Bazungu like the ones who came during the dry season—that was something they’d never seen before.
And yet, all sorts of Bazungu had passed through the hillside! First there were the padri, who seemed to have been there forever. There was the one who came to the church outpost now and then to lead a Mass and take confession from anyone with a sin to admit, and then the ones from the main mission; it was finally decided they weren’t entirely white, so accustomed was everyone to those old graybeards, and their weird way of pronouncing Kinyarwanda no longer made people laugh: they were just padri. And then there had been other padri, young ones freshly arrived, who spoke among themselves a language that wasn’t like the old padri’s, and who remained Bazungu as far as everyone was concerned. They said they’d come to Rwanda specifically to help the poor, the lambs of God, and that their Yezu didn’t like people who owned large herds of cattle and kept them for themselves, and the chiefs who made the poor populace work without paying them—they hated those people. The old padri, in their schools, had created troupes of intore dancers; the new ones created soccer teams. The dancers were bare-chested and had sisal manes like the warriors of old; the soccer players had shorts and undershirts like the Bazungu children.
And then there were the Bazungu who wanted to teach the peasants how to farm, the agronomists. They said they would show how to garden like them, because those poor peasants didn’t even know, as they did, how to plant in tight, straight lines, and that was how you had to plant. That it was bad to mix everything up, let the bean shoots climb up the corn stalks and, worse still, under the banana trees! You had to keep all that separate: each crop in its plot. And besides, they said, there were too many bananas, the banana plantation had to be “thinned out.” And the poor peasants cut down their banana trees, including, with rage in their hearts, the intuntu whose bananas are used to make beer. And above all, they had to plant coffee trees. The coffee trees took up all their time and almost all the room, while their daily bread, the beans and sweet potatoes, were neglected. Everything that had been saved to fertilize the soil—the corn and sorghum stems, the dried banana leaves—now went toward mulching the coffee trees. Woe unto the neglectful, on whom fines rained down, not to mention twenty lashes with the chicotte. But the agronomist wasn’t the meanest one: it was the Rwandan agricultural supervisor who followed his master around like a little dog. He was proud, scornful. How could he make these ignorant peasants understand what the agronomist was saying? The supervisor wore boots and the peasants went barefoot.
There were also the Bazungu who rode by in cars. No one knew how they’d strayed onto our path. It was an event people talked about for a long time: “Did you see the Bazungu go by?” Even rarer were the ones who stopped and got out of the car to photograph a small girl with her earthen jar on her head. Terrified, the girl ran away, her jar shattering on the ground, and lost the scrap of cloth that barely covered her little behind. The young boys came running, shouting: “Muzungu! Muzungu!” The Whites quickly got back in the car and sped off. The little girl’s father boasted: “The Bazungu tried to steal my daughter, but when they saw me coming with my stick, they took off without claiming their due.”
One day, a few came to photograph the old trees. They took measurements. They jotted everything down in their notebooks. They asked the catechist, who spoke a little French, what he knew about that grove farther up the hill. The catechist said that it dated from the time of the pagans, that no one went there anymore. The Bazungu seemed satisfied with what the catechist had said: they carried it all away in their notebooks. The catechist said he thought he understood that they were going to build a clinic there. These days there are no more trees, only a statue of the Virgin.
It was the sub-chief who came to announce the arrival of these new Bazungu:
“Whites will come,” he said, “great bwanas, especially one who has come especially from Europe just to see you, just for your hillside. He’s a scientist, you have to call him Professor, you understand, not Boss, just Professor. He wants to see your elders, he wants them to tell him stories from the olden days, from very long ago, from before Musinga, before the Belgians, from the time of Ruganzu Ndori, of Gihanga, of Adam and Eve, who knows! You do have elders here, don’t you? Old ones who still know those imigani, those tales, those cock-and-bull stories you drag out at night. The Professor wants all that stuff. And he’ll be here next week. Take me to me your elders, I want to see them now, I want to know if they’re still able to get two words out.”
There weren’t many oldsters left on the hillside. Most had died, first because they were old, and also from tuberculosis, and malaria, and all the other old-person illnesses. There were still Karakezi and Gasana, but those two really were too old. Anything they had to say no one could understand: they stuttered, they stammered, they got everything jumbled up and repeated themselves a hundred times over. No one paid any attention to their babbling, except for the children because they thought it was funny and they repeated the two old men’s ditties for laughs. And besides, they were still half-pagan. Did the Whites want to listen to pagans?
“That’s right,” the sub-chief had said, “perfect, that’s exactly what I need. Old people who keep repeating the same old stories and who are half-pagan: that’s what the new Bazungu want, they came especially for that. And for something else too, they say there’s something hidden under the hill where the statue of Maria is, I didn’t fully understand what they told me in Astrida, a queen’s tomb, a watering place that cows came out of, I don’t know, and they also believe that at the top of your Mount Runani, some strange things happened involving someone named Kibogo. You ever heard of him?”
Naturally they had all heard of Kibogo, even if the story was best forgotten. But what seemed even more worrisome was that the Bazungu had heard of Kibogo. Whoever could have told them about that? They’d never be through with this Kibogo business! But it might have been the fault of that little hoodlum Kabwa, who had managed to get accepted to high school, goodness knows how, while his buddies Gahene and Gatwa had remained in the village. Kabwa told everyone, especially the Whites, that where he came from, on a mountain called Runani, he had seen the ghost of a witch, and there were also skeletons and heaps of bones, he couldn’t say if they were animal or human bones, that his grandmother told strange stories about that mountain, involving a certain Kibogo who had risen into the sky from there, or maybe others had come from the clouds to look for him. A young Belgian teacher had taken an interest in his story. Where I come from, he explained, they tell the same things: on the moon, in the stars, there were certainly living beings that they called extraterrestrials and those inhabitants of the sky came, especially in more recent times, to visit Earth and even abduct humans. According to him, this was certainly what had happened to Kibogo. Our ne’er-do-well offered to guide his teacher to the top of Mount Runani if he bought him shoes. The volunteer teacher wanted to spend the night on the mountain to observe the heavens. Kabwa wrapped himself in the blanket his teacher had brought and went to sleep. When he awoke, the teacher claimed he had been up all night and seen many strange lights. Kabwa lost no time in spreading the story and embroidering it: he told his awestruck friends that in the night sky they had seen a huge brightly lit machine that someday soon would bring Kibogo back to Earth. The tale reached the ears of the Father Principal, who immediately summoned the professor and sharply reprimanded him for corrupting a naïve population with his crazy ideas, especially young people on whom the nascent Church of Rwanda grounded its most fervent hopes. He therefore found himself obliged not to renew his contract for the next semester and ordered him to stop spreading that gobbledygook about extraterrestrials to anybody, especially his pupils. Kabwa was expelled from school and went back with his two old friends to prowling the hillside looking for trouble.
The sub-chief had insisted on seeing the two old men who’d been recommended to him. He wanted to make them understand that professors had come from Europe just to see them and especially to hear the old folktales from distant times that only they still knew.
“What do those Bazungu want from me?” said Karekezi. “Do they know me? Do I know them? And why should I have to know them? And my stories, even if I still know them, don’t interest anyone around here anymore, so why would they interest the Bazungu? If it’s just to poke fun at a poor old man like me, as the rest of you do, I have nothing to say to them.”
Karekezi concluded his tirade with a jet of saliva browned by his tobacco wad.
“The Bazungu did not cross the oceans and travel all the way to your hillside to make fun of you. They want to write down the stories you remember, they want to take them away i Burayi, to Europe, so they can put them in their book.”
