Scholastique Mukasonga - Our Lady of the Nile

“Listen,” said Virginia, “I’m not leaving the lycée without my diploma. Give up so close to the diploma? Never. If you knew how much this means to my mother, the dreams she’s built upon that piece of paper. When I think of all those girls who were just as smart as us, maybe smarter, and were excluded by the famous quota. They had to resign themselves to simply being farmers, poor women farmers, all their lives. It’s partly for them I want to get this diploma, even if it probably won’t be very useful in Rwanda. After all, it’s not the first time we’ve been threatened, it’s our daily burden. Let’s wait to get that diploma, and if we have to leave, I’ll figure out a way.”

“I’m not so sure. You know, they’ve started to hunt Tutsi bureaucrats and students across the whole country. Soon it’ll be the turn of the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile, why would we escape it? The purge will end with a bang at the lycée of the female elite. You know what awaits us. Have you forgotten what we’ve already suffered and what they’re promising every day will happen to us? In 1959, half my family fled to Burundi as refugees. In 1963, three of my uncles were killed, though my father escaped — in Kigali, they didn’t do as much killing as they’d have liked to because of the people from the United Nations — but he was sent to prison with loads of others, he was beaten to a pulp, and when they let him go — because the President wanted to show the whites just how peace loving he was — they made him pay a colossal fine, his taxi and truck were impounded, and to top it all off, they made him sign a document confessing he was a spy and an Inyenzi accomplice. My father’s frightened: that document is still with State Security. Because of that, now they might kill him.”

“If they kill our parents, they’d better kill us too. You know what happened when we took refuge at the mission? There were many orphans, their mothers and fathers had just been massacred. Well, the Prefect came to say there were some Hutu families willing to adopt them, and he used such fancy words in front of the missionaries, like Christian charity and community spirit, that when my father repeats those words, they make him angry and my mother starts to cry. Anyway, they shared out the orphans: boys went to work the fields, and the young women, well, they were very popular, you can imagine why! When, as Gloriosa has promised, the JMR get here — and we know what for — there’ll still be time for us to hide, and try to join our families, then cross over to Burundi.”

“I’ll go to Fontenaille’s, he’ll protect me, he won’t let me fall into the hands of rapists and murderers. I’m his Isis, and anyway, nobody except you knows I go there.”

“Are you really sure? No one followed you there? You didn’t say anything to Modesta? I have doubts about her sometimes: why does she like talking to us Tutsi so much behind her great friend’s back? Because she’s half Tutsi or because she’s spying on us? Why does she complicate her life so much, poor thing?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. Perhaps she’s guessed something. She often asks me what I’m up to on Sundays, then laughs and makes allusions to that crazy old white guy who loves sketching beautiful Tutsi girls so much.”

“Watch out. Even if her mother’s Tutsi, you know what side she’ll always be on.”

“But, Virginia, if we really have to flee, how will we do it? The lycée is the only thing in Nyaminombe. It’s surrounded on all sides. I bet the mayor, his police officers, and the militants are already watching it closely. And when the day comes, they’ll put up roadblocks on the track. Even if you dress as an old peasant woman, it won’t be in a Toyota that you’ll leave Nyaminombe. Don’t count on anyone inside the lycée. Mother Superior’s already shut herself away in her office, so she can’t see anything. The Belgian teachers will keep on teaching, unperturbed. Even though the French teachers have some affection for us, seemingly because of our physique, they’ll obey the instructions from their embassy: no interference, no interference! When the killers fall upon us, some will say: it’s always been like that in Africa, savages killing each other for reasons no one understands; and even if some lock themselves in their rooms to cry, their tears won’t save them. But I have one hope, and that’s Fontenaille. You know he sent my portraits off to Europe, I’m known over there. He keeps saying they’re expecting me. He can’t let me be killed right in front of him without doing anything. Come with me. You’re his Queen Candace too. He must save his goddess and his queen.”

“I won’t be going to hide at your white’s place. It’s odd, but I’m not scared, it’s like I’m sure I’ll get out of it, as if someone, something, had promised me.”

“Like who?”

“I don’t know.”

Virginia was counting down the days leading the Tutsi girls toward a destiny she considered inevitable. There was no doubt that the scenario envisaged by Father Herménégilde would play out, step by step. Yet she couldn’t get rid of that certainty deep down inside her that somehow she’d escape it, and this troubled her. Meanwhile, Gloriosa had deemed herself absolute mistress of the lycée, and her sovereignty extended to the refectory. The table upon the stage, from where Sister Gertrude and the monitors would watch over meals, was empty now. Gloriosa declared she no longer wished to open her mouth in front of the Inyenzi. From now on, they would eat after the real Rwandans. They took great pains to leave them the quota of food that the majority people still conceded to the parasites. All the other tables followed her example. Gloriosa also decreed that no one should speak to the Tutsi-Inyenzi anymore, and that they must be prevented from talking among themselves. The true militants would always keep a watchful eye on them, and inform her of any suspicious word or deed. Virginia noticed, however, that Immaculée always managed to be the last one to get up from the table, discreetly leaving a good share of her portion.

Virginia could no longer sleep, nor did she want to. She listened for the slightest sound, anxiously waiting for the creaking gates, the rumbling engines and screeching tires that would announce the killers’ violent arrival, to be followed by furious shouts, screams of protest, hobnailed boots hammering the stairs, the stampeding panic of flight …

Virginia hoped it would occur at night. She thought this would make it easier for her to shake off her pursuers in the lycée corridors, reach the garden by way of the staircase that led down to the kitchen, jump the wall, and run and run toward the mountain … But she had no idea what might happen after that. She couldn’t picture it. But whatever the case, it had to be a moonless night.

Her head was filled with endless scenes of her escape, always the same, but one night she couldn’t stay awake and had a dream that reinforced yet further her vague certainty of being spared that she just couldn’t explain. She saw herself wandering the labyrinth of a vast enclosure, the kind they used to build for the kings of old. Beneath the bundles of bamboo that framed the entrance to a courtyard, stood a man, waiting for her; he was young, and very tall, with features that appeared, to her eyes, faultlessly beautiful. “Don’t you recognize me?” he asked. “Even though you came to see me, don’t you recognize Rubanga, the umwiru ?” He handed her a huge pot of milk: “Go carry this to the Queen, she’s waiting for it, she’s waiting for you.” Virginia continued on her way, between the high intertwined fencing, finally emerging in a vast yard where beautiful young women were dancing to the gentle rhythm of a song that reminded her of one of her mother’s favorite lullabies. The Queen stepped out of the large hut, her face hidden by a veil of pearls. Virginia knelt before her, and offered up the pot of milk. The Queen drank with delightful slowness, then handed the pot to one of her retainers and spoke to Virginia: “You have served me well, Mutamuriza, you are my favorite. Here is your reward.” Virginia saw two shepherds leading a pure white heifer toward her. “She’s yours,” said the Queen, “her name is Gatare, remember, Gatare.”