Running the Rift (18 page)

The smell of leather surrounded Jean Patrick as he sank into the seat. With all the new furnishings, he barely recognized the room. There were carvings of tribal art, large drums of varying types and sizes, and fancy lamps. A bookcase now took up most of one wall, with books in several languages, arranged by subject. Mostly history and government, but surprisingly he noticed titles of poetry, some traditional, in Kinyarwanda. Habyarimana still ruled the room from his place of honor above the mantel. Some things did not change.

Jolie set a dish of freshly boiled peanuts and two Primuses on the coffee table. She opened the beers, tipped Jean Patrick's glass, and poured. “For you. Muzehe pours his own.”

“Jolie is the best cook in Butare,” Coach said. “Once you taste her food, you will want it every day.” Jolie cackled. Coach jiggled a handful of nuts and watched her shuffling gait in silence. When she had shut the door, he pushed the dish toward Jean Patrick. The nuts were still warm from the fire.

“Tell me, do you still have your Tutsi card?” From Coach's casual tone, he may as well have been inquiring about the weather.

Jean Patrick's hand stopped halfway to his mouth. “I do. Uwimana asked me to keep it.”

“Good. I have a proposal for you.” Coach brushed salt and bits of skins from his trousers. “Well, not a proposal exactly, because the decision's been made.”

Suddenly, Jean Patrick couldn't swallow. He didn't know what to do with the nuts. Put them back in the dish? Pretend to eat them? He slid his clenched fist beneath his thigh.

“I think I can trust you,” Coach continued, “if I speak frankly.”

“Yego, Coach. You can trust me.” Jean Patrick wondered if this trust was mutual.

“Our government is in trouble with the West. Important countries are threatening to cut off aid unless Rwanda shows progress with human rights.” Coach spat out these last words as if ridding his mouth of some foul taste. He moved closer, and Jean Patrick resisted the urge to scoot to the far end of the chair. “Certain people have decided
you
will be our example. What could be more progressive than a Tutsi in the Olympics?”

Jean Patrick thought of the chess games between his father and Uwimana. When he was small, he used to watch, fascinated, as they picked up the mysterious pieces and moved them about the board. He felt like one of those pieces now, dangled from unknown hands. “I'm not clear. Are you saying you want me to be Tutsi again?”

A mosquito alighted on Coach's arm. He slapped it and flicked the body away. “You are the best runner this country has ever had. With the right
training, you can medal. I don't say this just to flatter you. In the world of track, you are the jewel in Rwanda's crown. Why not give up the pretense and represent your people?”

If Roger or Uncle had said this, Jean Patrick would have been proud. But coming from Coach, it sounded like a dismissal, an insult. “My people are the people of Rwanda,” he said. He slid his hand from beneath his thigh. One by one, he put the nuts in his mouth and chewed slowly. It was dizzying, this throwing down of one identity and picking up another. Outside the window, night bruised the sky. “If I am Tutsi again, can I still go to school?”

“Why not? You earned your scholarship.”

“And travel to track meets?”

“You must. No one here can challenge you, and you need to get your name out there. Run qualifying times where they count.”

“But it's so hard now for Tutsi to travel. What if I get stopped at the border?”

Coach roared. “You leave that to me. All you need to do is run.” He poured the last of the beer into their glasses. “Good. It's settled, then. Let us drink to your future.”

Of course, it had been settled from the first. On the one hand, Jean Patrick felt relief. He would not have to bite his tongue each time he presented his card, and as Uncle had said, he would truly lift up all Tutsi with each victory. But now, when he put his indangamuntu in a soldier's hand, he would once again know the feeling of surrendering his fate as well.

He glanced up at Habyarimana, then down at the volumes of
Kangura
stacked on a bookshelf. Although he did not see it now, there must be some advantage he could gain from this game. All he had to do was bide his time, hang back behind the leader, the way Coach told him to run the eight hundred. Like a chess player concealing his strategy, he smiled at Coach. “To my future,” he said. They clinked glasses. “And my gold medal.” They drank.

“Did you bring your Tutsi card?” Coach asked. Jean Patrick pointed toward the spare room. “Fetch it. And your Hutu card as well.”

Jean Patrick took both booklets from his backpack. A piece of paper
Jonathan had given him with his address fluttered to the floor. With trembling fingers he picked it up and put it on the table beside his bed. Cyarwa Sumo. Later he would have to ask Coach where that was.

“You look like I'm going to shoot you,” Coach said when Jean Patrick put the two booklets on the table. “Don't worry; everything will be all right. You have to trust me.” That word again:
trust.
Coach upended his glass. A mustache of foam remained on his lip. “I have to take this.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tapped the Hutu card.

“It's so dangerous for Tutsi now,” Jean Patrick said. He looked at Coach and slid the card toward him. From the darkness, now complete, cicadas trilled a warning.

“Yego. You are right.” Coach's hand hovered above the card as he held Jean Patrick's gaze. Then he slid the card back. “I threw this in the fire. You watched it burn. Do you understand?”

Jean Patrick touched the edge of his Hutu card. “Yes. I understand.” He palmed the card. “Thank you.”

“Hide it very carefully. Never use it again unless…” Coach left the sentence unfinished. He did not have to ask if Jean Patrick understood this last thing, and Jean Patrick did not have to answer that he did.

A
FTER DINNER
, J
EAN
Patrick sat on his bed with Uncle's gift on his lap, a framed photograph of Paul Ereng winning gold in the eight hundred at the 1988 Olympics. Ereng, a Kenyan middle-distance runner, had come out of nowhere, surprising the world with his win. How Uncle had managed to find the picture, Jean Patrick had no idea. The photographer had caught him just before he crossed the finish line a half step in front of another runner. On Ereng's face was an expression of ecstatic pain, an expression Jean Patrick believed he mirrored in the best of his races.
You have to suffer until suffering becomes an old friend,
Telesphore had said on the day he came to Jean Patrick's class, and Jean Patrick had tucked the words inside his heart.

