Running the Rift (45 page)

Time doubled back on itself. Direction lost meaning. Jean Patrick listened for a night bird, a bushpig, a monkey's warning cry, a rat scurrying through leaf litter. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. He shivered, suddenly cold. The smell of pine cut his nostrils. He crushed a carpet of pine needles, vines, and wild begonias beneath his feet. Pain cracked his skull.

H
E FOUND THE
trace of a footpath, but then the moon set, and he had to crawl to follow the faint trail. A frantic trill burst from the trees around him. At first he thought it was wood pigeons, confused and singing at the wrong time. Then shouts and chants rose above the whistles' din; “
Tubatsembatsembe!
” they whooped, a wild song of celebration.

Hand over hand he hoisted himself into a densely branched tree. The rough bark pierced his wounded palm. Above him was an abandoned monkey's nest, and he curled inside its stink. Held in the cradle of interwoven branches, he watched in silence. The Tutsi ran before their pursuers, mute and ragged, the young and the old dragged by the hand or abandoned to fate. Women carried babies in their arms, some clearly dead. Torchlight turned night into an unnatural day.

The killers wore banana leaves around their necks, and capes of banana leaves draped their shoulders. Gray paint, ash, and mud masked their faces. Even so, he recognized a guard from the university, a farmer he used to greet in the fields, the shopkeeper who had sold him the pirogue. They carried nail-studded clubs, machetes, and spears; the Interahamwe had guns and grenades, cans of petrol strapped to their backs.

Jean Patrick tried to shut his eyes, but every thud of a weapon drove them open. He had no free hand to cover his ears. Some Tutsi cried out,
some begged for life, some died in silence, not even a hand raised against the blows. He held his breath against the reek of blood and petrol, the fetid monkey refuse, until he thought he would faint. With the first air he drew, he vomited onto his chest. The tree shook, and twigs and leaves rained down. Through the crisscrossed branches, two killers stared directly at him.

“Eh! That's just a monkey. Leave it.”

“Let's get it down. Let's grill it.”

“Here we are, bellies full from Tutsi cows, and you want to grill a monkey? Muturage! Let's go.”

“Me, I'm going to catch him.” The man took a grenade from his belt and yanked the pin. He drew back his arm. In the torchlight, his ash-caked face gleamed ghostlike, transformed by blood hunger into a profane shape. Jean Patrick coiled himself into a spring, drew himself into his center.
If you remain calm, your mind will tell your body what to do.

“Igicucu! Are you crazy? Don't move!” The second killer grabbed his friend's hand in both of his. “It's us you'll kill like that—forget the fucking monkey.” He yanked the grenade away and threw it after a young boy and a woman dodging among the trees, sprinting for their lives. The blast sent them flying into the night's embrace.

Trees bent and shook. A rain of leaves, wood, earth, and flesh fell. The world expanded and contracted, resonant, swinging on its hinges. Jean Patrick's head became a struck bell.

Stillness returned, and the attackers hurried off after the few Tutsi who had managed to flee. The shrieks of whistles faded. Bodies lay scattered on the ground, caught in the last stunned moment of flight. Life flowed away beneath them, sweet and dark, seeking the earth. Jean Patrick waited to descend until his arms were too tired to hold him. He did not know which way to go; his choice was random. Behind him, a survivor begged for a sip of water, but he did not turn back.

A
BIBLICAL RAIN FELL
as Jean Patrick slogged through the marsh. When the killers came, he sank into the muck and papyrus. He felt rather than saw the others hiding beside him. They were all ghosts—the hunters and the hunted—invisible to the living.

Blood soaked his bandages. He had tied his foot to his leg to keep them going in the same direction, but the bandage was too tight, and his ankle pulsed and swelled. Vultures circled, and clouds of flies fed. A vapor of death, oily and cloying, rose from the umunyeganyege palms and clung to his hair and skin.

