A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

by Gil Courtemanche

  He squeezed Gentille’s hand a bit tighter, then looked straight into her eyes for the first time. She gave a shy little smile with her moist lips. He closed his eyes, hoping that everything would freeze then and there, that life would stop at this precise moment. Then his body relaxed. Muscle by muscle. He could have described the exact sequence, as if a twisted skein were undoing itself before his eyes, each thread taking its proper place in an orderly, harmonious tapestry.

  They did not say a word all the way to the hotel. Lando, with a sad smile, had observed the whole scene in his rear-view mirror.

  “Come on, friends, we’re all going to celebrate Méthode’s life. You’re my guests. My goat brochettes are better than the European buffet at the Mille-Collines, but they do have a more sophisticated wine list.”

  Gentille walked across the parking lot toward the hotel entrance. Valcourt stopped to watch her rearranging space into graceful, sensual curves. She turned, worried not to see him beside her.

  “Okay?”

  “I’m watching you walk and I like it, it scares me how much I like it.”

  They entered the lobby hand in hand. Zozo froze. So did the assistant manager who was passing by, though it did not prevent him from saying:

  “Mademoiselle Gentille, you are dismissed for unauthorized absence.”

  “If you only knew how little they care,” Lando shot at him scornfully.

  Gentille and Valcourt went up to Valcourt’s room. He gestured at the bed by the sliding door opening onto the balcony.

  “You’ll sleep there tonight.”

  “What about you?”

  “In the other bed.”

  “I’ll feel farther away than if I was sleeping at home.”

  “No. I’ll hear you breathe while you’re sleeping. You’ll hear me snore. Your smell will get into the sheets and penetrate the walls and carpet. You’ll smell my scent, which is now only what’s given off by lotions and toilet waters and aging skin. You may soon get tired of it. You Blacks often say we Whites give off a dead-body smell, a medicinal smell. Our emanations make you think of test tubes and laboratories. And then, I need time, Gentille. We shall see, we shall see.”

  “You don’t love me.”

  “I love you too much already. And what do you know about love, little girl? Because that’s my whole problem. You’re only a little girl.”

  “I’m not a little girl. I’m twenty-two and here, at my age, a girl has seen a lot of things. And you never understand anything because you complicate everything. You think, you take notes. I know, I’ve been watching you ever since I started working here. You talk and you argue. When the others laugh out loud and shout in fun, you just smile. When you laugh you don’t make any noise, or hardly. When you get drunk, you do it alone in your room. I know, because Zozo knows everything and tells me everything, because he thinks I’m going to love him when he gets to be head steward. He’d do anything for me. I’ve asked him hundreds of questions about you. Even if the girls often sleep in your room, I know you’ve never slept with any of them, except Agathe, and I know you’re not a real man with her. I’ve talked to all the girls. They think you like them but look down on them, because they offer themselves and you never take them, even for free. No, I don’t know anything about White men’s love. I only know Whites who look at me with big round eyes, like the eyes of the tilapias on the plates I serve, and when I come with their second beer, they say, ‘I could help you, you know, we could have a beer and we could talk about it.’ Rwandans come right out with it. ‘You’re beautiful, you know, will you come with me tonight?’ And they’ll put a hand on my back or my bum. I say no and they keep on laughing and having fun. But the White acts like I’ve offended his manhood. He stops smiling and sweet-talking. He orders his third beer by pointing at the empty bottle. And he leaves without saying thank you or good night. And the tip, forget about it. The next day he acts like he never asked me to sleep with him.

  “When you came and drove me home, what I wanted to tell you was I liked you because you’d never asked me to go with you. I know I’m beautiful because people have been telling me that since I first had breasts, since I was twelve. But I don’t know what it means to be so beautiful. It’s not a blessing, anyway. It’s a curse. On my hill, they’ve all tried to have me, uncles, cousins, friends of uncles and cousins. A few were more delicate or nicer about it, they said the kinds of things you see in French or American movies in bars where they have TV. Before throwing me down on the mat they would take my hand, like in the movies. That would last a few seconds. I’d get taken in. They’d have their pleasure and leave, laughing and telling me, ‘You’re good, Gentille.’ Then there were the others who didn’t ask permission. They just did it. So what I wanted to tell you the other night was, I thought you didn’t like me because you’d never asked me to go with you. And I wanted to because you’d always been polite and nice, nothing else, just polite and nice.”

