“Did you say the race would be on TV?”
“I did. Your family can watch the entire day; in fact, the whole town can watch.”
With a twinge of guilt, Jean Patrick realized he had not given a thought to his family. His mind was too much taken up by a woman with a pagne of planets and suns and the scent of sweet tea on her skin.
FIFTEEN
ON THE FIRST DAY OF CLASSES, Jean Patrick felt lucky and brave. On his way out the door, Jolie gave him a conspiratorial nod and pointed to his bare feet. “No fancy shoes?”
“No, Grandmother. Not today.”
He warmed up with an easy jog. He waved at the guards at the Officers’ School, and they waved back. He did strides, butt kicks, and pickups down the main road, then a steady pace to the arboretum. Finches trilled from the trees, showed off metallic flashes of feathers.
“Mwaramutse!” the soldiers at the Cyarwa checkpoint called. “How’s the Olympics going?”
“Olympics are going well.” On this morning, when he felt so bold, he could have looked them in the eye and said, My name is Nkuba Jean Patrick, and someday you will know it.
He passed the three-trunked tree. From the directions in his pocket, he found Jonathan’s house, hidden behind a brick wall. He had been right: a straight shot down to Bea’s garden. In the thick growth he spotted a place where he could see into her yard. A woman was hanging laundry, and Bea’s pagne with its field of stars beckoned to him from the line. The boy and girl that Bea had taken into her shawl chased each other between the clothes. Fascinated, he watched until his muscles stiffened and the children darted back to the house.
When he stood to stretch, a group of scruffy children surrounded him. “Watch us!” they chirruped, pulling on his T-shirt and dashing up the slope with screwed-up faces, arms and legs flailing.
“Do I look so strange?”
“Like someone from the moon,” they screamed, and they wheeled down the lane.
Jean Patrick had picked a rock from between his toes and was about to follow when he saw a man in Bea’s yard. He walked stiffly along the path, stopping by a mango tree. Light limned his hair with silver. He reached to pick a fruit. Even from this distance, Jean Patrick saw that the act filled him with pleasure. Bea came out and stood beside him, and he put an arm around her waist. Together, they walked to the house. The man held the mango high, like a prize. He may as well have reached into Jean Patrick’s chest and plucked his heart.
“THIS IS NKUBA Jean Patrick,” Coach said to the guard at the university’s main gate. “He’s a student here. He runs for me—my star. Treat him well.”
The guard held out a wrinkled hand to Jean Patrick. “Yes—I remember from last year. Such a pleasure to see you.” He tipped his cap. “Welcome back, muzehe,” he said.
Jean Patrick looked toward the eucalyptus grove that framed the track, his familiar world. As soon as his feet touched the packed red dirt, he could forget this woman called Bea.
Coach parked. “Your dorm is there.” He pointed to the long rows of dormitories below. From the paths came the scritch-scratch song of women sweeping, punctuated by the commotion of the students’ shouts and calls.
Jean Patrick touched the door handle. “Well, I guess I should go.” He glanced at his suitcase in the backseat. Coach had repaired the lock and hinges. “Where’s your office?” He let the car door swing open. “In case I need you.”
Coach pointed toward a two-story building. “First floor, in the Government Department.”
“Where is the Geology Department?”
Coach smirked. “I wouldn’t know.”
“I’ll see you for practice this afternoon.” Jean Patrick took his suitcase and stood beside the car. He watched a group of girls with arms linked sway down the path toward the cafeteria.
Coach started the engine. “Imana gives you cows, but he doesn’t tell you how to graze them,” he quoted. He slammed the car into gear and drove off, leaving Jean Patrick in a blue haze of exhaust to puzzle out the meaning.
JEAN PATRICK HAD barely enough space to stretch his legs in the tiny room, but unlike in Gihundwe, he had only Daniel to share it with. On the bed next to the window, Daniel had left a note. Welcome to the mwami’s palace. I’ve left the view for you. My papa greets you and said he was sorry he couldn’t wait. I got your last letter. FÉLICITATIONS!! We have much to discuss, my friend. His suitcase lay open on the bed, clothes spilled across the blanket.