“They’re going to write down what I tell them? In a book, a book like the Bible?”
“That’s right, Granddad, whatever you tell them they’ll put in their book, and it will even have your name, Karekezi. Can you read your name?”
“I can read and write my name! No more than that, but it’s enough. What do you take me for, a savage? But look at me, do you see how I’m dressed? Worse than a savage! My pants have holes, they’re holding together by a thread, and it’s my only pair. My shirt has lost all its color and its buttons. What will the Bazungu think when they see me like this? They’re going to say, ‘Rwandans abandon their elders and let them die in poverty.’ Shame upon our country!”
“Granddad, we’ll buy you a nice shirt and a nice white pagne so that you can do us honor with the professors.”
“Pants, I’d rather have pants.”
“No, the visitors want you in a pagne. Aren’t you an elder? You have to dress like an elder. But if you speak well, like the professors want, afterward we’ll buy you pants for your great-grandchildren’s weddings.”
“And will I also have an agacupa, a little banknote? If the professors want nice stories, they’ll have to give me amafranga. The Whites are rich and these ones must be very rich if they’ve come from so far away just to hear a poor old man.”
“You’ll have your money: when the Whites really want something, they’re prepared to pay a lot for it, and what they want are your stories.”
The sub-chief then went to Gasana and made the same promises.
“I’ve forgotten all that,” said Gasana, “but I’ll tell them everything. And I’ll have my name in the Bazungu’s book too.”
The new Bazungu arrived one week later in a huge Land Rover. There were four of them, accompanied by two young Rwandans. The district commissioner who had served as their guide hurried to open the door for the important bwana. The local councilor had advised everyone always to call him Professor. It was a bit disappointing that this great Professor was not wearing trousers but rather a pair of khaki shorts, like schoolboys’ kabutura but longer, much longer, down to his knees, and white socks that stretched to the top of his calves without quite managing to reach the shorts. Everyone hated the professor’s fat knees. On the other hand, they admired his jacket because of its countless pockets. His narrow-brimmed hat didn’t raise any eyebrows: the agronomist, the one who boasted to his supervisors that he’d slaughtered entire herds of elephants and buffalo, had the same kind, a safari hat. Finally, they noticed that his beard was much shorter than the missionaries’, though no one knew if that meant anything. His companions hopped from the back of the car: two young men and a young woman, dressed more or less like their boss. There was much commentary about the fact that the girl wore pants, the outfit of a sinebwana, a woman-with-no-man. But they took pride in the fact that the two Rwandans, in suits and ties as if for a wedding, had safeguarded the national dignity.
The professor, having greeted with polite warmth the delegation assigned to welcome them, asked via one of the Rwandans whether it might be possible to go visit the elders prior to the oral investigation of which they were to be the subjects: he wanted to start straight away forming a trusting relationship with them, which was necessary in order for him, through an interview that would be informal but conducted with all due scientific rigor, to mine and preserve the historical riches that their memories still contained. And he added in sententious tones: “Even peoples without writing have their libraries.” The professor’s retinue vigorously nodded at his words. One of the young Rwandans hastened to jot them down in his notebook. The commissioner, who seemed ill at ease, added that the district was planning to open a library. It was only waiting for the books. The hillside councilor went over to say something in his ear. The commissioner cleared his throat several times, then finally addressed the professor:
“Mister Eminent Professor, Sir, permit me to suggest to you that, perhaps, if I may say so, or in fact it seems to me, it would be better, it might be wiser to postpone your visit to our elders until tomorrow, just until tomorrow. They have not been notified of your visit, they haven’t had a chance to prepare for it, to see someone as important as yourself enter their simple hut, it could be a shock to them, they are just feeble old men, the entire population watches over them, they have to be treated gently. We’re going to explain the whole thing to them, so that they fully understand what it is you wish of them, that it’s for the honor of our country that they may speak to you, we’ll plan all of that, find a suitable spot where they can tell you their stories, and where you can listen to them in complete tranquility.”
“Fine,” said the professor, “we’ll start the interviews tomorrow. But please tell your elders that we have come with all good intentions and for the good of Rwanda. A new country such as yours can only base its foundation on a scientific knowledge of its past. So as not to waste the day, perhaps we can go up to the sacred wood to give it a first once-over.”
One of the Rwandan guides (we eventually understood that these were students from the university in Astrida, taught by the three Europeans who, themselves, seemed to be disciples of the professor) conveyed the request to the hillside councilor. The latter seemed embarrassed:
“The Kigabiro? Well, that is, there is no more Kigabiro, the trees were all cut down, they died, they were very old…”
“What do you mean, cut down?”
“They’ll explain it to you…” said the commissioner, “but, Mister Professor, Sir, it’s getting late, I believe it’s time to head back to reach the Agronomic Institute before nightfall, and for me to be driven back to the commune.”
“Very well,” said the professor, visibly irritated, “we’ll see about all this tomorrow.”
Everyone wondered why the Bazungu were being housed at the Agronomic Institute, which was farther from the hillside than the mission church, where the occasional travelers usually stayed. No doubt about it, these new Bazungu did nothing the usual way.
The evening and much of the night was spent preparing the two old men. Despite their vigorous protests, they finally agreed to let their great-granddaughters wash and dress them. Beneath the pitchers of water that the little girls emptied over them, they shook, trembling and moaning like the spirits of the dead that haunt the marsh. Gasana demanded, since they were treating him like a young bride before her wedding, a few drops from the bottle of amarachi, the perfume that one of his daughters-in-law, as he well knew, bought at the Pakistani’s behind her husband’s back. Karekezi hurled curses against everyone on and around the hillside and swore that those Bazungu monsters would not get a single word out of him. Their leathery old bodies were dried with tufts of herbs, ishinge, and they were wrapped in the kind of gray blankets that the zamu in Kigali have, who guard the villas of the rich. They split with the notables a pitcher of banana beer. Each one had the privilege of savoring for himself alone a bottle of Primus that the commissioner had left for them. Which put them in a jovial mood: they began telling stories and singing. “No, not yet,” they were told, “save that for the professors. Now go to sleep on your mat.”
At sunrise, the two elders were woken and, decked out in their splendid shirts and handsome new, dazzling white pagnes, were installed in folding chairs that had been set up under the thatched overhang of the cabaret where the hillside notables gathered every evening around a pitcher of banana beer. Following the students’ directions, they had borrowed a table from the councilor. Gasana refused the chair and demanded a mat on which he squatted, leaning on his shepherd’s staff. Everyone had long to wait, as the professors’ car didn’t arrive until mid-morning. The professor greeted the two old men respectfully, warmly thanked the councilor and all those who had assisted in preparing the interview, but asked them to remove the curious onlookers who had gathered around the cabaret. The councilor and the catechist had some difficulty persuading the crowd to disperse. A few blows with the rod finally dissuaded the most recalcitrant. During this time, the students had unfolded canvas chairs and arranged on the table the equipment that would gather and preserve the old ones’ words. They accepted an offer of help from three young boys, one of whom seemed to know a little French, advising them to be very careful: “You have no idea how expensive a Nagra is! And fragile!” The three boys were granted the privilege of staying for the interview session, if they kept quiet.
The students scrupulously took down the name, lineage, and genealogy of the two oldsters. Karekezi listed nine ancestors and Gasana eleven. Karekezi claimed that he was born before the arrival of the Digidigi, the Germans, when Mwami Rwabugiri was warring with the Bashi who are now in the Congo; Gasana, in the time of the great plague that had killed off almost all the cows and announced the arrival of the Bazungu. The professor and his three assistants asked questions, which the students translated.
