“Dying is not a sin.” Then, slightly raising his head, “We must tell them,” he said. Marguerite Izimana nodded and turned to Valcourt. In her eyes there was neither appeal nor interrogation, just a command. Awed by this dark solemnity, Valcourt stepped forward.
“You want to speak to me, Méthode?”
“Yes, but not just to you, to a lot of people … on the television … with the film you wanted to make with me. Let’s make the film. I’m going to rest, build up my strength, then we’ll make the film and you’ll show it to them. And then … I’ll go.”
Méthode closed his eyes and his mother closed hers. The two settled down calmly to wait.
Méthode emerged from his sleep, his stupor, his silence or semi-coma—how could anyone tell which?—only in late afternoon, jerked from his limbo by the harsh, strident calls of the jackdaws and buzzards arriving as the Whites returned from their aid work and deal-making. Méthode’s mother, like a seated tombstone figure, had not moved, had not let go of her son’s hand for a second. Only her shoulders, which would hunch suddenly whenever Méthode’s breath became more gasping, showed there was life left in a body made of knots, bones and skin stretched and dry, creviced by thousands of fine wrinkles, like the furrows the country people plow on their hills.
On the long, low dresser along the wall facing the two beds, Valcourt had ordered food and a bar set out.
“We’re going to eat, drink and fuck,” said Méthode, adding with the smile of a kid surprised by his own audacity that he was glad his mother didn’t understand French.
Then in Kinyarwanda:
“Maman, don’t be sad, I’m going to have a beautiful death.”
“For a young man, there’s no such thing as a beautiful death. Or a death that makes sense. All children’s deaths are ugly and senseless.”
André, who had learned in Quebec how to make Rwandans aware of condoms and abstinence, was the first to arrive for this funerary feast, which Méthode called the Last Supper, though he was quick to add, with a little laugh broken by coughing, that he did not take himself for jesus Christ. Then came Raphaël with some colleagues from the bank, and Élise, her arms full of flowers and her handbag full of morphine, which an understanding and ill-paid friend had obtained for ten dollars American. Finally Agathe, accompanied by three of her girls because a party without free girls is not a party. The girls would not kiss the dying man or even shake his hand. Méthode was too charmed with everything to insist. On the contrary. He was delighted the girls thought they might catch the sickness, even with the merest touch of their lips or fingers. Fear had got to them, and though unjustified, it was a fear, a terror almost, that he and so many of his friends had never felt. His death would not have been in vain.
When the first fevers had taken him, he had thought of malaria. The first diarrhea attacks had not surprised him. Sick goat’s meat or polluted water. The ten kilos he lost in a few weeks were certainly food poisoning, that rotten goat he had eaten at Lando’s, or maybe the grilled tilapias at the Cosmos that had left an aftertaste. The sores in his mouth hadn’t surprised him either, any more than the tuberculosis that floored him so suddenly. He took a room in the intellectuals’ building at the Kigali Hospital Centre so as not to have to share a bed with someone who had diphtheria or pustulant scabies. The sickness appeared to him along with the face of a Belgian doctor, the head of internal medicine, who knew well that it was penetrating everywhere, multiplying faster than rabbits, and that this was giving him a long head start on his Western colleagues. All these patients, this constantly replenished horde of ignorant people at his disposal, and the sickness progressing at lightning speed but with its own characteristics here—all of it could lead to an important discovery, and even
“You want to speak to me, Méthode?”
“Yes, but not just to you, to a lot of people … on the television … with the film you wanted to make with me. Let’s make the film. I’m going to rest, build up my strength, then we’ll make the film and you’ll show it to them. And then … I’ll go.”
Méthode closed his eyes and his mother closed hers. The two settled down calmly to wait.
Méthode emerged from his sleep, his stupor, his silence or semi-coma—how could anyone tell which?—only in late afternoon, jerked from his limbo by the harsh, strident calls of the jackdaws and buzzards arriving as the Whites returned from their aid work and deal-making. Méthode’s mother, like a seated tombstone figure, had not moved, had not let go of her son’s hand for a second. Only her shoulders, which would hunch suddenly whenever Méthode’s breath became more gasping, showed there was life left in a body made of knots, bones and skin stretched and dry, creviced by thousands of fine wrinkles, like the furrows the country people plow on their hills.
On the long, low dresser along the wall facing the two beds, Valcourt had ordered food and a bar set out.
“We’re going to eat, drink and fuck,” said Méthode, adding with the smile of a kid surprised by his own audacity that he was glad his mother didn’t understand French.
Then in Kinyarwanda:
“Maman, don’t be sad, I’m going to have a beautiful death.”
“For a young man, there’s no such thing as a beautiful death. Or a death that makes sense. All children’s deaths are ugly and senseless.”
André, who had learned in Quebec how to make Rwandans aware of condoms and abstinence, was the first to arrive for this funerary feast, which Méthode called the Last Supper, though he was quick to add, with a little laugh broken by coughing, that he did not take himself for jesus Christ. Then came Raphaël with some colleagues from the bank, and Élise, her arms full of flowers and her handbag full of morphine, which an understanding and ill-paid friend had obtained for ten dollars American. Finally Agathe, accompanied by three of her girls because a party without free girls is not a party. The girls would not kiss the dying man or even shake his hand. Méthode was too charmed with everything to insist. On the contrary. He was delighted the girls thought they might catch the sickness, even with the merest touch of their lips or fingers. Fear had got to them, and though unjustified, it was a fear, a terror almost, that he and so many of his friends had never felt. His death would not have been in vain.
When the first fevers had taken him, he had thought of malaria. The first diarrhea attacks had not surprised him. Sick goat’s meat or polluted water. The ten kilos he lost in a few weeks were certainly food poisoning, that rotten goat he had eaten at Lando’s, or maybe the grilled tilapias at the Cosmos that had left an aftertaste. The sores in his mouth hadn’t surprised him either, any more than the tuberculosis that floored him so suddenly. He took a room in the intellectuals’ building at the Kigali Hospital Centre so as not to have to share a bed with someone who had diphtheria or pustulant scabies. The sickness appeared to him along with the face of a Belgian doctor, the head of internal medicine, who knew well that it was penetrating everywhere, multiplying faster than rabbits, and that this was giving him a long head start on his Western colleagues. All these patients, this constantly replenished horde of ignorant people at his disposal, and the sickness progressing at lightning speed but with its own characteristics here—all of it could lead to an important discovery, and even
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