Running the Rift (26 page)

Bea regarded him strangely. “I have none. I thought you knew. Thinking of it now, I wonder if this was one reason my parents sent me to boarding school in London, because kids used to torture me about it when I was small. One boy threw rocks and threatened me with a stick. He thought I was possessed by a devil because I was an only child.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Why? It made me strong.” Her tongue against her teeth made a kissing sound. “Besides: all that love my parents have, and only me to take it.” The evening breeze came in, and with it the smell of rain.

Her parents met, Bea told him, when Niyonzima covered Ineza's first exhibit at the National Museum. He had not been happy about the assignment. He had expected excitement and exposés, not dull social events. But the moment he saw Ineza, all his bad humor flew away. “I was a big surprise. I arrived when my father was forty, my mother thirty-six. By then, they had long given up hope. That's why they called me Bea—their blessing.”

“They didn't want a brother or sister for you?”

“There were complications. Mama almost died, and the doctors told her if she had another child, it could kill her. It was a miracle, they said, we both survived.”

“As favored as you have been, I guess you have a boyfriend.” Jean Patrick ran his hand along the fabric of his jacket.

“As my mother told you, I have no child, no husband, no suitor.”

“What about that policeman who came to talk to you in the café?”

She pursed her lips in disgust. “You are always jumping to strange conclusions. Don't give him another thought.”

The engine thrummed, a slow, steady hymn. In the purplish light, Jean Patrick could just make out the stripes of pale and dark rocks, the abruptly discordant layers. In class, Jonathan had spoken of tectonic upheaval. Rwanda, he said, was a landscape twisted and folded, tied in knots
by a history of pressure and heat. Its insides heaved and shifted, disgorging their molten contents.

“Stop the car,” he said.

“Again? What's happened now?”

He threw back his head and gave a boisterous laugh. “I need a rock sample to take to Jonathan.”

Bea pulled over. “If there are more soldiers, they could kill us.”

“It will only take a minute. Come on; I want to show you.” He jogged to the outcrop and held out his hand.

Bea hiked her pagne. “Claire will kill me, with all this mud.” She picked her way to where he leaned against the wet cliff face. Wild begonias gave off a lemony scent.

“Give me your keys.” She put them in his hand, and he dug into a vein of rock, extracting a small, multifaceted crystal. “I think it's quartz. If I scratched it on the window, I could tell—the glass would scratch, but not the rock.”

Bea inspected the crystal. “I say it comes from the moon. I'm sure Jonathan will agree.” She turned it around in her fingers, then placed it in Jean Patrick's palm. She let her hand linger.

A drop of rain hit Jean Patrick's jacket, and then another. He closed his fingers around hers. The edges of the crystal were sharp against his flesh. He leaned back against the cliff and pulled her with him. Dampness seeped through his jacket. He put the crystal in his pocket.

The forest was redolent with evening. Rain spattered the leaves. Bea's hair swept her shoulders, and he gathered a handful and held it to his lips. It felt slippery and soft, like fine cloth. He tasted her flower-scented soap, the coconut oil she rubbed into her scalp. Touching his forehead to hers, he smelled the sweet milk and pungent tea she had sipped at dinner. Gently, he traced the lines of her jaw and lifted her chin. Then, more gently still, he kissed her mouth.

“Y
OU MISSED AGAIN
,” C
OACH SAID.
He clicked his stopwatch. “One forty-nine fifty-nine. What's wrong with you? Are you sick?”

Jean Patrick shook his head, and pain knifed behind his eyes. “No, Coach. Just tired.” He turned to hide his cough.

For nearly three weeks, he had failed to run an A-standard time. For the past week, fighting a cold, seconds attached themselves to his times and would not let go. He couldn't find his zone. His muscles felt sluggish; his rhythm, off. But it wasn't the cold. He knew the true cause: Bea was overmuch in his mind. At first, after their kiss, he'd drawn sustenance from the smell of her hair, the radiant heat in the hollow at the base of her neck, the way she tossed a shawl about her shoulders. He had blazed through workouts. Coach started talking about a medal at Worlds.