The professor began by stating that he’d come from Europe expressly to listen to them because he’d heard about this hillside. He knew its story. He had read about it in books. The story was that of Kibogo. He wanted to hear it from the mouths of those who surely knew it better than anyone else because they lived at the foot of Mount Runani. He wanted to discover with their help whether the story of Kibogo might conceal others.
Karekezi told how, to save Rwanda from famine, a famine like the one that had raged during the last war that the Bazungu waged among themselves, one of the king’s sons, named Kibogo, had been chosen by the soothsayers to be sacrificed and save the country that was on the verge of perishing. And this Kibogo was also called Akayezu. He wore a beautiful white habit like the padri and he spoke the language of the padri, like in Mass when they speak to their Imana. And so, as they were about to sacrifice Kibogo, who was also this Akayezu, at the top of Mount Runani, up there, on that mountain right over there, just above us, a cloud came to fetch him and he rose up to Heaven like the padri’s Yezu and perhaps someday he too will return.
“All this,” Karekezi went on, “I didn’t witness myself, I heard about it from the old ones of my time. But Akayezu, when the great storm came, went up the mountain and we never saw him again. And I heard that he had with him an old sorceress who claimed to be his bride but was more like the Maria of Yezu. They also say that like him she went up to Heaven, I don’t know how, but others have claimed they saw her ghost on the mountain and I don’t know who might have said such things, but they’re surely just tall tales.”
“No, no, no,” Gasana interrupted, “don’t listen to him, Karakezi doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s old. He gets everything mixed up. It wasn’t during the war among the Whites that Kibogo went up to Heaven. It was long before they came here. It was…who can remember? In the time of Mwami Ruzanzu or maybe another, who knows, but what I do know is that it wasn’t a cloud that abducted Kibogo: it was lightning that struck him, and not just him but also his five wives and twenty children and his intore who surpassed all the others in dance as well as in combat and his beef cattle, his inyambo, that no one could count because he owned so many: the lightning struck all of them, and so then they could all enter the great cloud that carried them off into the sky. Yes, that’s how Kibogo rose to Heaven. This I heard from my father, who got it from his father, who got it from his father…And this is why it’s forbidden for anyone to climb Mount Runani, for one must not tread upon the spot where lightning struck, and those who have tried have never returned. May I myself be struck by lightning if I’m not speaking the truth!”
Karekezi protested:
“Don’t listen to Gasana, he’s a liar, and he’s senile, he’s too old. Everything he just said is false. Everybody here knows he just makes up stories for anyone who has the patience to listen.”
“Calm down,” the students replied, “I’m sure the professor will like what Gasana said and what you said as well. We’ll try to translate for him what you’ve just told us.”
The professor seemed a bit disappointed by what the old men had recounted. He pressed the students to keep asking questions:
“But I also read that at the mwami’s court, there was a hut, an ingoro, a sanctuary dedicated to Kibogo. Tell me about this. Do you know how Kibogo was worshipped? And there was also that young girl, that virgin, the vestal who’d been betrothed to him…”
“It’s true,” answered Karekezi, “there was a girl from these parts who was sent to the royal court to look after Kibogo’s hut. She was like a servant, she swept out the enclosure. But the girl’s family is no longer here, they left, and she disappeared, no one knows what became of her.”
“But,” one student persisted, “the professor would like to know exactly how Kibogo’s umuzimu was worshipped.”
“It’s a secret. No one can know. Only those who hold the secrets of Rwanda, the abiru, have this knowledge. I can tell you nothing about this. Have you seen where the sun is? I don’t want to change into a lizard.”
“But the professor was told that there were people, back then, who had been killed on the mountain, that’s what he’d like to know about.”
Gasana, who was nodding while listening to Karekezi, then spoke up:
“Karekezi says he knows nothing about this. That’s true, but I do know. And I, Gasana, will answer your questions. And you will tell your professor that I’m the one who spoke the best, so I’m the one he must give compensation, amafranga menshi, money, a lot of it.”
“He’ll give you some if you speak well, as he wants. Try to remember: apart from Kibogo, were there others who died up there on your mountain to make the rains come? Try your best to remember, perhaps they killed people there.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you…Kibogo’s bride, for the young girl was the bride of Kibogo, Nyirakibogo, was responsible for the rain since Kibogo had brought the rains onto Rwanda. But if the rains were late in coming, if the rain refused to irrigate the Rwandans’ fields, the rainmakers said to the mwami, ‘The rain wants a sacrifice, Kibogo is calling for his bride.’ So then they brought out Nyirakibogo, they made her climb Mount Runani and they threw her from the mountaintop or arranged it, don’t ask me how, so the lightning would strike her, which was even better for making the rain come…”
“Don’t listen to him,” whined Karekezi, “he’s talking nonsense, how can he make up such things, for our shame and that of all Rwanda? He’s greedy, he’ll do anything for amafranga, and even for a little sip from the agacupa. If you don’t make him shut his big mouth, he’ll just keep piling on more and more. What shame for our hillside! What great misfortune for our Rwanda!”
“Why did they bring her up Mount Runani for her sacrifice?” asked the professor, increasingly interested.
Gasana reflected a long while before answering.
“It’s just that…I have to remember…I didn’t see this with my own eyes…It was the old people when I was little child who told what they had heard from their grandparents and that they themselves…All right, so why did they throw Nyirakibogo from the top of Mount Runani? It’s because there’s an overhanging rock for that purpose. It juts out over the abyss. And so they pushed her to the end of it and she fell all the way down, onto the rocks, and she was smashed against the sharp boulders. And they left her for the vultures and hyenas to devour, and that’s when the rain decided to fall. You can go up and see the overhang, it’s still there.”
“Yes,” said the professor, “I understand: they sent her to join Kibogo. She was his bride, they sacrificed her on the same spot as he, on the mountain. But you haven’t really told me, does the Kigabiro have anything to do with this?”
“The Kigabiro? Yes, the Kigabiro, indeed, the Kigabiro, I almost forgot…It’s coming back to me now…The Kigabiro was the domain of Nyirakibogo. She went there to ask for rain, the mwami sent her, that’s where she had her cows and her intore…maybe sometimes they also sacrificed a cow and an intore, I’m not sure anymore…Will that do, is the professor happy? That’s enough, I spoke well, no?”
“Yes, that’s fine, don’t add too much more or you’ll get it all mixed up. I’ll translate everything you’ve said for him. I think he’ll be very happy, as he’s been searching all over for human sacrifices, it’s his specialty!”
“Good,” the professor said after hearing out the student, “interesting, interesting. Tomorrow we’ll go explore the Kigabiro, or at least what’s left of it. It’s a shame they cut down those ancient trees, those witnesses to Rwandan history. Wasn’t there anyone to protect them from the missionaries’ vandalism, to save such a precious patrimony!”
No one understood why these new Bazungu were so interested in the trees on the hillside when all that remained of them were stumps. Why they asked so many questions about them. It was as if they were angry over those old trees, that it was a sin to have cut them down. The catechist tried to explain, and one of the Rwandan students translated his plea.
“Those trees,” he had argued, “dated from the time of the pagans. It was the devil and his possessed who had planted them. They held ceremonies there that no one will want to tell you about now that everyone has been baptized. Do not ask these questions. Everyone has forgotten all that, all those pagan charades. Besides, God’s fury had fallen on those cursed trees. During the great storm, many were struck down. They dried out and fell to dust. The people of the hillside had nothing to do with it.”
