The Eternal Audience of One

by Rémy Ngamije

  With the wedding done, their lives resumed their patterns of co-ordinated career moves and promotions. Guillome moved on from the state hospital to work in the administrative arm of the nascent pharmaceutical industry, allowing them to move out of their one-bedroom flat to a spacious two-bedroom house. Two years later, Yves was born. Both having secured promotions, Guillome and Therése moved to a roomy mansion in Kiyovu which required a maid and a gardener to maintain it. They looked at their new home with pride – their lives were indeed blessed. To Yves they gave the name Mugisha – “another blessing” – for they seemed to be the recipients of unending beneficence.

  Perhaps they tempted fate with that naming. Rwanda began changing, and tensions around the country grew. Everyone was on tenterhooks. The politics of ethnicity were becoming all consuming, enraging, and dangerous. Therése and Guillome trusted in education, the development, the foreign banks which operated in the country, and the healthy community of well-intentioned investors and volunteers to discourage the backwards slip into regression and factionalism. Plus, things were not too bad in their lives. Guillome was in the process of securing funds to start a pharmaceutical supply company and Therése had secured another promotion. They could see no end to their rise.

  Two more years passed. Séraphin was six, Yves was four, Guillome was putting ink to the final paperwork of the country’s first independent medicines distributor, and Therése was managing the communications of the entire United Nations mission in Kigali. Their prosperity was equally praised and envied. Their lounge had real china plates, a large cuboid Sony television with colour display and a video cassette player. Their fridge was filled with milk, rare custard, cold fruit juices, and imported beer. They entertained generously and offered aid to family, friends, and enemies alike. The passage of time did little to calm down the country’s seething grudges and grievances. It did, however, bring Guillome and Therése’s last-born into a country living in fear. Éric Uwituze was named as a blind hope for calmness. They looked at the situation in Rwanda and hoped for peace.

  “Things are not really bad yet,” Therése whispered in bed late at night. “We can wait. Things will get better.”

  “I agree.”

  It calmed her on nights when the air was hot and pressed, when ravenous mosquitoes made the darkness sing with their bloodthirsty hunger. The country seemed ready to spark. Each passing day brought news of tension, and each night their lovemaking was rushed and anxious, fading into whispers of plans that they still wanted to see through. The schools Séraphin and Yves would attend, the need for another house girl to help with the bouncy Éric, and the money which had to be sent to their parents and delinquent siblings.

  The night the mortars and gunfire could be heard through Kigali, Therése awoke in a panic. Her dreams had been filled with gaping chasms into which she tumbled endlessly. When they heard the first loud boom she thought surely the house had slipped into such a fissure. Guillome had already leapt out of bed, scrambling to the living room to peek through the curtains, making sure windows and doors were locked. She made a dash for Séraphin, Yves, and Eric’s shared nursery. She imagined opening the door and finding the room destroyed, the debris of their dreams crushed beyond recognition. She could hear Yves and Éric crying. When she opened the door her fear was only marginally abated. The boys were alive. She rushed to Éric’s cot and picked him up before going to Yves’s bed. He was sitting up and crying and she pulled him close to her. While she murmured soothing phrases to the two crying children Therése looked around for Séraphin.

  “Séraphin! Uri he?”

  “Ndi hano, Mamma.” The reply came from the adjoining room which was sometimes used as Therése and Guillome’s study.

  “Ngwino hano!”

  “Ndaje.”

  Guillome came into the room and sat beside her. The bed creaked with their weight. She pressed Yves and Éric to her body and rocked them back and forth and when they were calm she passed them to Guillome, who took them into his arms. Then she stood up to go and fetch Séraphin. At the door she paused and turned back.

  “We have to leave, Gui.” Therése voice was shaking. “For the boys, we must leave.”

  In the darkness of the room, with explosions sounding in the distance, and history unfolding about them, Guillome breathed in deeply, his shoulders and chest rising and expanding, as though he was steeling himself to command the country to peace. Then his shoulders slumped, and he sat, bent and hollowed.

