Baking Cakes in Kigali (20 page)

“Captain Calixte,” she said, “this is my first time to talk to a soldier in the Rwandan army, and if I am to advise you on your engagement cake it will help me to know something about you. Would you tell me about your fiancée and something about your life as a soldier?”

Calixte swallowed his mouthful of cake and then washed it down with a large sip of tea. “My life as a soldier,” he said slowly, turning his head and gazing towards the window. He was quiet for so long that Angel wondered if she should not perhaps say something to summon his mind back from wherever it had wandered. At last he turned back to her, and, leaning forward, looked her squarely in the eye. “Can I speak freely with you, Angel?”

“Of course you can,” she assured him. “You are my customer. I’ll never repeat what you say to me because I know how a professional somebody is supposed to behave.”

“That is good. And also you are
Mnyamahanga
, a foreigner, so it’s safe for me to talk to you. It’s only that I was taken by surprise to think about
my life as a soldier.
Of course, I’ve often thought about
being
a soldier, but I’ve never thought of that as my life. It was not the life that I wanted.” Again his gaze shifted towards the light of the window.

Angel waited a few moments before she prompted him. “So, is it better that I ask you about
being
a soldier?”

Angel’s guest turned back to her and—to her relief—laughed. “You can ask it either way, because whether I like it or not, being a soldier and my life as a soldier are in fact one and the same thing. Until so far, anyway.”

“Tell me about it, then.”

“Sawa.
Before my life as a soldier, there was my life as a schoolboy. I lived near Ruhengeri with my father; we were alone because my mother and my sisters did not survive the genocide. I was not a very good student, but I dreamed of becoming a teacher one day in a vocational school. I was very good with my hands: woodwork and carpentry. My father taught me. One day I was walking home from school with three other boys, and some soldiers stopped next to us in a truck. They asked if we could direct them to some or other place that was some distance away, and they said they’d pay us if we went with them to show them exactly where it was. Of course my friends and I agreed to go with them, and we climbed into the back of the truck. There were many soldiers there. But it soon became clear that they were not interested in finding the place that they had asked us about, and they drove with us for many, many kilometres, refusing to let us out. It began to get dark and one of my friends began to panic, and he started to insist that we be let go; but still they refused. Then at last when the night was completely black, they pulled off the road. My friend who was panicking pushed at some of them and climbed down from the truck, cursing them. They laughed at him, and then they shot him dead.”

“
Eh!”
Angel spilled some of her tea on to her
kanga
but did not notice.
“Dead?”
She thought of her son Joseph, dead in his house from a robber’s bullet.

“Dead. Then they laughed some more and told us they would shoot us too if we gave them any trouble. Late that night we arrived at a place and we were taken to some tents to sleep. There were other boys there, and they told us they had also been taken. We were going to be trained as soldiers, they said. And so that was the end of my life as a schoolboy and the beginning of my life as a soldier.”

“That is a very bad story,” said Angel, shaking her head. “Was it not possible to run away?”

“We knew that if we tried to run we would be shot. We saw it happen to others. We were dependent on the soldiers for food and we had no idea where we were or what would become of anybody who actually managed to escape. So eventually we stopped thinking about escaping and we concentrated on becoming good soldiers. We thought that once they trusted us with guns then we could get away. But somehow, by the time they gave us guns, we had lost the will to get away. We had become soldiers.” Calixte shrugged, unable to explain.

“It’s not my first time to hear a story like that,” said Angel. “I know it’s not an impossible thing to happen; it has happened in other countries.”

“They took me to fight in Congo, close to Kisangani. I was there for a very long time.
Eh!
The things we did and saw there!” He shook his head. “I cannot speak of those things. My heart had already been empty for a long time, and the only way for me to continue day after day was to make my mind empty, too. There are months, years even, that I could not remember now, even if I wanted to.” He drank some tea and finished his cupcake. “So that is my life as a soldier.”

Angel was silent for a while before she asked, “And what about your father?”

