Running the Rift (14 page)

J
EAN
P
ATRICK LOOKED UP
from his book and peered out the bus window at the thirsty fields of young maize. Although this short season of rain was known for its fickle nature, so far it had shown only its cruel teeth of drought. Soon it would be dusk, and they were only now climbing out of Nyungwe Forest, rocking over the bumpy road. Coach must be waiting for him already, pacing and annoyed. And it didn't make it any easier that Jean Patrick was suffering his first slump. Since Nationals, he had not repeated his qualifying time, and this cast a gloomy shadow over his usual anticipation.

There had been three checkpoints, and the soldiers made everyone step out. Each time, as Jean Patrick handed over his Hutu card, he swallowed fear. Each time, the soldier merely glanced at his picture and handed back his papers.

The man in the next seat peered over Jean Patrick's shoulder through crooked spectacles. “What are those crazy symbols? Is that the Muslim language?” He wore tattered brown trousers and a stained shirt that must once have been yellow, and he gave off a scent of must and urwagwa.

“Physics, muzehe. It's my schoolbook.” A sudden bump threw Jean Patrick against the man's shoulder.
A body in motion tends to remain in motion. A body at rest tends to remain at rest.
In the packed, airless bus, Jean Patrick's knees pressed into the seat in front of him, and he had no room to move without hitting some part of the man's body.

The bus stopped, and two young women in makeup and high heels stepped aboard. They squeezed together into the single remaining seat. “Tutsi,” the man spat in Jean Patrick's ear. “See how tall and slender? And look at those expensive clothes—like ParisFrance,” he said, running the two words together as if he believed they were one. He tapped the cover
of Jean Patrick's book. “Did you know the RPF run naked through the forests and have sex with monkeys?”

Jean Patrick coughed into his hand to hide his laughter. “I had not heard that.”

“It's true,” the man said, belching. “I read it in
Kangura.
”

A grandmother in the seat in front turned her head. “And if you read in
Kangura
that gold could be found at the bottom of a lake, would you jump in after it?” She kissed her teeth.

“If I read a prediction there, I know within a week it will come to pass,” a mama with a broad face and farmer's sturdy shoulders said. She poked her friend, a lady in a complicated head covering, for emphasis. The two women in the shared seat moved closer together. The already heated air heated up further.

The man leaned into Jean Patrick. “I also heard RPF have sprouted horns because of their evil deeds.”

Jean Patrick pointed to his head. “No horns here.”

“Ha-ha!” the man bellowed. “That's because you're not Tutsi,” he said, as if he had just penned the last stroke of some grand mathematical theorem.

Jean Patrick angled closer to the window to escape his neighbor and catch the last light to read by. On the page was a graph of time versus distance with tiny red arrows along a curved line.
Instantaneous velocity is the limit as the elapsed time approaches zero.
He imagined red arrows shooting from his back to measure his speed. He peered out at the sullen sky, the swollen, skittish clouds that so far had delivered little rain. By next week, he believed, they would open with a vengeance.
Everything in this world,
his father had written in his journal,
has a mathematical expression.
Jean Patrick closed the book and watched the passengers sway with the movement of the vehicle.

“G
OOD EVENING
. A
LMOST
good night,” Coach said. He stood by the open bus door, impatience written in his posture.

Jean Patrick pushed his way through the mass of descending passengers and jumped to the ground. “Sorry. Checkpoints, as usual.”

Coach frowned. “Problems?”

“No, just slow. This war is making the soldiers nervous, and they take it out on us.”

“Well, let's go and eat. We could both use it.” Jean Patrick threw his bag into the backseat. He no longer had to ask to know that they were headed to La Chouette.

The radio played full force behind the bar. Coach guided Jean Patrick to his usual spot and ordered Primus and food for both of them. The latest Simon Bikindi tune, “Nanga Abahutu,” “I Hate the Hutu,” came on.
I hate them and I don't apologize for that.
Coach chuckled. He's talking about the Hutu of Butare. Have you heard it?”

