The Flower Plantation

by Nora Anne Brown

  Mother returned soon after and said: “Lock all the doors, and don't open them to anyone.” She then dashed out the back door with Fabrice.

  Half an hour or more passed before Mother and Fabrice returned. They smelt of petrol. Only moments later the schoolteacher and his men arrived back too. They were angry and shouting.

  “Your family wasn't there,” said the schoolteacher. “You tricked us.”

  “They came here while you were gone,” said Fabrice, and Mother nodded. “Come. See.”

  I followed Fabrice, Mother and the mob through the gate and out to the pyre that was burning by the cutting shed. It smelt different from usual. It wasn't the woody smell of garden remains: it was acrid. As I got closer I could make out the shape of contorted limbs, stiff like branches, burning to ash.

  “There,” said Fabrice pointing to the pyre.

  “What?” asked the schoolteacher.

  With a poker Fabrice pulled out a melting identity card. The schoolteacher took it, read what it said, then tossed it aside.

  I took a step closer to the flames to see the card for myself. In the ash and dirt I saw two big almond eyes staring up from the melting, distorted plastic.

  Beni was dead.

  26

  I ran to my bedroom and lay on my bed, numb. It was as if when Beni's spirit left her body, mine did too. How could Mother and Fabrice have done such a thing? It made no sense at all.

  “Arthur,” Mother called several times that night, knocking gently on my door. I jammed a chair under the handle to prevent her from getting in. I felt as lifeless as an empty seed pod blowing in the wind. Nothing Mother had to say could make me feel any better.

  I still felt numb the next morning when the Belgian soldiers arrived, banging on the front door. They insisted Mother and I leave with them immediately.

  “Cinq minutes,” we were told. Five minutes to pack our things.

  A soldier with a gun across his chest stood guard at the front door. I didn't understand why soldiers were protecting us but not the Tutsis. Were we more important than them?

  “Quickly, Arthur,” said Mother, taking down a small suitcase from the attic, where Celeste's family had remained all night. They had eaten only dry bread and water and had not come down once, not even to go to the toilet. They were still up there.

  “Get your toothbrush and some soap.”

  Spurred on by the presence of the soldier, I did as she said and took them to my bedroom, where she packed them with my weekly clothes and passport, nothing more. I took my butterfly, pinned, set and framed, and handed it to her. She looked at it twice, placed it on top of my belongings and zipped up the case.

  I stared into my butterfly farm, empty and lifeless.

  “Come on, Arthur. There isn't time.”

  By the farm was my book. I picked it up and went to the front door.

  “He's ready,” Mother said to the guard.

  “Et vous?”

  “I'm staying.”

  “Non, Madame.” The soldier used the barrel of his gun to direct Mother towards the convoy of military vehicles parked at the bottom of the garden, but she wouldn't budge. She looked into my eyes, placed her hand on my shoulder and said: “Arthur, be brave.”

  She then ruffled my hair the way Father used to do. I wished he were there with us. All I wanted was to hear his big, booming laugh. Maybe, I thought, Father would be wherever I was going, maybe Father could explain what Fabrice and Mother had done.

  “Say goodbye to Romeo, Arthur.” The words caught in Mother's throat. I picked him up and nuzzled my cheek against his. He tried to lick my face, but I wouldn't let him – the image of him lapping Joseph's blood was burnt in my memory. Mother gave me a kiss, then wrapped her arms around us and squeezed tight. I wanted to squeeze her back, but couldn't.

  “The soldiers will look after you,” she said, letting me go.

  “Madame,” said the soldier. “It's not safe. You are married to a Belgian Tutsi. You and your child are not safe here. You must leave.”

  The soldier was right. The Vampire Radio had been talking about the “Belgian Bandits”, and how it didn't matter if they were killed. “If we kill some of them, the rest will leave,” one man had said.

  “My decision is final,” said Mother.

  I wanted to pack Mother's suitcase and make her come with me, but there was nothing I could do. Her mind was made up. A shout of “Allez” came from the lead lorry. The soldier stared at her a moment longer, but Mother shook her head.

