by Gaile Parkin
“I’m so happy that you liked it.” Angel’s own smile gleamed in the moonlight. “I’m happy, too, that I met you here on the road this evening so that I don’t need to disturb you at home.
I’m collecting dowry contributions for Leocadie, who works here in the shop. She wants to get married but she has no family to help her. I’m acting as her mother for the negotiations and the wedding.”
“Oh, very good,” said Mr Mukherjee, reaching for his wallet in the back pocket of his trousers.
“Yes, yes,” said Dr Manavendra, mirroring his colleague.
Angel held out the envelope with the mouth of it open so that the two men could place their contributions directly inside it.
“Thank you very much. It’s very difficult for people who have nothing and no family, especially when those around them are earning dollars.”
“Very difficult,” agreed Mr Mukherjee, closing his wallet and replacing it firmly in his back pocket. “But, Mrs Tungaraza, you must go home now. It’s not safe for a lady to be out on her own at night; there’s always a possibility that eve-teasing can occur.”
“Always a possibility,” agreed Dr Manavendra. “Let us escort you home.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine, really.”
“No, we insist. Come along.”
The two men walked with Angel past Leocadie’s shop and past the big green Dumpster that was already filled to overflowing again with the neighbourhood’s rubbish.
“Oof, this is smelling very badly,” said Mr Mukherjee.
“Very badly,” agreed Dr Manavendra.
“On Thursday or Friday last week I saw them removing that Dumpster up the hill, that one just near the kiosk for international phone calls,” said Angel. “So maybe they’ll get to this one this week.”
“We hope,” said Dr Manavendra.
“Yes, we hope,” echoed Mr Mukherjee. “There’s nowhere for us to put our rubbish without making mess.”
They left Angel within a few feet of the entrance to her building, when Patrice and Kalisa had greeted her and it was clear that she was safe, and turned back towards the home that their families shared.
Despite the cool night air, Angel’s head was feeling very hot, so instead of going inside immediately, she sat herself down on one of the large rocks that lined the walkway to the entrance and fanned her face with the envelope of money, careful to hold it closed so that she did not shower banknotes out into the night as she did so.
The compound’s owner had recently made an attempt at beautifying the front of the building with a few shrubs and some plants in enormous clay containers. Just next to the entrance was a large bush of a plant that flowered only at night, small white blossoms with a very strong perfume. The plant exhaled its perfume as Angel sat on the rock beside it, and her fanning brought its scent right to her nostrils.
Immediately—almost violently—the smell brought back a flood of memories: Vinas phoning to say she was too busy to come to Dar with the children for the school holidays, she would send them alone on the plane; Vinas phoning to check that they had arrived safely, to hear Pius’s and Angel’s assurances that no, her two were not too much for them on top of Joseph’s three who already lived with them; Vinas’s friend phoning in a panic to tell them about the headache that no number of pain-killers would take away, about using her key because Vinas had not answered her knock, about rushing her to Mount Meru Hospital where the doctors had shaken their heads and told her to summon the family urgently; finding Vinas already cold in the morgue when they arrived; gathering the children’s things to take back with them to Dar; sitting on the edge of Vinas’s bed, trying to imagine the intensity of the pain that had pushed so many tablets out of the empty bubble-packs on her bedside table; needing fresh air, going out into Vinas’s night-time garden, sitting under just such a night-blooming bush, gulping in the same perfume, sobbing because God had not felt it enough to take only their son.
“Madame? Vous êtes malade?” Patrice stood before her, peering into her face with concern.
“Non, non, Patrice, ça va. Merci.” Angel reached into her brassiere for a tissue and dabbed at her eyes and her hot face. Then she added, “Hakuna matata. Asante.”
She gave a reassuring smile and Patrice retreated. Really, she must pull herself together. All of that was well over a year ago now, and dwelling on it was not going to bring her daughter back. It was not helpful to be sad when she needed to be strong. There were five children—five!—in her care now, and that was where her attention should be.
And she had a wedding to organise. Leocadie and Modeste were going to have a perfect day: nobody was going to weep because their cake was unprofessional. There was so much to do! It was time to make a start on the residents of the compound whom she did not know well, and that was going to be a challenge.
And so it was that she found herself sitting in the Canadian’s one-bedroom apartment, watching him enjoy one of the cupcakes that she had brought with her to sweeten her request. He was a tall man, somewhere in his late thirties, with very short brown hair and rimless spectacles. Angel noticed a gold band on his wedding finger.
“I’m not even going to be here for this wedding,” he said, his mouth still full, “so it’s hardly my responsibility to help pay for it. I’m only here on a short-term consultancy.”
“What exactly is it that you are consulting about, Dave?”
“I’m helping the government to prepare its interim poverty-reduction strategy paper for the IMF.”
“Eh, that is very interesting. Do you have some good ideas for reducing poverty here?”
He laughed and shook his head. “That’s not my job. I just have to make sure these guys write the paper the way they’re supposed to write it. Their job is content, my job is form—although I’m finding myself having to assist with the sections on frontloading priority actions and mechanisms for channelling donor resources to priority programmes.”