“How could I not? Radio Rwanda likes that song too much.”

The food came, and the waiter poured their beers. “So you see, as a Hutu from Butare, even a loyalist like me stands accused. I have made it onto Bikindi's hate list.” He cut into a chicken leg.

“Even me, I have to laugh when I hear his songs. They're so exaggerated.”

Coach shook a sauce-stained finger at him. “Don't forget—you're a member of Rubanda Nyamwinshi now. The great majority. Officially, you're playing on Bikindi's team.”

Jean Patrick felt the hot flash of anger in his face. Could he calculate the
instantaneous velocity
of rage? In his mind, red arrows exploded from Simon Bikindi's music, sprang from the students talking in animated voices at the next table. They sprouted from a stalk of bananas on an old woman's head as she passed by the window. Arrows blazed from the cue sticks of the soldiers playing pool, calling out “Shot!,” slapping hands.

J
EAN
P
ATRICK STRUGGLED
through another eight hundred, wishing it would end. His times were not improving.

“Run from your belly,” Coach shouted. Jean Patrick didn't get what he meant. “Your belly!” Coach repeated. He made Jean Patrick lie down on the grass and place a hand on his abdomen. He made him bicycle in the air on his back.

This is stupid, Jean Patrick thought. Frustration fueled his stroke. He forced his cadence higher until his stomach cramped. Then, out of nowhere, a jolt of energy went straight through his belly and into his hand as his legs connected to his core. “Coach, I got it!”

“OK! Now get up and run. Quickly, before it goes away.”

The feeling was no more than a shift in his center of gravity, a subtle flow of force inside him. But it was enough. He knew that this time, when he crossed the line, Coach would hold up his stopwatch and smile.

A
FTER THE WORKOUT
, Jean Patrick sat on Coach's couch and watched him pace. His thighs still throbbed with a pleasant, tingly heat. President Habyarimana glared down from his portrait on the wall. Giddy from his effort and emboldened by the Primus beer he had half finished, Jean Patrick tipped his glass toward the president in a mock toast.

“What is that boy's name, the Tutsi in your class who runs distance?” Coach asked.

Jean Patrick's heart quickened. “Isaka.”

“Do you still run with him? He pushes you—you push each other.”

Jean Patrick averted his eyes from Habyarimana's gaze. “He left.” Isaka had not returned to school in September. There were rumors that his family had been killed in an August massacre in Kibuye, rumors that they had fled to Burundi. Jean Patrick didn't take them seriously. He knew his friend's spirit. Whatever had happened in Kibuye, Isaka had somehow survived.

“No matter. You'll be here permanently soon enough.” Coach jiggled a handful of peanuts. “There are two parts to the eight hundred: heart and head. You've got the heart, no question, but the head is where I come in. If you don't have the tactics, you'll never get out of the pack when you run with the Ndizeyes and Gilberts, the Sebastian Coes and Paul Erengs of this world. And starting next year, you'll be doing that.” He listed off the dates of important meets, the times Jean Patrick should be running by then. “Strategy, Jean Patrick. More than any other race, the eight hundred is about strategy. Watch any national or international race and see how often the original leader actually wins,” he said.

Listening to Coach's plans, Jean Patrick realized that, like Roger at Easter, he now stood at the vertiginous edge of his future. The Olympics became something he could touch and taste and smell. He took another sip of beer and enjoyed the rush, the sensation of falling and flying at the same time.

“Are you listening?” Coach poked Jean Patrick's toe.

Jean Patrick's head snapped up, his eyes immediately pinned by Coach's intense stare. He turned his attention to a copy of
Kangura
on the table beside him.

A COCKROACH CANNOT GIVE BIRTH TO A BUTTERFLY,
he read from the open page, a cartoon with a Tutsi woman beckoning to a Hutu man. A machete dripped blood behind her back. What would the world see when he ran for Rwanda? Cockroach or butterfly? When his picture appeared on the front page of the paper, how would anyone know who—or what—he was?

