The Great Agony & Pure Laughter of the Gods (15 page)

The number of his visitors increased. At first it was between four and six visitors a day; now it grew to ten or fifteen. On Sundays, they came in their dozens. Some of them didn’t even get a chance to see him. Each one came with something in his or her hands: foufou or ugali with Sambaza fish, the most special fish of the Kivu region, taken from the lake. Others came with foufou and meat, or foufou with different types of vegetables. Others brought Sombé – cassava leaves pounded with spices. Some brought bread and fruit, and some came with money. No one would have paid a visit empty-handed. It would have been a sign of discourtesy, unless one was experiencing terrible financial problems. Even if one brought just one big avocado or one juicy mango, it would be enough. The hospital didn’t provide food for the patients, so patients relied on the food brought by visitors or made by their relatives. Visits and food to a patient were also a debt to the patient and his family; if that person got hospitalised, he knew these people would visit him with food too.

Some people came to visit Risto’s neighbour empty-handed, and the boys couldn’t understand it. Didn’t he get even two sweet potatoes? As more visitors came, and more food was delivered, Risto donated some food to others in the ward who didn’t get any gifts from their visitors.

Landu was very happy when he saw church representatives coming to visit sick people. When he heard that even prisoners were fed by religious people, he was amazed. There is always a stranger without family or friends who needs help, he kept repeating. He knew that each Sunday morning, patients received visits from religious people who came to pray for them. Many believed that diseases came from Satan and other people possessed by evil spirits, which needed to be thrown out by prayer. Maybe it was someone’s last hour on earth, maybe their disease or wound couldn’t be cured, and those patients had to be prayed over. They prayed for the delivery of those with sin, for those who didn’t know God to be saved.

One morning, the tortoise man in his toy house had made Landu laugh until he cried. The tortoise man was always afraid – afraid that a jealous aunt had bewitched him and caused his car accident. After he dreamed his guard was chasing him with a knife, he refused to eat the food the man had cooked, even though he was his own brother. That day, he had called a pastor and told him of his fear, that he felt he was about to die. The pastor told him that if he had faith in God, he wouldn’t die. He argued, asking the pastor how many saints had died while they had faith in God. He asked the pastor where Peter, Luke, John and all those other people in the bible were. They had died even though they had faith. Was his faith bigger than that of all those people? The pastor prayed for him anyway.

The day came for Risto to stand up for the first time under the watchful eye of a nurse. Landu held the crutches for Risto as his mother came with a wheelchair. Risto no longer wore a green gown; he had changed into a boubou made from a piece of cloth brought by his mother. The boubou covered his remaining bandages without hurting him.

Risto refused the wheelchair; he wanted to show his family that he could stand up, like a hero. He stumbled and a flash of pain went through his bones; he felt dizzy, then leaned on his mother’s shoulder. Her celebrative voice was in each onlooker’s ear. She told everyone how her son, who had once had little hope of walking, would soon walk again. She became even more excited when the doctor told her that her son might be able to leave the hospital within a week.

Risto was torn between happiness and fear. If freedom from a hospital bed meant liberation and a return to normal life, it might also be his ticket to hell, or even a journey along suicidal paths. What if he bumped into someone from Birava village, someone on a business trip, a family visit, maybe even running away from the militia? What would happen to him if his past was exposed?

Risto sat on the grass outside the hospital beside Landu and his mother, the green grass his seat and bed. The world seemed different; it was quiet and clean, peopled by loving and caring people. He looked at the streets, the hills; things seemed brand new again. Only one week was left before he would go back to those streets. Would he reconnect with his old friends? Would they welcome him? Darkness was falling; the hospital bed was calling.

Landu was fast asleep beside his cousin when Risto’s body, like a melting iron bar, burned him; his sweat was as hot as steam from a boiling pot. His entire body moved in an endless earthquake.

‘What is going on, Risto? You are burning up!’

‘Call the nurse, I am dying,’ said Risto, shaking.

Landu couldn’t run fast enough. Suddenly a towel soaked in cold water shocked Risto’s face. It started to take the malaria fever from his skin and brought him a bit of relief. Landu came with another soaking towel; he took off Risto’s robe and spread the towel over his chest.

