Running the Rift (43 page)

Ineza came into the room. She was knitting a shawl, a blue and green one, for a niece in London. She sat beside them. Slowly the scarf swallowed the colorful skeins, and Jean Patrick imagined it growing and growing, becoming a bright path of wool and color for them to walk on, all the way across the ocean.

L
IGHT LEFT THE
sky. A new voice on RTLM took the place of the old. This particular announcer was famous for her rapid-fire delivery. How else could she get it all in, leave time for the music, the reports, live, from the roadblocks? At least the deaths of his mother, his uncle and aunt, his brothers and sisters, had not come to Jean Patrick through the mouthpiece of Hutu Power. At least he had that.

Now the Interahamwe were setting fire to churches filled with Tutsi. Niyonzima shook his head. “The clever planning of these extremists chills me to the bone. They call everyone to the churches and…” He swallowed a word. “It's like sweeping dead banana leaves into a pile to burn them more easily.” Jean Patrick knew the word he had not said. It was
schools.

Muhutu, here are more ibyitso helping the Inkotanyi: Uwimana and his wife, Angelique. He's headmaster at Gihundwe. Those not yet finished off have crawled inside there. His school is swarming with snakes. Do your work. Clean the house.

Before the announcer reached the end of her list, Niyonzima had dialed the phone.

“I'm here,” Jean Patrick said into the receiver.

“It's so good to hear your voice,” Uwimana said. The greeting Jean
Patrick had heard all the years of his childhood. “I will tell you quickly. Interahamwe came yesterday. They said all Hutu were free to leave. They told me to send them out, and they would be safe. I gave everyone the choice. Many refused to go. They say, ‘We have lived together, we will die together.' I cannot play God, deciding who lives and who dies. I asked Angelique to go, but she will not.” In the background, whistles and chants joined in a frenzied beat. The line crackled. “Jean Patrick, are you there? They'll break through soon.”

“I'm here.”

“I have no news of your family. I'm sorry. I prayed they would come, but as it turns out, I could not have protected them. Angelique wants you to know she loves you. To both of us, you have been a son.”

“And you have been father and mother to me.”

Terrified screams, as close as Jean Patrick's ear. “They're inside now. Let me hear your voice one more time.”

“May God protect you,” Jean Patrick said. “Ndagukunda cyane. I love you very much.”

“And you. May Imana walk with you—run with you—always. We'll meet again.”

“We will.”

A hissing filled the earpiece, as if the connection had been cut, but then Jean Patrick heard, “Are you still there? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I'm here; I can hear you.”

“Remember: they can kill our bodies, but they can never kill our spirits.” Then dead air.

Jean Patrick pressed the phone to his chest. He could not put the receiver back in its cradle, could not hear the final click. He remembered his first day at Gihundwe, when he had looked out at Saint Kizito and joy had filled him. “Ndishimye,” he had whispered. I am happy. He remembered that the sun's geometry had combined with his angle of vision to give the appearance of light flowing from the saint's arms, as if Imana's blessings emanated directly from the shining black skin.

J
EAN
P
ATRICK'S OWN
cry awoke him, his calf in a knot. Pain knifed through his leg, but when he bolted upright, his hamstring seized.
He stuffed his fist into his mouth to keep from crying out. It was as if his muscles, so unused to days without running, had rebelled, found a life of their own.
Breathe into your belly. Send your breath through your body,
Coach used to say, in that other life. Gently, Jean Patrick kneaded the tangled fibers, as his coach used to do. No one stirred in the house. Rain, eternal, slogged across the roof.

He had to flee. The decision was fully formed before he knew it was there. When the line to Cyangugu was cut, so was Jean Patrick's chance of finding his family alive in Rwanda. Surely, if he tried, he would be caught and killed. To the south, the mountains of Burundi rose like a beacon. If Roger's plan had gone forward, he would find his family with Spéciose. If not, at least he would survive. The thought sent a chill through his body, but from this day forward, the only way left to help those he loved was to save himself.