  I was led down the path, away from Mother and Romeo, from home and everything I knew, past the yellow roses and hydrangea bushes, whose flowers had been lopped off by machetes and lay scattered on the ground.

  A soldier hauled me into the back of the lorry, which had a wooden frame with a canvas cover, like an elephant's ribcage and hide. There were lots of other white people: I only recognized Dr Sadler, and sat down next to him, clutching my book. As the soldier got in, I caught one last glimpse of Mother. She was standing in front of our ivy-covered bungalow, waving me off, her smile wide, her eyes brimming with tears.

  * * *

  The convoy moved slowly away from home. We wound our way through local farmers who lined the road, armed with clubs and spears. They shook their fists as we passed, chasing us with hatred in their eyes. The women in the lorry were clinging onto the hands of soldiers and sobbing uncontrollably. I clung to my book.

  We passed the shops, the bar, the school. I couldn't bring myself to look at Beni's house for fear my numbness might turn to pain. At the church the doors were open: it was full. Crowds of Tutsis pushed in. The giant cross that once hung slantwise above the altar now lay on the ground. The priest and elders closed the doors, kicking Tutsis away into the hands of machete-wielding Hutus. Men who had sat side by side on pews now raised machetes above their neighbours’ heads.

  The lorry swept past. I didn't look back.

  The road to town looked like a river of people. It was as though the whole population of Rwanda was on the road with their possessions. Women carried bedding, firewood, plastic basins, pot and pans. Men dragged weary-looking livestock, barely clinging to life. Teenagers carried jerrycans and children; children carried babies, babies cried for milk. The people no longer dawdled because they weren't in a hurry: they dawdled because they were weak, almost hollow.

  I sat in the lorry with the white people, our belongings neatly packed in cases.

  We were passing the fields of blue tents when the lorry stopped. Through the small plastic window that separated the back of the lorry from the cab I could see a large tree trunk across the road. Men in baggy coloured suits and clown wigs waved rifles in the air. I knew from the radio descriptions that they were interahamwe. They were not like the men Mother and I had seen a few months before, men who neither could read nor knew what they were looking for: these men were organized, systematic, cold.

  I felt sick. The women panicked, their husbands held them close. A stocky man in a red wig, who stank of sweat and beer, swaggered up to the truck. It was Simon.

  He scanned our faces one by one and spat on the floor.

  “Look,” he said in his loud voice, and waved a rifle at a pile of bodies stacked as neatly as Jenga blocks, their clothes soaked with blood. The stench entered my nostrils and never left.

  “We kill the cockroaches,” he said, and turned his attention to a scuffle behind him. A man, tall and thin, with a long nose like Father's, was explaining that he had lost his identity card.

  “Kill him,” said Simon.

  “Oya,” he pleaded, sinking to his knees. “I promise, I am Hutu.”

  “You look like Tutsi scum.”

  Simon's machete was about to fall when the man yelled: “I give you all my money if you shoot me, please.”

  He began emptying his pockets of everything he had. Coins jangled to the ground, notes fluttered in the breeze. Simon put his rifle to his head and pulled the trigger. Dead.

  The women on the truck scre
amed, others turned pale. The men mostly looked at the floor. The people walking on the road simply walked past the dead man. They'd seen it all before. Simon and his accomplices slung him onto the pile. It was over quicker than it had begun.

  As the truck moved forward, I thought about how it might feel to kill a human. Did it feel the same as killing a butterfly? Was it like the cyanide death – quick and easy, the blood draining, the colour fading and regret creeping in? Or was it more like the chloroform death – a smothering guilt? Was there any satisfaction in an effortless death that looked like sleep – a death that only became real when the rot set in and the stench was thicker than the blue flies on the brown skin of the dead?

  I wondered who would tend to the bodies as I had tended to my butterfly.

  The lorry moved on, past endless corpses strewn by the road – men, the elderly, pregnant women, children, babies – no one had been spared. Limbs chopped off, heads smashed in, bodies burnt alive.

  Dr Sadler uttered reassurances gently by my side.

