Running the Rift

by Naomi Benaron

  After a week in the hospital, Niyonzima came home. He was healing, putting on weight and muscle. On mornings when Jean Patrick could escape from Coach’s watchful eye, he joined Niyonzima when he finished his workout. Together they walked up and down the lane, each time a bit farther, a bit faster. “Soon, even with your crutches you’ll beat me,” Jean Patrick joked.

  “Ha! That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” Niyonzima said. “Do you know the saying?” Ashamed, Jean Patrick shook his head. “It’s Nietzsche, a German philosopher. I repeated it every day I was in prison.”

  “I have seen his book on Coach’s shelf.” The words were no sooner out of Jean Patrick’s mouth than he wished he could snatch them back out of the air.

  “Of course,” Niyonzima said. Jean Patrick could taste the bitterness in his smile.

  EASTER CAME EARLY that year: April 3, now only three days away. Jean Patrick stretched out on his bed. He was trying to study, but his mind traveled here and there. The milk and honey they had all wished for at the start of the year seemed as far away as the moon. Letters from Mama sighed with bad news. For the crime of being Tutsi, classmates had chased Clemence until her feet bled. Hutu Power toughs jumped Zachary on a morning walk near his school. Luckily, Mama wrote, he has legs like yours to run.

  Jean Patrick returned to his geology book, a chapter on stress and strain in rocks. If stress was applied too quickly, he read, the strain could not be supported, and the rock snapped. This was how faults formed. But when the same stress was applied buhoro, buhoro, little by little, the rock adjusted. Folds formed instead of faults. “Like toothpaste squeezed from a tube,” Jonathan told the class.

  And if pressure kept increasing in Rwanda, what would happen then? Would they break or bend? Disgusted, Jean Patrick set the book aside. I will die in the wreckage of all this confusion, he thought.

  Commotion erupted outside the door, and Daniel burst through, dancing and whooping. He took off his jacket and shook out the rain. “Classes are over! Papers finished!”

  “Aye! Couldn’t you do that outside?” Jean Patrick shoved Daniel out and wiped the floor with a dirty shirt.

  “Let me in, huh?” Daniel kicked off his shoes and hurled himself on top of Jean Patrick, who was still on hands and knees, mopping. They rolled across the floor, wrestling.

  “No more slaughtered cows on your essays?”

  “Just a few drops of blood.” Daniel jumped up and wiggled his hips like a rock ’n’ roll singer.

  The bass from a radio vibrated the walls. In the small square of space between the beds, Daniel twirled and swayed to the beat. Jean Patrick joined in.

  “When are you leaving for Cyangugu?” Daniel asked.

  “Saturday morning, after practice. Coach wants to destroy me one last time before I go. He’s been too cross. Maybe he needs a wife to take his mind off his troubles.”

  Daniel howled. “Wah! Can you picture it?” He jabbed his elbow into Jean Patrick. “Anyway, I found out he had one.”

  “Eh-eh! Never.”

  “She ran away to Tanzania because she didn’t want to be second wife, behind the army.”

  “I think he’s still married to the army, the way he acts.”

  Daniel took two candies from his pocket. He gave one to Jean Patrick and popped the other in his mouth. These were red, a sweet burst of cinnamon and spice on the tongue.

  “From your muzungu sweetheart?”

  “I am in love!” Daniel grinned, openmouthed, showing off the candy on his tongue. “Let’s get some food. I could devour a cow by myself.”

  AN ONSLAUGHT OF noise hit them when they walked through the cafeteria door, students shouting and pushing, every seat taken, students sharing the tiny chairs. After they got their dinner, Jean Patrick and Daniel waited by the front. Daniel attacked his chips with his fingers, dragging them through a pile of mayonnaise sauce on his plate.

  “Tsst! Tsst! Share our seats.” The call came from a table in the corner where two girls stood and waved. Jean Patrick recognized them from the protest, the ones who carried the banner that said WE ARE ALL ONE PEOPLE. Daniel and Jean Patrick squeezed into one chair, the girls into the other.

  “Aren’t you that famous runner? Mr. Olympics?” The girl pointed her fork at Jean Patrick.

  “I am.” Jean Patrick held out his hand.

