Running the Rift (31 page)

Claire cleared the dishes and set down a bowl of fruit and a thermos of tea. When she had closed the door behind her, Niyonzima cleared his throat and folded his hands on the table. “My daughter has been against speaking to you frankly,” he said.

“In these times, ignorance is a blessing.” Bea's eyes flashed. Her glance flitted to her mother, then back to Niyonzima. “Knowledge can be a dangerous thing.”

Niyonzima shook his head. “Ineza and I think differently.”

Jean Patrick could not think clearly. Since his head still swam, he let the current of Niyonzima's words carry him. He hoped that when he reached the shore, Bea would be there, extending her hand to him.

“As you doubtless know, this country becomes more dangerous every day for those who are not graced with the government's good favor,” Niyonzima said. “You are in the spotlight, and you must be mindful of the company you keep.” He put a hand on Bea's shoulder. “You risk your future if you are seen with those of us who openly oppose the government. It was Bea's wish to sweep you from her door and make that decision for you, but she has agreed that we should speak plainly to you and let you decide for yourself. Whatever your answer, it must be given from your mind and not your heart.”

After days of crashing around without direction, Jean Patrick had found the pointing needle of the compass. “I don't have to decide. I know already.”

Niyonzima held up his hand. “Consider carefully. If you stay, understand that you have walked into a dangerous room, and that once you have come inside, you cannot change your mind and go out again.”

“And don't forget there is someone else to consider,” Bea said. “Your coach holds your future in his hands. He watches the company you keep.” She pointed her knife at Jean Patrick and then peeled and sliced the mango on her plate.

With the mention of his coach, the last variable in the equation fell into place. It was Coach who had refused to greet Niyonzima properly, who told Jolie that Jean Patrick was
involved with a girl, and not a good one.
All this time, Bea had been trying to protect him. He took the slice of mango she offered and let it slither down his throat.

He would not be forced to choose between one future and the other. He had come out in the rain, burning with fever, to say his piece, and now he would say it. He had two fists; he could grasp one dream in each. “I can't let worry beat me,” he said. “Any more than I can let an opponent beat me on the track. From the first day I saw Bea, I knew I would do what I had to in order to win her.”

“That is not the right reason,” Bea said.

“It is the only reason I have.”

“My father went to prison a strong man.” Bea's voice trembled. “When he came out, I thought the white-haired grandfather limping toward us was a stranger. He looked like the walking dead, and I told the guard, ‘You have made a mistake. This man is not my father.' As you see, he has never fully recovered. This is what Habyarimana does to his enemies. Do not think you will be immune.”

Ineza covered Bea's hand with hers. “You must look with your eyes open into this room before you decide to enter.”

Gatabazi pulled his chair closer. He had been so quiet that Jean Patrick had forgotten his presence. “Bea told us it was your friend's father who helped me on the road. You must thank him for me. I believe I owe him my life.”

“Pascal said a rock hit your car.”

“I can tell you don't believe it.”

“As a student of physics and engineering, I was confused by the mechanics, especially when I saw your car. If such a big boulder hit the roof, how could you live?”

“One hundred percent!” Gatabazi nodded his approval. “I will tell you the truth. A truck came up behind me, going very fast. When he pulled out to pass, he came very close, and the passenger threw something out the window. I knew immediately it was a grenade, but all I could do was steer into the bush and dive for cover. This time they failed, but they will try again. Eventually they will succeed. No matter—they can't stop me from speaking out.”

Jean Patrick recalled Bea's comment on the morning she first told him about her father. Like Niyonzima, Gatabazi loved Rwanda enough to die for her. “Do you know who it was?”

“Perhaps the extremists, perhaps someone from Habyarimana's inner circle. I am a thorn in all their sides. We in the PSD, the Parti Social Démocrate, are trying to free Rwanda from Habyarimana's stranglehold on power. We want a coalition government, and we want to share power with the RPF. The extremists can't accept that.”

“I've been waiting for the government to grow impatient with my articles and speeches again,” Niyonzima said. “Even with our Tutsi préfet, I don't know if I can remain safe, but that is a risk we have all accepted.” Sweat shone on Niyonzima's skin, and it gave the appearance of a glow coming from within, from his passion.