In the small mirror on the desk, Jean Patrick inspected his image. He liked the high crown of his forehead, the deep-set, serious eyes, but he found his nose a bit too long, his face perhaps too thin. He straightened his slacks, crisply pleated by Jolie, brushed off his jacket, and stepped out into his new life.
AFTER REGISTRATION, HE sat on a wall in the central courtyard. Students wandered the paths, crowded stairways, hung over balconies. Their singsong voices melted into a pleasant buzz in Jean Patrick’s head. The heat lulled him into a trancelike state. Now and again he was jolted awake by a clap on the shoulder from someone who recognized him from track.
He looked up from a conversation with a fifteen-hundred-meter runner when the flash of a gold blouse and brilliant green skirt caught his eye. Gold bangles flashed from the girl’s arm. Just before she disappeared into a stairwell, she turned and caught Jean Patrick’s eye. Bea! She gave him an amused smile.
In the instant it took to say good-bye to the runner, Bea had vanished. Frantic, Jean Patrick dashed after her. She trotted up the stairs and then down a poorly lit hallway, bracelets ajangle. He stopped halfway up the stairs to regain his power of speech and compose the words he wished to say. An office door opened, and a man in a gray suit stepped into the hall. Bea walked into his embrace and kissed the air by his cheeks. The image of that same gray-suited arm plucking a mango flashed through Jean Patrick’s mind.
JEAN PATRICK FOUND Daniel leaning against a giant plastic Primus bottle by the cafeteria, watching the girls. He wore blue jeans and a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his strapping arms. Jean Patrick had to look twice to make sure it really was him. He tried to lift him off the ground, but instead Daniel scooped him up and twirled him around.
“I guess Coach is right; I need to lift weights.”
“Papa made me strong, eh?” Daniel grinned, and Jean Patrick saw the familiar dot of pink tongue. “I kept thinking he had secretly enlisted me in the army to cure my natural laziness.”
Smoke from the cafeteria fanned out into the sky, carrying with it the smell of grilling meat. Jean Patrick poked Daniel. “Are you hungry?”
“If a cow walked by, I could catch it and eat it.”
Jean Patrick hooked Daniel’s arm, and they went inside. Hearing his friend’s high-speed chatter, Jean Patrick gradually shook off his morning companion named Misery.
“Let me tell you—I’m glad to be here,” Daniel said. They shoved through the crowd and found two seats at a long wooden table. They had to shout to make themselves heard. “Kigali and Butare are more like different countries than different cities. Kigali country I do not like anymore.” He tore a piece of meat from his brochette. “In Kigali, you know every minute of the day there is war. Grenades, gunfire, explosions.”
“What? The RPF are fighting in Kigali?”
“Not just RPF. Rival political parties. The MDR fights the CDR, CDR fights PSD, everyone fighting Habyarimana’s MRND. Aye! So many letters—who can keep them straight? And then there’s the crooks, blowing up shops just to steal from them. One day I almost tripped over a dead body. He was lying in the middle of the street, like he was asleep. They cut him in broad daylight.” Daniel dunked a chip in pilipili. “Oof! These peppers are hot.”
“What about the cease-fire? You said people danced in the streets. And what about the United Nations? They were supposed to send troops.” Jean Patrick’s sour mood returned. He had hoped Daniel would tell him the war had gone away.
“We have not seen UNAMIR.” Daniel spoke in a low voice. �
��United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda—a fancy name for an invisible army. Habyarimana promises UN troops, and we see more government soldiers. He promises peace, and we get more killings, promises to honor the transitional government, and instead he tightens MRND’s grip.” Daniel made a kissing sound through his teeth. “Who knows if he will ever keep a promise?”
With a sweep of his hand, Jean Patrick dismissed Daniel’s news. “These things take time. Eventually they will change. They must. Look at me, a Tutsi, competing in the Olympics. Habyarimana will come to greet me.”
Daniel clapped his hands together. “Aye-yay. I forgot to say congratulations. My brain is too stupid from politics.”
They talked about the race and the reception. Jean Patrick heard his voice, too loud, too insistent, in his ears, and he wondered if it was himself or Daniel he wanted to convince.
“Don’t listen to me,” Daniel said. “Papa’s wrongheaded predictions have twisted my thinking. But now I’m here, in Butare, and all that disaster cooking on the coals is behind me in Kigali.” He took in the commotion of a group of girls at the next table. “I had a few girlfriends while I was home. How about you?”
