Pagan Babies (2 page)

He was Tutsi, born in Rwanda but had lived most of his life in Uganda, where the official language was English. Laurent had gone to university in Kampala, trained with guerrilla forces of the Rwandese Patriotic Front, and returned with the army to retake the government from the Hutu genocidaires. He had been here in Arisimbi less than a year as acting conseiller, the local government official. Laurent waited until the rain had worn itself out and the tea plantations on the hills to the east were again bright green, then waited a little more.

An hour before sunset, when the priest would be sitting outside with his bottle of Johnnie Walker, Laurent got behind the wheel of the RPA's Toyota Land Cruiser and started up the hill--maybe to learn more about this strange priest, though he would rather be going to Kigali, a place to meet smart-looking women in the hotel bars.

This was a primitive place where people drank banana beer and spent their lives as peasants hoeing the ground, digging, chopping, gathering, growing corn and beans, bananas, using all the ground here, the smallest plots, growing corn even in this road and up close to their dwellings, the houses made of mud bricks the same reddish color as the red-clay road Laurent followed, continuing up the slope to the school and the sweet potato field the children worked. Now the road switched back to come around above the school and Laurent was approaching the church, this old white basilica St. Martin de Porres, losing its paint, scars showing its mud bricks, swifts flying in and out of the belfry. A church full of ghosts, no longer of use to the living.

The road looped and switched back again above the church and now he was approaching the rectory, in the trees that grew along the crest of the hill.

There it was, set back from the road, a bungalow covered in vines, its whitewash chipped and peeling, the place uncared for, Laurent was told, since the old priest who was here most of his life had died.

And there was the priest who remained, Fr. Terry Dunn, in the shade of the thatched roof that extended from the side of the house like a room without walls, where he sat sometimes to hear Confession and in the evening with his Johnnie Walker. Laurent had heard he also smoked ganja his housekeeper obtained for him in Gisenyi, at the Cafe Tum Tum Bikini. The Scotch he purchased by the case in Kigali, on his trips to the capital.

You could see from his appearance, the shorts, the T-shirts that bore the names of rock bands or different events in America, he made no effort to look like a priest. The beard could indicate he was a foreign missionary, a look some of them affected. What did he do? He distributed clothes sent by his brother, he heard Confession when he felt like it, listened to people complain of their lives, people mourning the extinction of their families. He did play with the children, took pictures of them and read to them from the books of a Dr. Seuss. But most of the time, Laurent believed, he sat here on his hill with his friend Mr. Walker.

There, looking this way, the priest getting up from the table as he sees the Land Cruiser of the Rwandese Patriotic Army come to visit, turning into the yard, to stop behind the priest's yellow Volvo station wagon, an old one. Laurent switched off the engine and heard music, the sound coming from the house, not loud but a pleasing rhythm he believed was . . . Yes, it was reggae.

And there was the priest's housekeeper, Chantelle, coming from the bungalow with a bowl of ice and glasses on a round tray. Chantelle Nyamwase. She brought the bottle of Scotch under her arm--actually, pressed between her slender body in a white undershirt and the stump of her arm, the left one, that had been severed just above the elbow. Chantelle seldom covered the stump. She said it told who she was, though anyone could look at her figure and see she was Tutsi. There were people who said she had worked as a prostitute at the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali, but could no longer perform this service because of her mutilation. With the clean white undershirt she wore a pagne smooth and tight about her hips, the skirt falling to her white tennis shoes, the material in a pattern of shades, blue and tan with streaks of white.

Once out of the Land Cruiser Laurent straightened the jacket of his combat fatigues and removed his beret. Approaching the yard he could identify the music now coming from the rectory, the voice of Ziggy Marley and the song "One Good Spliff," one you heard at Le Piano Bar of the Hotel Meridien in Kigali, Ziggy coming to the part, "Me and my younger sisters we take a ride." Chantelle now stood with the priest, the tray and the Johnnie Walker on the table that was without color from standing always in the yard, the bottle sealed, Laurent noted, before he said to the priest: "Father, I am very sorry to tell you news from your brother. Your mother has died in hospital. Your brother said tell you the funeral is two days from now."