  “And White … and rich.”

  Why couldn’t he understand what seemed so simple to her? Of course she wanted to be loved like a White woman, like in movies where all you see are caresses and long kisses, bouquets of flowers and men suffering from broken hearts. No, she didn’t want him to suffer, but she’d like to know her man would be capable of it.

  “I know Rwandans who suffer too when their love affairs go wrong,” he said.

  She didn’t know any.

  “I want you to teach me the White people’s love.”

  “I can only teach you my own. And sometimes it’s pretty black.”

  A terrified woman began to scream in the next room. Then came sounds of a scuffle, more screams and chairs being overturned on the balcony, then finally a long, piercing “No-o-o-o” that ended in a dull thud. On the metal awning over the pool bar lay the body of Mélissa, the ugliest and skinniest of the hotel’s prostitutes.

  “Aah, the bitch! The disgusting whore! She jumped just to piss me o f.”

  A fat, naked Belgian was waving his arms on the next balcony. A few paras trying to upgrade their sun-tans looked up. Two tourists stopped swimming briefly, then resumed their studied crawl.

  Gentille shouted, “Mélissa! Mélissa!”

  Valcourt said, “Do you still want me to teach you the White people’s love? ”

  Mélissa lay close to death three floors below on the white-hot aluminum.

  Gentille screamed, “He tried to kill her! Call the police!”

  “Just a dirty, drunken whore,” the pot-bellied Belgian protested.

  However much Gentille might yell and Valcourt argue and threaten, the hotel management never called the police. The head of security at the Belgian embassy, who was lunching at the pool bar, took the matter in hand. His colleague, he explained, had been attacked by a cheap little prostitute who had tried to rob him, he had defended himself, and the unfortunate accident had ensued. The embassy, where they knew how to do things right, he continued, would take care of the poor woman and pay all hospital expenses. The huge tottering beer-barrel, parading his little comma of a penis in the corridor, nodded to confirm his superior’s every word. In conclusion, the embassy official said to Valcourt:

  “Monsieur, you have all the bad friends here a man could have. You’re taking risks … Tell me, why don’t you just leave these people to their fate?”

  At the hospital they searched through all the buildings, stepping over the pallets and mats, describing Mélissa to the staff. In Emergency they were insistent, raising their voices. No Mélissa had been admitted to the KHC that day.

  Mélissa’s body was never found. The fat Belgian spent two days at the embassy and then went home to Belgium. At the bar, another girl who had been waiting for months for permission to begin active service had taken her place. The day after the incident, which had already ceased to be a subject of conversation, Valcourt and Gentille went to the public prosecutor’s office to lodge a complaint. The assistant chief prosecutor received them out of respect for Valcourt, the citizen of a do
nor country and above all a neutral country like Canada, a country that asked no questions and gave with its eyes closed, a perfect country in short.

  Valcourt laid out the facts in a few words, stressing that the body had disappeared after members of the Belgian security service had promised to take it to the hospital. Why not question them? Where was the Belgian counsellor? The official interrupted, spreading his two hands like a parish priest preparing to bless his flock or deliver a long sermon. The representative of the republic understood the Canadian’s effort, but …

