Free A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche

takes some more, more slowly.
    “I’m dying of AIDS, but I’m dying by accident. I didn’t choose, it was a mistake. I thought it was a White’s or homosexual’s or monkey’s or druggie’s sickness. I was born a Tutsi, it’s written on my identity card, but I’m a Tutsi by accident. I didn’t choose, that was a mistake too. My great-grandfather learned from the Whites that the Tutsis were superior to the Hutus. He was Hutu. He did everything possible so his children and grandchildren would become Tutsis. So here I am, a Hutu-Tutsi and victim of AIDS, possessor of all the sicknesses that are going to destroy us. Look at me, I’m your mirror, your double who’s rotting from inside. I’m dying a bit earlier than you, that’s all.”
    The minister stood up and shouted, “It’s a disgrace!” He stormed out. The effect was to wake his two body-guards, who had fallen asleep. The dignitaries, the Hutus and the two representatives of the Swiss embassy, which was subsidizing the People’s Bank, followed.
    “I’m dying happy because I’ve spoken at last. Goodbye and may the Lord bless you.”
    Standing at the back of the wide, cold, ugly hall, Gentille was crying. When Valcourt came to see her she said, “Méthode’s right. Promise me you’ll take me with you when you leave, I don’t want to die.”
    Valcourt put his trembling hand on her cheek. “I promise.”
    His world flipped. Uttering two words had brought him back to life. He had come here to live at a leisurely pace, with no goal, ambition or passion. All he had wanted was to go to the end of his own path without deceit, but at the same time without getting involved or taking sides in anything. One day he had written, “We are inevitably prisoners of the words we speak.” Oscillating between anxiety and happiness, he set off with the gang to get drunk at Lando’s, prisoner of the last words he had spoken.
    He had barely sat down before he began to miss Gentille, who had not been able to leave work. He got up and left the friends crowding around a long table, which in a flash was covered with big Primus bottles, and went to sit in a corner at a rickety table. It rapped on the cement floor every time he leaned on it as he watched the Lyon–Monaco soccer match being televised by Radio-Française Internationale.
    Lando came and joined him with a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and two beer glasses, which he filled. They were going to get very drunk.
    “Méthode dreamed of going to Quebec, the way his friend Raphaël did. You don’t know how he envied him for having done it. In a way I can understand that. It’s fun to be there. You’re so far away from everything.”
    Landouald then talked about Quebec’s Grande Allée and the people of the city, gently poking fun at their small-town reserve, and about his political science professors at Laval University. When he had talked to them of Rwandan excesses, corruption, violence, his Québécois Third-World-enthusiast profs had told him he was talking like “a colonial.”
    “I sometimes had the strange impression that the oppressed Blacks were the ones driving round in their Volvos and I was just a naive little White who wanted to exploit Africa.”
    Valcourt smiled and emptied his glass. His friend did likewise but without a smile.
    “You should leave, Bernard. Our friend Méthode was more observant than I thought. He was right. The big bloodbath is brewing, bigger than all the others Rwanda and Burundi have seen. Our only chance is the Blue Berets and your Canadian general. But as Hélène says— mind you, she’s a separatist—he’s a real Canadian, an imitation Swiss, a civil servant who follows procedure to the letter. Here, if you follow procedure, you’re a hundred corpses late. Drink up. Come and see.”
    Lando held Bernard by the shoulder. Since he was tall and limped, there was more weight than grip. They walked the length of the bar and crossed the restaurant parking lot to the tra fic