Jean Patrick waded and crawled, hid and waited and crawled again, until fatigue and dizziness forced him to rest. At night, when the killers went home, he slunk into the forest to dry. Sometimes a few refugees gathered together to share what food they had. Jean Patrick lost track of when one day ended and another began. Only the chants of the killers, coming and going, told him. He licked droplets from leaves, drank swamp water polluted with rotting corpses. He found wild fruit, dug up roots and grubs, and put them in his mouth though he was not hungry. Only death was hungry now.
Urupfu rurarya ntiruhaga.
Death eats and is never full.

T
HE KILLERS FOUND
a group of Tutsi and dragged them from the reeds, a mama and children, one a young baby. Jean Patrick was close enough to reach out and touch them. They slumped in silence and waited for the blows. Not even the baby wailed. Death had long since eaten their voices.

A
T SOME POINT
, while he slept, the rain had ended, the stars emerged from hiding. Jean Patrick knew from the trembling hint of light
around him that dawn approached, but no bird sang it into the sky. He checked his ankle. The previous night, a grandmother had rested beside him. Before lying on the ground to sleep, she had collected some leaves from the bush and, with a rock, pounded them into a poultice for his wound. He thought it had helped. The pain, at least, was less, and the murky discharge had stopped. In the distance, a dog barked, and then another. After tightening the cloth, Jean Patrick limped back toward the swamp. Around him, others emerged from the trees, a procession of shades.

A young boy came up beside him and whispered good morning. “Mwaramutse ho.”

“Mwaramutse,” Jean Patrick said. The boy slipped his hand into Jean Patrick's. “Are you alone?”

The boy nodded, and then he was gone. Soon the sun came out. It shone, indifferent, on the killers and on those who waited to be killed.

H
E COULD NOT
have taken Bea through this; even she could not have withstood it. He thought of her eyes, their obsidian shine. What was the green basaltic mineral? Yes! Olivine, mineral of the sea. Jean Patrick had never seen the sea, but he envisioned it now, green waves lapping a warm shore. Something in his heart told him Bea lived. This kept him going. For himself, he could have slipped into the filth and slept forever.

T
HERE WAS A
photograph. He must have been about three. Mama and Papa tall as trees. Jacqueline a baby in Mama's arms, pink ribbon tied around her head. A bundle of pink and white, skin the color of ironwood, little red shoes. A church function? He thought so. The girls in lacy white dresses, white veils flowing from pearled crowns. All these cousins he couldn't name, who were probably now dead, crowded together. He and Roger in little suits, holding hands, such serious, grown-up faces. Mama wore a pearl necklace, a long satiny shawl. Papa had on a tie with silver moons, flashes of gold. Jean Patrick couldn't remember what had happened to the picture. If he had it now, he would swallow it. A glowing ember inside him, a sign of life.

Night fell. The vultures slept. Jean Patrick crawled from the water like
a prehistoric creature that had sprouted prehensile digits. He staggered to the bushes, found a hole, and hid within it. When dawn broke, he did not return to the swamp. The forest was dangerous in daylight, but he could not stand the mud's stench any longer: the sharp-edged palm fronds, the bodies he fell over, soft, swollen, and decomposing. He wanted to be dry for just one more hour, and so he let himself sink back into the sleep of the dead.

“Lieutenant, look at the snake we found crawling in the brush.” Hands in Jean Patrick's armpits jerked him from sleep, pulled him from his hole. He struggled, slipped free. The hands caught him again, stood him up. It was day, a gentle drizzle. “It's a tall one. And strong.” The hands held him firm, squeezed him.

An officer strolled over, shirt untucked from his pants, round belly protruding. Jean Patrick couldn't believe his good fortune; it was the soldier from the Cyarwa checkpoint. “It's me, Lieutenant,” he said. “Mr. Olympics.” He extended his hand, but the lieutenant did not take it. “Remember? Rutembeza is my coach.”

The lieutenant took Jean Patrick's chin and twisted his head from side to side. “Aye! Look what we've caught!” His eyes were empty, as if everything human had spilled from them. “We can't kill this cockroach here. I'll take him to the major.” He laughed and poked at Jean Patrick. “Your Olympic coach, eh? Your Rutembeza.”

