Foreigners (24 page)

But Elizaphan stood his ground. He was determined not to return to the holding centre in the hotel beside the airport. Even with its comfortable beds, private baths and colour television, it reminded him of the camp in Zaire. He would sooner live in a dungeon than go back there. So he smiled and, in the overly polite, overly gracious, overly submissive manner that he'd come to recognize as the obligatory conduct of the refugee, assured her that the apartment would be fine.

Elizaphan took to walking to escape the smell and the headaches it brought him. At night, with the shop below closed and the windows of his apartment open, the air was breathable. But during the day he had to flee out of doors. At first, he explored the immediate neighbourhood, the residential streets that ran between Bloor and College, and those that slipped across Harbord and bordered the park at Christie Pits. It was late summer then and the sun was still strong. He found work washing dishes at a Greek diner on Clinton Street. His caseworker had suggested that he enrol in one of the city's adult learning centres to improve his English. It might help
for when he decided to sit the examinations required by the college of physicians. But Elizaphan thought less of medicine. It too belonged to the past.

Instead he concentrated on becoming lost in the city: a nameless face in the multitude, insignificant in his existence. He preferred the crowded streets, where it was easier to go unnoticed and to be unnoticing. Pushed along by the tide.

Then came a Sunday morning in late October. He found himself stopped on the sidewalk out front of St Michael's Cathedral. It was unseasonably warm; an Indian summer, the cook at the diner had told him the previous afternoon. It took Elizaphan a moment to realize what it was that had halted his progress. In consideration of the mild weather, two of the cathedral's doors had been left open, and through them drifted the sweet voice of the choir. Elizaphan, who'd served as an altar boy in his youth, recognized the processional hymn serenading the congregation as they made their way to receive the Eucharist. He stood and listened, but did not feel the urge to enter. Elizaphan had not been to church since before Zaire, even though there had been many priests in the camp and Mass was said often.

He walked on, heading west toward Yonge Street, before the parishioners emerged. Still, the sound of the choir and the unexpected brilliance of the sun had served to lighten his mood, and for the first time since his arrival, Elizaphan felt a sensation akin to belonging. He moved along the sidewalks as if he were weightless, bouncing on the balls of his feet. And without realizing it, he'd begun to look at the faces of those he passed by, taking unconscious pleasure in the fact that when he met an eye he did not feel the immediate need to look away.

At Dundas, Elizaphan crossed the street and began to make his way toward the entrance of the Eaton Centre. He was happily weaving through the mob of shoppers and tourists and street kids and panhandlers, softly humming the hymn he'd just heard. When he saw the face, the song caught in his throat, stuck like a stone in his windpipe. It was there ahead of him, motionless in the shifting throng, staring out at him. The features were immediately recognizable: the high forehead and long cheeks, the tapered chin, the thin nose and lips, the skin slightly less dark than his own. Eliel Nkongoli. But Elizaphan knew it was not Eliel. Knew that it could not be Eliel. For he had seen the man's body himself, had stood over it and looked down upon the head split open by a machete, flies feeding in the wound.

Elizaphan ran. Ran from the face that could not be Eliel Nkongoli's, though the resemblance was enough almost to make him weep. A taxicab screeched its brakes as he stepped blindly into the busy roadway, the driver cursing him in a language he could not understand. Elizaphan continued running, pushing his way through the crowded Sunday sidewalks, not knowing where he was going, his mind awash with horrible images: Eliel, his wife and two daughters, seven and nine, their bodies lying bloody and torn in the foyer of the hospital.

At night Elizaphan dreamed of the time before. When his wife, Agathe, was still with him and his son wrote loving letters and sent photographs of his happy family in Tallahassee, Florida. It was as if he were able to summon
specific images and replay them in his dreams like home movies. They flickered through his slumber in brilliant Technicolor, but were devoid of sound. The one he called upon most often was his and Agathe's last anniversary, and the trip they'd taken together to Kigali.

They stayed at the Hôtel des Mille Collines in an executive suite with their own private balcony, but spent most of their time at the poolside or wandering through the hotel's extravagant gardens. In his dream he did not recall the long trip from Kibuye or the disheartening drive through the slums northeast of the city, only their time together at the hotel.

Some nights were filled with meticulous renderings of their anniversary dinner at Le Panorama, the Hôtel des Mille Collines' top-floor restaurant. A small candlelit table against the window, where they looked out onto the distant purple silhouette of Mount Mikeno in the setting sun. He and Agathe began with
escargot de Bourgogne
. Garlic butter dripped down her chin, making her skin glisten; Elizaphan wiped it away with his thumb. Later it was chateaubriand for him,
confit de canard
for Agathe. Dessert was
bavarois au cassis
shared between them. They finished a bottle of wine and two
café crèmes
before going downstairs to Stan's Bar, to drink cocktails and dance to music that was far too young for them.

