Our Lady of the Nile (8 page)

He, Fontenaille, was now going to fulfill his mission. He had abandoned everything for her. He had rebuilt the goddess’s temple,
and the pyramid of the black pharaohs. He had painted the goddess, and Candace, the queen. “And you,” he said, “because you are beautiful, because you look like them, you will get your Memory back, thanks to me.”

Monsieur de Fontenaille led them to his workshop. With some difficulty, they weaved their way through the stacks of boxes of drawings. There, on an easel, was a sketched portrait.

“But that’s you, Veronica,” said Virginia.

“Yes,” said Monsieur de Fontenaille. “That is indeed our goddess, but you’ll see her better in her temple.”

The walls were hung with reproductions and photographs of frescoes, bas-reliefs, and steles depicting black pharaohs on their thrones; gods with falcon heads, jackal heads, crocodile heads; goddesses crowned with solar discs and cattle horns. Monsieur de Fontenaille paused before a large map of the River Nile. Veronica noticed that none of the place-names on it matched those she had read in her geography book.

“That’s Philae, the temple of the Great Goddess,” explained Monsieur de Fontenaille. “And there, that’s Meroë, capital of the Kush, the empire of the black pharaohs, of the Candace; capital of a thousand pyramids. I’ve been there for you, the Tutsi, and I found you there. Here, I’ll show you.”

He handed her a sheet from one of the boxes.

“It’s your portrait. I did it based on the rough sketches I made
at the pilgrimage. And now I’ll set it next to this photo I took at Meroë. It shows Isis, the Great Goddess, spreading her wings to protect the kingdom. Her breasts are bared. Look closely at her face, it’s your own, to the last detail. Someone did your portrait in Meroë three thousand years ago. This proves it.”

“But I wasn’t around three thousand years ago, I don’t have wings, and the kingdom is gone.”

“Just wait and see, you’ll soon understand. Now we must go to the temple.”

“Veronica,” said Monsieur de Fontenaille, “when you came to the temple for the first time, you probably didn’t take in my fresco well. Look closely at the faces of the young women bringing offerings to the Great Goddess, don’t you recognize some of them?”

“Oh, yes,” said Virginia, “the third one there, that’s me! And the one just in front of her is Emmanuella, who was in her final year a couple of years ago. And there’s Brigitte, who’s in tenth grade. It’s like he’s painted every Tutsi in the lycée.”

“Well, I’m not there.”

“You’re not in the procession because you’re the chosen one. Turn around and you’ll see,” said Monsieur de Fontenaille.

There on the back wall, the face of the Great Goddess was indeed that of Veronica. Only the eyes were strangely large.

“You see,” said Monsieur de Fontenaille, “last Sunday, I had ample time to observe you closely. Then I corrected the face of
the goddess so it really looks like yours. Now you can no longer deny it: you are Isis.”

“I am no such thing. I don’t like you making fun of me. And it’s dangerous to mock the spirits of the dead. The
abazimu
might turn on you, and their vengeance is often cruel.”

“Don’t be upset. Soon you’ll understand. Follow me, the tour’s not over yet.”

They exited the temple and climbed up to the ridge. A few long-horned cows were grazing on the slope, watched by young herders. On a nearby hill lay the enclosure where the cattle returned every evening. The dome of the main hut, with its artistically plaited tuft, rose above the encircling corral of shrubs. “See,” said Monsieur de Fontenaille, “if the Tutsi were to disappear, I would at least save their cows, the
inyambo
. Perhaps it was a bull like that one there, a sacred bull, who led them as far as here.” At the summit, in the midst of a thicket of old trees, like a slice of forest, stood a pyramid, taller and more tapering than the one erected by the Belgians at the source of the Nile. “That’s where I made excavations,” he explained. “The elders said it was the grave of a queen, Queen Nyiramavugo. So I ordered a dig and we found a skeleton, pearls, pottery, and copper bracelets. I’m no archaeologist. I didn’t want the Queen’s remains ending up in a museum, behind glass. So I had them fill in the trench and build this pyramid on top of it. Queen Nyiramavugo has a sepulcher befitting a Candace queen. Come here, Virginia, since from now on you, too, are queen, Queen Candace. Make whole the chain
of time once again. Now everything is in place. The temple, the pyramid, the sacred bull. And I’ve rediscovered Isis and Candace, as beautiful as the day the world was formed. The ending will be as the beginning. That is the secret. Isis has returned to the spring. I have the secret, the secret, the se …”

Monsieur de Fontenaille seemed to be having great difficulty containing the exaltation that overwhelmed him, his hands shook, his throat was tight. To calm down, he went and sat on a rock a little way away, and spent a long while contemplating the rolling mountains that seemed to soar to infinity beneath the clouds.

