Running the Rift (3 page)

Jean Patrick had expected a big man, but the runner stood not much taller than Roger. Jean Patrick wondered if he was umutwa, one of the pygmy people who sold milk and butter in clay pots to families that didn't keep cows. The momentary disappointment vanished as he watched the runner move, flowing rather than walking from one place to the next, as if his muscles were made of water. He wore sunglasses. His shirt snapped in the breeze, zebras and lions racing across the shiny fabric.

“Muraho neza!” the man said to the class. “I'm Telesphore Dusabe, a marathon runner representing Rwanda in the Olympics. I am blessed to be here in Cyangugu to talk to you today.” Jean Patrick asked him to write his name on the board, and he copied it into his notebook, framed by two stars on either side.

Telesphore spoke about running barefoot up and down Rwanda's hills. “We call our country the land of a thousand hills,” he said, his face lit from the inside as if by a flame, “and I believe I have conquered every one.” He talked about the lure of the Olympics and a feeling like flying that sometimes filled his body when he ran.

Jean Patrick raised his hand. “Did you say
sometimes
?” he wanted to know. “What about the rest of the time?”

“Smart boy,” Telesphore said, and he chuckled. “I will tell you a secret. Sometimes it is all I can do to go from one footstep to the next, but for each such moment, I make myself remember how it feels to win.”

Jean Patrick felt the man's eyes on his face alone, and his body tingled.
How it feels to win,
he repeated in his head. He wrote the words in his book of sums.

“We're going to have a race,” Sister said, taking two thick pieces of cardboard bound with tape from behind her desk. She slit the tape and held up a poster of Telesphore breaking the finish-line ribbon at some official meet. “And the winner will have our runner to watch over him.” She smiled. “Or her.”

Telesphore lined up the students in the dusty schoolyard behind a starting line he drew with a stick. “According to age, youngest first,” he said. That put Jean Patrick two rows from the back and Roger in the back. Telesphore brought two wooden blocks from his bag. “This is how we start a race,” he said. “Now take your marks.”

Jean Patrick wanted the poster. He wanted it more than he had wanted anything in a while. He heard the sound of the blocks clacking together, and for the second time that day, some small balance tipped inside him. When he stretched out his legs and sprinted toward the far end of the fence, passing one student and then another, the earth his bare feet touched was not the same red clay as before Telesphore began his talk. When he reached the far end of the fence three steps in front of Roger to claim first place, he understood that the earth would never feel the same again.

“Look at that lean! A natural!” Telesphore shouted. He pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead and pulled Jean Patrick closer. “What is your name?”

“Jean Patrick Nkuba.”

The runner squinted into the sun, and a field of wrinkles mapped his eyes. “No wonder, then. Do you know who you are named for?”

“The god who brings the thunder,” Jean Patrick said.

“Yes—Nkuba, Lord of Heaven, the Swift One.” Telesphore touched Jean Patrick below the left eye. “I see it there: the hunger. Someday you will need to run as much as you need to breathe.”

Sister brought the poster and gave it to Telesphore. Balancing poster
and cardboard on his knee, he wrote with a flourish,
To our next Olympic hero, Jean Patrick Nkuba.
He signed his name, Telesphore Dusabe, in a large, scrolling hand.

Jean Patrick took the poster and looked out toward the hills. The storms of Itumba were behind them now, the days sparkling and polished by the rains into a brilliant blue. In the steeply terraced fields, women harvested beans and sorghum. The berries bowed the stalks, decorating the lush landscape with necklaces of red beads. Soon the rains would dry up completely, and Iki, the long dry season, would warm the young plants cultivated during the rains, coax them to grow tall and strong. Now it was four more days until Jean Patrick's time in the house at Gihundwe would come to an end, but he would not think about that. Instead he looked at the runner's face and felt his words as truth—a prophesy.

T
HE LAST THING
J
EAN
P
ATRICK
did was to roll up his poster of Telesphore Dusabe, wrap it in two layers of paper, and tie it with string. He looked around the bare room. All traces of his family's life had been swept away like the dirt Mama cleared with her broom.

