The Flower Plantation (10 page)

12

I woke the next day to the cockerel crowing and waited for Joseph to walk through the garden. Lying there I thought about my bike and how I wouldn't be able to ride it in the yard the way I'd ridden my trike every morning. And I thought about the butterfly too. Looking at it in its farm I imagined Beni and me at the crater releasing it among all the others. I was certain we'd get there soon.

After Joseph had passed my window, boots slapping, I got up, ate two small green bananas and fed the scraps to Romeo and Monty, then went outside. I sat in Joseph's lookout watching Celeste heat water and worried about Mother finding out about the bikes.

There was a faded picture of Celeste and Fabrice in my album that intrigued me. In the photo, taken outside the back door years before, Fabrice looked lean, upright and proud. He showed nothing of his round stomach, curved shoulders and sagging chin, but it was Celeste who had changed the most.

She stood with a serious expression – something all the workers did when they had their photograph taken. In the picture she was tall, slim and pretty, not like the woman I knew – the heavy old woman who walked hunched over a
fimbo
, was blind in one eye and looked as though the skin on the left side of her face had melted. The young Celeste had no cane, two good eyes and flawless skin. Father told me that Fabrice and Celeste had worked on the plantation since his papa had owned it, but he'd never said anything about what had happened to her.

When my watch read seven, Celeste picked up her buckets and gently motioned for me to follow. The prints on the floor and the dirt on my clothes must have led her to realize something was wrong. There was something in her gesture that told me she had figured out about the loss of the bikes and promised not to tell Mother.

In the bathroom I helped slosh the water into the tub, undressed and climbed in. Celeste broke away from her usual routine and sat in the chair beside me, where she kicked off her flip-flops and scratched the dry, hard skin of one foot with the toes of the other. She began to tell me a story.

“One night, when I is young, a Hutu leader is attacked,” she said. “Hutus think: our leader is dead and violence fills Rwanda.

“Hutus attack Tutsis. They use spears, clubs, machetes and,” she pretended to shoot a bow and arrow at me, which made me giggle, “anything dangerous. Soon Rwanda is chaos.”

I tried to envisage the quiet hills and sleepy valleys around the plantation full of people fighting, but it was impossible. I rubbed a bar of soap over my ribcage.

“And one night, when clouds are low, Hutu neighbours attack my home. They burn roof and kill my cattle and beat me with club.” Celeste glanced at her leg and raised her hand to her bad eye. I understood how her injuries came about.

“Your Father's papa save me. Arthur. He bring me here and hide me in cutting shed. He move cattle to forest and my things to house.” She smiled faintly and paused.

“More cattle is killed, more buildings burnt, men dead in bananas groves and cornfields. Tutsis flee to Uganda and Belgian soldiers arrive. King Kigeri” – the one who looked like a giraffe, I thought – “drop paper from aeroplanes for fighting to stop. But Kigeri remain in palace and people get mad. The fighting, it last a month. Thousands without homes. Even more dead. Then Hutus take control.” That last comment made Celeste suck her teeth.

The bath water was getting cold, but I was interested in her story, so I hugged my knees to keep warm a little longer.

“Hutu chiefs replace Tutsi chiefs and Tutsis leave Rwanda. Hutus take important jobs but…” She allowed herself a chuckle – her face looked entirely different when she smiled, her skin plumper, even the side that looked melted. “Hutus stupid, Arthur and Rwanda soon in trouble.”

She gazed out the window with a distant look in her eye. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. Perhaps, I thought, she was thinking about her wounded cows or her friends lying dead among the cornfields. Perhaps she
wondered how life might have been if it wasn't for the troubles.

“The church,” she continued after a while, “they teach Hutu children: Tutsis are bad, different – from somewhere else.” She pointed with a finger tipped with a thick yellow nail towards the sky, suggesting a mysterious, far-off planet. “Soon Hutus hate Tutsis and win first election.”

Celeste, noticing me shivering, fetched my towel. She held it out, I got up, and she wrapped it round me snugly. She smelt comfortingly of wood smoke, from heating the water and doing the laundry.