  “We too are seeking the path to greater democracy, even if we have not been practising it as long as you. We too believe in the rule of law and practise it, although sometimes in our own ways that may surprise others but must be respected. You are appealing to this rule of law and showing confidence in us. I am delighted at this mark of respect for our democracy. It is apparent that you have not fallen victim to the propaganda of the Tutsi cockroaches who take such advantage of our generous republic. Although I venture to say that you keep curious company, that you are a friend of that Raphaël of the People’s Bank who gives his sisters to Whites in order to obtain benefits from them. You also organized the rather spectacular funeral of a certain Méthode who, before dying, attempted to destroy the tourist industry of this peaceful country by raising the spectre of a sickness that exists so little here that our citizens do not even know its name. I am telling you now that I am attributing these errors of judgment to too great a need for superficial friendship, to the vicissitudes of loneliness. Tutsi women are quick with a laugh and into bed. I understand how an expatriate might succumb to these charms and be carried away to the point of blindness. But that is not what concerns us. Incidentally, Monsieur Valcourt, I studied in Canada, you know. Yes, at Laval University. But the French spoken there was so close to some kind of incomprehensible creole that I liked my negro French better and completed my studies at the University of Butare …”

  By now Valcourt knew all too well the pleasure derived from solemn sermons, pompous speeches and long orations by so many African “intellectuals” to dare interrupt.

  “Yes, I know, it was a Canadian priest who founded the University of Butare, and many of your citizens still teach there. One day you will perhaps explain to me why, here, they endeavour to speak correctly, and we generally manage to understand them, while in your country … But I digress … So there you were in a room at the Hôtel Mille-Collines with a young woman, I must admit, pardon my candour, Mademoiselle, a young woman of remarkable beauty, I would go further and say, of exceptional beauty. Quite obviously a Tutsi, and perhaps a minor. We will need to verify…”

  The prosecutor scribbled a few words, then removed his Armani glasses.

  “This young woman has just been dismissed from her employ. She had no reason to be in your room, if not to practise the profession in which, they say, the Tutsis excel. You know, Monsieur Valcourt, that these people do not like either the Belgians or the French, anyone in fact who has helped the Hutu majority take back its rights that were usurped by the Tutsi cockroaches …”

  Valcourt and Gentille protested. She had attained the age of majority and was a Hutu, and certainly not a hooker. The official snapped irritably that there were more forged than authentic papers being made up these days.

  “Look at her, Monsieur … that narrow nose, that milk-chocolate colouring and that figure. Look at her and you will see clearly that she is descended from Ethiopians. So, you are in your room. You hear loud voices, you rush out onto the balcony. A Tutsi prostitute is lying on the awning of the pool bar and an unhappy member of the Belgian diplomatic corps is shouting himself hoarse, distraught at this suicide attempt which could compromise not only his honourable career but also his family’s serenity. But, swayed by love I dare say, Monsieur Valcourt, you see some sinister motive in it. You run to the hospital without knowing whether that girl, Mélissa, needed to be hospitalized. You insult worthy physicians, including the Emergency Room director, and then you come here to accuse a Belgian diplomat of involuntary homicide, and the police officers who came to get the girl—who was still alive, you remember—of complicity. In fact, if the girl has disappeared as you claim, you are accusing the police of sequestration or perhaps, though I dare not believe it, of murder and obstruction of justice through concealment of incriminating evidence, namely the dead body of the said Mélissa. I assure you that the girl, whose behaviour can rightfully be qualified as shameful, having placed a friend of our country in a position of embarrassment, quite simply returned to her hill by the first minibus. Do you still wish to file a complaint? ”

  Gentille squeezed Valcourt’s hand fiercely for a few seconds, allowing the sounds of the market to kill the silence that had fallen. Long enough for them to hear a hundred small slices of boisterous, harmless life.

  “Yes,” Gentille said, “I want to file a complaint … against the Belgian and against the people who came to get Mélissa.”

  “Since you are alone in wishing to go to law, as my learned colleagues say, I will ask you to remain here to comply with the formalities and answer the questions of our investigators. As for you, Monsieur Valcourt, I shall not keep you further.”

  “You don’t understand, Monsieur Assistant Chief Prosecutor. I am the one who is filing the complaint, and asking for an inquiry into the attempted murder of Mélissa, and her disappearance.”

  “You are very fond of Rwanda, I know, Monsieur Valcourt, and also of Rwandan women, as I observe, but for you to remain here Rwanda will have to be fond of you.”