The priest wore a T-shirt that said nine inch nails--the perfect drug across his chest. He nodded twice, very slow about it.

"I appreciate your coming, Laurent."

That was all he said. Now he was looking off at the church or the sky, or the hills across the way, a haze resting on the high meadows.

Laurent remembered something else the brother had told him. "Yes, and he said tell you your sister has permission to attend the funeral from . . . someplace where she is. I couldn't hear so good with the rain." Laurent waited.

This time the priest seemed engaged by his thoughts and wasn't listening. Or, didn't care about the sister.

Chantelle said, "His sister, Therese, is in a convent," and continued in her language, Kinyarwanda, telling Laurent the sister was a member of the Carmelite order of nuns who were cloistered and had taken the vow of silence; so it appeared. Therese had to be given permission to come out and attend the funeral. Laurent asked if the priest would also attend. Chantelle looked at the priest before saying she didn't know. Laurent told her his own mother had died in hospital, and began to tell how the Interahamwe, the Hutu thugs, came into the ward with spears made of bamboo--Chantelle put her finger to her lips to silence him, then took the priest's arm to give him comfort, the touch of someone close.

Laurent heard her say, "Terry," her voice a murmur, "what can I do?"

Calling him by his Christian name--someone who must be more to him than a housekeeper. Who would hire a woman with only one arm to cook and clean? Chantelle was very smart-looking, even more attractive than the whores in the bar of the Mille Collines, women known for their beauty, many of them killed because of it.

Laurent told himself to be patient, Johnnie Walker wasn't going anywhere. Give the priest time to accept his mother's death, someone close to him but far away in America. He would be used to death close by, there in the church, less than one hundred meters away. Was he staring at the church, or in his mind staring at nothing? Or was he listening to Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers now doing "Beautiful Day," Ziggy's Jamaican voice drifting over the hills of western Rwanda. Laurent became aware of his body moving oh so slightly and made himself stand still, before the priest or Chantelle would notice.

The priest was turning to walk away, but then stopped and looked back at Laurent.

"You know a young guy named Bernard? A Hutu, wears a green checkered shirt, sometimes a straw hat?"

It took Laurent by surprise, thinking the priest was grieving the death of his mother.

"I know of him, yes. He came back from Goma, the refugee camp. Those relief people, they don't know the good guys from the bad guys. The RPA comes, the Hutus run, and the relief people give them blankets and food. Yes, I know him."

"He tells everybody he took part in the genocide."

Laurent nodded. "So did most of the ones he tells."

"He admits he killed people. In the church."

"Yes, I hear that."

"Why don't you pick him up?"

"Arrest him? But who saw him kill people? The ones who were there are dead. Where is a witness to come before the court? Listen, RPA soldiers hear of a person like Bernard, they want to take him in the bush and shoot him. But if they do, they the ones are arrested. Two soldiers have been tried and executed for killing Hutu suspects. All we can do is keep our eyes on him."

"But if a man, not a soldier," the priest said, "sees the one who murdered his family and takes revenge . . ."

The priest waited and Laurent said, "I would sympathize with him."

"Would you arrest him?"

Laurent said, looking into the priest's eyes, "I would report I made a search and was not able to find him."

The priest, nodding his head, held Laurent's gaze, then turned and was walking away when Laurent remembered the letter. He said, "Father," bringing the letter from his pocket, "I have this, also from your brother." Chantelle took the envelope from him and brought it to the priest, again resting her hand on his arm, Laurent watching them: the priest looking at the envelope and then speaking to his housekeeper, his hand going to her shoulder, Laurent watching the familiar way they touched each other.

Chapter
3.

CHANTELLE RETURNED TO THE TABLE
as the priest continued toward the house.

"He invites you please to have a drink."

"Is he coming back?"

"He didn't say."

She sounded tired.

"With ice," Laurent said, approaching the table. "He surprised me talking the way he did. I thought he was looking at the church, the death of his mother reminding him of the dead inside."

They used English now, Laurent's first language.

