Running the Rift (41 page)

We will tell you the names of these traitors as we learn them. We will tell you how to find them. We will tell you the ones we have already found and killed.

The announcer reeled off names as if reporting the day's football scores. Niyonzima turned up the volume. He moaned for his friends. Ineza gasped for her cousin. Jean Patrick heard Pascal's name, and then he heard Daniel's.

A
LONE AND SLEEPLESS
in Bea's room, Jean Patrick tossed from side to side. When he closed his eyes, it was Daniel he saw, his face at the window, the dot of tongue like a tiny berry he was enjoying. Ear cocked to the sound of a woman's laughter in the night.

The house hummed with silence. Jean Patrick listened for a noise from the road, an insect's whir from the bush. Nothing moved. Not a dog barked, not a night bird shrieked. Even the land held its breath and waited. The world teetered on its axis, its center of gravity skewed. And then a thought took root: he could run. All these months of running, avoiding checkpoints, remaining hidden before first light, had taught Jean Patrick the trails to take. He could get to the marshes. He could fight his way through the mud and urubingo, the cutting fronds of umunyeganyege and
the choking thickness of papyrus. He could make it to Burundi. He could take Bea's hand and leave all this behind.

As one day lapsed into the next, Jean Patrick felt like a caged animal pacing the boundaries of his enclosure. Nervous energy sparked between the fibers of his calves. He did push-ups beside the desk in Bea's room until his arms collapsed, sit-ups until his stomach twisted. Time no longer kept its neat divisions of day and night. Before falling into bed, he would listen at the door of her parents' bedroom for Bea's quiet breath as she slept beside Ineza, the tick of her life his one constant clock.

Niyonzima stayed in his office and spoke on the phone in low, cajoling tones. He slept there now so he could maintain contact with the world at all hours. In Kigali, the list of his friends grew shorter. One by one, he heard their names announced on RTLM. In Europe, his contacts apologized and said there was nothing they could do. They would keep trying, but no one was listening. Rwanda had no oil or strategic interest, no diamonds or gold.

Niyonzima had been trying to get information from Cyangugu, but no one he knew could get out. Days of rain had left the roads in the countryside impassible. Helpless and powerless, all Jean Patrick could do was pray that Imana had looked down with pity and, with a breath of wind, had blown his family safely down the river to Burundi.

Butare persisted as an island of uneasy calm in a sea of complete madness. The Tutsi préfet appealed for Hutu and Tutsi to patrol together and keep the killers out.
Amahoro n'ubumwe
was the message: peace and unity. At least for now.

On the third day, Jean Patrick woke up and went to sit near the fire. No matter how he tried to change the conclusion, his mind came back to the thought that Coach, and only Coach, could help him now. Claire came in from the cookhouse and knocked on Niyonzima's door. “We're out of milk and margarine. Tomorrow, we'll be out of bread. I have slaughtered my girl's favorite rooster, and she is grieving.”

The back door burst open, and the children ran in. The boy fired a
machine gun made from a stick. “Tutsi snake, I'll kill you!” he shouted. The girl squealed with laughter.

“Mana yanjye.” Claire clapped her son's head. “I never want to hear you say that again.”

“They can't help it,” Niyonzima said. He stepped from his office and held the sobbing child close. The stick gun clattered to the floor. “It's all they hear now, day and night.” He let the boy go and straightened his shorts. “This can't go on much longer. They will have to let us go to market. Until then, we must live on our garden and whatever else remains.” As he turned to go back inside his office, Jean Patrick caught him.

“Yes—please come in,” Niyonzima said.

They went through the necessary dance of polite conversation. “I've been thinking,” Jean Patrick said then. “The headmaster at Gihundwe was like a father to me since Papa's death. He may have news of my family. If I could get to my coach, I could get his phone number from him. Rutembeza was préfet de discipline when I was there.”

