The Flower Plantation (4 page)

“Martha,” she called. I wondered how the witch knew Mother's name and decided she must have magic powers. “Martha,” she called again, but Mother didn't respond: she moved away in a hurry, the way I did when I was listening at doors and heard someone coming.

“Let's go, Arthur,” she said, whisking me along and ignoring the witch's calls. We crossed the road without
stopping to check both ways for cars and went into the shop that was only frequented by Americans and Europeans.

“Bertie!” said Mother, entering the store. Mother's friend, Mrs Blanchett, whom everyone referred to as Madame B., was buying chocolate. She was a plump French lady who owned the local tea plantation. Whenever she saw me she'd try to squeeze my cheeks and pinch my nose: that day was no exception. Before she could get her hands on me I slunk away to the fridge and took in the cold air and the pong of the French cheese and Italian ham, trying to think about Father's parcel and not about the witch.

“How
are
you, Martha?” asked Madame B. I didn't catch Mother's reply. “And Arthur?” This time Mother didn't answer. Instead she asked about Madame B.'s husband. Then they talked about shoes and someone called Laura Laney.

“It's so rare for her to be in town during the day,” said Madame B., and Mother agreed with a disdainful laugh.

“Come for coffee soon,” said Mother, and she kissed the air by Madame B.'s face.

Mother paid for her shampoo and handed me a lollipop. We went back to the pickup, where the crowd had dispersed and the witch was gone.

* * *

“Remember not to touch things,” warned Mother as she fixed her hair and put on lipstick in the car park of the Kivu Hotel, just a stone's throw from the border. I repositioned Father's parcel in the centre seat. “Keep your hands to yourself and don't stare.” Mother said this each time we arrived at the Kivu – I didn't know why. I neither touched anything nor paid any attention to the hotel guests who came to see the gorillas.

Father had told me about the gorillas on Mount Visoke, one of the few places in the world where they still lived in the wild. He told me a group of gorillas was called a band. He said there were very few left, and that some people thought the gorillas' bodies had special powers that could “turn dying men into dancing men”. Those people killed the gorillas, chopping off their heads, hands and feet. I figured the witch must be one of them, and that made me angry.

Father also said the gorillas were hugely strong and protective of their babies, and that they could easily kill a man who got in the way of their young. But he said I shouldn't be afraid, because they lived too far up the mountain and would not bother with someone as little as me. From time to time I'd look up to Visoke and hope that one day I might see one, just to know what they smelt and sounded like. But most of all I hoped that one of them would kill the witch. The gardeners said she snared, caged and trained them. I hoped that one would break free and that would be the end of her.

As I thought about the gorillas and the witch, someone knocked on the driver's window. It was the beggar who sold wooden objects – masks, little motorbikes, salad tongs. He wore black shades, flip-flops and a heavy wool coat, even in the scorching heat. Every time we came to town he badgered Mother to buy something. She never bought a thing.

“Get away,” shouted Mr Umuhoza, the hotel manager, who was coming over to greet us. The beggar scrammed. Sebazungu carted flowers to the cold-storage room.

Mr Umuhoza was a tall man who looked like a camel: long legs, a big belly, flabby lips and rotten teeth. I didn't like Mr Umuhoza: he always ruffled my hair like Father. This time, when he tried, I ducked out of his way.

“Good to see you, Arthur,” he said. He placed his hand in the small of Mother's back and took us through to the lounge, which had leafy wallpaper and giant glass windows overlooking the pool. There was a long bar and lots of tables and wicker chairs with thick cushions. Usually it was full of men wearing safari jackets and large-bottomed women in shorts and long socks; this day was no exception.

Dr Sadler was waiting for Mother, sipping tea and, as always, blotting his brow with a red handkerchief. He was a large, friendly man with grey curly hair and soft eyes. I never saw him in anything other than a crumpled beige linen suit. I wanted to know why he didn't have someone kind like Celeste to iron his clothes. One day, I thought, I might be able to ask.

“Hello Martha,” he said, standing to greet Mother and squeezing her hand.

“Edward,” she said and pressed her cheek against his.

“And hello, Arthur.” He smiled brightly, but didn't try to touch me. I liked Dr Sadler for that. “Do you feel like saying hello today?” I didn't.

Mother and the doctor sat down. Her legs leant against his. She looked like someone in the magazines she had sent over from England and laughed like one of the American actresses she watched on her video player. She had forgotten about me already.

I went outside and skirted the side of the pool, where ladies in brightly coloured swimming costumes lay on loungers. Monty limped behind me as I followed the little stone path that led to the beach.