“Kayibanda arrange coup,” she said, and I allowed her to dry my hair gently, “and Sovereign Democratic Republic of Rwanda is declared. Hutus take control. Kayibanda is President and soon,” she said, breaking into a full, mischievous grin, “
abazungu
leave too.”

Celeste finished drying my hair and, though I didn't want it to be, I knew story time was over.

* * *

“Are you ready, Arthur?” said Mother. “We mustn't keep the Blanchetts waiting.” I was investigating a colony of ants on the front step. They moved in patterns I didn't understand. I wanted to dip them in ink so that I could follow their tracks more easily, not go to the Blanchetts' for their New Year party.

“Come on then,” said Father, folding up his newspaper. He'd been sitting in the car for ages waiting for Mother, who had taken longer than usual to put on her make-up.

I climbed into the back with my book and compared the picture of the
Charaxes acræoides
with my drawing. Mother stared out of the window. Father drove without speaking. I watched the world pass by.

When we arrived at the Blanchetts' house, Father sounded the horn at the gates and we waited for their security boy. I watched the sun fall over Lake Kivu. The sky looked like the layer cake Madame B. bought in town – bands of yellow and pink.

Eventually the metal gate clattered open, and we drove into the enormous compound. As if in slow motion we passed the security boy – it was Zach. Safe in the car I turned to watch him close the gate and run through the banana palms to his shack at the back of the house. We parked at the front, next to all the other cars.

“Martha, so good to see you,” said Madame B., kissing the air by Mother's cheeks. Mother smiled.

“Come along, Arthur,” said Mother, standing at the front door. I watched the peacocks parading across the front lawn.

“It's OK, Martha. He can come in later.”

Mother and Father went into the house. I stood on the drive, clutching my book and staring at the
prehistoric-looking legs of a peacock that strutted over the gravel, its blue-and-green feathers shining in the setting sun.

I followed it round the side of the house. From there I could see the whole of the tea plantation. As far as I could see, tea bushes streaked the terraced hills. I wandered after the peacock, his tail feathers tickling a trail in the dust, and followed him until he scrambled clumsily over a hedge and out of sight.

“Eh,” said a voice from the boys' quarters – a row of corrugated tin shacks surrounded by banana palms. I stared into the dark. “Eh,” said the voice, and a pebble shot past my foot. “You.” The heavy “oo” made it sound big, as I imaged a gorilla would sound.

I turned towards the voice and saw two bloodshot eyes flashing out of the shack. It was Zach. My chest tightened. I checked behind me: there was no one else. He had to be talking to me.

“
Yego
,” he said. “
Ici
.”

I walked towards him uncertainly, as if walking a tightrope.

“Come,” he said, and I approached his hut.

He stepped back. I loitered at the entrance.

There was nothing in his shack apart from a sagging mattress on the floor, a string of damp clothes on a line and a cooking pot hanging from the ceiling. It smelt of sweat and cassava. The boy slugged from a brown bottle, then thrust it in my face. I didn't take it. He thrust it again.

This time I took the dirty bottle and wiped the rim. The fumes shot up my nostrils and irritated my throat. I sipped a tiny amount. The fiery liquid burned my mouth and strangled my windpipe, but somehow I managed to swallow, then coughed repeatedly. My eyes watered and stung, as if they might be bloodshot too.

I held out the bottle to him and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, the way I'd seen the gardeners do after drinking beer. He didn't take it.

“
Plus!”
he said aggressively, and I took another swig.

Immediately my stomach burned, then my head turned dizzy and my vision blurred. The boy snatched back the bottle and took a gulp, which had no effect on him at all.

“
Comment t'appelles-tu, mzungu?
” he asked.

My hearing was now muted, my face flushed. I wondered if he'd poisoned me. I tried to run, but found I could only stagger.

“
Un peu plus
,” he said, but I wasn't going to take any more. I zigzagged from the shack as fast as my weakened legs would take me. I needed to find Mother.

“Eh,” he called after me as I stumbled towards the house. “
Mzungu!”
He laughed barbarically – a sound that carried into the night.

* * *

When I opened the front door of the Blanchetts' house, a wave of sound and light hit me. Their entrance hall was as
big as our living room, and they had cable electricity, not a generator like we did. The light in the house was even brighter than at the hotel. I squinted to stop it hurting my eyes.