Risto felt the bed moving, turning. His head was about to explode. He had escaped the rage of the militia in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, only to be killed by malaria. He closed his eyes, waiting for death. Nearby, a voice was speaking urgently to a nurse. The nurse approached Risto and asked how he was feeling. The nurse had lost his senses, Risto thought; couldn’t he see how badly he was suffering?

‘Carry on soaking him; it will help,’ the nurse told Landu.

This time it was as if Landu had poured a bucket of water onto Risto. The cold wet towels dripped; the bed was a pool of sweat and water. The nurse came back. He gave Risto an injection and attached a drip.

Risto felt low. The hospital had become a tiresome place. Visitors were no longer very regular. Many knew that he was supposed to have left the hospital by now. He had discovered a nice spot to spend the late afternoon, a bench in the garden of the hospital. He sat here to watch the moon take over the day from the sun. His wounds were almost dry, but he still had a permanent bitterness in his mouth and no wish for food. His malaria was at the verge of disappearing, surely it was a matter of days, but the doctor wanted to keep a close-eye on him nevertheless.

Risto sat on his bench looking at a young girl in the garden playing with a baby. The baby boy, bare-bottomed, was crawling; he couldn’t walk yet. The girl would throw a ball, and then the baby would crawl quickly to retrieve it, screaming with joy.

The girl looked over at Risto and smiled, and he humbly returned a smile. She approached him, her eyes looking aside.

‘Sorry, may I ask you something, please?’ she said with shy courtesy.

‘Yes, no problem.’

‘Did you see a pastor here before I arrived?’

‘A pastor? No, but it is not easy to know if a person is a pastor or not.’

‘I don’t know if you are from here and would know him … he preaches early in the morning and prays for sick people in the hospital rooms.’

‘I don’t know which one you are talking about, we are visited by more than three pastors a day, and they are not the same each day. But I haven’t seen anyone looking like a pastor out here today. I am sorry.’

The girl’s Swahili was spiced with the Mashi dialect, and her discoloured, torn loincloth made her look like a villager. Her slippers were hooked on with wires, and Risto wondered if the wire didn’t hurt her toes. Her naturally chocolate skin seemed to be craving lotion; it had gone khaki. The baby playing on the lawn was barefoot.

‘Was there something important with the pastor?’ Risto asked.

‘Yes, we had an appointment here.’

‘Pastors have a lot of people to see, maybe he met someone else … be patient.’

She stared at the sky, as if to say that the night was approaching.

‘When were you going to meet?’

‘At 6pm.’

‘He might still come. It is not yet late, we still have the sun.’

The sun was setting over the mountains in the west, in the direction of Kabare territory.

‘Oh, such a cute boy! Where is his mother?’

The girl looked at him as her face changed. She sucked her lips for a moment. ‘He is my baby.’

She passed her left hand over her face like someone drying sweat, but it was tears she was wiping. The answer hung in her mouth; she wasn’t proud to be a mother. Risto was quiet; he understood that she hated who she was.

‘I dreamed all my life of furthering my studies. I wanted to go to college, to get a degree, I dreamed of becoming a nurse. But the dream was thrown away and burned to ashes …’ She lowered her face to dry her tears.

It had always been very difficult for a young girl who fell pregnant to carry on with her normal life in the South Kivu. Often a girl would drop out of school, unable to cope with the gossip and bother coming from her classmates. Some school principals would not allow a pregnant girl to remain at her desk, fearing she might become a distraction to her class. The girl would be marginalised, stigmatised and finally rejected. Her family would often believe that she had disgraced them.

The girl had stopped weeping, but her eyes were still dropping tears, ‘My name is Mina. I am not from this town; I am from Kalahe village where no one lives anymore except those bloody armies. Right now, we are staying in the village of Luhoko. Yes, I dreamed of becoming a nurse one day but today I am nursing the child of a snake. Whenever I think about this, I feel like … but I don’t have the heart of a killer. If I had, I would have thrown this child into the forest or the lake. This child is a curse, a shadow that my heart carries every day.’