The change happened from one day to the next, as if his fibers suddenly forgot how to fire. As if Bea had overloaded his nerves and drained the current. Not knowing the reason, Coach told him not to worry. “These things happen even to the best runners,” he said. But each time he stopped his watch, a knot worked up and down in his jaw. Jean Patrick thought of Samson and Delilah. He wondered if this was what love meant, a slow but steady sap of strength and spirit.

“One lap easy and we'll try again,” Coach said. He zeroed his watch. “I don't want those boys in Sweden to eat you up next year.”

Coach was trying a new plan, making Jean Patrick hold something back until he shouted, “Go!” at some point in the second four hundred. “That's exactly how those Burundi boys got you. For the eight hundred, you
have
to learn strategy.”

Jean Patrick hated it; he couldn't run that way. Trickiness was not in his nature. And as if that wasn't enough, he was losing the battle with his
cold. Cotton plugged his head. His chest burned. He ran again and failed again, and when he heard his time, he sneezed.

“Urachire,” Coach said. Be rich. “Are you sure you're not sick?”

“Twese,” Jean Patrick replied. All of us. The call and response that accompanied every sneeze in Rwanda. “No, Coach. I don't know what's wrong.” Coach lifted Jean Patrick's chin. “Is there something you're not telling me?”

“No, Coach.”

“Maybe you're overtrained. It's going to pour soon, anyway. How about a day off?”

“No, Coach. I need to run a qualifying time before I quit. All this doubt is too heavy.” He fought off another sneeze. “Let me run my old way. If I can break through, I'll be all right. Just one eight hundred—I promise.”

Coach placed a hand on Jean Patrick's belly. “I think you've forgotten. I don't know where your mind is lately, but this is where your power is. I want you to feel it here.” He pressed hard. “Now hurry before you have to swim instead of run.”

Jean Patrick did not hold back. At the signal, he ran as if his life depended on it. And it did. By the start of the second lap, he wanted to die. To keep from quitting, he recited physics laws in his head. He was onto harmonic oscillators when he reached the final straight.
Acceleration proportional to the negative of displacement from the midpoint of its motion.
He passed the line.

“One forty-six thirty-nine” Coach said. “You win.”

Jean Patrick didn't have the energy to raise his arms into the air. A violent, heaving fit of coughing racked his body, and he doubled over.

“You are ill. I knew it.” Coach helped him upright. At that instant, the sky tore open and rain came down in a sheet. “You're coming home with me. Jolie will make you soup, and you will drink it.”

Jean Patrick peered up at the road. “Where's your car?”

“I ran.” Coach brought an extra rain jacket from beneath the seats. “Put this on.” He snapped the jacket open and shook it dry. “Let's go.”

Already the ground was slick. They jogged down the road, mud sucking at their shoes. Jean Patrick observed his coach, his graceful cadence.
He could probably have been an Olympic runner in his own right. Jean Patrick didn't know whether to love or to hate him, if he was tyrant or father. Maybe he was both, all mixed up together in the same hardened soul.

“You taught me a lesson,” Coach said.

Jean Patrick shook his head to clear it. “I don't understand.” He wiped his streaming nose with the back of his hand.

“Your slump. Forcing you to change your style is like commanding a river to flow backward.” He tugged Jean Patrick's jacket. “Slow down, eh? You plunge full force into the waters—no looking—with everything you do. It's why I like you, but in the eight hundred, I guarantee, you will drown
ev-ery time.
” He accompanied each syllable with a fist slapped against his palm. “I don't know how to make you do it, but somehow you must learn to hold back.”

Jean Patrick wanted to laugh, but if he started, he would cough. He had a long road back to the times he was capable of, but at least he had broken the spell. He would not have to leave Bea; she had not cut off his invisible hair in the middle of the night.

J
EAN
P
ATRICK AND
Coach shook off their wet clothes in the front hall. Water puddled on the floor, and Jolie scolded them loudly. “Jean Patrick,” she said. “So many days, no news of you. Why are you a stranger?” Jean Patrick stooped to receive her cheek on his.

“He has been busy with a girl, and not a good one,” Coach said.

Startled, Jean Patrick looked up. He had said not a word about Bea. “Don't worry, Jolie. She's not as beautiful as you,” he said.