  In town the petrol station stood empty, but no sign swung in the breeze. The windows were smashed and the pumps pulled out. The mango tree in the corner had been stripped of all its fruit. I wondered if Sammy had gone to the border and if his mama and data had gone too.

  We passed Madame Dubois's house: her hedge was overgrown – the words “I Love Jesus” could no longer be read.

  At the post office, bodies clogged the storm drain. I wondered if the postmaster was safe, or dead beneath the counter. And at the hotel, Mr Umuhoza was standing at the gates, which people clambered over. As we passed, he opened them and let the people through.

  Lake Kivu was brown with waste; bloated bodies were bobbing on its surface.

  We slowed as the truck moved through the crowds towards the border. Another roadblock lay ahead. Sebazungu was stopping the traffic like a policeman. He stood with a machete held up to the sky with paperwork in his hand.

  “They've got a list of the people they want,” said a man to his wife.

  Dr Sadler whispered in my ear: “Lie down, Arthur. Under the bench.”

  I knew not to disobey. Even though I wanted to see what was happening, I got down and slid under the bench, the fabric of ladies’ skirts keeping me hidden.

  “Albert Baptiste?” called Sebazungu, who jumped into the back of the lorry. His eyes were red as poppies. It was as if the Devil had entered his soul. I thanked God Father wasn't here. If he were he'd have been a dead man. I held my breath and listened to people saying they hadn't seen him.

  “Cockroach,” he said, and spat his hate out the back of the truck. It landed by a bright-red shoe.

  Fabrice!

  The crowd was so big it swarmed past the truck, pushing Fabrice forward and out of view. I scanned thousands of frightened faces until I saw him again – and with him was Beni.

  Beni wasn't dead!

  I rolled out from my hiding position and got up as quickly as I could, desperate for Beni to see me, but Sebazungu caught me by the neck and pressed a machete against my throat.

  “Arthur Baptiste,” he sneered, shoving me to the back of the truck. His scar – the shape of a new moon – pressed against my cheek.

  I didn't hear what he said next. I was too focused on Beni, who waved to me from below. I wanted to wave back, but Sebazungu had my hands locked behind me. The cold metal blade of his machete nudged deep into my skin. I didn't think about dying. I thought only that Beni was by far the prettiest girl in the crowd. She was even more beautiful than our butterfly.

  A group of interahamwe pointed at Beni. Zach was with them, wearing a barbaric grin. Sammy was there too. They jostled and laughed their way towards her like frenzied hyenas.

  “This boy is with me. Let him go,” Dr Sadler said to Sebazungu. “He is English.”

  “He has Tutsi blood.”

  The interahamwe drew closer to Beni. She couldn't see them coming. I stared straight at them in the hope that she would follow my eyes. Words formed at the back of my throat and rolled to the tip of my tongue. This time it wasn't the words that choked me. It was Sebazungu.

  “Don't kill that one: she's a perfect little whore,” I heard Sammy say.

  “Better a dead Tutsi whore than a live one,” replied Zach, and the others jeered and whistled.

  A surge of emotion pulsed round my body, and I fought with Sebazungu, who pressed the machete deeper into my throat, until I could barely breathe.

  “Let him go. Keep me instead,” insisted Dr Sadler.

  “What use are you?”

  “I can treat your men.”

  Sebazungu thought about this for a moment, then conceded.

  He set me free.

  At the tailgate I saw Zach raise a machete above Beni's head. Suddenly my teeth came apart, my jaw loosened, a surge of energy rushed up my throat and words burst out of me.

  “Run, Beni!” I screamed. “Run to the cave!”

  The release of adrenalin from those few words consumed me. Beni ran, as fast as she could, followed by Zach and the others. I was about to jump from the truck to chase after them when Dr Sadler stopped me.

  “No!” he shouted and held on to my shirt. “It's not safe for you to stay.”

  Sebazungu got off and pulled the doctor down. I was left clinging to the frame. The truck jerked forward and started moving off.

  I watched Beni being chased by the gang and willed her to run faster.

  “Run, Beni,” I called. “Run!”