“I don’t think he even sees the same landscape as we do,” said Veronica. “He probably fills it with goddesses, Candace queens, and black pharaohs. It’s like a movie playing in his head, but now he wants flesh-and-blood actresses, and that’s us.”

“The Tutsi have already acted in white men’s B movies, or in their craziness, you should say, and we suffered for it. I don’t want to play Queen What’s-Her-Name. I want to get back to the lycée. Come on, let’s tell him to drive us back.”

As the young women drew near, Monsieur de Fontenaille seemed to awaken from a deep sleep.

“The rain’s coming,” said Veronica. “It’s late, you have to drive us back to the path.”

“I’ll take you. Don’t worry, no one will see you. But next Sunday, I’ll be waiting for you. It’ll be the big day. Much better than the pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Nile.”

It was Immaculée who found Veronica splayed at the bottom of the dormitory stairs.

“Help! Help! Veronica’s dead, she fell, she’s not moving.”

The lycée girls had just sat down at the refectory tables, but they rushed over to the staircase. Virginia got there first and leaned over Veronica.

“Nonsense. She’s not dead, she’s not dead, she fainted, she fell down the stairs and banged her head on a step.”

“Must’ve had one too many,” said Gloriosa. “She must’ve gone to Leonidas’s bar. She’s scared of nothing, that girl. Shameless. The boys bought her a few drinks, and she didn’t say no.”

“Maybe she’s been poisoned,” said Immaculée. “There are way too many jealous girls in this place.”

Sister Gertrude, who doubled as a nurse, fought her way through the throng of girls.

“Move back, give her some air. Help me carry her to the infirmary.”

Sister Gertrude took Veronica’s shoulders and Virginia lifted her legs, shoving a suddenly helpful Gloriosa out of the way: “Don’t you dare touch her!”

They laid Veronica on the metal bed in the infirmary. Virginia wanted to stay and watch over her friend, but Sister Gertrude asked her to leave and shut the door. A small group of girls waited outside for the Sister’s diagnosis. Sister Gertrude eventually opened the door and declared:

“It’s nothing, just a bout of malaria, I’ll deal with it. She mustn’t be disturbed, there’s nothing more for you to do here.”

Sleep eluded Virginia. What had happened to Veronica? What had that madman de Fontenaille done to her? Virginia didn’t dare imagine. The whites here thought they could do anything – they were white. Virginia reproached herself for refusing to accompany her friend. The two of them would have defended themselves; she had her little knife and would have convinced Veronica to flee before it was too late. As soon as the wake-up bell sounded, while the others washed and the Sisters attended morning Mass, Virginia slipped off to the infirmary. Veronica was sitting on the bed, her face deep in a large bowl. As soon as she saw her friend, she put the bowl down on the bedside table: “You see,” she said. “Sister Gertrude’s been taking good care of me, she gave me some milk.”

“What happened to you? Tell me before Sister gets back.”

“It’s tricky, like waking from a bad dream, a nightmare. I don’t know if what I’m about to tell you actually happened. The whites are worse than our poisoners. So I went to the meeting place, at the rock. The jeep was waiting for me, but it wasn’t Fontenaille at the wheel. It was a young guy, a Tutsi obviously, probably one of those he calls his
ingabo
. In the living room was that servant with the gold braid, holding his tray of orange juice. He told me to drink it. The juice tasted funny. Fontenaille entered, draped in a white cloth with one shoulder bare.

“ ‘Your friend didn’t come?’

“ ‘No, she’s sick.’

“ ‘Too bad, that’s her loss, she won’t discover her Truth.’

“I can’t recall what happened to me next. It was like I had no more free will, like I no longer belonged to myself. There was something, someone, in me, stronger than me. I saw myself in the temple. I was like the painted women on the wall. I don’t know who undressed me. My breasts were bare and I was wrapped in see-through gold fabric. But I felt no shame. It was like a dream you can’t wake from, and I saw myself in this dream. Around me, the fresco warriors had stepped off the wall. They didn’t really look like
intore
. All they wore were these cropped shorts, and they carried lances and large cowhide shields. I’ve no idea whether their hair had been straightened, or whether they were wearing wigs. Now I think they were the warriors Fontenaille was talking about. I felt like I was in a movie. Fontenaille made me sit on the throne and placed the hat with the large horns on my head. I saw him as if through a fog, sweeping his arms about and speaking incomprehensible words like the priest at Mass. I can’t remember what occurred after that. I lost consciousness. Maybe I fell from the throne. I don’t remember anything. When I came to my senses, I was in the jeep. It was the young servant who was driving. I was wearing my uniform again – someone must have put it on me. He dropped me very close to the lycée, telling me, ‘Try to walk in without drawing attention. Take care of yourself,
and not a word to anyone. But have a good look in your bra, there’s bound to be something in there for you.’ I managed to make my way upstairs. Inside my bra I found ten thousand-franc notes. I hid them in my suitcase. But as I came back down, everything started to spin, and I fell.”