Jolie cackled. “The water is off again. I've brought some for a bath, and I'll heat some more. You are both drowned.” She headed for the bathroom with her kettle. “I thought things would change with the peace treaty. I am waiting and waiting for the government to fix all the broken things.”

“Don't worry,” Coach called after her. “When Habyarimana comes back from peace talks in Arusha, milk and honey will flow from our pipes.” He pushed Jean Patrick. “You first. We need to protect our Olympic future.”

Jean Patrick squatted in the tub and breathed in steam from the basin.
Above him, wet laundry hung on a cord. There was no doubt about it now; the cold had won the war. He would ask Jolie for some herbs; old people knew such things. He could not afford to miss a workout. He needed to run another A-standard time to know that this was not a fluke. To be certain that Bea had not cast some spell.

Coach knocked at the door. “I have some clothes for you. I was saving them for Christmas, but take them now, since yours are wet. There's a leak in a pipe, and I'm going to try to fix it. Jolie will bring you soup.”

“I could help you.” Jean Patrick poured hot water over his head and wiggled his fingers in his ears to clear the soap. Coach was gone when he came out of the bathroom.

A sweat suit, neatly folded, lay on the bed in the spare room. Beside it was a pair of shimmery shorts and a long-sleeved jersey with a Nike swoosh. He put on the shorts and jersey and stood in front of the tiny mirror. The look pleased him.

Since the last time he had slept there, the room had changed. The bed had a thick blanket that hung down to the floor. He thought how pleasant it would be to wrap himself in its warmth and go to sleep. Jolie had hung his jacket on a chair. He shook it out, and something fell from the pocket and rolled under the bed. He bent to retrieve it and saw it was the crystal he had meant to give to Jonathan and forgotten. A wooden crate with Chinese writing had stopped its roll.

Curiosity won out over courtesy and common sense. He pulled on the crate, but it didn't budge. A dark substance had stained the wood, and when he drew his finger across it, a residue of oil remained on his skin.

“Inshyanutsi. Why are you nosing about?” Jolie's voice made him bump his head on the bed frame. She closed the door behind her and pushed a steamy towel at him. “I soaked it in herbs for your throat.” Bending closer, she said, “I will teach you something I have learned. Stay out of places you have not been invited into. Otherwise, things will not go well for you.”

Jean Patrick backed away from the bed.

“Come to the table,” she said. “I brought you a special soup. Lucky for you, I am an old woman, and my memory is very short.”

She touched his forehead, and he knew by the coolness of her fingers
that he was burning up. He followed her out of the bedroom, and she closed and locked the door. Whatever the contents of the box, it would be better for him if his memory was short as well.

J
ONATHAN BOUNDED ACROSS
the classroom, his voice booming with excitement. His constant motion made Jean Patrick woozy. Despite Jolie's herbs and two days of rest, his cold hung on. The subject of the lesson was geologic structures, and Jonathan described each one with wild swoops of chalk across the board. Students nudged each other and rolled their eyes. “Umuzungu yasaze,” they hooted. The white man is crazy.

After class, Jonathan caught Jean Patrick. “Do you have a minute?”

“Sure.” He followed Jonathan to his office.

The room looked as wild as Jonathan's class, every inch of space occupied by rocks and stacks of journals and books. “Tea?” Jonathan cleared a pile of papers. “Have a seat.” He pushed a chair toward Jean Patrick. “You coughed and sneezed all through class. Are you sick?”

“A little. Just a cold.”

Jonathan heated water in an electric kettle. “My new most prized possession.” From the chaos on his desk, he retrieved an airmail letter. “And here's my Christmas present.” He handed the envelope to Jean Patrick. Not sure what to do, Jean Patrick held it on his lap.

“Go ahead and open it. It's not top secret.”

“This is from your umukunzi?”

“My what?”

“U-mu-
kun
-zi. Your girlfriend.” Jean Patrick had studied Susanne's picture on Jonathan's desk. She posed on a mountaintop, feet wide, hands on hips. He thought she looked more like a boy than a young woman, but he liked her cheerful smile and the way the breeze had blown her hair into silky wisps around her head.

“Yup. She's coming January seventh.”