Elmore Leonard - Pagan Babies

"You must have been worried about them."

"Of course, but I didn't come here in time."

"What about the priest? Where was he?"

"Here," Chantelle said, pouring herself a drink over ice, "while you were in Uganda or you would be dead or missing part of you.

Yes, Fr. Dunn was here, but earlier that day he was in Kigali visiting the old priest, Fr. Toreki, in the hospital, his heart failing him. In only two more weeks he's dead. Fr. Toreki was here forty years, half his life, when he died. This day Fr. Dunn is visiting they also hear the radio telling Hutu militia to go out to the communes. Fr. Toreki tells Fr.

Dunn, go home and bring everyone he can find to the church, because the church has always been a place of safety. So now as many as sixty or seventy are inside, more frightened than ever in their lives. Fr.

Dunn, on the altar, is at the most sacred part of the Mass, the Gonseoration, elevating the Host. At this moment they come in the church screaming 'Kill the cockroaches!' the iGven;i, and they begin killing everyone, even the babies, until no one is spared. The ones who try to run out have no chance. Some of the women they brought outside and raped, the butchers taking turns before killing them. Can you imagine it? Fr. Dunn, on the altar, watching his people being put to death."

Laurent said, "He didn't try to stop them?"

"How? What could he do? At Mokoto, the monastery, the priests walked away and a thousand were murdered."

Laurent would have to think about it. He held out his glass and she poured whiskey into it, Laurent saying that he thought it was here in the church she was mutilated.

"On the way here," Chantelle said, "worried to death for my mother and father, also my sister. They lived not in the village but on a farm in the hills where my father kept his herd of cows." Chantelle shook her head, her voice becoming quiet as she said, "No one has seen them or knows where their bodies are. They could be stuffed down a latrine or buried in a mass grave on the side of the road. I do believe my sister could be one of the dead still in the church. I look at the skull faces-is this Felicit6 or an old king of Egypt found in a tomb?"

"You were on your way here," Laurent said, prompting her.

"A friend drove me, a Hutu friend. He said there would be no problem, he would speak for me. But we came to cars stopped at a roadblock and everyone had to show their identity cards. If you were Tutsi you were ordered out of the car. There was nothing my friend could say to protect me. I was taken from his car into the forest where already people from other cars were waiting, some with their children clinging to them." Chantelle paused, she leared her throat. "The Hutus, most of them were boys from the streets of Kigali, but now they were Interaharawe, they were in charge and they were all drunk, with no control of themselves. Now they came to us with machetes and clubs spiked with nails, masus, and no one could believe they were going to kill us standing as we were in the forest, away from the road. People began to scream and plead for their lives, mothers trying to shield their children. The Hums were also screaming, and laughing, too, in a state of excitement as they began to hack with their machetes like we were stalks of bananas. I raised my arm to protect myself from the blade…" Chantelle paused again; this time she sipped her drink, closing her eyes for a moment. She said, "This one took hold of my hand and struck as I tried to pull away, my arm extended."

She said, "I can see his face," and paused again. "When I fell I was in the crowd of people and others, killed or dying, fell on top of me. It was night and in a frenzy of killing, they didn't make sure we were all dead. For a long time I lay there without moving."

"Did they rape you first?"

"No, but others they did, fucked them like dogs."

"You could have bled to death," Laurent said.

"I was wearing strands of beads I twisted around my arm."

"Still…" Laurent said.

"Listen, I know of a woman in Nyarubuye, where a thousand or more were killed, who hid beneath dead bodies more than a week.

She would come out at night to find water and food and in the morning return to chase away the rats and bury herself again among the dead. I was very lucky, the friend of mine, the Hum, found me and brought me back to Kigali to the home of a doctor. He was also Hum but, like my friend, not an extremist. The doctor closed my wound and let me stay a few days. After that I was able to hide at Mille Collines because I knew the manager, a man who saved hundreds of people's lives. He was hiding even wives of government officials, Hum men in power whose wives were Tutsi. When it was safe, the Hum cowards running from your army, I came here again to look for my family." Chantelle's slim shoulders moved in the undershirt, a shrug. "And, I stayed to assist the priest."

"To keep his house with one hand," Laurent said.

She looked toward the rectory. The music had stopped some time ago, but there was no sign of the priest. "You want to believe I go to bed with him, even if you have no way to know if it's true."

"You do or you don't," Laurent said, "it means nothing to me.

What I don't see is what he's doing here, why he stays when he performs only some duties of a priest. All the time he's here, he offers Mass when he feels like it? The reasons I've heard people say-he has to save the Communion wafers because the nuns who made them for the old priest are dead. Or he drinks the altar wine with his supper."

He saw Chantelle smile in a tired way.

She said, "Do you believe that?"

"Tell me what to believe."

"He said Mass Christmas, always Easter Sunday. He's a good man.

He plays soccer with the children, he reads stories to them, takes their picture… Why do you want to find fault?"

"That's his purpose here, to play with children?"

She said, "You ask so many questions," shaking her head in that tired way and looking toward the house again.

"Don't you think," Laurent said, "he's different to other priests you know?"

"In what way?"

"He doesn't hold himself above you, with the answer to everything, all of life's problems."

It seemed to be something she believed, looking at him now like she was making up her mind finally to tell the truth about him. But all she said was, "He came to assist the old priest."

Laurent said, "Yes…?" not letting go.

"Now Fr. Dunn carries on his work."

Laurent said, "He does?" with a tone he could see annoyed her, not wanting to talk about her priest. Still, Laurent pressed her. "You say he came here… But wasn't he sent by the religious order, the one the old priest belonged to? I don't think I heard the name of it."

"The Missionary Fathers of St. Martin de Porres," Chantelle said,

"the same name as the church."

"And they assigned him to this place?"

She hesitated before saying, "What difference does it make how he came here?"

Laurent believed he had her in a corner. He said, "You look tired," and motioned to the table.

They sat across from each other, Chantelle with her hand cupping the stump of her mutilation. The light was fading now, the air filling with the sound of insects and the sight of dark specks against the sky, bats swooping into the eucalyptus trees.

She said, "You sound like a policeman with your questions. I can tell you only that Fr. Dunn came or was sent here because the old priest, Fr. Toreki, was his uncle, the brother of his mother who died."

Laurent said, "Oh?" It seemed to interest him.

"Every five years," Chantelle said, "Fr. Toreki would go home to America to preach and raise money for his mission. And each time he would stay with Fr. Dunn's family, doing this ever since Terry was a small boy."

Now Laurent was nodding. "So during these visits the old priest was able to brainwash the boy with stories of Ah-fri-ca, how he lived among savages who painted their faces and killed lions with a spear."