passing out machetes in the neighbourhood. Certain section heads had even been given machine guns. And there was beginning to be talk of bumping o f Whites. For example, the priests who organized co-operatives, and who took care of Tutsi refugees. No one was going to be safe, not even Valcourt.
“In the marketplace, the militiamen were shouting that all your friends were going to be cut up into little pieces and you’d never see Canada again, because you’re a friend of Lando’s. And I’m not saying what they promised to do to Gentille. Now that I haven’t said it, you know.”
“If you’re telling the truth, Cyprien, my friend, and unfortunately I believe you, they’re going to cut you up into little pieces too. You have to leave here, and you mustn’t go back to the marketplace.”
“Monsieur Valcourt, in your head, I’m already dead and gone. And you’re right. A few months more, a year maybe. Every day I carry on, I’m stealing time from God, who’s waiting for me and doesn’t hold a few accidents against me. But you don’t stop wanting to live and do things right just because you’re dying. And I’m one that does things right. A friend’s a friend. I’m staying with you to make your film. And something I haven’t told you—Cécile showed me the list because my name’s on it. She likes me. She’s the one I was with at the Cosmos, who I had my last accident with. She wanted me to get out of here too, and go somewhere near Butare because it’s safer.”
When the sun goes down over Kigali, the beauty of the world brings joy to the beholder. Great flocks of birds delicately embroider the sky. The wind is gentle and cool. The streets are transformed into lazily slipping, brightly coloured ribbons, thousands of people, like swarms of ants, leaving the city centre and slowly climbing their hills. On all sides smoke rises from cooking fires. Each column that shows against the sky speaks of a tiny house. Thousands of laughing children run about in the earthen streets, kicking burst footballs and rolling old tires. When the sun goes down over Kigali, if you’re sitting on one of the hills surrounding the city and still have the remains of a soul, you cannot do otherwise than stop talking and watch. Cyprien put his hand on Valcourt’s shoulder.
“Look. Everything’s beautiful from my house. This is why I want to die here, watching the sun put Kigali to sleep. Look, it’s like red honey running out of the sky.”
Gentille came and sat beside Valcourt. They stayed this way in silence, the three of them, until nightfall, hypnotized by the murmuring city curling up for the night in the folds of sun-painted shadows, first golden, then red, and finally brown. They felt that their lives, until now more or less shaped by their own decisions, were escaping them totally. They felt borne along by forces they could name but could not understand because they were foreign to them, had no place in their genes, or their frustrations, or their failures, because never, in their worst excesses of hatred, had they ever imagined that anyone could kill the way one hoes a garden to get rid of weeds. The hoeing, the work, had begun. Still, they were not giving up hope.
Dogs were barking as though speaking, as though warning humans: “Watch out, men are turning into dogs and worse still than dogs and worse still than hyenas or the vultures on the wind making circles in the sky above an unwary herd.”
Cyprien began speaking again. Valcourt, he said, was trying to teach him how to live while waiting to die. He wanted to teach the White that you could live only if you knew you were going to die. Here, you died because it was normal to die. Living a long time was not.
“In your country you die by accident, because life hasn’t been generous and leaves like an unfaithful wife. You think we don’t value life as much as you. So tell me, Valcourt, poor and deprived as we are, why do we take in our cousins’ orphans, and
“In the marketplace, the militiamen were shouting that all your friends were going to be cut up into little pieces and you’d never see Canada again, because you’re a friend of Lando’s. And I’m not saying what they promised to do to Gentille. Now that I haven’t said it, you know.”
“If you’re telling the truth, Cyprien, my friend, and unfortunately I believe you, they’re going to cut you up into little pieces too. You have to leave here, and you mustn’t go back to the marketplace.”
“Monsieur Valcourt, in your head, I’m already dead and gone. And you’re right. A few months more, a year maybe. Every day I carry on, I’m stealing time from God, who’s waiting for me and doesn’t hold a few accidents against me. But you don’t stop wanting to live and do things right just because you’re dying. And I’m one that does things right. A friend’s a friend. I’m staying with you to make your film. And something I haven’t told you—Cécile showed me the list because my name’s on it. She likes me. She’s the one I was with at the Cosmos, who I had my last accident with. She wanted me to get out of here too, and go somewhere near Butare because it’s safer.”
When the sun goes down over Kigali, the beauty of the world brings joy to the beholder. Great flocks of birds delicately embroider the sky. The wind is gentle and cool. The streets are transformed into lazily slipping, brightly coloured ribbons, thousands of people, like swarms of ants, leaving the city centre and slowly climbing their hills. On all sides smoke rises from cooking fires. Each column that shows against the sky speaks of a tiny house. Thousands of laughing children run about in the earthen streets, kicking burst footballs and rolling old tires. When the sun goes down over Kigali, if you’re sitting on one of the hills surrounding the city and still have the remains of a soul, you cannot do otherwise than stop talking and watch. Cyprien put his hand on Valcourt’s shoulder.
“Look. Everything’s beautiful from my house. This is why I want to die here, watching the sun put Kigali to sleep. Look, it’s like red honey running out of the sky.”
Gentille came and sat beside Valcourt. They stayed this way in silence, the three of them, until nightfall, hypnotized by the murmuring city curling up for the night in the folds of sun-painted shadows, first golden, then red, and finally brown. They felt that their lives, until now more or less shaped by their own decisions, were escaping them totally. They felt borne along by forces they could name but could not understand because they were foreign to them, had no place in their genes, or their frustrations, or their failures, because never, in their worst excesses of hatred, had they ever imagined that anyone could kill the way one hoes a garden to get rid of weeds. The hoeing, the work, had begun. Still, they were not giving up hope.
Dogs were barking as though speaking, as though warning humans: “Watch out, men are turning into dogs and worse still than dogs and worse still than hyenas or the vultures on the wind making circles in the sky above an unwary herd.”
Cyprien began speaking again. Valcourt, he said, was trying to teach him how to live while waiting to die. He wanted to teach the White that you could live only if you knew you were going to die. Here, you died because it was normal to die. Living a long time was not.
“In your country you die by accident, because life hasn’t been generous and leaves like an unfaithful wife. You think we don’t value life as much as you. So tell me, Valcourt, poor and deprived as we are, why do we take in our cousins’ orphans, and
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