why do our old people die with all their children around them? I’m telling you in all humility, you discuss life and death like great philosophers. We just talk about people who are living and dying. You consider us primitive or ignorant. We’re just people who don’t have much, either for living or dying. We live and die in messy ways, like poor people.”
Over the Kigali prison, the breath and sweat of thousands of men cooped up one against another was raising a cupola of mist.
Cyprien knew much more than he wanted to say about the massacres brewing. He knew the caches where guns and machetes were being stockpiled, the barracks where the militia was training, the gathering places in most of the city’s neighbourhoods. He had never liked the Tutsis. He thought they were arrogant and laughed too much, but he adored their women’s slender waists that he could girdle with his two great hands, their milk-chocolate skin and their breasts as firm as juicy pomegranates. That was his downfall in the eyes of his Hutu neighbours and friends, that and his friendship with this White, who hung out only with Tutsis and talked about freedom when instructing the journalists for the television station that still wasn’t producing any television. He liked this Valcourt, who could listen for hours and hours and talk without ever preaching. But he was also a little sorry for him. Valcourt was as arid as a desert, like dead earth that rejects seed. He was being eaten away by the hopelessness of living, the malady that a flicts only those who can afford the time to think about themselves. Valcourt was dead though alive, while Cyprien was alive though dead. Cyprien had been using this equation to resolve the endless questions he kept putting to himself after their meetings. Perhaps the beautiful Gentille would administer the electric shock that would bring the White back to life and allow him to die properly. Only the living know how to die.
The staccato sounds of a volley of gunfire cascaded down the neighbouring hill, and sleeping dogs woke and resumed their tortured-beast yowlings. Cyprien walked back and forth on the small terrace, thinking about the horrors looming in his country. He did not feel like helping this country that deserved only to die, it had gorged so greedily on lies and false prophecies. He could do nothing for his family, who were already dead, condemned by AIDS. His relatives? His friends? They were already waving their brand new machetes recently arrived from China, and practising cutting up Tutsi meat after smoking a joint or drinking a few beers distributed by the section heads.
“Valcourt, you love Gentille? ”
“Yes,” Valcourt replied calmly as if he had known it for years and it was right and natural that it should be so. “Yes, I love her,” he repeated, as if the three were dining together at a quiet, favourite restaurant, as though they were the same age and there was nothing they could not talk about.
Gentille had not moved, not even quivered, but already she was tumbling into another world, the world of movies and novels, because all her life she had never heard these words except in movies or read them except in the works of romantic novelists she had studied at the Butare Social Service School.
“Valcourt, you love her to sleep with or you love her to live with? ”
“Both, Cyprien, both.”
Gentille laid her head on Valcourt’s shoulder, and Valcourt bent his so that their hair mingled. As if in eruption, all the juices of life ran between her trembling thighs. An orgasm from tenderness and words.
“You’re not feeling well?” Valcourt asked gently, feeling her shiver.
“Oh yes, maybe too well. For the first time in my life, I know I’m living real life. When they taught me poetry at school, they told me words could lead to ecstasy. Here, feel.”
For her this life was different anyway, for not minding Cyprien’s presence, she took Valcourt’s hand and guided it to the wetness
Over the Kigali prison, the breath and sweat of thousands of men cooped up one against another was raising a cupola of mist.
Cyprien knew much more than he wanted to say about the massacres brewing. He knew the caches where guns and machetes were being stockpiled, the barracks where the militia was training, the gathering places in most of the city’s neighbourhoods. He had never liked the Tutsis. He thought they were arrogant and laughed too much, but he adored their women’s slender waists that he could girdle with his two great hands, their milk-chocolate skin and their breasts as firm as juicy pomegranates. That was his downfall in the eyes of his Hutu neighbours and friends, that and his friendship with this White, who hung out only with Tutsis and talked about freedom when instructing the journalists for the television station that still wasn’t producing any television. He liked this Valcourt, who could listen for hours and hours and talk without ever preaching. But he was also a little sorry for him. Valcourt was as arid as a desert, like dead earth that rejects seed. He was being eaten away by the hopelessness of living, the malady that a flicts only those who can afford the time to think about themselves. Valcourt was dead though alive, while Cyprien was alive though dead. Cyprien had been using this equation to resolve the endless questions he kept putting to himself after their meetings. Perhaps the beautiful Gentille would administer the electric shock that would bring the White back to life and allow him to die properly. Only the living know how to die.
The staccato sounds of a volley of gunfire cascaded down the neighbouring hill, and sleeping dogs woke and resumed their tortured-beast yowlings. Cyprien walked back and forth on the small terrace, thinking about the horrors looming in his country. He did not feel like helping this country that deserved only to die, it had gorged so greedily on lies and false prophecies. He could do nothing for his family, who were already dead, condemned by AIDS. His relatives? His friends? They were already waving their brand new machetes recently arrived from China, and practising cutting up Tutsi meat after smoking a joint or drinking a few beers distributed by the section heads.
“Valcourt, you love Gentille? ”
“Yes,” Valcourt replied calmly as if he had known it for years and it was right and natural that it should be so. “Yes, I love her,” he repeated, as if the three were dining together at a quiet, favourite restaurant, as though they were the same age and there was nothing they could not talk about.
Gentille had not moved, not even quivered, but already she was tumbling into another world, the world of movies and novels, because all her life she had never heard these words except in movies or read them except in the works of romantic novelists she had studied at the Butare Social Service School.
“Valcourt, you love her to sleep with or you love her to live with? ”
“Both, Cyprien, both.”
Gentille laid her head on Valcourt’s shoulder, and Valcourt bent his so that their hair mingled. As if in eruption, all the juices of life ran between her trembling thighs. An orgasm from tenderness and words.
“You’re not feeling well?” Valcourt asked gently, feeling her shiver.
“Oh yes, maybe too well. For the first time in my life, I know I’m living real life. When they taught me poetry at school, they told me words could lead to ecstasy. Here, feel.”
For her this life was different anyway, for not minding Cyprien’s presence, she took Valcourt’s hand and guided it to the wetness
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