What the catechist related was for the new Bazungu’s benefit, but it wasn’t entirely the truth. In fact, the people of the hillside had helped God’s fury along a bit. Or more precisely, they had helped the Xaveri to, as they said, “topple the idols.” The Xaveri came from the main mission school. A new principal had been appointed: one of those new padri who talked only about progress and demokarasi. He had enrolled some of the students in a movement they called the Xaveri. The old padri’s intore danced, the Xaveri played soccer. The intore had to be tall, slim, and supple; the Xaveri soccer players squat and stocky. A major seminarian who’d been put in charge of forming the squad of Xaveri for his trial stage had selected his players and told them:
“You footballers are the true Rwandans. The intore are little girls dressed up as ancient warriors. Their ancestors are from Ethiopia or, worse, Egypt.”
The principal, for his part, spoke to his troops about their holy Patron, Saint Francis Xavier, the great missionary who had gone to the ends of the earth to baptize the Japanese. Nagasaki, Yokohama: these names appealed to the Xaveri: they were like Rwandan names. The Xaveri had received handsome uniforms, shorts with khaki shirts. Almost like the army. And like the army, they had banners, yellow and white, the pope’s colors, standards showing the Blessed Virgin on golden clouds. The girls from the home economics school had embroidered Maria and the clouds. The Xaveri sang songs that had never been heard at Mass. The padri accompanied them on his accordion.
Boldly to the summits,
We Xaveri have followed
The steep path of progress
And development.
The sun shines on Nyanza
Ever since our king
Gave our country to the King of Kings.
The principal was very fond of a game called Theater. He explained that it was a game in which you have to pretend to be someone else and declaim the other person’s words as if they were your own. The Xaveri had played the martyrs of Uganda. The martyrs were like intore that the wicked king of that country had thrown onto a large pyre because they refused to renounce Christ and yield to the tyrant’s abominable customs. The performance had taken place on June 30, the day of the Feast of the Martyrs of Uganda, and it had been much discussed at the cabaret among the more sophisticated members of the chiefdom.
Personally, the principal seemed sorry that King Musinga, a hardened pagan, had not, like the Ugandan king, inflicted martyrdom on some of his intore who had received baptism. Rwanda had botched its entry into the Christian religion.
The principal was so proud of his initial success that he told the Xaveri they would soon rehearse and quickly perform another play. It had been written long ago by a Frenchman named after a bird, but of course he had translated it into Kinyarwanda with all the appropriate adaptations. It took place in the time of the Romans who had conquered the entire world with the sole exception of Rwanda. The Romans were pagans and they persecuted the Christians. The play told the story of a young soldier who, having just been baptized, immediately tried to smash the idols. He was executed on the spot by the soldiers guarding the idol.
The performance was held one Sunday after High Mass, reserved for the students and the elite. The idol looked like a scarecrow, only more horrible. They had hung the most disgusting grisgris from it. The padri himself had drawn the grimacing features, with an open mouth full of ferocious teeth. The newly baptized soldier had rushed up to the false god and smitten it with a single blow of his spear. The idol had collapsed with a deafening noise while the Roman soldiers sporting helmets of gold-painted cardboard belabored the courageous Christian with wooden machetes. The martyr’s white tunic then became stained bright red while a voice, mysteriously dropping from the sky, proclaimed: “The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians.” Many spectators had been impressed, but some had muttered, “All in all, the movies in Kigali are better,” and the Xaveri complained that an intore had been chosen to play the holy martyr and not a footballer.
The Xaveri would have liked to smash some idols of their own (even without the threat of martyrdom), but there were no more idols in Rwanda because everyone had been baptized. The captain of the soccer team suggested that maybe they could go shatter the Karinga drum, for that royal drum was indeed a kind of idol. Under Musinga, the king who had been deposed for intractable paganism, they still daubed it with the blood of sacrificed bulls, as one did for heathen fetishes. “And maybe even human blood,” insinuated the center forward. “Besides, you know what it’s decorated with? Bikondo! And you know what bikondo are? Well, pardon me for being vulgar, but bikondo are testicles, yes, that’s right, the balls of vanquished kings, and I’ll tell you something else: among those vanquished kings, there were Rwandans like us!” The center forward was shaking with rage and his companions, growing worried, did their best to calm him. If the king preserved Karinga, some said, it’s because it’s the emblem of the country, a little like the Belgians’ flag. If you destroy Karinga, you risk destroying the country. And besides, others added, in Nyanza, the mwami’s palace is well guarded, and they won’t let you through with your hoe or your machete. The goalie found the right argument to appease the captain’s fury: “I was in Nyanza,” he said, “when Mutara Rudahigwa dedicated Rwanda to Christ the King. They held a grand procession. Karinga and its suite of drums were in the parade. I can’t say they looked all that proud behind the crosses and banners, and the monstrance shining like a sun. Karinga and its suite of old drums—there were eight, I counted them—looked like prisoners. They reminded me of the chained kings that the Romans, like the Father Principal told us, made march behind the victorious general as a humiliation. I tell you, that day, Karinga and the others submitted to God and the padri. Those rotting antiques aren’t worth destroying!”
The Father Principal found a way to satisfy his Xaveri’s fever to go smash idols. No one knows who might have told him that, not far from the mission, there was a hillside and a pagan grove at the foot of a mountain that people thought was haunted by a demon, or whispered to him that there remained in that lost pocket a handful of hypocrites who went at night to traffic with the devil, a lair of witches and poisoners. And besides, they had added, not so long ago some mighty funny things had gone on involving a defrocked seminarian who had led a gaggle of madwomen into perdition, along with an even more horrifying sorceress who terrorized the poor peasants with evil spells that she’d learned as the high priestess who conjured up the devil. The populace, still blinded by superstitions, had refused to cut down those cursed trees and erect in their place a statue of the bountiful Virgin who would ward off the calamities that still afflicted them.
The Father Principal, having lent credence to these calumnies, had chosen that hill for the Xaveri’s holiday camp. Not only would the Xaveri help the poor peasants improve their lot, but they would combat paganism in what was surely one of its last strongholds.
At the beginning of the dry season, a caravan arrived on the hillside the likes of which no one had ever seen. The Father Principal’s car led two trucks, one carrying the Xaveri, throats and flags at full throttle, the other stuffed with their camping equipment. The community councilor had come to welcome them. On the day of communal labor, he had them clear an area on the slope of the hill at the top of which stood several old pruned ficus trees, vestiges of the pagan grove. The councilor welcomed the arrivals, thanking the Father Principal for having brought to this out-of-the-way hillside these advanced Christian youths who would sensitize the peasant masses to progress and development. The Father Principal answered briefly that the Xaveri had come to aid the entire population, without distinction, but also to combat the last obstacles of superstition that still impeded—but not for long—Rwanda’s entry into the congress of civilized nations.
For two weeks, the Xaveri crisscrossed the hillside, asking from one enclosure to the next how they might be of service. The inhabitants were suspicious and answered that everything was fine and they didn’t need anybody and they’d never asked for anything but that if such learned young persons would kindly accept to share a pitcher of beer with humble peasants such as themselves, they would always be welcome and the peasants would be honored. The Xaveri finally managed to convince an old woman to let them buttress her shaky hut with some new thatching and to prop up her fence, but when the Father Principal asked them to go fetch the crone some water, they flatly refused, saying the chore was unworthy of a man, even a baptized one, and all the men on the hillside agreed. One team paved the way to the church outpost with gravel and replaced the roof tiles the winds had carried off. Another team hacked through the path leading up to the little grove that people said was still haunted by spirits. They couldn’t understand why these young folk were putting so much energy into clearing a path no one would ever use.