The hall was full of adults talking loudly and laughing, drinking wine and eating nibbles from shiny silver trays. It smelt of salt and fish and cookies in the oven. There were three musicians in the corner, and waiters wove through the guests like dancers. The noise was too much: all the talking and laughing made my dizziness worse. I wanted to go home.

I couldn't see Mother anywhere. Or Father, for that matter. And I didn't recognize anyone. I held tightly to my book and wished Beni were there to keep me company. Snippets of conversation broke through the jumble of noise as I sneaked in and out of grown-ups' legs looking for my parents.

“Well, who have we here?” said a man when I stumbled into a group of people who were drinking dark-red wine that stained their lips. He bent down to within an inch from my face – I could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“If it's not Arthur Baptiste! How are the teeth?”

It took me a while to realize it was the dentist – I didn't recognize him without his mask. Fearful that he'd stick a needle in my mouth I backed away, but tripped over my own feet and fell in a heap on the floor.

“Arthur,” said Mother, appearing above me. “What's the matter?”

“He's just had a fright,” said the dentist.

Mother knelt down on the floor. She sniffed my lips, gave a quizzical look, then repeated the sniff.

“I don't think he's had a fright,” she said after a moment's thought. “I think he's had a drink.”

“Good lad!” said the dentist.

“I'm serious!” rebuked Mother.

The dentist sniffed my lips too.

“Smells like ethanol to me,” he confirmed, and Mother frowned. “Take him through to a bedroom, Martha. He'll sleep it off.”

Father arrived, and he and Mother took me to one of the Blanchetts' spare rooms. I couldn't tell what it looked like: Mother didn't turn on the light.

“Leave the door open just a crack,” said Father as they left, but Mother eased the door shut: the only light in the room came from the small gap under the door.

Mother and Father went back to the party, and I listened to the distant laughter, the bass from the band and the popping of corks. I held on to
African Butterflies
, which was splattered with red wine. I wanted to wipe it off, but the paper had already soaked it up. I was about to fall asleep when approaching footsteps woke me.

“What's going on up in Kigali?' The voice sounded like Monsieur Blanchett's.

“Where do I start?” This was Father's. “Economic decline, corruption, rising unemployment and crime – the country's going to the dogs.”

“And the assassination attempt?”

“Not sure, but he'd be wise to stay alert.” I heard the sound of ice cubes in a glass. There was a pause.

“Damn country. Even the reliable staff are causing me trouble. Gates banging at all hours of the day and night. Don't know who's coming or going.”

“We've had some trouble of our own,” said Father. Their shoes broke the light under my door, and the sound of their wooden heels faded towards the party.

I wondered what Father had meant by “trouble of our own”. Then I thought of my butterfly and of Beni and of what she might be doing. Was she also lying awake, trying to decipher grown-ups' talking while secretly thinking of me?

* * *

The day after the party, Father took me aside in the garden and told me seriously: “Arthur, I know you went up Mount Visoke, and I know you lost your bike.”

I couldn't tell if he was disappointed or cross, or how he knew.

“If your Mother finds out, she'll be furious, so I want you to make a promise.” I felt a nervous flutter in my stomach.

“I want you to promise never to go up the mountain again. Do you understand?”

I nodded, but tears welled in my eyes, and I fought to contain them. I wanted nothing more than to go to the crater to release my butterfly.

“If you don't go back, Arthur, I promise I won't tell Mother about your bike.”

With my plans to return to the crater in tatters, I spent the next few months gazing longingly at the mountain, imagining great rabbles of butterflies flying round its top. It felt like the greatest sacrifice of my life not to be able to release the butterfly there.

As for the theft of the bikes, that went unspoken of until one Tuesday when Mother and I were in town. We were sitting in the pickup at the petrol station, waiting for the tank to be filled. I was trying to dodge the stares of Sammy, who was sitting with his fat mama husking corn in the shade, when Zach rode in on my bike. It was definitely mine: metallic blue shone in the sun and BMX was written in yellow and white on the crossbar. He rode it as if it had always been his. Mother and I stared at it as though this was the answer to a riddle we'd both been trying to solve for a very long time. I figured Father must have told her it had been stolen, which made me cross – I had kept my part of our promise.