Angel thought for a moment. “Is that a way of talking about how to give money where it’s most needed?”
His smile was condescending. “In a way.”
“And tell me, does it ever happen that a donor gives money for one thing only to find that the money is used for something else instead?”
“All the time. It’s expected—or, at least, it’s not unexpected.”
“It’s expected? Then why does the IMF give the money if it expects that it will not be used for the right thing?”
“Ah, but the IMF doesn’t give money. It lends money. Ultimately all that matters is that it gets the money back, with interest. If the country doesn’t use it the way it said it would, or if it uses it the right way but the project turns out to be a failure, that’s not our concern; it’s not our responsibility.”
“I see.”
“So anyway, Angel, I’m meeting some people for dinner tonight at Aux Caprices du Palais, and I need to get showered and dressed. This wedding you’re organising doesn’t concern me, so I don’t think it’s right to expect me to contribute. Rwandans are always holding their hands out asking for money.” He stood up.
Angel remained seated. She spoke without looking up at him. “Yes, there are many beggars here. It’s unfortunate that their poverty has not yet been reduced so that they can stop doing that. Those beggars are very inconvenient for visitors, especially for visitors who can afford to eat their dinner at the most expensive restaurant in the city. But those who have jobs are not begging, and this is a marriage of two people with jobs. The job of a security guard for this compound is very important. If something bad happens here, it’s the security guards who will protect us. For example, if somebody steals money from us, it’s the security guards who will stop that thief in the street outside and prevent that thief from running away with our money. They are the ones who will make sure that we will get our money back. They are the ones who will solve our problem for us before the police become involved and before there is any embarrassment to our families.”
The Canadi
an stared hard at Angel. Then he threw his head back and laughed out loud, clapping his hands together.
“Bravo, Angel! You really are good! You know, I don’t give a damn about all this reconciliation crap you spouted about this wedding, and I don’t feel I owe anybody anything, certainly not the money that I work damn hard for. But I do admire your tactics, I really do.” He turned and went into his bedroom. Angel watched him go to the wardrobe and take out a box. He removed a banknote and then replaced the box in the wardrobe and came back into the living room. Angel stood up.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got change for a hundred-dollar bill?”
“Of course not,” said Angel, taking the note and tucking it into her brassiere.
“Of course not,” echoed the Canadian.
“Thank you, Dave. I hope you enjoy your dinner at Caprices.” Angel put her hand out. Reluctantly, the Canadian shook it.
As she walked down the stairs Angel put that same hand over her breast and felt the shape of the money in her brassiere. She had not put it with the rest of the money in her envelope because it was not going to go towards the wedding. She was going to give it to Jeanne d’Arc, one Rwandan to whom the Canadian most certainly did owe his money.
Of course, she had asked for the money for one thing and was going to use it for something else. But that was not unexpected.
Still, it was undoubtedly a lie. Silently, she offered up another prayer for forgiveness.
THE DRIVER OF the taxi-voiture opened the back door and carefully took the cake-board that his passenger handed to him to hold while she got out of the car. He looked at the cake admiringly. It seemed to have been built up out of red-earth bricks sealed together with grey cement. On the upper surface of the cake was a large window giving a view into a dark grey interior. Thick vertical bars in light grey blocked the window, but the central bar had been broken and the bars on either side of it had been bent. Tied to the lower edge of one of the bars was a thick plait of powder-pink marzipan that looked like fabric; it hung out of the window and down over the edge of the cake, settling into a pool of plaited fabric on the cake-board.
“What does this cake say to you?” Angel asked the driver, paying him the agreed fare and relieving him of the board.
The driver pocketed Angel’s fare as he spoke. “Bibi, it says to me that somebody has escaped from prison. He has broken the bars on the window, and climbed out on a rope that he has made from his prison uniform.”
“Eh, that is exactly what I want this cake to say! Thank you.”
The taxi-driver furrowed his brow. “Bibi, is this a cake for somebody who has escaped from prison?”
“No, no. It’s a cake for a Mzungu who has divorced her husband. She’s having a party tonight here at Chez Françoise because her marriage was like a prison and now she’s celebrating because she feels like she has escaped.”
“Eh, Wazungu!” said the taxi-driver, shaking his head.
“Uh-uh,” agreed Angel, shaking her head, too.
“Angel! Are you going to stand there all morning talking to the taxi-driver or are you going to come inside and drink a soda with me?” Françoise had appeared at the gate leading into her garden, with blue plastic rollers in her hair and a green and yellow kanga tied around her short, stocky frame. She led Angel through the garden that constituted Chez Françoise, shouting instructions along the way to a woman who was wiping down the white plastic tables and chairs with a cloth.
“Eh, that cake is beautiful!” declared Françoise, as Angel placed it carefully on the counter of the small bar just inside the entrance to the house. “This Linda is a very strange Mzungu, but thank you for sending her to me. It’s not often that Wazungu come here, and tonight there’ll be a party of sixteen. Tell me, Angel, is that girl always only half-way dressed?”
Angel laughed as she endeavoured to balance her buttocks—tightly encased in a smart long skirt—on a high wooden bar stool that rocked slightly on the uneven floor surface. She held on to the edge of the bar-top to prevent herself from toppling over.