“I never saw him again. Some time ago I had the opportunity to go to Ruhengeri, but I found that he was already late. I don’t know if he ever searched for me. I don’t know what he thought that day when I didn’t come home from school.”

“
Eh
, that is very sad,” said Angel.

Calixte shook his head. “Things are sad only when you allow yourself to feel them.”

“And you don’t allow yourself to feel them?” “I told you: my heart is empty.”

Angel tried to lighten the mood, which had become uncomfortably heavy. She smiled hopefully. “But you are in love,
Captain Calixte! You’re getting engaged! How can your heart be empty?”

He shook his head again, laughing in a hollow way. “I’m not in love, Angel. There is no love in my heart. I told you: it is empty.”

“But if your heart is empty, then why are you marrying?”

“That is simple: because my mind is no longer empty.”

“Captain Calixte, you are confusing me now,” said Angel, removing her glasses and holding them in her lap. “What is it that is now in your mind?”

He took a sip of tea. “A plan.”

“A plan?”

“Yes, a plan. A way out. I don’t want to be a soldier, Angel; it was never what I wanted. I want to be demobilised, but that is not what I want; many soldiers have been demobilised, and there is nothing for them to do. I never completed my schooling, so what would I do outside the army? There is nothing. So I’m going to marry a
Mzungu
, and she will take me with her to her home country. That will be my escape.”

Angel thought about this for a moment. “And in your plan, what is it that you will do when you are with your
Mzungu
in her home country?”

Again he laughed. “Why will I need to do anything? I won’t need a job.”

“So your fiancée is rich?”

“All
Wazungu
are rich.”

Angel began to rub gently at her glasses with the edge of her
kanga.
Captain Calixte was right: the
Wazungu
in Kigali were certainly paid extremely well by their international organisations. In addition to their pay, some even received an extra hundred dollars a day to compensate them for having to live in a country that they said was dangerous; most Rwandans did not earn that much in a month. But did the girl who was
going to marry this soldier know that it was only her money and her passport that he wanted? That she was only useful to him for his plan?

“Have you proposed yet, Captain Calixte? Has she in fact agreed to be your fiancée?”

“Not yet. But of course she’ll agree. It will be impossible for her to say no to me.”

Angel’s mind leaped to the soldier’s semi-automatic rifle. Surely he would not force the girl at gunpoint? The rubbing of her glasses became somewhat frantic as a disturbing thought entered her mind: the soldier sitting in her living room might be quite mad. It was not impossible for war to push a man over the edge. But if he planned to force this girl to marry him, then why was he ordering a cake to celebrate their engagement? The idea of the cake made Angel feel a little easier.

“Why will it be impossible for her to say no to you, Captain?”

“Because I’ve studied
Wazungu
women carefully,” he replied. “I’ve noticed three things about them: number one, they like beautiful things; number two, they like events to be well planned; and number three, they’re concerned about their safety.”

Angel thought for a moment, pausing in her rubbing. “Actually, I cannot disagree with any of those things.”

“So when I ask her to marry me, first I’ll give her this beautiful thing.” He reached inside his collar at the back and removed a long string that had been hanging around his neck, concealed inside his uniform. Suspended from the string by a knot was a small bundle of dirty brown fabric. He undid the knot and extracted from the piece of fabric a small, glittering diamond.

“
Eh!”
Replacing her glasses, Angel took the diamond and examined it carefully. “This is indeed a beautiful thing, Captain Calixte. And
Wazungu
women do like to get a diamond when
they get engaged; it’s their tradition.” She handed the diamond back. “But are you a rich somebody yourself that you can afford this diamond?”

Calixte laughed as he wrapped the diamond in the fabric again, knotted it back on to the string and repositioned it around his neck. “You don’t need money to get a diamond in Congo, Angel. All you need is quick fingers—or a gun. Do you think the soldiers are there only to fight?”

Calixte sat back and drained his tea. Angel did not offer him more.