“I was too busy,” Jean Patrick said. He took his books from his knapsack and lined them up on the table. Daniel plopped a pile of texts beside them. “A lot of biology and chemistry,” Jean Patrick said. “Did they give you premed?”
“They did. I’ll be a doctor after all, but I still have to take physics. That made my mama happy, since she teaches science. And you?”
“Mechanical engineering. I knew I wouldn’t get physics or math, but I get to take a lot of the classes, so I’m happy.” He handed Daniel his geology book. “And I’m taking this.”
“Physical Geology: An Introduction.” Daniel wrinkled his nose. “What good is that?”
Jean Patrick recalled Jonathan’s surprise when he mentioned that in Rwanda, students were not free to decide their course of study. He wondered what it would be like to pick from a list of courses as a diner picks from a menu. To say, I choose geology, or I choose physics. That was a world he could not even imagine.
Daniel gave him back the book, and Jean Patrick saw the splash of pink between his teeth. All vacation he had missed this face, this grin.
“I saw Coach,” Daniel said. “He warned me we had a special practice, running up and down every stair on campus. Then he quoted some proverb about welcoming us to graze in his pastures, and laughed.”
Suddenly, Jean Patrick understood what Coach had been trying to tell him as he sped off in his car. Imana had given him talent and a stubborn will. He needed to run as much as he needed to breathe, and he would endure any amount of pain to win. But now he saw that he depended on Coach to chisel his gifts into a shining, perfect gem. He realized, too, that this gem was more than his personal success. He remembered how Uncle and Roger had told him he was running for all Tutsi, and this seemed even truer after all this talk about the war.
Jean Patrick shook his head. All this time he had mistakenly believed he had only to trust in two legs that were quick enough to cleave the air. But that wasn’t enough, would never be enough. He had to trust in Coach for guidance, in Habyarimana to allow him his Olympic dream, in the government to bring in the United Nations troops. And if it ever came to that, he would have to trust in those troops to protect his life.
SIXTEEN
COACH PULLED UP IN FRONT of Jonathan’s house and grunted. “Look at that muzungu. He sticks out like a big white thumb.”
Jonathan looked more tourist than professor, standing at his gate in the near darkness, cap on his head, knapsack on his back, camera case across his shoulder. Jean Patrick had learned that the B on the cap was for the Boston Red Sox, the baseball team from Jonathan’s town.
“Mwaramutseho,” Jonathan said, sliding into the front seat. “J. P., amakuru?”
“Ni meza,” Jean Patrick said in response. “Jonathan, this is my coach, Rutembeza.”
Jonathan extended his hand. “Mwaramutse,” he said.
Coach’s expression changed from scorn to smile, as if an unseen hand had erased one countenance and sketched another. “Good morning,” he said in English. “Jean Patrick speaks highly of your class.”
Jonathan placed his cap on Jean Patrick’s head. He had cropped his wild hair into a neat, close cut. “Are you ready to win?”
“Me, I’m always ready.”
“Today, he’s going to beat the entire Burundi Olympic team,” Daniel announced.
Jean Patrick felt the first nervous somersault of his stomach, and he turned his attention to the weather. It didn’t look promising, rain clouds blotting out the smallest scrap of sun as the day took shape. As they left Butare Prefecture, rain plunked steadily on the roof.
“I’ll never run a qualifying time like this; I’ll be slipping in the mud.”
Daniel rolled down the window and cupped his palm to catch the rain. “It could pass soon.”
Jonathan pointed to a crack of blue gray and the faint edge of a rainbow. “Yes. I believe it will.” He kept his camera in his lap, a finger on the shutter release.
Near the turnoff for Nyanza, the rain stopped. A flock of children burst from the grass, screaming, “Agachupa! Agachupa!”
Jonathan aimed his camera. “Beautiful! What are they saying?”
“They want this.” Jean Patrick tapped him with an empty water bottle. “Containers are precious—especially from muzungu.”
Jonathan threw the bottle out the window, and the children dove. A small girl surfaced from the fracas, bottle held high. She pumped her legs to outdistance her pursuers.
“Eh-eh—look at her go. Watch out, Marcianne Mukamurenzi,” Jean Patrick said.
