A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche Page A

Canadian nurse more stubborn than a mule and more generous than a field of poppies, administered the perfusion. Méthode would die in a private room at the hotel, as he wished. A steady stream of visitors began to arrive. Immediate then distant relatives, friends, colleagues at work, and finally vague acquaintances. Méthode would smile sometimes. He did not know that so many people loved him. A medical inspector, accompanied by a policeman, had come and seen that no by-law had been infringed, especially having discovered in conversation with Raphaël that he himself was related to the dying man. He was pleased to deliver a certificate attesting that the patient could not be moved. He went through the motions of refusing the five thousand francs offered him, but thought about his many children and the fact that he had not been paid for three months. Worse, his small medicine business was doing badly. The pharmacy had been out of aspirin for a month and had not had a glimpse of an antibiotic for two weeks. He had tried to sell off some of the anti-tuberculosis medicines but without much success, because the missionaries were handing them out free and there were almost as many missionaries as there were tubercular patients.
    The Belgian manager, Monsieur Dik, who had summoned the medical inspector but forgotten to offer him a gift, arrived with his large pustulous nose at the door left open to accommodate the constant coming and going. He was greeted by Agathe, who regularly offered him her mounts and hills of firm flesh in recognition of friendship or rent in arrears. Madame Agathe made use of her opulent body the way others use their cheque-books. He had fondled, caressed, sucked the breasts she had presented to him one after the other the way one offers cakes to a greedy child. He had pawed her buttocks and slipped his hands between her humid thighs. And he had come while doing it. But he had never seen Agathe naked. Frugally, she did not waste her assets and saved some of her capital for grand occasions. When the manager cried, “Monsieur Bernard, this cannot go on … ,” she clasped the little man to her bosom and literally carried him into the bathroom.
    “Monsieur Dik, I’m taking you to paradise.” And she closed the door.
    Five minutes later, still quivering with pleasure, the manager came to speak to Méthode with all the respect and studied compassion that courtesy and circumstance required.
    Then Méthode’s mother arrived and the visitors withdrew. Marguerite Izimana’s face, like an emaciated cat’s, was deeply furrowed, her eyes empty and her gaze fixed. She sat on a straight chair and took Méthode’s hand; he gave a faint smile of recognition. She did not look at him. She alone of the whole hill had known that her son was suffering from “the sickness.” She was not ashamed, no, but she did not wish to be troubled by the gossip, the rejection, the judgments and the scorn. If Méthode was dying of a shameful sickness it was because he was born in shame. The shame of poverty, of discrimination, of university education denied, grants refused, of land and house so tiny that he had soon left for the city, the shame of being unable to marry because of poverty and inadequate housing, then a girl for a few brochettes and a beer, a girl to help forget fear and time in jail, a girl for a quick little orgasm, that’s not a sin, that’s an imitation of happiness. This is what she was thinking as she murmured what ought to have been prayers. And then, to die at thirty-two, or at forty butchered by drunken soldiers, or at forty-two of malaria, or at fifty-five, like her, of weariness and heartbreak … What’s the difference?
    “Dying is not a sin” was the only thing she had come to say to him, and she gently placed her other hand on her son’s glistening forehead, whereupon he closed his eyes and let his last tear fall. The last tear is death’s beginning.
    Finally soothed and free, Méthode repeated,