Sitting down under a palm tree I watched the local children splash in the water. I hoped they wouldn't see me, the pale-skinned boy under the tree. The Mzungu Boy. My hope was in vain.

“Mzungu!”
yelled one boy and ran up the sand. His sinewy wet muscles shone in the sun.

“Mzungu!”
he said again, and waved his arm for the other children to join him. One by one they saw what he saw and ran up the beach. Within moments their lean black bodies enveloped me. Salt water and sand splattered my skin.

“Mzungu! Mzungu!”
they chanted and jumped about wildly, brandishing jerrycans and sticks and kicking sand
in my face. I wanted to explain that Father was half Rwandan. Only Mother was white. But the words stuck in my throat.

Monty yapped and growled and defended me as best he could, but it didn't stop them. It wasn't long before one of their sticks caught me on the head and I fell to the ground. They scurried down the beach like rats.

After a few moments I struggled to my feet and staggered back up the stone path, where I found Mr Umuhoza and Sebazungu standing by the pool.

“Arthur,” said Mr Umuhoza, ruffling my hair. My head hurt too much to pull away. “What happened?”

“He won't answer,” laughed Sebazungu, picking me up and looking at my head. “That's a big bump, Arthur. Let's get your mother.”

Mother wasn't in the lounge, so Sebazungu put me on a couch while Mr Umuhoza went off to find her. Monty kept guard. Mother arrived a few minutes later, followed hastily by Dr Sadler. Sweat clung to her upper lip, and her lipstick was faded.

“Arthur,” she said, standing over me and feeling the area around the bruise. “Are you all right? You gave me a fright.”

Dr Sadler knelt to examine me. My head was pounding.

“Can you tell me how you feel, Arthur?” I couldn't. Dr Sadler's eyes told me that was OK. He smiled at me.

“No long-term damage,” he concluded with a laugh and mopped his brow.

“How did this happen?” Mother asked.

“The local children, Madame,” replied Sebazungu.

“Where were you? Why weren't you keeping an eye on him?” Mother didn't give Sebazungu a chance to reply.

On her command he scooped me up and carried me to the pickup. She drove recklessly back to the flower plantation. I didn't love it this time: I felt sick.

When we arrived, she slammed on the brakes, creating a cloud of dust that engulfed us. She jumped out, tore open the passenger door and shouted, “Take him inside, Sebazungu!” – which he did, placing me on my bed and leaving Mother and me alone.

Mother paced like a leopard round the bedroom and muttered something about Father being displeased. She bit her fingernails. As dark descended, the evening chorus of crickets became louder, as if someone had turned up the volume on a record player. Beneath the din of crickets I heard the horn of Father's car at the gate and the sound of Joseph, boots slapping, running down the gravel drive.

A hushed conversation followed in the kitchen, then the beat of Father's wooden soles came down the red corridor. My bedroom door opened.

Father rested his large hand on my chest and tucked loose hairs behind my ears. He placed the brown package with the stamps of the Queen of England under my fingers.

I don't know if he spoke: if he did, I didn't hear him.

He left, leaving my door open just a crack. A wedge of light from the hall crept over my bed, just enough so that I could see the parcel and open it.

Peeling back a corner of brown paper, taking care not to tear the stamps, I revealed the pale blue of a pocket book. In the half-light I could make out the navy words on the hard cover. They read “African Butterflies”.

4

1987

Between the ages of six and seven I took
African Butterflies
everywhere with me. It kept me in the plantation and out of the forest. I became obsessed with caterpillar eggs and spent hours each day hunting for them in the side garden. On the day before my seventh birthday I had my biggest find of all.

“Gishyushye!
Hot!” warned Fabrice, opening the door of the wood-burning stove in the kitchen to reveal eight sterilized jam jars sitting in rows. Clutching my slightly dog-eared book I rushed to glimpse the gleaming glass. On Fabrice's instruction I stood back and watched him remove the jars with a clean cloth – he knew they had to be spotless. Fabrice understood my obsession better than most: he had obsessions of his own, such as wearing shiny red shoes that creaked and saying things three times.

“The jars are scorching hot,” said Mother, entering the kitchen and turning down Fabrice's radio. “Go and prepare for art in the garden. Fabrice will bring them to you when you've finished your lesson.”