Every evening, in their encampment, the Xaveri sat around a huge campfire and sang songs, then the Father Principal said a few words to them and, after prayers, they went to their tents. The Father Principal had turned the outpost chapel into his own bedroom and study. The young men apparently paid no mind to the loose women who suddenly materialized and roamed around the tents. But certain rumors, mean-spirited as always, claimed that one of them gave birth in Kigali nine months after the Xaveri’s camp.
After the Sunday high mass, the Father Principal spoke. He thanked all the inhabitants for the warm welcome they’d shown the Xaveri and underscored that they had come expressly to help the people. Then suddenly, after a long pause, he stretched out his arm toward the hillside opposite the one on which the outpost stood: “Turn around,” he bellowed, “and look well: what do you see at the top of that hill? I’ll tell you what I see: a grove that is still pagan. And you live in the shadow of the devil, since those demonic trees are still there and you have not had enough faith to cut them down. Therefore you have not eradicated from your souls, baptized though they might be, the roots of superstition. My Xaveri came to you to free you from all the bonds in which the old paganism still holds you, and that has brought so much ruin down upon you. Tomorrow you will come back here with your machetes and I will bless them and we shall climb the hillside where the demon has taken refuge. To the strongest among you I shall lend these axes, and beneath their blows those trees of the devil will fall.”
The following day, led by the Father Principal and Xaveri brandishing axes and banners, some twenty men, trailed by as many curious women and children, climbed the hill to the pagan wood. The sacred grove was fairly sparse. Many of its old trees had been struck by lightning. Their cracked, blackened trunks jutted from the ground, along with leafless branches reduced to stubs, like giants that were wounded but still baleful. Some thought that their roots stretched all the way down to the land of the dead, where spirits ceaselessly wandered in darkness without end. The improvised lumberjacks from the hillside, like the Xaveri, hesitated a long while. A few women quietly slipped away, then ran down the hill as fast as their legs could go. The Father Principal grabbed an ax and attacked the thickest tree. The Xaveri, suddenly liberated from the fear that had paralyzed them, pounced on the other trees. A few hillside men followed the catechist with greater or lesser enthusiasm. The Xaveri put so much fervor and persistence into the task that by morning’s end the grove was flattened. They stacked the trunks and branches into a huge pyre that took three days to burn. Five Xaveri watched over the blaze, chasing away the little girls come to gather kindling for the family hearth. “Don’t you know this wood is cursed,” they said, “the roots of these trees fed on the flames of Hell. Do you want to warm your mother’s home with fire from Shatani’s kitchen?” The little girls ran down the hill in tears, saying they’d seen the fires of Hell.
The Father Principal congratulated the Xaveri on having exorcised and purified, thanks to their courage, the last of the devil’s dens.
The Xaveri, who had planted their banners in the deforested hilltop, carried up bricks and built what they said was a base, as in the main mission church, on which they would set a statue of the Virgin. She was very white, with eyes blue like her veil. The Father Principal explained that the monsignor of Kabgayi had sent a statue of the Virgin to all the large missions but that, as an exception, because the Xaveri had enjoyed the best welcome right here, and because everyone had helped chase away the demons, he had managed to convince the monsignor to reserve one for this tiny outpost. This was a great honor. The inhabitants should be proud and come as often as possible to pray to the good Maria who from now on would protect them and keep them safe from the forces of evil. They recited a number of rosaries, then the Xaveri folded their tents, the Father Principal got into his car, the Xaveri into their covered truck, and the convoy disappeared in a cloud of dust.
The next day, the councilor, the catechist, and several notables welcomed the professor and his retinue at the foot of the Kigabiro hill.
“Don’t anyone follow them,” the councilor had ordered the small waiting crowd.
But the three boys rushed to the Land Rover and offered to help the students carry their equipment.
“Fine,” said one, “but what are your names?”
“I’m Kabwa, and this is Gatwa and Gahene.”
“Your names aren’t very pretty,” the students laughed.
“Well, then, call us whatever you like,” answered Kabwa, “Tintin, Tarzan, Lucky Luke…”
“Well, how about that!” the students marveled. “Where did you learn about those things?”
“I went to school,” said Kabwa. “I was even friendly with one of the teachers. He gave me comic books to read.”
“And you’re not in school anymore?”
“I had some problems with the principal, because of that same teacher. He saw things in the sky, things he called flying saucers.”
The students burst out laughing and said:
“Fine, all right, you can carry the equipment, but don’t do anything foolish, and don’t go getting underfoot.”
At the top of Kigabiro, the professor, his assistants, and the two students engaged in various activities. They counted the stumps of the felled trees one by one, photographed a few trunks, measured the perimeter of the former sacred grove. From these vestiges, the young woman assistant drew up the presumed map of the enclosure. They gave the three boys shovels and hoes to clear a rectangle of terrain around the statue. The professor lengthily examined the uncovered soil. The students sifted the dirt. They found a few shards of pottery and charred twigs. The professor declared that these were evidently traces of a collapsed hut, perhaps the sanctuary of Kibogo and his priestess. He would recommend that the Institute in Astrida send a team of archeologists without delay. For that, they would have to move the statue: “It’s as if,” the professor remarked, “they erected it here to forbid the Rwandans from reclaiming their past.” He was hoping that below it they would find graves, drums, weapons for sacrifices. From the trunks, they could tell how old the trees were…All this would be written up in a paper that would be a landmark in African Studies.
The catechist ventured a remark:
“But Maria, her statue, you can’t touch that, it was the monsignor himself who gave it to our hillside, we can’t touch it, it would be a sin, a mortal sin, and it would surely bring us great misfortune. No, no, you cannot…”
“Come now,” said the professor, “we’re just going to move your statue over a bit: the Blessed Virgin isn’t going to stand in the way of science, is she? It’s like being in the Vendée, or Brittany,” the professor added for his assistants’ benefit.
The three boys had quietly approached the students:
“You’re sure the professor is going to give us something, right?”
“Yes, of course, he promised.”
“If he gives us a good matabiche, we too could tell a story; we know things, too. Not like that fibber Gasana who says whatever comes into his head for a bottle of beer. Kibogo’s wife never had a hut here on Kigabiro and people were never thrown off the mountaintop. Gasana made all that up so he’d get more amafranga than Karekezi. But we can tell you what we saw with our own eyes.”
“Tell us first, and we’ll see if it’s interesting.”
“If we tell you, you’ll go repeat it to the professor and we won’t get anything.”
“If it’s worthwhile, I’ll take you to the professor myself and you can tell him.”
“All right, so you know what we found at the foot of the statue, the wood ash and bits of pottery: none of that’s old. We were little then, but we saw it. In the place of the Maria, there was Akayezu’s shack. Do you know about Akayezu? He was once a seminarian, and he went crazy. That’s why they kicked him out of the major seminary. We’re not sure if he thought he was Yezu because of his name, or Kibogo because of the legends his mother used to tell. There were a ton of stories they used to tell about him. Like my grandmother’s tales. He gave bread to all the children: with just two loaves, he had enough for everybody. They said he’d revived a baby, now she’s a little girl who’s a healer. He had apostles like Yezu, but his apostles were women, even loose women who’d come back from Kigali with their half-breeds and their diseases. And then he got married to Mukamwezi. You don’t know Mukamwezi? Well, that’s going to interest the professor! Mukamwezi was the girl they chose to go to the mwami’s court. Mukamwezi was the last one to go to Nyanza. And do you know what she did in the court of the old mwami Musinga? She tended Kibogo’s hut. She was Kibogo’s girlfriend. Kibogo had this kind of chapel at the king’s court. You must know that, since you’re practically scholars already, and you also know Kibogo rose into the sky to go find the rain. You’ve heard the old men’s stories. Well, when the great drought came, the one they called Ruzagayura, during the last war, Mukamwezi went up the mountain with the old men, the same two who told you their stories, the others are dead now, and she’s the one who made the rains come back. That’s what they say behind the padri’s backs.”
