry with me, but I must proceed alone into the
kigabiro
. It’s a forbidden wood. You must have cut down trees, you dug up the earth, uncovered the Queen’s remains, and built your monument on top. You’re a white man, but you’ve violated the
kigabiro
all the same. I’m afraid that the Queen will refuse my offering if you’re with me. If we annoy the dead, we may have to fear their evil. Perhaps this is of no concern to you whites, but it’s me who’ll receive her vengeance. Please, don’t be angry, I beg you.”

“But of course I’m not angry, Candace. On the contrary, I understand, I respect the rituals. When you get back to the villa, you’ll dress yourself in Queen Candace’s clothes again. I’ll do your portrait. Isis, Candace, the evidence is accumulating. Even if the Tutsi were to disappear, I am the custodian of their legend.”

Virginia slipped between the gnarled trunks of the ancient fig trees, avoiding the clearing where the pyramid stood, trying to find the flame tree in the eerie and closely growing thicket. A thought entered her head: “What if the python is stalking me from within the undergrowth?” She hurried and soon reached the far side of the wood: “Rubanga deceived me,” she said to herself. “He’s just an old charlatan.” But as soon as she got out into the open, she saw a tree standing on its own not far away. It wasn’t covered with red blossoms (she knew it only flowered in the dry season), but she recognized it as the tree she sought from its twisting branches and cracked bark: the flame tree, the
umurinzi
, the guardian, as it should be called out of respect, the tree the
abiru
chose long ago to receive the Queen’s
umuzimu
. She circled it, plunged the
umurembe
stem into the pot, and sprinkled the
umurinzi
with milk drops while reciting the words: “Return without thorns, like the
umurembe
.” When the little pot was empty, she knelt at the foot of the tree and dug a hole with a flat stone, in which she buried the pot and the
umurembe
branch. When she stood up, she thought she saw the flame tree’s leaves tremble and she felt as if bathed with a serene strength. “From now on,” she thought, “the Queen’s
umuzimu
will bring me good fortune, I am her favorite, but her favorite in this world.”

As they walked back down to the villa, the servant ran toward them and breathlessly announced:

“Master! Master! There’s a visitor: the old padre, the one with a big beard. He came on his
ipikipiki
.”

“That old Father Pintard, he still rides that motorbike at his age! He’s back again to convert me to his biblical absurdities. He’ll try to convert you, too. Twenty years, he’s been trying. Don’t listen to him. And don’t forget it was me who told you where you come from, from Meroë, I recognized you as Queen Candace.”

Father Pintard was waiting in the large living room. The little bamboo chair he was sitting on seemed ready to collapse beneath his imposing stature. His white cassock spattered with mud was swathed in chunky rosary beads, like a hunter with his cartridge belts. His long patriarch’s beard made a big impression on Virginia.

“Fontenaille, hello, I see you’re still attracting gullible young ladies to your demonic chapel. If it’s for your perversions, which reassures me a little, then it must be because you’re so well past it that your true favorites are queens from four thousand years ago.”

“Bless me, Father, for I have greatly sinned,” replied Fontenaille, laughing. “This young lady’s name is Virginia, I’m drawing her portrait and you’ll see how much she resembles a queen from two thousand years ago.”

“Dear girl, don’t listen to Fontenaille, listen to me instead, you’re Tutsi I presume, in any case there are only ever Tutsi at Fontenaille’s. When I arrived in Rwanda, almost forty years ago
now, people swore by Tutsi and only Tutsi, bishops as much as Belgians. They’d had to change kings, but we were soon to baptize the new one, it was Constantin they wanted. Then the Belgians and bishops turned coats: they swore by Hutu and Hutu only, the doughty democratic farmers, the Lord’s humble sheep. Well, I’ve got no views on the matter, I obey Monsignor, and those young missionaries just fall for everything they’re told about the majority
demokarasi
. But I’ve spent nearly forty years studying: the Bible on the one hand, the Tutsi on the other. It’s all in the Bible, the story of the Tutsi and everything else.”

“Pintard! Pintard! That’s nonsense! Don’t exhaust us with your ridiculous theories. Virginia doesn’t want to hear it.”

