The Flower Plantation

by Nora Anne Brown

  A hushed conversation followed in the kitchen, then the beat of Father's wooden soles came down the red corridor. My bedroom door opened.

  Father rested his large hand on my chest and tucked loose hairs behind my ears. He placed the brown package with the stamps of the Queen of England under my fingers.

  I don't know if he spoke: if he did, I didn't hear him.

  He left, leaving my door open just a crack. A wedge of light from the hall crept over my bed, just enough so that I could see the parcel and open it.

  Peeling back a corner of brown paper, taking care not to tear the stamps, I revealed the pale blue of a pocket book. In the half-light I could make out the navy words on the hard cover. They read “African Butterflies”.

  4

  1987

  Between the ages of six and seven I took African Butterflies everywhere with me. It kept me in the plantation and out of the forest. I became obsessed with caterpillar eggs and spent hours each day hunting for them in the side garden. On the day before my seventh birthday I had my biggest find of all.

  “Gishyushye! Hot!” warned Fabrice, opening the door of the wood-burning stove in the kitchen to reveal eight sterilized jam jars sitting in rows. Clutching my slightly dog-eared book I rushed to glimpse the gleaming glass. On Fabrice's instruction I stood back and watched him remove the jars with a clean cloth – he knew they had to be spotless. Fabrice understood my obsession better than most: he had obsessions of his own, such as wearing shiny red shoes that creaked and saying things three times.

  “The jars are scorching hot,” said Mother, entering the kitchen and turning down Fabrice's radio. “Go and prepare for art in the garden. Fabrice will bring them to you when you've finished your lesson.”

  I wanted to stay with Fabrice and my jam jars, but I knew better than to disobey Mother. And anyway, now that I had African Butterflies, art lessons weren't such a chore. Mother allowed me to use the book as inspiration for my drawings, and I gladly pored over the anatomical diagrams of the butterfly in all its stages, trying to copy them. Mother said it combined art and biology, and that was “more than I'd ever learn in any school in Rwanda”.

  Having fetched my paper, pencil and crayons from the bureau in the living room I took them to the side garden. There I set the materials on the table next to Mother's white wooden bench and went off in search of leaves that I could use for rubbings.

  I explored the plants around the lawn. The lavender leaves were too small and soft; the ginger plant was better: bigger and stronger. The honeysuckle climbing the garden wall was as tempting as honey itself, and I trod through Mother's flowers to bury my nose in the heady scent.

  With a handful of leaves I returned to the bench, where Mother was drinking coffee with Madame B. and eating the layer cake that she'd brought from town. Monty was sitting between them. Since his accident he mostly just crouched beside Mother having his ears tickled.

  “Arthur!” said Madame B., and attempted to squeeze my cheeks and pinch my nose. I managed to dodge her by feigning interest in Mother's new shoes, which were sitting in a box on her lap.

  “Bertie brought them from the post office. Wasn't that kind?” said Mother. “I've lost track of how many months it's been since I sent for them.”

  I took the coffee tray, loaded it with art materials and lay down in the centre of the lawn. Wind slapped against the palm trees – it sounded as if the leaves were giant sails of tarpaulin. Beyond the boundary wall the gardeners were singing in the fields.

  I placed a ginger leaf on the tray, put a piece of paper over it and rubbed with a green crayon. The shape of the leaf began to show. I repeated this process several times until I had lots of leaves covering the page like the wallpaper in the hotel lounge. Then I opened my book to the diagram of the butterfly, and very carefully began copying it, section by section.

  “How are you, Martha?” asked Madame B. as I drew the abdomen.

  Mother told Madame B. that she hadn't been sleeping.

  “What does Dr Sadler suggest?”

  “A drink before bedtime,” said Mother laughing, but Madame B. didn't join in.

  “And Albert?”

  Mother sipped her coffee and took a bite of cake before answering quietly: “Albert keeps his thoughts to himself.”

  “If I can help in any way,” said Madame B., and she drank her coffee too. I could hear her swallow it down.