“Yes, all right, the professor might be interested in your story…”
“Wait, there’s more. So, as we were saying, crazy Akayezu moved in with Mukamwezi. I don’t know who was crazier. One year, at the start of the rainy season, there was a storm like we’d never seen. It destroyed everything, swept it all away. The trees of Kigabiro were felled by lightning. Akayezu’s hut burned down. Mukamwezi’s shack was crushed by boulders. Everyone said, ‘Those heathens are dead, they were punished by the God of the padri.’ But we happen to know they didn’t die like that. If they’re even dead! We went to take a look at the top of Runani. We went there because it’s forbidden by custom. We wanted to know what was being hidden. So the three of us climbed up there, Gahene, Gatwa, and I—Kabwa—and when we’d almost reached the top, we got caught in this strange cloud. We couldn’t see a thing. And yet, in that strange cloud, we made out something, I can’t say what it was, but that something spoke to us, it might have been an umuzimu, a ghost, the ghost of Mukamwezi, yes, Mukamwezi, but I can’t say any more than that, it would bring us misfortune. Unless…”
“Go on, I’m sure your story will interest the professor. He’ll give you whatever you ask, as long as it’s reasonable.”
“All right, well, then,” said Kabwa, lowering his voice, “the ghost said that Akayezu had gone up into the cloud, like Kibogo, and that he’d return like Yezu.”
“What a story! Where did you get that from? You, Kabwa, come tell your story to the professor. He’ll arrange to put it in his book for the other professors. But don’t talk too much about Yezu. The professor doesn’t really care for Jesus and missionaries. On the other hand, he loves human sacrifices: he goes looking for them everywhere, in his region, in what used to be called Gaul in the time of his ancestors and among the ancient Americans and all over the world. So don’t tell him Gasana made up his stories, he’ll be very unhappy. But if we can offer him the kind of stories he likes, we hope he’ll find us a grant to go to a university in Europe. And don’t worry, you’ll get a good reward. It’s important he comes back from his trip to Rwanda satisfied.”‘
It was Kabwa who immediately seized the microphone and told the professor, in French, the story of Akayezu and Mukamwezi. Gahene and Gatwa tried their best to introduce a few variants, but the students not so gently pushed them back and made them keep quiet.
“Interesting, very interesting,” the professor concluded. “Dagobert and Léonidas, transcribe what he told me immediately, so that I can think about it overnight, and tomorrow we’ll scale that famous forbidden mountain. These kids can be our guides. Dorothée, don’t forget to help them out as they deserve. But I don’t want anybody else, and especially not that catechist with his religious claptrap. We don’t have any time to waste, so keep him away from me.”
The three boys of course showed up at the appointed hour at the foothills of Mount Runani. They didn’t have long to wait. The professor’s Land Rover soon came to join them. They gave Gahene and Gatwa the equipment to haul, but Kabwa, promoted to guide, was exempted from having to carry anything and set off in front. He led the little column, making out the traces of a barely perceptible path that grew steeper and steeper as they climbed.
“Not so fast,” the students said, “the professor is elderly. He has a weak heart. Old white professors are like infants, you have to take special care of them. If you keep up this pace, he’ll get out of breath and won’t be able to make it to the top. And it will be your fault, in which case you can kiss your matabiche goodbye.”
Kabwa slowed down and they took as many breaks as the professor needed.
“Believe me,” the latter said, “I’ve gone up quite a few of these, including the three hundred sixty-five steps of the great Maya pyramid in Mexico in one go: that was something else! From up top, they used to hurl the bodies of sacrificial victims. Perhaps they also did that from the top of this mountain, according to what the old men and Kabwa told me. In any case, it remains to be seen.”
“You’ll surely prove it if such was the case,” the assistants replied in chorus.
“Maybe that’s how Mukamwezi threw Akayezu from the top of the rock face. Unless he leapt off it himself. Akayezu thought he was Kibogo. He wanted to rise into the sky, he was crazy,” said Kabwa.
“Or else it was the other way around,” the professor answered with a laugh, “and it was Akayezu who threw Mukamwezi off. To each his own theory, my boy.”
“He’s very smart, this boy,” the professor assessed, “we should do something with him. You’re called Kabwa, that means ‘little dog.’ I think your father should have made that ‘clever little dog.’ Meantime, do you mind if I lean on you? You’re going to be the crutch of my old age till we reach the top.”
The small troupe, Kabwa at the head, helped, supported, and hoisted the professor in the steepest passages, until they reached the sloping plateau that formed the crest of Mount Runani and ended in a rocky spur hanging over the void.
The professor had caught his breath and regained his enthusiasm:
“You see that boulder over there? It’s just what I said, Rwanda’s answer to the Tarpeian Rock, the great pyramid of Central Africa. It’s the sacrificial rock. Make sure to photograph this site from every angle.”
The assistants pulled cameras from their shoulder bags and snapped away at the crest, while the professor seemed to be immersed in deep reflections.
“Now I’ll need someone who isn’t afraid of heights. We have to go to the end of the spur to see if there might be any signs carved into the stone; I’m not expecting an actual inscription, of course, we’re in Rwanda, not the Yucatan. But even so, it’s worth checking.”
Everyone hesitated. The assistants kept their faces in their notes. The students pretended not to hear.
“I’ll go,” said Kabwa. “I’m not afraid. I’ll let you know if I see anything.”
Gahene and Gatwa tried to hold their friend back:
“You’re crazy, Kabwa. Don’t go. You’re not going to get yourself killed for a Muzungu.”
“Leave me alone,” said Kabwa, “I know what I’m doing, I’m not an old woman.”
And already he had started onto the narrow promontory, advancing step by step, using his arms to keep his balance. Sometimes he appeared to falter.
“Kabwa!” his two friends cried, “Come back, you’re going to fall, we don’t want you to die! What will we tell your poor mother?”
The professor, his assistants, and the two students stared at the tightrope walker, petrified.
Kabwa had reached the far end of the suspended rock. He managed to kneel, and lengthily studied the extremity of the spur.
“I don’t see anything,” he shouted back, “but it’s possible they carved this stone a bit. It’s pretty pointed.”
On the way back, Kabwa seemed to take large strides, as if he had overcome vertigo or the call of the void.
The professor enthusiastically greeted the intrepid explorer:
“Well done, boy! You’re not afraid of anything, on top of which you’ve got ideas in your head. It is indeed possible they worked the stone a bit. If you stare at it closely, you’ll see it looks like the beak of a bird of prey. That’s where you take off from. Did you get pictures of that?”
“Yes, definitely, Professor. It’s true, if you look closely, it’s amazing, it’s just like an eagle’s beak.”
“Isn’t it? All right, now we have to rake off this whole summit. Maybe we’ll find other clues. Don’t let anything get by you.”
Everyone examined the parcel of ground that the female assistant had assigned them. Gahene, Gatwa, and Kabwa gathered a few pebbles that seemed oddly shaped. But the professor decided that these were just the work of nature. The assistants came back empty-handed. Then one of the students suddenly cried out:
“Come look! Here are some bones, surely human bones!”