He would leave in the morning. He would ask Bea to go, but if she would not, he would go alone. She was Hutu. She would be safe. But the killing was a cancerous growth that soon enough would spread to Butare. Soon the machete would fall on his head. Better to run like a dog than die like a dog. But what if Bea was pregnant? He could not leave her, unmarried, carrying his child. He would give it another day. Maybe two or three. Surely he had that much time. Surely, by then, the West would give the UN troops the help and the weapons they needed.

T
HEY SAT AT
the dining room table—Jean Patrick, Bea, Niyonzima, and Ineza—tea steaming before them. Day had once more dragged itself from night's belly.
It is the Tutsi who are burning down their own houses! They want to lure the Hutu there. Then they will trap them and kill them.

Ineza silenced the radio. “A moment's peace,” she said.

“I have decided to try for Burundi,” Jean Patrick said. He looked at Niyonzima. “Will you allow Bea to come with me?”

“We are modern here,” Bea said. “You can ask me directly, and the answer is no. I will not crawl through the marsh like some kind of swamp animal, and I will not leave my family.”

Jean Patrick had not slept since pain awoke him. Only his jagged energy, nothing useful to do with it, kept him moving. Before daybreak, he
had gone for a run to untangle his head, keeping to the bush, barefoot like the muturage he was, the country boy. More than once, he had to stop and rub out his calf. The answer that came to him in the night did not change. With or without her, he had to flee. What good would he be to her or his unborn child if he was dead?

“Don't be a fool. You must go,” Ineza said. Her knitting needles clicked. The green-blue wave of scarf unfurled toward the floor.

Niyonzima took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then put his glasses on again. “Maybe there is something I can do.” He looked at Ineza. “If I can get travel passes for the three of you, will you go?”

The knitting needles stopped. “That is a silly question, my husband.”

“And you, Bea?” Niyonzima's voice was cajoling. “It won't be for long. It can't be. This insanity must stop soon. Burundi is not so far away. Or Tanzania.”

Bea went to the window and drew back the curtain, as if she would find her answer written in the patterns the rain made on the glass. She glanced up toward the soggy sky. Then she came back and hugged her mother and her father. “Dadi, you won't go?”

He held up his cane. “I am too old and tired to run. My voice is needed here, for whatever good it will do.”

“Mama? You won't come with us?”

Ineza put down her knitting and took Bea's hands in hers. “It will just be for a little while. For us, please, go.”

For a minute, Jean Patrick thought she would refuse again. The pain in her face made him regret that he had asked. But then she said, “All right. I will go.”

Niyonzima clapped and got up from the table. “Please tell Claire to bring me coffee. I need to clear my head.” He disappeared into his office.

Bea wandered into the living room and slumped onto a chair. A single cry heaved her shoulders. Ineza went to her. “Come,” she said. “Let's go and see our beautiful garden.”

“Mama, it's raining.”

“We'll just stand beneath the roof and look out.” She helped Bea to her feet. With their arms around each other, they walked to the door. Then
Ineza opened the door, and Jean Patrick smelled the wet grass, the bracing morning air.

I
NEZA HAD PUT
on her painting clothes—a huge shirt, mottled with color, that she was lost inside. Bea came from her room in her pagne of planets and stars, malachite bracelets on her wrists. “Mama wants to paint us today.” Her fingers trailed along the wall, and the bracelets jangled.

Niyonzima opened his door. “There is no more long-distance service, and no further travel permits will be issued. From now on, no Rwandan can leave the country.” He limped to his chair. “But I think if I go in person to the police station and offer the chief a very fat bribe, he will take it. I've known him a long time.” He leaned forward, hands folded on top of his cane. “Let me call Jonathan and see if he will drive me.”

J
EAN
P
ATRICK LEANED
on the gate and watched Jonathan's car slip and slide before gaining traction. The four silhouettes behind the steamy glass strained visibly as if they willed the struggling imodoka forward—Jonathan and Niyonzima in front, Ineza and Claire in back. After they disappeared, Jean Patrick stood in the rain and let the water streak down his skin, a baptismal shower.

This time, he told himself, Imana would hear them. Niyonzima knew the game of Rwandan politics; he had been around it long enough. He wouldn't ask Jonathan to come out in this storm if he had not been certain of success.