Outside, bees hummed in the acacia. Mama had picked the last ripe tomatoes and beans, a few chili peppers, from her garden, and it was the time to sow a new crop of beans and squash. It had always been Jean Patrick's job to help his mother, but for the first time he could remember, they had not knelt in the earth to plant. Like the house, the garden looked bare—already forgotten. Jean Patrick hefted his knapsack and tucked the family's radio under his arm. He followed Mama through the door and closed it behind him.

Jacqueline, Zachary, and a few students from Gihundwe were helping Uwimana and Angelique pack the family belongings into his truck.

Uwimana took Mama's hands in his. “I wish I could change your mind, Jurida,” he said. “The house will be empty until the start of school.” Clemence, bound in a cloth at Mama's back, made kissing sounds in her sleep.

Mama shook her head. “I can't look at those windows without hearing glass break. My brother's home is our home now.”

“François believed Hutu or Tutsi made no difference anymore. His students loved him, and his dreams gave us hope. We must hold on to that hope in spite of what happened,” Uwimana said.

“For my husband's sake and yours, I will try to keep it alive.”

Angelique took Mama in her arms and then hugged Jean Patrick, Jacqueline, and Zachary. “Gihundwe will seem so empty without your voices to fill the days,” she said.

“We'll come visit,” Jacqueline said. Jean Patrick saw her bite her lip and knew she was not far from tears.

Angelique knelt beside Jean Patrick and lifted his chin with her finger. “You will come back for secondary school,” she said. “This will be your home again; you must believe in that.”

“Come, Jean Patrick.” Uwimana opened the truck door. “Sit next to me.”

“I need to help Roger with the cattle,” Jean Patrick said. He took the radio's plug and held it to his ear. “Jacqueline—they're playing your favorite song.” He made clowning faces and mimicked Pepe Kalle until they both laughed.

“How will you make the radio play at Uncle's? By Imana's electric power?” Jacqueline said.

Jean Patrick wiggled the dials and sang a few words at top volume. “Maybe Uncle will get electricity soon.” He wedged radio and knapsack between two mattresses in the bed of the truck. Then he gave his poster of Telesphore to his mother and said good-bye before he, too, found himself close to tears.

He stood until the truck became a speck in the red swirl of dust. When even the speck had disappeared, he broke into a run down the road, where life paraded on as if nothing had changed. Men strained up the hill, sacks of sorghum and potatoes draped over bicycle handlebars or stacked in rickety wooden carts. Children herded goats fastened with bits of string, lugged jerricans filled with water, trotted with rafts of freshly gathered firewood on their heads. Women chatted on the way to and from the market, basins filled with fruits and vegetables balanced like fancy hats.

Jean Patrick had not gone far when a student from Gihundwe hailed him. “We heard you were leaving,” he said. “So sorry.”

“I'll be back once I pass my exams. I'll be a student here,” Jean Patrick said, echoing Angelique's words. He shook the boy's outstretched hand and sprinted away, charging the hill until his chest was on fire and spots danced in front of his eyes.

H
E FOUND
R
OGER
in the shade of a banana grove. The cattle lolled beside the trees, tearing off mouthfuls of young urubingo. The
inyambo steer stood apart from the rest as if he knew he was descended from the cattle of kings. His arc of horns supported a corner of sky, and his oxblood hide glowed in the sun. On his head were two white patches like countries on a map. He sported a beaded necklace—blue and white like an Intore dancer's—and bells tinkled when he shook his head. When Jean Patrick was small, Papa used to hold his tiny hand steady while the steer licked sugar off it with his hot, rough tongue.

Roger looked behind him, toward Gihundwe, his face lost in shadow beneath the brim of Papa's felt hat. How many Sundays Jean Patrick and Roger had watched as their father put on his hat, took his traditional carved staff from its place by the door, and said, “Tugende, my sons. Let's go for a walk.”

As if reading Jean Patrick's thoughts, Roger touched the hat's brim. “Everything is finished now. We'll be nothing but poor fishermen, running around dirty and eating with our fingers like the rest of Uncle's children.”

Jean Patrick patted the steer's dusty rump. “We'll still go to school. Papa always said that, and Mama promised. Anyway, Uncle Emmanuel isn't poor. Look at all his boats.”