I wanted to stay with Fabrice and my jam jars, but I knew better than to disobey Mother. And anyway, now that I had
African Butterflies
, art lessons weren't such a chore. Mother allowed me to use the book as inspiration for my drawings, and I gladly pored over the anatomical diagrams of the butterfly in all its stages, trying to copy them. Mother said it combined art and biology, and that was “more than I'd ever learn in any school in Rwanda”.

Having fetched my paper, pencil and crayons from the bureau in the living room I took them to the side garden. There I set the materials on the table next to Mother's white wooden bench and went off in search of leaves that I could use for rubbings.

I explored the plants around the lawn. The lavender leaves were too small and soft; the ginger plant was better: bigger and stronger. The honeysuckle climbing the garden wall was as tempting as honey itself, and I trod through Mother's flowers to bury my nose in the heady scent.

With a handful of leaves I returned to the bench, where Mother was drinking coffee with Madame B. and eating the layer cake that she'd brought from town. Monty was sitting between them. Since his accident he mostly just crouched beside Mother having his ears tickled.

“Arthur!” said Madame B., and attempted to squeeze my cheeks and pinch my nose. I managed to dodge her by feigning interest in Mother's new shoes, which were sitting in a box on her lap.

“Bertie brought them from the post office. Wasn't that kind?” said Mother. “I've lost track of how many months it's been since I sent for them.”

I took the coffee tray, loaded it with art materials and lay down in the centre of the lawn. Wind slapped against the palm trees – it sounded as if the leaves were giant sails of tarpaulin. Beyond the boundary wall the gardeners were singing in the fields.

I placed a ginger leaf on the tray, put a piece of paper over it and rubbed with a green crayon. The shape of the leaf began to show. I repeated this process several times until I had lots of leaves covering the page like the wallpaper in the hotel lounge. Then I opened my book to the diagram of the butterfly, and very carefully began copying it, section by section.

“How are you, Martha?” asked Madame B. as I drew the abdomen.

Mother told Madame B. that she hadn't been sleeping.

“What does Dr Sadler suggest?”

“A drink before bedtime,” said Mother laughing, but Madame B. didn't join in.

“And Albert?”

Mother sipped her coffee and took a bite of cake before answering quietly: “Albert keeps his thoughts to himself.”

“If I can help in any way,” said Madame B., and she drank her coffee too. I could hear her swallow it down.

“What are you working on, Arthur?” asked Mother after she and Madame B. hadn't spoken for a while. I showed her the abdomen and the forewings. “Lovely,” she said, before saying to Madame B.: “All he thinks about is butterflies. I can't take that book away from him.”

“So long as he's happy,” said Madame B., and Mother shrugged. After a long silence Madame B. added: “It must be hard, Martha. Very hard.”

I wondered what Madame B. meant, but I was more interested in drawing the hindwings of the butterfly than listening closely. Mother said something about “the worry of bullying and isolation” and “what the long-term implications might be”.

“Dr Sadler wonders if it's connected to his birth – we didn't get the chance to bond the way we should have done.” Mother raised an eyebrow. “I have my doubts.” She drank her coffee.

“Anyway, we won't get a definitive answer here, that's for sure,” she said when Madame B. said nothing. “I think he'd be better cared for in London, but Albert doesn't agree.”

“Give it time,” said Madame B., and squeezed Mother's hand. With no idea of what they were talking about, I concentrated on perfecting the antennae.

They drank their coffee and ate their cake – I coloured in my butterfly.

* * *

After lunch, when Madame B. had gone, I collected my bug kit, which consisted of a magnifying glass and tweezers in an old ice-cream tub, from the back lobby.

“Arthur, what are you doing?” asked Mother as she and Monty came to join me in the garden again. I was busy looking for caterpillar eggs in the flowerbeds.

Fabrice followed – chin sagging, shoulders round, belly soft – in his crisp white jacket and black trousers. He had my jam jars on a tray and a pot of tea for Mother, who sat on her bench, placing Monty beside her.

“I hope you're not covered in dirt from crawling around in there,” she called. My shorts were muddy, but some eggs on a buddleia leaf grabbed my attention. I extracted them with my tweezers, placed them in a jar and studied them with my magnifying glass. They weren't quite white or brown – a bit like me. Eggs stood out against the leaves and dark soil, just as I did next to the local boys.

“Where's my boy?” asked Father, returning from the city. He kissed Mother on the cheek, rubbed his nose on Monty's muzzle, then came over to ruffle my hair.

“Those look like fine specimens,” he said. “I'm not sure I've seen anything better in the lab.” He took a good look before moving to the bench where he reclined – arms stretched along its back, his long legs placed out in front of him. He moved his Panama hat forward to shield his eyes.