A curtain closed over Niyonzima's face, but he put a hand on Jean Patrick's shoulder. They walked down the hall, Niyonzima supported by Jean Patrick. “It's quite possible your headmaster has returned to school,” Niyonzima said. “I imagine Tutsi have been streaming there for protection, especially if he is known to be kind. Just let me have some tea and a little something to eat. Then I will find out the number. I will call him.”

A tiny seed of hope took root—why hadn't he thought of it? Uncle knew all the ways through the bush. Even if they had not left Cyangugu, he could have taken everyone to safety at Gihundwe. They had lived through this before. They were strong. They knew what to do.

C
LAIRE STRUGGLED WITH
a stack of kindling, and Jean Patrick jumped up from the chair where he was reading, waiting for Niyonzima to place the call to Gihundwe. Niyonzima had asked him to come in, but he refused. He wanted to give Niyonzima the opportunity to compose himself in private if the news was bad.

“Here, let me help you,” Jean Patrick said. He bent to take the load from Claire, but she was shaking, and the twigs tumbled to the floor.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. Tears streaked her face.

“It's no problem. I can sweep it. I'm glad for something to do.” Jean Patrick touched her shoulder gently. “Eh—such a small thing. Don't cry,” he said.

“These people who are doing this, they are not my people,” she said, weeping. “May God forgive them their wickedness.”

Jean Patrick gathered sticks from the floor, on his knees like a supplicant.
Imana yirwa ahandi igataha i Rwanda,
he thought then. Wherever God spends the day, He comes home to sleep in Rwanda. But perhaps for God—like Coach—something had come up. Jean Patrick wondered if He was coming home at all or if He, along with the rest of the world, had forsaken Rwanda. Then, as if someone had slapped him, he bit down on his tongue. “Imana, forgive me my wicked unbeliever's mind,” he whispered.

Niyonzima came out from his office. “I got through to Gihundwe. Uwimana is there. The woman who answered told me the classrooms are overflowing with refugees, many of them wounded. She had gone to fetch him when the connection went dead. I tried again but did not succeed.” Jean Patrick's heart dropped down to his stomach, and Niyonzima must have seen. “Don't worry,” he said. “That is the nature of communications now. I'll try again in a little while. Maybe then you will get a chance to talk to him,” he said. “Keep up your hope. Inside the schools, the people are safe. If your family are there, they will be protected.”

Jean Patrick thought of equations and mathematical proofs, chalk symbols filling a blackboard, a life that was no longer his own. Was that
if
or was that
if and only if
?

T
HE RAIN ENDED
, but large drops still fell from the trees onto the walkway. Jean Patrick turned the radio noise into a hiss of rain, canceled it with a frequency of his own internal humming. He sat on the floor, legs crossed, the igisoro board on the low table in front of him. Niyonzima had taught him to play, but he wasn't very good. Niyonzima kept landing in his cups and stealing his seeds.

Ineza looked up from plaiting Bea's hair and scolded him. “So you thought igisoro was a game for old people, huh? It's not as easy as it looks.” She went back to her plaits.

“Ouch, Mama. That hurts,” Bea said. A floral fragrance came from her hair. Coconut pomade glistened on Ineza's fingers.

How strange, Jean Patrick thought. If someone from a foreign country were to drop down suddenly from the sky and land in this room, the scene would look like a peaceful day in the life of a Rwandan family. The person would never guess they clung to these simple acts as they would cling to bits of wreckage in the final flood.

F
OR THE FIRST
few hours of the first day, Jean Patrick had hoped the killing would not spread beyond Kigali. Then he had hoped and waited and prayed for the RPF to be victorious or for UNAMIR to take up arms and defeat the extremists. When the Belgians were killed, he believed surely the West would not stand by while their own were slaughtered. His vision of Americans landing at the airport was so vivid he felt joy and relief in his chest.

Today, the killers themselves came to speak on RTLM. A man from Nyakizu, just south of Butare, boasted that his group had caught eight Tutsi on the road to Burundi. They had tortured and killed them and left their bodies to rot, a message for any Tutsi who thought of escaping the country.