  “I’m called Valerie.” She wore a PL beret over her close-cropped hair. “You’re friends with Bea—why don’t you come to our Parti Libéral meetings?”

  “I didn’t think Tutsi could come.”

  Valerie rolled her eyes. “Anyone can join. We can’t believe in exclusion.”

  Daniel looked up from his food. “Tell me when your next meeting is, and I’ll be there.” He shook Valerie’s hand. “My friend has no time for politics. He’s too busy training.”

  “No time for politics when justice is disappearing?”

  Like something too hot or too cold causing pain in Jean Patrick’s chipped tooth, the question went straight to his nerve, the same raw nerve Bea always probed. He cut his food into small, neat squares. In two days’ time, he would sit with his family, scooping up stew with ugali, all talk of politics forgotten for a while—except, of course, for Uncle. Daniel and Valerie debated Rwanda’s problems, and the more they heated up each other’s heads, the closer they sat. More than politics boiled Daniel’s blood.

  “I’M GOING TO marry her,” Daniel sang. They walked back to the dorm hand in hand. A light rain fell. The moon, almost full, gave off a ghostly glow from behind the clouds.

  “You think you can marry an activist? She will break your heart.”

  “Bea’s an activist.”

  “You see? That one breaks my heart every day.”

  “But you will marry her.”

  “She is not fast enough to run away forever.” Jean Patrick matched his long stride to Daniel’s shorter one. He traveled back in memory to the day he and Daniel met. That gap-toothed boy was far away from the young man who now walked beside him, sturdy and lean, talking of marriage. “You need to pack,” Jean Patrick said. “Your papa will be here early, and he will not want to be kept waiting.”

  Daniel stopped in the path. “I wonder why Jonathan and Susanne don’t get married.”

  “Americans are different from us,” Jean Patrick said. “They don’t get married, and they don’t have kids. Not until they are old already.”

  “Did I tell you my sister Rosine is getting married?”

  Jean Patrick counted on his fingers. “Only nine times.”

  Rain kept a steady beat on the roof as Daniel threw clothes into his suitcase, took them out and folded them, put them back in. Charged with excitement, he kept up a steady banter with the radio, with Jean Patrick, with himself. When Bob Marley came on, he broke into a dance and hollered. Them belly full but we hungry. “After vacaion, we’ll go dancing,” he said. “You and Bea and me and Valerie. Forget curfew. We’ll dance till morning.” A hungry man is an angry man.

  “What about your muzungu sweetheart?”

  With a brush of his hand, Daniel dismissed her. “Valerie is true love.” Twirling between the beds, he slow-danced with the shirt he had been about to pack. “But I’m going to meet the muzungu in Kigali. She’s spending Easter at l’Hôtel des Mille Collines. Her parents are coming from Paris.”

  “Oh là là,” Jean Patrick teased. “The Mille Collines! Maybe you should reconsider.” Dancing to the desk, he picked up Daniel’s books. “Don’t forget to take these. We still have exams when we get back.”

  Shrill laughter, female, came from the walkway. Daniel pulled aside the curtain to look. He stood by the window, head cocked, fingering the fabric of the curtain. Light from the dim ceiling bulb illuminated his face like a half moon. A small corner of his tongue peeked through in his usual gesture of concentration. If Jean Patrick had a camera, he would have taken a picture just so. Something to remind Daniel of this time when he was older, with kids of his own.

  TWENTY-THR
EE

  JEAN PATRICK ARRIVED EARLY FOR DINNER, dressed in his suit. Already he was outgrowing it, slivers of ankle and wrist poking out if he moved the wrong way. His legs jiggled with nervous agitation. He had something to ask Niyonzima and Ineza, and he wanted to ask it before Susanne and Jonathan arrived. This business of the heart’s turmoil did not come easily to him. If Daniel hadn’t gone home, he would have asked for his help. When it came to matters of the heart, Daniel knew how to make persuasion flow from his mouth.

  In a moment of inspiration, Jean Patrick had thought of his father. If Papa had been alive, Jean Patrick would have gone to him for advice. The closest he could come was Papa’s journal. He analyzed his father’s turns of phrase and sentence structure and practiced them aloud. Even so, as he stood at the window with Ineza, he was still crossing out in his mind, replacing weak words with stronger ones. They were watching the spectacle beyond the window, where workers fortified the garden wall. Bea and Niyonzima walked the base, inspecting the work and making small talk with the workers. Niyonzima had traded his crutches for a sturdy staff, and he leaned against it, accepting Bea’s support with his other arm.