“Eh, Françoise, I hope she dresses more modestly when she talks with big men about human rights being violated. How is a Minister going to listen to what she is saying about rape, meanwhile she is showing him her breasts and her stomach and her thighs?”
“At least he’ll be thinking about rape!” retorted Françoise, laughing and shaking her head. “Fanta citron?”
“Thank you.”
Françoise retrieved two bottles of lemon Fanta from one of the two large fridges that stood against the wall behind the bar, and levered off their tops. She placed two glasses on the counter before climbing on to a bar stool on the other side of the counter, opposite Angel.
“But seriously, Angel, even if she covers up her body, she’s still too young. Big people cannot take a young person seriously.”
“Exactly. It’s only with age that a person becomes wise.”
“Yes.” Françoise drank some of the soda that she had poured into her glass. “Whoever is paying her big Mzungu salary, they are wasting their money. Because what can she achieve here? Nobody will listen to her.”
“But still, they’re spending their money; sometimes that’s all that matters to some organisations. They can say to everybody: look how many dollars we are spending in Rwanda; look how much we care about that country.” Angel sipped her soda before continuing. “But let us not complain too much, Françoise. Tonight her Wazungu friends will be spending their Wazungu salaries here at Chez Françoise.”
“Yes.” Françoise smiled. “I’m going to make everything perfect for them so that all of them will want to come back again.”
“A good way to impress them tonight will be to serve Amstel.”
“Yes, thank you for giving me that tip earlier. I phoned a friend in Bujumbura and she was able to get two cases to me. Well, there were four cases, but the customs officials on both sides of the border had to be taken care of. But I think that will be enough to please these Wazungu. I do need more customers.”
“Is business still not good?”
“It can always be better. A lot of customers come just to drink, and then they go home to eat. Or they come here with their stomachs already full. It’s only when they eat here that I can make a good profit.” Françoise sighed and shook her head. “It’s not easy to raise a child alone.”
“Eh, it must be very difficult,” said Angel. “I’m lucky that I still have Pius; I don’t know what I would do without him. I’m not an educated somebody who can get a good job with a good salary.”
“Me neither,” said Françoise. “I thank God that my husband built this business in our garden many years ago. After they killed him and our firstborn, all I had to do was keep it going.”
“Eh, Françoise! I knew that your husband was late, but I didn’t know that they had killed your firstborn, too!”
“You didn’t know?” Françoise looked surprised.
Angel shook her head. “You never told me, Françoise. How can I know something that I’m not told?”
“I’m sorry, Angel. I thought you knew because everybody knows. Everybody round here.” The circular gesture that she made with her right arm to indicate everybody in the vicinity—perhaps even everybody in Kigali—triggered a serious wobble of her stool. Steadying herself by clutching at the counter, she went on. “But really, when I think about it, how can somebody from outside this place know without being told? So let me tell you now, Angel.” She took a sip of soda, and when she spoke again there was no sadness in her voice, there was no emotion at all. “They killed my firstborn as well as my husband.” Her words seemed to come from a barren hardness deep inside her, a place of cold volcanic rock where no life could take root and thrive.
“I’m very sorry, Françoise,” said Angel, sorry for Françoise’s loss but also sorry for having made her friend tell her that she had lost a child. Perhaps she should simply have pretended that she knew already. Perhaps she should simply have kept quiet so that F
rançoise could, too.
But Françoise showed no signs of wanting to keep quiet. “It happened right there,” she said, pointing towards the gate that opened on to the street from the garden. “I watched it.”
“Eh! You watched it?” Angel clapped her hand over her mouth—carefully maintaining her balance on the stool by keeping hold of the counter-top with her other hand—and looked at Françoise with wide eyes.
“Yes. I’d gone to check on my mother-in-law because she wasn’t well, and the stress of what was happening was making her even more ill. Gérard was still a small baby, so I strapped him to my back and took him with me. I was still breastfeeding. When I came back in the evening the darkness was already coming. I saw from the end of the road that there were many people near our gate, and I thought that they were customers. But as I got closer I saw that they were young men with machetes and soldiers with guns. I knew at once that they had found out.”
Françoise’s hand was steady as she drank from her glass.
“Found out what?”
“We’d been hiding people here, protecting them from the killers. There’s a space in this house between the ceiling and the roof; I don’t know how many we put in there. And round the back there’s a lean-to where we keep the wood for the cooking fire. Some hid in there, behind the wood.”
“Eh! Were these people your friends?”
“Some were friends; some were neighbours. Some we didn’t know.”
“But you risked your lives for them?”
“Angel, you have to understand what was happening. Every day the radio told us that it was our duty to kill these people; they said that they were inyenzi, cockroaches, not human beings. But if we had killed them, we would not have felt like human beings ourselves. How could we live with the blood of our friends and our neighbours on our hands? How could we look people in the eye, as one human being recognising another, and then take their lives? There were thousands who did what they were told to do, thousands who had no choice because it was kill or be killed. But we felt that we had a choice because we had this bar.”