I
N HIS DREAM
, Jean Patrick was fishing with Uncle. The sun on Lake Kivu was like a surface of scattered diamonds. The voice that called him became Mathilde's voice. She had made another dog for him, this one no bigger than a thumbnail. As she stood on the shore and held it out to him, it came alive and grew and then jumped from her hands. She squealed with glee, and in his dream he thought of Miseke, the Dawn Girl, who turned her laughter into pearls. “Jean Patrick,” she called to him.

The little dog barked. The bark became a knock. “Jean Patrick, wake up. Jonathan is here. We are free to leave the house, to go to market. The préfet has declared Butare safe.” The voice belonged to Bea, but beyond the window, the high-pitched delight continued.

Jean Patrick rubbed his hands across his scalp. He sat up and straightened Niyonzima's ill-fitting sweatpants on his waist and went to the window. Beyond the shutters, Claire's children streaked through the wet grass.

“Jean Patrick—did you hear?”

“Yes. I'm coming.”

“Freedom!” Bea said when he came out. “I can find out if Rwanda still exists or if we have been wrenched from the earth and thrown down in another galaxy.”

Jean Patrick embraced Jonathan. “Many days I have not seen you,” he said. Jonathan looked beaten down, dark circles like bruises beneath his eyes.

“It feels great to hold on to you,” Jonathan said, squeezing Jean Patrick. “How are you holding up?”

“We manage.” Jean Patrick squeezed back. What else could he say?

“I came to see if I could give you a ride to town. It might be”—he sighed—“safer.”

Jean Patrick looked at the front door as if it were some foreign object he no longer knew the use of. His near-dead hope stirred. “How is Susanne?”

“Struggling a bit, but strong. She's home with Amos.”

Ineza came in with tea and a packet of Belgian biscuits. “A hidden treasure from a corner of the cupboard.” Bea clapped, and suddenly, Jean Patrick saw Mathilde's face in her simple joy.

Niyonzima came from his office and turned off the radio. “How about a little peace and quiet for our celebration.”

They sat at the table. Tea steamed in their cups, lightened with powdered milk. Jean Patrick dunked his biscuit and savored its crumbly sweetness bite by bite. He thought of bears in cold climates emerging from winter's hibernation, blinking in the unexpected light.

First thing, he would go back to campus. Then he would see if his coach had returned. In his head, he made a list of everything he had missed: his new Puma running shoes, new running clothes, his tracksuit and books. Jeans and shirts, Isaka's scarf, Paul Ereng's photo with his Hutu card. He wondered if he was expected to return to the dorm, if the crisis in Butare had passed and he could resume his life. He wished to sweep this nightmare into the hole of forgetfulness, but he knew that was not possible. When he walked into his room, he would face Daniel's empty bed, and Daniel's spirit, his restless umuzimu, would wrap around him.

Across the table from him, Bea gathered crumbs with a fingertip and put them into her mouth. The gesture swelled Jean Patrick's heart, and he remembered the first time they had shared a pastry at the Ibis and he had watched this same ritual, warm sunlight washing the tablecloth. In the past week, her presence had become as much a part of him as an arm, a leg, his beating heart. It had happened gradually, naturally, and now he could not imagine losing it. Not even for an hour.

J
ONATHAN LET
J
EAN
Patrick off by the university road. Rain had returned. Water dripped from branches, from the closed and curled blossoms of poinsettia and flame trees. The road that had always teemed with bright and colorful life was empty, and Jean Patrick felt as if he had stepped onto a strange, deserted shore.

“Are you sure you want to do this alone?” Jonathan said.

“I'll be all right.”

“We can take you—I should go check on my office, and it's going to pour any second.”

Jean Patrick looked up toward the gate. Well-armed soldiers stood by the guardhouse, and he didn't know if he should be frightened or reassured. “I need to walk. It's the only way I can think. I know how to hide if I have to.”