  “I agree.”

  For the first time in her life, Guillome’s words did not calm Therése. She felt light on her feet, as though gravity had lost its grip on the earth and she would float into the sky and into endless space. The study door was ajar. Séraphin was at the window, standing on tiptoe, looking out through a gap in the curtains. Wearing only his underwear, he was a beanpole made of knees, sharp shoulder bones, and a round stomach. From the doorway Therése could see his face trying to process the sound of distant disaster.

  She pushed the door open and entered the room.

  “Séra – ”

  VI

  In a country far removed from the closeness of violent nights, where the fear of a bad school report is equatable to the finality of a report from a gun, Therése stands in a supermarket bemoaning the cost of avocados, guavas, mangoes, and sweet potatoes. These commodities grew like weeds in her country. Now they are luxuries, circled in newspaper shopping supplements which bear a word she has come to loathe: sale.

  It speaks of cheapness. It is an opportunity for poverty to flaunt itself, chasing down items with red stickers on them in aisles. The word means asking a sales assistant for the aisle with the things which could not be afforded yesterday but which, by the good graces of demand and supply, and the inevitability of expiry dates, brings them within the ambit of carefully monitored family budgets. She casts her eyes over the heat-smacked fresh produce. The bananas have already succumbed. Ruefully, she smiles at the thought of her buying bananas. On her family’s farm such a thing would be unheard of. She pulls herself from the past into the present where she must purchase items on sale for her household. The apples are green with hints of yellow suffusing their skins – Therése detests the softness of golden apples. They make her feel cheated of the crunch apples are supposed to make when you bite into them. The ashy-skinned potatoes peer at her sparsely populated cart in pity. The mangoes are stunted, not like the ones back home which required two hands and a relaxation of one’s dignity to eat them. The avocados are green grenades stacked in ignored too-ripe heaps. She reaches out and squeezes some tomatoes, her fingers expertly telling her to avoid the ones that lose their shape under pressure. She is lucky to find a cucumber with a fresh libido. A last glance at the mangoes persuades her to choose five for her family, a treat they might enjoy.

  When she is done she pushes her cart to a cashier who has just finished packing a departing shopper’s groceries and starts unloading her purchases onto the counter beside the till. The cashier nods a greeting to her and begins scanning her groceries: dishwashing liquid; a bottle of sunflower oil; two loaves of fresh bread; and a tub of margarine with a lascivious slogan on it. Ever since she had discovered why Séraphin and Yves laughed whenever they read “spread for bread” on the tub she has tried not to buy it as often but finances sometimes get in the way of moral uprightness. Therése watches each item’s price flash on the cash register’s periscopic digital display. For the the fresh produce to be rung up, the cashier weighs each item on a scale and then presses the corresponding number on a labelled keyboard for sticky price tags which roll out of the machine like impudent white tongues mocking their purchaser’s fastidious budgeting. When her bag of mangoes has its price stuck to it Therése stops the cashier. “The price, it is wrong,” she says.

  The cashier presses a button on the register and slides the mangoes past the scanner again. The price on the display is repeated. “Sixty-three dollars and fifty cents,” the cashier replies. Her English is bad, and
sixty-three comes out as “siggisty-three.”

  “No, the price, it is wrong. They are on special.”

  “Meme,” the cashier says, “the price is the price – you can see on the display.”

  “No, it is not the price in the newspaper.” Therése fishes a leaflet out of her shopping bag. It is crowded with colours screaming out reduced prices for mincemeat, fresh milk, cheeses, biscuits, juices, and the disputably-priced mangoes. “You see, the price here, it is fifty-five for five. Not sixty-three.” Therése involuntarily places emphasis on the x-sound.