“Who’s that?”
“I just read about her,” Jean Patrick said. “She’s run in the Olympics for Rwanda in the fifteen hundred and the marathon.”
Coach dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “A girl.”
Jean Patrick wouldn’t let it go. “Eh—she beat that guy Telesphore Dusabe, who came to my school. Her time was a minute forty faster.” He jiggled his leg. “She was a mail carrier, and she trained by running barefoot from village to village with the mail.” Coach groaned, and Jean Patrick returned to watching the sky, hoping to coax a border of blue from the gray blanket.
THE KIGALI SKYLINE materialized beyond the swamps of the Nyabarongo River. Patches of blue sky appeared, and the land steamed dry. Jonathan leaned out the window with his camera.
“Maybe now the track won’t be so slippery.” Jean Patrick’s jitters metamorphosed into a flock of butterflies in his stomach.
“Didn’t I predict it?” Daniel high-fived him.
“Oh my God,” Jonathan leaned out farther and frantically focused his lens.
Ahead, a crowd had formed around a group of machete-wielding men. The car crawled closer, and Jean Patrick saw that some of them had hand grenades clipped to their belts.
“Welcome to Kigali,” Daniel whispered to Jean Patrick. “Now you see our Interahamwe.”
“This doesn’t look good,” Jonathan said. He clicked the shutter, and Coach snapped his head around.
“You’ll need to put your camera on the floor, where it can’t be seen. Quickly.” Ice could have formed on Coach’s words. “Roll up your window and lock your door.”
An old, bent herder stood at the center of the crowd, leaning heavily against his staff. Someone had pulled off one of the man’s rubber boots and was brandishing it above his head. Although his clothes were patched and much roughed up, Jean Patrick could see that the man had dressed with care and attention. Earth stained his slacks, and his felt hat lay trampled in the mud. A torn sleeve dangled from his jacket. Schoolchildren picked among the vegetables from his overturned basket. But even through his fear, an air of dignity remained.
“Why is everyone harassing that poor farmer?” Jonathan pressed his forehead to the window.
“He’s Tutsi,” Jean Patrick said, shocked by
his own boldness. Coach shot him a look.
The crowd swelled; drivers abandoned their cars to get a better view. Some taunted the herder or cheered on the Interahamwe. Some called out to leave him alone. A little boy hurled a tomato, and it burst against the old man’s back. The boy’s friends cheered.
Coach honked his horn and pointed at Jonathan. “You’d think they’d let a foreigner pass,” he said in Kinyarwanda.
An Interahamwe picked up the cowherd’s hat. He slapped it against the man’s leg and threw it down again with exaggerated distaste. The mob whooped and whistled. The herder remained immobile, bared head bowed. Children ran off with armloads of produce.
“The guy probably tried to cheat them.” Coach patted Jonathan as if pacifying a child. “It happens all the time. In Rwanda, people don’t take thieving lightly.”
Outrage swirled in Jean Patrick. The herder’s shame burned his face. Although he knew better than to contradict an elder, he spoke up. “That’s not—”
Daniel squeezed his hand. Leave it, he mouthed.
A second Interahamwe snatched the old man’s glasses. He put them on and waved his arms like a political official working a rally. A gold chain glinted from his neck. The herder stood still, eyes blinking. Jean Patrick sensed the collective constriction in the mob like a boa squeezing its prey.
“Cut the Tutsi snake in two,” someone yelled.
“Shouldn’t we do something?” Jonathan’s voice quavered. “Where are the police?” In the backseat, Jean Patrick fidgeted.
“The police are busy counting their contributions,” Daniel whispered to Jean Patrick.
“Don’t worry. Guys like this—they just want to scare him. They’ll let him go in a minute,” Coach said. Jean Patrick looked to Daniel for confirmation, but Daniel merely shrugged.
For an instant, the road opened up, and Coach accelerated, managing a few meters before the gap closed again. He blasted the horn, and the herder swiveled toward them, fear ablaze in his eyes.
Jean Patrick checked his watch. If they didn’t get out of there soon, he would be late. He could have pummeled the seatback with his fists, but instead his voice came out a whimper. “We need to hurry,” he said.
Running the Rift Page 15