Risto, who had at first thought he might cheer Mina up, was now sweating. Her story made him deeply uncomfortable, and even worse, there was a third person hovering. His voice echoed on the wind’s rhythm, it whirled. An ironic and horrible laughter followed when he saw the person behind Mina. The voice, the laughter came from his mirror image, a Risto whose body floated in the air.

‘Kill her, stab her … she knows all about you,’ taunted the other Risto.

As he stared at himself, Mina continued her story, explaining how her family had given everything they had to the militia. But the militia wanted more. Mina was thirteen years old. Five men, three times her age, left her unconscious on a moonless night, naked in her family’s yard. She became bitter as her dreadful memories overflowed. ‘Oh, the cruelty of these dogs! Why didn’t they kill us so that we don’t have to live like this? Will we ever regain our dignity? My shame is here, in this child with his five faces – who is the father? How can I ever know?’

‘It’s you she’s talking about. It’s you she hates,’ said the ghost Risto, with his nasty laugh.

Mina’s cries were like calls for Risto’s death. He didn’t deserve to live; he had stood by, even helped, as this had happened to his people. A breeze passed, and for a moment, a freezing silence cooled the garden. Risto saw the ghost-Risto holding the little baby in his arms while the mother, Mina, leaned on that ghost’s shoulders.

That night was unusually cold. Risto had covered himself with sheets to call sleep, but no sleep came. He wanted to forget the story of that day. He begged for the lights to be switched off, and this time even the tortoise man agreed. He begged for absolute silence, and it was given. The silence of the shuttered room became indescribably eerie. He desperately needed deep sleep. One hour passed; he was still awake with his eyes closed. He avoided thinking; he wanted his mind to remain blank. When something would appear in his head, he would open his eyes to let it go. However, something refused to leave him, making the night unbearable. He opened and closed his eyes quickly; there was something hanging around that he couldn’t see, but he could feel, the echo of a female voice crying. Perhaps it was Mina, the girl he had met that evening? The echo seemed to come from far away, maybe from the mountains. A voice came on the breeze, carrying a story. It cried and mourned, growing louder and louder.

‘Can you hear it too?’ Risto asked the tortoise man’s guard, who seemed to be staring at him in the dark.

‘What? Are you dreaming?’

The voice he could hear faded, but now Risto felt the staring of a strange figure. The story of little Mina had awakened ghosts from his past. Risto threw back his sheets, restless in the quiet room, with everyone else asleep. Only the tortoise man moved in his shell made of cloth. Risto took the glass of water from his bedside table and drank, then sat on his bed.

Risto’s sisters surrounded him. The youngest, Zaina, was in his arms; she leaned on his chest and looked at her sister Pendo, who stared at their brother as though he were a newborn child. They examined every single scar. They would run fighting to give him the glass of water, or plate of food he had requested. Advised by their parents, they avoided asking him questions about his mysterious time in the jungle of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park.

Every day since their brother and Benny had been kidnapped by the militia, they had cried with their mother, thinking they would never see him again. They had missed him, but their mother had helped them by driving them to work hard at their studies. She had become very strict and wouldn’t tolerate the slightest mistake. So both girls had done well at school.

Landu, who had arrived in Risto’s family to resume his studies, had become a best friend to Risto’s two sisters, and this had helped the ache of his absence a little. He was kind to them, told them beautiful stories and played the most beautiful tunes on his flute. The gentleness of his melodies, the tenderness of their rhythms, and the peace they brought to the heart of each listener was what had sealed the great friendship and strong brotherhood between Landu and the girls. He had become so attached, so close to the entire family, a visitor would have thought that he was born and raised with them.

Each evening, the family looked forward to Landu’s musical performances. He mostly played his own compositions, except for a few ballads he had learned from his teachers. He played his flute in many different ways, his fingers caressing the instrument as he let his breath transform into sweet melodies of great magnificence. The beauty of his melodies had led Zaina and Pendo to become background singers. They sang to his melodies, whispering at first, then with angelic voices. And this way he had contributed to the healing of the family; his music brought hope of a better tomorrow, and his presence gave them the love that they needed. Of course they missed Risto, but things would have been worse without Landu.