  The cashier looks at the flyer, willing the evidence before her to be wrong. It is not. She presses a green button under her till which rings a bell above her counter for the floor manager. As she waits for her to arrive she reaches for a black ballpoint pen in her pocket and presses it through her weave. The pen’s lid vanishes into the maroon hair until it hits the crust of her head. The cashier gives the pen a firm wiggle to irritate the scalp, her face slackening with relief as the hot itch is scratched away. When she is done she returns the pen to her pocket and says to Therése, “You are from here?” The “here” sounds like “he-yeah”.

  “No, I am not from here,” Therése replies cautiously.

  “You are from where?”

  “Rwanda.”

  “Luanda? You are Angolian?”

  “No. Not Angola. Rwanda.” Therése is used to the response. “It is further away.” She makes a mental note to tell Séraphin about Angolians. Maybe he will laugh at that. Therése searches for a geographic marker that will explain where Rwanda is, something which, hopefully, will orientate the woman and end the conversation. “It is near Kenya and Uganda.”

  “O-ho.” The cashier’s reply does not suggest any knowledge of the whereabouts of these two countries. “You don’t speak Oshiwambo? Or Afrikaans?”

  Therése always fears this line of enquiry. To be from elsewhere and not have learned to speak any of the local languages seems to be a capital offence, as though her inability to pick up the language reflects her disrespect for it in some way.

  “No,” she says. “Only English.”

  “My dear, you must learn.” The “meme” honorific reserved for grown women has been dropped. Instead she is a young child, to be educated, to be told about the workings of the world. The “dear” also comes out sounding like “dee-yeah”.

  “Yes,” Therése replies, choosing to remain silent beyond the single word. A queue of shoppers with laden trolleys has formed behind her and she is reluctant to be the cause for a hold-up in service, especially for five incorrectly priced mangoes and an inability to speak Oshiwambo or Afrikaans.

  The floor manager arrives and looks enquiringly at the cashier.

  “She says the price is wrong.”

  Therése hands the flyer to the floor manager, who lets out an exasperated breath. Now she must press three buttons, swipe a card with a magnetic strip on it through a slot to void the transaction, then press four more buttons, and enter the barcode of the mangoes so their new price can be reflected on the register’s display, which she does with poorly concealed irritation before pulling her elephantine figure away to attend to another ringing bell down the line.

  The mangoes, now correctly priced, are pushed to the end of the counter. “Two hundred and seventy-five dollars and eighty cents,” the cashier says, confirming the number on the display.

  Therése pulls her purse out of her shopping bag. She counts the notes carefully before her breath stops. “Merde,” she says under her breath. The cashier continues to look at her expectantly. “I am sorry,” Therése says in a small voice, “I do not have enough money.”

  “Ewa! First you make me change the price and now you tell me you do not have enough money to pay?” The cashier folds her arms across her chest. Her voice is everything but discreet. The cashiers to either side of her cluck something to themselves.

  Therése closes her eyes and wishes herself to another country far, far away when her purse would be lined with crisp Rwandan francs and American dollars, when any item she needed or wanted would not be out of her reach in either the short or long term. She had worth, she was employed, and she had bank accounts in her name. She never had cashiers crossing their arms and embarrassing her about not having enough money. When Therése opens her eyes she is still standing in front of the irate cashier who does not know where Rwanda is and what Therése left there and the queue behind her shuffles awkwardly in annoyance. Therése’s chest rises as she takes a deep breath and says, “You will have to remove them.”

  There is an uncomfortable stare-down between Therése and the cashier before the latter rings the bell for the floor manager again. A person at the back of the queue swears audibly and moves away to find another line. Preferably one without a foreigner without enough money on her. The floor manager returns and asks the cashier what the problem is this time.

  “She wants them to be removed,” the cashier replies. “She does not have enough money.” The addition is said at volume so that everyone in Therése’s vicinity is made aware of her cash-strapped situation. The floor manager shoots Therése a venomous look before doing her complex button-and-swipe routine to remove the offending mangoes off her till slip. She hovers by the cashier to make sure there are no other corrections to be made. “Two-twenty and eighty cents,” the cashier calls when the new price flashes on the display. Therése hands over her money and cups her hands to accept the change, which is given to her distractedly. A few coins slip from the cashier’s hands. Therése picks them up off the counter one by one. The cashier pushes Therése’s groceries to the back of the till and points at a heap of plastic bags. “My dear, you will pack your things. They are not many.”

