In the middle of the night, as the coals in the courtyard go out, Idelphonse leaves home, fishnets over his shoulder. He crosses the center of Kiganwa, exchanging a few words with the silhouettes chatting in the glow of the candlelight on the verandas. He follows a stretch of path, then turns down a trail that descends abruptly toward the river. In the darkness of the banana groves, the coos of turtledoves answer the cuckoos’ calls, their odes interrupted by the barks of what may be jackals or monkeys.
Down the hill, lapping water lets one know the river is near. In the shadows, its current seems stock-still. The water is slack; even during the rainy season, it barely stirs. On clear nights, the moon and even the stars are reflected on its surface. A tongue of earth skirts the river, surrounded by sloping pastures. A dozen years ago, these banks held the barrel-like shadows of hippos. Herds grazed until daybreak. The females mooed at their cavorting calves while the males grunted, marking their territory for the umpteenth time with mounds of droppings. Today the fishermen lament the animals’ absence because, they say, the squat pachyderm hooves used to mill the mud, working into the current the plankton and insects the fish were fond of. Nowadays, only cow dung mixes with the sludge. The cows come at night to graze on the aquatic fodder, which young kids, night owls balanced atop thin boats, cut into islets for them to eat along the riverside. Yet the hippos didn’t leave because of the cows, and still less because of the gaggle of geese one sees coiled in the grass at the edge of the bush. It was the sugarcane planters. Indeed, the green-gold fever of Kigali’s investors has spread all the way here.
As Idelphonse inspects his traps, other fishermen arrive and deposit their gear into slender pirogues. They silently slide their boats into the river and depart for deeper waters, baiting their hooks with beeswax before setting up their traps and lines in the choppy current. In the morning, the fishermen return home singing, just as people in pirogues sing nearly everywhere in the world. A hustle and bustle awaits them on the banks. Women do their wash kneeling at the water’s edge; herders goad their cattle to drink. A bevy of herons, touching down from who knows where, scour the rushes with their hungry beaks. During the migration season, egrets bivouac here as well. The heat has stopped the gray geese from sleeping in; they graze the grass unperturbed by the commotion around them.
The fishermen empty their catch onto the landing. Tilapia are tossed into a red bucket, barbs into a green one, small catfish into pails carried off by female fish-merchants to be smoked and then sold at the market. Idelphonse can’t hide his disappointment. It was a luckless morning with the nets. An eel or a plump Nile perch could have earned him and his colleagues several thousand francs from Kigali restaurants.
When he returns from the river, he walks past the parcel where his mother and brother, Jean-Damascène, are busy tilling the soil. Scarcely a word is said between them. For Idelphonse, the workday is over. He goes for a stroll with friends from the fishing co-op until mealtime and then takes a nap. Afterward, he sees to the urwagwa, whose secret recipe his father, during his years of freedom, handed down to him.1 The banana beer Idelphonse distills delights his Kiganwa customers, who sit on the veranda passing around the chalumeau late into the evening, some admirers coming from as far as Nyarunazi or Kibungo for its exceptional taste.2
Unlike his brother, Idelphonse hardly thrived at school. Leaving was less of a disappointment than he lets on. He didn’t dream of a job in town. He pictured himself instead alongside his father, Fulgence, who trained him in business and in new crops like tomatoes and coffee. He learned fast. A tenacious worker, he spared no effort to succeed. He had been looking forward to a good marriage on the hill, a house in Kiganwa, and later a business of his own, until the day the Ernestine Kaneza affair changed everything. It was a Sunday, sixteen years after the genocide. During the final session of the gaçaça trials, to everyone’s surprise, Janvier Munyaneza’s story of the horrid murder of his sister Ernestine, on the first day of the killings, sent Idelphonse’s father back to Rilima for life. On that notorious Sunday night, as Idelphonse followed the three men leading Fulgence away in shackles, he still didn’t know the reason for his father’s arrest, for no one in his family had attended the trial. He thought it merely a momentary twist of fate, which would explain his shock the next day when he discovered the details.
At nineteen years old, he is no longer the little boy who watched his father leave for prison after their return from Congo. At that time, at least one man from every Hutu family in Kiganwa was in prison. The children shared the same incomprehension, destitution, and humiliation. This time, however, the family had to confront alone the rumors and shame brought on by the accusations of the appalling crime. They kept their feelings of injustice to themselves. Their hopes for an appeal dwindled; the signs of their poverty quickly appeared. The parents of Idelphonse’s fiancée refused to accept him as their son-in-law, his brother was expelled from school, their crops declined in Fulgence’s absence. There were endless arguments in the fields, which their neighbors eyed covetously. Idelphonse gradually gave up the hoe, preferring his nights spent fishing on the silent river. He rarely mentions his troubles. He goes on walks; he drinks in Primus the money he makes from fishing, which he then earns back by selling urwagwa.