"He wants to bury them," Chantelle said, "but the bourgmestre, the same person who told the Hutu militia to go in and kill them, said no, it must stay the way it is, a memorial to the dead." She handed Laurent his drink. "Explain that to me if you can."

"He calls it a memorial," Laurent said, "and you think the bourgmestre, Mr. Shiny Suit, is sorry now, look, he's showing remorse. But I think he keeps the dead in the church so he can say, 'Look what we did,' proud of it. You were here that time, in the church?"

"I tried to be here, but no, I was in Kigali," Chantelle said, "all day listening to the radio for news. The disc jockey tells the Hutus to perform their duty, go out in the streets and kill. He gives them such information as, 'Tutsis are in the Air Burundi office on Rue du Lac Nasho. Go and kill them. Tutsis are in the bank on Avenue de Rusumo.' Like the radio has eyes. I hear the disc jockey say militia are needed out in the country in different communes, and he names this one where my family lives."

"You must have been worried about them."

"Of course, but I didn't come here in time."

"What about the priest? Where was he?"

"Here," Chantelle said, pouring herself a drink over ice, "while you were in Uganda or you would be dead or missing part of you. Yes, Fr. Dunn was here, but earlier that day he was in Kigali visiting the old priest, Fr. Toreki, in the hospital, his heart failing him. In only two more weeks he's dead. Fr. Toreki was here forty years, half his life, when he died. This day Fr. Dunn is visiting they also hear the radio telling Hutu militia to go out to the communes. Fr. Toreki tells Fr. Dunn, go home and bring everyone he can find to the church, because the church has always been a place of safety. So now as many as sixty or seventy are inside, more frightened than ever in their lives. Fr. Dunn, on the altar, is at the most sacred part of the Mass, the Consecration, elevating the Host. At this moment they come in the church screaming 'Kill the cockroaches!' the inyenzi, and they begin killing everyone, even the babies, until no one is spared. The ones who try to run out have no chance. Some of the women they brought outside and raped, the butchers taking turns before killing them. Can you imagine it? Fr. Dunn, on the altar, watching his people being put to death."

Laurent said, "He didn't try to stop them?"

"How? What could he do? At Mokoto, the monastery, the priests walked away and a thousand were murdered."

Laurent would have to think about it. He held out his glass and she poured whiskey into it, Laurent saying that he thought it was here in the church she was mutilated.

"On the way here," Chantelle said, "worried to death for my mother and father, also my sister. They lived not in the village but on a farm in the hills where my father kept his herd of cows." Chantelle shook her head, her voice becoming quiet as she said, "No one has seen them or knows where their bodies are. They could be stuffed down a latrine or buried in a mass grave on the side of the road. I do believe my sister could be one of the dead still in the church. I look at the skull faces--is this Felicite or an old king of Egypt found in a tomb?"

"You were on your way here," Laurent said, prompting her.

"A friend drove me, a Hutu friend. He said there would be no problem, he would speak for me. But we came to cars stopped at a roadblock and everyone had to show their identity cards. If you were Tutsi you were ordered out of the car. There was nothing my friend could say to protect me. I was taken from his car into the forest where already people from other cars were waiting, some with their children clinging to them." Chantelle paused, she cleared her throat. "The Hutus, most of them were boys from the streets of Kigali, but now they were Interahamwe, they were in charge and they were all drunk, with no control of themselves. Now they came to us with machetes and clubs spiked with nails, masus, and no one could believe they were going to kill us standing as we were in the forest, away from the road. People began to scream and plead for their lives, mothers trying to shield their children. The Hutus were also screaming, and laughing, too, in a state of excitement as they began to hack with their machetes like we were stalks of bananas. I raised my arm to protect myself from the blade . . ." Chantelle paused again; this time she sipped her drink, closing her eyes for a moment. She said, "This one took hold of my hand and struck as I tried to pull away, my arm extended." She said, "I can see his face," and paused again. "When I fell I was in the crowd of people and others, killed or dying, fell on top of me. It was night and in a frenzy of killing, they didn't make sure we were all dead. For a long time I lay there without moving."