Everyone ran up. Against a rock, you could indeed make out the remains of a skeleton, clearly human, but whose bones had been crushed, mangled, and scattered, as if every predator on the mountain, hyenas, jackals, and vultures, had fought over the carcass.
“Don’t touch a thing,” said the professor, “take photos first.”
“It’s Mukamwezi,” murmured Kabwa, “the misfortune is upon us! We saw her umuzimu, and now, her bones. Her ghost will take its revenge, it will torment us until the day we die.”
“Yes, yes,” Gahene insisted to the students, “don’t touch it. Leave her there where she wanted to die. Her umuzimu must remain on the mountain or it will spread misfortune everywhere.”
“Come, come,” said the professor, “let’s not be superstitious. We’ll carefully gather up all these remains to study who they might have belonged to. Maybe to Kibogo’s priestess, as Kabwa seems to believe, or perhaps the defrocked seminarian, as I suspect. But who knows? They might even be older than that.”
The students let the professor’s assistants collect the skeleton fragments. The three boys stayed back a good distance and turned their faces away when they exhumed what might have been a piece of skull.
“It’s like the remains of a cannibal feast,” the assistants joked.
Everyone else pretended not to hear. They also found a warthog’s tusk, wildcat fangs, glass pearls that must have belonged to a necklace, and even a medallion of the Blessed Virgin.
“Let’s hurry up,” one of the students suddenly said, “look at that cloud, it’s running alongside the crest, uncoiling like a snake, it’s coming toward us, we’re going to get caught in the fog!”
“Yes,” the boys begged, “we have to go back down quickly before the cloud swallows us up. It’s Bweramvura, the cloud of the first rain, Kibogo’s rain, he’s the one who’s sent it to us. We’re going to be carried off or struck by lightning.”
Gatwa and Gahene, followed closely by the two Rwandan students, immediately fled down the mountain, leaving the professor and his adjuncts behind. Only Kabwa remained at the professor’s side and acted as his guide in the increasingly dense fog that seemed to chase after them. He propped up the professor when he stumbled on the slippery rocks, supported him in the steepest passages, held him back from toppling over the edge. The assistants groped their way behind. They finally managed to reach the Land Rover, in the shelter of which the students and the two boys were waiting. They hastened to make room for the new arrivals, who gave them neither a word nor a glance. The Land Rover started up. The professor, regaining his breath and his spirits, endeavored to break the glacial silence:
“Well, that was a narrow escape,” he said. “We were being pursued by the curse of Kibogo, but my friend Kabwa saved me just as we were about to be carried off by the cloud. Maybe Kibogo didn’t want me, for what could an old man do in the clouds?”
The students forced a laugh.
“In any case,” the professor continued, “I will never forget what this young man did for us. Isn’t that right, Dorothée? We’ll have to take care of him.”
“Of course, Professor,” replied the young assistant, “but what would the young man like?”
“To go back to school, but this time a real school, a school for Whites.”
“We’ll take care of that. We’ll surely find a grant somewhere. But tell me, you’ve got an awfully funny name. Don’t you have another name, Kabwa the little dog?”
“It’s the name my father gave me. I don’t have any other name.”
“Why did he call you that?”
“My father was prudent. And distrustful. In my family, many of my older brothers and sisters had died. I’m his only son. There was no way of knowing whether this malediction came from the Rwandan Imana or the padri’s God. So he gave me the name Kabwa to protect me. Why should one of our Imana, not to mention the all-powerful God of the priests, pay any attention to a little dog? We hoped he’d have better things to do. And by the way, it’s the same for my friends: Gahene means little goat, and the worst is Gatwa, little pygmy—I’d rather be a little dog!”
“Your father was a sage, Kabwa, a true philosopher. But if you go back to school, as I hope, I’ll find you another name.”
“As you wish, Professor, but then you too will be my father.”
“We’ll see, we’ll see…”
The professor wanted to go say hello to the hillside councilor. He wasn’t hard to find: nightfall was the time for Primus, so he could only be at the cabaret with the catechist and a few notables. The councilor greeted the professor and his retinue with relief and curiosity:
“So Kibogo didn’t carry you off in his cloud! We got worried when we heard the storm rumbling up there on the mountain.”
“As you see, my dear Councilor, Kibogo didn’t want us, we’re too white.”
“And did you make any interesting discoveries?”
“Yes, I think so. We’ll talk more tomorrow. I would like to tell you, Councilor, as well as any of your citizens who are interested, about what we believe we’ve discovered and what our plans are. For we are not done with your hillside.”
“You will always be welcome, Mister Professor, Sir, and the population will always be at your service. But,” he added, casting a look of disdain and anger at the three boys, “we will make sure, with your permission, to furnish you with honorable and competent personnel.”
“I believe I’ve already found what I need,” the professor replied.
Few people the next day came to hear the professor. The catechist had gone from enclosure to enclosure, saying:
“Don’t subject yourselves to the fancy words of that crazy scientist. He’s a liar. The missionary priests told me: ‘The Communists sent him to stir up the Lord’s humble lambs.’ Don’t you know that he is one of those who worship the devil, Shatani himself, the ones who sacrifice newborn infants on their altars? Isn’t that what this professor has come to do on our hillside? He said he’d come back to topple our statue of Maria and put in her place a horrible fetish of the devil, and on the mountain, he believes we used to sacrifice human beings to the idols, he’s looking for bones of the dead for his evil spells, for as the padri told me, he’s even worse than a Communist, he’s a Freemason! And for the Whites, Freemasons are like pagan for us, going off at night to make Kubandwa with all the demons of the brush: they speak to the dead, they dance with the devil!”
Everyone barricaded the entrance to their enclosure with interlaced thorn branches, those who had padlocks padlocked their huts, the men kept their machetes near at hand, and the women strapped their newborns tight against their backs.
Nonetheless, the councilor managed to persuade a few of his citizens by promising that the professor would surely offer a round of Primus before his departure to thank the hillside for its hospitality. Of the two old men, only Karekezi deigned to go greet the one he now called his Patron and Benefactor; Gasana refused, complaining that although he had said the most to make the professors happy, he’d received the same amount as Karekezi, who had said nothing.
The professor’s pompous speech was approximatively translated by the students. He maintained that his research would revolutionize the history of Rwanda and Central Africa, to the dismay of his colleagues timidly shut inside their universities. He himself was a man of the field. He would soon be back and was going to train onsite competent youths like the ones he had met here, he concluded, looking at Kabwa. The councilor asked if the honored Professor could help them convince the authorities in Kigali to build them a community clinic. The professor answered that the discoveries he would surely reveal on the site of the former sacred wood and on Mount Runani would make the hillside famous the world over. He even had plans to reconstruct the sanctuary of Kibogo and his vestal. To attract enlightened tourists, they could reenact the rituals once celebrated there. He was certain that this would have enormous success and bring much revenue to the village. They would need drums, intore dancers, and they would select a very pretty young girl to play the role of Kibogo’s predestined bride. He was counting on the cooperation of all the inhabitants and he was certain this would incite the authorities to provide the hillside with the necessary infrastructure.
The students discreetly reminded the professor that the custom was not to leave without having a drink to “seal their friendship” and the councilor therefore invited all who wished to honor the professor to follow him to the cabaret where they had set out the requisite Primus and banana beer. A small crowd was already waiting under the straw roofs, despite the catechist’s directives. Soon the beer was flowing freely and the number of those who desired to wish the eminent professor bon voyage had visibly swelled. Kabwa tried his best to protect him from the jostling crowd and signaled to the driver to bring up the Land Rover. The professor jumped into the car, followed by Kabwa.