  “What are you working on, Arthur?” asked Mother after she and Madame B. hadn't spoken for a while. I showed her the abdomen and the forewings. “Lovely,” she said, before saying to Madame B.: “All he thinks about is butterflies. I can't take that book away from him.”

  “So long as he's happy,” said Madame B., and Mother shrugged. After a long silence Madame B. added: “It must be hard, Martha. Very hard.”

  I wondered what Madame B. meant, but I was more interested in drawing the hindwings of the butterfly than listening closely. Mother said something about “the worry of bullying and isolation” and “what the long-term implications might be”.

  “Dr Sadler wonders if it's connected to his birth – we didn't get the chance to bond the way we should have done.” Mother raised an eyebrow. “I have my doubts.” She drank her coffee.

  “Anyway, we won't get a definitive answer here, that's for sure,” she said when Madame B. said nothing. “I think he'd be better cared for in London, but Albert doesn't agree.”

  “Give it time,” said Madame B., and squeezed Mother's hand. With no idea of what they were talking about, I concentrated on perfecting the antennae.

  They drank their coffee and ate their cake – I coloured in my butterfly.

  * * *

  After lunch, when Madame B. had gone, I collected my bug kit, which consisted of a magnifying glass and tweezers in an old ice-cream tub, from the back lobby.

  “Arthur, what are you doing?” asked Mother as she and Monty came to join me in the garden again. I was busy looking for caterpillar eggs in the flowerbeds.

  Fabrice followed – chin sagging, shoulders round, belly soft – in his crisp white jacket and black trousers. He had my jam jars on a tray and a pot of tea for Mother, who sat on her bench, placing Monty beside her.

  “I hope you're not covered in dirt from crawling around in there,” she called. My shorts were muddy, but some eggs on a buddleia leaf grabbed my attention. I extracted them with my tweezers, placed them in a jar and studied them with my magnifying glass. They weren't quite white or brown – a bit like me. Eggs stood out against the leaves and dark soil, just as I did next to the local boys.

  “Where's my boy?” asked Father, returning from the city. He kissed Mother on the cheek, rubbed his nose on Monty's muzzle, then came over to ruffle my hair.

  “Those look like fine specimens,” he said. “I'm not sure I've seen anything better in the lab.” He took a good look before moving to the bench where he reclined – arms stretched along its back, his long legs placed out in front of him. He moved his Panama hat forward to shield his eyes.

  It was then that a surprise discovery – a symmetrical cluster of pearly eggs on the silvery underside of a leaf – made me start with excitement. I was certain that this was a cluster of Charaxes acræoides eggs – one of the rarest butterflies in Rwanda. A butterfly that had both the colour and stripes of a tiger, the spots of a cheetah and could fly just as fast as a tiger could run.

  “What have you found?” Father asked.

  I put down my jar, ran to the lawn, grabbed my book and went straight back into the flowerbed where I flicked quickly through the pages to confirm my find. My eyes darted between page and foliage.

  Father laughed his big, booming laugh. Mother sighed.

  Over the year I'd memorized every butterfly, learnt how to recognize different eggs and remembered all of their gestation periods. African Butterflies had taught me the correct temperature at which to keep them and the right amount of light too. I could tell when particular eggs would hatch into wriggling caterpillars and then
eat their shells. But after a year I had still to learn how to keep the caterpillars alive and see them change into chrysalis and butterflies. That took greater patience than I was capable of at six years old.

  “What have you got?” Father asked again, joining me in the undergrowth. “Can you tell me?” I wanted to tell him, I really did. I fought to say something, but all I could manage was to point at the picture of the Charaxes acræoides and then at the underside of the leaf. “Well, that's quite something,” he said, hunching down beside me and inspecting my find. “Charaxes acræoides – tough to say, no?” I knew Father wanted me to try, but I couldn't. “It's not every day you see that. Sometime I'll have to take you up to the crater on the top of Mount Visoke. Up there butterflies fly in clouds around a lake.” Father really should have said “rabble”, which my book said was the collective noun for butterflies. He looked at me with bright eyes and ruffled my hair. “You're becoming quite the expert. Perhaps one day you'll work for me in the lab.” He handed me a fresh jar and returned to his bench, where he stretched out again.