  “And you are Rwanda, perhaps?”

  “Yes, Monsieur Valcourt, in a certain fashion. You can return tomorrow to comply with the formalities. We are rushed off our feet today.”

  Yes, they were rushed off their feet. From the next office came hysterical laughter. In the waiting room a group of militiamen, those interahamwes seen strutting about in increasing numbers, were amusing themselves hitting a teenaged boy. Some policemen were standing by, laughing. Three civil servants sat behind small school-type desks, slowly pushing pencils.

  Valcourt and Gentille were walking down the steps toward the market when they heard:

  “Monsieur Valcourt, your television contract is still in force, is it not? ”

  Chapter Five

  Across from the justice Ministry office is an orgy of colour and noise, of bustle and loud, cheery voices. A kind of concerto to life. Small life, undistinguished, ordinary, wretched, boisterous, simple, rough, dumb, merry, life of whatever kind. Kigali’s main market, a lurid, spectacular tableau saying in its fashion that an indestructible Africa exists, an Africa of close proximity, elbow-rubbing, small business, resourcefulness. The Africa of endurance, persistence and endless conversation.

  Before Valcourt and Gentille stretched a long red scar, as red as the red on flags that kill, like the red, yellow and green Rwandan flag. Thirty metres of tomatoes, thirty women selling tomatoes. Valcourt, who had never seen a red as vibrant, came often to sit on the steps of the prosecutor’s office and look at the scene. He had asked cameramen to shoot long fixed sequences of these tomatoes, then panoramas and zoom-ins and zoom-outs. And then the same shots, with the same movements, of the spice stands, where little pots of ground peppers and saffron were lined up as in a field of poppies and daisies. His student cameramen could never understand his fascination with scenes showing nothing but tomatoes, pepper and saffron.

  “Come, I want you to meet Cyprien.”

  Cyprien sold tobacco leaves, which he displayed on a little mat opposite the tomatoes which were vastly more popular than his tobacco, for tobacco was more and more a luxury product. He did not hold it against the tomatoes and particularly not against the tomato vendors, whom he cruised constantly though he was married and the father of three children. His ambition was to have fucked them all before dying and he was already not far from having succeeded. The former truck driver couldn’t set eyes on a woman without wanting to have her. Cyprien had AID
S but hardly anyone knew it, not even his wife, so that his last two children were also HIV positive. He had got his place at the market thanks to Father Louis, who financed a program of small loans that enabled certain AIDS patients to carry on a business. Cyprien was happy. His serenity and detachment in the face of imminent death had fascinated Valcourt. But when Valcourt began talking to him about it, bombarding him with questions as only journalists and betrayed wives can do, Cyprien could not understand his astonishment and curiosity. One day, having run out of answers that Valcourt kept finding too simplistic or attributed to the traditional reserve of Rwandans, he said:

  “But, Monsieur Valcourt, don’t people die in your country? ”

  Cyprien was going to die the same way he came to the Kigali market to sell his tobacco. The end meant no more to him than the beginning or the middle. Here, Valcourt was beginning to understand, dying was simply one of the things you did one day.

  “Monsieur Valcourt, I’m glad to see you. We’re going to make the film soon?”

  Cyprien was one of some fifty people, most of them HIV positive, with whom Valcourt had become friends, close friends in some cases, while doing research for the film on AIDS he was losing hope of ever finishing. He had approached them and questioned them with such patience and respect that these cautious, even secretive people now confided in him with a familiarity and candour that made his heart glow. Explaining why he had conceived a child with his wife despite his illness, Cyprien had told him:

  “Monsieur Valcourt, it was an accident. That day I’d sold all my tobacco in an hour. I was so happy I went and drank beer at the Cosmos. And there was this girl I’d wanted for such a long time. I had her with a condom the father gave me. Then I went home a bit drunk. But I still wanted some more. That girl wasn’t very good and my wife’s very, very good. I didn’t have another condom but I wanted it so much and my wife too. God won’t punish me because my wife and I wanted some pleasure. You see, it was an accident.”