Father Julius wrote the equation for the behavior of springs on the board. It was the last few minutes of the last class of the day, and Jean Patrick couldn't concentrate. Looking out the window at the gray, rippled sky, he rubbed his legs, still sore from the weekend's workout. Rain weighted the air. Quietly he touched a hand to his belly, lifted his leg beneath the desk, and tried to feel the instant when muscle converted to action.

“Here is the work done by the spring when force is applied.” Father Julius drew a diagram with a spring and a thick arrow to represent the force. He wrote the calculus beside it.

Jean Patrick copied the equation in his notebook. Then he added,
Like a spring, if someone pushes me, I push back. An equal and opposite force.

A tentative
ping
sounded on the metal roof. Jean Patrick looked at Daniel.
Rain??
he scribbled on the corner of his page. Daniel grinned and shrugged his shoulders.

The raindrops came closer together. Father drew two blocks connected by a spring, arrows of force between them. Before he finished, a riotous downpour ripped the sky.
Yes!!! Rain!!!
Daniel scrawled below Jean Patrick's question.

A rivulet of rain dripped between ceiling and wall. It ran down the board through the middle of Father's artwork. The drumbeat of rain rode over his words. Finally the bell rang. “Class is finished,” Father shouted, chalk-whitened fingers held high.

Everyone bolted from the classrooms, taking off their shoes to dance
in the season's first storm. “Imvura!” they shouted, faces turned toward the sky, arms held wide. Rain! It was an occasion worthy of tradition, the best Intore dancers going to the center to leap and spin, mimicking the steps of the early heroes, the graceful women of the mwami's court. “Finally it's come!” they sang. Even the priests joined in, showing off their best steps, white frocks raised to their calves. The courtyard erupted in swampy celebration.

Jean Patrick could almost believe there was no war, no drought, no indangamuntu weighing down his pocket. Bean plants would sprout. Fish would fly onto hooks. Roger would come home from the mountains unharmed. From nowhere, a memory of Mathilde came to him, a day when her face gleamed like polished copper, her smile transformed by the simple miracle of rain. After her death, they found out she had come in first in exams. She would have started secondary school this year, but no miracle could make her rise from the dead.

A
FEW DROPS
still fell when Jean Patrick and Daniel walked back to the dorm and pushed through the ruckus of naked boys. Instantly, Jean Patrick knew his bed had been disturbed. He could smell it, sense it on his skin, taste it on his tongue. He felt between the sheets, looked under the bed. When he ran his hand beneath the pillow, he found what had been placed there.

It was a copy of
Kangura,
folded open to an excerpt from a speech by Mugesera. Two sentences were underlined in red.
If you are struck once on one cheek, you should strike back twice.
And
Your home is in Ethiopia, and we are going to send you back there, quickly, by the Nyabarongo River.
The word
quickly
had been crossed out and
dead
written in its place.

Jean Patrick put the paper back beneath the pillow and sat heavily on the bed. The euphoria of the rain had evaporated; in its place was a sense of shock and the eerie feeling of eyes at his back. He looked around the room but saw only the chaos of bodies and slapping towels.

“What happened, eh?” Daniel sat beside him, dressed only in a towel. Beads of water blinked from his skin.

“Leave it,” Jean Patrick said, instantly regretting his harsh tone. “I'll be back soon.”

“Wait! Where are you going?”

Jean Patrick ran outside without answering. It was forbidden to leave school grounds, but he slipped out the gates, still barefoot and in his soaked school uniform. Again he felt the prickle of eyes at his back. At the edge of town, he stopped at his father's favorite bakery. The yeasty warmth of baking bread enveloped him. Instantly he was a small boy again, holding his father's hand and pointing at the chocolate-covered biscuits.