  The thought of working with Father in the laboratory was almost as pleasant as the thought of working in the post office. Father was a doctor. Not a normal doctor – not like Dr Sadler. Father was a lab doctor – a doctor who treated monkeys as well as humans.

  “Arthur,” called Mother after I'd placed the eggs into the jar with the host buddleia leaves and screwed the lid back on tight. “Time for your story.”

  I used to think Mother loved Father's stories almost as much as me.

  “Once upon a time, about a hundred years ago,” Father began, taking off his hat and placing it on my head, “there was a powerful king called Kigeli IV Rwabugiri. He was treated like a god, and any man who tried to turn against him was killed, and their testicles hung on his sacred drum!” Father winced, then chuckled. I didn't understand why: the King sounded very frightening to me.

  Listening to the story, I turned to the Charaxes acræoides page of my book and drew a picture of my cluster of eggs in the space below the description of the butterfly and the diagrams of its egg, caterpillar and chrysalis. My picture didn't look much like the one in the book, but I was pleased with it nonetheless.

  “The King was a tall, good-looking man with a long, golden headdress like a lion's mane. But he was harsh and made the Hutus poor and the Tutsis rich and powerful. He was also old, Arthur,” said Father dreamily, “and soon he died, leaving many wives and many more children.” I was glad to hear that the King had died: he sounded like a rotten villain to me. “Before he died he decided he wanted his son, Rutarindwa, to succeed him. The old King picked one of his wives, Kanjogera, to become the Queen Mother, even though she wasn't Rutarindwa's mother at all. But Kanjogera was wicked and, with her brother Kabera, they decided to kill the new King.” I wiggled my tooth in excitement and imagined Kanjogera in black robes with no teeth, like the wicked queen I'd read about in my storybook. “After a bloody battle the King and his supporters were killed, and the Queen Mother immediately announced her own son, Musinga, as King.” Father paused to let out a big yawn. “And just as he was being crowned, the Germans arrived.” Father laughed, and Mother did too. I liked to hear them laugh together: it didn't happen often enough. “The Germans didn't understand that the Queen Mother was bad, so they let her do as she wished. She favoured the Tutsis and suppressed the Hutus even more, and in letting her do so the Germans created an explosive situation. And that is definitely a story for another day,” said Father, taking his hat from my head and spinning it on a finger.

  I wanted him to continue, but Mother was already collecting our things and talking about dinner and bed, saying, “The quicker you go to sleep, the sooner your birthday will come.” And at six years old, soon to be seven, the excitement of a birthday exceeded everything else, including Father's story and my Charaxes acræoides eggs.

  5

  The following day I folded back my blanket as the cockerel crowed, reached under the bed and pulled out the jam pot to examine my eggs. Overnight, condensation had formed inside the jar, and the fine beads of water made it difficult to see. I gave it a gentle shake, flicked my fingernail against the glass and looked at it from every angle. The eggs were ever so slightly bigger than they'd been the day before.

  At twenty past six Joseph whistled his way through the front garden – I moved the jar to the window sill for warmth, then went to the kitchen to fetch my two small green bananas and to feed Monty.

  In the middle of the kitchen table, under a see-through cloche, was my birthday cake. I lifted the cloche and stood salivating like Monty on a hot day. It was a chocolate cake – delicious and gooey and all mine. Mother must have made it – cake being the only thing she could make. Fabrice only knew how to bake cookies.

  “Happy birthday, Arthur,” said Mother, appearing in the doorway. Her hair wasn't brushed, and there were pillow marks on her face. She had no colour to her skin and big grey rings circled her eyes. I wondered if she'd been up all night baking.

  “How does it feel to be seven?”

  I thought it would feel different being seven. I had hoped that being seven would feel better than being six. But it didn't. It felt just the same. I shrugged.

  “Well, no cake until supper time,” she said, filling up the kettle, her hands shaking. “Just because it's your birthday doesn't excuse you from your studies and chores. Now run along. Sebazungu will be waiting.” I knew better than to delay when Mother was tired, so I retreated out of the kitchen. Upsetting Mother in the morning meant she could be in a mood for the rest of the day – and nobody wanted that.