“You've lost your mind,” Bea said when he came back inside.

“Say it again.” Jean Patrick gathered her close, felt her heartbeat against his wet shirt.

“Eh? You really have.” She struggled free. “I'm soaked now.”

“I want to hear the sound of your voice, that's all.” He kissed her head, her two eyes, her nose, and then her mouth. “Come lie down with me. Who knows when we can be alone again.”

“Only a minute. I don't think I can stay still.”

Jean Patrick led Bea to her room, the need to have her beside him, skin against skin, so strong he could barely breathe. He closed the door.
Rain drummed on the roof. The wind in the trees made a sound like the plucked string of inanga. He held the flat of his palm to her belly. “Is a baby inside?”

“Ko Mana—you ask every ten minutes.” She sighed. “I don't know. Everything is off balance. Not even my own body makes sense anymore.”

“No. Nothing makes sense. Except you.” The room breathed softly around them. He guided her to the bed, undid the gold knots of her buttons, and kissed her breasts. “Will this hurt him?”

“I don't think so. If
she's
in there,
she
is strong.”

She stepped from her pagne. Planets and suns spiraled from her body. Then she lay down and drew the pagne over them. Slowly, gently, they made love beneath this bright galaxy. Jean Patrick unwound inside her dark earth. The taut cord of death in his belly uncoiled. He buried himself inside her, seeking the slow, steady pulse of life, its perpetual seed.

T
HE CLICK OF
a key in the front door startled them both from sleep. Bea dressed and quickly kissed Jean Patrick's cheek. “Let me go now and see if I can fasten myself together.” Jean Patrick pulled on his sweatpants. He could have drowned in shame. She slipped out the door before he could kiss her back.

Niyonzima and Ineza were at the table when Jean Patrick came out. They looked up with a single motion, and he knew from their faces that once more, Imana's ear had remained deaf to them.

“Everything was going well,” Niyonzima said. He regarded Jean Patrick with pained eyes. “I had a good conversation with the chief—a little joke, a little laugh. I showed him the envelope, nice and fat. He seemed about to take it, but then he told me to wait. When he returned, he said he could not accept the payment.” Niyonzima cleared his throat and folded his hands, one on top of the other. “I am certain he checked a list, and our names were on it.”

T
HERE WAS A BREAK IN THE WEATHER.
The sun climbed into a clear, crisp sky. Bea and her family still slept. Exhaustion had pulled them under. Niyonzima typed in his study. Jean Patrick heard the keys like some crazy syncopation to the voice of RTLM, both coming together through the thin walls.
There will be no more Inkotanyi; there will be none in this country anymore. When you see how many of them die, you would think they came back to life. They themselves believe they come back to life, but they deceive themselves. They are disappearing.

Quietly, Jean Patrick tiptoed to the hall and put on his running shoes. He closed the gate behind him and stepped into the road. “
Kare kare mu museke,
” he sang softly, a line cast out to his former life, this simple greeting of the dawn. Blue mist hid the hills. Burundi's mountains floated in a sea of mist. Here and there along the paths, farmers climbed toward the fields. He felt like Rutegaminsi from his father's book of stories, tunneling through the earth with his mole guide to emerge into a terrible beauty on the far side of the world. He remembered reading the story to Mathilde, time and again, thankful that she never had to emerge into a land like this.

Checking one last time that his identity card was in his jacket pocket, he set off at a slow jog toward town. He settled into the motion his legs had ached for. Into his Nikes he willed the power of Nkuba, the Thunder God for whom he was named. He imagined tucking everyone he loved beneath his arms and carrying them across the Akanyaru swamps, away from Rwanda and into Burundi, away from this war in which they would almost certainly all die.

For now, Butare remained a place of safe haven. Little by little, women returned to their plots, men appeared on the trails with bicycles and carts.
Streams of Tutsi, filthy and bleeding, poured in from the rest of the country to seek refuge in churches and hospitals. They came from every direction like the walking dead. They were dazed, in shock. Some appeared to have gone mad. Behind them, children with sticks ran to the roadblocks and waited for the action to begin.