It was then that a surprise discovery – a symmetrical cluster of pearly eggs on the silvery underside of a leaf
– made me start with excitement. I was certain that this was a cluster of
Charaxes acræoides
eggs – one of the rarest butterflies in Rwanda. A butterfly that had both the colour and stripes of a tiger, the spots of a cheetah and could fly just as fast as a tiger could run.

“What have you found?” Father asked.

I put down my jar, ran to the lawn, grabbed my book and went straight back into the flowerbed where I flicked quickly through the pages to confirm my find. My eyes darted between page and foliage.

Father laughed his big, booming laugh. Mother sighed.

Over the year I'd memorized every butterfly, learnt how to recognize different eggs and remembered all of their gestation periods.
African Butterflies
had taught me the correct temperature at which to keep them and the right amount of light too. I could tell when particular eggs would hatch into wriggling caterpillars and then eat their shells. But after a year I had still to learn how to keep the caterpillars alive and see them change into chrysalis and butterflies. That took greater patience than I was capable of at six years old.

“What have you got?” Father asked again, joining me in the undergrowth. “Can you tell me?” I wanted to tell him, I really did. I fought to say something, but all I could manage was to point at the picture of the
Charaxes acræoides
and then at the underside of the leaf. “Well, that's quite something,” he said, hunching
down beside me and inspecting my find. “
Charaxes acræoides
– tough to say, no?” I knew Father wanted me to try, but I couldn't. “It's not every day you see that. Sometime I'll have to take you up to the crater on the top of Mount Visoke. Up there butterflies fly in clouds around a lake.” Father really should have said “rabble”, which my book said was the collective noun for butterflies. He looked at me with bright eyes and ruffled my hair. “You're becoming quite the expert. Perhaps one day you'll work for me in the lab.” He handed me a fresh jar and returned to his bench, where he stretched out again.

The thought of working with Father in the laboratory was almost as pleasant as the thought of working in the post office. Father was a doctor. Not a normal doctor – not like Dr Sadler. Father was a lab doctor – a doctor who treated monkeys as well as humans.

“Arthur,” called Mother after I'd placed the eggs into the jar with the host buddleia leaves and screwed the lid back on tight. “Time for your story.”

I used to think Mother loved Father's stories almost as much as me.

“Once upon a time, about a hundred years ago,” Father began, taking off his hat and placing it on my head, “there was a powerful king called Kigeli IV Rwabugiri. He was treated like a god, and any man who tried to turn against him was killed, and their testicles hung on his sacred drum!”
Father winced, then chuckled. I didn't understand why: the King sounded very frightening to me.

Listening to the story, I turned to the
Charaxes acræoides
page of my book and drew a picture of my cluster of eggs in the space below the description of the butterfly and the diagrams of its egg, caterpillar and chrysalis. My picture didn't look much like the one in the book, but I was pleased with it nonetheless.

“The King was a tall, good-looking man with a long, golden headdress like a lion's mane. But he was harsh and made the Hutus poor and the Tutsis rich and powerful. He was also old, Arthur,” said Father dreamily, “and soon he died, leaving many wives and many more children.” I was glad to hear that the King had died: he sounded like a rotten villain to me. “Before he died he decided he wanted his son, Rutarindwa, to succeed him. The old King picked one of his wives, Kanjogera, to become the Queen Mother, even though she wasn't Rutarindwa's mother at all. But Kanjogera was wicked and, with her brother Kabera, they decided to kill the new King.” I wiggled my tooth in excitement and imagined Kanjogera in black robes with no teeth, like the wicked queen I'd read about in my storybook. “After a bloody battle the King and his supporters were killed, and the Queen Mother immediately announced her own son, Musinga, as King.” Father paused to let out a big yawn. “And just as
he
was being crowned, the Germans arrived.” Father laughed, and Mother did too. I liked to
hear them laugh together: it didn't happen often enough. “The Germans didn't understand that the Queen Mother was bad, so they let her do as she wished. She favoured the Tutsis and suppressed the Hutus even more, and in letting her do so the Germans created an explosive situation. And
that
is definitely a story for another day,” said Father, taking his hat from my head and spinning it on a finger.

I wanted him to continue, but Mother was already collecting our things and talking about dinner and bed, saying, “The quicker you go to sleep, the sooner your birthday will come.” And at six years old, soon to be seven, the excitement of a birthday exceeded everything else, including Father's story and my
Charaxes acræoides
eggs.