“Okay, so you have this beautiful diamond. Now how will you show her that you are good at planning?”

“That’s where the cake comes in. We’ll be able to have an engagement party the minute she says yes.”

Angel cleared her throat before speaking. “But do you not think that maybe she would like to plan the party ahead of time and invite her friends?”

“She can phone them.”

“I see. But then … will the party not be … unplanned?”

“No, it will be planned, because I’ve planned the cake.
Wazungu
cannot have a party without a cake.”

Angel did not try to press the point; to do so could be to persuade him not to order the cake that he had come to order. “And so how will you deal with the third matter, the matter of her security? Will she feel that she’s safe simply because you are a soldier?”

“Not at all. I’ll show her my certificate.” He reached into his trouser pocket and brought out a piece of paper, which he unfolded and handed to Angel. It was a photocopy of some kind of official document in Kinyarwanda and French, with an official-looking stamp in the lower right-hand corner.

“What is this certificate?” she asked. “What does it say?”

“It says that I have tested negative for HIV.”

Angel looked for any words that she might recognise. Sure
enough, there were the letters VIH—the French for HIV—and a French word that looked very like the English word
negative.
On a dotted line across the middle of the document, the name Calixte Munyaneza Ntagahera had been typed. It was definitely Calixte’s certificate. But was this man she was talking to definitely Calixte? A person had to be so careful in such matters, because it was very easy for somebody to pretend to be negative with a borrowed certificate. That was one of the dangers that Angel had learned from Odile. Then she noticed the date on the official stamp.

“Captain Calixte, this test was done almost two years ago.”

“So?”

“So is it not possible that this result is … well …
old?
Will your girlfriend not want to see a certificate that is new?” “Why would she want that?”

Angel felt exasperated. Was this man ignorant as well as mad? “How long has your girlfriend known you, Captain Calixte? Does she trust you?”

“She doesn’t know me yet, Angel, but I’m sure that she’ll trust me when I present myself to her with my diamond and my certificate and my cake.”

Angel looked at him and blinked a few times, saying nothing. Then she cleared her throat and said, “I’m confused, Captain Calixte. Are you telling me that you and your fiancée-to-be have not actually met?”

“No.”

“No, that is not what you are saying, or no, you have not actually met?”

“We have not met. But I’m planning to introduce myself to her as soon as my cake is ready.”

Angel took off her glasses and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. “So you’re planning to introduce yourself to her, show her your certificate, ask her to marry you, give her the diamond and have her phone her friends immediately to
come and eat the cake that you’ve brought to celebrate your engagement.”

“Yes. We can marry here or in her country; that is of no importance to me. But what is essential is that she will take me with her when her time here is finished. That is how I will escape. That is my plan.”

Angel had still not opened her eyes. She desperately wanted a cup of milky, spicy tea with a large amount of sugar in it, but if she made one for herself she would be obliged to make one for her guest as well—and her guest was in all probability somebody who belonged in the psychiatric hospital at Ndera. She did not want him to stay in her apartment any longer than necessary.

“Right,” she said, opening her eyes and putting her glasses back on. “So let us make sure that your cake is a very fine one. Now, you don’t know this girl, so you don’t know what kind of cake she would like. We’ll have to choose something—”

Calixte interrupted. “But
you
know the girl, Angel. I’ve seen you talking to her on the street, outside the church of Saint Michael. You can advise me on what she would like.”

Angel was not sure that she could take any more, but she had to ask the question.

“Who is she?”

When Calixte gave her the name, she sighed deeply and dropped her head into her hands.

FOR
her talk to the Girls Who Mean Business, Angel wore the same dress that she had worn to the function at the Tanzanian Embassy; it made her look smart and professional, and it had the added advantage of being sufficiently loose to ease her ascent to, and descent from, the front seat of Ken Akimoto’s Pajero, which had been reserved in advance for the trip to Sophie’s school.

Carefully balancing the board bearing the money-cake on her lap, Angel told Bosco about the man who had visited her earlier that day.