  The wall had been extended upward until it blocked all but the treetops in the forest beyond. Pieces of broken bottle cemented into the top turned the house and yard into an impenetrable fortress. At least this was the hope.

  “After what’s happened, we have no choice,” Ineza said.

  Trapped inside the broken glass, sunset became a row of colored flames: blues, greens, reds, and browns. “You will find a way to use your painting to turn this wall into a thing of beauty,” Jean Patrick said.

  Bringing with him the blustery wind, Niyonzima came inside. He shook Jean Patrick’s hand warmly. “What do you think of our new structure? Have you noticed—all our neighbors copy us.” It was true. Every day Jean Patrick counted more walls armed with sharp teeth, more coils of barbed wire rising from cement and brick. For a country moving toward peace, the impression was more one of preparing for war.

  “We have urwagwa!” Bea announced, coming in from the kitchen with two large bottles of banana beer. “Jean Patrick—look at you.” She touched her cool cheek to his warm one and ran her hand along his jacket sleeve. “Movie star, eh? At least this time, your suit is dry.” She embraced her father as he stood by the window, leaning on his ornately carved cane. “And you with your staff—like the mwami.”

  “Ah! Finally you see it,” Ineza said. She helped Niyonzima to a chair. “I knew from the first glance, when he walked into my exhibit and raised his pen as if extending a blessing.”

  Jean Patrick pondered Bea’s cheer. She was like fire in the wind: he never knew in what direction she would burn. Ineza filled their glasses. The beer’s yeasty tang wafted out into the room, and with the first sip, Jean Patrick felt it go to his head. Tonight, he needed the alcohol’s strength to pry his speech from his tongue. But by the third sip, the potent brew had swept away half the words he had so carefully stored there.

  His intention was to wait until a polite amount of time had passed and then, at the proper opening, to address Niyonzima and Ineza directly. Bea sat beside him on the couch, the nearness of her thigh boiling the pot the urwagwa had set on the flame. They discussed the rain, the government that was still to be sworn in, the huge crowd at Gatabazi’s funeral. They praised Niyonzima’s stirring eulogy, delivered on crutches. Then, just as Jean Patrick drew a breath and prepared to speak, Jonathan and Susanne called out, “Mwiriwe,” from the gate, and opportunity vanished.

  CLAIRE PILED DISHES of traditional food on the table: green bananas and beans, carrots cooked with cabbage and onions in a tomatoey sauce, goat meat swimming in thick broth. Bea brought in a dish of pasta and placed it in front of Susanne with a flourish. “Especially for you,” she said.

  Susanne let out a peal of laughter and clapped her hands. “Murakoze cyane!” she said, thanking Bea like a true Rwandan.

  They all dug in and ate. They drank more urwagwa. Neither Jonathan nor Susanne had tried it before, and Ineza insisted on showing them the traditional way, sharing it with a straw. “Of course, in the country,” Ineza said, “they use reed instead of plastic for the straw.” With every bite of food, every sip of beer, Jean Patrick’s speech retreated into a farther corner of his mind.

  Susanne had brought a box of photographs, and after dinner, she laid them out across the table. Bea examined them beside her, and soon they sat as close as sisters. Susanne was pink faced and giddy from the beer.

  Bea held a picture of ragged, waving children. “They’re beautiful. Who are they?”

  “Aren’t they sweet? They go to primary school near my project slopes, when they’re not too busy helping in the fields. I wish I could adopt every one of them.”

  Bea stiffened. “Probably they are happy where they are.” Susanne had stumbled into another sin, but she didn’t seem to notice. Bea’s anger faded with the next photo, the children’s smiles bright and filled with hope.

  “I don’t know how they manage,” Susanne said. “We’re just beyond the DMZ, and some days the shelling never stops. I thought there was supposed to be a cease-fire.”

  Bea said, “There is.”

  Susanne pointed to one of the boys. “His cousin was killed by a mortar. What is the point? By the end of the first week, I was ready to ask Jonathan to come and rescue me. But then, I guess I got used to it.” She looked to Bea. “You do, don’t you. Get used to it, I mean.”