Now that Jean Patrick understood why Bea had left him, he would plant his feet firmly and hold on. Just two months before, Habyarimana had thrown a party in his honor, and Jean Patrick had shaken his hand. It was foolish to think anyone would want to hurt him, and he wished everyone would stop worrying over him. All he wanted was to run and to have Bea beside him. “I understand what you are telling me. But as I said, I did not come here in the bad weather to let doubt beat me down.”

O
NLY
B
EA AND
Jean Patrick remained awake. Gatabazi, asleep in Niyonzima's study, snored softly. Rain struck the window and slid down in tiny streams. Jean Patrick studied their trace on the glass a moment
before he spoke. “There was a scarf, a green one, in my pocket. Do you know what happened to it?”

Bea put a hand to her mouth. “Just a minute.” She went to the kitchen and returned with the bandanna. “This?” She held it out, crumpled and wet, to Jean Patrick. “I found it in the bathroom, on the clothesline. I thought it was a rag for cleaning.”

Jean Patrick cupped it in his palm. “It belonged to a friend.” Another door better left locked and guarded, but he opened it and invited Bea inside. “He stepped on a mine.” Bea gasped again. “He didn't die, but he lost his leg.”

“You surprise me, Nkuba Jean Patrick. I see we both have secrets.” She looked out the window at the rain. “Is he RPF?”

Jean Patrick took a deep breath. “Yes. We ran together at Gihundwe. He was a great distance runner. Our last year, he just disappeared, never came back from vacation. People said he had been killed, but then I got a message—he wants me to run for him in the Olympics.” He chuckled. “The marathon.” None of this was a lie. Jean Patrick was merely selecting his truths, a lesson he was quickly learning. Roger's story jumped onto his tongue, trying to find a way into the room, but Jean Patrick stilled it. That was a secret he needed to let sleep.

“My God, you'll die,” Bea said. “I've seen you after eight hundred meters.”

Jean Patrick thought of the photograph in her room, and his heart grew full. “True enough. But I need some way to honor him. His spirit is so strong.”

“I have an idea.” Bea disappeared and came back with a sketchbook. She turned the pages—flowers, her backyard, Claire's children, portraits of Niyonzima and Ineza—until she came to a sketch of three men, two black and one white, standing on the medal podium at the Olympics. The two black athletes raised black-gloved fists. They wore no shoes, just black socks beneath rolled-up pants. All three athletes had large white buttons pinned to their warm-ups. The title of the sketch was
Mexico City, 1968.

“I drew this from a scrapbook my father kept. Long before he heard my first cry, he saved important newspaper articles for his children.” A faint smile graced her lips. “And of course to study how they were written.”

“You drew this?”

“I did.”

Jean Patrick passed his hand lightly above the page as if to absorb its energy. “Like your mama's painting, it comes alive.”

“They were protesting apartheid in South Africa and racism in America. I was so moved. They could have lost their medals, but they were willing to take the chance for their beliefs.”

“Why are you showing me this?” Jean Patrick felt a twinge of annoyance. He did not want to be pushed into anyone's politics.

Bea touched her finger to the gold medalist. “His name is Tommie Smith. You can't see it, but he also wore a black scarf to stand for black pride.”

“A scarf! Mana yanjye! I don't have to run the marathon after all. I just have to wear my friend's scarf in the eight hundred. But me, when I win a medal, I will not chance anyone taking it away.”

“One more thing,” Bea said.

She leaned closer to flip the pages. He felt her quiet, steady breath, her heat. Suddenly, Jean Patrick was looking into his own face, sketched from the photograph on her desk. He believed she had captured him perfectly, down to the mix of pain and transcendent joy radiant in his eyes.

J
EAN
P
ATRICK HAD BEEN HOME
for Christmas vacation when he heard the announcement on the radio that Gatabazi's PSD party would get what they had struggled so hard to achieve—a role in a transitional government. For the first time, they would share in power and have a true voice in shaping Rwanda's future. Jean Patrick and Uncle had celebrated with urwagwa, sipping the banana beer from a common straw, but as they sat and watched evening swallow the lake, Uncle wagged a finger. “This does not mean Tutsi should sleep with both eyes at the same time,” he said, the same words Roger had used to warn Jean Patrick about Coach. When he heard them again, uneasiness crept from the mist to sit beside him in his rickety chair. Its presence stuck with him for the rest of vacation and even on the bus ride back to Butare.