There was also the afternoon they played tennis with the middle-aged couple from England. The man was in frozen-food storage and this was a second honeymoon of sorts. His wife, he explained, wanted to see the mountain gorillas, the ones Dian Fossey had found, but they'd been warned away from the area by the travel bureau. Agathe spoke far better English than he did, and on the court there was more conversation
than play, which seemed to please the Englishman's wife, who showed little interest in the game. Afterward, they shared lunch and drinks at the Pool Bar, before the Britons set off to explore the city.

In his dreams their time was carefree: leisure without concern. It was only as morning approached that trepidation invaded. It appeared as a dimming in Agathe's eyes, as if a cloud had settled over her, blocking out the sun. At which point, as if a deaf man miraculously cured, Elizaphan was flooded with voices. But they were neither his nor Agathe's, nor those of the other hotel guests. Rather, they were the rabid utterances of Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines, warning all who listened that blood would soon be spilled.

Elizaphan took a seat in the rear of the bus. Below his feet, a discarded newspaper lay bloated in the melting slush. Already he'd become disenchanted with winter's snow. When the first flakes had drifted through November's sky, he'd stood on the sidewalk out front of his apartment and gazed upward in amazement. The mechanics from the transmission shop came out of the garage and laughed at him in a good-natured way. But when December brought the first ground-covering blanket, they paid no attention as he ran his fingers along the pavement and touched them to his lips. Now Elizaphan saw the snow for what it was: an impediment, turning the city salty and grey, disrupting it at whim.

He leaned his head against the window, the pane cold against his skin. The snowploughs that had run throughout
the night had blocked in cars parked along the roadside. Here and there hurried commuters worked at digging out their automobiles, the vapour of their breath disappearing quickly in the wind. It was still early, but even when the sun finally climbed into the sky, there would be only a hint of its presence above the slate-grey clouds. It was like an angry hand, Elizaphan thought, pushing an icy pillow down over their faces.

He returned his gaze to the interior of the bus and began to count the passengers. Including himself, there were seventeen people. This was something he found himself doing more often now. Whenever he was in an enclosed space, he counted the bodies and tried to calculate how much room they would take up if they were piled close together.

The first time it had happened was at the diner. He'd just carried a tray of clean cups and saucers to the counter at the front, and as he turned to go back to the kitchen, he stopped and let his eyes roam quickly over the dining room. Thirty-six was the number he'd come up with. Add to that the three waitresses, two cooks, the manager and himself: forty-three. With all the tables and chairs removed it would take less than half the diner to accommodate them. Of this he was certain. For Elizaphan had seen far more bodies pushed into an even smaller area than that. Indeed, there had been more in the reception room back in Kibuye.

Eliel Nkongoli, whose face he now saw everywhere, had, like Elizaphan's son, gone to America to study medicine. But unlike Elizaphan's son, Eliel had returned to Kibuye.
Returned, taken a wife, begun a family and accepted a post at l'Hôpital Murengoru. A pediatrician, he was well liked by both his patients and the hospital staff. He was quick to smile and, it always seemed, even quicker to laugh. Elizaphan liked to imagine that his own son had grown into a man like Eliel, though he knew that it was probably not the case. His and Agathe's only child had always been a sullen boy, caring but rather downcast.

There was nothing downcast about Eliel. Quite the opposite. He was gregarious, fun loving. A quality he brought back with him from America. Many was the time that he invited the hospital staff, and not just the doctors, but the nurses and custodians as well, to his house overlooking Lake Kivu to eat and drink and dance late into the night. He called them his Yankee Barbecues. Agathe always refused to go, and forbade Elizaphan from accepting the invitations. She did not approve of Eliel's kind.

But Elizaphan admired him, if from a brief distance. For he also recognized the danger in such a man. Eliel Nkongoli, at times, spoke too freely and put too much trust in supposed friendships. Elizaphan could see in the eyes of his co-workers what Eliel could not. Behind their smiles and laughter was the old stain of resentment. And when, one afternoon, while sharing a coffee in the doctors' lounge, the young pediatrician expressed his ambitions—“You watch, Dr Misago, one day I will be prefect of Kibuye. Then, my friend, you will see things change”—it was as if a hand had reached out and put a mark upon his forehead.