“Take me with you, Professor, you’ve seen how useful I can be. You said so yourself, I’m the crutch of your old age. Take me with you and enroll me in a good school, a school for Whites, and when you go dig up your old bones, I’ll be with you to protect you from the evils of the living and the dead.”
“Kabwa, you’re a good boy, and I want to do something for you. I already told you: Dorothée, who is staying in Astrida, will take care of you. You’ll go back to school and when I return, I’ll take you onto my team, I promise.”
“Thank you, Professor, Sir, I’ll wait for you, don’t forget me. Don’t forget your crutch.”
The assistants and the students had finally climbed into the Land Rover. The car was just starting forward when they saw the councilor waving frantically at them. The driver stopped short and the councilor gripped the door:
“Mister Professor, Sir, all these good people who have drunk in your honor, you have to pay for their Primus, you almost forgot! They did this for you, out of respect for you, they came here in your honor, and they’re poor. Look, I have the little bill here. It has been a great honor for them as for me to have you among us.”
The professor read the little bill, smiled, took a few banknotes from his wallet, and said:
“Very well, and here’s so that your good people can drink to my health some more and not forget me. I’ll be back.”
It was with great relief that they watched the professor and his retinue leave. “What were those Bazungu doing here on our hillside?” everyone wondered. “Measuring the trunks of old pagan trees, going up the mountain that no one should climb, gathering up old bones…And all this to call down on us the vengeance of the spirits and the anger of the padri, who look poorly on these new Whites.” And the catechist added, as he’d heard from the missionaries’ own mouths: “Did that professor, filled like so many others with false science, believe he could revive the old paganism and its gory rituals?” The catechist was especially peeved at Gasana: where had he come up with that story just to make the professor happy, how had he made up all those lies that did such injustice to Rwanda, that made our ancestors out to be savages even worse than the ones in America? And all that for a few ten-franc notes, Judas’s pieces of silver that Gasana had gladly received.
He should repent and swear on the cross, on the medallion of Maria, on the mwami, on our Rwanda, on his children and his children’s children that everything he’d told the professor was nothing but falsehoods born from his own avarice or from debility caused by his extreme old age. The councilor would put his confession in writing and it would be sent to the Administrator and the chief, who would no doubt deem it wise for the honor of his chiefdom to make sure the disavowal, duly signed by Gasana’s thumb and index prints, reached the professors in Astrida who studied the history of Rwanda and its races seriously.
Gasana’s face lit up in a large toothless grin:
“You need stories for every kind of ear. If the padri asked me for some seasoned to their taste, I would serve them just as many. Don’t be angry. And besides, there’s nothing you can do against my words. They won’t just vanish like the ones in the tales. They won’t dissolve in the hazy memories of children. They are already far away. They will cross the oceans. They will remain written down in the professor’s book like the words of Jesus in your Gospels. They might be in the language of the Bazungu and I don’t know if it will still be my story but the professor told me: my name will be in his book. I, Gasana, son of Gatera, of Kagango, of Kiromba, of Gafuku, of Ntorezo, of…”
“That’ll do, Gasana, leave your ancestors be, you’ll be joining them in Hell soon enough, like the old pagan you are.”
But many were also annoyed at Kabwa for having been the old professor’s little dog. They laughed at his pretensions: did he really believe the professor was going to adopt him? Him, a hoodlum, a petty thief who’d gotten himself expelled from school, and because of a professor, to boot? He was still the same little liar: could anyone seriously imagine him, Kabwa, who was so black, with such a white papa? They chided him for guiding the professor and his team to the top of the mountain to collect old bones. Obviously this could unleash the ire of the dead, who have nothing better to do than torment the living. Gatwa and Gahene thought Kabwa had gone to Astrida. He would be staying, he’d told them, with the professor’s female assistant while waiting for his supposed new father to return. He had also bragged that someday he might marry that young lady, who, even though she was no great beauty by Rwandan standards nor exactly in the first blush of youth, was undeniably all white. Gatwa and Gahene, trembling with envy, swore they’d go to Astrida, to Usumbura, to the ends of the earth if necessary, and bash their ex-pal’s face in.
The following Sunday, at High Mass, everyone at first listened with half an ear to the padri’s sermon. “There were,” he said, “false prophets who told false tales. Those who heeded those false tales, and those who read them, if they knew how to read, went straight to Hell. To those bad people who told false things to the Lord’s innocent little children, Yezu had promised a strange punishment: an urusyo would be attached around their neck, a millstone, and they would be thrown into Lake Kivu.” Without transition, the padri asked them to pray for everyone, even for the enemies of Yezu, for those who should have been condemned to the bottom of the Kivu. And that’s when he arrived at what he’d no doubt wanted to say all along: “I have some sad news to relate: the professor who came to your hillside is dead. He was killed in an airplane accident: the small plane that connected with Sabena in Usumbura crashed in the tall mountains overlooking Lake Kivu. I’ve been told that the airplane got caught in a fierce storm, that it was struck by lightning, and that the airplane broke into a million pieces. Let us pray for the professor and for those who were traveling with him. The professor is surely in need of our prayers. But God is merciful: they say that the prayers of the Lord’s innocent little children can lessen for an instant the sufferings of the damned.”
When the cloud of dust raised by the motorcycle had settled, the catechist commented on the padri’s sermon for those who had remained to chat on the packed-earth churchyard in front of the outpost.
“Did you fully understand what the padri said? Did you fully understand Yezu’s punishment? The wicked shall be tossed to the bottom of the lake with a millstone around their necks, as they once did for the adulteress. And who, then, were those wicked? False scientists who had not gone to the mission school but to the devil’s school. Yes, the padri have told me: there are devil’s schools where they come from. And these false scientists mislead little children with their big words that no one understands. They try to push them back into worshipping the old fetishes, the trees, the sheep. Well, here, too, on our hillside, the professor came to mislead us and restore the time of the pagans. You heard him yourselves: he wanted to rebuild Akayezu and Mukamwezi’s hut, destroy the statue of Maria that the monsignor of Kabgayi gave us. He wanted to sacrifice children to Kibogo on our mountain.
“But you have also heard: his airplane was struck by Yezu’s fury. You must fear Yezu’s fury. And so, to thank him for having saved us from the snares of the wicked, let us pledge here and now to erect a great cross on the top of Mount Runani. It will protect us from every demon, from Kibogo and all the spirits of Hell.”
A murmur from the gathering, which the catechist took as assent, greeted the end of his speech.
But late at night, when the hearth fire was no more than a dome of glowing embers, the spinners of tales asked:
“And why should we attribute this vengeance to Yezu? Didn’t Kibogo also have reason to complain of this professor? What was that professor doing up there on Kibogo’s mountain? Stealing the remains of the woman who had been his bride? As for us, we shall recount how Kibogo came down in his cloud, followed by the endless train of his brides who, for centuries and centuries, nourished his umuzimu in the chapel of the king’s palace, of intore dancers with their lion’s manes, of his countless herds of cattle with their long horns. Kibogo struck with his Thunder-Spear the thieves of bones, the thieves of memory. And he took back the bones of his bride, who immediately became again the young girl of unequalled beauty she had once been, and she regained pride of place among those who had been promised to him. In our tales, Kibogo too can shake the sky and set off the thunder: isn’t the tale of Kibogo equal to the tale of Yezu?”
And in the deepest secret of night, the storytellers spin and spin again the tale of Kibogo.