Now, the day of the swearing-in, Jean Patrick tried to shake nervousness from his fingers as he prepared for his workout. This morning, Bea and Niyonzima had gone to Kigali to watch the ceremony, and to keep his mind going in one direction, Jean Patrick had come to the track to run. The workout was pinned to his shorts: a series of four hundred meters, fast, followed by a two-hundred-meter recovery, then four eight hundreds at race pace. He was on his last four hundred, not looking forward to the eights. A trace of sluggishness from his cold still lingered. Much of the time he was home, he had been too sick to run. This was his first attempt to return to his training, and yesterday's rough bus journey from Cyangugu had not helped.

He passed the start line and glanced at his watch: not good. The watch was new—a Timex, a Christmas gift from Coach. He had found it folded inside the package of workouts Coach had left for him, along with a note.
This will substitute for me. The Americans have created a miracle, keeping track of ten laps at once. Which you will write down in my absence.

Seeing his four hundred time, Jean Patrick wished he didn't have the reminder. He wished he had Coach to push him, the rest of the team to challenge him. On his own, his muscles tired and out of shape from too much rest, he couldn't reach his goals. There was at least one good thing: the truck tire existed only in memory. Coach would reinstate this torture when he returned, but for the present he had disappeared. Jean Patrick had gone to see him as soon as he returned, but Jolie said he was not expected back before the end of vacation. When he asked where Coach had gone, Jolie called him inshyanutsi—a nosy one.

Jean Patrick slowed for his recovery, shook out his fingers, tried to find in his legs the tempo he had lost. At his peak, he felt as if he sliced the air when he ran. Now he pushed against it, left jagged flaps of it in his wake. Crossing the start for his first eight hundred, he called back the memory of New Year's Day with his family to keep him company.

“I
AM TELLING YOU,”
Uncle Emanuel said. “These days, prosperity opens her arms to me. I have seen a motorboat and soon it will be mine.” The table was crowded with family and neighbors, piled high with food. Mukabera brought a large dish of igisafuria, made from a plump hen and her own peanuts ground into a spicy sauce. The front door remained open, and all day people from the surrounding hills came to say umwaka mwiza, happy New Year, and to share food and urwagwa. Even now, on the track, the vision made Jean Patrick smile.

He brought back the taste of the ibijumba n'ikivuguto his mother had made him. He saw himself take a sip of thick, sweetened milk, a bite of sweet potato, letting the two mix and melt in his mouth. Surrounded by family, the smells and tastes of his childhood cooking, he could almost believe he had returned to his previous life, one with two feet planted on the earth.

“Uncle,” he joked, “all these years I broke my back paddling, and now that I'm gone, you get a motor?”

“I have seen this boat with my own two eyes,” Fulgence said, emphasizing
his words with a long draft of urwagwa and a tug at his Saint Christopher medal. “The man says it is not for sale, but me, I say if your uncle wants it, he will have it. His talk his too sweet—like honey.”

Zachary sat beside Uncle with his luminous smile. He had received a scholarship for school in Kibuye. In the new term, he would begin his studies for the priesthood.

The vision gave Jean Patrick enough strength for one last brutal kick. He wheeled past the line, and the numbers on his watch gave him a glimmer of hope.

The second eight hundred proved harder than the first. He probably went out too fast. Maybe, finally, he was beginning to understand what Coach meant by
pace.
For distraction he recited the names of minerals found in Rwanda:
cassiterite, columbite, tantalite, wolframite,
quickening the tempo of the chant as he pounded the dirt. Another tenth of a second shaved from his time. For the third eight hundred, he switched to physics:
Energy is the property of matter and radiation manifested as a capacity to perform work
.
Energy. Energy
.
Energy.
He was two-tenths slower and had to jog a little extra to regain his breath.