  A bite of anger pulls at Therése’s lips. The cashiers are supposed to pack, not the customers. She is in no mood to argue, though. She has caused enough delay with her mangoes. Few things annoy black people more than black foreigners demanding proper service. Therése places her groceries in her shopping bag and walks away from the till, leaving the floor manager, the cashier, and the queueing customers talking about something, whether it is her or not she does not know.

  Outside the sun is already ferocious despite it being only ten o’clock. The street is crowded with taxi drivers baying for passengers. They run up to shoppers with laden trolleys and guide them towards a parked car with one or two passengers already in them, all the while filling the air with promises of immediate departures – “Mamma, we are going right now!” – before bundling shopping bags into the boots of their cars and graciously ushering the new passenger to a back or front seat. The drivers then ceremoniously ignite their cars – “Ja, we go right now!” – and make the engines of their cars scream with eager haste to depart. The vehicles crawl two or three metres before the drivers sight another potential passenger, prompting them to switch off their engines and turn to the fare payers sweating in the heat with mock apologies – “Just one more, eh? Then we go!” – and rush towards another commuter anchored by shopping bags – I just need one more! Ja, we go right now!”

  Therése scans the street for a driver who has managed to wear his waiting passengers’ patience thin. A young man catches her attention by flicking his wrist westward. The front seat of his battered Toyota Corolla has an obese woman occupying all of it, fanning her sweaty forehead with a newspaper, while the back has a younger man in cheap corporate attire who is making a show of opening and closing the door, suggesting to the driver he is about to leave and enter another taxi. Therése nods her head and walks towards him, carefully wending her way between the stop-start hooting mass of traffic. The driver opens the back seat for her, forcing the young man to scramble to the other side of the car in a huff. Therése clambers into the car and clutches her shopping bag to her chest. The driver starts his car and looks for an opening in the traffic, squeezing his vehicle into a gap without permission. The irate hooting which follows the taxi driver’s manoeuvre hurts Therése’s ears and embarra
sses her vicariously.

  The taxi ride out of the city centre is not long and she sulks all the way home, nearly forgetting to tell the taxi driver where to stop on her street. He slams on his brakes with exaggerated force and stares at her in the rear-view mirror. She hands him his fare and waits for her change, which is handed back to her with poorly hidden ire. When Thérese alights in front of her house she is angry she could not complete the day’s shopping and embarrassed to have left the house without enough money; the notes she meant to take are sure to be lying on the kitchen counter or the lounge table – anywhere except where they should have been, which is in her purse, and saving her from the scorn of cashiers who say “he-yeah” and “de-yeah” and think every foreigner is Angolan – Angolian – or destitute.

  Therése’s hands rifle through her shopping bags searching for her house keys and, finding them, uses the small door next to the sliding gate, grumbling to herself about forgetting the ease of pressing the gate’s remote and saving herself precious seconds out of the scorching sun. Inside the compound she traverses the paved rectangle in front of the garage where Séraphin and Yves sometimes play basketball, shooting at a mounted hoop above the garage doors. She climbs a flight of stairs to the balcony entrance of the house and finds the sliding door open. Séraphin probably came here for a break between his studies, she thinks. Therése marches to the kitchen and dumps her shopping on the table. She scans the kitchen counters but does not see her money. She goes into the lounge and is disappointed to find the room devoid of all currency. Perhaps, she thinks, it is in her room, in another purse or handbag. She walks down the corridor to her and Guillome’s bedroom, but pauses outside Séraphin’s door. The music in his room is really loud, which is strange because he usually studies in silence. Is the boy having a party or what? Therése pushes the door and enters the room.