But Father Pintard didn’t want to hear it either. He had launched himself, apparently still addressing Virginia, into an endless monologue, part sermon, part lecture. “Without going as far back as Noah, let’s start with Moses. The Israelites left Egypt, Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea with his staff, but some of them went the wrong way, heading south, and arrived in the land of Kush, these were the first Tutsi, then there was the Queen of Sheba, who was also Tutsi, and she went to visit Solomon and returned home with the child she begat with the great king, and then her son became emperor of a land where the Jews were Tutsi called Falashas,” and at the end of all that, Virginia hadn’t understood why it should finish in Rwanda, where the Tutsi were
the real Jews, along with the
abiru
who knew the secrets of King Solomon’s mines.

Monsieur de Fontenaille laughed, threw his hands in the air, poured glass after glass of whiskey, and offered some to his guest, who refused more and more feebly until he eventually accepted. Virginia didn’t dare interrupt Father Pintard, but when she noticed the sun was close to setting, she whispered in Fontenaille’s ear:

“It’s late, I must get back to the lycée, I need a lift.”

“Please excuse me, Father,” Fontenaille interrupted. “Virginia must get back to the lycée. I’ll tell my driver to take her back. Now, Virginia, promise me you’ll return on Sunday: I want to see you as Queen Candace.”

“Young lady,” said Father Pintard, “think hard about what I’ve told you. You’ll find some consolation in my words for your people’s misfortune.”

“Tell me, Virginia, did you play the queen at Fontenaille’s?” asked Veronica.

“I did what I needed to do. But I also learned that Tutsi aren’t humans: here, we’re
inyenzi
, cockroaches, snakes, rodents; to whites, we’re the heroes of their legends.”

King Baudouin’s Daughter

After the Easter break, Mother Superior wanted to show just how far her liberalism extended: she gave the girls permission to decorate the partitions of their “rooms.” With taste and moderation, she had insisted, and distributed drawings of Our Lady of the Nile that they could hang over their beds. Gloriosa checked to make sure that all the girls had placed the President’s photo next to Our Lady of the Nile. In Rwanda, all human activity took place beneath the curatorial portrait of the President. In even the most humble boutiques, the head of state’s dusty red portrait stood guard atop a shelf, flanked by a few bags of salt,
some matches, and three cans of Nido milk; in even the sleaziest of bars, the portrait swung above jugs of banana beer and a lone crate of Primus bottles. The living rooms of the rich and powerful competed to have the largest, since the size of the President’s portrait testified to the businessman’s or civil servant’s unswerving loyalty to the Emancipator of the majority people. Unfortunate is the lady of the house who neglects to divest the beloved leader’s portrait of the tiniest speck of dust each morning.

Goretti was the only one who dared criticize the venerated photo: “I like our President very much,” she remarked, “but at least he could’ve dressed like a president for the photo, with a peaked cap, a smart uniform with epaulettes, loads of braid on the sleeves, and a heap of medals on his jacket. That’s what every president looks like, but ours looks like a seminary student in that dinky suit.” The girls around her pretended not to have heard. They awaited Gloriosa’s reaction. She took her time to retort, and surprised everyone with her moderation: “Our President doesn’t need a uniform to address the people, they all understand him, not like you and your colonel father.” Making fun of the way people spoke in the North, where they lived alongside gorillas at the foot of the volcanoes, was just part of the joking around that hardly shocked anyone. So nobody understood why Gloriosa hadn’t deployed her usual arsenal of threats, like denouncing remarks of her being subversive with regard to the Party and, even worse, her father … The most perceptive deduced that the military,
particularly officers who came from the North, were clearly becoming quite influential, and that the President himself had to reckon with them. Goretti’s behavior suddenly seemed less awkward, and her language less rude. The girls refrained from the customary teasing and showered Goretti with signs of affection and solicitation, which she received with disdainful benevolence.