  I fed Monty, rode my trike once round the yard, took my bath, checked on my eggs and put on my green shorts and orange T-shirt – the clothes I wore every Thursday. At eight o'clock I opened the back door to head out to see Sebazungu, but a sudden blast of noise stopped me. I shut the door and rubbed my knuckles together.

  “Arthur, for Heaven's sake,” said Mother from behind me. “It's only the gardeners’ wives and their babies.” She might as well have said, “It's only a herd of stampeding elephants and their hungry calves,” such was the fear the gardeners’ wives invoked in me. They came to the back door on Thursday mornings for medicine. Mother was a botanist, but that was good enough for them. Father used to laugh about it. He called her the White Witch, a name I didn't like. It reminded me of the witch in the forest and the stampeding elephants that could return at any moment.

  The gardeners didn't believe in visiting the doctor the same way Mother did. They believed in spells. I'd heard them talk about spells to make women fall in love with men, others to make women pregnant and others still to heal sick babies. Dr Sadler used to tut about it when babies were brought to him too sick to cure. The gardeners buried a baby most months.

  “They don't bite,” Mother said, but I couldn't be certain. She opened the door, and the women surged forward in one enormous herd. Even Monty cowered in the corner.

  I took a deep breath, sneaked through the women's legs and only released my breath when I was through and clear and able to view the scene from the safety of the gate to the cutting shed and fields. More than twenty women gathered round the door, most of them clutching a screaming baby, with others strapped to their backs. They talked at Mother like bees buzzing round a tree hive. I don't know why: Mother didn't understand Kinyarwanda – she refused to learn anything other than greetings.

  I left the women and the noise behind and went to the shack by the cutting shed where Sebazungu had his office.

  The office was made from mud bricks and had a drape instead of a door, a small window with stained net curtains, a wobbly table (one leg was propped up by a piece of folded cardboard) and a filing cabinet that screeched every time it was opened and closed. I hated that noise.

  “Arthur,” said Sebazungu when I entered the office. “Amakuru?” I shuffled my feet on the dirt floor to indicate that I was fine and stuffed my hands into my pockets.

  “Quoi?” he said, l
aughing. “Seven years old and still no tongue! But I told Mama Ruku this morning that I was certain you'd be getting a tongue today.” I didn't like Sebazungu talking to his wife about me or teasing me about being mute. When he did, I felt awkward, aware that not talking wasn't normal. It made me feel as if I was to blame – and that made it worse. I looked at my shoes.

  “This morning you make baskets. No tongue needed for that,” he said, and led me to the cutting shed. Basket-making was awful: it made my fingers sore and my bum numb from sitting all morning on a hard stool. It was almost as bad as eating cabbage or going to the dentist.

  I took a seat between the head gardener, Simon, who was stocky and walked with a swagger, and Thomas, the tallest gardener, who was gaunt and chewed tobacco.

  Even though it was only eight in the morning, the gardeners were already busy. Every day at six thirty they arrived from their tiny mud homes scattered over the terraced hills, some on ramshackle bikes, others on foot. They arrived at dawn and left at dusk.

  “Ah-fuh,” said Simon in his loud voice. “Ah-fuh” was how Simon pronounced my name: he was trying to learn English. Mother said he'd been trying for years. “How you go?” I looked up at his big hat that shaded his leathery skin and hid his eyes. I shuffled my feet.

  “Ah-huh,” he laughed. His breath made me turn away: it smelt as if his teeth were rotting. Mother said he had “halitosis – something he can't help”, so I wasn't to make a fuss. It was difficult not to. He went about his basket-making, chanting loudly, “I am garden. I am garden,” and breathing over everyone.

  The gardeners chatted as they worked. Usually Sebazungu was there to translate for me, but that day he went off to do something else. I listened on my own, understanding snippets, but not enough.

  “U-u-umuzimu,” said Thomas, who was quietly spoken with a stutter. Umuzimu meant ghost. The others looked at me and laughed. I felt uneasy and wished Sebazungu would come back, or that Monty was with me. I thought the gardeners were making fun of my appearance.