Jean Patrick shook his head to clear it. He was missing a connection, a conclusion he needed to come to.

With the butt of his rifle, the lieutenant prodded Jean Patrick toward a truck. “If you run, I can catch you now. If not, I can shoot you.” He laughed, then shoved Jean Patrick into the bed and slammed the tailgate shut. Jean Patrick struggled to a sitting position and tightened the wrap against his foot. If he could slip from the truck unnoticed at a stop, maybe he could run.

“Hey, Mr. Olympics, you almost made it, huh?” The lieutenant pointed to the mountains, close, blue, and shimmering. “Only a few more kilometers to the border. Oh. I almost forgot.” He leapt into the bed of the truck.
A swift, graceful movement for such a fat man. He tied Jean Patrick's hands behind his back.

They banged along the muddy road, bodies sprawled across it: women naked from the waist down, a man with a single shoe, the other placed neatly beside him, two small children curled in an embrace. Littered belongings scattered in the wind, hung from tree limbs. Identity cards fluttered like dying butterflies. Interahamwe sat on couches and fancy chairs in the open air. Women walked with televisions in their arms, carried stereos, clothing, and cooking pots. Men balanced sheets of corrugated metal on their heads. A child ran with a toy giraffe clutched to his chest. Wild dogs tore at the dead. Jean Patrick's head kept hitting the rear window. No Olympics now, he thought. Then, inexplicably, he laughed. And then he slept again.

H
E WAS JARRED
awake with the cessation of motion. When he opened his eyes, Coach stared down at him. His ankle pulsed beneath the bandage. He shook his head to clear the fog.

“I'll take care of him.” Coach opened the tailgate and helped Jean Patrick down. He took him to a jeep and pushed him inside.

“Eh, Major. Why don't you leave it in this truck? It stinks.”

“That's all right. By now, I am used to the reek.” Coach climbed into the driver's side. He turned the key in the ignition, put the jeep in gear, and headed up the road. “Jean Patrick, amakuru?”

Jean Patrick couldn't help it. He smiled at the question. “I am well, Coach. And you?”

“Me, I'm not so well.” Coach's face was drawn and hard. His uniform smelled of blood, and blood stained his jacket, his pants. “You should have listened. This one time, you should have done as I told you.” What was it Coach had told him? Jean Patrick couldn't remember now. “I went to find you in your room, to take you somewhere, but you had disappeared. Jolie told me you came to the house. I knew where you'd gone, but I couldn't fetch you there.” He regarded Jean Patrick. “Why did you disobey me?”

Jean Patrick thought it was sadness hiding in the creases around Coach's eyes. Sadness and weariness. He said, “Coach, did you know Daniel is dead?”

“I heard it on the radio.”

“That house … where I was.” He refused to say Bea's name to Coach. “Do you know what happened?”

“Yes.”

“Were you there when…” He couldn't finish the sentence. Could not make it real.

“No. But I told them if they found you to bring you to me. Even then, I could have helped you.”

“But it wasn't you.”

“No.”

“They would not have brought me anywhere. They would have killed me.” Jean Patrick grasped his thigh and moved his leg; it had fallen asleep. “Do you think someone could have escaped?”

“No. It's not possible.”

All things were possible. Jean Patrick would not believe otherwise.

“I will have to kill you now,” Coach said.

“I know,” Jean Patrick said.

C
OACH TOOK HIM
to the arboretum fields. With the rains, the crops had burst into life. Coach opened the door, and the sweet, clean fragrance hit Jean Patrick, so vibrant it was painful.

“What happened to your foot?” Coach kneeled and tightened the bandage.

“I cut it when I went over a wall. On the bottles.” He twisted to show Coach his palm, and the rope burned his wrists. “My hand, too.”

“The stigmata.”

“Yes.”

“Can you run?”

“I think so. I'm not feeling very strong, but if I have to run, I will do it.” A half smile. “You know me.”