Running the Rift

by Naomi Benaron

  THAT NIGHT, JEAN Patrick awoke with the policeman’s face so close, so real, he reached out to push it away. In the morning, he had two exams. In the afternoon, a hard workout. Shivering, he pulled the covers around him, closed his eyes, and tried to summon sleep. Dampness seeped from the sheets into his bones. A girl like Bea can marry anyone, he thought. A nice Hutu man, a doctor or a judge. What would she want with a Tutsi fisherman? The question troubled his mind.

  But the next day, when his last exam was finished, he walked into town with his food money. In the first shop he entered, a store for tourists, he found her a gift. It was on a high shelf, between the clay pots and straw baskets: a pirogue carved from some soft, golden wood. When the shopkeeper lifted it down for him, Jean Patrick inhaled the musty tang of home. Inside the boat were two fishermen made from tightly woven imiseke, the reeds still smelling of the swampy earth they came from. They reminded him of the dog Mathilde had made him. They bent to their strokes with miniature oars, the delicate curves of their backs in perfect symmetry. Tiny fish made from shells flashed in the bilge. There is value to my life, he almost said aloud as he watched the merchant wrap his prize in pages torn from an old and yellowed issue of Kangura.

  JEAN PATRICK AWOKE in a panic, daylight bright in his eyes. He bolted upright, then fell back against his pillow to keep his head from spinning. Instantly he regretted the late night, the third Primus he had shared with Daniel. Eyes half-shut, he sat up slowly, rubbed his temples, and searched for his running shoes.

  The voice of RTLM pushed through the wall from the adjacent room. Burundi first. That’s where our eyes are looking now. The dog eaters have mutilated— the rest of the sentence lost in static. Jean Patrick sucked his teeth. People loved this new radio station too much; he heard it day and night in students’ rooms, as background at the cabarets and shops, traveling on guys’ shoulders as they strutted about. Just after seven in the morning, and already the announcer was hard at it, heating up heads.

  “Daniel, it’s time to get up.” Daniel pulled the covers over his head and turned to the wall. Jean Patrick yanked the covers down. “Don’t make dead man’s face at me, huh. I’m going. See you in class.” He stood by their small desk and forced down a piece of bread, a few sips of water. Daniel’s pillow slammed into the wall beside him as he opened the door.

  It had not yet rained, but the morning threatened, the sky a dirty rag ready to be wrung out. A cold wind strummed the dark wires of the clouds. Jean Patrick pulled his collar close and started out at a slow jog. At his back, he heard the broadside of RTLM. Even when the dog eaters are few, they discredit the whole family. Bahutu—be vigilant against them. The voice kept pace behind him. Jean Patrick whirled around. He recognized the boy with the boom box, one or two others in the group. From time to time they greeted him on his morning runs. Sensing trouble, he nodded to them and picked up the pace.

  “There goes a dog eater now,” the boy with the boom box said.

  Jean Patrick pushed harder, and the group fell back. His head throbbed; he wanted only to return to his room, crawl into bed, disappear beneath the blanket. A rock skittered by his feet, and then another.

  On the main road, he forced himself to start his pickups and lunges. His lungs burned strangely, as if he had inhaled a toxic substance. Maybe today he would stop at the hut where the old guard lived and join him for a cup of hot, sweet tea. He neared the turnoff to the arboretum fields, and his breathing felt tighter. He couldn’t puzzle it out, but then, turning onto the dirt road, he immediately understood. What he had taken for a cloud was a column of smoke, and it rose from the ridge where the guardhouse stood. A flower of orange flames bloomed at its center, where the old man’s hut should have been.

  Jean Patrick sprinted toward the ridge. His eyes watered, and his throat stung. A thick gray-blue haze rose from the earth. Usually by this hour, the women were hard at work, their ruckus carrying to his ears, but today he heard only the goats on the slopes, their high-pitched bleats and the tinkle of their bells piercing a preternatural quiet.

  He reached the fields; sacks of different colors lay scattered among the rows, mist curling about them. When he drew close, an odor like none he had ever smelled brought him to his knees. It was the stench of death. The sacks, he saw now, were the bodies of the workers. They lay on the earth, heads oddly turned, limbs akimbo.

  Kneeling in the dirt, he retched until his stomach was empty.