“And he didn’t do anything to you?”

“No, he didn’t touch me. He’s not like the other whites, who only want to fling you into bed. What he wants is to play out his crazy notions. I’m his Isis.”

“Why did he drug you, then?”

“I don’t know. He was afraid I would refuse to play along, that I’d make fun of him. He wanted everything to happen exactly as he had dreamed, so he made me drink his potion, but he overdid it, he’s a bad poisoner. There are limits to my curiosity, after all, do you think I’d have agreed to go along with his ridiculous game without his potion? There was a letter with the banknotes. He said that he was sorry he had to make me drink his potion, and for not trusting me, but he had no choice: there was no room for failure. He hopes I’ll understand and that I’ll still come back and see him. I’m the only one who can play goddess. He’s invited me to stay at his place during the long vacation. He’ll pay my fees, even for me to go to Europe. He’s prepared to spend a lot of money on this …”

“And you believe his promises?”

“Can you imagine if they were true?”

“You’re as crazy as he is. You’ll end up believing you’re the
goddess. You know what happened to us Tutsi when some agreed to play the role the whites assigned to us. My grandmother told me how when the whites arrived, they thought we were dressed like savages. They sold glass beads, loads of pearls, and tons of white cloth to the women, the chiefs’ wives. They showed them how to wear it all and how to fix their hair. They turned them into the Ethiopians, the Egyptians they’d come all this way to seek. Now they had their proof. They dressed them to fit their own delusions.”

The Blood of Shame

Once again she was woken up by that same bad dream. Her schoolmates were furious; they made fun of her, for she let out a cry loud enough to wake them, too. It happened much too often. They were going to complain to the dorm monitor.

Modesta was no longer sure whether it had really been a nightmare. She looked at the sheets. Then, still in bed, she lifted her nightdress and felt between her thighs. No, there was nothing. It was just a bad dream that had plagued her ever since she became a woman. Perhaps it was a curse or an evil spell that someone had cast on her, someone she didn’t know, a hidden enemy, maybe a person very close to her, one of her schoolmates. Or else it came from farther away, from back home, a jealous neighbor; she had no idea, perhaps she never would.

In the dream, she was sometimes in her own bed, but more often in class. She began to bleed, a huge red patch soaking into her blue dress, sticky blood between her thighs, and down her legs, a long stream flowing under her seat and beneath the other desks. The pupils started screaming: “It’s her again, she’s bleeding, she’s bleeding … It’ll never end!” And the teacher shouted: “We must take her to Sister Gerda. She knows what to do with girls who bleed anywhere and everywhere.” And suddenly she found herself in Sister Gerda’s office, with an angry Sister Gerda shouting at her: “Look at that! It’s what I’ve always said: that’s what it means to be a woman. And you all want to become women. It’s your own fault! And now there’s all that blood. It’s never ending!”

Modesta didn’t like to remember. And yet the same memory kept flooding back. It was no longer a dream, more a memory she kept reliving, like a sin she’d never be able to atone for. It began the year she started middle school. She had passed the national exam and was therefore able to join the core curriculum. She felt proud. Her parents felt proud. The neighbors felt proud, and jealous. She felt proud that her neighbors felt jealous because of her. They went to the tailor’s to have her uniform made; they purchased exercise books and pens from the Saint-Michel Économat; from a Pakistani shop in Muhima, they bought material to make two sheets. The list also specified two meters of white fabric, the type known as
americani
. She had no idea what that could be for.
Neither did her father. She didn’t ask her mother, who knew nothing about school stuff. She hadn’t dared ask the parish priest. They put everything into the suitcase they’d bought specially for her, since her big sister’s case was too battered. She needed a new case to make a good impression, for the sake of her family’s honor. When they got to school, the sister monitor checked the contents. It was all there, including the
americani
material, which the sister appeared to consider especially important: “You’re to bring it along to the first sewing lesson,” she told her.