Jean Patrick recognized Uncle's handiwork in the ironwood frame. In two diagonal corners he had carved a runner. They were stick figures, but Jean Patrick saw his own high, stretched-out kick. In a third corner was
a running shoe, complete with a tiny Nike swoosh. A note tacked to the backing said,
Never forget we are your #1 fans. We love you.
Jean Patrick knew how difficult it must have been for Uncle to commit those three words to paper.

Jean Patrick turned the picture over, pried the nails loose that held the backing to the frame, and inserted the Hutu card behind it. In the morning, he would ask Coach for some glue so he could fasten it securely. If it ever came to that—if he needed the card in a hurry—the frame's destruction would be a necessary price to pay.

A flash of brightness startled Jean Patrick awake. Coach stood by the light switch dressed to run; a pair of Nikes dangled from his fingers. “I have a course mapped out, about ten kilometers, lots of long hills for intervals. The level of pain will please you.”

“You're running with me?” Jean Patrick threw off the covers.

“I have trained for it.” Coach set the shoes on the floor. “I figured you needed new ones. Lots of room for your toes.” He tossed a bag onto the bed. “Courtesy of our government.”

Jean Patrick removed a tracksuit, iridescent blue. His fingers slid across the satiny fabric as he lifted it from the bag. On the back of the jacket was a Rwandan flag. He let out a low whistle. It was the most beautiful jacket he had seen in his life.

S
UNRISE CAUGHT THEM
as they crested the first hill and approached the Junior Military Officers' School. The guard at the gates saluted, and Coach returned a clipped salute. “What are you gawking at?” he asked Jean Patrick.

“He saluted you, and you saluted him back like a soldier.”

Coach waved off a fly. “I do some training, teach a few courses.”

“You're in the army?”

“I was for many, many years. Not now.”

Jean Patrick expected something further, but Coach just forced the pace harder.

They turned onto the main road and let gravity take them down the hill. Jean Patrick unzipped his jacket. The brisk morning tingled his skin. They ran past National University. In a few days, this would be his home.

At the bottom of the hill was a checkpoint. A group of guys with machetes on their belts loitered by the soldiers. When they noticed Jean Patrick, they stopped their bantering to stare.

“Relax,” Coach said. “Just act calm.” The soldier waved them through. Jean Patrick felt the stares at his back like a layer of cold sweat.

“Who are those guys?”

“Interahamwe. A government youth militia. I told you—don't worry.” Coach turned down a narrow dirt lane and grinned wickedly. “Now comes the fun.”

The road climbed sharply among large houses with tiled roofs. Tall trees shaded the route. Jean Patrick's lungs burned.

“Before you came, I drove around looking for the steepest hills,” Coach said. He swept his hand across an expanse of rolling summits. “Today you have an easy day, a jog to see the scenery. Starting tomorrow, you'll do your intervals here. Hills in the morning, track in the afternoon. Resistance and endurance. Speed will come later, after you build your base.”

“Where are we?”

“Cyarwa Sumo,” Coach said.

“Eh! I have a friend who lives here.”

Coach wiped the sweat from his forehead. “A friend?” From the expression on his face, Jean Patrick might just as well have said, I am Nkuba, King of Heaven.

“A geologist from America. He's teaching at National University, and he rented a house here.” Jean Patrick paused to catch his breath. “I thought maybe I could take his class.”

“Did you say geology?” Coach grimaced. “What good is that?”

I
T WAS NOT
yet light when Jean Patrick awoke. He dressed in the dark and tucked the paper with Jonathan's address into the pocket of his track pants. He nearly collided with Jolie on her way to the kitchen with a kettle.

“Sorry,” she said. “I nearly burned you.”

Jean Patrick took his shoes from the mat by the door. “Grandmother, I was at fault.”

The old woman clucked. “Do you think you can go out so, no thought of curfew? If the crooks don't get you first, the soldiers will shoot you.” She laughed at her joke.

“I'll be all right. I know how to hide. Can you let me out?”

Jolie removed the ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked the front door. “Imana bless us,” she said. Jean Patrick stepped into the bracing air. She padded behind him in her flip-flops. “If muzehe wakes before sunrise and finds you gone, I'll say you stole the keys and let yourself out.” She gave a throaty singsong and unlocked the gate.

“Yego, Grandmother. I did that.”

J
EAN
P
ATRICK BEAT
the dawn to the Cyarwa Sumo checkpoint, so he turned down a dirt lane to pass the time until daylight. Leaning against a signpost for the National University arboretum fields, he wondered what they were. He found a goat trail among them where he would not be seen. At the top he made out a small hut, and he chose this as his goal.

He took off his shoes and climbed, easy until he found his footing, then digging in until the effort burned his thighs. With each arm stroke, his jacket released a
ssshhh
like falling rain. The slope's steepness took his breath. He reached the hut simultaneously with the sun's arrival. Hands on knees, he caught his breath and watched the soldiers, tiny as ants at the bottom of the hill. The fields were filled with pungent, colorful crops he could not identify.

“Mwaramutse,” a voice rang out. A wizened grandfather leaned against the door of the hut. Smoke from his pipe wound a blue ribbon about his head. He motioned to two chairs, one with a cup of tea, a knife, and a block of wood beside it. “Why are you running so? Please sit down.” The old man sat and took up his knife. An animal head took shape in the wood.

“I'm training, Grandfather. I'm going to run in the Olympics for Rwanda.”

“The Olympics? Imana bless you!” A scent of wood and smoke rose from his skin. Inside the hut, pots clanged, a baby cried, a woman sang a soothing tune.