  It took him a moment to connect the sound in his head with someone calling his name. He looked up. Bea stood beside a car on the side of the road, a scarf over her nose. “Come with me—hurry. Burundi’s president has been assassinated, and everywhere, Hutu are blaming the Tutsi.”

  “Ndadaye? Killed?” Jean Patrick felt a chill as the morning clicked into place: the tirade on RTLM, the students hurling dog eater at his back, and now this scene of devastation. Slowly, Jean Patrick rose and stumbled toward Bea, forcing his legs to obey his crumbling will. When she opened the car door, he stooped inside and collapsed against the seat.

  Bea reached behind him and pushed down the lock. “There’s been a coup. It’s not clear what happened, but the moment the news of Ndadaye’s murder hit the streets, Burundi erupted like a volcano, and now violence has spilled like magma into Rwanda. No matter what you see, look straight ahead as if you didn’t care.” She accelerated onto the road. “In a few minutes we’ll come to a mob. They’re staggering drunk, blocking traffic, harassing everyone who passes.” Her voice quavered. “You can see what they’ve been up to.”

  The men took shape from the mist. Dressed in rags, brandishing machetes, spears, and clubs, they fanned across the road.

  “God will make us an exit,” Bea said. “But you must stay relaxed. If they smell fear, they will devour us.” Jean Patrick nodded. He tried to keep his hands from trembling in his lap.

  The mob surrounded them, and Bea rolled down her window. The cloying sour-sweet of banana beer and blood, mixed with the stench of human filth, wafted into the car. “Good morning,” she said.

  A man pushed his head inside. Blood stained his club; his clothes were stiff with blood and dirt. “Are you Hutu?” he slurred. Jean Patrick held his breath against the fetor.

  Bea bestowed on him a smile to melt sugar. “We’re from the newspaper Kangura. Do you know it? We’re covering reaction to Ndadaye’s assassination. An important job.” She spoke in the slow, cajoling tones reserved for young children. “Are you from Burundi?”

  The man grunted. “What about him? He looks like a dog eater.”

  An exasperated breath escaped Bea’s lips. “Do you think I’d let a Tutsi in the car with me? He’s my assistant.” She looked at Jean Patrick. “Show him.” Jean Patrick gave her a puzzled look. “Your card. Your papers.” She snapped her fingers, and he gave her his card. “There, you see?” Bea tapped the page in the man’s face. “Hutu.”

  He examined Jean Patrick’s picture and squinted at the writing, turning the booklet upside down, right side up, his brow furrowed with the effort. “Tell your paper we will make those dog eaters pay.” He swept his arm across the scruffy group. “We are Burundians. We ran from our country because those Tutsi in charge slaughtered Hutu like dogs. We have been living first inside the stinking camps and now in Butare Town. We can’t find jobs, can’t find food, and just when we are thinking we can return to our land, because of those dog eaters, we’re blocked again.”

  From a distance, Jean Patrick had seen the blue plastic roofs of the ramshackle huts in Gikongoro. The scent of their misery carried a distance in the wind. There were rumors, Uncle said, that Hutu militias were training them there.

  With his bloodied club, the man pointed toward the arboretum fields. “At least those snakes can’t poison us anymore.” He waved his arms, and the mob parted to let the car through.

  The mob turned their attention to the trunk, pounding it with clubs and fists. Bea’s hands on the steering wheel were locked and rigid. Jean Patrick shoved his hands deep in
side his pockets to hide their trembling. Neither spoke. Bea turned down a deserted goat trail, the car rattling and bumping across the ruts.

  At a pullout hidden by a thicket of vines and brambles, she killed the engine. They both rolled down their windows. The air was clean, rain almost palpable in it. “If someone snapped our picture, we would see the same stupid expression on both our faces,” Bea said. With a mixture of relief and terror, they both laughed.

  “Where did you get the idea to say you were from Kangura? That was brilliant.” Jean Patrick clutched the seat as if it held him to the earth.

  “God gave it to me at the last second. Imana ishimwe, it worked, eh?”

  “I can’t believe you looked me in the eye and told me to hand that murderer my card.” Tears flowed down his cheeks. “Mana yanjye, you were so calm—steady like a rock.”