  In my panic I didn't notice my book slip from my pocket. Too late to catch it, I saw it fall to the ground, into the mud, and be trampled by the crowd.

  “Goodbye, Arthur,” called Dr Sadler, waving me off. He grew smaller – Rwanda slipped away.

  As it crossed the border the truck was rocked by an almighty boom: Nyiragongo had erupted. The sky grew dark with ash.

  It felt very much as though the giant had woken and turned out the light of the world.

  Epilogue

  Twenty years have passed since I left Rwanda. I was taken into Goma and flown to London, where my uncle and his family met me. They were just as they appeared in their Christmas photos – denim jeans, Mickey Mouse sweatshirts and grimacing smiles. I was immediately sent to boarding school, which was every bit as dreadful as Father made it out to be.

  I thought of my parents every day, searching news reports for any scrap of evidence that they were still alive. There was nothing. Only images of men loading rotting bodies into garbage trucks. Rwanda and its people had been torn apart.

  And I thought of Beni. With every breath I thought of Beni. I wondered if she had made it to the cave, if she had managed to outrun the gang and find her way to safety. It was impossible to think of anything else.

  Three months passed without any communication from Mother: no letters, telegrams or phone calls. It was almost autumn in England when I finally received a letter. The news was both good and bad.

  She told me that the postmaster and his family had been killed, even though they were Hutus. He was drowned in the cesspool behind his home for allowing his neighbours to hide in one of his cupboards.

  The schoolteacher flushed his Tutsi pupils out of their homes. They were lined up and killed by the interahamwe one by one.

  Mr Umuhoza was spared, due to his ability to supply drink and accommodate prostitutes for the extremists. As a result he was able to shelter thousands of Tutsis in the hotel. They survived on water from the pool and what goods he was able to bring in from Goma.

  The priest, who helped slaughter hundreds with hand grenades in the church, escaped and was rumoured to be living comfortably abroad.

  Celeste survived the injuries that Fabrice had inflicted on her to save her life. She and her family remained in Mother's attic for many weeks. A Hutu neighbour risked his own life by sneaking in to provide them with food rations and water – which were increasingly scarce. They were eventually rescued and taken to the refugee camp in Goma.

  As for Fabrice and his
family – well, that news I read with the greatest interest of all. Mother told me how Fabrice had thought up the idea of dousing the dead on the plantation in petrol and passing them off as his family. They then hid in the cave for three months and wouldn't have survived if it weren't for Sammy, who left provisions for them in the tunnel. He had never intended to hurt Beni that night at the hotel – it was all a ruse. He knew if he was seen as a moderate Hutu he'd be killed.

  Sammy was Beni's saviour, and he was not alone. Among all the butchery, savagery and loss of life were a million acts of compassion and bravery. Sammy's kindness and Beni's survival were rays of hope in a country enveloped in gloom.

  As the years passed, Mother continued to send letters telling me what news she had. She wrote when Simon was put on trial by the gacaca court and imprisoned. He had killed scores at the roadblock and many on the plantation too, including Thomas. Mother said he no longer wore blue dungarees: instead, he could be seen ploughing at the roadside in pink uniform – the colour worn by the genocide prisoners. Zach was imprisoned too for killing Joseph, among others.

  Sebazungu avoided prison – even though, or perhaps because he was one of the principal organizers of the massacres in the area. He continues to live near the plantation, side by side with the Tutsi family members of those he ordered to be killed.

  Throughout the massacres Dr Sadler remained in the country, one of only thirty whites who did. He kept his promise and treated the killers as well as their victims. Though I didn't realize it at the time, Dr Sadler played a crucial role more than once in my life. It was he who was present at my birth, introduced me to lepidopterology and saved me from certain death that day.

  Mother confessed to me years later that Dr Sadler was in love with her. Though she was fond of him, and always tried to keep up appearances, she wouldn't allow herself to dishonour Father, despite his transgressions. She stayed with the doctor during the worst of the troubles, but returned to the plantation after the fighting died down. She waited by the phone for months for any news of Father, but no news ever came. Dr Sadler died five years after the genocide, leaving Mother, once again, alone.