It proved to be quite difficult for the girls to decorate their alcove partitions as recommended by Mother Superior. They hung up some small basketwork panels decorated with traditional geometric motifs, place mats embroidered with simplistic flowers, photos of parents or entire families taken at an elder sister or brother’s wedding. But the girls weren’t satisfied with the result: this wasn’t how a young, modern girl, a “civilized” girl as they would say during the Colonial Era, should decorate her room. What was needed, and they knew it, were pictures of young people with long hair, singers wearing “anti-sun” shades, as they were called, blond girls, real blondes, blonder than Madame de Decker, long-blond-haired beach girls in bathing suits like the ones in the movies at the French Cultural Center. Of course there were no such pictures at the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile, except perhaps, said Immaculée, among the French teachers, who were young and single, most likely Monsieur Legrand, who had a beard and played the guitar. Gloriosa decided that Veronica should go ask Monsieur Legrand if he wouldn’t mind giving his pupils a few
magazines: “You Tutsi girls know how to handle Whites, and for once it won’t be to bad-mouth the Republic.” Monsieur Legrand seemed flattered by Veronica’s request, and the following day he brought a pile of periodicals to class: issues of
Paris Match
and
Salut les copains
. “If you want more,” he added, “just drop by and ask me.” Some of the girls were convinced his invitation was meant specifically for them.

The girls flicked feverishly through the magazines. Lengthy negotiations ensued to decide the sharing and cutting out of photos. Johnny Hallyday, the Beatles, and Claude François were keenly fought over. As for the female stars, Françoise Hardy and her guitar seemed too sad, but Tina Turner and Miriam Makeba caught the girls’ fancy because of their color, but Nana Mouskouri had the most success thanks to her glasses. Everyone wanted Brigitte Bardot’s picture, but there weren’t enough to go around. Gloriosa divvied them up among her favorites. Only a handful of girls, out of either caution or actual devotion, insisted on the Pope’s portrait and some views of Lourdes, Saint Peter’s in Rome, or the Sacré-Cœur in Paris.

When Mother Superior proceeded to inspect the “rooms,” she couldn’t hold back a “
Mon Dieu
!” of stupor, indignation, and anger.

“Just look at that!” she said to Father Herménégilde, who was
standing beside her. “We thought we had protected our girls from the evils of the world, and the world has come crashing through our doors. But I can guess who gave them these horrors, and I’ll tell him quite bluntly what I think about this.”

“Satan,” the chaplain replied, “takes every available guise. I fear our Christian Rwanda may be under serious threat.”

Mother Superior severely reprimanded the girls and grounded them for the two following Sundays, except of course for those who had hung up a portrait of the Pope. She ordered the girls to tear down the indecent images and hand them in to Father Herménégilde. However, in order to demonstrate a certain liberalism, she exempted the photos of Adamo and Nana Mouskouri. The chaplain, it was noticed, conspicuously tore up the photos of the crooners but spared those of Brigitte Bardot and endeavored to furtively slip a few into his cassock pockets.

Mother Superior and Father Herménégilde apparently paid no attention to Godelive’s alcove. Yet her schoolmates were most intrigued by her decorative display. Apart from the obligatory icons of the Holy Virgin and the President, there was only one other image: a full-length portrait of the King and Queen of the Belgians, Baudouin and Fabiola. We also noticed that the royal portrait was not an illustration cut out of a magazine, but an actual photograph. When Godelive was asked why she’d chosen such a photo and how she’d obtained it, she got all mysterious, simply replying that she couldn’t say anything, that all would be revealed
soon. Exasperated at not knowing, Gloriosa tried to force open Godelive’s suitcase while she was cleaning the chapel with a few other girls. But the padlocks withstood her attempts.

A few days later, Mother Superior gathered all the pupils and teachers in the large study room. She appeared quite moved as she stepped onto the stage. She cast an unusually maternal gaze over the pupils: “My girls,” she declared, “we are about to experience a momentous event, a historic event, I’m not afraid to say. Our lycée, the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile, will have the remarkable honor of welcoming the Queen of the Belgians, Queen Fabiola. For King Baudouin and his wife are making an official visit to Rwanda. While the President and the King discuss politics and development, the Queen will visit the First Lady’s Orphanage in Kigali, but she is also keen to recognize and encourage the Rwandan government’s female advancement policy, of which our lycée is the best example. You are familiar with the generosity and piety of Queen Fabiola. She will therefore visit our lycée. We must extend a welcome that will show her the image of today’s Rwanda: a peaceful, Christian Rwanda. She will be accompanied by the Minister of Female Advancement, perhaps Madame the First Lady, too, we don’t know yet. She’ll stay for a day, perhaps, or a half day, I have yet to receive the definitive schedule. In any case, we have a month to prepare for this extraordinary event. The lesson load will be lightened if necessary. I am counting on all
you girls, and on you, the teachers, to contribute wholeheartedly to the success of this day, which shall remain forever engraved in our memories.”