  “Know thine enemy. I guessed he couldn’t read. It’s sad, really, but you have to take advantage where you can.” Her hair hung over her face. Beneath the silky fabric of her blouse, her chest rose and fell.

  A shiver passed through Jean Patrick. “If you hadn’t found me, those guys could have killed me, too.”

  “When I heard RTLM last night, I knew things would be bad. I didn’t sleep. As soon as it was light, I went to check on you. Daniel pointed me in the right direction.”

  “What’s this about dog eaters?”

  “The media has been shouting that Tutsi dog eaters tortured Ndadaye and mutilated his body. Who knows where the phrase came from, but they have pounced on it.”

  “But it was Tutsi who killed him?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. In the spirit of reconciliation, Ndadaye had left the mostly Tutsi military in place after he came to power. They murdered him in an attempted coup. Whatever happens now, it will not be good for Burundi or Rwanda.” Bea’s fingers tapped out a rhythm against the steering wheel. “The funny thing is, if I lived in Burundi, it would be the Hutu I fought for.”

  “Why is that strange? After all, you are Hutu.”

  Anger flamed in Bea’s eyes and then was gone. “It’s not that at all. Hutu or Tutsi or green people from the moon, I fight injustice where I see it.”

  On the slope below, a woman prepared a field for planting. The hoe struck between her bare feet with a rhythmic tac. A red gash of soil opened in the stubbled remains of sorghum. Beside her, a little boy squatted and sucked on a piece of sugarcane.

  “That hut,” Jean Patrick began, “the one the mob burned.” Bea turned toward him. “An old man lived there, the guard. I used to greet him when I ran. He would offer me tea, and each time, I said, ‘Ejo hazaza,’ tomorrow. Just now, before I saw, I said to myself, Today I will have tea with them.” A sob wrenched free from his throat. “He had a daughter and a grandson.”

  “Promise me one thing,” Bea said. Jean Patrick nodded. If she demanded a particular star, he would fly to the heavens to fetch it. “I’m going to bring you to our home now—Dadi has asked you to stay until we know it’s safe. When you greet my mother, don’t mention anything about this morning. She worries too much.”

  “Even if I wanted to tell someone, I have no words to speak it.”

  To the south and east, cloud banks rolled over Burundi’s mountains. Rain fell in the high peaks. Streams would be bursting, tumbling down through the forests and denuded slopes to feed the Rusizi River as it journeyed southward from Lake Kivu. Jonathan had drawn pictures on the chalkboard in class. Before his eyes, Jean Patrick had watched the mountains form in thick yellow swoops from the violent upheaval of magma. He thought of Mama’s sister Spéciose in Burundi, waking up to go to the fields, the children setting off for school. He thought of Gilbert and Ndizeye in Bujumbura, measuring their lives by the click of a stopwatch, the pure joy of motion radiant in their eyes. Yesterday he could have looked at the time and guessed what each of them would be doing, but from today, he could no longer predict the course of life beyond those mountains. He tasted bile in his mouth, sour and thick. He couldn’t even answer the question alive or dead or say with certainty that the Rusizi River would not reverse course and spill back into Rwanda with its burden of ashes and blood. Imana itanga ishaka. God gives when he wants. And at any moment, he can take away again.

  “Tomorrow, I will have to go to Cyangugu,” Jean Patrick said. “I will have to see for myself that my family is safe.”

  On the path, schoolchildren laughed and sang. Goats bleated, the timbre of bells crisp and bright. Life went on. Bea gathered her hair into a clip. “Then I will drive you,” she said.

  “I DON’T KNOW why no one is coming.” The car idled at the gate. Bea honked again.

  Jean Patrick rested his head against the window’s cool glass and recalled the day she had pulled him into her yard and permanently altered the spin of his world.

  She bit her lip. “How am I going to get out of this car and act as if nothing has happened?”

  Jean Patrick stepped out. He had to lean against the door for support. “The second step will be easier than the first,” he said. “I will try it now, to let you know how it is.” Strangely they both giggled. A woman came to open the gate. Jean Patrick followed the car into the yard and looked into the face of a smaller, thinner Bea.

  “Welcome,” she said. “I’m Ineza, Bea’s mother.” He stooped to receive her formal kiss: right cheek, left cheek, right again. “It’s good to see you are safe. We were all anxious.” She embraced Bea and led them to the door. “I’ve just now come from the market. I’m still putting things away.”