“Eh—stupid! Who'll pay for our school? Uncle has his own children to worry about.”

“I'm not stupid,” Jean Patrick said. “You already have your scholarship for Kigali, and I'll go to Gihundwe. After, I'll go to college in America. I'll get a scholarship to run. Everyone does it there.”

Telling the boy on the path he would be back at Gihundwe, Jean Patrick had doubted himself, but when he heard Roger challenge him, Angelique's words lodged in his heart as a prize he was determined to claim, whatever the price. He crouched on the grass the way Telesphore had shown the class. “Come on. I think today I will beat you,” he said.

“You think so?” Roger said. “See that tree at the top of this hill? I'll give you a head start.”

“I don't need a head start,” Jean Patrick said, springing up the trail. He kept his tempo fast, his kick high, the way Roger had told him. The familiar burn settled into his lungs, and he pushed harder toward the ridgetop. He felt Roger at his back. Just to the tree, he told himself. I need to beat
him to the tree. He gritted his teeth and dug in deep, but Roger drew even before the last rise and kept pace easily beside him.

At the tree, Roger tackled him. “You can't beat me yet. You're close—I had to work hard—but it will be a while before you take the wreath from me.”

“You're talking foolishness. I already beat you once—the day Telesphore had us race.”

Roger sucked his teeth. “Number one, you started two rows in front of me. Number two, that was too short to count.”

“Let's keep running. Maybe I will do it now.”

“Aye-yay! I don't want you to collapse.” Roger cuffed Jean Patrick's head and then helped him to his feet.

Jean Patrick heard the tinkle of the inyambo steer's bells behind them. He turned to see the steer trotting in front of the small herd, regal as a king.

“Go easy,” Roger said. “We don't want to lose our herd.”

Jean Patrick and Roger let gravity take them down the backside of the trail. In the distance, the dark eye of Lake Kivu winked.

B
Y THE TIME
they reached Gashirabwoba, where Uncle lived, Jean Patrick's legs felt like stones. They stopped on a ridge above Uncle's urugo. Below the compound, two eucalyptus trees marked the path, towering above the rest of the forest. It was afternoon already, the heat lazy around them. Bees hummed in the hives that perched in the high branches.

“We're here. Let's go down and greet them,” Roger said.

Two cypress trees formed a gateway in a fence of dried sorghum and maize stalks. A cassava patch spilled down the slope. Beneath a lean-to, a pirogue rested on two halves of a fifty-gallon drum. Fishnets hung between branches like strange, mossy growths. Sheets of corrugated metal, propped against a shed, threw back the sunlight. The main house, shaded by a large jacaranda, was a sprawling collection of mud and brick, as if the rooms had sprouted like extra arms and legs from a central body. Since the last time Jean Patrick had visited, the front door and the window frames had been painted a bright blue.

A procession of children ran from the house, led by Uncle's little twins, Clémentine and Clarisse, in matching dresses. Mathilde burst through the door and charged after them, cradling Jean Patrick's radio in the crook of her arm. “I've been waiting for you!” she said, and she held the radio aloft. “How can we play some tunes, eh? I want to hear that morning music, Indirimbo za buracyeye, they play.” She shook Roger's hand formally but threw her free arm around Jean Patrick.

A girl in a ragged skirt approached, and Mathilde yanked her forward. “This is my friend Olivette. She lives just there.” She pointed to a ridge where a woman and boy descended. The woman balanced a large basket on her head. “That's Olivette's mama and her brother Simon coming just now. Mama says put the cattle in the pen until they get used to it here.”

The children surrounded Jean Patrick and Roger as they herded the cattle through the gate. They chattered and wiped at runny noses with their sleeves.

Aunt Esther came from the garden. “Welcome,” she said. “You're home now.” She wore a new-looking pagne decorated with colorful fish. Around her close-cropped hair she had tied a scarf with glittery threads that caught the light. Jean Patrick wondered if she had put on her good clothes for the occasion of their arrival. Between her feet, a red puppy, more bones than flesh, chased invisible prey. Jean Patrick tried to pet it, but it scurried away.

“Don't worry,” Auntie said. “She'll be following you around soon enough.”