  “Yes,” Bea said, sweeping a grain of rice into her palm. “I suppose you do.”

  Susanne picked out a photo of a skinny black dog with matted fur. “Here’s our new puppy. She was wandering around my hut in the mornings, so I started sharing my breakfast. Once she had me pegged as a primary food source, she wasn’t going anywhere. We’ve named her Kweli, after one of Dian Fossey’s beloved gorillas. The children about died when I told them we named a dog.”

  Ineza put her arms around Jonathan and Susanne. “Why don’t you join us for Easter? It’s such a beautiful time in Rwanda, long parades of people walking to church in their best clothes, everyone singing together. It’s one of the few times we can forget our troubles.”

  Jean Patrick gulped the last of his urwagwa. Here was the opening he had been waiting for. He was half-underwater, but he forced himself up for air. “Tomorrow I leave for Cyangugu,” he said to Niyonzima and Ineza, “and I want Bea to come with me.” He glanced sidelong at her. “It is my greatest wish for her to celebrate Easter with my family.”

  “It’s not possible,” Bea said. “I’m needed here to help my father.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Niyonzima said. “Lately you forget you are my child, not the other way around. I’m perfectly capable of caring for myself, and if not, I have my wife.”

  Ineza gathered Bea into her shawl. “You must go. We can get through a day without you.”

  “How will I get home? I’m sure the bus doesn’t run on Easter.”

  “Stay with us. You can sleep with my sister Jacqueline.” Jean Patrick would leave her no way out. “There is a bus first thing Monday morning.”

  Bea’s jaw relaxed, and Jean Patrick saw he had won. “You could have asked me first,” she said. “Here in Butare, we live in modern times.”

  Jean Patrick smiled at her. “But I knew you would refuse me.”

  Bea raised her glass to her lips. The muscles in her neck formed taut ropes, and Jean Patrick imagined climbing them with his fingertips to feel her quickened pulse.

  “We could drive you,” Jonathan said. “We had planned to go to Nyungwe and stay in a cabin, hike around if the weather cooperated. But now we have this puppy, and Amos has gone home for Easter. This way, Susanne gets to see the forest, and we’ll be back in time to feed Kweli.”

  “You can still have your vacation,” Ineza said. “I’ll take care of Kweli until Bea comes back, and then Bea will take over until you return. Just tell us what to do.”

  Bea opened her mouth to speak,
but Ineza’s expression shushed her.

  “We could be back Tuesday,” Jonathan said. “Would that be too long?”

  “Perfect,” Ineza said. “Then we’ll have our own Easter on Wednesday, when everyone is here.”

  “It’s a deal,” Jean Patrick said in English.

  At first he thought he had said it wrong, because Jonathan frowned, but when he followed Jonathan’s gaze, he saw that his words had nothing to do with the expression of concern.

  Susanne sat with a photo of schoolchildren in her lap. She stared intently at their faces. They were lined up on the steps of the school, laughing for the camera. Tears streaked her cheeks, and at first she didn’t respond when Jonathan spoke. She was still with the children, taking their picture, loving them.

  “Do you know what someone told me? At least I think I got this right.” The back door opened, and Claire came in to clear the table. The candles flickered. Susanne sheltered a single flame with her cupped palm and waited for Claire to leave before continuing. “A government biologist, one who speaks English, said the teachers have made lists of all the Tutsi children. He said the burgomaster demanded it.”

  Bea and Niyonzima looked at Ineza. Ineza looked at the floor.

  Susanne said, “And it’s worse than that. The burgomaster wanted a list of every Tutsi household, every Tutsi business in the commune, with explicit directions to each one. The biologist is Tutsi himself, and I think he told me all this because he was afraid they were going to be killed. Because he thought there was something I could do, as an American, to stop it.” She let her hands fall on top of the photo, palms up, as if waiting for good fortune to drop into them.

  Jean Patrick had been right in his prediction: on Saturday morning, Coach seemed determined to drive him into the ground one last time before Easter vacation. Fartlek training had been abandoned; the tire was back. Up and down the arboretum hills, its dead weight pulling Jean Patrick backward. Again and again in a cold mist until he doubled over, gasping for air.