  “God help us, Mama, you went to market? Why didn’t you send Claire?” Bea said. Jean Patrick noticed a tiny shudder before she recovered.

  Ineza smiled at Jean Patrick. “My daughter, I have not yet reached an age where I can’t walk to market.”

  “But today, Mama, you could have stayed home.”

  “As is our custom, we went together.” A trace of worry underlay the casual banter. When Ineza balanced on one foot to remove a thin-strapped sandal, Jean Patrick thought of a bird preening delicate feathers. She disappeared into the kitchen.

  Niyonzima stood by the curtains, looking out at the garden. Bea went to her father and kissed him. “I’ve brought Jean Patrick. He is unscathed.”

  Niyonzima squeezed Jean Patrick’s hands. “Thank God. What did you discover?”

  Bea spoke softly, her eye on the kitchen. “A gang of drunk Burundi refugees on a rampage. They burned down the guard’s hut and murdered some workers at the arboretum fields. Closer to town, life seems as always.” About their own confrontation, she said nothing.

  “That is truly worrisome,” Niyonzima said. “I’ve been making some calls. It appears most of the countryside remains calm.”

  “What about Cyangugu? Jean Patrick is anxious for his family.”

  “I have not heard. My few contacts there did not answer the phone.”

  Abruptly she put her hand on her father’s shoulder. “Jean Patrick, come and see my mother’s paintings,” she said loudly. “Mama, leave the tea things for Claire and come be tour guide.”

  “With pleasure.” Ineza took Jean Patrick’s arm. “You’re shaking. Are you cold?”

  “A little bit. This jacket is thin.”

  “Then have tea first. That will warm you.”

  “Tea can wait. Let me see your paintings.”

  Ineza guided him toward the wall. “As you see, it is Rwanda’s countryside that lives in my heart—the countryside of my childhood.” Jean Patrick regarded the canvases: Intore dancers, farmers in terraced plots, tea pickers lost in a sea of foliage. Birds taking flight, green hills rising from mist. It took a moment to see that the golden light was a trick of the artist and not a swath of sun from the window. The last painting was of the children Bea had sheltered beneath her shawl. Ineza had caught them in the act of leaping for a ball, the illusion of motion so strong they looked about to leap from the canvas. Jean Patrick’s heart twisted as he searched their faces for Bea’s features. Maybe the boy’s nose, the
girl’s broad shoulders; he couldn’t be sure. “Your grandchildren are handsome,” he said.

  Bea shrieked. “Ko Mana—they are not my children!”

  “My daughter has neither husband nor children,” Ineza said. “Not even a suitor, as far as I know. Now come have tea, Jean Patrick, before you shiver out of your jacket.”

  A woman came from the cookhouse with bread and a bowl of fruit. Bea ran to her. “Here is Claire, the mother of those beautiful children.” She touched her cheek to Claire’s.

  “I HAD TO put on something else,” Bea whispered when she came outside. “I wanted to scrub my skin until the layers came off.”

  Jean Patrick was standing in the tentative sunlight, watching Claire shell peas. By pretending for Ineza that nothing had happened, he had almost come to believe it. But while he waited for Bea alone, his mind traveled back to the bodies, the drunk men. The blood smell was overmuch in his nostrils, and he wondered if it would ever wash away.

  “I feel the same,” he said.

  “Dadi has asked if you will stay here, just to be safe. I can fetch what you need from Daniel, and we can leave for Cyangugu first thing in the morning.” The children came running out in their blue school uniforms. Bea gathered them up and kissed their heads. “Sometimes,” she said, “only innocence can bring you back to life.”

  JEAN PATRICK DID not know how he managed to survive the rest of the day. Ineza had presented him with an armload of books, and he occupied himself with trying to discover Bea through the pages. He approached it like a physics problem, gleaning the variables of her tastes and arranging them in orderly equations. He was staring at an English novel, trying to make sense of the words, when she returned with her father.

  “I told him what happened,” she said. “He went with a photographer, but someone had already removed the bodies. They found a few survivors and interviewed them. He sent the photos and the story to an American woman with Human Rights Watch. She knows Rwanda well and fights for us; the deaths will not go unnoticed.”